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Divided Duty

4/4/2024

the United States Library of Congress Prints and Photographs division. digital ID 04642

Recently, one of my fans let me know that there was a poem about Alexander McRrae, the Union officer who lost his battery of artillery pieces to the Confederates at the Battle of Valverde. Given that tidbit of information, I went down a rabbit hole and discovered not only a poem, but a couple of interesting people.

The poet, it turns out, is a man named Theodore Marburg. Marburg wrote a number of books. Some are poetry. Others are treatises on economics, government, the Spanish American War, and The League of Nations. He was also the United States Minister to Belgium from 1912 to 1914, the executive secretary of an organization called the League to Enforce Peace, and a prominent advocate of the League of Nations

Marburg was born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 10, 1862, which means that McRae was already dead when the poet was born. I found that interesting, and wondered what caused him to want to write a poem about someone he never knew. He died in Vancouver on March 3, 1946.

The poem about Captain McRae, entitled DIVIDED DUTY, comes from In The Hills: Poems, a small volume that was privately printed in Paris 1893, then revised and reprinted by The Knickerocker Press, a division of G.P. Putnam’s Sons, in 1924.

The poem has a footnote, which says

When the American civil war began there happened to be in the regular service a young officer whose home, with all that the word implies, was the South. There were many such. His story is but a type. Is it difficult to picture the struggle that came to them with the sense of a divided duty? This one, with the clearer vision which events have justified, felt that the higher duty was the preservation of the nation; but the thought of fighting against his kindred and the friends of his boyhood so preyed on his mind that he is believed to have courted the death which soon came to him. When the element of fate enters, hurrying the just and the brave to a tragic end, the story must always excite our interest and sympathy. At the battle of Val Verde in New Mexico, February 21, 1862, our hero met his death. The battery, of which, although a cavalry officer, he had been given command for the day, was overwhelmed by the Texans. He remained seated on one of the guns, defending himself until the enemy shot him down. They did him the honor to give his name to one of our forts and to take him back to West Point, to the quiet cemetery in the hills.

McRae's tombstone. It is just four stones down from that of George Armstrong Custer

The poem is almost as much about the beautiful setting of the West Point Cemetery as it is about the man buried there. It made me wonder if the tombstone inspired the poet to research the man buried beneath it.

McRae, a native North Carolinian, commanded Company I, 3rd United States Regular Cavalry. His commanding officer, Colonel Edward R.S. Canby, had given him an artillery battery of six pieces. During the Battle of Valverde, February 21, 1862, McRae's battery performed with great success until about 750 Confederate Texans led by Colonel Thomas Green charged the Union guns. Screaming the Rebel yell, the three waves of confederates were poorly armed with short-range shotguns, pistols, muskets, and bowie knives. Green had instructed his men to drop to the ground whenever they saw flashes from the artiller's muzzles. The Union men thought they were inflicting great casualties on the Rebels, but the fact that they just kept coming spooked the New Mexico Volunteers supporting McRae and his officers. Many fled the battery and ran panic-stricken across the Rio Grande, unnerving the Volunteer troops who were then being held in reserve.

The Texans fell upon the battery and fierce hand-to-hand fighting swirled around the artillery pieces. Samuel Lockridge, a Texan officer leading the charge is reported to have shouted, "Surrender McRae, we don't want to kill you!" to which the North Carolinian replied, "I shall never forsake my guns!" Both men then suffered fatal bullet wounds. The loss of the battery caused Colonel Canby to issue orders for a full retreat to Fort Craig. The captured guns, thereafter known as the Valverde Battery, continued to fire against Union troops for the remainder of the war.

After the war, Confederate Gen. Henry Sibley, who led the Confederate forces into New Mexico, wrote a letter to Alexander McRae’s father. In it, he said "The universal voice of this Army attests to the gallantry of your son. He fell valiantly defending the battery he commanded. There are few fallen soldiers that are admired by both armies of a conflict. Capt. Alexander McRae was one."

DIVIDED DUTY

OH, plateau the eagle's brood has known
What potent dead you hold!
In fear of God, in duty's light,
For country and for human right
On varied fields they fought the fight
And, while you claim their mould,

They live and will live through the year,
Though deaf to drum and fife,
For manly deeds are fertile seeds
That spring again to life.

What peace, what perfect peace broods o'er
The soldiers ' burial - ground
Here in the heart of the silent hills
With Hudson flowing round.

A stately guard, these mighty hills,
Close crowding one another,
Gigantic Storm King locking arms
With Old Cro ' Nest, his brother!

Their summits command to the North a range
Where a sleeping figure lies
Stretched on its back on the mountain tops
Against the changing skies.

There Rip Van Winkle, the children know,
Beheld with exceeding wonder
The queer little men whose ninepin balls
Create the summer thunder.

Down from the Donderberg scurried the winds
That tossed the Dutch sailor of yore.
Down from the highlands the captains came
When trembled and strained a nation's frame,
When all the fair land was aflame,
Aflame with civil war.

