Relevant History | Author Suzanne Adair

Caps, Kerchiefs, and Common Sense

Posted on April 3, 2015 by suzanneadairApril 4, 2015

I admit to watching the Starz production of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, set in eighteenth-century Scotland, with one eye on the characters’ clothing. I’ve been a history buff and Revolutionary War reenactor for so long that I cannot help it. Hollywood revels in dressing actors for historical productions. However, we all know better than to believe that those costumes are completely accurate. Right?

Here’s the character Claire Randall out of doors. Most of her clothing is fairly accurate for the time period. However none of the three pieces around her neck and shoulders is correct. For an eighteenth-century woman in the out-of-doors, especially a woman who isn’t wearing a shawl, cape, or cloak, Claire is missing several very important articles of clothing. Common sense articles of clothing.

The bodices of eighteenth-century gowns tended to be low-cut, so a woman wore a neck kerchief for modesty when she left her home—and often when she was indoors. The neck kerchief came in several variations and could be worn outside the bodice or tucked into it. Outdoors, it protected a woman’s chest from exposure to cold and blistering sunlight. It also shielded her skin from the bites of disease-carrying insects such as mosquitoes and ticks.

She wore a mobcap to cover most of her hair. The mobcap prevented the buildup of grease and dirt in her hair and kept the hair from having to be washed often. It also saved her from spending a lot of time fussing over her hair every day. Indoors, on certain occasions, she might opt out of wearing the mobcap. But when she went outside, the combination of the mobcap and a hat kept the sun out of her eyes and off the top of her head, and it acted as a barrier to those nasty bugs. In the winter, it helped keep her head warm.

I’ve reenacted in living history events in the summer and winter. The kerchief does protect my chest. The mobcap and hat do protect my head. Eighteenth-century people knew what they were doing by using all that clothing. People of Western cultures in the twenty-first century think nothing of Claire’s bare head and bare chest. However if she were truly in the eighteenth century, venturing outside without a neck kerchief and at least a mobcap would tell people that she’d lost her wits, or was sexually promiscuous, or both.

Enjoy those lovely “Outlander” costumes. But do remember to take them with a grain of salt.

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Finding the Revolution’s Last Men

Posted on March 24, 2015 by suzanneadairNovember 4, 2018

Relevant History welcomes back Don Hagist, an independent researcher specializing in the demographics and material culture of the British Army in the American Revolution. He maintains a blog about British common soldiers and has published a number of articles in academic journals. He has written several books including The Revolution’s Last Men: The Soldiers Behind the Photographs and British Soldiers, American War, both from Westholme Publishing, and is on the editorial board of Journal of the American Revolution. Don works as an engineering consultant in Rhode Island and also writes for several well-known syndicated and freelance cartoonists. For more information, check his Facebook page.

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The American Revolution was fought by thousands of soldiers, as most wars are, and as in most wars only a few of the participants achieved fame. As individuals, most soldiers played only minor roles in a long and wide-ranging war, but together their efforts were vital in shaping the course of events. With few exceptions, it was the leaders and policymakers who were remembered, while the soldiers remained almost anonymous.

A quirk of fate changed that for six men who were only teenagers when they served in the war that created their nation. In 1864 an innocuous budget report from the Federal government revealed that only a handful of Revolutionary War veterans were still alive and collecting pensions. When a photographer and a clergyman-activist learned how few of these men remained, the race was on to capture their images and words before the opportunity was lost.

The result of this quest by photographer Nelson Augustus Moore and Reverend Elias Brewster Hillard was the book Last Men of the Revolution. Published at the end of 1864, it contained biographies of the last six Revolutionary War pensioners and, more remarkably, a photograph of each one.

New technology for old veterans
The book was innovative. While daguerreotype photography was already a quarter-century old, the technology to make prints from photographic negatives had been introduced only a few years before 1864. There was still no way to put a photograph onto a printed page, so each copy of Last Men of the Revolution contained individual prints of each man pasted by hand onto the pages. It represented the very latest technology for sharing images, capitalizing on the sensation of photographic image collecting that was sweeping the nation.

The book had great visual appeal, but the biographical content was sorely lacking. Reverend Hillard interviewed five of the six men but did no research to corroborate their garbled tales based on fading memories. Indeed, his goal was not to record history but to inspire the current nation, at the time torn by civil war, with the stories of heroes that had seen first-hand the nation’s founding.

