Category:

Heritage Fiction

2/8/2024

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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A Couple of Inspiring Christmas Gifts: Treasures from the Past

1/11/2024

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One of my sisters really gets me. I mean, really, really understands what interests and excites me. Luckily for me, she also loves to search ebay for unique things.

This past Christmas, I got two treasures from her that will undoubtably work their way into one of my novels. I’m sharing them with you and hope that they interest and excite you as much as they did me.

The first gift was a little brass box with an emblem that read “Gott Mit Uns” over a picture of a crown. After a little research, I discovered that Gott Mit Uns is German for God with us, and was a slogan used by the German army in World War I. The crown is the imperial crown of the Second Reich, and is described both as German and as Prussian online.

The emblem on the box originally graced a belt buckle on a uniform. Here is a picture of one still attached.

So how did this emblem get placed on a brass box? The answer is an interesting bit of World War I history. Most people know that World War I is notable as the war in which both sides hunkered down in trenches along a front that became unmovable. Soldiers spent many weary months hunkered down in the mud, waiting to go “over the top” and attack the other side. The waiting grew monotonous.

To counter the boredom, soldiers found things to do to occupy their time. They had to use what they had at hand, and once one creative soldier had invented a form of art, it seems all his buddies copied it. The thousands of examples of vases made from shell casings, each unique in its decorations, attests to the hundreds of thousands of shells that flew over the trenches.

Sometimes what was lying around was pieces of uniforms. The belt buckle on a German uniform is exactly the right size to be made into a match box. The one I have has a lid that separates from the box. Others I found online were hinged or were squared off tubes with open ends. On some, the smooth brass had been deckled or worked into ridges. I do not know if the top of the box is part of the original belt buckle or if it was fashioned from a fragment of a shell casing. Either way, I can imagine a soldier hunkered down in the cold and damp, intently working on a bit he picked up in no man’s land to turn it into a little trinket for his loved ones back home.

The second treasure my sister gave me is a little, paperback book entitled History and Rhymes of the Lost Battalion, by “Buck Private” McCollum. Lee Charles McCollum self-published a 32-page volume of poetry by that name in 1919. That edition included sketches by Franklin Sly, another veteran of the American Expeditionary Force that went to Europe in 1918. Pt. McCollum saw action in France in many of the same areas as the famous Lost Battalion, but he is not listed on the unit's roster. Whether that means he wrote under a nom de plume was something I was not able to ascertain. The books was again published in 1919, 1921, 1922, and 1929, by which time Franklin Sly had passed away and another veteran, and Tolman R. Reamer, had completed artwork. The little volume grew over time. By 1939 it was up to 140 pages and included stories, remembrances by some of the key figures in the fight, pictures and tributes both to the Battalion and to its commander, Lt. Col. Charles Whittlesey, who had passed away in 1921. Over 700,000 copies of the various editions were sold.

The volume tells the story of Battalion 1 of the 77th Division, which pushed hard into the Argonne Forest and found itself cut off from the rest of the American forces.

On the morning of October 3, 1918, Companies A, B, C, E, and H of the 808th Infantry, the 308th Infantry’s Company H, Company K of the 307th Infantry and Companies C and of 306th Machine Gun Battalion, all members of the Seventy-Seventh Division, were cut off from the other American forces near Charlevoix, in the Argonne Forest, and surrounded by a superior number of Germans. For four days, the approximately 550 men, under command of Major Charles W. Whittlesey managed to survive without food and with a dwindling supply of ammunition, fending off enemy machine gun, rifle, trench mortar, and grenade fire and some friendly fire from their own artillery. When they were finally reconnected with the main American force, only 194 of the officers and men were able to walk out of the position. 107 had been killed.

McCollum’s poems are about that experience, plus other observations in war, including poems about his gas mask and about kissing a French girl. Some are cute and sweet, while others are sad elegies to friends now dead. It’s a great volume for anyone interested in the experience of American doughboys.
I’m thinking I need to write a sequel to my WWI novel, a Blaze of Poppies, with a character who was in the Lost Battalion and now carries around a matchbox as a memento.

What do you think? Is that a story you'd like to read? If I ever write it, you can thank my sister.

A Blaze of Poppies is an historical novel that tells the story of a New Mexico rancher in the southern part of the state and a member of the New Mexico National Guard's Battery A, who participated in many of the final battles of World War I. It is available in paperback and ebook through many online booksellers and directly from the author.

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Gabriel Paul, Civil War Hero

7/20/2023

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Just about anyone can name a general from the Civil War. Gabriel René Paul’s name doesn’t come as readily as others, but he was an important figure and his story is an interesting one.

