Category Archives: will Rees mysteries

Inventions by Shakers

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Besides their skill at building furniture and buildings, the Shakers were also talented inventors. (This does make one wonder if celibacy creates strengths in other areas!)

Besides improving on various types of machinery, they invented the flat broom, seed packets, metal pen nibs and metal chimney caps, an improved plow, the circular saw, and a prototype of a washing machine called a washing mill. (Some of these are discussed at the Hancock Village museum).

The washing line was another, and this really interested me – they also invented a substance that helped clothing being washed and ironed from wrinkling. This was almost 150 years before modern technology caught up.

As you can see from the list, the inventions covered the gamut and were not restricted to primarily male tasks. Some, like the future washing machine and the non-wrinkle powder, were later marketed by the outside world as ‘labor saving’ devices. This community valued work of all kinds.

I find them endlessly fascinating.

The Battle of Minisink

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In The Long Shadow of Murder, I explore the long lasting effects of past actions.

One of the side threads concerns the Battle of Minisink.

Minisink is an area in Orange/Sullivan County. It was the only decisive battle fought in the upper Delaware Valley. Most of the British soldiers were concentrated in and around New York City.

On July 22, 1779, Joseph Brant, an Iroquois and a supporter of the British, led a party of warriors and Loyalists disguised as warriors, upon Minisink. Only a few settlers were killed because they fled to the fort, but the settlement was destroyed. Riders from Minisink reported the raid in Goshen, New York (where I worked at the Library for many years – but not during this time, of course). A militia under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Tusten set out. They were joined by a detachment of men from Sussex, New Jersey and, a little bit later, by militia from Warwick under the command of Colonel John Hathorn. Although Tusten did not want to follow the Iroquois, the militia dismissed the fighting ability of the Iroquois. With 120 men, the militia marched out to engage.

Hathorn planned to ambush Brant but before it was set, Brant got wind of the approaching force. (Accounts vary a little here.) Brant took the high ground. After several hours, ammunition ran low and the fighting degenerated to hand to hand combat. At least 46 militia men were killed, including Tusten. Hathorn was seriously wounded but survived. Brant lost only 7 men.

Brant gave no quarter to the captured and wounded men. All were killed. The widows could not collect the remains for 43 years, because of the battle site’s remote location. Eventually, the remains were collected and brought to Goshen, where they are buried beneath a stone obelisk.

In the aftermath, another American force went after Brant. Although they did not catch him, they swept through forty Iroquois villages, killing everyone – men, women, and children – in their path.

Although there was no term for PTSD then, I suspect the soldiers on both sides carried scars from the events of those days, especially the destruction of the Iroquois villages. These were non-combatants, unarmed, and mainly women and children. That would be pretty hard to justify.

T

Book Release and Barnes and Nobel

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I am excited to announce that The Long Shadow of Murder was released today. It is the latest in the Will Rees saga.

After a long winter, Rees is driving into town for supplies when he is distracted by Constable Rouge. A body has been discovered in the woods near the Shaker community of Zion. Of course, Rouge is immediately suspicious of the Shakers but Rees isn’t so sure. He wonders if the victim’s traveling companions might not have reason to kill the man.

But as Rees and Lydia investigate, they find that everyone in town has secrets, some going all the way back to the Revolutionary War.

As usual, besides the murder, Rees and Lydia are trying to manage their busy farm and their large family with a new baby on the way.

On Saturday, I and three others of my writing friends will be on a panel at the Poughkeepsie Barnes and Noble. We will be available to answer questions and sign books. Hope to see you there.

The Shakers and the Simple Life

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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.

round barn in Hancock Village

Cold Snap

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Right now, in New York where I live, it is 27 degrees. Last night it dropped to 7 and earlier this week it was 3.

The pipes in the house didn’t freeze but the outflow from the sink did. When I filled it with hot water in preparation for washing my good knives and some of the other things that cannot go into the dishwasher, I realized that the water was not draining. At all. So now, all the dishes in the dishwasher and that were waiting for washing must be washed in the bathroom sink. What fun!

That prompted me to think of the past. No dishwashers. In fact, no electricity at all. I might have to step outside into the freezing cold to use the outhouse or to pump water. No hot showers. The house might be heated by a fireplace. How cold would that be when the temperatures are at 7?

How much water would I need to pump, and then heat, to do laundry? And where would I put it to dry, in a basically unheated house?

We got about 8 inches of snow a few days ago. By 11 a.m. the next day, the plows had cleared the roads. My husband went out with a snow blower to clear the driveway and the walk. What would 8 inches of snow have done to travel plans in the past? In the 1700s and 1800s, horses and/or sleighs would have been the option.

