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
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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

Maps

I don’t know why, but I’ve loved maps ever since we started studying geography when I was in elementary school. I loved to copy maps I found interesting. Cartography, in fact, is another potential career I considered pursuing in addition to archaeology, art, interior design, and anything involving gardening or craft work.

It would be impossible to set the stage for the action in this series without accurate maps, and of course I use them extensively in my research. Below are a number of links to excellent online resources for historical maps that I’ve chanced upon. In addition to the Americans, both the English and French commissioned maps of the known areas of the North American continent and the action during the Revolution, and there are excellent collections of accurate maps online. I can spend hours studying them if I let myself. If you haven’t already run across these resources, I hope you find some of them useful in researching your own projects!

Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/rr/geogmap/guides.html

David Rumsey Map Collection: http://www.davidrumsey.com/index.html

Old Maps Online: http://www.oldmapsonline.org/#bbox=-75.421967,39.815342,-74.90973,40.089054&q=&datefrom=1000&dateto=2010

University of Texas Library: http://lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/index.html

World of Historic Maps (maps for purchase): http://www.history-map.com/

New Editions

In case I haven’t mentioned this before, we’re planning to release new, slightly updated editions of Daughter of Liberty and Native Son at some point in the next year or two—the exact date is still on the drawing board. As soon as we find a slot for them, I’ll announce the release dates here as well as on my Publishing Dream blog.

The new editions will be done in the same size and with covers consistent with Wind of the Spirit, including a larger font to make them easier to read. Zondervan, who published the first 2 books, made the text awfully small in order to keep the page count lower, and that’s something I’ve been wanting to fix for a long time. So as I can squeeze it into my schedule, I’m digging back through the manuscripts, correcting minor details and adding a bit here and there. Most readers who’ve read the original versions won’t notice the difference, but I’m incorporating some newer research to make the text as accurate as possible.

DOL has been finalized, but I’ve only gotten to chapter 7 in NS. In the meantime, I had an illustrator recreate the maps, and I just got the final files. So naturally I want to share! Aren’t they pretty? We added a few new details to the originals. Joseph Warren’s home has been added to the Boston map, and Tess Howard’s mansion is on the Boston area map. A few other features have been added as well.

I’ve always loved maps. A detailed map is a wonderful aid to help you orient the action in a historical novel, and these ought to help bring the story to life even more vividly.

After some feedback from a reader, I’m seriously considering having both books converted to Kindle format. WOTS is already available, and on Kindle the text can be enlarged to a comfortable size. It isn’t terribly expensive to have the text converted, but it’s another item that has to be shoehorned into the budget, so it may be the first of the year before they’re available in that format.

And then the question arises, what about Barnes and Noble’s new e-reader, and Sony, and so on. So far the books we have up on Kindle haven’t sold well enough to justify the expense, but they have to be marketed just like a print version, so that’s another thing we have to think about. If you have an opinion, please post a comment and let me know what your feelings are about e-books vs print books.