VIRGINIA CITY: THE WILDEST TOWN IN THE WEST

Most of the time my posts focus on Wyoming, but today I thought we'd take a trip up north to Montana. When I started writing my first historical Western, Home Fires, I turned my sights to one of the first capitals of Montana and a boom-town that went bust, Virginia City. I think the reason for this was Virginia City was the last place I visited before moving from Montana to the East Coast. But enough rambling lets get into the good stuff.  

Virginia City sprung from the Rocky Mountains in what was then Idaho Territory, and boomed like most gold towns.  In 1863, six men found gold in a natural bowl along Alder Gulch.  They tried to keep the find under their hats by traveling to Bannack, 60 miles southwest, for supplies, but they could not fool some sharp-eyed prospectors.  They returned to Alder Gulch with 200 new friends.  News spread like fire and before long the area was flooded with prospectors.  

Virginia City from Boot Hill (picture courtesy of Kirsten Lynn)

What is different about Virginia City is the gold was found during one of the most disruptive periods of American history, the Civil War.  The gold brought emigrants from around the world, but by an overwhelming majority Southern “rebels” outnumbered any other emigrant. These misplaced Confederates intended on naming the town “Verona,” a misspelling of “Varina,” Jefferson Davis’ wife. However, the miners’ court judge was a stubborn unionist, and would not submit the name. Those proposing a town charter hastened to explain the name was a compromise as Mrs. Davis was born in New Jersey. Not convinced, Judge Gaylord Bissell crossed out Varina and submitted Virginia.

The town remained a primarily Southern town. Disturbing to most Unionists, the camp was producing enough gold to win the war for whoever could secure the find!  This turned the eyes of President Lincoln square on the gold camp. Northern emigrants were encouraged to flood Virginia City to hold the gold for the North. As you can imagine, this didn’t go over too well with the current residents and Virginia City soon became one of the most lawless places in the West.

One of the first houses in Virginia City, many of the houses were ordered from Sears & Roebuck (courtesy of Kirsten Lynn)

By 1864, 10,000 people were living in and around Virginia City, and Congress created the new Montana Territory (the intent, Lincoln could send his man to serve as territorial governor and keep the gold out of the South).  In 1865, Virginia City became the territorial capitol. Tents and shanties were replaced by permanent buildings and the town became home to Montana’s first public school, newspaper and telegraph and theater.  Virginia City and nearby Nevada City became the site of the richest placer gold strike in the Rocky Mountains, an estimated $30 million worth of gold being removed from the gulch.

Boot Hill, Virginia City (courtesy of Kirsten Lynn)

As in all gold booms, few miners became rich. More businessmen benefited from the gulch. But the men who benefited the most were those who planned to gain their riches the old fashioned way…steal it. Robbers and thieves haunted the roads preying on miners, freight haulers and stagecoaches.  With the rise of bandits came the birth of an even deadlier group, vigilantes.  Lynchings became a daily event. Today, historians ponder who the real criminals were in an area fraught with extreme lawlessness and violence?

With all booms there comes a bust, and Virginia City no sooner boomed when things started to fall apart. Miners started moving to a new find near Helena (which would become the capitol of Montana), and by 1870 Virginia City’s population was reduced to few hundred.  Dredge mining continued in the area until World War II when all mining, except for a few hobbyists, ceased in the Gulch.

Fire truck tours (watch out for the crazy driver)

All was not lost, and Virginia City remains the most preserved ghost town in the West.  Visitors can step back in time, visit the Wells Fargo, see a melodrama at the Opera House, ride a train, visit Boot Hill, or ride south out of town a piece and into the mountains.

Writing this brings back memories of my visit to Virginia City and of HOME FIRES. Cord and Olivia's story will always hold a special place in my heart.

Cord Matthews sets his sights on the open Montana Territory when the War Between the States rips everything from him. Olivia Bartlett, the only woman he's ever loved, has been killed--a cross marks the place where she lies buried. Cord builds a new dream, but a ghost from his past won’t let him forget what his heart wanted most.