Finding the soldiers behind the photographs
The images captured in 1864 have continued to captivate generations of history enthusiasts ever since. Unfortunately, the error-ridden biographies that were published with those photographs have also been repeated without question, even though much of the information ranges from implausible to impossible. The book has been reprinted verbatim several times, and the images with summaries of the biographies are readily available on the Internet. A new study of these six veterans has been long overdue.

Two years ago, Westholme Publishing asked me if I could research the men profiled in the 1864 book and compose a new volume telling their real stories. It was an interesting proposition; although I’ve researched and written extensively about British soldiers in the American Revolution, that’s a completely different discipline than researching American soldiers. The organization and administration of the army was completely different, and the archival sources used to study it is also completely different. But, unwilling to turn down a book project, I accepted the challenge.

It was quite an adventure. Extensive research revealed a wealth of previously unpublished information about each man and also a new perspective on the 1864 photographs and the 1864 book. It has finally come together in The Revolution’s Last Men: the Soldiers Behind the Photographs (Westholme, March 2015). This new volume presents all of the information that was in the original book but gives it a thorough examination using the pension depositions of the soldiers themselves and men who served alongside them, as well as muster rolls, orderly books, and a host of other primary sources. This is the most complete look at each soldier ever published.

To supplement the textual information, The Revolution’s Last Men includes six original drawings of the men as they may have looked when they were young soldiers, based on extensive study of period military clothing and equipment. Rendered by artist Eric H. Schnitzer, these images put into perspective the photographs taken six decades later, providing new visual context for each man’s military service. [Suzanne Adair’s note: Photograph and sketch are of William Hutchings.]

The research for The Revolution’s Last Men revealed many unexpected surprises. Besides additional recollections by the veterans not published in 1864, I discovered several photographs taken by other photographers after the men became celebrities due to the publication of the original book. These photographs, along with the drawings and extensive text, make The Revolution’s Last Men a valuable study of memory as well as of history. Creating this book was a remarkably rewarding experience for me, and I hope that you’ll find it enjoyable and informative both to read and to look at.

[Suzanne Adair’s note #2: Don accidentally sent the wrong drawing for William Hutchings. Here is the correct sketch.

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A big thanks to Don Hagist.

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The Winner of In a Milk and Honeyed Land

Posted on March 16, 2015 by suzanneadairMarch 16, 2015

Michele Drier has won a copy of In a Milk and Honeyed Land by Richard Abbott. Congrats to Michele Drier!

Thanks to Richard Abbott for taking us on a journey to the origins of our alphabet. Thanks, also, to everyone who visited and commented on Relevant History this week. Watch for another Relevant History post, coming soon.

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Stamped On These Lifeless Things

Posted on March 10, 2015 by suzanneadairMarch 16, 2015

Relevant History welcomes Richard Abbott, who writes historical fiction set in the Middle East at the end of the Bronze Age, around 1200BC. His first book, In a Milk and Honeyed Land, explores events in the Egyptian province of Canaan. It follows the life, loves, and struggles of a priest in the small hill town of Kephrath. He continues to explore this world in other novels. Richard lives in London, England and works professionally in IT quality assurance. When not writing words or computer code, he enjoys spending time with family, walking, and wildlife, ideally combining all three pursuits in the English Lake District. To learn more about Richard’s books, check out his website and blog. Follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

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“Which yet survive…”
In 1817, the poet Shelley wrote the sonnet Ozymandias, speaking of sentiments

“Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.”

Shelley was inspired by the British Museum’s acquisition of massive fragments of a statue of the pharaoh Ramesses II. His words apply to written records as much as physical ones.

Our modern alphabet is derived from Egyptian glyphs, via the indirect route of Canaanite, Phoenician, Greek and Latin. The earliest link—Egyptian to Canaanite—has only become apparent in the last decade or so, and often surprises people. As well their quite different appearance, Egyptian signs are syllable-based, typically pairs or triplets forming a sound cluster. From Canaanite through to English, we are dealing with a true alphabet. The discovery of this link has raised many profound questions.

