On Midwife-Entrepreneurs

Edith here, recuperating from knee replacement surgery. But also ecstatic to have Delivering the Truth nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Historical Mystery, and "The Mayor and the Midwife," my short story featuring midwife Rose Carroll, nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Short Story!

A friend found a used book she thought I'd enjoy, Catching Babies: The Professionalism of Childbirth 1870-1920 by Charlotte G. Borst, now a history professor in Birmingham, Alabama. (This copy is inscribed, "To Mother, with love, Charlotte," so now I'm imagining Mother, and Charlotte, and how the book came to be for sale in a used book store. Hmm, a new short story, perhaps.) The book appears to be Borst's doctoral dissertation and focuses on birth logs and other primary historical sources in four Wisconsin counties.
Perfect! Thanks, Rae Francoeur. 

So I've been leafing through it, gleaning useful research for my Quaker Midwife Mysteries. Chapter Four is titled, "Midwife Entrepreneurs in the City" and uses several urban Wisconsin midwives as case studies. Despite being an academic treatise, it reads easily and well. And I'm finding all kinds of interesting facts.

Mary Gerrard left a complete record of the births she attended. During the years my books take place, the end of the 1880s, she attended around 200 births a year. She was a full-time midwife despite having seven children at home. She had attended a three-month course at the Northwestern Academy of Midwifery in Chicago and earned a diploma in 1878. Borst discusses other urban midwives following similar careers. All were able to earn a decent living. This bodes well for my fictional Rose Carroll continuing her midwifery practice should she and beau David Dodge ever manage to tie the knot.

One point of Borst's I found interesting is that despite these women being successful in their chosen field, they didn't attempt to move beyond their neighborhoods and promote a professional identity for their occupation. The work of even these successful, educated entrepreneurs basically didn't differ much from that of the less-educated rural neighbor-midwives, and they didn't organize into a professional organization. 

Once the concept of the professional began to be more popular after the turn of the century, childbearing women started to seek out physicians to assist with their births. (Physicians certainly also sought to control the birthing environment, but that's a different book.)

Stay tuned for Called to Justice, book two in the Quaker Midwife Mysteries, which releases April 8! 

A Reading on Steroids

Edith Maxwell here. Well, I'm not not on steroids, but last month an event honored my mystery, Delivering the Truth, in a way that went way above and far beyond your average five-minute author reading. PLUS - I'm giving away a large-print edition of the book to one commenter here before midnight eastern time today! Details at the end of the post.

I might have mentioned it here, but last spring the Whittier Home Association asked if I would "mind" if they featured my book in their annual Celebrating Whittier event, and also suggested they would propose it for an All-Community Read. "MIND?" I replied, astonished. Why, no, I wouldn't mind.

The staged reading took place on September 10 at the historic Amesbury Friends Meetinghouse - where Whittier worshipped.

Local actors Chuck Kennedy and Kate Bernardoni portrayed Whittier and my midwife, Rose Carroll. I narrated, tying the scenes together using a script our town's Poet Laureate Lainie Senechal wrote based on the book.

Lainie Senechal, Chuck Kennedy, Kate Bernardoni, and author yours truly

It was a huge success. A hundred people turned out. The costumes were perfect. All our rehearsals over the summer paid off. 

A hot August rehearsal

The local cable TV station filmed it. And now you can watch it! Truly, not your average reading.

Chuck in front of Whittier's portrait in the John Greenleaf Whittier Home Museum in Amesbury, MA

Readers: What has been your favorite reading to listen to? Do you like it when authors read, or would you rather they didn't? Writers: Has your work ever been staged?

Remember - one lucky commenter will win a large-print edition of the book! Leave a comment or question for me here before midnight eastern time today. 

A Reading on Steroids

Edith Maxwell here. Well, I'm not not on steroids, but last month an event honored my mystery, Delivering the Truth, in a way that went way above and far beyond your average five-minute author reading.

