When Family History Doesn’t Work Out as Expected

When I began to write my historical novel Brookhaven, my jumping off point was a family story. My father often told me about my great-grandfather, Samuel Young, and his Civil War experience.  

The story was this: Samuel was 13 when the war began in April of 1861. He was too young to enlist, so he signed up as a messenger boy. He had been in that position for a good deal of the war. When the war ended with the surrender of General Lee’s Army at Appomattox Courthouse to General Grant and the surrender of General Johnston’s army to General Sherman at Greensboro, Samuel found himself in the East, with no way to get home except by foot.

 

The story went on, 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest. 

Photograph: My paternal great-grandparents, Samuel Franklin Young and Octavia Montgomery Young.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Is the End of Reading Here? – Zach Franzen at Story Warren.

 

Education and Marxism – Jerry Newcombe at Real Clear Politics.

Five Ways to Research Your Family History

The writing of my historical novel Brookhaven took about 150 years. 

I must have seen something like this before, but I can’t recall a specific example. Many novels include an acknowledgement page, cutting the people who helped or inspired the author. My historical novel Brookhaven has an author’s note explaining some of the novel’s background. But it also has something you don’t usually see in a novel – a nine-page bibliography.

 

I included more as a reminder to myself of where the novel come from. 

 

A grandmother who referred to the Civil War as the “War of Northern Aggression.” A father who told slightly mangled family stories, including one that sounded like an epic journey. A research paper in high school on what the “plantation system” really looked like. A family Bible with a mystery embedded in the birth and death records. A mountain of reading old and new American history books. An aunt who spent decades researching family history, long before the invention of the internet. Discovering I liked, as in really liked, the poems of Henry Wadsworth Longellow, once the top-selling poet and author in the United States who was dropped into the dustbin of literary criticism. 

Photograph: A page of family records in the Bible, pre-preservation.

Some Thursday Readings

 

This Just In – poem by J.S. Gilbert at Frivolous Quill.

 

Murmurs in the Cathedral – Jeffrey Streeter at English Republic of Letters.

 

Third Annual Poetry Prize for Submissions – First Things Magazine.

 

“A Look at the Heavens,” poem by John Clare – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Poet Laura: Mother in Satin – Donna Hilbrt at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Seven Tips for Researching Family Heritage

When I was writing my historical novel Brookhaven, I initially relied upon two main sources – the records of births and deaths in the old family Bible, and the charts and genealogical lines in the Family Search web site. 

My ancestors in Mississippi served as the approximate inspiration for the McClure family in the novel. I borrowed many of the first names outright from the family Bible. I borrowed one name wholesale, to remind me of what I almost missed.

 

The Bible records mentioned the death of a Jarvis Seale in 1862. It didn’t mention birth, marriage, or anything else about the man. Some research in Family Search told me who he was – the husband of a great-great aunt. He was the only in-law included in the Bible records. The Family Search information only had the relationship reference and date of death. I still didn’t know what my great-grandfather had included him when others had been left out. Another web site, Find-A-Grave, showed his monument stone in a small-town cemetery in north Texas, which really made no sense.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: A page of records from the family Bible.

Forgetting All the Illustrations I Studied for a Non-Illustrated Book

My historical novel Brookhaven has no illustrations. I spent an estimated third of my research time hunting for them. 

The novel is set in two different time periods – the Civil War and immediately after, and then 50 years later, in 1915. From the beginning of the first draft, I quickly learned that I had to see both periods. I had to see what people wore, what they ate, how they traveled, what their homes were like, what their streets and communities were like, and more. 

 

From early on, I had to spend far more time looking than reading, and vastly more time looking than writing. Thos 50 years were some of the momentous in American history – rapid industrialization during the war and after, wagons and carriages giving way to automobiles, the advent of flight, the rapid spread of newspapers supported by wire services like Associated Press, rapid changes in the position of women in society, and mechanized agriculture becoming the rule rather than the exception.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW Blog.

Illustration: Men's golfing clothes in 1915.

"Brookhaven" and the Pearl River Lumber Company

A reader of Brookhaven sent n email, asking if I modeled the McClure Lumber Company in the novel on the Pearl River Lumber Company. A great-grandfather had worked there, the reader said, and she wondered. 

That I had to research the Pearl River Lumber Company to respond to her should answer the question. Or, more briefly, no. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph: Operations at the Pearl River Lumber Company about 1900.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

From Whitefield to Kirk: Revivals That Saved Nations – John Carpenter at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

We’ve Been Reading Dracula Wrong – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Prime, a monastic hour – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

Research Doesn't Stop with Publication

It was a year ago that the manuscript for my historical novel was attached to an email and sent to the publisher who requested it. I felt an incredible sense of relief. The thing was done. I could take a break from literally years of reading and research about the Civil War. Nine years of reading and research.  

