Housekeeping in the 1800s - Not Quite the Pied Piper

Even in the Victorian Era an the American Old West, poison was an item that was a little disconcerting. It's not hard to imagine that housekeepers were interested in finding a way to control pests without possibly poisoning the rest of the household...

**The information below comes from a Ladies Magazine of the period, but I have NO IDEA if it's either viable to use for the purpose, and I do NOT know if the methods are safe to use**


DRIVING RATS AWAY WITHOUT POISON. -

First, the old French plan. This is followed, chiefly in Paris, by men who make it a special business. They take a deep tub, with water on the bottom, and a little elevation in the middle like an island, on which is only a place for just one rat to sit on. This trap is covered and has a large balance-valve opening downward. On the middle of this valve a piece of fried pork or cheese is placed, and when the rat walks on it to get the cheese the valve goes down, drops the rat into the water, and moves back in position. A road is made from the rat-hole to the top of the tub by means of pieces of board rubbed with cheese, so as to make the walk more attractive for the rats. In the course of the night, some ten, twenty, or even more rats may go down, and if the island was not there, they would be found most all alive in the morning, quietly swimming around; but the provision of the little island saves the trouble of killing them, because their egotistic instinct of preservation causes them to fight for the exclusive possession of the island on which, in the morning, the strongest rat is found in solitary possession, all others being killed and drowned, all around him.

Second, the New York plan, invented by one of the Friends. The floor, near the rat hole is covered with a thin layer of a most caustic potassa. When the rats walk on this it makes their feet sore; these they lick with their tongues, which makes their mouth sore, and the result is that they shun the locality, not alone, but appear to tell all the rats in the neighborhood about it, and eventually the house is entirely abandoned by them, notwithstanding the houses around are full of rats.

VOCABULARY -
Potassa is an older name for Potassium Hydroxide
Friends, I believe, is a reference to Quakers

Which method would you prefer to use?

Please visit me and see what books I have to offer... 

The Forgotten

Forget Me Not

My book Captured Heart tells the story of a young woman whose lost her memory and the impact that has on her and the husband she forgot.

Today there has been much research into the causes and reasons for amnesia. But what would it be like for someone who has amnesia in the nineteenth century, when very little was known about the condition. In the time allowed me, to conduct my research for this book. I found very little information out there to successfully provide me with the information I needed. Therefore I tried to use information I gathered along with common sense to determine possible outcomes.

I asked myself how would I feel if I forgot my loved ones, if I forgot the life I used to have, if I forgot who I was? And use that instinctive response to formulate how I was going to write my character and the reaction by those who she forgot.

It has to feel like bits of you floating away.













First, let's tackle the causes of memory loss:

Memory loss or amnesia as we now know it can be temporary or permanent. However the term amnesia is generally given to the short-term variety of memory loss. The causes include brain or head injury, as well as a few known drugs, which can cause memory loss, alcohol or traumatic events. There is also the condition known as Alzheimer's disease which also causes memory loss and deterioration.

Types of Amnesia:

Anterograde amnesia is the inability to create new memories due to brain damage, while long-term memories from before the event remain intact.

Retrograde amnesia is inability to recall memories before onset of amnesia.

Post-traumatic amnesia is generally due to a head injury (example: a fall, a knock on the head).

Although I have a degree in psychology. To clearly explain these conditions goes beyond the scope of this post. Also these terms were not used in the period depicted in my story. However it's an interesting concept and one I really wanted to share here.

Now let image the impact to the individual who has loss there memory.

Although I don't doubt this would be the effects of someone today. I do believe we were made of sterner stuff back in the old day. The mortality rate, living conditions, climate and treacherous terrain. Losing one's memory, may have been considered a blessing to some and a curse to others. Either way I have no way of telling other than looking back at the grit and determination of the pioneers of America.

They would be more likely to  shake it off and make the best of it. As long as there was life there was hope. Please remember these are my opinions not fact.

I would imagine it would have been a lot harder for those who were forgotten. Loved ones whose memories of what they had would hurt them greatly. I also believe the forgotten would experience similar emotions as a person who'd lost their memory.