Far in the South was the home of one '
Twas there he had spent life's morn-
Where winds are soft and women are kind
And gentleness is born;

Where the grey moss waves from the great live - oak
And the scarlet tanager flutters;
Where the mocking - bird, hid in the bamboo- vine,
Its passionate melody utters.

The boom of the gun upon Sumter that caused
A million hearts to sicken,
That rolled o'er the land and grew as it rolled
While a knell in the mother's breast was tolled
And city and meadow and mountain old
With the spirit of war were stricken,

Brought from the hills of the Hudson one
Whose home was the South, ' tis true,
But o'er him the flag of his fathers waved:
He marched in command of the blue.
Oh, the sad story, the story they tell,
The story of duty and death!
The comfort of heaven, the anguish of hell,
Surging with every breath!

Out from the North, the awakening North,
Came comrades whose step was light.
Ah! that was their home, and a mother's prayer
Went with them into the fight.

Measureless plains of the wide South - west
Ye shook ' neath the tread of men.
Nor winds of the prairie, though mighty they be,
That fashioned your reaches like waves of the sea,
Nor rush of the bison once roaming you free
Have caused you to tremble as when
Through all the long day the sulphureous smoke
Hung heavy over the field
And man from his brother the hand of God
Seemed powerless to shield.

The battle is lost.
What use to stay When his men are slain or fled!
Did anguish too great for the brave to bear
Bring longing to lie with the dead?

His battery silenced, on one of the guns
Alone he sat ' mid the rout,
Unmoved as the cliff that the ocean in anger
Whirls its white surges about

A whirlwind of dust, a whirlwind of men,
A whirlwind of lead therefrom,
A vain pistol shot from the figure alone
And the coveted end had come.

What peace, what perfect peace broods now
O'er the beautiful burial - ground,
Up in the hills, the stately hills,
With the river flowing round.

1916: Captain Marburg and his first wife

In researching the poet, I found that Theodore Marburg had an interesting son. Captain Theodore Marburg Jr. was born November 27, 1893 in France and attended Oxford University. When World War I broke out, he joined the Royal Flying Corps, which required him to take the oath of allegiance to the British Government. While on a mission to photograph the German lines in 1915, his plane crashed and a strut pierced his left knee, requiring the leg to be amputated. Marburg wanted to return to the US to get an American-made artificial leg, but the U.S. government refused to issue him a passport since, according to their interpretation of law, he had broken his allegiance to the United States by taking the oath in Britain. His widely publicized case led President Wilson to a bill in October 1917 that restored US citizenship to US citizens who enlisted in Canadian, British, and French services before the US declaration of war if they took an oath of allegiance at a US consulate. Marburg then came back to the U.S. and was treated at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Marburg’s life did not go well after the war. Believing an outdoor life would be good for his health, Marburg moved to Arizona, where he purchased a cattle ranch. His first wife, Baroness Gesell de Vavario of Belgium, did not like ranch life and divorced him. He had only been married a month when he shot himself in the head on February 17, 1922. He was buried in Druid Ridge Cemetery in Pikesville, Maryland. It would be interesting to learn more about Marburg Jr. and his struggles.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is the author of a number of historical novels for middle grade and adult readers. Where Duty Calls, the first in the trilogy Rebels Along the Rio Grande, includes the scene where McRae's battery is charged by the Confederates. A Blaze of Poppies tells the story of a young, female rancher from New Mexico who serves as a nurse in World War I and comes back to marry a wounded American soldier.

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The Civil War Battle of Albuquerque

3/28/2024

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La Glorieta today. It was originally built sometime before 1803. John Phelan, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

The Battle of Albuquerque was one of the least significant battles of the American Civil War. It was so small that it is more appropriately called a skirmish.

General H.H. Sibley’s Army of New Mexico had begun with great intentions. Its leader had planned to take the California and Colorado goldfields at little cost to the Confederacy, fulfilling a Southern version of Manifest Destiny. But things went wrong from the start, and they soon discovered that New Mexicans were not as willing to feed and shelter an army made up of Texans as Sibley had supposed.

After its supply train was destroyed while they were fighting the Battle of Glorieta Pass, Sibley’s army retreated to Santa Fe and began straggling into Albuquerque, where they commandeered La Glorieta, the already old hacienda that was owned by German entrepreneur Franz Huning.

Col. E.R.S. Canby

Meanwhile, Col. Canby, whose troops had been bottled up in Fort Craig and living on half rations, moved his men north, leaving Kit Carson and his New Mexico Volunteers to defend the fort. On April 8, Canby arrived at the small farming settlement of Barelas, south of Albuquerque. Scouting reports informed him that the main Rebel force had not yet arrived from Santa Fe and only a small group of Confederates held the town.

