When we first meet Will Rees in A Simple Murder, he is pursuing his son to a nearby Shaker community.
David has run away from his aunt’s rough treatment. When the boy was eight, his mother died. Rees drops his son on his sister and leaves, ostensibly to pick up weaving jobs. The truth is, though, that Rees, besides grieving the devastating loss of his wife, is also dealing with a huge amount of guilt. He is running away. And David views that as abandonment and it takes many years, and a lot of work, before the estrangement is resolved.
Through the series, we see Rees evolve from an indifferent father, at best, to an engaged and caring father. In Cradle to Grave, he and Lydia adopt several orphaned children, increasing the number of children to six.
By the Long Shadow of Murder, Rees and Lydia have a little girl of their own and she is pregnant with another child.
And Jerusha, the eldest of the adopted kids, is now in her late teens and hoping to attend The Litchfield Female Academy to become a teacher. Although Rees would never crush her dream, he hopes Jerusha will stay home. He wants to keep his children close.
In my head, I imagined Rees’s evolving – growing up if you will – from a fairly self-centered man to a husband and father whose core is his family.
Simon Rouge, Will Rees’s frenemy in the Will Rees mysteries, is the Constable in the village. Why a constable? We don’t use that system in the United States.
Oh, but we did, once upon a time.
In the beginning, when Boston, New York and Philadelphia were just colonial villages, night watchmen and constables were appointed to keep the peace and provide law enforcement. Constables were, at first, generally unpaid or paid very poorly. Few people were interested in taking on a hazardous job with little pay and low status so the quality of those that did apply was poor.I imagine that little crime was prevented and few crimes were solved.
As the northern cities grew thanks to an influx of immigrants, and dealt with increasing crime, the southern states established patrols to control the large enslaved population.
The spread of people to the frontier created new problems for crime control. In 1789, the US Marshals were created as the first federal law enforcement agency. In1823, the Texas Rangers was formed to protect American settlers from Indian attack in the Mexican territory of Texas.
In 1790, only two US cities had populations over 25,000. By 1820, both New York and Philadelphia had populations of over 100,000. The ability of night watchmen and constables could not keep up.
So, where did our current system of policing come from? Well, just like the system of night watchmen and constables (and sheriffs too), the US copies the ‘modern’ police force of London’s Metropolitan Police force, set up by law in 1829. New York City is the first American city to set up a unified, prevention-oriented police force in 1845. In 1853 they adopted uniforms.
So, in the late 1700s and early 1800s, Rouge would still be a constable, poorly paid and with very little authority. This is also why he earns his living, not as a law enforcement officer, but as a tavern owner.
Will Rees, the main character in my mystery The Long Shadow of Murder, is a traveling weaver, called factors. Like many professions then, weaving required an apprenticeship of about seven years. (This may explain the ‘Luddites”, many of them weavers who saw their professions disappearing.) About nine spinners were required to keep a weaver in business. And looms were big, heavy and expensive, hence the word heir-loom.
In colonial times, and stretching into the early USA, larger towns, like Williamsburg, had a resident professional weaver and cloth from overseas did come into the ports. Smaller towns might have a weaver who also farmed. The further away these towns were located, the less imported cloth the women had access to. In the beginning, this expensive cloth was expensive also although, as the Salem ships brought cloth from India, this cloth dropped in price. By 1802, when Long Shadow takes place, Rees is facing a huge drop in his business.
Besides the traveling weavers, other professions took to the roads. Some men made brooms. This was a craft the Shakers took on as well; they sold their wares which included brooms, whips, boxes and other items, from wagons. Tinkers, who not only sold pots and pans but mended them as well, were also a familiar sight.
In these agrarian times, the goal was to make enough money to buy a farm. Usually, once a man had a good farm, he settled, at least for most of the year. Although still a weaver, and a reluctant farmer, Rees has begun to focus more on the farm where he and Lydia and their children live.
Some of the accounts from the women married to such men speak poignantly of the loneliness and isolation, to say nothing of the struggles in keeping a farm going by themselves.
Indigo is probably the most familiar dye in the world and has a long history of use. The first identified use is from 4000 years ago in Peru. Our word indigo, however, comes from a Greek root word meaning Indian dye since it was from India that indigo traveled to Europe via the Silk Road. The use of the dye quickly spread. From the Tuaregs in the Sahara to Cameroon, clothing dyed with indigo signified wealth.
