Tag Archives: American history

Death in the Great Dismal

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After being delayed for several months because of COVID, the new Will Rees will be released in the United States on January 5.

The Great Dismal Swamp, the setting for the ninth Will Rees, is my favorite so far. Will and Lydia are asked by a friend, born free but sold down south and now escaped, to accompany him to the swamp to rescue his wife. Of course they agree, and several murders occur.

Yes, the swamp still exists. It is much smaller, though, than it was when George Washington first explored it (and first saw the potential for development.) But it still feels like a trackless wilderness. Bears and bobcats still live within the swamp as well as many species of birds and aquatic life. And insects, lots and lots of insects.

This is a peat bog and in some places the peat is fourteen feet deep. A man could be swallowed up with no one the wiser.

Many slaves escaped to the swamp. Estimates range from a few thousand to one hundred thousand. Many were caught but quite a few managed to make a life for themselves inside the swamp. These fugitives were called maroons.

When the escaped slaves fled to the swamp, they bedded down first under the pines. They grow only on the drier islands. Daniel Sayers, an archaeologist has been excavating these drier patches and has found evidence of small communities.

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Most of the swamp resembles an impassible green curtain.

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Now the swamp is passable via boardwalks. This one leads to a memorial honoring the maroons.

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Maine

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I realized – and I’m not sure why it took me so long – that although I have blogged about many many topics, I have not discussed Maine. My detective, Will Rees, is a Mainer and many of my books are set in this state.

At the time the books are set, Maine is not yet a state of its own. Originally populated by tribes of the Algonquin Nation, whose names remain in names like Androscoggin, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot and more, Maine was considered part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It was officially called the District of Maine. Maine was brought into statehood as part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820. (Maine came in as a ‘free’ state. The following year, Missouri came in as a slave holding state, thereby keeping the balance between free and slave.)

Maine is called The Pine Tree State for obvious reasons.

Maine has a long, and rocky coastline.

Although part of the temperate climate, and frequently warm and humid in the summers, it also has a long cold and snowy winter. I have seen it snow the last week of April, and not a dusting either but several inches.

But winters in Maine have their own beauty.

Circus wagons

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The heyday of the American Circus occurred in the early 1900s. Hundreds of circuses, both small and large, toured the United States, performing for audiences of a few hundred or several thousands. Trains took the circuses all over the country and by then the circus was the circus we think of. Canvas tents had been invented and adopted in the mid-nineteenth century and exotic animal acts became a feature of the performances. The trapeze, invented in France, was added to the line-up.

But in 1800, if the circus came to Durham, Maine, it would be far different. As discussed in previous blogs, there were no tents; the circus constructed a small roofless amphitheater. Instead of elephant and lion acts, the animals were dogs and pigs. The trapeze, adapted from the tightrope, had not been invented. And trains did not carry the circus across the country,

Horse drawn wagons would have been the vehicle used.

As my model for the wagons used in A Circle of Dead Girls,

I used the Burton wagon. It is the oldest example of a wagon used as a home in Great Britain. 

The history of the wagon, however, is older. By the late 17th century, most of the roads in Europe were paved. It is thought that the first wagons used as living quarters appeared in France and were designed for the actors of the circus. They were large, horse drawn caravans. By the middle of the 18th centuries, the carriages became smaller and only needed one or two horses to pull them.

The Burton wagons had small wheels placed under the body of the carriage itself and were undecorated. These wagons evolved into the elaborately embellished wagons, with large wheels necessary for going off-road, used by the Romani. According to Wikipedia and other sources, they began using such wagons about 1850 called a vardo.

Since John Asher, the circus owner, is from England and has traveled through Europe, I imagined that he would have seen such living wagons in France and other places and used them for the models of his own horse-drawn circus wagons. These living wagons would be a practical solution to traveling from town to town.

The decorated wagons did not disappear when the circus began touring via train. They evolved into parade wagons, the brightly painted and gilded wagons that paraded through town to advertise the circus. The circus museum in Sarasota, Florida has some fine examples of these wagons.

Clowns

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The circus comes to town in Circle of Dead Girls.