Canby decided to use his four pieces of artillery to make what he called a “noisy demonstration.” Rebel cannons returned fire from Huning's grist mill, which was located near what is now the intersection of Laguna and Central. The artillery duel lasted for several hours until a delegation of concerned citizens approached Canby under a white flag. They explained that Sibley had refused to allow the town’s women and children to evacuate, and the Union shelling was endangering them. Rather than risk public opinion in a territory that wasn’t wholly supportive of American rule, Canby ordered his men to stop firing, ending the Battle of Albuquerque.

The townspeople and the Confederates didn’t know it was over, however. They waited anxiously as the sunset glowed red, orange and pink. In the fading light, the yellow glow of Canyby’s campfires dotted the horizon. Union buglers, drummers and fifers played “Tattoo” marking the end of the day, then continued with more music as, gradually, the campfires died out. It wasn’t until morning that it became apparent that Canby and his troops had slipped away in the darkness, leaving the musicians and the campfires to cover their movement.
Unwilling to face Sibley’s entire army, which might reach Albuquerque at any moment, Canby had moved his men eastward into the Sandia Mountains. A few days later in the little village of San Antonio, he met up with the Colorado volunteers now under the command of John Chivington. Now, he thought, his troops were large enough to resume the attack on Gen. Sibley.

The howitzer replicas, Old Town Albuquerque

But Sibley’s forces had left Albuquerque, ending a possible second act of the Battle of Albuquerque. The General had arrived in Albuquerque soon after the artillery exchange and explained to his officers that, with only enough food for 15 days and no more than 40 rounds of ammunition per man, the best course of action would be to retreat down the Rio Grande valley and return to Texas. So that they couldn’t be used against his retreating troops, he had eight brass howitzers buried in a corral behind San Felipe Neri Church. On the morning of April 12, Sibley abandoned his wounded and proceeded south. The two armies would not encounter each other until two days later, at the Battle of Peralta.

Although hardly a battle, the artillery duel is the only battle ever to be fought within the city limits of Albuquerque. The eight brass howitzers were later recovered, and two are preserved in The Albuquerque Museum and replicas of the guns stand around the edges of Albuquerque's Old Town Plaza..

Jennifer Bohnhoff taught New Mexico history at Desert Ridge and Edgewood Middle Schools, in central New Mexico. She is now a full time author and lecturer. Rebels Along the Rio Grande is her trilogy of historical fiction set in New Mexico, and is suitable for middle grade through adult readers. Where Duty Calls and The Worst Enemy are already published. The third and final book in the trilogy, The Famished Country, will be released in October. The Battle of Albuquerque will be depicted in that book.

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Where Have All The Soldiers Gone?

3/24/2024

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Mike, the interpreter

Yesterday I went up to Pecos National Historic Park to attend a talk commemorating the 162nd anniversary of the Battle of Glorieta Pass.
The Battle, which took place March 26-28, 1862, is often called "The Gettysburg of the West." The man who gave the talk,a National Park employee (whose name I believe was Mike, but I didn't write it down and wasn't sure of by the time I got home) who came down from Fort Union,was in authentic Civil War dress. He gave a very nice synopsis of the battle, then a demonstration of his Springfield rifle, both of which the crowd of forty or so appreciated.

But it wasn't what I'd hoped for.

Union reenactors in Escondido in February, 2022.

It used to be that every year, on the weekend closest to March 26-28, the Park would sponsor a reenactment of the Battle of Glorieta. Groups of reenactors, most in meticulously researched and authentic dress, would set up camps, one for the Confederate forces and one for the Union forces. All weekend, tourists could wander among the tents asking questions and learning what life was like for the soldiers, merchants and camp women.

Ken Dusenbery and I at an Albuquerque convention for Social Studies teachers in 2014.

My connection to all this was a wonderful man named Ken Dusenbery. Ken, a veteran of the Vietnam war, was fascinated with military history. He was Corporal in the Artillery Company of New Mexico, a group of reenactors who took their jobs very seriously. Ken knew a lot about the life and times of the Civil War soldier and could tell you more about ammunition and "grub" than just about anyone alive. He read both Where Duty Calls and The Worst Enemy for me before they were published and helped me to get the details right.

Ken has since passed away, leaving a big hole in my heart. I miss his knowledge and the kind way he corrected my errors. I regret he wasn't able to read through book 3 of the series, The Famished Country, which comes out this fall.

The last time I saw Ken was in March of 2022, at Pecos National Historical Park. That time, there were both Confederate and Union camps, and tourists got to wander through the tents asking questions. Ken's company brought their howitzer, which was fired off to great applause. Many of the reenactors had their weapons with them and were happy to show them to interested people, but weapons were not the only things of interest. I remember my mother asking about the tar bucket that hung from one of the wagons. Others asked about the cooking implements and the portable writing desk. And my favorite memory from the day was the youngest Union soldier, the son of a reenactor who was proudly participating for the first time.

But there were no reenacted battles that year. Ken explained to me that the Park Service no longer wanted battles on their property. One ranger told me it was the gunsmoke that people complained of. Another said it was the glorification of war.