Olivia, forced to flee her Virginia home, finds new purpose as a nurse to the wounded at Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory. War and separation haven’t diminished her love for Cord Matthews, or her stubborn belief that he is coming for her. Danger threatens once more with the impending arrival of a new commander at Fort Laramie--a man who has already tried to kill her once. Olivia flees to Montana Territory, seeking refuge.

Reunited on the Montana frontier, can Cord and Olivia hold tight to their love and defeat the man who seeks to destroy them both?

AMAZON

SOURCES:

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/mt-virginiacity.html

Barsness, Larry. Gold Camp: Alder Gulch and Virginia City, Montana.

Dimsdale, Thomas J. The Vigilantes of Montana.

Forney, Gary R. Finding El Dorado.

Langford, Nathaniel P. Vigilante Days and Ways.

Kirsten Lynn is a Western and Military Historian. She worked six years with a Navy non-profit and continues to contract with the Marine Corps History Division for certain projects. Making her home where her roots were sewn in Wyoming, Kirsten also works as a local historian. She loves to use the history she has learned and add it to a great love story. She writes stories about men of uncommon valor…women with undaunted courage…love of unwavering devotion …and romance with unending sizzle. When she’s not writing, she finds inspiration in day trips through the Bighorn Mountains, binge reading and watching sappy old movies, or sappy new movies. Housework can always wait.

FORT KEARNY - Army Post along the Oregon Trail

Writing about the historical Old West is in my blood!  Why? Because I was born near the Oregon Trail in Kearney, Nebraska. As a young girl, I became interested in the history of nearby Fort Kearny after which my hometown was named and equally fascinated to read about the soldiers, pioneers, and Native Americans who helped create the history of America's growth westward.

Fort Kearny was founded in 1848 along the Platte River and named after then Colonel and later General Stephen W. Kearny.  As an interesting side note, the "e" was added to Kearny by postmen who consistently misspelled the town name.  Also one should not confuse Fort Kearny with the historic Fort Phil Kearny located in Wyoming and named after Kearny's nephew, Maj. Gen. Philip Kearny.

General Stephen W. Kearny

Despite its lack of fortifications, Ft. Kearny served as a way station, sentinel post, supply depot and message center for 49ers bound for California and emigrants traveling to California, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest.  Numbering in the hundreds of thousands, those brave pioneers crossed the continent searching for economic opportunity, and who associated land ownership and farming with freedom. 

Throughout most of its 23-year history, the outpost consisted mostly of wooden buildings surrounding a central parade ground without fortified walls.  Throughout the decades of its use until the completion of the transcontinental railroad, the buildings became slightly more permanent, changing from adobe and sod structures to the wooden frame buildings. 

 As the first U.S. Army post on the Oregon Trail, it grew rapidly into an important trail stop. The fort accumulated large stores of goods for travelers, with the directive of selling them at beneficial cost to the emigrants. The commander of the fort was authorized to sell goods at cost to emigrants, and in cases of hardship, to give goods to them for free.  In 1850, the fort acquired regular once-a-month mail service with the arrival of a stagecoach route between Independence, Missouri and Salt Lake City.  It was the first regular mail service established along the trail. By the 1860's the fort became a significant freighting station and home station of the Pony Express.

 Although it was in the heart of lands inhabited by Native Americans, and was near the center of hostile action in the 1860's, no direct attack was ever made on the fort.  However, in the summer of 1864, the irritation of the Native Americans at the encroachment by white settlers culminated in violent attacks on wagon trains along the Platte and the Little Blue River.  During this time, soldiers from Fort Kearny began escorting wagon trains and the fort became a center for refugees fleeing from attacks.

The construction of the Union Pacific Railroad across Nebraska starting in 1867 largely marked the end of the need for a fort to protect and supply wagon train emigrants. Following the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, the U.S. Army issued an order for abandonment of the post in May, 1871.