When it was thought that Canaanite arose as a new invention around 1200BC, the appearance of written texts using alphabets about 300 years later made sense. The older, more elaborate scripts like hieroglyphic or cuneiform were thought to be barriers to literacy, with a very large set of signs, and complex links between sign and sound. Their use, it was said, ensured that writing was kept for the elite. Conversely, once alphabetic scripts appeared, literacy would boom. Enthusiastic opinions were expressed, like that of W.F. Albright: “…the 22-letter [Hebrew] alphabet could be learned in a day or two by a bright student…I do not doubt for a moment that there were many urchins in Palestine who could read and write as early as the time of the Judges.”

This happy picture has vanished. Comparative studies worldwide have shown that high literacy rates can be enjoyed with a complex script and high sign-count such as in Mandarin Chinese. Conversely, low literacy rates exist in the presence of a simple alphabet such as Latin or Greek—or English. Real literacy means more than memorizing twenty-two symbols—twenty-six for English. It means knowing how to use these symbols flexibly, accurately, and reliably to capture information and pass it on to others. Learning how to be a writer requires more than learning your letters.

“The hand that mocked them…”
Moreover, the recognition of the link to Egypt has pushed back the appearance of the first alphabetic writing by something like half a millennium. We now look back to about 1800BC as the time when Canaanite letters became distinct from Egyptian signs. Short monumental inscriptions or assertions of ownership using alphabetic scripts appear in the later parts of the second millennium, but we do not find a lengthy text until around 840BC. If alphabets were so easy to learn and so compellingly clear, why did it take nearly a thousand years before they are employed to display national pride and propaganda?

Of course the picture is not that simple. Some items—stone monuments, clay tablets, interior wall paintings—survive much longer than others—wax slates, wooden boards, cured leather. Perhaps the early writers in the alphabetic tradition used materials which were inherently perishable? Or perhaps some kinds of writing were reckoned to be peculiarly suited for some topics and not others? At Ugarit, on the Syrian coast, a form of alphabet existed alongside traditional Akkadian cuneiform, and each was used only in some contexts and not others. Religious epics were written in the alphabetic script, and formal diplomatic letters and records in Akkadian—but not the other way round.

“The heart that fed…”
In most of the world’s history, writing has been the preserve of a few individuals, mostly men, and the topics they tackled were the concerns of the wealthy. Royal annals, battles, tribute, religious events, trade and so on fill most of the written content of the past. But sometimes we come across something more personal. The royal workmen’s village near the Valley of the Kings in Egypt was home to highly skilled craftsmen and women, and it is refreshing to read their comments about everyday concerns.

“Write to me what you will want since the boy is too muddled to say it!”…“The chief workman Paneb: Kasa his wife was in childbirth and he had three days off”…“I found the workman Mery-Sekhmey son of Menna sleeping with my wife in the fourth month of summer”…“Bring me some honey for my eyes, and also ochre that has been freshly moulded, and real black eye-paint”…“I won’t let you do singing. It is Pasen who has been assigned to do the singing for Meretseger”…“Seek out for me one tunic in exchange for the ring”…“Go and pick the vegetables, for they are now due from you.”

Many of the senders and recipients are men, but there is a good representation of women as well. The full spectrum of everyday life is captured by these letters—families, friendship and rivalry, legal proceedings, employment records, and so on. There are even shopping lists and laundry manifests. Most were inked hastily using hieratic writing on pieces of broken pottery, and passed by hand from person to person. They have a direct, intimate connection with the people of that age, and their preoccupations. But the workmen’s village is unusual, and these insights into everyday life are rare.

Writing is a strange thing. We make little marks of various shapes and use them to transmit complex and often highly personal information to other people. The story of writing continually throws new questions at us, and often challenges preconceived ideas about former generations. What we write, and how we write, tell the reader as much about the writer as about the subject matter.

And, as Shelley said, these fragments have long outlived their original personal and social context. They offer fascinating, and often perplexing, insights into the world of the past.

(The three images are publicly available from the British Museum web site.)

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A big thanks to Richard Abbott. He’ll give away a trade paperback copy of In a Milk and Honeyed Land to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I’ll choose the winner from among those who comment by Friday at 6 p.m. ET. Delivery is available worldwide.

