A Remarkable Woman by Tanya Hanson

In the unenlightened past, male physicians who practiced obstetrics and gynecology were often scorned by their male peers as “midwives”. Yet even they were suspicious of allowing women to become physicians, even to treat “their own.”

Fortunately, Dr. Samuel Gregory in 1848 founded the New England Female Medical College, the first in the world to offer medical training to women. No surprise, Dr. Gregory had difficulty finding funding and instructors, but the college eventually trained more than 280 students and granted 98 medical degrees. In 1874, the school merged with Boston University School of Medicine.

One of its most amazing graduates was Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler, the first African American woman to be granted a medical degree.

Born in Delaware on February 8, 1831, Rebecca was raised by an aunt who often helped sick friends and neighbors. In 1852, she moved to Charlestown Massachusetts and worked as a nurse with various doctors until 1860. These professionals all gave her letters of the highest recommendation upon her entrance to the medical college. To quote Rebecca, she “received the degree of doctress of medicine” in 1864.

About this time, she married Dr. Arthur Crumpler

When the Civil War ended, she moved to Virginia and joined other black physicians caring for freed slaves in the Richmond area, herself experiencing intense racism. She bore with grace insults such as the M.D. after her name meant “Mule Driver.”

Eventually, she returned to Boston, caring mostly for women and children. However, demand for her services began to wane. In 1883, she published one of the very first medical books by an African American. The Book of Medical Discourses is based on the extensive notes she took during her years of practice, on health issues and care specifically for women and children.

She dedicated her book to nurses and mothers.

Dr. Crumpler died March 9, 1895. One of the first medical societies for African American women, The Rebecca Lee Society, was named in her honor.

Caught between a noose and a cave-in, Tulsa Sanderson must do anything possible to prove his brother’s innocence...even if it means marrying a gold miner’s daughter he just met. He needs every nugget and flake he can pull from her worn-out claim, but he sure doesn’t need a wife. Save his brother and he’ll be back on the Texas cattle trails. God, and trusting Him, are things of the past.

Charlotte Amalie lost her heart, her virtue, and her money to the last mysterious outsider in the valley. Faith? That’s wavered, too, after too many family tragedies. But she has no choice but to wed the handsome Tull. He bears terrible family secrets that need to be kept behind closed doors. Although she’s eager to leave the valley to find a new life for herself and medical treatments for her wounded brother, her unwanted marriage douses her plans, yet stirs up hope and love for Tull...and begins to fortify her weakened faith.

Can the two of them find a future--and faith--together even with their haunted pasts? 

Amazon Buy link:

http://tinyurl.com/n4mxbgo

Log Cabin Cooking

 By Anna Kathryn Lanier

Two things I like are historical books about the old west and cookbooks.  Lucky for me, I discovered both in one when I found LOG CABIN COOKING: PIONEER RECIPES AND FOOD LORE by Barbara Swell.

You've gotten your family moved clear across the country (a four to six month trip via covered wagon) and now you've set up house in a hand-hewed log cabin. Along one wall is a fireplace, used for heating and lighting as well as for cooking.  Swell tells us, “Kettles were hung on poles built into the fireplace. Other foods were prepared in the coals or on pots over the coals.  The lucky family had an oven for bread baking built into the hearth.  A fire was built up in the oven and allowed to burn down, then the ashes were swept out and the bread was put in to bake.”

The pioneer cook had to ‘make-do’ with what she had on hand. Few cooks had measuring instruments, so they became good at ‘eyeballing’ amounts of ingredients needed, the textures and the appearance of food in various states. Swell goes on to say, “Notice how a teaspoon of salt looks and feels in your hand. Feel the weight of a cup of sugar. Notice the texture of a medium batter. What does soft butter, the size of an egg look like? Taste your food as you go along, adjust seasoning when needed.”