This year, the commemoration was distilled into just one person: Mike. He gave a great speech and fired three volleys, plus one more for an encore. But I missed the camps filled with men and women who've immersed themselves in the everyday life of the period and were so enthusiastic to share their knowledge with the rest of us.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a retired history and language arts teacher who is now writing full time. You can read more about here and her books on her website.

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Albuquerque Historical Site: La Glorieta

3/14/2024

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https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/NM-01-001-0089

La Glorieta has seen a lot of history. Albuquerque’s only surviving example of a Spanish Colonial hacienda, it was later owned by one of people who helped transform the town from a sleepy village to a railroad town.

In 1662, a soldier from Mexico City named Diego de Trujillo established a hacienda near what would later become Albuquerque’s Old Town. The house was damaged in 1680, when the Pueblo Revolt forced its occupants to flee the territory. The owners returned after 1692, during the period called the Reconquista, and rebuilt their home. The north and east wings of the twelve room, one-story adobe building that still stands might possibly date from this period.

In 1861, Franz Huning, a German immigrant who had opened a mercantile in Albuquerque’s Old Town, bought the property from the Franciscans. In addition to the eight-room hacienda, which Huning named La Glorieta, Spanish for arbor, the property included 700 acres of fields on which Huning grew crops. He added south and west wings to the house, creating a fully enclosed patio at its center. He also built a sawmill and a gristmill on the property.

Huning’s mercantile business depended on goods that he brought in along the Santa Fe Trail from Missouri. He was in St. Louis on business when, in 1862, the retreating Confederate Army of New Mexico, under the command of Major General Henry Hopkins Sibley, occupied La Glorieta. The officers lived in the home while the enlisted men camped in the nearby fields. The Confederates fired their cannons from the grounds of the gristmill during the artillery duel that became known as the Battle of Albuquerque.

https://www.albuqhistsoc.org/programs/ahs-2014-2015-programs/postwar-transformation-albuquerque-1945-1972/erna-fergusson/

Huning returned to Albuquerque in 1864 with a new wife, Ernestine Franke. They lived in La Glorieta for nineteen years, until 1883, when he built a new mansion, Castle Huning, down the street. In 1887 he deeded La Glorieta to his eldest daughter Clara as a wedding present when she married a local attorney named Harvey Butler Fergusson. They raised four children, including author Erna Fergusson, who has an Albuquerque Public Library named after her.

In 1940, Ruth Hanna McCormick Simms, a former Illinois congresswoman, bought

La Glorieta to house Manzano Day School, a private elementary school that she had started two years earlier. She had moved to Albuquerque after marrying local businessman and former New Mexico congressman, Albert Gallatin Simms, and established the school to provide an education for her daughter and the children of other prominent families.
Today, La Glorieta houses the administrative offices of the school. It is closed to the public, but tours and visits can be arranged by appointment

Jennifer Bohnhoff is an author and educator who lives in the mountains east of Albuquerque. She is presently working on The Famished Country, the third book in Rebels Along the Rio Grande, a trilogy of middle grade historical novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War. Where Duty Calls, the first book in the series, was published by Artemesia Press, and was published in May 2022. The second book, The Worst Enemy, was published in 2023. Both were finalists for Western Writers of America's spur award, and the first has also won the NM Book Award and the EVVY.

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Time to Play Ball Again

3/7/2024

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My husband at a game (because I take the pictures and am bad at selfies!)

March is here, and that means wind and freakish weather and the promise of baseball. Before we know it, spring training will be over and my husband will be glued to the tube watching his favorite teams.

And I do mean teams, with an s. Instead of rooting for just one team, my husband roots for the entire National League Central Division. The son of a strong St. Louis fan, he will cheer for the Pirates or the Cubs (and the Twins, even though they're American League. Me? I pick a few good looking young kids with funny batting stances to cheer for each year. Often, I cheer for the catchers on whatever team's playing.

And if you asked me to name a player, you'd get a mix of current players from a lot of different teams and players from long ago. I can't remember who plays for the Dodgers now versus who played for them when they were still in Brooklyn. Really, I'm just there for the beer and the crowd.

So it should come as no surprise that I love books that combine baseball and historical fiction. Last spring I wrote a whole list of baseball books for middle grade readers, many of which were set in the past. Recently I've found two new additions to add to my list. They'll delight the baseball fan, and they'll give a glimpse into the past at the same time. That's a win-win to me, especially since both books feature teams from the National League's Central Division!

Both books were recently published by Kinkajou Press, an imprint of Artemesia Publishing, LLC that was created in 2007 to publish early reader, mid-grade, and young adult fiction. Artemesia also publishes titles for adults, including some really interesting baseball fiction, nonfiction and biography.

Click the titles below to find the books on Bookshop.org.