This doesn’t even touch on the rapid communication we enjoy. If I want my husband to pick up something from the store, all I have to do is text him. Yes, we really have many amenities now. I am glad I don’t live in early America, the time of Will Rees.

Weavers and weaving

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In prehistoric sites, remnants of string skirts have been found. Plant fibers, twisted into cords, and knotted together. Think macrame. From this simple beginning arose weaving. Every culture has some form of weaving from the simplest form of loom to the more complicated ones used by hand weavers today.

The Egyptians used a ground loom that, to my modern body, looks uncomfortable to use.

How do we know the Egyptians were weaving so long ago? Well, there are pictures inscribed next to the hieroglyphics.. And also, remnants of clothing has been found in excavations. In 1913, Sir Flinders Petrie found a pile of linen cloth about thirty miles outside of Cairo. Years later, researchers from the Victoria and Albert Museum were sorting though the pile when they came upon a remarkably well preserved dress. It was nicknamed the Tarkhan dress and the age was estimated at 5000 years. Almost fifty years later, the dress was carbon dated and discovered to be from about 3000 B.C.E. Easily from Egypt’s first dynasty, maybe even before.

In Peru, the women employed a back strap loom.

The early Scandanavians used a loom with weights tied to the bottom threads.

The Navaho, who still weave blankets and so for sale, use a simple four piece frame.

In every culture, weavers enjoyed fairly high status. Although not aristocrats, they were among the skilled craftsmen – what passed for the middle class of that time. Without weavers, there would have been no cloth.

Textiles were time-consuming to make, and thus expensive, and learning to weave takes time. In the Middle Ages, an apprenticeship took between seven to nine years. Weave

I wanted to pay homage to this valuable craft. In my Bronze Age Crete mysteries, Martis comes from a family of weavers. (Yes, even in Bronze Age Crete, the women were weavers. Loom weights were found in Akrotiri. And the Minoans, who were the sailors of this age, traded the textiles all over the Aegean.) She does not want to be a weaver, hoping for something more exciting and adventurous – like jumping over a charging bull.

In the Will Rees mysteries, he is a weaver, a traveling weaver. Since women were not supposed to work or leave home, men like Will Rees traversed the early USA with a loom in their wagon bed, weaving for the farmwives.

What saw the end of several millennia of weaving as a profession?

Well, Rees is already seeing the end of his career with the importing of calicoes and other fabrics from India. But the real end to this profession came with the Industrial Revolution and the mechanization of weaving.

Lydia Rees and the Role of Women

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Lydia Rees is one of the primary, some would say the primary, protagonist in my Will Rees/Shaker mysteries. I thought I would return to this work and talk about the women in the later eighteenth century.

Lydia Rees, wife of my detective Will Rees, is an opinionated and outspoken woman and an equal partner with her husband as they investigate murders and other crimes. This is not so surprising for modern times but during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a woman had no legal status. She owned nothing and in fact she herself was chattel, belonging first to her father and then to her husband. The portion she brought to her marriage belonged to her husband and literally everything she had, including her children and the clothes on her back, belonged to him. In one of the primary sources I read a woman divorced one man for another and had to marry in her shift. The clothing she wore belonged to husband number one. Fortunately, husband number two had clothing waiting for her and as soon as they were married, she dressed.

A woman could not inherit the family home unless her husband specifically named her in the will. If he did not, she became the burden of her eldest son. If they had a bad relationship he could, and did, at least according to some of the histories I’ve seen, put her out to make her own way on the road. 

This did not mean that women did nothing. Oh no. This was an agrarian world and a man could not run his farm without his wife’s labor. Farm wives kept a garden, made butter and cheese, cooked, sewed clothing, cleaned – and all of this at the same time they dealt with pregnancy and minded their children. Wives of printers and other professional men frequently helped in the shop. It is no wonder that many men from this time are buried with two, three or sometimes more wives.

Lydia is a former Shaker (or The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Coming to give them their proper name. Shakers was at first a derogatory nickname based on their physical services – it is a combination of ‘Shaking Quakers’.) The Shakers were a faith begun by a woman, Mother Ann Lee, and the Shaker Sisters have equal authority with their male counterparts. There are two Elders and two Eldresses, two Deacons and two Deaconesses for every Family. Although the work was assigned along traditional gender roles, women and their labor were considered of equal importance. And in a time when illiteracy among woman was high (even among men it was almost 50%), the Shakers educated the girls equally with the boys. (Girls went to school during the summer, boys during the winter.) So Lydia expects to have a say.