I had started this even before I’d thought about writing a historical novel. I started reading about the Civil War because I was interested in it. It was only when I stumbled across an event called Grierson’s Raid, a Union cavalry raid in 1863 that the idea for a novel arose. The raid began at the border between Mississippi and Tennessee, swept down through the state, and eventually ended at Baton Rouge in Louisiana. It was designed as a diversion for Ulysses S Grant to quietly move his Union army across the Mississippi and attack Vicksburg from the east.

 

My ancestors had experienced that raid. They lived in the Brookhaven, Mississippi, area, one of sites that Grierson’s raiders had visited.

 

I researched everything I could about the raid and the broader war. Once I knew I would be writing a novel, my research intensified. By the time I sent the email to the publisher, I was close to exhausted, at least mentally.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW Blog. 

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Grand Review – Josh Frye at Emerging Civil War.

 

What If Collapse Has Already Happened? – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

 

Murders for May – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine.

 

Kazuo Ishiguro Reflects on Never Let Me Go Twenty Years Later – at Literary Hub.

 

Murder and the Imagination – Andrew Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

Relearning Civil War History to Write a Novel

I was born and grew up in New Orleans, a city saturated with French, Spanish, American, and Black American history and culture. Louisiana law wasn’t based on English common law but Napoleonic Code. Counties are called parishes. Mardi Gras was an official holiday.

The state was, and to some extent still is, three regions, each with a distinct accent. North Louisiana, where my father came from, resembled East Texas and Mississippi, including the southern accent. Southwest Louisiana is Cajun country and where my maternal grandfather was born and raised. And then there was New Orleans, with its own distinct accent that sounds vaguely Brooklynese. My mother and her family were all born there, and that’s where I lived with my two brothers.

If one subject tied and unified the state of Louisiana, it was history, and specifically Civil War history. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: A publicity poster for the 1939 film "Gone with the Wind."

Some Tuesday Readings

Songs from the Kayak – poem by David Whyte.

Making & Unmaking Meaning: Interview with Wendy Wisner – Tweetspeak Poetry.

My Kite – poem by Mac Sumner at Story Warren.

“The Owl,” poem by Edward Thomas – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

That Bell in Your Hand – poem by Catherine Abbey Hodges at Every Day Poems.

Research for a Novel Upended a Family Civil War Legend

In writing Brookhaven, one of the sources I relied upon for research, book referrals, and general information about the Civil War was a web site called Emerging Civil War. Its official description is “a public history-oriented platform for sharing original scholarship related to the American Civil War.”  

Because the site is aimed at the general reading public (people like me), the articles include historical research, memory studies, travelogues, book reviews, personal narratives, essays, and photography. The writers include professors, National Park rangers, teachers, historical authors, and even general writers (like me).

 

I can’t say enough about how helpful the site has been to my research and my general understanding of the war and the people who fought in it. And now I’m one of their guest authors, with “Research for a Novel Upended a Civil War Legend.” 

Photograph: My great-grandparents, Samuel and Octavia Young, about 1880. The photograph was rather clumsily repaired after suffering some damage.

7 Tips for the Novice Historical Novel Writer - Learned the Hard Way

Writing one historical novel does not make one an expert in the genre. I have written exactly one historical novel, Brookhaven, a romance set in the Civil War era and in 1915. 

To write Brookhaven, I didn’t turn to how-to works by historical novelists, historians, or romance writers, or read articles on the subject on web sites. In fact, I never intended to write a historical novel at all. Because I had the time, I began to pursue a lifelong interest in the Civil War, with a side-interest in the role of my great-grandfather.

 

At some point, I told myself, “This is a story worth telling.” And I began to write. 

 

I also continue to do research, because writing this kind of story demands it. What did people wear? What did they eat? How would they send a letter when railroads and the mail service weren’t functioning? What were prisons like for captured soldiers? How does a society function when social order breaks down?

 

I learned some lessons along the way. Each was hard-learned and hard-earned. I stopped counting the times I had to go back and revise something, sometimes extending to almost everything I’d previously written.

 

If you’re thinking about writing a historical novel, I have seven suggestions for how to do it and not do it. 

To continue reading, please see me post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Top photograph: A page from the 1850 census, listing the members of the Franklin Young family in Pike County, Mississippi. 