Walter Steps Up To The Plate

It's 1927, and all twelve-year-old Walter wants is to hang out with his friends and go to Wrigley Field to watch his beloved Cubs play. Unfortunately, his mother develops tuberculosis, and he must accompany her west, where the air is drier and thinner and she has a hope of recovery. Walter finds himself boarding with his aunt, uncle, and a spoiled cousin who's not happy to share his room. The cost of caring for his mother is steep, but Walter steps up to the plate and takes on a job delivering newspapers. He encounters Al Capone, who just might be the answer to his family's financial straits, but at the price of Walter's integrity. This is a sweet story that will immerse readers into Albuquerque when it was still a small and dusty town. They'll also learn a lot about the Great Depression. And while the times were different, young readers will understand and root for this scrappy young protagonist.

The Batboy and the Unbreakable Record

It's 1938, and 12 year old Richie Goodwin' is facing an awful summer because his dad has broken his leg and Richie has to get a job to help support the family. But when he gets his dream job -- batboy for the Cincinnati Reds -- his life goes from miserable to fantastic. Richie's smart mouth and unwillingness to follow rules gets him in trouble, and he has to deal with bullies, but he learns his lessons and is able to stick around to see Johnny Vander Meer make history -- and set a record that might never be broken! If you don't know (I didn't!) both Johnny Vander Meer and his unbreakable record are real, not fiction. This is a great book for baseball loving boys, middle grade readers of historical fiction, and anyone who wants to see a boy make good in a difficult situation.

I've got one copy of each book, and now that I've read and enjoyed them, I'd like to pass them on. If you'd like either book, leave a comment. Tell me which one and why, and I may choose you!

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former educator who enjoys eating hotdogs and crackerjack and sitting next to her husband in ballparks. She is the author of a number of middle grade and adult books, many of them historical fiction. Kinkajou Press published two of the middle grade novels in her Rebels on the Rio Grande Trilogy: Where Duty Calls and The Worst Enemy. The third novel, The Famished Country, will come out this fall. A novel set in New Mexico 11,000 years ago, In the Shadow of Sunrise, is scheduled for release by Kinkajou next spring.

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Pancho Villa and the Raid on Columbus

2/29/2024

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In 1915, the Mexican Revolution had been going on for five years. The decades-long regime of President Porfirio Díaz had ended, and a power struggle between elites and the middle classes, in addition to labor and agrarian unrest had led to armed uprisings resulting in the assassination of Diaz’ successor, Francisco I. Madero under the orders of the next president, Victoriano Huerta. Huerta’s counter-revolutionary regime was opposed by a coalition of leaders from the Mexican states, including a Constitutionalist Army led by Governor of Coahuila, Venustiano Carranza, Emiliano Zapata who was leading an armed rebellion in Morelos, and the governor of Chihuahua, Francisco "Pancho" Villa, who led his own army in the northern part of Mexico. However, once Carranza took power, the alliance he’d had with Villa, Zapata and others dissolved and they began fighting among themselves.

By spring of 1916, Villa’s army was little more than a disorganized band, wandering northern Mexico in search of supplies. The 1915 Battle of Celaya had been a great defeat for Villa, and his army lacked the military supplies, money, and munitions needed to pursue his war against Carranza. While the reasons for the raid have never been established with any certainty, it is likely out of desperation that Villa planned the raid on the New Mexican border town of Columbus and the adjoining Camp Furlong. He camped his army of an estimated 1,500 horsemen outside of Palomas on the border three miles south of Columbus and waited for the right time to surge over the border and steal the supplies he so desperately needed.

Columbus was a small town of about 300 Americans and about as many Mexicans. Located just three miles north of the border with Mexico. It sat side by side with Camp Furlong, a small garrison intended to patrol and protect the border. It consisted the headquarters troop, one machine gun troop, and seven rifle troops, totaling 12 officers and 341 men, of which approximately 270 were combat troops.

Before the raid, Villa sent spies into the town to assess the presence of U.S. military personnel. They reported that only about thirty soldiers were garrisoned at Columbus. This was a significant error. On the night of the raid, approximately half of the 362 soldiers were out of camp on patrol, leave, or other assignments, but even at that reduced number, there were far more troops than Villa anticipated. Not knowing this, Villa moved north and crossed the border about midnight. Maude Hauke Wright, an American kidnap victim who was travelling with the raiding party, stated that Villa only sent 600 of his 1,500 men into the attack because he lacked the ammunition to arm them all.

Early in the morning of March 9, 1916, Villa divided his force into two columns. At 4:15, when it was still dark, he launched a a two-pronged attack on the town and the garrison. Most of the attacker approached on foot, their mounts left safely back with the rest of Villa’s troops. Some claim that Villa never crossed the border, but remained in Palomas. Others swear that he directed the attack from Cootes Hill, a small promontory overlooking Columbus.

The clock in the Columbus train station,, stopped when struck by a Villista bullet.