Memory loss could be likened to a bereavement for the forgotten as well as the individual. How they come to terms with that loss can take various forms as in the seven stages of grief.

The seven emotional stages of grief are:
shock or disbelief,
denial,
bargaining,
guilt,
anger,
depression,
acceptance/hope.
Symptoms of grief can be emotional, physical, social, or religious in nature. In my story I tackled this concept on all four levels, but more focus was given to the emotional and religious side of dealing with loss.

I hope you get a chance to read Captured Heart and it gives you as much joy and pleasure as it did for me writing it.

I'm Sandra E Sinclair Author of Captured Heart, the next book in the Sweethearts of Jubilee Springs Series.

I hope you found this post interesting.

Sandra E Sinclair
For a list of Sandra E Sinclair Books: Here

Don't Lose Your Saltiness

by Sheila Hollinghead

Oh the harshness the pioneers of the west endured! Can you imagine eating a tomato sandwich, the tomato fresh from the garden and dripping with goodness, without a dash of salt?

Salt has been used for seasoning and preserving food perhaps since the very beginning of mankind. And, thankfully for our taste buds, we’re in no danger of running out. Geologists believe the underground salt deposits in Kansas alone would give Americans enough salt for the next 250,000 years. 

And if we ever did run out of salt on the earth, salt from the oceans would keep enhancing the taste of our food. The amount of salt in the oceans is staggering. If we removed all of it at once, we would be buried in a mountain that reached over five-hundred feet thick over the entire earth!

Yet salt has not always been readily available for all. Pioneers often had to thinly stretch their rations of salt. The harsh frontier life was made even more difficult from lack of salt. Due to its scarcity in the early 1800s, salt was four times as expensive as beef on the frontier!

Salt's usefulness extends beyond making our food tasty — as a matter of fact, it is essential for people and livestock. Tell that to your doctor! The sodium in salt is a needed nutrient that the body cannot produce. Sodium regulates many bodily functions and is a component of blood. We cannot live with an unregulated vital fluid, our blood, the transporter of oxygen and nutrients. 

Besides being necessary for life and a tasty ingredient, salt was, and still is, used to preserve food. Without refrigeration, curing of meats and some vegetables with salt was widely used in frontier days. Salt pulls the water from microorganisms during the process of osmosis, destroying the bacteria that cause illness.

Its necessity put salt at a high premium in our country’s history. For example, in the late 1860s, the Salt War broke out in El Paso, Texas when men fought for ownership of the salt deposits near the base of the Guadalupe Mountains. The war lasted for twelve years, resulting in property damage and loss of life.

This importance of salt has resulted in words and sayings, some perhaps not recognizable as being derived from salt. Laborers were once paid in salt, and it is where the word salary comes from. In the past, leafy greens were salted, as many of us still salt them today, and thus we get the word salad.

Someone who is the “salt of the earth” is dependable and true to their word. And of course we’ve all heard, he’s not worth his weight in salt.

Adding salt to our food makes it tastier, and in the same way, adding a grain a salt to something someone says helps it to become more palatable.

Just remember to take this article with a grain, or perhaps a handful, of salt!

Connect with Sheila:

Facebook ~ Twitter ~ Amazon Author Page ~ Pinterest

Goodreads ~ BookBub ~ Blog ~ Newsletter Sign-up

Link to

Sheila's Down to the River Series

  

 

Robbie and Taron

The path down to the river may sweep her away ... to love or disaster, perhaps both.

Now free on Amazon, please CLICK HERE.

Lockets--a Must-Have Fashion Item of the Victorians

by Heather Blanton

Recently I became interested in lockets as a potential symbol in a story. Curious about their history, I did a little research. They really are an interesting and emotional reflection of the heart’s capacity for syrupy love.

Scholars pretty much agree that lockets were originally born out of the medieval transition from amulets to a more rational and less “magical” mindset. Still, items of great value, sentimentality, and power were kept in the lockets. Everything from notes, to hair, to poison.