Prior to the arrival of indigo in Europe, woad was the tradition dye. It produces a lighter blue. (One of the theories is that blue previously meant a shade similar to cyan.) In the New World, enslaved people were put to work cultivating indigo which became a significant cash crop. There were large plantations in South Carolina. (See Death of a Dyer.)
During the time of Will Rees, all of the yarn he worked with would have been dyed with these natural dyes. Indigo, by the way, was very expensive.
Indigo is not water soluable and so has to be treated to make it useable. One of the pre-industrial processes was soaking it in stale urine. Many accounts do not mention this particular fact but the pungency of the process is regularly described. (I used indigo a library program and when it was ‘curing’, it smelled so terrible, we all left the room.) The result is known as indigo white. Fabric dyed in the indigo white turns blue with oxidation. Indigo is also toxic so there is plenty of opportunity for indigo workers to become sick. And despite the processing, indigo fades slowly over time. Just take a look at your jeans. Denim is dyed with indigo and fades.
I saw items dyes with indigo in the highlands of Peru. The hanks of wool were all different colors from a light royal blue to such a deep blue it was almost navy. Truly beautiful colors.
Synthetic dyes have now almost taken over for indigo and the other natural dyes.
In the newest Will Rees mystery, I look at several serious themes. One is PTSD. Although not called that in 1802, or for almost three centuries afterward, I am sure that it existed. We know that ‘battle fatigue’ was PTSD. (In WWI, women went around handing white feathers for cowardice to able-bodied men home from war, no doubt making already traumatized men feel worse.)
I remember working with a patron at a library in the nineties. A car backfiring outside caused the man to drop to the floor in reaction. He was the right age to be a Vietnam vet. It was scary for all of us, especially him. His wife had to come and collect him.
In The Long Shadow of Murder, we discover that Rees joined the Continental Army when he was sixteen and served at Jockey Hollow and Valley Forge, both of which have come down to us as beyond terrible. Ephraim Sewell, a young man who is considering joining the Shakers, was even younger, following his brother into war at eleven.
Both are haunted by their wartime experiences. Although Rees has managed to put the memories aside and move forward with a wife and family, Ephraim still has nightmares. The stew of grief and guilt has kept him fixed at that point in time and cost him his family and his farm.
Other characters are also suffering. One from events that occur in A Murder on Principle; the other from the behavior of the British soldiers during the Revolutionary War. As I describe, they took everything they could, stealing chicken and livestock, commandeered people’s houses, and raped women. The resentment felt by the colonists increased accordingly.
TSDAlthough the Revolutionary War happened twenty five years before the action in Long Shadow, and the murder in this novel, the trauma experienced by the different characters continue to affect, not only the characters themselves, but also all the people around them.
Hand weaving has been inextricably linked in history from neolithic times right up to the Industrial Revolution. Weaving was a profession. Men (and the professionals were mostly men) had an apprenticeship of between seven and nine years. (That changes one’s view of the Luddites, who were seeing the end of their professions, doesn’t it?)
Weaving has now been mechanized but the machines follow the same process that modern looms employ.
Previous looms were much simpler. The Egyptians looms were similar to those used by Navahos.
The weavers in South America use a backstrap loom, where the warp goes around the back, and the tension is controlled by the weaver. Patterns are memorized.
Modern looms look more like this.
They all utilize sticks that separate the threads in the warp and make a cross. The shuttle carries the weft threads through it. Anyone who has ever woven a potholder on a little frame knows that the threads have to go over and under to make a mat.
Looms were very expensive and heavy so if a woman wove, she did so in her home.
We have words in English that memorialize this craft; for example: heirloom, i.e. heir loom.
In the Will Rees mysteries, his weaving supports his family.
The three pillars of the Shaker belief were Church, Community and Celibacy.
Besides the Sunday services, the Shakers believed that work itself was sacred and a job well done was as much a prayer to God as a Church service. One of their mottos was “Put your handsto Work, and your hearts to God.”
Essentially an agricultural community, the Shakers ran large and productive farms. (And where did they get the money for this property? Although they would accept converts who had nothing, wealthier converts were expected to donate their property (dowries, land, and money) to the community. This meant they quickly grew wealthy in their turn.