On page nine of LOG CABIN COOKING, Swell gives a pioneer cook’s measurements for ingredients:

BUTTER

1 Tbs (heaped) = size of a hickory nut

2 Tbs (heaped) = size of an egg (1 stick)

4 Tbs (heaped) = one teacup (2 sticks)

1 pound butter = 2 teacups well packed (4 sticks)

FLOUR, MEAL, SUGAR, COFFEE

5 Tbs sifted flour or meal (heaped) = one teacup

1 Tbs sugar (heaped) = one ounce

7 Tbs granulated sugar (heaped) = one teacup

1 pound coffee = two teacups (heaped)

1 pound sifted flour = 4 teacups (level)

LIQUID

8 oz = one teacup

When we want to make a yeast bread, we usually just reach for that little low packet of yeast, but commercial yeast and baking powder did not become popular until the late 19^th century. So, what was the pioneer cook suppose to use instead? Saleratus, or baking soda as it’s known today, could be combined with sour milk to produce the carbon dioxide needed to rise breads.  In addition, “homemade baking powder was by combing saleratus with cream of tartar and corn starch.”

Reading for pioneer recipes? Remember, many of the recipes Swell shares are ‘inexact’, so you have to refer to her measurements given above when making these recipes.

BISCUITS

2 cups flour

4 Tbs shortening (size of an egg)

¾ tsp salt

3 tsp baking powder

2/3 cup sweet milk

Cut shortening into flour, salt, and baking powder. Add milk, roll out on a floured board and cut into shapes. Bake on a greased sheet in hot (450°) oven until browned.

CORNMEAL MASH

Boil 2 cups water, add ½ tsp salt, and sprinkle in cornmeal slowly until mush becomes thick. Eat warm with butter and honey or molasses or put in bread pan and chill until set. Slice and fry in frying pan with a bit of butter until crisp on both sides, then serve with maple syrup or honey.

Since many cooks were illiterate, they would remember recipes by setting them to rhyme.

JOHNNY CAKE IN RHYME

Two cups Indian (cornmeal), one cup wheat;

One cup good eggs that you can eat.

One-half cup molasses too,

One big spoon sugar added thereto;

Salt and soda, each a small spoon.

Mix up quickly and bake it soon.

                From: My Folks Come in a Covered Wagon

MIRACLE COBBLER

This is a fruit coffee cake that tastes great and is a snap to make.

2 Tbs. butter

1 cup flour

1 cup sugar

1 cup milk

1 tsp baking powder

1-2 cups berries, any kind

Melt butter in iron skillet. Stir dry ingredients together and add milk, mixing until no lumps remain. Pour into skillet with melted butter. Sprinkle berries over the top and cook at 350 ° oven for about 35-40 minutes. Sugar sprinkled on top before baking adds a great touch.

MOCK PECAN PIE (OATMEAL PIE)

Here’s a modern version of a tasty, economical mock pecan pie.  This is REALLY good.

2 eggs

½ cup sugar

¾ cup old fashion oats (not quick cooking)

¾ cup dark corn syrup

¾ cup coconut

2 Tbs. melted butter

Combine ingredients and pour into an unbaked pie shell.  Bake at 350° until it looks done. The oats will be on top. The pie will look brown and bubbly.

Available at Barnes and Noble.

Just a note: aside from purchasing this book and loving it, I have no connection whatsoever with the author.

Anna Kathryn Lanier
Romance Author, A GIFT BEYOND ALL MEASURE

http://aklanier.com/

Never let your memories be greater than your dreams. ~Doug Ivester 

Lady Killers

By Kathleen Rice Adams

The Wild West could be a dangerous place. If outlaws, gunfights, animal encounters, and Indian attacks didn’t do a body in, disease or accident very well might. For an unlucky few, danger emerged from an unexpected source: women with an axe to grind … repeatedly.

Belle Gunness and her children

Lizzie Borden may have been the most infamous of America’s female killers, but she certainly wasn’t the only woman to dispose of inconvenient family, friends, or strangers. She wasn’t even the most prolific American murderess. That honor probably goes to Belle Gunness, a Norwegian immigrant suspected of killing more than forty people — including two husbands and several suitors — in Illinois and Indiana at the turn of the 20th Century. When authorities began investigating disappearances, Gunness herself disappeared … after setting up a hired hand to take the fall for arson that burned her farmhouse to the ground with her three young children and the headless body of an unidentifiable woman inside.