The Villistas entered Columbus from the west and southeast shouting "¡Viva Villa! ¡Viva Mexico!" and other phrases. The townspeople awoke to find their settlement in flames and the Mexicans looting their homes and shops. The raid soon escalated into a full-scale battle between Villistas and the United States Army. 2nd Lt. John P. Lucas made his way barefooted from his quarters to the camp's barracks, where he organized a hasty defense around the camp's guard tent, preventing the Villistas from stealing the troop’s machine guns. The troop's four machine guns fired more than 5,000 rounds apiece during the 90-minute fight, their targets illuminated by fires of burning buildings. Soldiers joined with Springfield rifles, and many of the townsfolk had shotguns and hunting guns of their own.

Finally, a bugler sounded the order to retreat and the Villistas disappeared back over the border, pursued by the regiment's 3rd Squadron until it ran low on ammunition and water.

Villa announced that the raid was a success, and that he’d captured 300 rifles and shotguns, 80 horses, and 30 mules. However, he’d also lost between 90 and 170 men, 63 killed in action and at least seven more who later died from wounds during the raid itself. The sixty-three dead Villa soldiers and all the dead Villa horses that were left behind in Columbus after the raid were dragged south of the stockyards, soaked with kerosene and burned. Of those captured during the raid, seven were tried and six hanged. Although records are inconsistent, the American dead seems to range between 8 to 11 soldiers and 7 or 8 civilians.

The tents at Camp Furlough when it was at its height. Photo by author, taken at display in Pancho Villa museum

The American public was outraged by Villa’s attack and the United States government wasted no time in responding. First on the scene were elements of the New Mexico National Guard. Other National Guard units from around the United States were called up. By the end of August 1916 over 100,000 troops were amassed on the border, with 5,000 headquartered at Camp Furlong. Camp Furlong also had supply facilities and repair yards for the early motor trucks used in Mexico when General John J. Pershing moved the Punitive Expedition into Mexico to track down Villa. Columbus also had the first tactical military airfield in the United States. The 1st Aero Squadron's Curtiss JN3 Jenny biplanes provided aerial observation and communications for the expedition.
Following the withdrawal of the Punitive Expedition, the importance of Camp Furlong declined. By 1920, when the Mexican Revolution ended, only 100 men were garrisoned there. All troops were gone by 1923.

Jennifer Bohnhoff's historical novel A Blaze of Poppies is the story of a young female rancher who is trying to keep her family's ranch and a member of the New Mexico National Guard who is in the area to protect the border. Agnes Day and Will Bowers both get drawn into Pancho Villa's raid, the ensuing Punitive Expedition, and World War I. Inspired by real stories set in the time and area, this is a work of fiction that will inspire and educate as well as entertain.

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Walnut Pie

2/15/2024

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I’ve been sharing Perspective, an historical novel set on Isle Royale during the Great Depression, with my critique group. This past session, my chapter included a scene where the characters make a walnut pie. It fit into my chapter well, since the characters, Genevieve and Ida, are using the shells to create ornaments for their Christmas tree, and if they’re shelling walnuts, they’d better do something with the meat. But I’d never researched further to find out just what was in that pie.

“Walnut pie?” my critic partners wondered. “What’s that? What goes into it? What does it taste like?”

Creator: Rainer Lesniewski | Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

In truth, I didn’t know. I’d included it because it was convenient. Maybe it was mentioned in one of the memoirs written by an islander that I had read while writing the first draft of this novel back in 2002, but I’ve forgotten whether that was the case, or I’d just made-up walnut pies out of thin air. Clearly, I needed to do more research.

Isle Royale is a long, thin island in Lake Superior, the westernmost of the Great Lakes. To some people, Lake Superior looks like a wolf looking to the left, and Isle Royale is the eye.

Isle Royale is a national park now. Earlier, it had been a site of copper mining, fishing and logging operations, and marginal farming. By the early 1930s, most of the inhabitants were only seasonal, visiting every summer to escape the heat and humidity of mainland Michigan and Minnesota. Tourists visited the island's hotels. Only a small but hardy group of fisherman endured hard winters cut off from the rest of the world by treacherous ice. What kind of pie, I wondered, would these independent souls create in their isolated wilderness homes?

There are lots of recipes for pies with walnuts on the internet. Many are fruit pies, often apple or apple and cranberry. Some, called Amish walnut pies, included oatmeal. Another Amish pie had whipping cream and gelatin. Many were similar to pecan pies. I didn’t find any pies on the internet that were called Isle Royale pie or even Michigan or Minnesota pies. Even if the inhabitants of this Lake Superior Island had made pies, they’d left easily accessible record on the internet, and I was in Maine while all my printed resource material was back in New Mexico. If I wanted a pie recipe now, I’d have to create it myself.

The recipe I finally settled on is very simple, like I assume my characters, living in an isolated island forest, would be most likely to make. It uses maple syrup, which was then produced on the island in small quantities for use by the local inhabitants. I made a test pie and shared it with my family and they pronounced it a winner, so here it is.

Walnut Pie

Put a pie crust into a 9” pie plate.
(Don’t have your own pie crust recipe? Click here for one of mine.)

Preheat oven to 375°

Place 1 ½ cup chopped walnuts on a baking sheet.
Bake 5-7 minutes to toast the nuts and bring out the flavor.