Most of the work was split along traditional gender lines. Their standards of cleanliness (not at all common in that time) meant their livestock was fat and healthy, their milk pure and disease free. Although most people have heard of the Shaker furniture, they also ran many businesses to support themselves. Many villages had their own mills, tanneries, basket making and broom making shops. They were famous for their medicinal herbs and seeds, which they sold via traveling wagons. They also engaged in a thriving international trade, especially with China. In today’s money, they made millions.
They were creative inventors as well and many of the villages had machinery far in advance of the neighboring farms. The Shakers invited the first clothes pin. And well before advances in modern chemistry, they invented a product to add to clothes to so they required less ironing.
Their attempt to create perfection resulted in the high quality of their products that we admire today.
The Sisters, besides cooking, caring for the children, doing laundry and housework, spun and wove cloth that was famous for its high quality. They had equal power to the men. Every Family had two Elders and two Eldresses, two Deacons and two Deaconesses to share the authority for the community. The Shakers believed that God was both male and female and of equal importance.
Celibacy was strictly practiced. Marriages were not allowed and married couples that joined a Family were expected to live as brother and sister. Men and Women were segregated although Unions, where the Brethren and the Sisters could meet and talk on a regular basis, became a feature of the village life.
Last week I wrote about their practice of taking in orphans. It became so well known, they found foundlings on their doorsteps. They also took in children whose parents signed them over to the Shakers as quasi-apprentices. The New York State Museum has examples of some of the contracts signed between the parents and the Shakers. When the children reached the age of twenty one, they were free to choose between remaining or leaving. Many of the children raised by the Shakers married out; the Shakers did not require the Children to ‘make a Shaker’.
Eventually, with the shift ofAmerica from a rural to an urban society the flood of new converts began to diminish and by the 1930’s the number of members had declined so severely that several villages were closed and much of the land sold off. Many of the once-thriving Shaker villages, for example, Hancock Village, became living museums. The only village still in existence today is Sabbathday Lake in Maine.
In two weeks, the newest of the Will Rees/Shaker series will be released. In The Long Shadow of Murder, a body is discovered in the woods near the Shaker community of Zion. Suspicion immediately falls on the Shakers, although Rees is skeptical. He feels there are plenty of other suspects, including the victim’s wife and other traveling companions. Indeed, the murder has its roots in the Revolutionary War.
The Shakers were, if not the most successful commune, was certainly one of them. An offshoot of the Quakers, the name Shakers comes from ‘the Shaking Quakers.” The group’s proper name was the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing; with a name like that it is understandable they had a shorter and more easily remembered nickname.
The wellspring of the Shakers was a woman, Mother Ann Lee. She sailed to the colonies in the middle 1700s and set up a damsel community just outside of Albany, New York. (The runways for the airport are now located over the old fields.) Like the Quakers, they believed in simplicity and were abolitionists. Mother Ann Lee a former Quaker, was revered. Her position as the prophet/leader resulted in two important doctrines: men and women were equal – highly unusual in this day and age, and they were celibate. Despite that, for many years, they thrived.
How did they succeed for so long then? And they were. They took in converts. Here the unmarried woman could find a home, The disabled could find a home. The landless men, who frequently stopped at the Shaker villages for the winter, thus earning the title of Winter Shaker, had three meals a day and a roof over the heads. Although many left again come spring, some probably remained.
And they adopted orphans. Since this was a world with no safety net, and lots of death, there were a lot of orphans. Besides training these children in the skills they would need in an agrarian world – the girls learned cooking, sewing and other homemaking skills, and the boys farming – they were taught how to read and write. Since males and females were rigidly separated, the boys went in winter, the girls in summer. The Shakers thrived until the world changed. After 1900, the United States went from agrarian to industrial. Girls now could work in factories.
In 1966, the United States passed a law stating that the Shakers could no longer adopt orphans. That really impacted this group.
Yes, they still accept converts. The numbers have shrunk to 2, but one is a younger man who converted. These two live at Sabbathday Lake in Maine. This was the smallest and poorest of all the Shaker communities. My village of Zion is based on Sabbathday Lake.
Why did I choose to set murders within or near this group? Well, although most were peaceful good people, there are always some bad apples. Certainly the acceptance of anyone, and the toleration of the Winter Shakers, opened up the communities to some of these bad’uns.