The shocking crime of serial murder seems even more chilling when the perpetrator is a woman. Cultural and biological factors encourage women to eschew physical aggression. Most women fight with words or, sometimes, by manipulating male proxies. Consequently, females seldom go on the kind of violent binges that characterize male serial killers. In fact, only about 15 percent of serial murderers in history have been women.

According to Canadian author, filmmaker, and investigative historian Peter Vronsky, who holds a PhD in criminal justice, when men kill, they employ force and weapons. Restraint of the victim often provides part of the thrill: Many male serial killers derive sexual gratification from the act of taking a life. Women, on the other hand, prefer victims who are helpless or unsuspecting: 45 percent of convicted female serial killers used poison to dispose of spouses, children, the elderly, or the infirm. Instead of a sexual high, their primary motivation was money or revenge.

The eight female serial killers below were active during the nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries in the American West. (Another half-dozen cropped up east of the Mississippi during the same period.)

Delphine LaLaurie

Delphine LaLaurie

The volatile wife of a wealthy physician, LaLaurie tortured and killed slaves who displeased her. An 1834 fire at her New Orleans mansion revealed her depravity when a dozen maimed and starving men and women, along with a number of eviscerated corpses, were discovered in cages or chained to the walls in the attic. One woman had been skinned alive; another woman’s lips were sewn shut, and a man’s sexual organs had been removed. LaLaurie fled to avoid prosecution and reportedly died in Paris in December 1842. Years later, during renovations to the estate, contractors discovered even more slaves had been buried alive in the yard.

Mary Jane Jackson

A New Orleans prostitute with a violent temper, Jackson was a relative anomaly among female serial killers: Described as a “husky,” universally feared woman, she physically overpowered her adult-male victims. Nicknamed Bricktop because of her flaming-red hair, between 1856 and 1861 Jackson beat to death one man and stabbed to death three others because they called her names, objected to her foul language, or argued with her. Sentenced to ten years in prison for the 1861 stabbing death of a jailer-cum-live-in-lover who attempted to thrash her, 25-year-old Jackson disappeared nine months later when the newly appointed military governor of New Orleans emptied the prisons by issuing blanket pardons.

Kate Bender

Kate Bender

A member of the notorious Bloody Benders of Labette County, Kansas, beautiful 22-year-old Kate claimed to be a psychic. In 1872 and1873, she enthralled male guests over dinner at the family’s inn while men posing as her father and brother sneaked up behind the victims and bashed in their skulls with a sledgehammer or slit their throats. Among the four Bender family members, only Kate and her mother were related, though Kate may have been married to the man posing as her brother. When a traveling doctor disappeared after visiting the Benders’ waystation in 1872, his brother began an investigation that turned up 11 bodies buried on the property. The Benders, who robbed their victims, disappeared without a trace. A persistent rumor claims vigilantes dispensed final justice somewhere on the Kansas prairie.

Ellen Etheridge

During the first year after her 1912 marriage to a millionaire farmer, 22-year-old Etheridge poisoned four of his eight children. She attempted to kill a fifth child by forcing him to drink lye, but the 13-year-old boy escaped and ran for help. A minister’s daughter, Etheridge confessed to the killings and the attempted murder, laying the blame on what she saw as her husband’s betrayal: He had married her not for love, but to provide an unpaid servant for his offspring, upon whom he lavished both his affection and his money. In 1913, a Bosque County, Texas, jury sentenced her to life in prison. She died in her sixties at the Goree State Farm for Women in Huntsville, Texas.