Mix together:
½ cup brown sugar
2 TBS flour
1 ¼ cup maple syrup
3 TBS melted butter
¼ tsp salt
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Stir in toasted walnuts. Pour into shell.

Bake for 40-45 minutes. Let cool completely before slicing and serving.

Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade through adult readers from her home high in the mountains of central New Mexico. She and her family visited Isle Royale during the summer of 2000, where they camped, canoed and portaged by day and listened to the wolves howl by night. During her ten days there, she fell in love with the island and its history. Perspective, her novel set there during the Great Depression, may come out this summer. The cover will be a lot better than the one pictured here.

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Heritage Fiction

2/8/2024

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Have you ever heard of Heritage Fiction? I hadn’t until I came across Ora Smith, a genealogist who creates fascinating historical fiction based on true events involving her ancestors. I’ve read two of her novels now, and I’m fascinated at the depth of research she puts into her stories.

I read White Oak River: A Story of Slavery's Secrets a while back. It’s the story of Caroline Gibson, who leaves a life of privilege on a plantation that uses slave labor to marry an abolitionist preacher, the Reverend John Mattocks. This couple is the author’s great-great-great-grandparents, from coastal North Carolina. When she gives birth to a son with dominant African traits, Caroline must decide if she’ll hold onto her bigotry at the cost of her relationships with both her husband and her son. The novel does an excellent job portraying that the Civil War may have changed laws, it failed to create a change of heart within southern society.

I just finished reading Smith’s The Peace of Pocahontas: Based on a True Story. This novel is the middle in a trilogy about Pocahontas and her role in securing peace between the Native peoples and the English colonizers. Chapters are presented in the voice of Pocahontas and of Thomas Savage, an orphan and indentured servant who lived among the Natives and served as an interpreter, and who is an ancestor of the author. It takes place in Virginia in 1613, when Pocahontas is kidnapped after three years of war. During her captivity, she learns English customs, wears English clothing, converts to Anglicanism, and marries John Rolfe. This series is a fascinating dive into a chapter in American history that most people are familiar with.

As luck would have it, I ended up reading another author in 2023 who is also writing Heritage Fiction. Olivia Hawker writes historical fiction, some of which is based on stories from her own family.

One of them, The Fire and the Ore, tells the story of three women: Tabitha, Jane, and Tamar, who are all wives of Thomas Ricks, one of the early Mormon settlers in Utah Territory. Set in 1856, the novel follows Tamar Loader and her family through a brutal pilgrimage from England to Utah, when she meets the man she is sure is destined to be her husband. She agrees to a polygamous union that is threatened when the US Army invades to stop the Mormon community from engaging in what they consider illegal practices. This is a part of U.S. History that few textbooks mention.

Hawker also wrote The Ragged Edge of Night, which tells the story of her grandfather and grandmother during World War II. When the Nazis close his school for handicapped children, Franciscan friar Anton Starzmann moves to a small German hamlet to wed —in name only—a widow who needs someone to protect her and help raise her three children. He joins the Red Orchestra, an underground network of resisters plotting to assassinate Hitler, but questions his values as he finds himself falling in love with his wife. This is a tense story, filled with beauty and emotion.

We all have family stories that we think would be good novels. The incidents our forebears went through were often dramatic and harrowing. I know it’s unlikely that I ever turn my family stories into novels: there’d be too many relatives who’d dispute the events or be offended by the portrayals of the people in their family. I’m glad Ora Smith and Olivia Hawker were able to overcome their worries (if they had any!) and produce such interesting windows into the past.

Jennfer Bohnhoff writes historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade through adult readers. None of her books have been based on her own family. You can read more about her and her books here.

For more on Ora Smith, go to her website at https://orasmith.com/
For more on Olivia Hawker, go to her website at https://www.hawkerbooks.com/

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Pareidolia

1/31/2024

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Have you ever heard a word for the first time, and then it seems to come up over and over in the next few days? This seems to happen to me with some regularity. A few weeks ago, that word was pareidolia.

Pareidolia sounds like a cross between paranoia and indolence: laying around and worrying that someone is watching you. But that’s not what it is. Pareidolia is defined as seeing significant patterns or recognizable images, especially faces, in random or accidental arrangements of shapes and lines: seeing significant images in insignificant things.

Pareidolia seems to be central to the human psyche. We’ve been doing it a long, long time. Take, for instance, the constellations: humans look at stars, randomly spaced throughout the sky, often millions of light years apart, and see pictures. Connect the dots and a group of stars becomes a mighty hunter facing off against a raging bull, twin brothers with their arms about each other’s shoulders, a queen sitting on her throne, a long-tailed bear.

Another common form of pareidolia is cloud watching. I have one friend who frequently posts pictures of clouds on Facebook. A whole lot of her friends see things in those clouds.

