I will likely never know what it is like to go somewhere without an understanding of what I am going to do once I arrive. Technology helps me locate a ride, ...

Social reformers are not, by nature, passive nor necessarily polite. They have a vision, a calling, to right wrongs and at the cost of some of their lives, t...

As has been the case for so much of my story’s time period, another event is coinciding with the current coronavirus outbreak. Cholera, an easily dealt with ...

It’s amazing to me that I can do so much research from the comfort of my home but there comes a time when a visit has to happen. I’ve done research in the Na...

By 1790, there is no federal census record of buying and selling of slaves in Massachusetts. But, if someone came to the state with a slave or two in their h...

When Charles Sumner addressed the Boston Mercantile Library Association in February, 1847, he gave an oration on the chattel slavery of Christians throughout...

My story forced me to understand Irish immigration in 1849, into Boston specifically. Here’s what I learned. The first wave of Irish immigration from 1717 to...

As a woman of the western United States, the concept of servants and slaves has no specific ancestral significance to me. But, in 1849, understanding the dif...

As a twentieth-century girl, seeing a woman astraddle on horseback is a common sight. But, in 1849, when horseback travel was reserved mostly for men, proper...

It is hard to imagine in our world today, that there was actually such a thing as The Cult of True Womanhood. This article, by Barbara Welter, written in 196...

In our modern time, coverture isn’t an everyday word. Its implications do still affect us but not nearly like they did in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries....

In most of our lifetimes, we have had the benefit of the Federal Reserve System, created in 1913, to provide the United States with a more stable monetary an...

Keeping in the theme of the mid-1800s western migration, there’s another migration that gets little attention now, although it was, at the time, covered as t...

As a land steward, I understand the feeling that comes with knowing that the land you derive your living from is personally owned. No one can take it from yo...

As we all know, our world is driven, many times, by reaction. Today we find ourselves reacting to Tweets and the 24-hour news cycle, our economy reacting to ...

My husband and I have moved six times in our married lives. Save one corporate paid move, the rest were done by ourselves where we packed, loaded, drove, and...

Growing up in the San Juan Mountains, where rivers and streams start their journeys, it wasn’t until I started my story’s research that I fully appreciated h...

One of the reasons I was excited to start this blog was to help give context for the time and place of my story to my readers. Prologues, epilogues, afterwar...

Growing up on a ranch in southwestern Colorado in the mid-to-late-20th century has given me a unique perspective from which to write. There were the expected...