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Commodore John Paul Jones and the Battle at Flamborough Head

Posted on December 2, 2014 by suzanneadairDecember 1, 2014

Relevant History welcomes Michael C. McCloskey, who has spent the last ten years studying American History at Millersville University and received his MA in 2013. His focus is on the colonial Atlantic world, and the development of American identity. Currently courting several doctorial programs, Michael looks forward to the day he will have a classroom of his own. He has also been active in Public History programs serving as historic interpreter at the Army Heritage Education Center during their time line events and guest lecturing on revolution and its causes, bringing alive the past for the next generation. For more information, connect with him on his web site at Millersville University.

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In looking at the American War for Independence, one of the more uncommon aspects is that of the United States Navy, and no one was more famed of that arm than Commodore John Paul Jones. Perhaps most famous for uttering the immortal words “I have not yet begun to fight…” in the Battle at Flamborough Head on the eastern coast of England touching the North Sea.[1] The war had not been going well for the colonists in 1779, and they needed a victory to help bolster their spirits and carry them on to fight until Cornwallis was defeated in 1781 at Yorktown, Virginia. That victory came in the form of Commodore Jones at the Battle of Flamborough Head. Outgunned and even in the face of treachery by one of his captains, he managed to escape what could have been an ignominious end and emerge the hero in a contest which seemed mismatched once the engagement began.[2]

The Engagement Begins
On the afternoon of 23 September 1779, a flotilla of supply troops arriving from the mouth of the Thames River was ferrying material from England for the war effort against the Americans.[3] It was just such a prize that Commodore Jones was waiting for. In the small squadron commanded by Commodore Jones was the Alliance commanded by Captain Pierre Landaise, the Pallas commanded by Captain Henry Lundt, and the cutter Vengeance. Coming around the cape was the H.M.S. Serapis of 50 guns commanded by Captain Richard Pearson RN. The Countess of Scarborough was not far along and commanded by Captain Thomas Piercy with a large number of ships in tow carrying supplies for the British.[4]

By 6:00 p.m. the battle began with Commodore Jones having the Stars and Stripes hoisted up the mainmast revealing his true intent. Even though the Bonhomme Richard was outgunned and facing a much more maneuverable enemy (the Serapis had a copper lined hull making her much faster and maneuverable than the Richard), Jones was relying on his squadron to help even the odds.[5] In the case of the Alliance, that was a trust misplaced, as we shall see. The other two vessels did what they could against the Countess of Scarborough keeping her busy while the Richard and Serapis faced off for the next three to four hours. Early on in the engagement, the Richard wound up running her bowsprit into the hull of the Serapis while maneuvering to gain advantage. Captain Pearson asked Commodore Jones if he was going to strike his colors. To which the immortal words were uttered “I have not yet begun to fight!” At which point the engagement renewed.[6]

A Questionable Alliance
While the Richard and Serapis were dancing with each other in the waters off the coast of England, the Alliance was keeping her distance, waiting to cut in, but not with the expected party. Meanwhile the Pallas engaged the convoy and the Countess of Scarborough, and the Vengeance could do little but watch the battle unfold. With the Richard and Serapis now locked, broadside to broadside, the Alliance began to maneuver closer, but instead of firing on the H.M.S. Serapis, Captain Landaise fired on the Richard! Not just once, but three times. It turns out, according to historian Samuel Eliot Morison, the commander of the Alliance had designs of sinking the Richard and taking the Serapis as a prize for himself and getting Commodore John Paul Jones out of the way in the same move, a shrewd but treacherous act indeed.[7] This act seemed to be a streak through many of the foreign commanders subordinated under Jones’s command throughout his life and demonstrates the complexity of the politics he had to navigate throughout his career and most especially during his final command in Russia.

The Alliance notwithstanding, Commodore Jones and Bonhomme Richard held on to the Serapis and both railed away at one another. Jones’s iron determination and sheer will seemed to keep the Richard afloat as the engagement got hot. Even many under the command of Jones on the Richard itself were ready to call for quarter and ask for terms. Commodore Jones did not allow for such an action. Finally at 10:30 in the evening, the mainmast of the Serapis began to give way, and Captain Pearson struck his colors. No easy task, as Morison relates that he nailed his colors to the mast, and owing to the loss of men to killed and wounded, he had to climb up top to strike them himself.[8] When Commodore Jones received Captain Pearson upon the deck of the Bonhomme Richard to accept his surrender, the ceremonies of war during the period were well observed, honor being done to both sides in the battle, much in contrast to the reputation of John Paul Jones as a pirate, rapacious and without mercy.

