Cupid and The Power of Love by Kimberly Grist

While researching life in the 19th century, I became intrigued by the popular depictions of a chubby male child, usually naked and sometimes winged. Originally known in Renaissance and Baroque periods, the putto came to represent the cupid, which can be found in both religious and secular art from the 1420s to the turn of the 16th century.

Many artists have depicted them and among the best-known examples are from the painter Raphael and the sculptor Donatello.

 
These winged characters experienced a revival in the 19th century and appeared in architecture,  artwork, illustrations, folk paintings, and other handcrafted decor and dishware.

Cherubs appeared in fabrics, wallpaper, and appeared in paintings, decor, and dishware. 

As Deputy Leo Weaver, from my recent release, Willow's Worth commented, "Everywhere I look these days, I see those little angels. I don’t understand people’s attraction to half-naked cherubs.”

Cherubs appeared in cards, calendars, and Advertisements

Cherubs in the Victorian era were symbolic of romantic love and for some representing the cherubim watching over and interceding for mankind. 

The fat little-winged angels who carried a bow and arrow came to be known as the symbol of piercing the heart of mortals with love and desire. 

The combination of divinity, myth, and romanticism made cherubs accessible decorations even when in society the glimpse of an ankle was considered erotic.

In my first novel  Rebecca's Hope, I introduced a western town in the late 19th century filled with colorful characters and innovative your women. Willow's Worth is a combination of the tale and includes characters initially introduced in subsequent stories such as Emma's Dream, Lois's Risk, Maggie's Strength, Carol's Choice, Garnet's Gift, A Fresh Start for Christmas and A Bride for David.

Telegraph operator, Willow Graham has benefited from a unique lifestyle growing up on her grandfather's ranch. She loves the wide-open countryside where she tries and trains animals. With her twenty-first birthday approaching her family pressures her to return to the city and take up the lavish lifestyle her uncle has planned for her. But another option piques her curiosity a matchmaking agency's recommendation that she begins a correspondence with a handsome farmer. 

Hardworking, twenty-seven-year-old, Leo Weaver is a man of many talents. He's helped his father develop a successful farm. Loyal to Carrie Town, he volunteers as a deputy sheriff. Both handsome and charming, Leo's become the target of several well-meaning ladies in the community who have submitted his name for a new matchmaking venture. 

Willow and Leo' have differing ideas on how to create a successful marriage and home. An inspirational romance that shows sometimes true love is worth hammering out the differences.

Combining History, Humor, and Romance with an emphasis on Faith Friends and Good Clean Fun.

Connect with Kimberly:

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/FaithFunandFriends/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/GristKimberly

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Kimberly-Grist/e/B07H2NTJ71

Freight Trains on the Plains

When we think of freight trains today, this is probably what comes to mind:

However, back in the 1800s, before the railroads crossed the Missouri River after the Civil War, a freight train looked more like this:

Notice two wagons hooked together-needed fewer bullwhackers or muleskinners that way.

Freight trains were pulled across the Great Plains for decades before railroads began transporting a large portion of trade goods between the East and either the Pacific Coast states of California and Oregon, or the Mexican-held Southwest. One of the earliest known cases of freight being taken across the territory claimed by Mexico, but dominated by the Plains tribes of Native Americans, was the first venture down the Santa Fe Trail in 1821 by Captain William Becknell.

 

Sante Fe trail's end outside W.J. Rowe Transfer Company

His party of traders left Arrow Rock, Missouri, to trade horses and mules with American Indians and hunt wild game on the plains. The expedition met a troop of Mexican soldiers in November and traveled with them to Santa Fe. Their trade goods, including calico and other printed cloth, sold at high prices in the isolated Spanish town. They returned to Missouri in 1822 after only 48 days of travel. Because of high profits, the trade route soon became a favorite with other traders—most of whom used freight wagons pulled by teams of either oxen or mules.

Ben Holladay became known as the stagecoach king. However, he got his start in freighting in 1846 during the Mexican-American War when he contracted with General Stephen W. Kearny to supply the U. S. Army with wagons and provisions. Once the war was over, he formed a partnership with Theodore W. Warner. They transported supplies to Salt Lake City, Utah.

One well-known shipping firm was Russell, Majors and Waddell which came into being to fill a need that none of the men individually had the means to do on their own. Until 1854 government freight contracts were awarded to various companies for relatively small shipments. That year the War Department offered a single, enormous two-year contract to transport supplies to U.S. Army posts in most of the West and Southwest. Majors owned a freight company at the time. Russell and Waddell were partners in a wholesale trading company. The three men joined forces on December 28, 1854, to form Russell, Majors and Waddell won the contract. They also competed for and won the next government contract, although that one did not prove so profitable.