Some Thursday Readings

 

The 1811 Slave Revolt and Destrehan Plantation – Chris Mackowski at Emerging Civil War.

 

The Parable of Anna Akhmatova – Ted Gioia at The Honest Broker.

 

Edge – poem and artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Poet Laura: A January Pilgrimage – Sandra Fox Murphy at Tweetspeak Poetry.

An Inspiration for "Brookhaven" - The Family Bible

In the early 1980s, the Young family Bible was passed down to me from my father. We had looked at it together much earlier, especially the family records it contained. All of the entries for births and deaths, beginning in 1802 and ending in 1890, were in the same hand, presumably my great-grandfather’s.  

For years after I received it, I did the time-honored family thing: kept it wrapped in brown paper and twine and on a closet shelf. I did eventually buy an acid-free box to store it in, but it was fragile. The binding was coming apart, the ink on the family records was fading, and some of the pages were loose.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph: a page of records in the family Bible, before restoration.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

World War II, Remembered Rightly – Philip Jenkins at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

A Gathering of Old Men – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

 

Family Matters –Alan Jacobs at The Homebound Symphony.

 

Political Violence Happens Because We Let It – Charles Fain Lehman at The Free Press.

 

“Snow-Bound,” poem by John Greenleaf Whittier – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Writing a Bibliography - for a Novel

It’s been two weeks since I read a book about the Civil War, and it feels strange. My draft novel is done, at least for now. It’s not so much a novel about the Civil War as it is a novel of the Civil War. 

If you grew up in the South, or even if you didn’t, what happened in the years 1861-1865 affected you, even when you didn’t know it. Both my maternal and paternal grandparents were children of Civil War veterans. They experienced the war in very different ways, both in the fighting and in civilian life. 

 

My mother’s grandparents were Franco-German immigrants who settled in New Orleans and descendants of the Acadians expelled from Canada after the French and Indian War who settled in what we called “the river parishes” – the stretch of territory along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The men generally fought for the Confederacy; after 1862, the women, children, and elderly men discovered life under Union occupation. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph by Thomas Kelley via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

What the Latest Farm Census Says About the Changing Ag Landscape – Lisa Held at Civil Eats.

 

On the Way to the Tavern: el Camino de Santiago – Br. Raphael Arteaga at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Yale Civil War Memorial – Patrick Young at The Reconstruction Era.

A Year of Reading (and Writing) the Civil War

My story connected to the Civil War has passed the 70,000-word mark, and the ending is in sight. I’m not sure when it was that I realized I was writing about something I had only the most surface understanding of, but I did. The only solution was to start reading and researching. 

Many blogs and web sites have been helpful, but two especially so. Emerging Civil War, edited by Chris Mackowksi, is written by historians, National Park guides, and other who know their stuff. Most have published books. Civil War Books & Authors, penned by Andrew Wagonhoffer, posts notices of new books and full-length book reviews focused solely on the Civil War, its causes, and its aftermath. Both sites have been at this work for years, ECW for more than a decade and CWBA since 2005.

 

What was also a treat was discovering and visiting the Missouri Civil War Museum, located adjacent to the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery here in St. Louis.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest. 

Top photograph, courtesy Wikimedia Commons: The Wilderness site, sometime after the battle. The dense scrub wasn’t conducive to fighting, but the dry weather made it conducive to being ignited by sparks from artillery fire.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Boy at the Front Desk – Havalah Peirce at Story Warren. 

 

Wheeler Catlett: Law and Community – James Decker at Front Porch Republic. 

 

The Courage to Admit You’re Wrong – Jamie Reed at The Free Press.

 

Stones River Aftermath – Bert Dunkerly at Emerging Civil War.

 

A Letter from Arles – Andrew Roycroft at Rabbit Room Poetry. 

 

Research Can Teach You a Hard (if Useful) Lesson

I learned a very hard lesson while writing a historical novel. I learned how hard it can be, and it’s hard for both the research you do and for the research you have to ignore. 

I’m writing a novel that takes place in two historical periods – the Civil War and its immediate aftermath, and 50 years later, during the run-up to World War I. The story was loosely based on a story handed down in the family about what had happened to my great-grandfather. The emphasis is on the word “loosely,” because the more I researched, the more I discovered that what was passed down as a family story had very little basis in fact.

 

Because I discovered this about 40,000 words into the manuscript, it stopped me cold. For weeks. I kept hoping I was wrong, but I learned my extended family had two oral traditions about my great-grandfather. And the version passed down to me was the wrong one, or perhaps I should say “more embellished.” It made a great story, but it was flat-out wrong.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the American Christian Fiction Writers blog.

