Over at Booktryst, Stephen Gertz discusses the treasures found in a 19th Century ledger book for the London – Seven Oaks coach line.
For lovers of history and writers of historical fiction, it’s a very interesting read that gives insight into the small details that bring a sense of reality to stories set outside of the here and now.
In the 1500s, along a wooded river near the sea, the Lenape people of the village of Chammasungh had farmed, hunted, and fished for generations.
During the 1600s, however, Chammasungh was first renamed “Finland” by invading Swedes, then “Marrites Hoek” by the Dutch. Soon after, property records in the town record the arrival of The Proprietor, an ominous reference to William Penn, whose name we have inherited in Pennsylvania.
And, the both Lenape people and their river were renamed by colonists after the governor of Virginia, Thomas West, Baron De La Warr — or Delaware.
Digging in this little town on the Delaware River (now called Marcus Hook) has revealed a wealth of artifacts from this history, obscure to many Americans who typically look back no further than the Civil or Revolutionary wars. These treasures include plates with yellow-and-blue sunburst designs, British cannonballs, and a red quartz arrowhead dating from the time of Stonehenge, the Olmecs, and the most ancient Chinese dynasty.
Earlier this week, Carla Nayland conducted a very thorough investigation into the nature of the villain Grendel from the Old English poem Beowulf
The War of 1812 is one of America’s least known wars and yet the conflict in which we truly established our place as an independent actor on the world stage. (There really should be more historical fiction written about this war!)
Now, a ship discovered decades ago in a Maryland inlet could shed light on the Chesapeake Flotilla that battled the invading British fleet, and serve as a showpiece for the upcoming 1812 bicentennial. Found in the 1970s and excavated in the 1980s — but then reburied due to lack of funding — the ship is believed by archaeologists to be the USS Scorpion, part of America’s defense of the DC region.
The Flotilla’s ships were driven into the Patuxent river’s mouth, however, and were sunk to keep the warships from falling into the hands of the British, who later went on to burn the Capitol and White House.
I have to confess a particularly deep connection to the events of 9/11. Not only was I scheduled to fly back to the mainland from visiting family in Hawai’i on that day, but I was working in counter-terrorism as an Arabic linguist at the time, I had studied Islam at university, and had foreseen this innovation in tactics years before while studying the origins of Wahhabi militancy.*
Recent developments have caught my attention again, as a writer: workers digging at Ground Zero have uncovered a ship dating to the 1700s in the muck under where the World Trade Center once stood. (See the Christian Science Monitor or Associated Press for the full story.)
The story of this ship is intriguing for many reasons. It reveals how pollution has actually made the world a better place for wooden ships, how New Yorkers used to be able to purchase land that didn’t exist, and how much an iron anchor from the period weighed, all excellent background material for historical fiction writers.
Follow one of the links above to read more.
Edward Moran, who painted many maritime scenes, including of New York Harbor. By the time this photograph was taken around 1870, the WTC ship had already been abandoned to the muck for over half a century.
* For the full deets on the prescient notebook doodle I’m referencing here, ask nicely and I might blog about it.
Want to know how close we can be to the sort of conflict that drives good historical fiction?
For the residents of the coastal town of Mystic, Connecticut, it’s as close as their own front yards. On a hill that is now part of a quiet neighborhood, almost 400 years ago, a fort of the Pequot people was destroyed by English colonists.
As reported by the Associated Press:
Artifacts of a battle between a Native American tribe and English settlers, a confrontation that helped shape early American history, have sat for years below manicured lawns and children’s swing sets in a Connecticut neighborhood. A project to map the battlefields of the Pequot War is bringing those musket balls, gunflints and arrowheads into the sunlight for the first time in centuries.
It’s also giving researchers insight into the combatants and the land on which they fought, particularly the Mystic hilltop where at least 400 Pequot Indians died in a 1637 massacre by English settlers.
Often, Americans look for historical intrigue and suspense overseas, in the Highlands of Scotland, the Imperial Court of China, India under the Raj, or among the legions of Rome.
But, long before the familiar struggles of the Depression, Prohibition and its gang wars, the Old West, the Civil War, and even the Revolutionary War, the eastern shore of America was the setting for much romance, violence, friendship, and betrayal… all of the elements that make up a good historical novel.
During conservation work at Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate, built in the 1500s by Suleiman the Magnificent, workers discovered a 100-year old Turkish hand grenade in the core of the wall.
Israeli antiquities experts believe that someone stashed the grenade in the middle of the wall through some broken stone during the last years of the Ottoman Empire.
But, what if there were another explanation? What if someone from our near future slipped back in time to visit the Grand Sultan during the height of Ottoman rule, making a pit stop in the Empire during World War I to pick up supplies and weapons?
Perhaps the grenade ended up in the wall as it was being built. A good writer could really build a story around that.
George Washington had it built.
Martha Washington mentioned it in a letter to a friend.
And now, two hundred thirty-two years later, archaeologists have found it.
What is it? It’s a log cabin General Washington had constructed behind the main headquarters at Valley Forge, to use as a dining hall for himself and his top advisers. Archaeologists working for the National Park Service have now located it, having identified discolored earth that indicates the presence of the “sill log” that forms the base of a log cabin.
Washington, his aides, servants and wife all lived and worked together in the small headquarters house. To ease the cramped conditions in what some historians have dubbed the “1778 Pentagon,” the general had a cabin constructed. During the encampment, from Dec. 19, 1777 to June 19, 1778, British troops occupied Philadelphia. The cabin served as both a dining hall and war room for Washington and his men.
It is unknown how many critical debates took place in this tiny structure, debates that guided the fate of millions yet to be born, and pointing us to it was a single piece of correspondence from a woman to her friend.
One small cabin, one small letter. Sometimes, the little things truly are what count!
A replica cabin at Valley Forge, similar to the one archaeologists are now excavating near General Washington's headquarters.
Since I expanded the blog from showcasing my fantasy novel, The Ligan of the Disomus, and have posted other stories including some science fiction, I guess I might as well start sharing some science background material in addition to the historical (and prehistorical) stuff I normally post.
One of my favorite works of science fiction is Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy. So, when I read that a study of delta formations on Mars had turned up an ancient shoreline that not only corresponded with previously identified shoreline formations, but also would indicate that this ancient ocean covered one-third of the Martian surface, I knew I had to share it.
Read about it at USA Today, FOX News, or TG Daily.
There have been some interesting recent developments in the not-so-recent world of archaeology.
A site on the Patuxent river that not only yielded a Native American house from the age of the Crusades, but implements carbon-dated to 3000 years ago, and clues that could push the site’s antiquity back to 10,000 years BP.
And, interesting for those of us who love the little historical details, archaeologists have discovered what is believed to be the oldest leather shoe ever found, “about 5,500 years old, which is about 1,000 years older than the great pyramid of Egypt and 400 years older than Stonehenge.” The shoe was found in Armenia but, according to the story, the oldest footwear of all was found in the United States and made of plant fibers.
Finally, in news of a more nautical nature, an ongoing, 18th century dig site in Maine uncovers details about two of the first shipwrights in the region.