I might have mentioned it here, but last spring the Whittier Home Association asked if I would "mind" if they featured my book in their annual Celebrating Whittier event, and also suggested they would propose it for an All-Community Read. "MIND?" I replied, astonished. Why, no, I wouldn't mind.

The staged reading took place on September 10 at the historic Friends Meetinghouse.

Local actors Chuck Kennedy and Kate Bernardoni portrayed Whittier and my midwife, Rose Carroll. I narrated, tying the scenes together using a script our town's Poet Laureate Lainie Senechal wrote based on the book.

Lainie Senechal, Chuck Kennedy, Kate Bernardoni, and author yours truly

It was a huge success. A hundred people turned out. The costumes were perfect. All our rehearsals over the summer paid off. 

A hot August rehearsal

The local cable TV station filmed it. And now you can watch it! Truly, not your average reading.

Readers: What has been your favorite reading to listen to? Do you like it when authors read, or would you rather they didn't? Writers: Has your work ever been staged?

A Reading on Steroids

Edith Maxwell here. Well, I'm not not on steroids, but last month an event honored my mystery, Delivering the Truth, in a way that went way above and far beyond your average five-minute author reading.

I might have mentioned it here, but last spring the Whittier Home Association asked if I would "mind" if they featured my book in their annual Celebrating Whittier event, and also suggested they would propose it for an All-Community Read. "MIND?" I replied, astonished. Why, no, I wouldn't mind.

The staged reading took place on September 10 at the historic Amesbury Friends Meetinghouse - where Whittier worshipped.

Local actors Chuck Kennedy and Kate Bernardoni portrayed Whittier and my midwife, Rose Carroll. I narrated, tying the scenes together using a script our town's Poet Laureate Lainie Senechal wrote based on the book.

Lainie Senechal, Chuck Kennedy, Kate Bernardoni, and author yours truly

It was a huge success. A hundred people turned out. The costumes were perfect. All our rehearsals over the summer paid off. 

A hot August rehearsal

The local cable TV station filmed it. And now you can watch it! Truly, not your average reading.

Chuck in front of Whittier's portrait

Readers: What has been your favorite reading to listen to? Do you like it when authors read, or would you rather they didn't? Writers: Has your work ever been staged?

Quaker Midwife News

Edith Maxwell here, with several bits of good news!

The large print version of Delivering the Truth came out yesterday. I've only had one other of my books come out in large print and I'm delighted. Isn't that a great cover? I'm happy that vision-impaired readers will be able to read a paper copy of the story.

This Saturday is the big event: the staged reading of scenes in Delivering the Truth between Rose Carroll and John Greenleaf Whittier. If you're in New England, I hope you'll join us at the historic Amesbury Friends Meetinghouse!

Friends Journal is the US national Quaker Magazine. They reviewed the book last week, and it was a glowing review! "...presents Quaker characters and their practices with refreshing authenticity...key themes and challenges highlight timeless elements of the human experience..."

In short fiction news, "Adam and Eva," a new 1888 short story of mine was published in Kings River Life Magazine recently. This one is told from the point of view of my midwife's postmistress friend, Bertie Winslow, as she and Rose work together to find and catch a killer. 

Also, I'm very excited to be one of the Blood on the Bayou contributors, this year's Bouchercon anthology. If you'll be in New Orleans next Saturday afternoon, come get your own copy signed by the authors!

Next, Called to Justice is in production. That's very exciting - it means the book is on its way to being out in the world next April. It's available for preorder, too.

Third, my manuscript of book three is done, polished, and out with an independent editor. It's always a great feeling to finish a book. I like the story, which takes place during election week of 1888 and has a sub theme of women's suffrage. (More on that later...) So far I'm calling it Turning the Tide, but that could change. The book isn't due until January, however I have to write another book in another series before then, thus the head start.