Linda Burfield Hazzard

Linda Burfield Hazzard

The first doctor in the U.S. to earn a medical degree as a “fasting specialist,” Hazzard was so committed to proving her theories about weight loss and health that she starved at least 15 patients to death. In 1912, she was convicted of manslaughter in the case of an Olalla, Washington, woman whose will she forged in order to steal the victim’s possessions. Hazzard served four years of a two- to twenty-year prison sentence before being paroled in late 1915. She died of self-starvation in 1938.

 

Lyda Southard

Lyda Southard

A serial “black widow,” Lyda Southard married seven men in five states over the course of eight years. Between 1915 and 1920, four of her husbands, a brother-in-law, and Southard’s three-year-old daughter — all recently covered by life insurance policies at Southard’s suggestion — died only months after the nuptials, apparently of ptomaine poisoning, typhoid fever, influenza, or diphtheria. Southard was convicted of second-degree murder in the poisoning death of her first husband, earning her a ten-years-to-life sentence in the Old Idaho State Penitentiary. She escaped with the warden’s assistance in 1931, only to be recaptured and returned to serve another eleven years before receiving parole. After changing her name and divorcing three times, she died of a heart attack in 1958 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Della Sorenson

Between 1918 and 1924, Sorenson killed eight family members to satisfy a twisted desire for revenge. Upon her arrest after an attempt to poison her second husband failed, she told authorities her niece and infant nephew, her first husband, her mother-in-law, two toddlers, and her own two daughters “bothered me, so I killed them.” She poisoned all of the children in the presence of their parents by feeding them cookies and candy laced with poison. A Dannebrog, Nebraska, jury declared the 28-year-old insane and committed her to the state mental asylum. She died there in 1941.

Bertha Gifford

Bertha Gifford and a six-year-old victim.

At the turn of the 20th Century, Gifford was known as an angel of mercy in Catawissa, Missouri. Not until 1928 did authorities discover the nurse's deadly ruse: The twenty to twenty-five sick friends and family members she took into her home and cared for between 1909 and 1928 all died of arsenic poisoning. Gifford was declared insane and committed to the Missouri State Hospital, where she died in 1951.

FINDING A SETTING FOR A STORY

The setting for all my books, as most of you know, is in Texas.  Recently, I began writing a historical short story that needed a town to get started. The time period is 1870 and the main part of my tale takes place in the fictitious town of McTiernan, a few miles north of Dallas. Actually the town will be built during the telling, but that's in the story.

In the book, Katie and the Irish Texan, the hero, Dermot McTiernan, came to Texas from Ireland to make his fortune in 1861. He becomes a ranch hand, working for land owner, Ian Benning. In 1863, they joined a brigade of Texas soldiers to help save the state from being destroyed like Georgia in Sherman's March to the sea. After the war ends, he returns to Ireland intending to marry his love and bring her home to Texas. Well, we know the course of life and love never runs smoothly and Dermot returns to Texas alone.

Sooooo, here he is in a saloon, in the middle of a card game, and about to be accused of cheating. He's not wearing plaid or a brightly colored hat and his name isn't Waldo, but where the heck is he? There are a myriad of places he could be, after all Texas is a pretty big state. While I peruse the internet, he starts to tell me a little more about himself and come to find out, he's been lumber-jacking in East Texas in and around the city of Jefferson.




Now, at this time, around 1870, Jefferson is quite the happening place. Toward the end of the war, she had been scheduled for destruction and to be set ablaze by the advancing Northern troops. Thankfully, she was spared this fate, unlike many of her sister cities, and by 1870, there were over two hundred buildings scheduled to be built. The town reached its peak population of greater than thirty thousand and became the sixth largest city in Texas.





Jefferson became a port for steamboat travel and at it's peak in the early 1870's, accommodated up to two hundred fifty steamers per year. She also was a major railway hub until 1873 when the completion of the Texas and Pacific railway rerouted rail travel  from Texarkana to Marshall bypassing Jefferson. After that her population diminished to about 3,500 residents.




Today, Jefferson is a lovely historic town, home to more state registered historic structures than anywhere else in the state. She truly lives up to being called, The Queen of thee Bayou, a unique and special place to be explored and shared.