The reasons a woman joined the Shakers were many and varied. In A Simple Murder and Cradle to Grave, Sister Hannah (Mouse) joins the Shakers be cause she has a cleft palate and knows she will never marry. In Simply Dead, one of my women characters flees to the Shakers to escape a life of servitude to her family. Another woman, who is an ongoing character throughout, is a fugitive who has escaped servitude in the south.

The Shakers were abolitionists and accepted escaped slaves as members in their community.

Obedience to the rules and celibacy, however, both come with membership in this faith. When Lydia secretly marries her first husband, Charles Ellis, and bears a baby she is immediately expelled from the Shakers. Ellis’s unexpected death causes further legal complications. 

When a person joined the Shakers, he or she signed a document called the Covenant. In it, they agreed to surrender all their worldly goods to the community. Charles Ellis is almost a member of Zion; he has not yet signed the Covenant but everyone is expecting him to. Then he dies. Because Ellis leaves his farm to Lydia in his will, the farm the Shakers were expecting to own, she inherits.  When she marries Will Rees, the farm immediately becomes his because of the laws governing a woman’s lack of rights to own property.

Although Lydia wishes to abide by Ellis’s wishes and surrender the farm to the Shakers, Rees hesitates. Fortunately for the family. When they are forced to flee their home in Dugard, they take refuge in the farm near Zion. (The Devil’s Cold Dish).

Lydia is a very determined individual. When Rees would leave her behind in Death in the Great Dismal, when he goes south to rescue a woman from the Great Dismal Swamp, Lydia insists on accompanying him. Fortunately. Ruth will not agree to go north without Lydia’s persuasion.

Lydia is instrumental (always!) in assisting her husband solve the mystery and, in many cases, connecting with the other women characters.

Women in Minoan Crete

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Since March is Women’s History month, I thought I would discuss the women of Bronze Age Crete. In my series, I chose to write about this advanced society from about 2600 to approximately 1100 B.C.E. where women played pivotal roles in religion, culture and possibly even the governing of the cities. (In my previous series, I had a male protagonist, a traveling weaver, because women had a much inferior role in the United States of the late 1700s. They couldn’t own property or vote and if their husbands died, their sons took on the responsibility for their care. I wrote about the Shakers extensively, however, since in that society, women were equal and shared equal power in governance of the community.)

Frescoes and artifacts unearthed portray women in positions of reverence and power, suggesting a society where gender roles were viewed differently from contemporaneous civilizations.

Religion was female-centric, with goddess worship at its core. The male figures were always pictured as smaller than a central and large female figure. Women – or priestesses – were often depicted with open arms in a gesture of divine power. I imagined them as influential figures, managing religious ceremonies and advising on state affairs.

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Although the myths about Minos and the Minotaur are what we know today, one has to remember they were told by the Classical Greeks, a very patriarchal society. On Crete, real women likely held sway in the Minoan court. Administrative records and luxurious goods designed for female use display their influence, hinting at the wealth and status women enjoyed. I previously blogged about textiles and the elaborate clothing women wore.

Archaeological findings suggest that queens may have ruled alongside kings or even independently. The opulent grave goods of priestess-queens, often buried with symbols of power, reveal the respect and reverence these women commanded. I imagined a male consort who managed administrative details, under the Queen who was also the High Priestess.

The archeology suggests women’s influence extended beyond the spiritual realm into economics and craftsmanship. The intricately designed pottery, seal stones, and frescoes feature women in prominent roles. We know the intricate textiles, woven by the women, were traded all over the Aegean.

Emerging evidence further suggests that women in Minoan society received an education. In my books, I talk about the agoge, an initiation into society. I based it on what we know of the ancient Spartans who also educated their women. They spent a year minimum in a dorm with other women before marriage and children. (Boys, we think, went into a dorm at the age of seven.)

These ancient Minoans were a progressive culture ahead of its time.

Happy Holidays

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We take so many Christmas customs for granted that we may assume that they have always been enjoyed. Not so. A visit to Colonial Williamsburg, for example, reveals a village decorated with candles and evergreen boughs. Where are the trees splendid with glittering ornaments? Where are the Christmas cards? Where are the representations of Santa Claus?

From its early days, Christians celebrated the Nativity. The giving of presents, the decoration of the houses with evergreens, the suspension of enmity and the proclamation of peace were all features of the festival right from the beginning. (That is, with some interruptions. The Puritans thought the celebrations took away from the worship of God and banned all jollity.) Some of the customs common during this period aren’t so familiar to us now. The Lord of Misrule? What does that even mean? ( The Lord of Misrule was usually a servant or a slave who presided over the Christmas revels. He had the power to make anyone do anything during the season. )The switching of masters and servants ? That is something foreign to us now.

