Author’s Note

This book takes place during the national election week of 1888. I was fascinated to learn the history of the candidates, the issues being discussed, the customs surrounding elections—including Election Cake!—and more. I read accounts of events taking place locally in the Newburyport Daily News on microfiche at the Newburyport Public Library and the Newburyport Daily Herald on microfiche at the Amesbury Public Library.

As the book has a sub-theme of women’s suffrage, I studied whatever I could find in the library and online. I took the liberty of paraphrasing a few sentences from Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s essay, “The Solitude of Self,” which was not published until 1892, for her to speak in person in this book (at Bertie and Sophie’s evening gathering). I couched it as Stanton developing her thoughts on the topic, and I trust her departed soul will approve. The song “Daughters of Freedom,” which the women sing in this book, was a women’s suffrage rallying piece copyrighted in 1871, with lyrics by George Cooper and music by Edwin Christie. Thanks for supporting the movement, gentlemen. Alas, my schedule didn’t permit visiting the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, New York.

I want to thank Peter Bryant of the former Salisbury Point Railroad Society for checking my train details. I cribbed the three things a detective needs from A Good Month for Murder: The Inside Story of a Homicide Squad by Del Quentin Wilber. KB Inglee again read for historical details and corrected several of my errors, and Alison Russell checked my facts for that election season.

I’m always on the lookout for intriguing authentic names from the period. My writer friend Nancy Langmeyer mentioned her great-great grandfather Hilarius Bauer over wine one evening. I asked if I could use his name and she said, “Sure!” Mystery author, independent editor, and good friend Sherry Harris wrote a Facebook post some time ago about discovering interesting names of some of her ancestors. I borrowed her paternal grandmother’s first name for the character of Zula in this book. I know nothing about Ursula Gates Novinger, and am quite sure any negative characteristics and behavior of my Zula have no connection to the real Zula of the past.

I used the wording of a couple of letters and invitations that I found in this resource: The American lady’s and gentleman’s modern letter writer: relative to business, duty, love, and marriage, University of Pittsburgh, Digital Research Library 2002. I attended the Strawbery Banke Harvest Festival in Portsmouth while writing this book. The festival features craftspeople and artisans in period dress making their arts, doing their crafts. I was delighted to encounter Rose Carroll’s own bicycle among a display of vintage cycles. I was able to put my hand on the split leather seat and learn that cycles of the time even featured a small headlight.

The menu for the dinner for twelve at the Dodge’s is taken nearly verbatim from Miss Parloa’s Bills of Fare, found in Miss Parloa’s New Cook Book And Marketing Guide, 1880. Note: the fictional Dodge family bears no relation to the ancestors of my good friend from Newburyport Anne Dodge and her West Newbury cousin John Dodge—although I did borrow their name, and their forbearer did, in fact, own a successful shoe business in that town.

I’m also always looking for sources of how people, particularly women, spoke in the era. For this book I perused several of Louisa May Alcott’s books for dialog, plus I gleaned bits from Sarah Grand’s Ideala, George Egerton’s (Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright) Keynotes and Discords, and The Wing of Azrael by Mona Caird, all books written by women in the late 1800s.

Susan Koso is not only on the Board of Directors of the Amesbury Carriage Museum, she is also a fount of limitless knowledge about carriages and carriage driving of the period. While I was writing this book she took me riding in her own antique runabout, pulled by her mare Hope, on a former carriage road through Appleton Farm in Ipswich, Massachusetts. While we drove, I asked endless questions, all of which she answered, and she offered invaluable tips on everyday life. Susan also read an early draft of this manuscript, and corrected a few of my errors, but I’m sure more remain, which is no reflection on her expertise. The Amesbury Carriage Museum is also an invaluable resource with their collection of carriages from the period in which I set this series.

I continue to train as a docent at the John Greenleaf Whittier Home and Museum. In this book I quote one stanza of Whittier’s poem “The Lakeside.” Whittier’s comments on not remembering his own work are paraphrased from a quote in the November 1, 1888 Newburyport Daily Herald. The Whittier Home Association, along with the Amesbury Public Library, generously starred Delivering the Truth, the first book in this series, as the All-Community Read for 2016, and they staged a reading of the scenes from the book featuring Rose and Whittier at the Amesbury Friends Meetinghouse. I was honored and delighted. Chris Bryant, President of the Association, continues to be endlessly supportive of my work and stocks my books for sale in the home’s gift shop.

I continue to refer to the following historic references, among others: Marc McCutcheon’s Everyday Life in the 1800s (1993), John Greenleaf Whittier: a Biography by Roland H. Woodwell (1985), the Sears, Roebuck & Co. Consumers’ Guide for 1894, The Massachusetts Peace Officer: a Manual for Sheriffs, Constables, Police, and Other Civil Officers by Gorham D. Williams (1891), and A System of Midwifery by William Leishman, MD (1879). I consult the Online Etymology Dictionary endlessly to see if I can use a particular word or phrase, or if its first attested occurrence was after 1888, and often check Pinterest and other sites for examples of clothing from the era.

I traveled to New Orleans for the Bouchercon mystery convention while I was working on this manuscript, and I happened across the Pharmacy Museum in the French Quarter. I discovered an entire room upstairs devoted to midwifery and childbirth from the 1800s. It was set up like a bedroom, complete with historic tools and medicines, with well-curated explanatory signage. Bliss.

I very much enjoy reading the novels of my fellow historical mystery writers who set their books in close to the same period, especially those of my friends Jessica Crockett Estevao, Nancy Herriman, Alyssa Maxwell (no relation), Ann Parker, and Anna Loan Wilsey, and of course the long-running series of both Victoria Thompson and Rhys Bowen. You should check out all these well-written books. I hope I have absorbed only a general feel for the era from them and not subconsciously lifted anything too specific.

Obviously, any remaining errors on anything historical are of my own doing.