Fort Kearny State Historical Park

In 1960, Nebraska designated the land where the outpost once stood as Fort Kearny State Historical Park.  Archeological exploration has located the building sites that are now marked with interpretive signs. Replicas of the palisade and blacksmith shop were built. An interpretive center presents audio-visual programs and museum displays. The park's 40 acres also acts as a recreational area, providing hiking trails, camping, picnicking and boating.

Fort Kearny played a vital role in the settlement of the American West. I feel fortunate to have spent part of my childhood living nearby and thus, developing a love for our western heritage and more importantly a love of writing about it.

The fort's history was the inspiration for writing Book 1 of the Wheels of Destiny Trilogy, Trail To Destiny,which takes place along the Oregon Trail. 

http://www.amazon.com/Cheri-Kay-Clifton/e/B002BLZOKC/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

https://www.facebook.com/CheriKayClifton

http://cherikayclifton.com/

http://sweetheartsofthewest.blogspot.com

My Lands Are Where My Dead Lie Buried

By Paisley Kirkpatrick

---The government promised many things, the one promise they did keep is that they took everything---

Crazy Horse, a Native American war leader of the Oglala Lakota, resisted being photographed and was deliberately buried where his grave would not be found. He reportedly said, "My lands are where my dead lie buried." His extended hand on the monument is to symbolize that statement."

Elaine Quiver, a descendant of one of Crazy Horse's aunts, said: "They don't respect our culture because we didn't give permission for someone to carve the sacred Black Hills where our burial grounds are. They were there for us to enjoy and they were there for us to pray. But it wasn't meant to be carved into images, which is very wrong for all of us. The more I think about it, the more it's a desecration of our Indian culture. Not just Crazy Horse, but all of us."

The Crazy Horse Memorial is a mountain monument under construction on privately held land in the Black Hills, Custer County, South Dakota, USA. It will depict the Oglala Lakota warrior, Crazy Horse, riding a horse and pointing to the land where his people were buried. The memorial was commissioned by Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota elder, to be sculpted by Korczak Ziolkowski. It's operated by the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit organization.

The monument has been in progress since 1948 and is far from completion. If completed, it may become the world's largest sculpture as well as the first non-religious statue to hold this record since 1967. The monument is being carved out of Thunderhead Mountain, on land considered sacred by some Oglala Lakota. The sculpture's final dimensions are planned to be 641 feet wide and 563 feet high. The head of Crazy Horse will be 87 feet high; by comparison, the heads of the four U.S. Presidents at Mount Rushmore are each 60 feet high.

The memorial is to be the centerpiece of an educational/cultural center, to include a satellite campus of the University of South Dakota.

Plaster replica of finished memorial that is 1/34 the size.

Is Your Setting Another Character? by Cheryl Pierson

Location. Setting. Why is it so important to the stories we read and write? It seems obvious in some cases. In others, there could be a 'hidden' agenda. It can actually become another character.

Let's take a look, first, at the importance of setting to our genre, or sub-genre.
Fifty years ago, the choices were limited. Regencies and Westerns were prevalent sub-genres in the historical category, and mysteries and detective stories captivated the 'contemporary' nook. Science fiction was still relatively uncharted.
The setting of a novel was a definitive device, separating the genres as clearly as any other element of writing.

The glittering ballrooms and colorful gowns and jewels whisked historical romance readers away to faraway, exotic locales. Sagebrush, cactus, and danger awaited heroes of the western genre, a male- dominated readership.

But something odd happened as time went by. The lines blurred. Rosemary Rogers combined the romance of exotic places with the danger of an action plot, and an unforgettable hero in Steve Morgan that, had a man picked up 'Sweet Savage Love' and read it, he certainly could have identified with.

By the same token, the male-oriented scenery accompanied by the stiff, stylized form of western writers such as Owen Wister (The Virginian) and Zane Grey (Riders of the Purple Sage, The Last Trail) gave way to Louis L'Amour (Conagher, the Sackett series) and Jack Schaefer (Shane, Monte Walsh).

Why is the evolving change in description of location so important? In older writings, many times the location of a novel was just where the story happened to take place. Often, the plot of the story dictated the setting, rather than the two forming any kind of 'partnership.'