Gabriel René Paul was born on March 22, 1813, in St. Louis, Missouri, a city that had been founded by his maternal grandfather, the prosperous fur trader René-Auguste Chouteau, Jr. His father, Rene Paul, was a military engineer who had served as an officer in Napoleon’s army and who was wounded at Trafalgar. Paul followed in his father’s military footsteps, entering the United States Military Academy, commonly known as West Point, when he was only 16 years old. He graduated in the middle of the Class of 1834, ranked 18th of the 36 graduates.

After graduating, Paul was commissioned as a lieutenant in the 7th United States Infantry. He served in Florida in the last 1830s and early 1840s, where he participated in the Seminole Wars. Like many of the other men who would become generals during the Civil War, he served under both Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott during the Mexican-American War. He saw battle action at Fort Brown, Monterrey, Vera Cruz, Cerro Gordo, Churubusco, Molino del Rey and Chapultepac. He was given an honorary promotion, or brevet, to the rank of major when he led a storming party and captured a Mexican army flag during the battle of Chapultepac. After the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, Paul served in several different frontier army posts and participated in several expeditions up the Rio Grande and into Utah.

When the Civil War began, Paul was a Major in the 8th Infantry Regiment stationed at Fort Union in the New Mexico Territory. In December 1861 he was appointed Colonel of the 4th New Mexico Volunteers and commander of the fort. After the Battle of Valverde, Colonel E.R.S. Canby, the commander of all Union troops in New Mexico, sent a message to Paul telling him to hold the fort at all costs. However, when Colonel John Potts Slough arrived with his Colorado volunteers, he announced that he outranked Paul because he had been commissioned a few days earlier than Paul had. Slough deliberately ignored Canby’s orders and proceeded south with his troops, who engaged in the Battle of Glorieta, leaving Paul to guard the fort.

A portrait taken after Gettysburg. If you look closely, it is clear that his eye socket is empty.

In late May 1862, Paul mustered out of the New Mexico Volunteers, and holding the rank of Major in the Regular Army, was sent east to work on the defenses of Washington. While he was stationed there, his wife went to the White House and pleaded President Lincoln for a promotion for her husband. Lincoln documented the meeting with a note that read “Today Mrs. Major Paul calls and urges appointment of her husband as a Brigadier [General]. She is a saucy woman and will keep tormenting me until I may have to do it.” Less than two weeks later, President Lincoln signed Gabriel Paul’s commission as a Brigadier General of volunteers. He was given the assignment of brigade commander in the First Army Corps, and he led troops at Fredericksburg and at Chancellorsville.

At Gettysburg, he was transferred to a brigade in 2nd Division, where he led the soldiers of the 16th Maine, 13th Massachusetts, 94th and 104th New York, and 107th Pennsylvania Infantries as they threw up makeshift barricades and entrenchments in front of the Lutheran Seminary building during the early parts of the first day of fighting. When some 8,000 Confederates backed with 16 cannons began making significant inroads into the Union First Corps’s exposed right flank along a prominent rise of ground known as Oak Hill Ridge, the Second Corps was called in. When Henry Baxter’s brigade was nearly out of ammunition, Gabriel Paul’s brigade was brought forward to take its place. It was soon after his men had arrived on Oak Hill that he was struck in the head by a bullet that entered behind his right eye, passed through his head, and exited through his left eye socket. The men who watched him fall believed that Paul had been killed and left him where he lay as the battle intensified. Late in the afternoon, the First Corps and Eleventh Corps troops surrounding Paul’s brigade broke and began to retreat. Baxter’s and Paul’s men followed. When the division reformed on Cemetery Hill, it was discovered that 1,667 of the approximately 2,500 men who had gone into battle that morning had become casualties. Paul was one of the 776 men killed, wounded, or missing from his brigade.

When soldiers returned to the field to search for living among the dead, they found Paul and carried him to a field hospital in the rear. Later, Paul was brevetted a Brigadier General in the Regular Army “For Gallant and Meritorious Service at the Battle of Gettysburg.” He was completely blind and his sense of smell and hearing were seriously impaired for the rest of his life, and he suffered frequent headaches and seizures, yet he refused to leave the service. He worked as Deputy Governor of the Soldier’s Home near Washington, and then was the administrator of the Military Asylum at Harrodsburg, Kentucky. On December 20, 1866, he finally retired.

For the next twenty-two years, Gabriel Paul’s health deteriorated. During the final years of his life, seizures were an almost daily occurrence, and he suffered up to six epileptic attacks a day. When he died on May 5, 1886 twenty-two years, ten months, and five days after the battle of Gettysburg, his doctor pronounced that the cause of death was an “epileptiform convulsion, the result of a wound received at the battle of Gettysburg, Pa.” He was buried in Section 1, Lot 16 of Arlington National Cemetery.