Consequences
After the battle, the Bonhomme Richard was so damaged that she wound up sinking the next morning, giving her last full measure to provide Commodore Jones with his victory that day. But what did that victory demonstrate? It lay plain to the people and government of England that a war fought an ocean away can be brought to their own back yard. The world was no longer as large as many thought it was. Also, while this convoy did have the good fortune to escape to a safe port while the Serapis and the Countess of Scarborough did their job engaging Jones and his small fleet, England’s merchant fleet ran the same risk as American colonial merchant ships, that of being taken as a prize of war. As a result the merchant fleets cried for naval protection.[9] England now had to reevaluate where to place its resources when mapping out a strategy. The war became “not so distant” anymore.

Footnotes
1. Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), p. 83
2. Samuel Eliot Morison, John Paul Jones, (New York: Time Incorporated, 1959), pp. 234, 235; Tuchman, The First Salute, p.110
3. Gardner W. Allen, A Naval History of the American Revolution, Vol 2, (New York: Russell & Russell Inc, 1962), pp. 456, 457
4. Morison, pp. 224-226
5. Ibid, pp. 226, 227
6. Tuchman, p. 83; Morison, p. 231
7. Morison, p. 235
8. Tuchman , p. 83; Morison, p. 237

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A big thanks to Michael McCloskey!

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The Winner of Death in the Time of Ice

Posted on November 25, 2014 by suzanneadairNovember 25, 2014

Georgia Wilson has won a copy of Death in the Time of Ice by Kaye George. Congrats to Georgia Wilson!

Thanks to Kaye George for her insights into her research of Neanderthals living 38,000 years ago. Thanks, also, to everyone who visited and commented on Relevant History this week. Watch for another Relevant History post, coming soon.

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Why On Earth Did I Choose Neanderthals?

Posted on November 18, 2014 by suzanneadairNovember 19, 2014

Relevant History welcomes national best-selling and multiple-award-winning mystery author Kaye George, who writes several series: Imogene Duckworthy, Cressa Carraway (Barking Rain Press), People of the Wind (Untreed Reads), and, as Janet Cantrell, Fat Cat (Berkley Prime Crime cozies). Her short stories appear in anthologies and magazines as well as her own collection, A Patchwork of Stories. Her reviews run in Suspense Magazine. She lives in Knoxville, TN. For more information, check her web site and blog, and look for her on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

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One day I decided I wanted to write about something in the past. I rejected a few periods, mostly because I had studied them in history class. It seemed to me, at the time, that history consisted of memorizing dates and wars, with a few kings and queens. Boring! It was only after I left high school and started reading historical fiction that I realized some of those periods were interesting, even fascinating.

What else was there?
However, lots of people were writing about those times. What was there that no one had done before? Here’s where my interest in anthropology kicked in. I was an avid fossil hunter at one time and used to have a terrific trilobite—wish I knew what happened to that!

Add in the fact that Neanderthals, long thought to be low-browed savages, were turning out to be misunderstood. As scientists sequenced one of their genomes, startling discoveries were made. One that they sequenced was red-headed and probably freckled! When you considered how many thousands of years they thrived, then factored in the climates they survived, everyone had to drastically change their opinions of their intelligence.

Conflicting theories
I ordered a few textbooks and heavily underlined and post-it-noted the pages. I found that, for every theory, there’s a conflicting one. Perfect for a fiction writer! Some said it was unlikely they could speak. Others said that of course they could. Some said they buried their dead with ceremony, others said probably not. So I was able to pick and choose what fit my fiction.

No one knows how their society was ordered, so I ordered it to suit myself. My tribe, the Hamapa, is matriarchal with the wise old woman as the leader, advised by two of her male partners. In order to be able to describe things to the reader from outside, I chose one main character, Enga Dancing Flower, who was adopted into the tribe with her twin, Ung Strong Arm. It is assumed that her tribe abandoned her and her sister, as very small children and near to the Hamapa tribe, because they could no longer feed everyone. I chose another main character to be a young male of the tribe, Jeek, still a child, and younger than Enga Dancing Flower.