Although there was no canvas tent (not invented for another twenty+ years), no exotic animals (the first circuses used pigs, horses and dogs) or trapeze artists, there were clowns.

The ancient Greeks used figures of fun, which were rustic fools. The English word for clown also meant rustic fool originally. These characters are plentiful in Shakespeare’s plays.

At the same time, the Italian Commedia del’arte used a number of stock characters that includes clown-like figures: Pierot and Harlequin.

Clowns have certain evolved since then.

The clown in the American circus is a direct outgrowth of Philip Astley, who restarted the circus in England in 1768. His circus was originally an equestrian show and clowns were used as the breaks between the trick riding.

Clowns

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The circus comes to town in Circle of Dead Girls.

Although there was no canvas tent (not invented for another twenty+ years), no exotic animals (the first circuses used pigs, horses and dogs) or trapeze artists, there were clowns.

The ancient Greeks used figures of fun, which were rustic fools. The English word for clown also meant rustic fool originally. These characters are plentiful in Shakespeare’s plays.

At the same time, the Italian Commedia del’arte used a number of stock characters that includes clown-like figures: Pierot and Harlequin.

Clowns have certain evolved since then.

The clown in the American circus is a direct outgrowth of Philip Astley, who restarted the circus in England in 1768. His circus was originally an equestrian show and clowns were used as the breaks between the trick riding.

Epidemics – Yellow Fever

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ellow fever

Yellow fever is a viral disease spread by an infected female mosquito. It began in Africa and was transported to the New World via the slave trade. Because it was so prevalent in Africa, many Africans had some immunity to it. But so many white men died in what is now Nigeria, it was called ‘white man’s grave.’

In most cases, symptoms include the usual: fever, chills, loss of appetite, muscle pains particularly in the back, and headaches, exactly like other diseases such as the flu. Symptoms typically improve within five days. In about 15% of people, within a day of improving the fever comes back, abdominal pain occurs, and liverdamage causes jaundice. Because of this, yellow fever has been nicknamed Yellow Jack and Bronze John. Death occurs in up to half of those who get severe disease. A vaccine exists for yellow fever and some countries require it before travel.

 Although yellow fever is most prevalent in tropical-like climates, major epidemics have occurred in Africa, Europe and the Americas.  New York City had an outbreak in 1668 and other cities such as Philadelphia and Baltimore had outbreaks in 1669. All three saw other occurrences in the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1793, Philadelphia, which was then the capital of the country saw an epidemic. Several thousand people died. (The government at that time fled the city.)  Dr. Benjamin Rush gained fame during this disaster. A great book to read about this episode in Laurie Halse Anderson’s Fever 1793.

Since the disease traveled along steamboat routes, New Orleans suffered many major epidemics during the 19th centuries, causing 100,000 – 150,000 deaths in total. It was greatly feared and the wealthy abandoned the city to summer homes to escape the disease. The more things change, the more they remain the same. Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January series refers to Yellow fever throughout.

More about voting -elections 1796-1800

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“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, a quote ascribed to writer and philosopher George Santayana. Variations have been popularized by different speakers.

Well, whoever created this saying was right.

I thought of this as I did research for my next book (after Death in the Great Dismal) which is tentatively titled Murder on Principle. I happened to come across a number of interesting factoids about the election in 1800; a contest between John Quincy Adams and Thomas Jefferson. (This was the fourth election but since George Washington basically ran unopposed in the first two, in actual fact it was the second contest.) 

When George Washington had opted not to run again for a third term, both 

Adams and Jefferson ran to replace him. Adams won, narrowly, in this third election. Since there were no parties, the candidate with the next highest number of votes became the vice president. So, while Adams became the President, Thomas Jefferson became his vice-president. (The chasm between the beliefs of these two men was deep; Think Trump as President and Hillary Clinton as his vice-president.) The two men faced off in the following election cycle -1800 – causing a constitutional crisis. To solve it, Adams ran as a Federalist and Jefferson as a Republican.

The Federalists were more akin to our current Republican party while Jefferson was like our modern day Democrats. (Just to illustrate the difference between them, Jefferson worried that without term limits the President could serve for a lifetime. Adams thought that was a fine idea.) 

