Doing Research

Plan of Fort Pitt, 1759

I posted this on my Northkill blog a while back, and thought the readers of this blog might find it helpful too.

I’m sure you all know that anyone who aspires to write accurate historical fiction lives and dies by research. While digging into a period, I regularly run across fascinating sources that have provided those little details and insights that make my stories not only factually accurate, but also lend social and cultural authenticity. I’m especially thrilled when I find firsthand accounts from the period or histories written not long afterward that contain tidbits of information I haven’t found elsewhere.

Below are a few of the many sources I’ve lucked upon. They run the gamut of topics, and a few of them pretty obscure. But all are very helpful and a few even had me jumping up and down when I found them. Thank goodness nobody was around to witness that loss of writerly dignity!

The PDF and ebook downloads can also be found on my American Patriot Series website on the Print & Media Resources page. In a few cases I reformatted the text to make it easier to read.

I hope these are helpful for your own research!

Colonial Medicine and Herbs

Colonial Herbs, Miller Cory House Museum

“Colonial Medicine,” the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation

“The Practice of Domestic Medicine During the Colonial Period” by L. G. Eichner, MD

Food

Coffee, Tea, and Chocolate in Early Colonial America

Colonial Recipes

Food Timeline

Forts

These contain fabulous detail!

Orderly Book of Captain William Trent at Fort Pitt, May 28-October 16, 1763

“Fort Northkill,” Report of the Commission to Locate the Site of the Frontier Forts of Pennsylvania, vol. 1. (Clarence M. Busch State Printer of Pennsylvania, 1896)

French and Indian War

War for Empire

French and Indian Cruelty Exemplified in the Life and various Vicissitudes of Fortune, of Peter Williamson by Peter Williamson.

History

Stories of Ohio by William Dean Howells (1897). This covers the earliest history of Ohio through the late 1800s.

Historical Calendars, Sun, Moon, and Tide Data

Miscellany, Historical calendars.

Sun and Moon Data

Tides and Currents Offers a great deal of info on currents and tides. Data can be found for recent years and predictions for near future.

Language

Extremely helpful for us 18th century lovers!

“A Guide to Eighteenth-century English Vocabulary” by Jack Lynch, 2006

Online Etymology Dictionary If you need to know whether a word was in common usage during a certain period and what it meant at that time, this is your site!

Maps

If you love maps, you’ll find many on these sites to add to your collection
.
Maps, Etc.

Fortifications on the Pennsylvania Frontier in 1756, illustrated by Justin Blocksom, based on the information given in the book The Indian Wars of Pennsylvania, by C. Hale Stipe

“Mapping Pennsylvania’s Western Frontier in 1756,” The Pennsylvania Magazine

Library of Congress

Manners

I reformatted this one for ease of reading, and you'll find it on my website. It actually contains some pretty wise counsel.

“A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters” by the Late Dr. Gregory of Edinburgh (1774)

Money

Cost of Living in Colonial Times, The First Foot Guards

Sailing Ships

Ahoy, matey, great info here for the sailors and pirates among us!

Anatomy of an English Man of War This site also includes info on pirates, terminology, navigation, ship and sailing info and numerous other subjects. Terrific site!

Men-o-War

Nautical Terms  And so much more!

Ranks and Duties in the Royal Navy ca. 1790

Catching Up

What a week this has been! I got back from my jaunt to Greenville Sunday evening and plunged right back into the daily grind on Monday. Today is the first day I’ve been able to come up for air—but only briefly before I get back to finishing up the last few tasks left over from the week. Oy veh!

What a great experience I had with Laura and her mom Chris . . . and her dad Chris! There’s nothing better than making wonderful new friends, and I’ve adopted them. lol! I’m already looking forward to next year and hoping I can keep that weekend free. The morning was rainy again, but the afternoon cleared up a bit and there was a lot of traffic to the festival. It’s exciting to see how people in the area support this event! Here are a couple more pix I snapped on Sunday afternoon—a group of reeneactors whose authentic period costume just begged to be snapped, and the matched team that hauled the shuttle wagon. Aren’t they beautiful guys?

This entire week has been cold, rainy, and windy. Which means it’s been good for staying inside and getting work done. It’s hard to stay organized when two people are living in a 344 square foot 5th wheel, though, so I’m having to improvise, like spreading papers across the furniture and floor while I’m working, then gathering them up again once I’m done. Boy, do I have a ton of filing to do. It’s not on the top of my priority list, though, so the piles keep getting taller!

We’ll be heading back to Tennessee later this month, and if it gets cold enough this winter, we’ll probably spend a couple of months or so in Florida. I have to admit I’m sad to be leaving northern Indiana, but hopefully we’ll be back when it warms up next spring. It looks like we’re going to be nomads for a while.

Work is progressing on the new covers for Daughter of Liberty and Native Son. My designer told me she’ll have roughs for me next weekend, and of course I’ll share them here. I am sooooo excited—can’t wait to see them!!

