The Black Jacks and Star of the West.

Google Books has an e-book preview of this Black Jacks book. The Black Jacks appear in the historical  novel Shot Tower.

And the Star of the West cotton trading clipper out of Liverpool is in there. Mobile was a port of call. Was Savannah?  Not certain but it will be in Shot Tower.. Mobile Bay itself, if all goes as planned, is projected to appear as a setting in Shot Tower Book III.

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Note Websearchers who may have landed on this pase as a reult of some randow searcg,Shot Tower, The Novel is not published at the time of this posting. check the rest of this site, for instance the Front Page for news of its avaiability. Or heck, check Amazon.com.

Historical Fiction Influences; SHOT TOWER Update

Here's a brief sketch of some of the historical fiction I've read in the past, all of which I can say I enjoyed and that made me want to read more of it, and write some of it.

Here's a pretty comprehensive site about a wide-ranging genre: historicalnovels.info.

Earliest I remember -- which doesn't mean it was the earliest I read -- was Julian by Gore Vidal, about a Roman Emperor who tries to reestablish the old Roman religion after Christianity was well-established.

Vidal's Burr is called "snotty" by a politician and strangely enough, upon thinking about all this the last few days for this post, the one "insight" by Vidal that I've retained all these years is that the renegade criminal Burr considered George Washington a pompous half-wit who had a big butt. Kind of snotty. If you look at full-size portraits of Washington you see where Vidal might have gotten the big butt part. But pompous half-wit or not, if that's what it takes to defeat an Empire and launch liberty, so be it.

Then there was I, Claudius, The Name of the Rose,  August 1914, Little Big Man.

Of course The Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brian are excellent. Be sure to read them in order. I'm still only about half-way through.

These three Roman epics I read individually way back. Then a few years ago I decided to reread them all one after another, a kind of reading Roman orgy. I forget the order but that was worth doing: Quo Vadis, The Robe,  Ben-Hur.
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Then there's Allen Furst's World War II espionage novels You'll want to read them all. They can be read in any order but I recommend reading Night Soldiers first, or last. It's different. A bit more epic in scope.

Update on Shot Tower. By any measure more than half done this official First draft. Moving in on Chapter 20 of 30 tonight. So by that measure it's about two-thirds done. No promises but I'm pushing to nail down this official first draft next weekend in Philadelphia, home of the Shot Tower. The fast-moving action-packed last 10 chapters of the rough draft make that a possibility. Maybe I'll do the last page edit and save in the shadow of the tower or something nutty like that. Stay tuned.

The History Girl

The History Girl at the Indian King Tavern, Haddonfield NJ.

"This place matters!" the motto and clarion call for The History Girl, whose worthy site may focus on New Jersey but swings around the "tri-state" area -- NJ, PA & DE. For instance this post on Jenny Wade, the only civilian casualty of the Battle of Gettysburg.

We've agreed to do a piece for her on the setting and background of our historical novel Shot Tower, which though it launches in Philadelphia, does swing around a few elsewhere's, such as a spot in New Jersey called Pavonia

That will happen upon completion of work on the current draft.

The Ship Houses at the Old Philadelphia Navy Yard

75th Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers

The 75th PA's monument at Gettysburg. This unit, recruited in Philadelphhia, was nearly all German immigrants. It lost 111 men killed, wounded, captured and missing at Gettysburg. Earlier 50 of its number drowned in a raft mishap crossing the Shenandoah in pursuit of Stonewall Jackson. Some of its recruits will make an appearance in Shot Tower.

New Ironsides

A photograph of USS New Ironsides, a masted steamer frigate, built in Philadelphia in 1862 by Merrick & Sons. Their foundry was at Fifth Street and Washington Avenue. This was the first seagoing ironclad in the US Navy, and though it was a year or so behind Britain's HMS Warrior (video), it can be regarded as predecessor to US battleships of the recent 20th century era and perhaps of the modern day missile frigates, it being, after all, itself a frigate.

 According to the nicely illustrated Ships of the Civil War, 1861-1865 by Kevin Dougherty, the short-lived New Ironsides saw its share of action, which included suffering damage from a spar torpedo attack at Charleston. A spar torpedo can be thought of as a bomb on a stick.

 New Ironsides came back to the city for refit, saw more action at Hampton Roads, was decommishioned in 1865 here in Philadelphia then was destroyed by a fire in 1866.