Photograph: Some of the 1,700 Union cavalry troops who rode through Mississippi in 1863 during Grierson's Raid.

Some Thursday Readings

 

1863: “Even the birds are seldom heard with their cheerful voices”: A Confederate Reflects Post-Chancellorsville – Ryan Quint at Emerging Civil War. 

 

Taste and See: A Review of The Liberating Arts – Alex Sosler at Front Porch Republic.

 

1863: What a Difference a Year Makes – Patrick Kelly-Fischer at Emerging Civil War. 

Rosebery Topping, a Dark Teesside short story by Glenn McGoldrick, is free to download today on Amazon.

Murders for August – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine.

 

The more a character puts in a bucket, the more there is to spill – Nathan Bransford.

 

At Walthan Abbey – Spitalfields Life.

 

What book blurbs really mean – The Secret Author at The Critic Magazine.

When Research for Your Historical Novel Changes Your Understanding

For more than a year, I’ve been researching / writing/ researching / writing a historical novel set during the American Civil War. It’s loosely based on the experiences of my great-grandfather, but the more I write and research, the looser it becomes. 

I thought I knew the basic story of the war. What I soon learned is that, for a very long time, historians focused on the war in the East, which specifically meant Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, and Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. But in the last two of three decades, the war in the West – in particular, Tennessee and Mississippi – has come to be recognized as almost as significant as that in the East.

 

It was certainly significant for both sides of my family. My father’s family experienced the Battle of Shiloh and Grierson’s Raid (the basis for the 1959 movie The Horse Soldiers, starring John Wayne). My mother’s family experienced the Union occupation of New Orleans (starting in 1862), both the Creole French and German immigrant sides of the family. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at the American Christian Fiction Writers blog.

Photograph: John Clem, who "enlisted" in the Union army at age 9 in 1861 and became a soldier at age 12.

 

How Research Fills the Gaps in a Family Story

The idea has been in my head for years – a story about my great-grandfather. But I knew only a few facts about him, passed down by my father. Research has filled it in – a little bit. 

Too young to enlist as a regular soldier, he’d been a messenger boy in the Civil War. He’d lost two brothers and a brother-in-law in the war, leaving him the youngest and surviving son. When the war ended in 1865, he had been “someplace east,” likely North Carolina rather than Appomattox. He had to walk home to southern Mississippi. When he arrived, he discovered his family was gone, having fled to Texas.

 

That was as much as I knew. When I finally decided to consider a story about him, I turned first to the family Bible, with its records of births, deaths, and marriages.  The records, written over a period of 50 years, were in the same hand – my great-grandfather’s. They proved more revealing that I’d realized.

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW blog. 

 

Photograph hy by Anne Nygard via Unsplash. Used with permission.

 

Research a Contemporary Novel?

The four, soon to be five, novels in the Dancing Priest series are set in the near future, at least far enough away from the actual present to avoid any notion that the characters are based on real people. But they’re essentially contemporary fiction, falling into the space between general fiction and Christian fiction.

Why would contemporary novels require extensive research? Lots of reasons.

You’re writing about a country or culture not your own. You’re writing about people who do things you’ve never experienced. You write about a painter when you’re not one. You’re writing about an institution you’ve never been part of. You’ve put your characters into a geography, even if ever so briefly, you’ve never visited. 

Many people – historians and novelists alike – write about the American Civil War, or World Wars I and II, but were never part of it. Some write mysteries set a generation before they were born. Some write about peoples and cultures that aren’t their own (an often-dangerous thing to do these days).

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Dancing King Stories: Researching a Novel

I’m looking at a web site called English Historical Fiction Authors. Its audience is authors who write period historical novels. The various posts are written by the authors themselves. So, you can learn about how ice cream was made in the 18^thcentury, what pieces of furniture would have been found in an upper-class hoe in the 16^thcentury, who the Lord Proprietors of Carolina were in the 17^thcentury, the friendship between the British Saxon Osulf and one of Charlemagne’s sons; and similar kinds of really detailed information. If you want your period novel to show authenticity, you need authentic historical details.

I don’t write historical novels. Mine fall into the more contemporary genre; actually, they’re set a few years ahead of our own times. So, I don’t have to be concerned with a lot of historical detail, like what Osulf really thought of his friend Charles a thousand years ago.

But it doesn’t mean I’ve escaped the research yoke. Far from it.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph by by Gaelle Marcel via Unsplash. Used with permission.