The Last Edition of THE OREGON SPECTATOR, March 10, 1855
I’ve written before about the importance of old newspapers in my research for my novels about Oregon pioneers. The Oregon Spectator’s issues from 1948 through 1852 provided a lot of background for Now I’m Found and My Hope Secured. So as I began to research my next Oregon novel (I’m still researching and won’t be […]
Oregon Spectator, May 22, 1851
Sometimes when I’m stuck on my historical novels about Oregon Territory, I go out to the Oregon Spectator newspaper for the month that I’m writing about and look for inspiration on what was actually on the minds of citizens of the day. I didn’t know what to write in today’s post, though I knew I […]
Schools in Oregon in the 1840s
In my novel Now I’m Found, Jenny, one of the lead characters in the book, opens a school for some of the children on surrounding farms. She holds the school in her cabin. It’s a one-room cabin, and she has benches built for the children to sit on. Her only resources are two primers, three […]
The Vagaries of Mail Service During the Early California Gold Rush
One of the issues I have dealt with in my novel about the California Gold Rush is long-distance communications in the West between 1848 and 1850. I have characters living in Oregon, others in California, and they have relatives in Missouri and Massachusetts. The only way people could communicate over distance was through letters, but […]
The Times, They’re Not A-Changin’
For those of you who want an update on my writing about the Oregon Trail, I just started delving into the first draft of my second novel in that series. Writers recognize this as a very dangerous point—will I hate every page or will I think it is all wonderful? Neither of those perspectives is […]