I appreciate you stopping by and as always, I love to hear from you!

Hugs and have a great week,
Carra

Find me on my website: http://carracopelin.com
Facebook: http://facebook/carracopelin
Twitter: http://twitter/CarraCopelin

Dilue Rose and The Runaway Scrape

by Celia Yeary

GIRL IN SUNBONNET-WINSLOW HOMER-1878

Dilue Rose was only ten years old when she and her family were caught up in the terrible exodus called The Runaway Scrape. They'd moved to Texas only two years before and had barely settled in near Harrisburg when word came that Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and his Mexican army were gathering on the Rio Grande River. The war between Texas and Mexico had begun.

The residents around San Patricio, Refugio, and San Antonio began to move east in large groups as early as January.

In March, Sam Houston arrived in Gonzales and learned of the fall of the Alamo. He decided on retreat to the Colorado River and ordered all inhabitants to leave everything and accompany him. People from all over Texas began to move toward Louisiana and Galveston Island to escape the Mexican Army. This began the Runaway Scrape on a very large scale.

Like all others, Dilue Rose's parents, Dr. Pleasant Rose and wife Margaret, were ill-prepared for the long trek east. In their state of panic, they left food on the table, a fire in the fireplace, stock to be tended, and chickens left to roam.

No one made proper preparations to survive on the run. They used any means of transportation available, or none at all, meaning many walked, including women and children. Babies and toddlers were carried which made the flight even more difficult.

As a young girl, Dilue followed her family as all other children did in a desperate attempt to get to Louisiana or Galveston Island.

DILUE ROSE HARRIS

As an elderly woman, Dilue used her father's journal along with her childhood memories of the horrors of The Runaway Scrape to write memoirs of those days. Those pages were used to write her story in various publications, including a book titled Texas Tears and Texas Sunshine-Voices of Frontier Women.

Dilue writes:

"We left home at sunset, hauling clothes, bedding, and provisions on the sleigh with one yoke of oxen. Mother and I were walking, she with an infant in her arms, while Father rode their one horse. Brother drove the oxen and my two little sisters rode in the sleigh.

When we got to the San Jacinto River, there were five thousand people waiting for the Lynchburg Ferry. We waited three days before crossing.

Our hardships began there. The river was rising and there were struggles to see who should cross first.

Measles, sore eyes, whooping cough, and every other disease known to man broke out. We got on the ferry first because of my little sick sister. The horror of crossing Trinity was difficult to describe. Once on the ferry, the flood waters broke over the banks above. It took eight men to get us to safety." 

By April 1 the prairie was a scene of chaos and desolation and death.  The spring rains fell in sheets, making every river crossing a terrifying ordeal. Women floundered waist-deep in mud, babies in their arms.  Some families gave up running and simply cowered where they were, in the tall prairie grass and bottomland canebrakes. Many refugees sickened and died along the trail. Children were abandoned. Thieves stole horses, claiming they were for Houston's Texian Army.

After weeks of intolerable conditions, a young man rode toward their camp, shouting, "Turn back! Turn back! Houston's army has whipped the Mexicans, and it's safe now. Go home! Turn back!"

They soon learned that the return trip was just as horrendous as the running away.

 

SANTA ANNA ON LEFT IN RED CAPE. SAM HOUSTON LYING ON GROUND, WOUNDED

Dilue writes:

"We crossed the San Jacinto River and stayed late into the night on the San Jacinto battlefield. A soldier asked my mother to go with him to see Santa Anna as a captive and the Mexican prisoners, but she would not go, saying she was not dressed to go visiting. Instead, I got permission to ride there with him.

Earlier, I had lost my bonnet in the raging river, and Mother made me wear a tablecloth tied over my head.  But I wouldn't wear the tablecloth again since I would be seeing some of the young men.

I was on the battlefield of San Jacinto on April 26, 1836. Two days later I turned eleven years old.

We left the battlefield late in the evening. We had to pass among the dead Mexicans, and once Father had to stop and pull one out of the road so we would not run over the body.