But with the stories that came along later, that partnership was strengthened, and in some cases, location became almost another character in the plot.

Take, for example, Louis L'Amour's 'Conagher.' As he describes the heroine's (Evie) dismal hopelessness at the land her husband (Jacob) has brought her to, we wonder how she will survive. Yet, Jacob has plans, sees the possibilities that Evie cannot, or will not see. The underlying message is, "The land is what we make of it."

As the story continues, she begins to appreciate the beauty of the prairie, while acknowledging the solitary loneliness of her existence. She plants a garden, nurturing the plants, and gradually she sees the farm being shaped into a good home from the ramshackle place she'd first laid eyes on.

The land is beautiful, but unforgiving. Her husband is killed in a freak accident, and for months she doesn't know what has happened to him. She faces the responsibility of raising his two children from a previous marriage alone.
In her loneliness, she begins to write notes describing her feelings and ties them to tumbleweeds. The wind scatters the notes and tumbleweeds across the prairie. Conagher, a loner, begins to wonder who could be writing them, and slowly comes to believe that whomever it is, these notes are meant for him.

At one point, visitors come from back East. One of them says to Evie something to the effect of "I don't know how you can stand it here."

This is Evie's response to her:
"I love it here," she said suddenly. "I think there is something here, something more than all you see and feel…it's in the wind.

"Oh, it is very hard!" she went on. "I miss women to talk to, I miss the things we had back East–the band concerts, the dances. The only time when we see anyone is like now, when the stage comes. But you do not know what music is until you have heard the wind in the cedars, or the far-off wind in the pines. Someday I am going to get on a horse and ride out there"–she pointed toward the wide grass before them–"until I can see the other side…if there is another side."

The land, at first her nemesis, has become not only a friend, but a soulmate. If that's not romance, I don't know what is.

In your writing projects, what importance do you give setting in your description, plot, even characterization? Within 40 pages of 'Conagher', we understand that the land, with all its wild beauty and dangers has become enmeshed in Evie's character. She can't leave it, and it will never leave her.

I'd love to hear from you about settings in stories that you've read or written that have played an important part.

MARRIAGE WHEN THE PREACHER WASN'T AVAILABLE!

 

The last post by Paty Jager on frontier preachers reminded me that in the West, a preacher was not always available. In my own ancestry, my great-great-grandfather was a Methodist circuit preacher until he built a chapel next to his home in South Carolina. This fosters the question of what did couples do when there was no preacher around?

In genealogy, researchers will come across the term “marriage bond” but this was not a marriage. Think of a marriage bond as an intention to marry. A man who proposed to a woman went to the courthouse and posted a bond indicating his intention to marry the woman. If he then failed to marry, he forfeited the bond. The bondsman was often a brother, uncle, or father of the bride.

Marriage by Bond

Old West Preacher

By contrast, “marriage by bond” was when there was no minister available to perform the marriage ceremony. In some remote areas, months—possibly years—went by without a minister coming through town. In this case, the couple chose to be “married” by bond. 

They would file with local authorities a document that included their wedding vows, their agreement, and the amount of money they would mutually bind themselves to pay should they not have the marriage validated by a competent authority as soon as the opportunity arose. The amount of money posted as bond would vary with the couple and area. It could be as low as fifty dollars and as high as several thousand. I wonder how the money was collected if the groom just headed for distant lands. Surely the bride did not have to pay the groom's share.

As an example, the document might read:

Be it known that we, John Smith and Mary Jones, are of lawful age of (county or Territory), wishing to unite ourselves in the bonds of matrimony and there being no priest or minister to celebrate same. Therefore I, John Smith, do agree and do hereby take Mary Jones to be my legal and lawful wife and as such to cherish, support and protect her, forsaking all others and keeping myself true and faithful to her alone. And I, Mary Jones, do hereby take John Smith to be my legal and lawful husband and as such to love, honor and obey him, forsaking all others and keeping myself true and faithful to him alone. We mutually bind ourselves to each other in the sum of one thousand dollars to have our marriage celebrated by a priest or minister authorized to do the same whenever the opportunity offers, all of which we promise in the name of God and in the presence of Harry Brown, (Title) of (County or Territory) and other witnesses present whereof we have hereunto set our hands this 1^st day of September, 1859.