Photo Credit: NPS Photo, Sarah Sherwood

Her friends are not the only people on Facebook who practice Pareidolia. Recently, White Sands National Park, in the southern part of New Mexico recently admitted that in the park they frequently play "what do you see in that pedestal?" Pedestals are raised places that form when the moisture in a plant’s root system cements together a clump of the gypsum sand, creating a column that the wind then sculps into interesting shapes. Ranger Sarah thought this pedestal looked like a great white shark emerging from the sands.

A meme on Facebook showed a line of happy tires. One reader commented that they’d had a good year. Another meme showed a terrified couch.

My hiking group hikes up to Old Man Rock nearly every February.

When I built my house, I told the person selling me tile that I wanted something that would hide dog hair and coffee spills. I ended up with a mottled tan tile that is very conducive to my own pareidolic musings. Some images seem to come and go, like mirages. Others, like this one, stayed so vivid that I felt compelled to sketch it. What do you think? Do you see the vulture leaning over the hippo's shoulder, or something else?

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a writer who lives his in the mountains of central New Mexico. When she isn't staring out the window at clouds or finding pictures in the tile, she's writing historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade through adult readers. You can read more about her and her books on her website.

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Room to Write

1/25/2024

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When I celebrated my birthday this month, one of my kids gave me a copy of Rooms of Their Own: Where Great Writers Write, by Alex Johnson. Illustrated with colorful, loose pen and watercolors by James Oses, this book shares the writing rooms that fifty famous authors used to create their works, and offers glimpses into their writing methods, routines and habits. It’s made me think a bit about my own space.

When I’m at home, my writing is a bit of a mobile project. I move between a round table or drop-down desk in a study in the northwest corner of my home, and a lowered section of countertop in my pantry. Each has its own appeal. The round table has a lovely view north, over mountains and valleys. The drop-down is a convenient place to hide away my laptop and all my reference materials when I just can’t look at them anymore. Both are close to the router and printer, so they’re the best place if I’m making copies to read aloud or for future reference. The desk in the pantry is close to the kitchen and has the best room if I need to spread out materials. Sometimes I work from all three spaces in a single day. There are other times when I inhabit just one space for weeks on end.

I’ve been housesitting in Maine for the past month. There is a study in this house, but it is cold enough that I find my fingers going blue at the tips. I’ve done most of my work while sitting at a dining room table that looks out at a lake. I’ve seen that lake in full color, with green grass and a brilliant blue sky. It’s been so muted that I swore I was looking through a black and white filter. The water has been fully liquid, fully frozen, and many permutations in between: rippling with waves, smooth as glass, riddled with cracks, coated with snow.

Looking out on the lake has been especially inspiring to me because one of the pieces I’m working on is set on Isle Royale, an island in Lake Superior that is now a national park. My story takes place during the Depression, and the characters are families that live on the island full time and make their living by fishing. I worked on chapters set in the dead of winter, when the island is cut off from the mainland by huge, destructive ice floes. Frozen lakes aren’t something this New Mexican has experienced much. Neither is walking through mixed deciduous and evergreen forests. Even though I live with my back up against a national forest, it is primarily ponderosa and fir, evergreens that keep their needles and their shape throughout the winter. Here in Maine, a good 50% of the trees have lost their leaves. Combined with the frozen streams that run through the woods, the forest here seems a lot more bleak and desolate than the one I’m used to. It’s helped me add a lot of depth to my book’s setting.

I am not the only writer who becomes inspired by bleak surroundings. Rooms of Their Own tells me that George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four while in self-exile on Jura, and island in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides. The environment was harsh, and Orwell had few creature comforts. He lived spartanly, moving about the house, from sitting room to attic, to bedroom, to work where inspiration hit him. Although the austerity of his lifestyle was doubtless inspirational for his work, it was hard on his body; Orwell was suffering from tuberculosis, and the cold, damp air and his chain-smoking made his condition worse.

Victor Hugo also wrote while in exile, although his was political. Hugo got himself crossways with Napoleon III, so he moved to Guernsey in 1855. Over the next fifteen years, he wrote from a room he built at the top of his house. The room had windows on three walls and a glass ceiling that made it frigid in winter and broiling hot in summer, but it also gave him a view of the sky and the sea, and on clear days, his beloved France. Hugo wrote Les Mierables and Toilers of the Sea from this room.

Tomorrow I’m leaving my own self-imposed exile and heading back to New Mexico. I’m looking forward to being home again, to trading mountain views for lakes and ponderosas for poplars. But I’ll be bringing the experiences I had back with me and they’ll find their way into my writing.

Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade through adult readers from her home high in New Mexico's central mountains.

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Divided Duty

DIVIDED DUTY

The Civil War Battle of Albuquerque

Where Have All The Soldiers Gone?

Albuquerque Historical Site: La Glorieta

Time to Play Ball Again

Walter Steps Up To The Plate

The Batboy and the Unbreakable Record

Pancho Villa and the Raid on Columbus

Walnut Pie

Walnut Pie

Heritage Fiction

Pareidolia

Room to Write

ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

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