As a side note, one of my pioneer families crossed the plains in a covered wagon which, with a few others, was attached to a Russell, Majors and Waddell freight train.

Along with all the larger freight companies were a multitude of smaller freighters to transport goods from one place to another.

Five of my books, starting with my 2020 Lockets & Lace novel, Hannah’s Handkerchief and ending with Hannah’s Highest Regard, touch on the Kansas trails (Smoky Hill and Santa Fe), the frontier forts, and either freight or passenger service along those trails and between those forts. 

The two books about Hannah involve a hero in the Army Quartermaster Corps who uses freight wagons to transport goods from Fort Riley, the supply center for forts farther west. Most freight was hauled by contract labor in freight trains usually pulled by oxen. (U.S. Army freight wagons, often used for delivering ordnance or transporting supplies on individual campaigns, were pulled by teams of six mules—always mules and always six of them.)

In my three books I’m writing for the Widows, Brides & Secret Babies series, Mail Order Roslyn, Mail Order Lorena, and Mail Order Penelope, I focus on the Butterfield Overland Despatch Stagecoach Company. 

Founder David Butterfield recognized the Smoky Hill Trail was the shortest and quickest route between Missouri and Denver, Colorado. He started a freight business at the same time he started the stagecoach line. His first freight train traveled that trail a few weeks before the stagecoach. To prepare for freight as well as stagecoach drivers and travelers along the trail, Butterfield built and stocked stations every ten to fifteen miles. Along with the home stations that served food and sometimes provided lodging, and the stock stations that only changed out teams, he built cattle stations. Cattle stations, in addition to being home stations for the coaches, allowed freighters to change out their tired oxen and, in some cases, mules for those freight trains traveling the trail. These cattle stations were past Fort Ellsworth (later Fort Harker) at Ruthton, Eaton, Cornell Creek, and Bijou Basin.

 

1890 Last large bull train from the railroad to the Black Hills

Even after the railroads came carrying freight to stations along it tracks, it still needed to be transported distances to the ultimate customer. Freight trains made of wagons pulled by oxen, mules, and horses continued to find business well into the twentieth century until motorized vehicles took over.

Sources:

https://kshs.org/kansapedia/santa-fe-trail/12195

https://www.legendsofamerica.com/ben-holladay/

https://www.legendsofamerica.com/we-russellmajorswaddell/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Russell-Majors-and-Waddell

Keep Your (Victorian) Moustache Nice! by Kristin Holt

by Kristin Holt

USA Today Bestselling Author of

Sweet Romance set in the Victorian-American West

Mustache, moustache.... that hairy patch above a man's lip. Apparently our Victorian ancestors spelled the "moustache" with an 'o', at least in Chicago where this 1891 article originated.

My husband wears a full beard (and mustache), and I love it. He keeps it trimmed nicely and I find it handsome. Our son wears full facial hair, too. The younger Mr. Holt uses beard oil, a trendy bamboo beard comb, and his new bride bought him a beard iron/curling iron thingie as a Valentine's gift last winter. I think today's men love facial hair almost as much as their Victorian counterparts.

This 1891 article is a beautiful "slice of life" view of a barber's no-nonsense replies to both "keep that moustache nice" (was spelled in 1891 after all), and "dandruff!"

Notice this late Victorian-era barber's solution for a moustache that won't grow. Note that this barber shop of the nineteenth century employed hot irons (yes! curling irons!) to moustaches. "Don't curl it with your fingers!" Okay. I won't. (Never had a mustache, even a few hairs in need of bleach, myself.)

Note the 1891 treatment for dandruff. Salt water and brisk brushing. But don't you dare use a wire brush, said the barber. Never, never never.

This one's definitely worth reading:

What fun!

For more articles about the happenings inside a Victorian Old West Barber Shop don't miss out on my related history bits like this.

Thank you for joining me! Please scroll down and comment. Your thoughts are welcome (as is "conversation", especially amidst COVID-19).

Warm regards,

Kristin

Copyright © Kristin Holt LC

Finding Love with a Little Help ...

Hi, Kit Morgan here. I don't often promote my books on this blog. Instead, I'm usually writing about the old west. But I have a new release that folks are enjoying so I'd thought I'd share.

There's nothing as sweet as young love, and my character Darcy Templeton is about to find that out. But she's a shy girl, and though she's discovered there are men out there, it's one thing to dream about marrying one and having a family, quite another to go through the motions of doing so. And, when a good catch is right in front of you, but you don't see because you're too busy staring wide-eyed at the handsome stranger hanging around town, it's easy to miss what's been right under your nose all the time. Hmmm, sounds familiar doesn't it? It seems nothing much has changed over the years.

So, sometimes love needs a little help from some seasoned veterans. In my fictional town of Independence, there are four steadfast friends. Mercy, Martha, Maude and Mahulda. The latter is tasked with matching Darcy and Martha's grandson, Chance. But it's easier said than done! So my four matrons do what they can to bring the young couple together.