It is true some of our traditions have roots stretching back to antiquity. Caroling, for example, has been a feature of the season since the middle ages. Wreaths also have a long history. The Etruscans used wreaths, a tradition that continued into Ancient Greece and Rome. The different plants symbolized different virtues. Oak leaves meant wisdom. Laurel leaves were used to crown winners. Our evergreen wreaths are constructed of evergreens to represent everlasting life. The Advent wreath, with its white candles, was first used by Lutherans in Germany in the 16th century.

What about the hanging of stockings?

Well, this tradition has a long history. According to some historians, this is a custom that stretches all the way back to Odin. Children put out their boots filled with food for Odin’s horse to eat and Odin would reward them with gifts or candy. Like so many pagan customs, the practice was adopted and Christianized. Hanging stockings became connected with Saint Nicholas.

So, let’s talk about Old Saint Nick, known in the US as Santa Claus.

The modern Santa Claus grew out of Saint Nicholas, a fourth century bishop, as well as the German Christkind and the Dutch Sinterklaus. Christmas had been personified -made into a person – as early as the fifteenth century but the modern Santa Claus in his red suit is a nineteenth century creation that has been added onto over the years. Now even several reindeer have names, courtesy of the poem “The Night Before Christmas” (originally titled “A visit from Saint Nicholas) by Clement Clarke Moore. The Santa Claus so beloved of today’s children was not invented until the nineteenth century.

Other nineteenth century inventions include the Tree, the lights on the tree and Christmas cards, The tree was a custom in Germany and arrived in England with Prince Albert. Although known in England before Queen Victoria married Prince Albert,  it did not achieve its popularity until the Queen adopted it. Like so many British customs, this one crossed the Atlantic and now who can imagine the holiday without a tree?

Our Christmas lights are descended from the candles used to decorate the tree in Christian homes in early modern Germany. And the first commercial Christmas cards were not created until 1843. Again, that custom began in England. Cards did not cross the Atlantic to the United States until 1874.

Nutcracker dolls were known as early as the seventeenth century but were not connected to Christmas until later.

So Will Rees and his family would not have been familiar with most of the customs we think of as essential to the celebration of the holiday. And more customs continue to be created. In my family, the holiday is not complete without a showing of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. The elves (Santa’s elves that is) make regular visits to the kids and leave little gifts.

Cosmetics

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Lydia, of the Will and Lydia Rees mystery series, does not wear cosmetics of any kind. Although the Colonial periods both men and women boasting fine white wigs and patches, the Federalist culture viewed women who wore ‘paint’ as loose. Lydia, as a former Shaker, would be even more reluctant to wear any kind of cosmetic.

Throughout human history, however, people have worn various forms of paint for adornment. Even war paint is adornment of a sort, although used to strike terror in onlookers instead of awe at their beauty.

I thought of this as I researched my next series, a historical murder mystery set in Bronze Age Crete.

Cosmetics were commonly used in the Ancient World: Egypt, the Middle Ages, and Asia. In Egypt and Mesopotamia, we know from hieroglyphics, murals, frescos and more, they were used by both men and women and all classes. Kohl was the most commonly used cosmetic. Although kohl was the major cosmetic in Crete, in Egypt eye paint was also important. Especially green eye paint. That was made of malachite a copper carbonate pigment. Kohl was made from galena, a dark gray ore and crushed charcoal. Both the malachite and the galena were crushed and missed with gum or water to make a paste. Cosmetics were so important cosmetic palettes were found buried in gold with the deceased’s grave goods.

Kohl was used for lining the eyes, like modern eyeliner. It offered health benefits in the form of protection from disease, bugs and sun rays. Red ochre clay was ground up and mixed with water to create a paste to paint on the lips and cheeks.

This was a lot less dangerous than the white lead women used to paint their faces in Elizabethan times. Lead is toxic so these women were gradually poisoning themselves. (Medieval women also plucked the front hair on their heads also to give themselves a high forehead.

The ban on cosmetics for “virtuous” women continued through the eighteen hundreds but returned as a fashion imperative during the nineteen twenties when so many other changes happened. Women have worn cosmetics, especially lipstick, since. (Lipstick, BTW, used to be made with the blood of small cochineal beetles to give that scarlet shade.)

I wear eyebrow pencil to darken my pale eyebrows, mascara for my blond lashes and eyeshadow, continuing the history of eye paint since the Bronze Age.