John Smith                                          Mary Jones

Witnesses:   Harry Brown

James Jones

Bill Smith

Can you visualize a small community in the back of nowhere after the arrival of a traveling preacher and him standing before several couples—and their children? 

Jumping the Broom

Jumping the broom began in Wales, Scotland and England. It may have referred to the broom plant as well as an actual broom. As such, it referred to a marriage that was not viewed as legitimate. This could be because the couple eloped without having their banns read three times, the bride was underage, or another societal reason rather than actual legality. It is still performed at the end of some ceremonies or a person sweeps a broom in front of the couple as they leave their wedding.

Jumping the broom  was used by slaves before the Civil War. Slaves were denied legal marriage because a civil contract required the consent of free persons. The slave community developed its own methods of distinguishing between committed and casual unions. The ceremonial jumping of the broom was always done before witnesses and signified that a couple chose to become married as allowed.

Jumping the broom fell out of practice after the Civil War when freed slaves could marry legally. The practice made a resurgence after the publication of Alex Haley’s ROOTS, and particularly after the book became a movie. Many African American weddings end with jumping the broom as a testimony to heritage.

Handfasting

Handfasting is an ancient practice that is no longer recognized as legal. Handfasting probably comes from Scandinavian Christian and pre-Christian practices introduced to Scotland before 1000 AD and was still popular in the 1500-1600s. It was a form of betrothal. Some historians have interpreted this as a trial marriage of a year and a day. In some places in the Scottish borders, it may have been.

In Handfasting, the hands were bound by the bann (ribbon or chord), rather than by rings. Under old Cannon Law, public figures other than priests would sometimes perform the wedding: Blacksmiths (as in Gretna Green), clan chiefs, other prominent public figures. It was the vows before the family that made the marriage legal, not the person officiating. The law changed in the 1600s, allowing only church ministers to perform marriage. The practice of binding the hands had become so popular that some Scottish churches still use handfasting as part of the wedding ceremony.

There were several types of handfast throughout Great Britain, depending on the area/country. By the 18th century, the church of Scotland no longer recognized marriages formed by mutual consent with subsequent sexual intercourse, even though the Scottish civil authorities did. To minimize any resulting legal actions, the handfasting ceremony was to be performed in public. This situation persisted until 1939, when Scottish marriage laws were reformed by the Marriage Act of 1939 and handfasting was no longer recognized as legal and binding. Some couples still include handfasting as a part of their legal wedding. 

The custom has been adopted by those who practice Wicca.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_marriage_in_Great_Britain_and_Ireland

http://history.brazoriaresearch.com/2015/06/21/marriage-banns-marriage-bonds-and by Ronald Howard Livingston

Photos from iStock and Wikipedia commons

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Spooning the Frontier Preacher by Paty Jager

While trying to construct/conceive/fabricate the hero of my next historical western romance I hit the research trail to discover which denomination of clergymen wore the white collar. In this quest I purchased a used book titled: Pioneers & Preachers by Robert William Mondy.

I thought the book would tell me more about the type of man who became a preacher in the old west and a bit more about how they lived.  In some respects it did show me that preachers, especially itinerant ones, were at the mercy of the people along their route. They traveled throughout the mid-west and west without a church but stopping at people's houses and towns to preach. They stayed in homes, ate with the families, and then headed out again to hopefully find another house to give them a roof and food for the night.

The book also stated that even the clergymen in the small towns weren't given any money as compensation for staying in a town. He usually had to find a job to make a living, while preaching on Sundays and tending to the needs of the town during the week. This part I liked. It gives my heroine even more of surprise when she discovers the hero is a preacher. ;)

According to the author of the book the best preachers were the ones that could blend in with the people they encountered or lived with. Here are a few sayings that were in the book:

"Setting to her" was a term from bird hunting and it meant that a man was courting a lady.
"She kicked him" meant a lady rejected a man.