Here's the book's blurb: Mrs. Mahulda Brock has been tasked with a very important task. Matchmaking! Not that she hasn't done a little before ...
But this was different. For one, she had to find ways to bring two young people in her home town of Independence together. Yet finding ways to make that happen wasn't easy. But with the help of her friends Mercy, Martha and Maude, she'd manage, wouldn't she? After some trial and error, she wasn't so sure. Worse, she noticed the young couple in her charge weren't the only ones bereft of love. There were others. How was she going to manage to bring together so many lonely hearts?

Find out in this sweet historical western romance! You can find the book on amazon.

Importance of Supplies in War

Since men began fighting, it’s known that armies must have provisions, the basic three-Ms  are meals, munitions, and medicines. The definition of “supplies” is the stock of resources from which a person can be provided with the necessary amount of that resource.

Generals do spend a great deal of time planning battles, but they also carefully plot where to obtain the needed supplies to keep their military units marching and how to move those supplies to their positions. Napoleon Bonaparte, who lost more men to spoiled food that to the enemy, is known for saying, “An army marches on its stomach.”

The very next day after George Washington accepted command of the Continental Army in 1775, he created a special position for a man whose responsibilities were the finances and logistics of all the army’s needs—the Quartermaster General. He acquired the supplies and got them distributed to the army.

We’ve all just lived through disruption to our own ‘supply lines’ and know firsthand how devastating it can be. For a general, a vital proponent of winning the war is keeping his own supply lines open while doing his best to destroy the enemy’s. Starvation has meant the surrender of one side since wars began.

The industrial North had so much advantage over the South with their manufacturing abilities. The Southern plantation owners farmed, growing cotton and tobacco crops to sell to the European markets where they ordered goods they could no longer procure from the North. Slave labor was the foundation for a prosperous economic system in the South.

The higher quality of supplies of clothing and gear issued to the Union soldiers made those in gray envious.

Plus the North had the superior infrastructure in their railroads to move both me and goods. They had twenty thousand miles of track compared to nine thousand in the South and their own locomotive factory whereas the South converted theirs into an armament factory. For this reason, both rail centers and railroad tracks became targets for attack.   

In the beginning of America’s Civil War, patriotic citizens of both sides were fully willing to provide for their men going off to fight for the right, to share what they had. This is when my new story takes place, in December of 1861, and in Kentucky which had declared itself neutral, but that didn’t stop the Confederates from making Bowling Green their regional headquarters for their army.

But three years in, that was no longer so. Commandeering food from civilians became rampant. Both the Union and Confederates' military regulations allowed for ‘foraging food and livestock.’ To plunder and pillage though was explicitly banned—except no one paid attention to that part and almost everyone ignored it.

To devastate Lee’s food supply in 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant ordered Major General Phillip Sheridan to destroy all the farms, crops, and businesses in the Shenandoah Valley. He told him to render it so barren that a crow flying over would have to pack its own lunch.

The one hundred thousand men who made up Grant’s Army of the Potomac required forty thousand pounds of meat and vegetables a day. Lee with half that number in his Army of Northern Virginia were existing on half rations, basically starving because the supply lines had been interrupted.

In KENTUCKY BRIDE, book eight of the North & South: Civil War Brides Collection, my heroine, Gardenia Gladiola Garland—who goes by GiGi—is accompanying her grandfather to deliver supplies to the Confederate troops. It is scheduled to debut on June 9th, so is available now for pre-order.

Here’s where to pre-order your copy! <+> https://www.amazon.com/Kentucky-Bride-North-South-Brides-ebook/dp/B085BFF244

And here’s the jacket copy:
In this world, you will have tribulation.
In 1861, a tragic war fell upon America’s United States, dividing them North against South. Some might say a young woman can't be too fussy when almost every unattached young man is off fighting, but that shouldn't mean the daughter of a Union man has any excuse for canoodling with a Rebel.

Still, eighteen-year-old Gigi longed for true love, and the dashing Texas Ranger turned Kentucky Confederate vies for her heart. How will they overcome the odds and a war to be together? A Civil War indeed, such an oxymoron!

Bio: Award-winning Author Caryl McAdoo prays her story brings God glory! And her best-selling novels are blessed with a lion’s share of 5-Star ratings! With fifty-and-counting titles, she loves writing as well as singing the new songs the Lord gives her—listen to a few at YouTube. She and husband Ron share four children and nineteen grandsugars. The McAdoos live in the woods south of Clarksville, the seat of Red River County, in far Northeast Texas, waiting expectantly for God to open the next door. 

Links: 
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YouTube (Hear Caryl sing her New Songs!)