Language?
I had the most fun inventing their language, since at one time I considered majoring in linguistics in college. Going from a French major to Russian, I sort of gathered some linguistics. Putting together knowledge about how babies learn to speak, how disabled people manage, and early language studies, I used only the sounds easiest to make, just in case it was hard for them to speak. Also, they save the spoken language for ceremonial announcements and communicate mostly by telepathy. (Not a theory by anyone but me. But, hey, if the Australian Aborigines can do it, Neanderthals might have.)

Where to put them
One problem was setting. I knew I wanted to use the end of their time on this planet as a separate people, about 38-40,000 years ago, but I didn’t know much about Europe or Asia then, which was just before the last Ice Age. I did know something about North America (and learned a lot more!). Then it came to my attention that the theory of peopling the Americas was being called into question. So I decided it was people much, much earlier than the main theory (and now that theory is almost totally debunked in favor of earlier migrations). Why not let the Neanderthals go just a bit farther east and come on over?

The advantage of doing that is that I can use the mega-fauna that existed on this continent in those days: mammoth, mastodons, saber-tooth tigers, dire wolves, flat-faced bears, giant beavers and sloths. Everything was gigantic! And presented challenges as food sources for my tribe. The approaching glaciers from the north were also driving the game south as the story opens. Some neighboring tribes were having a hard time feeding themselves.

Other prehistory fiction!
I’ve recently made the acquaintance of a group of prehistory fiction writers who write the gamut, from fairly recent times, just before the discovery of the Americas by the Europeans, to 70,000 years ago. It’s fun to share our interests in primitive peoples. If you’d like to know more about them, visit the group. Some of the other writers (all fiction—I’m the only mystery writer) are Mary Black, Kathleen Rollins, Bonnye Matthew, Ron Fritsch, Michael Gear (of W. Michael and Kathleen O’Neal Gear), Simon Townley, Sandra Saidak, Gary McCarthy, and Sharman Russell. (Though I might call the Gear books at least part mystery). If you like prehistory fiction, look up all of these!

More respect for the Neanderthals
By the way, one marker of progress is that I read, in a textbook published well after 2000, that scientists all agreed that Homo neanderthalensis didn’t interbreed with Homo sapiens. Today, I know that I’m 2.9 percent Neanderthal from a simple DNA test I took a couple of years ago. The old myths about these long-misunderstood people are falling day by day! They were added to the genus Homo only very recently. I’m so gratified that some of my theories about them are being added as new discoveries. I love writing about my Neanderthals!

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A big thanks to Kaye George. She’ll give away a trade paperback copy of her book, Death in the Time of Ice, to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I’ll choose the winner from among those who comment by Friday at 6 p.m. ET. Delivery is available worldwide.

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Did you like what you read? Learn about downloads, discounts, and special offers from Relevant History authors and Suzanne Adair. Subscribe to Suzanne’s free newsletter.

Boys with Whips

Posted on November 14, 2014 by suzanneadairNovember 14, 2014

Flogging as a form of punishment was dispensed by company drummers during the American Revolution. In my recent post on flogging, I included the following statement:

…the desired outcome of flogging wasn’t usually the recipient’s death. That meant that often the flogging was delivered by a boy who didn’t have the upper body strength of a man.

A history buff queried me about the statement, said that all drummers were adults, and wanted to know where I’d gotten the rationale about using boys to go easy on the punishment.

One place I’d seen it was in Dr. Tony Scotti’s 2002 book Brutal Virtue: The Myth and Reality of Banastre Tarleton. Here’s the quote from his book:

Starting in 1740, some restraints appeared during floggings. Soldiers lived through large numbers of lashes, say one thousand for desertion, because they were administered at intervals over several weeks and supervised by a surgeon. Furthermore, drummers now carried out the punishment. The rationale for all this is simple. Aside from being more humane, it saved a valuable if momentarily wayward soldier for future service. In addition, a drummer boy of thirteen or fourteen years of age did not have the upper body strength of an adult corporal or sergeant. The youth could not last long at full tilt when whipping his comrade.