The Electoral College had been already formed. (I leave the discussion to whether it is still needed now to another day.) Jefferson and Adams won an equal number of votes, a result that threw the election into the hands of the House.

For people who believe our current politics are nasty, here are a few examples of what was happening then.

Alexander Hamilton claimed that if Adams was reelected, Virginians (like Jefferson) would resort to physical force to keep the Federalists out of office. Further, he tried to persuade John Jay to change the rules so that the legislature would not be able to choose the Jefferson electoral delegates, saying that it would ‘prevent an atheist in Religion and a fanatic in politics from getting possession of the helm of state.” Jay refused.

Adams, furthermore, as one of his last acts, chose John Marshall as Chief Justice, thereby giving control of the courts to the Federalists.

Jefferson, meanwhile, believed that Adams and the Federalists would seek to change the laws so that a President could serve for life.

Sound familiar?

Voting -in 1800

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Some fun facts about 1800 election

The voters did not elect the president. They chose instead their representatives for the House. This caused a problem (more than one IMHO). If Congress chose the President, that violated the principle of separation of powers. So how to do it?

The Electoral College was set up to address this; the voters elected the delegates who chose the President. (Sounds unnecessarily complicated to me.) Each delegate had two votes, one for President, and one for VP. (In the previous election, Adams won the Presidency and Jefferson the vice-presidency so the top officials were of different parties. (And the men disliked each other and disagreed on almost every point. Imagine if this were Trump and Hillary Clinton?) If the delegates had chosen to use their votes for Burr, instead of becoming Jefferson’s VP he would have become president. He was pressured to remove his name in the event he received more votes; he declined to do so.

The candidates themselves did not campaign. The supporters did the campaigning, and the newspapers were every bit as passionate in declaring for their favored candidate as they are now.

Fun fact: the meeting they held to decide this was called a caucus. This is an Algonquian word meaning advisor.

The polls that our current candidates live and die on had a totally different meaning back then.

Since poll meant the top of a head, polling meant counting heads.

Maryland was the first state to require voting on paper (in 1799).

Ballots meant tossing a ball into a box, usually a pea, a pebble, or commonly, a bullet. It was not secret at all.

Out of a total U.S. population of 5.23 million, only 600,000 were eligible to vote. Only in Maryland could a black man vote and then only until 1802 when the law was changed. Only in New Jersey could a white woman vote, and that was changed in 1807. Generally speaking, the only citizens who could vote were white landowning males.

Finally, the House was set up in such a way that the number of representatives is based on population. (That is one reason why a census is taken every ten years.) But the southern states had large populations of slaves, which skewed the number, especially since the enslaved people could not vote. So it was decided that each enslaved person should count as three fifths of a white person. (The law caused a lot of resentment in the North since a state like Virginia, that had a lot of slaves, had much more political power based on a non-voting population.)

It just boggles the imagination.

More about the Tarot

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Why did I include the Tarot in A Circle of Dead Girls? The short answer is I wanted to be able to comment on the action and on Rees’s investigation in an oblique way. Although Bambola is the character who believes in the cards, she also does not listen to what they are saying to her. And Rees, although he is skeptical of anything that is not concrete, is surprised by the accuracy of some of the readings.

Do I believe? Well, I have friends who do. The readings they have done for me have sometimes been surprisingly accurate. So how does one align something that purports to foretell the future with the practicalities of the here and now?

I believe that some people are unusually intuitive. We all use non-verbal clues to understand another person’s distress, anger or joy. Some of us are amazingly good at that. I suspect that the cards allow this intuitive reader to focus and, in doing so, really hone in on the person sitting on the other side of the table and understand far more about them than they might consciously.

One further note about the tarot my mystery. Bambola associates justice with Rees. I would postulate that most of the protagonists in mystery novels have that passion. They don’t give up even when threatened with death. And a good thing for those of us who love reading mystery novels.

Talk at East Fishkill Library and More

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I had a great time speaking at East Fishkill Public Library. I wish I had taken pictures.

My event at the Goshen Public Library has been rescheduled for May 9.

My talk at the Turning Page has been arranged for March 7. Looking forward to both.