The Battle of Gettysburg claimed the lives of more generals than any other battle in the American Civil War. Six general officers fell either dead or fatally wounded at both Antietam and Franklin. By most accounts, nine generals were either killed or listed among the mortally wounded at Gettysburg. The casualties include four Union (John Reynolds, Samuel Zook, Stephen Weed, Elon Farnsworth) and five Confederates (Lewis Armistead, Paul Semmes, William Barksdale, Dorsey Pender, Richard Garnett.) If we include Strong Vincent, who fell atop Little Round Top and who was posthumously honored with a promotion to brigadier general, the number climbs to ten, five for each side. I think that Gabriel Paul should be included in this list, even though he didn’t die until much later. He represents the countless many whose lives ended due to the Civil War, even if they didn’t die.

Gabriel Rene Paul is a background character in The Worst Enemy, book 2 of Jennifer Bohnhoff's trilogy Rebels Along the Rio Grande. Written for middle grade readers and above, the trilogy tells the story of the Civil War in New Mexico Territory. It is published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing. Contact the publisher for class set discounts and teacher's guides.

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John Potts Slough: Victor of Glorieta

5/11/2023

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Colonel John P. Slough , of the First Colorado Regiment ( From a war - time photograph loaned by Mr. Samuel C. Dorsey , of Denver . )

John Potts Slough came from a prestigious military and political family. His ancestor, Mattias Slough, was the first colonel appointed by General George Washington during the Revolutionary War and was also a member of the Pennsylvania assembly before he left public life to run a tavern in Lancaster County.

John had big shoes, and expectations, to fill.

John Potts Slough (whose name rhymes with 'plough') was born on February 1, 1829, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He earned a

degree in law and was elected as a Democrat to the Ohio General Assembly. Things were looking promising for this young man, but all was not perfect. Potts was noted for having a fierce temper and could pepper his tirades with obscenities. He was expelled from the Legislature after engaging in a fist fight with another assemblyman. He then moved to Kansas where he was narrowly defeated in a race for the Governor's seat.

Slough then moved to Denver and became one of its preeminent lawyers. When the Civil War broke out, he entered the service as the Captain of the 1st Colorado "Pike's Peakers" Volunteer Regiment, then convinced the territory's Governor, William Gilpin, to raise his rank to Colonel. Slough used family money to support the troops. He located a vacant building, the Buffalo House Hotel, and got it donated for use as barracks until Camp Weld was built on the south side of Denver. Despite his organizational acumen, Slough was not popular with the troops, who found him cold and imperious.

In 1862, a Confederate army invaded New Mexico Territory, and Slough marched his regiment to Fort Union. Once there, he took assumed control of the fort, arguing that he outranked Colonel Paul, the regular Army officer who had been in control, by reason of an earlier appointment date.

Colonel Edward Canby, who commanded the Department of New Mexico, ordered Slough to stay at the fort, but Slough deliberately misinterpreted the orders and marched to Glorieta Pass, where he engaged in a battle that ultimately turned the tide and sent the Confederate Army back to Texas. The victory was not a sweet one for Slough. Worried that he would be drummed out for disobeying orders and convinced that his own men fired on him during the battle, he resigned his commission and left the state.

Slough went to Washington, D.C., where once again things seemed to be going his way. He was appointed Brigadier General of Volunteers and became the military Governor of Alexandria, Virginia. Slough served as pallbearer at Lincoln's funeral and was a member of the court that convicted Henry Wirz, commander of the notorious Andersonville Prisoner of War Camp. In 1866, President Andrew Johnson appointed Slough the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New Mexico.

Slough is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Once he returned to the territory, Slough again showed concern for his old troops. His efforts to have proper burials for the soldiers killed at Glorieta resulted in the creation of the National Cemetery in Santa Fe in 1867. In 1895, Confederates who died in the battle were interred there as well.

But once again, Slough's fiery temper and outspoken tirades got him into trouble. President Andrew Johnson wanted Slough to break down the corrupt patronage system that had plagued New Mexico for centuries, and Slough began by attacking peonage, which he compared to slavery. This swiftly earned him enemies in the still divided and notoriously violent territory. On December 17, 1867, Slough was playing billiards in the La Fonda Hotel when he and another former Union officer and New Mexico legislator, William Logan Ryerson, got in an argument. Two days later, Ryerson, who was also a part of the notoriously corrupt Santa Fe Ring, fatally shot an unarmed Slough in the lobby of Santa Fe's Exchange Hotel. Ryerson was tried for murder but the jury acquitted him, saying he had acted in self defense.