Queen Elizabeth wore a locket with a painting of her mother in it—the famous Ann Boleyn, beheaded by Henry the VIII. I can imagine the picture and her mother’s untimely demise kept the Virgin Queen on her toes and careful with men!

Lockets, however, truly entered the mainstream of fashion with the Victorian age. Prince Albert gave Queen Victoria a bracelet with eight pendants on it, each containing a lock of hair from all their children. The queen was rarely ever without the sweet gift.

When Albert died, she was devastated. She had a locket made with the Prince’s photo inside. Hearts melted by the sentimentality of her gesture, fashion aficionados of the day turned the mourning locket—and then lockets in general—into the fashion trend of the day. Black bog oak (an old wood) was the material of choice. Just as there was a cultural expectation that a widow would wear black for a year, she was also expected not to wear any jewelry other than the mourning locket for the same amount of time.

I was more impressed with the spinner lockets, though—a particular style that became popular during the Victorian era. According to the ebay buyer’s guide, “These lockets have a bail, which is a D-shaped or oval component used to connect the locket to the necklace chain. The bail is not fixed to the locket itself, leaving it free to spin.” I don’t know why that impresses me. Possibly because I’ve never seen one and they tend to be more valuable than a normal locket.

If you find a spinner locket, snap it up!

Fort Jackson Colorado

Post (c) Angela Raines

Fort Jackson is the third of the four forts located within fifteen miles of each other in the Platte River area east of Longs Peak and the Rocky Mountains. It came into existence in 1837, two years after Fort Vasquez. The other two to begin in 1837 were Fort St. Vrain and Fort Lupton.

Fort Jackson was started by two partners: Peter A. Sarpy and Henry Fraeb. Sarpy was a Frenchman originally from St. Louis. Sarpy was active in the fur trade and in 1824 was appointed as the Indian trader at Bellevue in Nebraska. (Note - Bellevue, Nebraska in Sarpy county.)

Author Photo from Inside Ft. Vaxquez Museum

Henry Fraeb was of German descent although there is not much known about his early life. By 1829 he was actively involved in the fur trade and during his lifetime worked and was partners with the likes of Milton Sublette and James Bridger. He traversed most of the Rocky Mountain Region between present day Wyoming and Arizona. He died in 1841 near Battle Creek in Routt County Colorado near the Wyoming border in a fight with the Cheyenne, Arapahoes and Sioux.

Records seem to indicate the business started out well. The merchandise bill was around $10,000. The men on the payroll, some of who were paid around $200 for twelve to fifteen months of work. They following were listed as employees of the company that ran Fort Jackson: Michel Sioto, Ls LaJeunesse, Wm. Primeau, Ls B. Myres, John H. Albert, Chas. Kiney, Bartlett, Daugherty, Benito Garcia, Jacog Hawkins, Gilbert Jackson, Trudelle, Woods, and Antoine Latereuse. These men built and worked for/in Fort Jackson.

Author Photo: Native Plants near South Platte River, CO. 

However, the business was short lived and the partners sold out to Bent & Company sometime in 1838 according to some reports. Since Fort St. Vrain was less than ten miles north, after the goods were transferred to St. Vrain, the building itself was probably abandoned and fell into disrepair and disappeared. As of 2011 there has been on definite location found for Fort Jackson, but that it existed is undisputed.

For more on this and other 'Forts' in Colorado during the heyday of trapping and trading the following may be of use: "The Fur Trade in Colorado" by William B. Butler and "Colorado Forts" Historic Outpost on the Wild Frontier" by Jolie Anderson Gallagher.

Join me next month for the fourth and final post of the Forts along the Platte.


Doris Gardner-McCraw - Author, Speaker, Historian-specializing in

Colorado and Women's History

Angela Raines - author: Where Love & History Meet

For a list of Angela Raines Books: Here 

Photo and Poem: Click Here 

Angela Raines FaceBook: Click Here

Release Day for Perfectly Unacceptable by Linda Carroll-Bradd

This novella is my third in the series and book 13 overall. Although a stand-alone story, Perfectly Unacceptable features cameos of characters from the first two stories, Perfectly Mismatched (Book 1) and Perfectly Unscripted (Book 9).