It was a good August for me. I went away on a writers' retreat and got a lot done. At home I'm enjoying all the summer produce and my family is well. Fall is nearly officially here, though. I'll welcome some crisp temperatures, finding my knee-high boots, and sinking my teeth into local apples.

Readers: have you ever read a large print version? Do you enlarge the font on your ereader instead? Anybody with deep knowledge of the women's suffrage movement in the late 1880s?

An All-Community Read

Edith here, with a report on a huge honor Delivering the Truth and I had bestowed on us. 

The book is set in my town of Amesbury in 1888. Imagine my surprise and delight when the John Greenleaf Whittier Home Association, which maintains the famous abolitionist poet’s home a few blocks from where I live, asked if “it would be all right” if they featured Delivering the Truth as an All-Community Read this summer. They planned to culminate the summer of reading – about Quaker midwife Rose Carroll solving an arson and two murders – with a staged reading of the four scenes in the book where Rose meets with Whittier.

Um, yeah! It would be SO all right, and I told them so. The Amesbury Public Library signed on to co-sponsor the All-Community Read, and my publisher donated twenty copies of the book to the library to put into circulation.

I kicked off the summer of events with a talk during Amesbury Days at the Art Show about my research for the series. Recently I’m repeated my historical walking tour of town in my Quaker dress (see a video of highlights from the first one here). In July the Whittier Home hosted a book discussion group, and there will be another one at the library next week.

Whittier and Rose rehearse

September 10 will feature the staged reading at the the Amesbury Friends Meetinghouse, with actors portraying Whittier and Rose. I’ll be narrating, tying the scenes together, using a script our local Poet Laureate Lainie Senechal wrote based on the book. The actor playing Whittier is two years younger than Whittier's age in the book, and the actress looks exactly like Rose - tall, slim, dark haired, under thirty.

The whole slate of events makes me SO happy.

John Greenleaf Whittier

I also heard that several Amesbury High School teachers are requiring their students to read the book this summer. The teachers asked if I would be interested in talking to the History Honor Society students and the Early College American Studies classes in the fall.

Um, yeah! Of course I’ll come and talk with  students about history and writing and whatever else they want to talk about. Another teacher recommended the book as a Summer Reading Faculty Favorite.  After I posted a note about these teachers on Facebook, a college teacher in Oklahoma said she’d recommended the book to her Women’s History students.

When I started writing this series, I thought it might appeal to local history buffs and the occasional Quaker, in addition to midwives and fans of historical mysteries. I never dreamed of it going this far, and I’m floating on a cloud.

Readers, have you ever participated in an All-Community Read? Do you know any high school or college teachers who need a fabulous (ahem…) historical mystery set in the nineteenth century for their students?

Note: A version of this post appeared on the Wicked Cozy Authors blog at the end of June.

Edith Maxwell writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries and the Local Foods Mysteries, the Country Store Mysteries (as Maddie Day), and award-winning short crime fiction. Her short story, “A Questionable Death,” was nominated for a 2016 Agatha Award for Best Short Story. 

Maxwell is Vice-President of Sisters in Crime New England and Clerk of Amesbury Friends Meeting. She lives north of Boston with her beau and three cats, and blogs with the other Wicked Cozy Authors. You can find her on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, and at her web site, edithmaxwell.com.

Runabout, Phaeton, Brougham, Rockaway?

Edith, here. I had the great fortune to go riding in a carriage a couple of weeks ago with a woman

who really knows her stuff.  I'm always looking to improve the details in my Quaker Midwife Mysteries, and Susan Koso is one way to do it.

She owns a mare named Hope. She owns a number of horse-drawn vehicles that my midwife Rose Carroll might very well have ridden in. She knows what kind of bridles and tack were used in 1888. And she's written academic published papers on the roads, the carriage industry, and the economics of the late 1800s. How could I go wrong?

I first met Susan at a couple of years ago at an Amesbury Carriage Museum event, where this not-young woman showed herself to be more agile and flexible than me, crawling around helping to secure carriages the museum was moving down from a second-floor loft.