The prairie was very boggy, it was getting dark, and now there were thirty families with us. We were glad to leave the battlefield, for it was a gruesome sight. We camped that night on the prairie, and could hear the wolves howl and bark as they devoured the dead."

The family arrived home after many days of grueling travel. When they arrived, they found the house ransacked, dishes broken, furniture tossed about and broken, the floor torn up, and hogs running around in the house. They had practically nothing, and so the starting over began.

"Father had hidden some of our better things in a big chest so that no one could find them. We had left in our better clothes. Now our better clothing was in that chest, and among them was my old sunbonnet. I was prouder of that sunbonnet than anything, for I was sorely tired of wearing that tablecloth."

--Dilue Rose was born in 1825 in St. Louis, Missouri on April 28.

--After the Texas Revolution, her family moved to the area of Bray's Bayou five miles outside Houston.

--There, Dilue attended school.

--At age 13, she married Ira A. Harris who served with the Texas Rangers.

--They had nine children.

--Ira died in 1869 at age 53.

--Dilue died in 1914 at age 89.

NOTE: One of Dilue's little sisters died during The Runaway Scrape. If you recall reading my post of a couple of months ago titled, "Mary and a Horse Named Tormentor," she also was in the Runaway Scrape with her husband and babies. One of her babies died during the exodus, as well.

Celia Yeary

Romance...and a little bit of Texas

Sources:

The Handbook of Texas On-Line: State Historical Association

Texas Tears and Texas Sunshine: Voices of Frontier Women

Reminiscences of Dilue Rose Harris

Mike Kearby's "Texas"

Wikimedia Commons.

Public Domain Photos

Let's Spin a Yarn

 

Today for Big Art Day in Texas, my artist friends and I are going to yarn bomb the local arts council building. We’ve been crocheting, knitting and finger weaving for two weeks in preparation for the big day. My students have really enjoyed the process. So when I was trying to think of a topic, I thought I’d look up the history of yarn. Most pioneer women made clothing for their families and this often included raising the sheep or growing flax, spinning the fibers into yarn, weaving the yarn into fabric, dying the fabric and then sewing the articles of clothing. It was a very labor intensive process. As areas became more settled and mills more automated for making fabric, settlers could either order readymade clothing, commission a seamstress or in some cases buy clothing in the local mercantile.

The first recorded piece of yarn is a string skirt dating over 20,000 years so I figure I’ll cover the era after the spinning wheel was invented. While an exact date and place for the first spinning wheels are not known, many suspect the originated in India somewhere between 500 and 1000 CE. Charkha wheels are still used today and are among the first type of spinning wheels. “Instead of a wheel with a rim, Charkha wheels were composed of spokes with holes in the ends. A string was run through the holes, connecting the spokes in a zigzag and supporting the drive band. The drive band was connected to a spindle on its side, and powered by a hand crank.” (From Crochetvolution – The History of Yarn).

Spinning Jenny

With the spinning wheel, the production of cloth took less time. Technology continued to advance and in the 1760s the development of the water wheel, spinning jenny and the spinning mule contributed to the growth of the cloth industry and enabled the first fabric mills. By the 1830s, steam power allowed the mills to be semi-automated.

The most common fibers used for yarn are cotton and wool but yarn can also be made from more unusual sources like yaks, possum, ostrich feathers, bamboo, hemp or even soy.  Dyes could be made from natural materials like shellfish, bugs and certain plants.

The phrase “spin a yarn” comes from women spinning their yarn in groups and telling stories until eventually “spinning a yarn” also meant telling a story. So I guess it’s rather appropriate to be talking about yarn on a writing blog. For more information, check out this site on the spinning wheel.

A Little History on Forensic Science

BY Linda LaRoque

I say "A Little" because there is so much information and also because I want to focus on two aspects—finger printing and sperm identification.