I bolded the portion of the quote most pertinent to this post and will get to the issue of drummers’ ages in a moment. This bolded part supplies a rationale that drummer boys administered floggings because they didn’t have an adult’s upper body strength and could thus go easier on the prisoner. Documentation exists to support the points about the flogging intervals, surgeon supervision, and duty of drummers. But the rationale itself doesn’t appear to have primary documentation supporting it. (If you find such a source, please send it to me.)

Years after the Revolution was over, that rationale may have been acquired to supply a motive or reason for why boys were involved in the business of floggings. How would a rationale be attributed? Unfortunately, people have “embellished” pieces of history all along to support personal and organizational agendas. If you don’t believe in these agendas, take a look at “Molly Pitcher.”

Here’s where matters get murkier. It’s a fact that units enlisted boys as young as twelve years of age. I checked into some primary sources—pension applications and, via a fellow researcher, muster rolls—to see what they could tell me about the ages of drummers. In both the British and Continental armies, there were plenty of adult drummers. However, boy drummers also became members of units as early as twelve years old. So were all drummers adults? No.

Life on a campaign trail was obviously harsher than that in garrison. Any boy who could endure the rigors of battle as a drummer and march all day carrying a heavy drum would have to be strong and stout. Such a boy would be expected to perform all the duties of a drummer. Most likely he’d be older than twelve—but that doesn’t mean he’d necessarily be a man. One pension application I read included a direct reference to the drummer flogging someone, and when he did it, he might have been fifteen years old. Tantalizing data.

We don’t yet know why drummers were chosen to administer floggings. Nor do we know if there was a minimum age requirement to perform the duty. In a unit, drummers were rotated through the task of flogging. If a prisoner was to receive a great number of lashes, several drummers could be assigned to carry out the sentence. Thus some boys may have been included in the duty rotation and wielded the cat-o’-nine-tails. Such circumstances don’t support the rationale that armies used drummer boys for a light touch with the whip.

Why would this rationale be attributed in the first place? For Americans living in the past century, the ideas of enlisting children as combatants, whipping a man’s back to shreds as corporal punishment, and using children to dispense such floggings are alien, horrific, and repulsive. But that level of social consciousness didn’t exist in the 18th century. The notion that boys were assigned to deliver floggings because they didn’t have the upper body strength of a man sounds like a very modern attribution. Maybe it’s an “agenda” to soften some grim realities: that “childhood” looked very different during the American Revolution, and that corporal punishment was brutal business in the British and Continental armies.

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The Winner of Bluffing is Murder

Posted on November 10, 2014 by suzanneadairNovember 12, 2014

Kaye George has won a copy of Bluffing is Murder by Edith Maxwell. Congrats to Kaye George!

Thanks to Edith Maxwell for her insights into Quakers, midwifery in the 1800s, and abolitionist and poet John Greenleaf Whittier. Thanks, also, to everyone who visited and commented on Relevant History this week. Watch for another Relevant History post, coming soon.

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12 November 2014 NEWS FLASH! Kaye George has generously offered her giveaway, an ARC of Bluffing is Murder, to another commenter. The new winner is Nancy Whitt. Congrats, Nancy, and thank you, Kaye!

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Taking Liberties with John Greenleaf Whittier

Posted on November 4, 2014 by suzanneadairNovember 4, 2014

Relevant History welcomes Edith Maxwell, who writes the Local Foods Mysteries. The latest, ‘Til Dirt Do Us Part, was released in May 2014. As Tace Baker, she also writes a modern Quaker series, the Lauren Rousseau Mysteries; book 2, Bluffing is Murder, will be released 11 November 2014. Under the pen name Maddie Day, she writes the Country Store Mysteries. Her historical Carriagetown Mysteries series is in development. Maxwell has also published award-winning short stories of murderous revenge. She lives in an antique house north of Boston and blogs every weekday with the Wicked Cozy Authors. For more information, check her web site, and look for her on Facebook and Twitter.

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No, not that kind of liberties! But John Greenleaf Whittier is a secondary character in my new historical Carriagetown Mysteries series, and I’m having fun bringing him back to life.

I’ve been a Quaker for a long time, and I worship at the same Friends Meetinghouse in northeastern Massachusetts where Whittier worshiped. He lived down the street (Friend Street, felicitously enough) and was on the building committee for the lovely simple light-filled structure that was completed in 1851.