In late June when the flies and mosquitoes were all hatched and bothersome, I drove to our riding appointment a few town's south of here, and I met her horse, Hope. Hope's

crocheted ear guard is similar to those horses would have worn to keep the bugs out of their ears and eyes. Susan hitched Hope to a beautiful restored runabout (an open two-seater conveyance with four wheels pulled by one horse), handed me a helmet, and off we went.

We wandered around Essex County Greenbelt Association trails, rode all through Appleton Farm (which used to be my walking route when I lived in Ipswich), and moseyed back, talking all the way. I got to experience Hope trotting, I hung on for dear life on bumpy trails and around corners, and I generally soaked up the atmosphere.

On a couple of trails, Susan said, "This would have looked exactly the same in Rose Carrols's day." I had to

agree!


As when I went riding the year before, I wore my long linen skirt and low boots to get a small feel for the clothing of the day.

I never stopped picking Susan's considerable brain. I learned more about all the different kinds of vehicles: phaetons, broughams, traps, and Rockaways, among others. She said the dash board in front of our knees - named to prevent hooves from dashing mud up onto passengers and drivers - might have been covered in patent leather. She told me a horse pushes a carriage rather than pulls it (which I still don't quite get). I even heard about the "fifth

wheel" - but that one's going to need further study before I use it in a book.

She suggested a couple of convenient ways for a malicious villain (oh, I guess that's redundant) to do away with someone by cutting almost through an important strap or to cause a horse to be a runaway. This is a woman after my own heart. Susan had also finished reading Delivering the Truth, and kindly pointed out a couple of small errors in horse-and-carriage procedure. I thanked her, of course. And then she read the manuscript for book two, Called to Justice, within a couple of days' time and corrected me on several points in that book, too.


I'm so delighted and grateful to have found a subject matter expert willing to share her extensive knowledge with me. Guess who's getting a complimentary copy of each book in the series as long as it runs?

Readers: Who is your favorite subject matter expert? Have you ever gone riding in an old carriage?

Cover Reveal!

Now that Delivering the Truth is launched and happily in the hands of readers (who report being very happy with the story, too - see lots of glowing reviews here), I'm looking ahead to books two and three.

Called to Justice is finished and in production. It's even up for preorder on Amazon! And isn't this a gorgeous cover?

Here's the blurb: Quaker midwife Rose Carroll is enjoying the 1888 Independence Day evening fireworks with her beau when a teenaged Quaker mill girl is found shot dead. After a former slave and fellow Quaker is accused of the murder, Rose delves into the crime, convinced of the man’s innocence. An ill-mannered mill manager, an Irish immigrant, and the victim’s young boyfriend come under suspicion even as Rose’s future with her handsome doctor suitor becomes unsure. Rose continues to deliver babies and listen to secrets, finally figuring out one criminal – only to be threatened by the murderer, with three lives at stake. Can she rescue herself, a baby, and her elderly midwifery teacher in time?

I'm so excited about this book! It'll be out in April, 2017. And this week I've started writing book three. It doesn't have a title or much of a plot yet, but it will by the end of summer. Stay tuned. 

Readers, what do you think of the cover? Does a cover catch your eye in a bookstore or online, or do you go more for what the blurb says? What leads you to buy a book?

How to Get Stuff Right

Edith here, almost all blogged out!

My first Quaker Midwife Mystery came out last week from Midnight Ink, and I've been all over cyberspace talking about it: here, here, here, and plenty of other places.

Today I thought I'd just list a bunch of my favorite historical reference books, the ones I keep close at hand to check as I'm writing.

How to Be a Victorian: a Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victoran Life from Ruth Goodman, 2013.

Everyday Life in the 1800s by Marc McCutcheon, 1993.

The Massachusetts Police Officer: a Manual for Sheriffs, Constables, Police, and Other Civil Officers, 1891.