Union Volunteer Refreshment Saloon

From May 1861, soldiers passing through Philadelphia to and from the South would be welcomed at the Union Volunteer Refreshment Saloon, which stood in a donated factory at Washington Avenue and Swanson Street. There they would receive a full meal, and, if needed, medical attention at the hospital next door.


On short notice the Saloon could seat 1,200 to 1,500, an entire full-strength regiment or multiple depleted ones, and it served over a million meals during the war, while receiving no funding from city, state or federal authorities. It was entirely an effort of the citizens of Philadelphia.

Soon after, later in May, a second such establishment opened nearby on Otsego Street (Water Street) called the Cooper Shop Volunteer Refreshment Saloon.

The image above is from a page that has an entry of the Freeman Colby Diary at Live Free and Draw, done comic-style. The Refreshment Saloon makes an appearance on that page. If you want to start the delightful journal from the beginning go here.

Troops from New York and north rode the Camden and Amboy Railway, crossed the Delaware on the Kaign Avenue Ferry to its station at Washington Ave, then marched the short distance to the saloons for their refreshment. The Colby Diary mentions that this was the first food provided since starting out.

Then they rode the horsecar lines (the tracks are visible in the photo  above) or marched west on Washington to Broad Street and the huge station for the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore line of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Then onto trains south.

 

And it wasn't only Union troops who benefited from the Refreshment Saloons. Confederate prisoners of war also came through on the way to their "lodgings" at Fort Mifflin.

Mummers - Philadelphia - 2014 - Happy New Year!

Heading out to the Mummers in a bit, the tradition predates Philadelphia's parade by centuries but is carried on the USA only here, where the fun is taken seriously.  Enjoy the current parade now from anywhere in the world by clicking this link for the live stream provided by WPHL Channel 17.

Notice the umbrellas carried by the wenches, This and the sun shapes you'll see in the themes and back pieces of costumes in many of the other groups marks the day as a celebration of the return of the sun, and so can be traced near-directly to the sun worship of the Egyptians.

Swede and English imported the tradition of masking to Philly and it was made an official event sanctioned by the city in 190,9 but recognition of the tradition goes back to George Washington.

Happy New Year!

Scrapple it up!

"Scrapple Love" TableMatters.com http://tablematters.com/2013/11/11/scrapple-love/

What would a Philly blog be without mention of scrapple?

Scrapple is not an acquired taste. It is a, when cooked correctly, love-at-first-taste taste. Cooking correctly merely entails higher temperature in the frying pan, deep frying or even broiling, in order to crisp it. Formula ingredients may differ, just as hot dog formulas differ, but if you see Dietz & Watson's don't pass it by.

The Scrapple Wikipedia entry (grain of salt) seems about right, but how can it be "arguably the first pork food invented in America"  and then be traced back to pre-Roman Europe and the German panhas?

I did the scrapple Google search so you don't have to.

And there's no indication I've found yet that the word scrapple is actually a  Pennsylvania Dutch colloquialism for the question "What the heck do we with the rest of the pig after we make sausage, ribs and bacon.."

Archaic Job Titles I

 

Spent a day last week at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, a few hours of it looking listing-by-listing at the McElroy City Directory of Philadelphia, 1861. The City Directory was like a White Pages/Yellow Pages but without phone numbers, of course. It gave your name, address and occupation. Barely through the As for my purposes but I started to notice many occupations that no longer exist:

turner
coach trimmer
bonnet presser
bridgetender
trunkmaster
hatter
cordwainer
wheelwright
gentlewoman
lampblack
watchcasemaker
morocco dresser
morocco finisher
morocco manufacturer

This was through two pages. Gentlewoman I believe would have meant "rich lady." Morocco is a type of leather made from goat hide. Apparently in 1861 Philadelphia was the morocco capital of the world, outside of Morocco, I'd imagine. One guy was listed as tailor AND publisher. There was an iron works at Fifth and Tasker. It was owned my Mr. Morris and Mr. Tasker. For those unfamiliar, Morris is the name of a Philadelphia street one block south of Tasker. At Fifth and Arch was an establishment that dealt in dental supplies, and it looks like they also did a big business in porcelain teeth.

 

(The porcelain teeth in the photo are circa 1880 and are available at Collect Medical Antiques.)