BLURB: Jared Manning was left wanting on two prior marriage attempts, and this time he wants to be assured of a bride. So he commits to a correspondence courtship with only one potential mail-order bride and anticipates the arrival of Dina Valdis, a retiring schoolteacher, in time for the town’s Harvest Dance. He knows just how he wants his picture-perfect married life to be and assumes he’s found the perfect woman to fulfill the role.

                Dina is passionate about being a schoolteacher who sparks the love of learning in young minds. An incident in her hometown of Kingston, New York forces her from her job, and her reputation is smeared. Not wanting to become a hermit, Dina is reminded how her cousins, Aurelia and Rilleta, found happiness with their husbands in Jubilee Springs. Thinking this is her only option, Dina heads west as a mail-order bride. Seeing the size of the tiny town almost sets Dina running, but an attraction for this handsome miner keeps her there. When she learns the town’s children have no teacher, she starts a campaign to educate the townspeople. Soon, she’ll have to decide if the attraction she feels for Jared is stronger than her passion for teaching.

Amazon buy link

GIVEAWAY: One lucky commenter will win his or her choice of either Perfectly Mismatched or Perfectly Unscripted (or a backlist title of your choosing).

~**~

As a child, Linda was often found lying on her bed reading about characters having exciting adventures in places far away. In later years, she started writing romances and achieved her first publication--a confession story. Now Linda writes heartwarming contemporary and historical stories with a touch of humor.

Amazon Author page

Amazon Author Page

Dolls of the 1800s

By Kathryn Albright

I often tease my mother that she never grew up—she still plays with dolls. My mother is a doll restoration artist. Years ago she apprenticed to a woman who later retired and sold the business and tools to her. People brought in their broken dolls, modern, antique, or reproduction and she knew just what to do to fix them–whether it involved restringing, a new wig, gluing in eyes, or adding a new limb.

I remember returning home late at night after a babysitting job or an evening out and feeling eyes staring at me from every corner of the house–rather disconcerting, if not down-right frightening. (And don’t even get me started on the boxes of eyes, bodies, and limbs in the basement!)

In an early book of mine, The Angel and the Outlaw, two dolls play a part in getting the hero and heroine together. A china doll from 1860 and a paper mache doll from 1850.  I was fortunate that my mother happened to have two dolls that fit my story to a “T”, even to the point of a lovely green dress on the French doll which matched a description in my story!

Manufactured dolls of this era were generally paper mache or china or bisque. They had an adult face rather than a baby face. (Manufactured dolls with a baby face weren’t available until 1910.) The soft cloth bodies were filled with sawdust, horsehair or cotton. Hairstyles reflected the current styles of the day. Both of these dolls have “flat-top” hairdos that were popular during the Civil War. The heads were often sold by themselves, and a mother would then make the body of the doll and sew the clothes. 

The French china doll was popular from 1860 to 1900. It cost approximately one dollar at that time. The head and shoulder plate, along with the hands and feet are china (with painted-on shoes) and the body is made of cloth. This doll has a painted garter on the left leg.

The German-made paper-mache doll is older with cracks along the bust line.

She has soft leather arms and hands (with separate fingers!) and leather shoes that can be taken off. As sedate as she looks here, she has a lovely corset and petticoat *g*.

  

For families out on the prairie's that could not afford manufactured dolls or doll heads, a young girl's doll was made from whatever could be spared. I've seen dolls of that era made from corn husks, rags, and flour sacks, with faces that were embroidered with thread or yarn or drawn with pencil or ink. The Raggedy Ann doll above started out in just this way.

Growing up, the doll I remember playing with the most was a Barbie doll (along with her boyfriend Ken and her younger sister Skipper). Usually, there was a ranch involved because I loved horses and had several Breyer horse figurines. 

I’d love to hear about your favorite doll—now or when you were younger. 

* * * * * * * * * * 

[  Amazon  ]

Author Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Pinterest | Amazon Author Page | BookBub | Goodreads