Sears, Roebuck & Co. Consumer's Guide for 1894.

Montgomery Ward & Co. Catalogue and Buyers' Guide, 1895.

Miss Parloa's New Cook Book and Marketing Guide, 1880.

A System of Midwifery, Including the Diseases of Pregnancy and the Puerperal State, by William Leishman, 1879.

John Greenleaf Whittier Biography, by Roland H. Woodwell, 1985.

That's it for now. Readers: do you have any fabulous late Victorian research sources? Please share!

Edith Maxwell writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries and the Local Foods Mysteries, the Country Store Mysteries (as Maddie Day), and the Lauren Rousseau Mysteries (as Tace Baker), as well as award-winning short crime fiction. Her short story, “A Questionable Death,” is nominated for a 2016 Agatha Award for Best Short Story. The tale features the 1888 setting and characters from her Quaker Midwife Mysteries series, which debuts with Delivering the Truthon April 8.

Maxwell is Vice-President of Sisters in Crime New England and Clerk of Amesbury Friends Meeting. She lives north of Boston with her beau and three cats, and blogs with the other Wicked Cozy Authors. You can find her on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, and at her web site, edithmaxwell.com.

"A Questionable Death" - Agatha Nominated!

Edith here. I've been enjoying writing short stories set in the time and place of my Quaker Midwife

Mysteries: Amesbury, Massachusetts in 1888. [NOTE: Giveaway details at the end.]

A year and a half ago I crafted a story about one of midwife Rose Carroll's clients, a young pregnant wife named Helen. Rose discovers that Helen's husband has been physically abusing her. Rose asks her police detective friend for help, but the police wouldn't touch domestic violence in those days. Rose enlists her quirky postmistress friend Bertie Winslow to help her find a solution to the problem.

I polished "A Questionable Death" and submitted it to an anthology of historical mystery called History and Mystery, Oh My! and to my delight it was accepted for publication. The anthology came out in January 2015. To my further delight, after the rights reverted to me, Kings River Life Magazine reissued the story in January of this year, this time with pictures.

Hank Phillippi Ryan with her
Agatha Award teapot
a few years ago. 

And to my extreme delight, the story was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Short Story! Icing on the cake? Delivering the Truth, the first Quaker Midwife Mystery, will be published on April 8, a few weeks before the Malice Domestic conference where attendees will decide the Agatha winners. Talk about worlds converging. I'm really over the moon about that.

I suspect the story was nominated in part because of the twist at the end. You can read it and decide for yourself!

And to celebrate, I'm giving away an ARC of Delivering the Truth to one commenter today! Make sure you include your email address so I know where to find you.

So tell, me dear reader, what's your favorite thing about reading historical fiction? What's your pet peeve about same? Or do you never touch the stuff?

All the News That's Fit to Print - from 1888

Edith here, working on a short news article about Quaker Midwife Rose Carroll in 1888 Amesbury, Massachusetts.

Grove Cleveland was President of the country, which now proudly featured thirty-eight stars on its

flag. The Great Blizzard of 1888 hit the east coast hard in March, with hundreds dying.

Textile mills filled downtown Amesbury, and boardinghouses full of mill girls from New Hampshire farms or western Massachusetts villages kept the mills running. The news in early April wasn't good for the bustling town.

The world-famed carriage industry was in shambles after many of the factories burned to the ground on Carriage Hill one night. Midwife Carroll finds herself in the middle of the arson investigation. Here's a draft of my news article.

Local Quaker Nabs Arsonist

Area midwife Rose Carroll apprehended a local man attempting to set the Friends Meetinghouse aflame Sunday morning.

The Chronicle has learned that Carroll, twenty four, ran from the worship service after she deduced the identity of the man, Stephen Hamilton, whom she thought was the Carriage Fire culprit. She’d planned to go directly to the police station to inform them. Instead, she caught Hamilton red-handed starting a fire at the back of the thirty-year-old wooden structure on Friend Street.