Stepping Back into History

Through a reader I’ve corresponded with for several years who’s become a good friend, I’ve been invited to participate in a reenactment event. I’ve attended a number of reenactments as a spectator, but this will be my first foray into the reenactors’ world as a participant. I’m thrilled at the prospect of living in the period of my story to some degree, if only for a weekend.

The event is the Prairie Days Festival at Shawnee Prairie Preserve just outside of Greenville, Ohio. This is Darke County Park’s largest park, with about 2 1/4 miles of trails winding through a number of different ecosystems in the 118-acre park. According to the park’s website, archeological evidence confirms that at least a portion of the preserve was the site of a village founded by Tecumseh’s brother, Tenskwatawa, or the Prophet, where he rallied fifteen woodland Indian nations in response to the Treaty of Greene Ville in 1795.

Held annually the last full weekend of September, this event focuses on the prairie way of life from about 1780 to 1810 and features crafts, games, and trades of the period. I’ll not only be appearing in the persona of a writer of the time, with my books available for purchase, but I’ll also be helping to judge the pie baking contest. I’m particularly looking forward to that as pie is my favorite desert!

For the past week I’ve been busily putting together as authentic an ensemble as I can afford without actually sewing it myself. I’d love the challenge, but alas, I simply can’t cram another project into my already insane schedule. Modern life is just way too busy, and I’m sure you know all about that! So I’m purchasing all the accoutrements I need from several suppliers such as Jas. Townsend & Son and Burnley & Trowbridge. In my next post I’m going to share more details of my costume and some pictures as well.

Below are the dates and times for Prairie Days.

September 24 and 25, 2011
Hours: Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Sunday from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m.

The preserve is located on State Hwy 502, just outside of Greenville, Ohio. A map is posted on their website. If you’re in the area, I hope to see you there!

Constructing the Video

A video trailer requires many more images than a book cover. I’d need an image for each frame as well as a soundtrack. So in my script I noted where the audio line would come and, and then, beside each line of text, the kind of image that would best illustrate that segment. This is how the script looked after I added general image descriptions and indicated where the audio line would come in:

Audio: rolling thunder

1. Wind of the Spirit [cover background scene]

2. The American Patriot Series Book 3 [black background]

3. by J. M. Hochstetler [black background]

Audio: sound effects and/or music

4. A spy for General Washington [portrait of Washington]

5. Elizabeth Howard is drawn into the very maw of war [portrait of beautiful young woman]

6. Where disaster all but ends the American rebellion [RevWar battle scene]

7. Yet her heart is fixed on Jonathan Carleton [portrait of handsome man]

8. missing more than a year after he disappeared into the wilderness. [forest]

9. Now the Shawnee war chief White Eagle, [cropped cover]

10. Carleton is caught in a bitter war of his own [Native American image]

11. against white settlers encroaching on Shawnee lands [Indian battle scene]

12. the tender love of the beautiful widow Blue Sky [beautiful Native American woman]

13. and the schemes of the vengeful shaman Wolfslayer [Native American man]

14. Can Elizabeth’s love bridge the miles that separate them [distant vista]

15. and the savage bonds that threaten to tear him forever from her arms? [Native Americans]

16. The nation’s epic struggle for freedom continues . . . [black background]

17. Book cover

18. Credits

I had the full image of the background for the book cover for the first frame and easily constructed frames 2 and 3 directly in Movie Maker. An online search yielded the portrait of Washington I wanted on the Metropolitan Museum of Art Web site, with permission to use it for private non-commercial and educational purposes. Then in searching my old standby, istockphoto, for Revolutionary War images, I found a video clip of reenactors enacting a battle that would work perfectly for frame #6.

For the time being, a photo of Philip Winchester in his Crusoe persona at left that I copied off NBC’s Crusoe Web site stood in for Carleton very nicely in frame #7. His features are a bit more rugged than I envision Carleton’s, but he’s amazingly close, plus he’s dressed in a costume that is close enough even though it’s probably a decade off. The cropped Wind of the Spirit cover focusing on the Native American image went into frame #9. I also found a haunting image of misty woods that worked perfectly for frame #8 and a vista taken in upper New York state that beautifully supplied #14.

In addition to images for Elizabeth and Carleton, that left the Native American images I would need for frames 10, 11, 12, 13, and 15. I wasn’t very confident that I could find exactly what I needed, and I was (unhappily) prepared to make compromises if necessary.

Thankfully it occurred to me to do a search on Native American stock photos. I had no idea whether there were any sites that specialized in those, but I hit the jackpot immediately with Native Stock, which offers a wide range of images searchable by tribe. What a treasure trove! I’m sure I’ll mine this site again for future projects. Among the Shawnee images I found several of members of the Shawnee nation dressed in historic costume for a production about Tecumseh. It was even set in Ohio! They were perfect for my purposes, and I was pretty excited!!

Ultimately, my greatest challenge turned out to be finding images for my hero and heroine. The script required images for both Elizabeth and Carleton, but finding authentic-looking stand-ins for these two characters turned out to be hair-pullingly frustrating, made worse because I’d already found the rest of the images I needed and had them in place. And they looked great! I finally began to think I’d never be able to complete this video!

I’ll talk more about the hunt tomorrow.