Slough is one of the historical characters in Jennifer Bohnhoff's Civil War novel The Worst Enemy which will be published in August 2023 by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing. The Worst Enemy is the second in the trilogy Rebels Along the Rio Grande. and is available for preorder. The first book in the series, Where Duty Calls, was published in 2022 and is available here. Both novels are suitable for middle grade readers and above.

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Samuel H. Cook, Miner and Soldier

5/4/2023

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A photo of a real boy who became the inspiration for my fictitious character, Cian Lachlann.

When I began writing Rebels on the Rio Grande, my series of historical novels on the Civil War in New Mexico, I soon realized that no real characters were present for all the events I wished to portray. That left me with a choice: did I add a lot more point of view characters into my stories so that I could always be assured to have someone the reader knew at each event? Or did I take out interesting and significant events because none of my characters were actually there?

I finally settled on a third approach. I filled my books with real, historical characters, yet I created fictitious characters for my main characters. That way, they could be everywhere I needed them to be. In The Worst Enemy, the second novel in my series, I created Cian Lachlann, an orphaned boy originally from Ireland, to represent the Union side of the story. He is representative of a number of real boys who joined the war effort out of desperation and a need for food and guidance.

Samuel H. Cook

One of the real people who show up in The Worst Enemy, is Samuel H. Cook.

Cook came to the Rockies in 1859 in search of gold.
By summer of 1861, he and his partners, George Nelson, and Luther Wilson, were out money, out of food, and nearly out of hope.

Reading a newspaper near their Golden, Colorado claim, Cook saw an advertisement that stated "the United States Government desperately need troops to wage war and defend itself from secessionist aggression."

The article claimed that any man who could recruit 25 volunteers would be an officer and lead his own troops.

Cook rode the fifteen miles into Denver and had recruiting posters printed. He plastered those posters throughout Rocky Mountain gold mining towns. Men began to show up at his tent to sign up the next day.

Luther Wilson

Cook's first two recruits were his mining partners. George Nelson became Captain Cook's First Lieutenant, and Luther Wilson his Second Lieutenant.

But these three were not the only men in the Colorado gold fields who needed a fresh start. The prospect of regular meals, warm clothing, and a comfortable bed attracted many hungry miners from across the region. By mid August, Cook was able to report that he had 87 volunteers ready to ride with him to Kansas to join the Union Army. Cook's old friend, Colonel Jim Lane, wrote back from Leavenworth, Kansas with Cook's appointment, welcoming him.

Governor William Gilpin

Cook and his men never made it to Kansas.
They stopped for lunch in Denver on the first day of their ride to Kansas, and William Gilpin, the territorial governor, treated Cook to a meal at Sutherland House, one of the fanciest eateries in town. During that meal, Gilpin convinced Cook that the territory needed protection just as much as the Union did, and that he and his men would do well to stay in Colorado.

Cook convinced his men to join the 1st Regiment of the Colorado Volunteers, which Gilpin had appointed Colonel John P. Slough to lead.

John Slough

Slough wanted to run an infantry regiment, but two of his companies, one of which was Cook's Company F, refused to give up their horses.

Cook is credited with being the first Union casualty in the Battle of Apache Canyon, the name given to the first day of the Battle of Glorieta Pass. He was his three times in the thigh by buck and ball before his horse went down. He survived his wounds, but never saw action again.

Rebels Along the Rio Grande is a trilogy of historical fiction novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War. Samuel Cook, George Nelson, and Luther Wilson are all real people, but are portrayed fictitiously in the second of the novels, The Worst Enemy which will be published on August 15, 2023 by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing. It can be preordered on Bookshop.org. The Worst Enemy continues the story begun in Where Duty Calls, which was a finalist for both the prestigious Zia Award and the Spur Award.

Mrs. Bohnhoff is an educator, historian, and author who lives in the mountains of central New Mexico. You can read about all of her books here.

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Kozlowski's Ranch: Important Site in the Battle of Glorieta

4/13/2023

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The decisive battle in the Confederacy's attempt to take New Mexico during the Civil War took place on March 26-28, 1862. Called the Battle of Glorieta, or the Battle of Glorieta Pass, it ranged through a narrow mountain pass that was the last leg of the Old Santa Fe Trail before it reached Santa Fe. Three ranches, owned by three very different characters, were settings for this battle.

Martin Kozlowski came to the area by a circuitous route. He was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1827 and fought in the 1848 revolution against the Prussians. He was a refugee for two years in England, during which time he met and married an Irish woman named Ellene. The two immigrated to American in 1853, and Martin enlisted in the First Dragoons, who were fighting Apaches in the Southwest.