She raised the alarm within, and members of the church joined her in putting out the fire and restraining Hamilton, son of mill owner Cyrus Hamilton. Famed poet John Greenleaf Whittier assisted in the effort.

Will young Hamilton also be charged with setting the Carriage Fire? Detective Kevin Donovan was close-mouthed about the investigation. “Miss Carroll is to be commended for her insight and bravery,” he offered instead.

Readers: What do you think? Did Stephen set the big fire, or? What else do you know about 1888 history?

Edith Maxwell writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries from Midnight Ink, among other series. The first book, Delivering the Truth, releases April 8 and is available for preorder wherever books are sold. You can find her at edithmaxwell.com, on Facebook, and elsewhere.

Midwifery Then and Now

Edith here, thinking about childbirth through the ages.

In my Quaker Midwife Mysteries, Rose Carroll is an independent midwife helping pregnant women

give birth in the safest way possible - in an 1888 New England mill town. How is that different from how independent midwives operate today, in the US and around the world?

Uncomplicated pregnancies and births really have not changed for many thousands of years. And as long as women have been experiencing the journey of their infant as it travels through their bodies and emerges, likewise have other women been helping them through that process.

Sisters, mothers, and friends might not have understood anything of the science of birth, but that didn't stop them from providing comfort. A damp cloth to the forehead. Strong arms to hold on to while squatting. A loving grandmother to take the new baby and wipe her eyes and mouth clean, wrap her, and hand her back to her new mother. Someone to explain breastfeeding.

A midwife merely makes it her profession to do so. She brings some way to monitor the baby's heartbeat. Something clean and sharp with which to cut the umbilical cord. Knowledge of what normal labor and birth look like and what to do when something goes awry. Often a collection of medicinal herbs. Most of all an encyclopedia of prior births in her head.

Birth these days in first world countries can be complicated by modern drugs, by ultrasound monitoring, by the hospital setting, by surgeons who want to schedule deliveries. Lives are certainly saved by modern medicine. No doubt about it. But the straightforward pregnancy and delivery of a healthy well-informed woman might not differ at all from one in 1888.

I trained for several years as an independent childbirth educator, and also worked as a doula, helping couples through their labors in a birthing center or hospital. I was not a midwife - I didn't want that level of responsibility - but I was all done producing more babies in my own family and I loved coaching couples about what to expect for their labor, birth, and neonatal period. I also visited a group of village midwives way out in the bush in Mali, West Africa at the time - not a population with a hospital anywhere in less than a day's journey - and I collected stories from them about their methods and their deliveries, both healthy and sadly not.

Those experiences gave me the confidence to write about a working midwife in this series. I was grateful for input on the birth scenes in the book from modern-day midwife and mystery fan Risa Rispoli - and gratified when she didn't find anything that needed changing!

Readers: Do you have experience with midwives in any setting?

Back in 1888

I'm now putting the final polish on my second historical mystery. Quaker midwife Rose Carroll is once again trying to track down a murderer in an 1888 Massachusetts mill town. This time the subplots have to do with continuing prejudice against former slaves, a baby's eyes becoming infected from his mother's gonorrhea, and the conflict that arises between sweethearts of two different faiths and social classes.

The research continues. The former slave in the story, Akwasi, who has become a Quaker and has a successful furniture-making business, is brought in for questioning for the murder, and so I had to understand police procedure from the time. I checked around, and, voila! I found a book from 1890 called The Massachusetts Peace Officer: a Manual for Sheriffs, Constables, Police, and Other Civil Officers. And it's perfect. It states the laws, illustrates with various cases, and more. An invaluable resource.

Gonorrhea was next. I looked up symptoms in men and women, and I knew there wasn't a real cure until antibiotics came along a few decades later. But was there any treatment? Why, yes. I found a long paper describing using balsam (basically sap) of the Copaiba tree from South America, right down to the dosage. The extract didn't always succeed in reducing the inflammation, but occasionally did. Also sometimes effective were Cubebs, a kind of pepper from Indonesia.