Back in 2007 when I began writing my first time-travel novella, A Law of Her Own, set in 1888 in Prairie, Texas, it became necessary to learn when sperm was first identifiable under a microscope. That led to identifying the type of microscope might be available to a country doctor in a small town in the late 1800s. I needed this information so my heroine could prove the villain was not only a murderer, but a sexual predator. One novella led to two more set in Prairie and included some of the same characters.

I'm happy to say that sometime in the future the three—A Law of Her Own, A Marshal of Her Own, and A Love of His Own will be published as an anthology in both ebook and print. I'm very excited so had to add that little tidbit.

While writing Birdie's Nest, my heroine, a Texas Ranger is transported back to 1890 in Waco. One of the only people who halfway believes she's from the future, a detective on the Waco Police Force, asks her to work undercover and use her investigative skills to help locate a man carving up some of the soiled doves on the reservation. Of course, Victorian society does not approve of women dealing in men's business and Birdie finds herself in fixes.

So, that's all I can say about the story. You'll have to read it.

Archimedes (287-212 BC) the man behind the term "Eureka," is considered to be the father of forensic science. He determined a crown wasn't made of gold (as falsely claimed) by its density and buoyancy.

Later in the 7th century, Soleiman, an Arabic merchant, used fingerprints on clay tablets to prove the validity between debtors and lenders.

In 250 BC, Erasistratus, a Greek physician concludes that pulse rates of his patients increased when they lied—the first lie detector test.

In 44 BC, the first recorded autopsy occurred when a doctor determined that Julius Caesar died from the 2nd of 23 stab wounds.

There are many more recorded example of forensics being used in our early history, but I want to move on to more recent years. If you would like to read more, I used this website for reference.
http://forensicsciencecentral.co.uk/history.shtml

The first microscope was developed in 1590.

Anton von Leeuwenhoek, a tradesman in Delft, drew the attention of the Royal Society in London with the microscopes he made. He had no university training and spoke only Dutch, but through these new friends he developed a taste for speculation. His interests turned to whether mammalian generation (or more plainly put, reproduction) was determined by the male sperm or the female egg.

Understand that in the 17th and 18th centuries, the subject of generation was weighed down with religious and philosophical overtones. Naturally he was hesitant to use his microscopes on the study of semen. Also, he wasn't keen on writing about semen and intercourse nor the thought of having to talk about it. Some years later, in 1677, a medical student at Leiden brought him a sample of semen in which the student and now Leeuwenhoek found small animals with tails. "Leeuwenhoek resumed his own observations with his own semen—acquired, he stressed, not by sinfully defiling himself but as a natural consequence of conjugal coitus—observed a multitude of 'animalcules' less than a millionth the size of a coarse grain of sand and with thin, undulating transparent tails."
The website I used is below if you'd like to read further.
http://10e.devbio.com/article.php?ch=4&id=65

It was not until 1986 that DNA was first used to solve a crime. Sir Alec Jefferies, through DNA profiles, identified Colin Pitchfork as the murderer of two young girls in England.

Though researchers knew that lines and whirls in fingerprints and footprints could be used in identifying individuals for many centuries, there was no real system which made it unreliable and/or unable to prove. In 1880, a paper written by Henry Faulds of Scotland, suggests fingerprints at the scene of a crime could be used to identify the suspect. He used fingerprints to free an innocent man and lock up the perpetrator in a Tokyo burglary.

Sir Francis Galton established the first classification system in 1892 and published his book Fingerprints. In 1918, Edmond Locard suggests the use of 12 matching points as a positive fingerprint match.

The FBI was established by US President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905, but it was not until 1932 that the FBI crime lab was created.

Here is a picture of an 1852 microscope. The one Doctor Wilson, in A Law of Her Own, uses in 1888 in Prairie is probably very similar. I doubt he could afford anything newer.

Another reference not listed above.
http://www.ehow.com/info_8558497_early-crime-scene-investigation-tools.html

This is such an interesting subject to me. If you're interested, I hope you'll Google some of the websites listed and read further. You won't be disappointed.

I give full credit for facts in this blog post to the references where I gathered the information. The pictures are from Wikipedia Commons.