Martin must have fallen in love with New Mexico during his Army years. In 1858 he mustered out and used his 160-acre government bounty land warrant to purchase the land on the far eastern edge of Glorieta Pass. Here, the Pecos River meets Glorieta Stream in a wide, flat area that is well watered and has fertile soil. Kozlowski's 600 acre spread included 50 improved acres, which consisted of a home for the family, a trading post, a tavern, and rooms for travelers. It had a spring for fresh water, and lots of forage for horses and mules. The 1860 agriculture census shows that Kozlowski grew corn and raised livestock, but a lot of his livelihood came from accommodating for travelers on the Santa Fe trail.

The Spanish mission church at Pecos Pueblo. The entrance to a kiva is in the foreground

This area had been settled long before the Santa Fe Trail opened. Perhaps the first settlers in the area were the people who founded Pecos Pueblo sometime around AD 1100. Historically known as Cicuye (sometimes spelled Ciquique), which mean the "village of 500 warriors," the Pueblo was visited by the Spanish explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado in 1540. The Spanish mission church was built in 1619 and the kiva in 1680, after a revolt that caused the Spanish to abandon the area. In 1838, attacks by Comanches compelled the inhabitants to abandon the area and move in with their relatives at the Walatowa Pueblo in Jemez. Twenty years later, Kozlowski moved to the area and used some of the timbers and bricks from the abandoned pueblo to build his buildings.

Martin Kozlowski in front of his trading post.

Kozlowski's ranch became site of Camp Lewis, the headquarters for the Union Army during the Battle of Glorieta. The troops were mostly men from Colorado, who had come from Camp Wells in Denver, through Raton Pass, and stopped in Fort Union. Their leader, John Slough, intended to engage the Confederates in Santa Fe and was surprised to encounter Confederate troops in the pass.

The Union Army continued to maintain a hospital in Kozlowski's tavern for another two months after the battle was over.

After the war, Kozlowski complimented them, saying “When they camped on my place, they never robbed me of anything, not even a chicken.” Perhaps their good behavior was because Kozlowski was former military himself.

The early 1870s appear to be the high point for the Kozlowski family's enterprises. In 1873, U.S. Attorney T.B. Catron sued him for violating a federal law that prevented non-Indians from settling on pueblo land grants. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, but ultimately Martin paid $1,000 and was able to keep his land. In 1880 the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad ran its line through the canyon, effectively ending the lucrative Santa Fe Trail traffic. Soon thereafter, Kozlowski moved to Albuquerque, where he died in 1905.

Kozlowski's ranch traded hands several times after he left it. Sometimes, it was a working ranch. At other times, It became a dude ranch where tourists could live like pampered cowboys. In 1939, a Texas oilman and rancher named Buddy Fogelson bought the property and renamed it The Forked Lightning Ranch. Fogelson's widow, the actress Greer Garson, donated the ranch to the National Park Service in 1991. It is now part of Pecos National Park.

Kozlowski's Ranch is one of the major settings for The Worst Enemy, which will be published August 15, 2023 and is available for preorder at Bookshop.org.

The Worst Enemy is book 2 of Rebels Along the Rio Grande, a trilogy of middle grade historical novels about New Mexico during the Civil War.

Book 1: Where Duty Calls, is available in ebook and paperback. It was a finalist for both the NM Women's Press Zia award and the Western Writer's of America spur award in 2023.

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A Confederate Point of View

2/9/2023

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When historians want to know what it was like to be part of the Confederate invasion of New Mexico, one of the people they turn to is Alfred Brown Peticolas.

Peticolas was was born on May 27, 1838, in Richmond, Virginia.. In 1859, he came west to Victoria, Texas, where he set up a law partnership with Samuel White.

On September 11, 1861, he joined the Confederate Army. Peticolas enlisted in Company C of the Fourth Regiment of Texas Mounted Volunteers,. This was part of Henry Hopkins Sibley's Army of New Mexico, a brigade with which Sibley intended to capture the rich Colorado gold fields, then secure the gold and harbors of California for the Confederacy. Throughout his time in New Mexico, Peticolas kept a diary in which he set down his keen observations about the country through which he traveled. He was also an artist and sketched his surroundings. The diary filled several books, the first of which was destroyed when the wagon in which is was stored was burned.

Peticolas sketched the San Miguel mission church in Socorro, New Mexico. After the Civil War, Bishop Lamy remodeled this adobe church.. .

He also drew San Felipe church, in Albuquerque's Old Town. In his sketch, the Confederate flag flies from a flag pole in the center square of the village, right in front of the church.

The Confederate, Mexican, Spanish, and American flags, flew over Albuquerque's Old Town representing all the governments that had controlled the town. In 2015, deemed too controversial, the stars and bars were taken down.

