Time Travel Fantasies

Who wouldn’t want to travel back in time and witness a point in history that’s always fascinated you?
That’s the fun of time travel romances. In most I’ve read, a modern-day heroine travels back to meet a hunky hero of the past. But sometimes it’s the hero who travels back to meet a fair maiden of [...]

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving became a official holiday until 1863. But in November 1861, President Lincoln ordered the government closed for a local day of thanksgiving.
Sarah Josepha Hale, a prominent magazine editor, wrote a letter to Lincoln in 1863, urging him to have the “day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival.”
So he did. It [...]

Drawing on Social Conclusions to Understand Victorian Deportment

I’ve been working on a piece of artwork for a Victorian chapter in a modern finishing-school manual. After a few versions I’m still working on it, for I decided to try to capture the heart of a moment between a young lady of the Victorian era coming face-to-face with one from our modern times. The picture is [...]

Ward McAllister and his 400

Ward McAllister was the self-appointed head of New York Society during the Gilded Age.  It was a time when the very wealthy of New York wanted to hold themselves above the fray, establishing themselves (at least in their minds) as the Aristocracy of the United States.  Without the nobility titles, they searched for a way [...]

Civil War Amputations

“Union Colonel Thomas Reynolds lay in a hospital bed after the July 1864 Battle of Peachtree Creek, Georgia. Gathered around him, surgeons discussed the possibility of amputating his wounded leg. The Irish-born Reynolds, hoping to sway the debate toward a conservative decision, pointed out that his wasn’t any old leg, but an ‘imported leg.’ Whether [...]

Political assassinations

Political upheaval was ripe and often successful, but just how many politicians were targeted? Who the hell knows. Why? Psychos…pure and simple. Anarchists who thought they’d do something, separatists who tried to kill leaders on their side…people are stupid. Seriously. But here are a couple big ones during the late 1800s.
Napoleon III of France who [...]

Veteran’s Day

I actually had a different blog in mind for this morning, but then I realized what day it was.  This just felt more appropriate.
With the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919, World War I (known as The Great War, to my grandmother’s generation) ended. However, actual fighting ceased seven months earlier [...]

Nevada’s First Woman Sheriff

In 1919 Clara Dunham Crowell, a former waitress at the Two Bit House, was the law in Lander County, Nevada.
Clara Dunham married George Crowell, a teamster who drove a stage coach, in 1898. The Crowell family flourished with the addition of two children. George, who was highly regarded for his honesty and “can do” attitude, [...]

STEAMPUNK: “Party Like It’s 1899″

You may think you’ve never read a Steampunk book or seen a Steampunk movie, but there’s a good chance you have. Find out more about Steampunk. It’s been around. You may even be WRITING IT!
STEAMPUNK is defined by Wikipedia as “subgenre of fantasy and speculative fiction that came into prominenece in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. These include works set [...]