Halloween Trivia

Since it's Halloween Awareness month, I thought I would share some Halloween trivia that I learned while researching my current project. My book takes place in 1895 at a women's college in Upstate New York. So I was curious as to how people in Victorian America celebrated Halloween or even if they did celebrate it at all.

I was surprised to learn that some of the Halloween traditions that we know today were present in Victorian America. For one thing, they actually had candy corn! Yes, that too sweet orange and yellow candy that we associate with Halloween was available in the 1890's. In fact, according to Wikipedia, candy corn was created in the 1880's by George Renninger of the Wunderlee Candy Co. The three colors of the candy, orange, yellow and white are supposed to mimic the colors of corn. There is also 'Indian Corn' which is white, yellow and brown.

I also learned that it was the Irish who brought the tradition of Jack O'Lanterns to this country. It was named after the strange phenomenon of light flickering over peat bogs, called ignis fatuus or jack-o-latern. Both in Ireland and Britain, there was a long tradition of carving laterns from vegetables. However carved laterns did not specifically become associated with Halloween until 1866. Originally laterns in the US were associated with the Harvest season in general, before it got folded into Halloween.

Agnes Carr Sage wrote in, "Halloween Sports and Customs," Harper's Young People, October 27, 1885, p. 828: "It is an ancient Scottish custom to light great bonfires on Halloween, and carry blazing fagots about on long poles; but in place of this American boys delight in the funny grinning jack-o'-lanterns made of huge yellow pumpkins with a candle inside."

You can read the Irish folktale of Jack here. Another story that I read in a Time-Life book on America in the 19th century stated that young girls on Halloween would walk down the stairs backward holding up a mirror to see if they saw their future husband. You just know that I had to include that little tidbit in my book.

I also learned that in America, while there was no trick-or-treating yet per se, there were kids who played Halloween tricks in the big cities.

See, sometimes you can learn fun things while researching!

Senda Berenson - Pioneer of Women's Basketball

As I've mentioned before, I'm writing a historical YA set in a women's college in Upstate New York. One of the interesting bits of research that I've learned is how important sports and physical education was at the colleges. We tend to think of things like gym as being strictly a product of the 20th century, but au contraire mon amie, the women who attended female seminaries or boarding schools as well as the nasceant women's colleges were very involved in physical activities.

Most schools required the girls to take calisthenics of some sort, as well as organized sports. I was intrigued to learn that even though basketball (or basket ball as they spelled it then) was invented until December of 1891 by Dr. James Naismith (who was Canadian) at a YMCA training school in Springfield, MA, by 1892 it was being played at Smith College.

Senda Berenson (1868-1954), who had immigrated from Lithuania with her family, was teaching at Smith when she modified the rules of the game to suit women. By 1896, it was well established at several other women's colleges, including Vassar. Berenson was taking a risk simply by teaching the game to women, which is why she modifiedl the rules. This included dividing the court into 3 sections and 9 players per team. Two players were assigned to each area and couldn't cross the line into another area. The ball, like now, was passed from section to section by passing or dribbling. You couldn't dribble the ball more than 3 times or hold it for 3 seconds. No snatching or batting the ball away from another player was allowed. The baskets were actual peach baskets. After every basket, someone had to physically remove the ball from the basket (no had yet thought of making a hole in the basket).

In 1893, the freshmen played the sophomores at Smith College. Also in 1893, Mount Holyoke and Sophie Newcomb College (which is now part of Tulane) were playing basketball. By 1896, the first intercollegiate games were being played, Stanford women vs. Berkeley. A woman named Clara Gregory Baer published the first book of rules for the game in 1895 but she called the game Basquette which is kind of French and weird.

Senda Berenson (whose brother was the noted art historian Bernard Berenson, making her the great-great aunt of photographer Berry Berenson and socialite Marisa Berenson), also authored the first Basketball Guide for Women in 1901-1907. I found a copy of this book online and it is very interesting. Lots of articles about how beneficial basketball is for women. She later married a professor of English at Smith named Herbert Vaughan Abbott, soon after she resigned from the college.

Senda Berenson Abbott is now known today as the Mother of Women's Basketball and was the first woman ever enshrined into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Adventures in Research - Part Four

So the weather has been teasing us once again here in New York. First it was lovely this weekend, and then yesterday it started off raining, then sunny and humid, and then rainy and then just rainy and humid. My hair just doesn't know what to do with itself. I wish I had the money to afford the brazilian anti-frizz treatment that is now popular for us curly-heads. Its supposed to be better for your hair that the japanese hair-straightening technique that came to our shores a few years ago. Apparently the brazilian version puts keratin in your hair when it straightens and anti-frizzes.

I am ashamed to say that I only wrote two pages yesterday on my WIP but I had to stop and do some research, which has just given me some great ideas for future scenes. That's what I love about research, when it can actually help with the plotting as opposed to just telling me what kind of corsets and skirts people wore in the late 19th century.

It was immensely gratifying for me to learn that I could have my heroine play basketball in college, and that they had electric lights, central heating, and an electric trolley to take my heroine into town, not mention flush toilets and bathtubs with running water. In fact, I may have to write a scene where my heroine can take a bath just so that I can include that little tidbit!