Departing Albuquerque, Peticolas' unit traveled through Tijeras Canyon, then turned north, taking the road now known as N14 towards Santa Fe. They camped for over a week in the mountain village of San Antonio. The church, the building at the far left of the picture, burned down and was rebuilt in 1957. The Confederate tents and wagons are on the far right of the picture.

After Sibley's retreat back to San Antonio Texas, Peticolas participated in the Louisiana Campaign. Finally, illness led to his reassignment as a clerk at the quartermaster headquarters, and he finished the war behind a desk.

Rebels on the Rio Grande: the Civil War Journal of A.B. Peticolas, edited by Don E. Alberts, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1984 is a compilation of the passages from the diary that related to New Mexico.

While he is not represented in Jennifer Bohnhoff's trilogy of novels about the Civil War, his material was instrumental in shaping the narrative and illuminating it with the little details that make historical fiction feel accurate.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is an author and educator who lives very close to the mountain town that Peticolas sketched. Where Duty Calls the first novel in her triloogy Rebels Along the Rio Grande, came out in 2022. The second, The Worst Enemy, will be published in the summer of 2023.

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Crossing the Alps: Reality vs. Propaganda

11/30/2022

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When Napoleon Bonaparte crossed the Alps to push the Austrians out of Italy in the spring of 1800, he was determined that the world know that this crossing put him on a footing with the world’s most renowned generals. Hannibal Barca, the great Carthaginian general, had crossed in 218 BC to attack the Romans. Charlemagne, the great Frankish king who became the first Holy Roman Emperor, did so in 772 AD. Now that Napoleon was to add this accomplishment to his list, he commissioned his favorite painted, Jacques-Louis David, to commemorate the event. David did so in his five versions of Napoleon Crossing the Alps, paintings that remains instantly recognizable the world over.

But what Napoleon wanted and what David provided, was not in any way historically accurate. Instead, it is propaganda, more representative of Napoleon’s character and goals. David didn't paint what Napoleon looked like as he cross the Alps. He painted what Napoleon wanted everyone to think he looked like: a man who could control France and the world as easily as he could control -- with just one hand. -- a rearing horse.

In the original version, which is hung at Malmaison, a very young-looking Bonaparte wears an orange cloak and rides a black and white piebald horse. The Charlottenburg shows Napoleon with a slight smile, wearing a red cloak and mounted on a chestnut horse. There are two versions hung at Versailles, the first shows a stern-looking Napoleon riding a dappled grey horse, while the second shows an older Napoleon, with shorter hair wearing an orangy-red cloak and mounted on a black and white horse. A final version, from the Belvedere, is almost identical to the first Versailles version. In all versions, the horse is rearing and Napoleon is pointing, guiding his men over difficult pass. Behind the horse and rider, there is a small view of soldiers struggling to get their cannons over the pass. The sky is stormy and dark.

What Napoleon wanted and what David provided, was not in any way historically accurate. Instead, it is propaganda, more representative of Napoleon’s character and goals. Not even the face in David’s portraits was drawn from life because the fidgety and impatient Bonaparte had refused to sit still for the painter.

In one account, David asks Napoleon to pose and he answers “Sit? For what good? Do you think that the great men of Antiquity for whom we have images sat?”

“But Citizen First Consul,” David responded, “I am painting you for your century, for the men who have seen you, who know you, they will want to find a resemblance.”

“A resemblance? It isn't the exactness of the features, a wart on the nose which gives the resemblance. It is the character that dictates what must be painted...Nobody knows if the portraits of the great men resemble them, it is enough that their genius lives there.”

After failing to persuade Napoleon to sit still, David copied the features of a bust of the First Consul. To get the posture correctly, David had his son perch on top a ladder.

Look in the lower right hand corner, where men are pulling a cannon barrel.

But it is not just Napoleon’s face that is inaccurate. The trail over the Grand Saint Bernard Pass is so narrow, steep, and rocky that wheeled conveyances, including cannons, could not negotiate it. The army took apart the cannon and their carriage in Bourg-Saint-Pierre, the highest village up the northern side of the pass. Tree trunks were hollowed out, the cannon barrels placed inside them, then slings were made so that 100 men could carry each cannon barrel. Other men carried the disassembled carriages, and other men carried the wheels.
Records indicate that Napoleon did not lead his men over the pass. Instead, General Maréscot led the army while Bonaparte followed after them by several days. By the time he crossed, the sky was sunny and the weather calm, although it remained cold and the ground covered with snow.