And then there's language. Yes, gonorrhea was called "the clap" as of the 1580s. "Maitre d'" isn't attested until 1890, however, so my character can't use that. "Blowhard" was attested as of the 1850s, as was, "Don't cross the bridge 'till you come to it" - the latter from the poet Longfellow. "Paycheck" wasn't used until 1894, but "great minds think alike" was written in the early part of the nineteenth century.

You never know where research will take you!

Readers, anybody have an interesting tidbit from the Victorian days? Writers, what has your research uncovered?

Oh, and check out this fabulous review of Delivering the Truth from historian and award-winning short story author, KB Inglee!

"As a midwife, Rose Carroll gets to go into houses all over town. Not just the houses but the bedrooms, and the private lives. It’s a perfect set up for a detective. As a Quaker she has a strong sense of justice.

I love books in which real historical people appear as secondary characters. John Greenleaf Whittier is the kindly mentor and the voice of conscience.

I love books with a strong sense of place. Edith has done her research on the town renowned for the manufacture of fine carriages.

I love strong women protagonists who still seem a part of the time in which the author has set them. Rose is one of my favorites."

Doing My Research

Edith here, working on bringing 1888 to life.

In 1888, if you wanted to get somewhere closer than fifty miles away, you generally traveled in a conveyance pulled by horses. There were buggies, carriages, phaetons, wagons, surreys, carts, and plenty of other varieties. Some had two wheels, some had four. They were pulled by one, two, four, or even eight horses.

I've now written two books (one is still a draft, thank goodness) featuring vaguely worded

carriages and buggies. The Quaker Midwife Mysteries are set in Amesbury, which was called the Carriage Capital of the World, shipping graceful, sturdy vehicles shipped all over the US and internationally. I'm a member of the Amesbury Carriage Museum and have seen plenty of antique carriages around, even sat in a couple as they sat unhitched to a steed.

But I'd never ridden in one. So last week I hied myself fifteen minutes north to The Carriage Barn in Kensington, New Hampshire. They provide equine therapy, carriage driving lessons, and much more. The generous director, Ann

Ann Miles, director and guru of the Carriage Barn

Miles, knows more about riding, equine therapy, AND historic carriages than her brain has a right to.

Ann showed me a couple of dozen carriages - no, there was a buggy, a runabout, a couple of sleighs, a governess's cart, a phaeton, a sailor's wagon, a wagonette, and more.

I think this is a runabout.

Governess cart

We talked about the history of the time. She lent me two volumes of the Carriage Journal. She handed me a helmet - because I was about to go riding! One of the people who come and take riding lessons, Sue, had agreed to have her lesson with me aboard.

Sue (behind), Ann, and Emily (in pink) hitching up Casey.

Sue and delightful barn employee Emily brushed and cleaned and harnessed up the patient, calm, strong Casey. Sue and Ann brought a replica carriage out and they all worked together to hitch Casey to it.

I learned that the driver's seat was always on the right, not the left, and the driver mounts first. I'd worn my homemade earlier-century long linen skirt and ankle boots to get the feel of climbing up into the carriage, and yeah, I had to keep the skirt out of the way.

Getting ready to head out in a wagonette.

We walked a few laps, and then trotted quite a few over the grassy field. Wow. The carriage lists from side to side. There's nothing much to hang onto.

Sue, who is a couple of inches shorter than I, was remarkable in holding the whip at the ready but only touching Casey gently with it when she gave him a command (and not letting the whip sag and touch him inadvertently). Casey was voice trained - who knew?

I thanked them all, and Casey, after we finished. It was a hugely useful couple of hours. I know I'll be back.




Readers: What kind of detail do you look for in an historical novel? Or even in a contemporary? Have you ever stopped reading because you found an error in fact? Writers: what do you do for research?