So far, I've learned about late 19th century Halloween traditions. Did you know that it was the Irish who brought jack o'laterns to the States? In Ireland, they use to carve them into turnips to scare away Stingy Jack, which is this whole legend which I won't get into. Anywhoo, when the Irish came to the US, they discovered big fat pumpkins, which were better for carving the jack o'laterns than turnips.

Trick or treating came later in the 20th century, but I have more than enough stuff for my Halloween scene in the book. And I gave one of my character an Irish granny so that I could impart the information without it being too much information dump, which can slow down the narrative.

I also got sidetracked by discovering another Scandalous Woman to write about, darn it. More books for me to buy, which is going to cut into my shoe budget immensely. Still now that there is NO TV for me to watch since all the season finales for my shows are over, I am going to be spending my nights editing and my days writing in order to get this book finished.

Adventures in Research - Part Trois

I've decided that the only way that I'm going to get through the research for my historical YA, Veiled Beauty, is with many, many pictures of Richard Armitage. That's Richard as Sir Guy with Maid Marian in the second season of Robin Hood, probably shocked that the series has been renewed for a third season.

I had a bit of a jolt on Monday when I watched this American Experience program on Grand Central Station. In the 19th century, there was no such thing as Amtrak. Railroads competed for business and for routes. The New York Central railroad of which Vanderbilt was a chief stockholder had the route from Chicago to New York to Boston and then points in Upstate New York pretty sewn up. Grand Central Depot as it was called back then was where the trains stopped in New York.

Now my heroine is from Philadelphia. For her to get to New York and then Grand Central, she would have to take the Pennsylvania Railroad line from Philadelphia to Jersey City in New Jersey and then take a ferry across to New York, make her way to Grand Central Depot and then take the train from there to upstate New York. Yikes! That's one long ass trip. And the trains were still steam engines. Electric trains didn't really come into vogue until the tail end of the century and really into the early years of the 20th. This was after many accidents at Grand Central depot with steam engines.

Of course, in my head, I had my heroine going to straight to New York and then on upstate all on the same train. Silly me! I had thought of moving my heroine to Boston, but the problem is the woman that I'm partly basing my heroine on came from Boston and I don't want it to be that similar. Plus I like Philadelphia, I know the city fairly well from my days stage managing a friend's theater company. And because of its background being founded by Quakers, and a hotbed of abolitionists, and the place the Declaration of Independence was signed. The City of Brotherly Love and all that.

I can also use how utterly exhausted my poor heroine is going to be after having schlepped all the way from Philadelpia to my advantage. Right now things are a little too easy peasy for her when she arrives at college. She might even have to stay overnight at a boarding house before she takes the trolley to college in the morning, leaving her dreadfully low on funds.

When I came up with the plot for my new YA, I had thought because I'm a history geek, that the research would be easy. Then it dawned on my that while I knew a great deal about 19th century England, my knowledge of late 19th century America was not as extensive as I had thought. 19th Century New York society yes, the lives of the middle class not so much. And lives of late 19th century college girls not at all.

It's been a real learning process trying to find out the information that I need but also a lot of fun. And its not going to go to waste because I have at least 2 other books that I want to set in the same time period which hopefully I'll get to write if this comes off.

As long as I have my pictures of Richard to inspire me!

Thanks for reading,

EKM

Go Google!

Okay, I must be the last person to figure this out, but you can find all sorts of 19th century books on Google books! Do you know what this means for a history geek like me who has already spent like $200 on research books for this historical YA? Less money spent! Which means more money for the important things in life like sushi.

Just this morning, I discovered that two books that I had planned on buying, The American Girl at College and Olive Anderson's Four Years at an Boy's College are available for free download on Google books. I can't wait to dive in to read more about what it was like for a young woman in the late 19th century to attend college.

I've also gotten some great help from two new Yahoo! Groups that I joined recently, 19th Century Women and Godey's Lady's Book. I needed to know about how to clean a stain out of fabric in the late 19th century, what sort of techniques they used since there was no such thing as dry cleaning. Thanks to the women on the loops, I now that I need to change what I wrote. I had initially decided that one of my snobby characters gets punch spilled on her evening gown, but now I'm changing that to just having her train ripped and needing it fixed which is where my heroine Rose comes to save the day as it were. The plan was for Rose to be able to remove the stain further revealing her lower class origins, but considering removing stains takes alot more time then I have in this chapter, she'll just make sewing repairs. Apparently they used gasoline in the 19th century to remove some stains which makes no sense to me because wouldn't that cause more stains? Who knew?

I've also quit my second job last night after spending a rather painful hour having to watch Tyler Perry's House of Payne, one of the worst sitcoms ever visited on the American public. I never thought I'd feel sorry for Robin Givens, but there she was last night guest starring in a small role as a party guest who was hot for one of the show's stars, and I use that term loosely. Seriously, shouldn't this woman be playing the bitch role on Girlfriends or on The Game, that other Kelsey Grammer produced show on the CW? Even she deserves better than House of Payne.

Yikes!

That's not why I quit. It was becoming increasingly hard to work two jobs, be President of RWA NYC, try to have a social life, and write fiction. I was being stretched much too thin. So something had to give and the final straw wasn't really House of Payne but the fact that yet another writer got promoted to editor over me, despite the fact that I have been there longer than most of the current crop of writers and editors.

Thanks for reading!

EKM