Finally, Napoleon Bonaparte was not riding any of the horses depicted in the various versions of David’s paintings. Because of the treacherous conditions, he was riding a much mor surefooted mule, and the mule was being led by an alpine guide named Pierre-Nicolas Dorsaz.
Dorsaz later related that the mule slipped during the ascent into the mountains. Napoleon would have fallen over a precipice had Dorsaz not been walking between the mule and the edge of the track. Although Napoleon showed no emotion at the time, he began questioning his guide about his life in the village of Bourg-Saint-Pierre. Dorsaz told Napoleon that his dream was to have a small farm, a field and cow. When the First Consul asked about the normal fee for alpine guides, Dorsaz told him that guides were usually paid three francs. Napoleon then ordered that Dorsaz be paid 60 Louis, or 1200 francs for his "zeal and devotion to his task" during the crossing of the Alps. Local legend says that Dorsaz used the money to buy his farm and marry Eléonore Genoud, the girl he loved.

In 1848 Arthur George, the 3rd Earl of Onslow, was visiting the Louvre with Paul Delaroche, the painter who had painted Charlemagne Crossing the Alps. George commissioned Delaroche to produce a more accurate version of Napoleon crossing the Alps, which was completed in 1850. While much more historically accurate, this depiction is nowhere as heroic or romantic.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is currently working on a novel set in the Great Saint Bernard Pass in the years 1799 and 1800. Napoleon has a tiny cameo appearance in her story, but Dorsaz the mountain guide shows up in three different scenes. For more information about her and her other books, see her website.

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The Great and Little Passes of Saint Bernard

11/15/2022

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There are two passes in the southern Alps which bear the name Saint. Bernard, and they are often confused with each other.

The Great Saint Bernard Pass is the lowest pass lying on the ridge between the two highest mountains of the Alps, Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa. At 8,100 ft high, it connects Martigny in the Swiss canton of Valais, with Aosta, Italy. The Little Saint Bernard Pass, 7,178 ft high, straddles the French–Italian border and connects Savoie, France to the Aosta Valley.

Both passes have been used since prehistoric times. At the summit, the road through Little St Bernard Pass bisects a stone circle that might have been a ceremonial site for the Tarentaisians, a Celtic tribe, during the period from c. 725 BC to 450 BC. The road has taken the place of a standing stone that stood in its center. While there are indications that the Great St Bernard Pass has been used since at least the bronze age, the first historical reference to it refers to its use by Boii and Lingones, Celtic tribes who crossed it during their invasion of Italy in 390 BC.

The stone ring at the top of Little Saint Bernard Pass. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Publisher New York Ward, Lock, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Writers in the 1st century BC called the Great St Bernard Pass the Punic Pass. It may be that they misinterpreted the Celtic word pen, meaning head or summit, and wrongly believed that it was the pass that the Carthaginian general Hannibal used while crossing with his elephants into Italy in 218 BC.

While no one is sure of the exact route that Hannibal used, based on the limited descriptions written by classical authors, many a full century after the event, most historians now believe that Hannibal used the Little Saint Bernard Pass.

Wanting to find a shorter route between Italy and Gaul than the commonly used coastal route, Julius Caesar tried to secure the Great Saint Bernard Pass, but it remained insecurely held until Augustus’s time when Aosta was founded on the southern edge of the pass. By 43 AD, when the emperor Claudius reigned, both the Great and Little Passes had Roman roads and mansios, rest places maintained by the central government for the use of those traveling on official business. Both also had a temple to Jupiter at their summit.

At the Great St. Bernard Pass, a cross inscribed with Deo optimo maximo, to the best and greatest god was placed where the temple had been. The bronze statue of St Bernard stands where the mansio was. Coins dating back to the reign of Theodosius II, in the 1st half of the 5th century are now on display in the museum of the nearby hospice, while some of the buildings in the village of Bourg-Saint-Pierre 7 1/2 miles north, on the Swiss side of the pass, contain fragments of the marble temple.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the mountain passes became haunts of brigands and outlaws who preyed on travelers. The first hospice, built to provide travelers a safe place to stop, was built in Bourg-Saint-Pierre during the 9th century and is first mentioned in a manuscript dated between 812 and 820 AD. Saracens destroyed this building when they invaded the area in the mid-10th century. It was refounded at the highest point on the Great St Bernard Pass in 1049, by Bernard of Menthon, the archdeacon of Aosta. Today, the hospice straddles both sides of the modern road and the old Roman road, which continues to see service as hiking path, goes around its northern edge, just uphill from the modern road..

Soumei Baba, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

This past summer, my husband, two friends, and I walked most of the way around Mont Blanc. Because we had some difficulty finding room in the hiking huts, we took a detour, traveling by bus through the Great Saint Bernard Pass. The Swiss bus took us up to the hospice, but would go no farther. We got off, then, unsure of when or even if a bus would be coming to the Italian side, we scurried past the hospice and its lake, and over the border into Italy. Fortunately, we learn that an Italian bus was coming soon and we would not be stranded at the top of the pass. Unfortunately, that mean we did not get to tour the hospice or the museum. However, the short time I spent there was inspiration enough to get a story started in my head. I am working on that story now.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is the author of several contemporary and historical novels for middle grade and adult readers. You can learn more about her books on her website.