I also live in a house built in 1880 for the mill workers who wove cotton cloth in the tall brick buildings only a block away. And I worked as a childbirth educator and doula many years ago, stopping just short of being a midwife.

So I’ve put all these experiences together in a completed novel called Breaking the Silence, in which Quaker midwife Rose Carroll hears secrets and keeps confidences as she attends births of the rich and poor alike in 1888 Amesbury. When the town’s world-famed carriage industry is threatened by the work of an arsonist, and a carriage factory owner’s adult son is stabbed to death, Rose is drawn into solving the mystery. Things get dicey after the same man’s mistress is also murdered, leaving her one-week old baby without a mother. While struggling with being less than the perfect Friend, Rose draws on her strengths as a problem solver to bring two murderers to justice.

What did being a Friend in 1888 mean? And what was it like to deliver babies at home without advanced medical assistance, antibiotics, or sterile procedure?

Quakers
Quakers have always followed several testimonies: simplicity, integrity, peace, equality, community. For a couple of centuries they wore plain dress—simple clothes in muted colors—as a way to demonstrate simplicity and equality. They refused to go to war. They did not doff hats to those of higher class and did not use titles. They refused to swear an oath in court, because integrity guided their lives and they considered that they always told the truth. Friends of 1888 might still have used “plain speech,” using “thee” and “thy” to both familiars and strangers, which originally was to avoid distinguishing between two classes of people when “you” was used in a more honorific way. But by the late 1800s “theeing” and ”thying” only set Quakers apart, since the language had regularized to “you” for all second-person usage.
The testimonies haven’t changed for modern Quakers, although the manifestations have. Many Friends have been conscientious objectors, and simplicity might be now expressed by living in a modest-sized dwelling, owning a used car, and wearing a jacket from the consignment shop. Many modern Friends still refuse to swear an oath in court, instead requesting to affirm the truth.

My protagonist, 27-year old Rose, is happy in her calling as a midwife, but she’s also being courted by a young doctor whose family is in high society one town over. When she’s invited to a fancy dinner dance, Rose consults with Whittier about wearing a party frock, and he gives his blessing. I’ve greatly enjoyed joining the Whittier Home Association and immersing myself in his life, and was gratified when one of the docents read my completed manuscript and said he thought I had captured the famous poet and abolitionist’s appearance and essence. And Rose lives in my house with her late sister’s widower and his five children, so I can imagine the story as I walk through not only my own home but the streets of my town.

Midwifery
As for attending births, Rose uses a Pinard horn to listen to a baby’s heartbeat, and struggles with infections and the common diseases of the day, sometimes losing a baby to prematurity or a fever. But germ theory was already known, and she practices hand washing and sterilizing what she uses to cut the umbilical cord. She encourages her pregnant mothers to eat well and take fresh air and exercise, and helps postpartum women with both breastfeeding and depression. She’s had experience, as most modern independent midwives have, with difficult births like breech, twins, or when a baby’s shoulder gets stuck. These are skills that are falling out of many modern obstetricians’ tool boxes, because of the relative ease of surgical births, despite its still real risks to both mother and newborn.

A Time of Change
It’s a fascinating period to write about, just before the electric trolley replaced the horse-drawn system. When rich people might have electric lights indoors but most still used gas lamps. When the telephone existed but wasn’t common. When women wanting to ride the safety bicycle, with its equal-sized wheels, started to wear bloomers and cycling costumes and developed a less restrictive style of dress so they could move about more freely.

I piloted the premise of the Carriagetown Mysteries in an award-winning short story, also called “Breaking the Silence,” that was published in the anthology Best New England Crime Stories 2014: Stone Cold from Level Best Books. The series is not yet under contract, but I’m determined that it will be somewhere, sometime. “A Questionable Death,” a short story featuring Rose and her friend Bertie Winslow, will appear in History and Mystery, Oh My from Mystery and Horror, LLC. Stay tuned for news in this space, as they say!

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A big thanks to Edith Maxwell. She’ll give away an uncorrected proof (ARC) of her soon-to-be released book, Bluffing is Murder, to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I’ll choose the winner from among those who comment by Friday at 6 p.m. ET. Delivery is available within the United States only.

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Did you like what you read? Learn about downloads, discounts, and special offers from Relevant History authors and Suzanne Adair. Subscribe to Suzanne’s free newsletter.