Itinerant preachers found themselves the most welcome when a marriage ceremony need to be performed because a couple had produced many children, or an overdue funeral service as needed.

A good preacher did more than quote the Bible, he could be a teacher or counselor, help with raising a house, or planting a field. He had to be versed in many things.

The parts in the book that had me chuckling were tales of spending the night in some "full" houses. People were so happy to have messenger of God come to their homes and communities they would ride out and tell neighbors there was a preacher. People would come from as far as ten miles away to hear a sermon and speak with the preacher. There were times when many would stay over night. There was mention of one night when there were 40 people sleeping in a cabin that measured 12 feet by 16 feet. At bed time all the men were chased outside and beds of blankets and buffalo robes spread on the floor. Before the men returned 10 women got under cover with the married ones in the center(this didn't' make sense to me). The men came in, each husband laid down with his wife and the single men laid on the outside. when someone wanted to turn, they said, "Spoon" and everyone would turn at the same time.

Another told of men going outside as women retired for the night, slipping into beds and covering themselves completely. The men then entered, undressed and slept on pallets on the floor. In the morning, they all lay in their places chatting until they decided they should get up. The woman covered their faces with their hands while the men dressed and left to do the chores.

This is what I like about the pioneer spirit and the old west. There are scenarios that could happen that make for great scenes in fiction books.

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 30+ novels, a dozen novellas, and a passel of short stories of murder mystery, western romance, and action adventure. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters.This is what readers have to say about  the Letters of Fate series- “...filled with romance, adventure and twists and turns.” “What a refreshing and well written love story of fate and hope!”

Weird Texas: A Book Review, Sort of

I am fascinated by strange or unusual places, occurrences and historical mysteries, as well as untapped powers of the human mind. That’s why I feature psychic characters in my novels and why I love reading about mythology and legends. It’s no surprise then, that when I spotted a book titled Weird Texas while browsing a local Buc-ee’s (a huge gas station, food stop and souvenir hunter’s paradise) I had to have it.

This book is a treasure trove of spooky tales and oddities from the Lone Star State, including some ancient not-so-natural sites. One is “Enchanted Rock,” a pink granite dome more than one billion years old. Encompassing 640 acres in the Hill Country of central Texas, some twenty miles north of Fredericksburg, the rock reaches 400 feet above the surrounding land. The huge batholith (an igneous rock formation exposed by erosion) is the second largest in the United States, the first being Stone Mountain in Georgia. It’s also one of the oldest in the world.

The name Enchanted Rock stems from Native American beliefs that it is haunted, so the story goes. Both the Tonkawa and Comanche feared and revered the rock, possibly offering sacrifices at its base. The Apache believed it was inhabited by mountain spirits. Since many Indians avoided the rock, white settlers sometimes sought refuge there from raiding parties.

One legend says the rock is haunted by a band of warriors who fought to the death against enemy attackers. Their wailing spirits supposedly wander over the rock. Modern scientists suggest the Indians saw how the rock glitters at night after a heavy rain and thought the glittering lights were spirits. Likewise, they mistook the creaking sounds the rock makes when the surface chills after a warm day, for ghostly wails.

The book's authors say, "Such theories do not credit the Indians with having much sense, and assume that they were a superstitious bunch, ignorant in the ways of nature. Much of this attitude may result from our own ignorance of the forces of nature, of which the Indians were very much aware."

Members of the Weird Texas team have camped near Enchanted Rock and other granite rocks in the area. They report hearing strange noises coming from the giant rock, particularly during solstices, that sound like the hum of a high-voltage power line, even though there are such lines anywhere near. The authors speculate that the lights and sounds come from energy within the granite, and go on to say shamanistic cultures have long held such sites sacred.

This is just a small taste of the interesting legends -- and facts -- I found in this thoroughly entertaining book. If you'd like to add it to your library, it's available on  Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Texas-Travel-Legends-Secrets/dp/1402766874 

You can also find all of my books on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Lyn-Horner/e/B004CY506Y