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Bedbugs!

11/3/2022

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This summer my husband and I joined another couple on a grand adventure: the four of us walked around Mont Blanc, the largest mountain in the Alps. Mont Blanc straddles the borders of France, Switzerland and Italy, so I had a lot to think about as I walked. It was an interesting and exciting, and it inspired me to begin thinking of how I could turn what I saw and experienced, both the good and the bad, into a book.

I won’t sugarcoat it: I did experience both good and bad. The scenery was beautiful, the food fantastic, the people friendly and kind. But there was also some parts of the trip that I wouldn’t want to repeat. The bedbugs fall into the later category.

We stayed in a wide variety of lodgings during our trip. One night, we stayed in a hostel that looked like it had been used as a barn before being converted into a place for hikers. The inside was furnished with rows of bunkbeds. The bathroom area, which had many narrow rooms with outfitted with toilets and others with showerheads, also had a long, trough-like sink. Our own beds were up in what had been the hayloft. It looked nice enough. But then we turned out the lights and went to sleep.

No sooner than it grew dark than I felt something strange. The feeling, a tingling, began on my hands. I began to itch. Soon the feeling way everywhere: my back, my legs, my face, my neck.

But no one else in my party seemed affected. They slept soundly while I thrashed and scratched. I believed that I was the only one affected. Sometime during the night, I got out of my bed and moved to another one, believing that I could leave my tormenters behind.

When morning came, I discovered that I was not the only victim of the bedbugs. My skin reacted the most strongly: I had itchy welts for several weeks afterwards. That shouldn’t have been a surprise, since I react very strongly to mosquito bites too, but everyone had been bitten. I felt awful that I hadn't roused everyone in the middle of the night.

We walked down to the nearest town and found a laundromat, where we boiled, drowned our clothes (and, we hoped, the bugs) in the washer, and baked them in the dryer. We turned our sleeping bags, our jackets and our backpacks inside out searching for the devious little bugs. We must have been successful in eliminating them, for they tormented us no more. But the welts, and the emotional trauma of the attack, stayed with us.

Bedbugs have been around since the time of the dinosaurs, so it’s likely that they have been bothering people for as long as there have been people to bug. There are mentions of them in ancient Greek manuscripts dating from 400 BC. Aristotle wrote about bedbugs, and they are mentioned in Pliny's Natural History, first published in Rome around AD 77. They are aggravating, but fortunately are not a vector for any serious diseases.

People have been trying to find ways to eliminate bedbugs, or at least alleviate the itching, for as long as they’ve been plagued by the little critters. One old folk remedy that housewives in Eastern Europe have been using for generations used the leaves from bean plants. These leaves were spread on the floor. In the morning, they were covered with bedbugs and were taken out and burned. It wasn’t until recently that scientists were able to determine that bean leaves have microscopic hooks that impale the insects, capturing them. You can bet I’m using bean leaf bed bug traps in my book about the Alps!

I went into a French pharmacy looking for relief from the itching. I discovered that the French are not fans of cortisone creams. Instead, I got a tube filled with herbal oil that was dispensed through a top that had a metal roll-on ball. The oil smelled like eucalyptus or Vics Formula 44. It did little to stop the itching, but it gave me something to do.

People in the Alps have been using various herbal remedies for their ailments for a long time. A website dedicated to Alpine plants with medicinal uses stated that a bruised leaf from a plantain weed presents the itching caused by insect bites and nettles. I wish I had known this while I was still up on the trail. It certainly would have worked as well as the little roll-on bottle did.

Am I glad I experienced bedbugs during my trip to the Alps? Absolutely not! But I can use the experience to make my writing more interesting and more informed. Writers have a great reason to appreciate even the worst of experiences.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is the author of several works of historical fiction written for middle grade through adult readers. She is participating in National Novel Writing Month by working on a first draft of a novel set in the Alps in 1799-1800. The first chapter begins with bedbugs!

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Heritage Fiction

A Couple of Inspiring Christmas Gifts: Treasures from the Past

Gabriel Paul, Civil War Hero

John Potts Slough: Victor of Glorieta

Samuel H. Cook, Miner and Soldier

Kozlowski's Ranch: Important Site in the Battle of Glorieta

A Confederate Point of View

Crossing the Alps: Reality vs. Propaganda

The Great and Little Passes of Saint Bernard

Bedbugs!

ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

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