I’m thrilled to learn The Seamstress of Acadie has been chosen for the Kentucky Society Daughters of the American Revolution reading list for 2024. As a DAR member, this is meaningful to me on so many levels. I’m also a huge devotee of DAR’s American Spirit magazine which is beautifully done & award winning.

Many Americans have Patriots in their lineage which opens the DAR door. To find out more & discover a chapter in your area, please visit the Daughters of the American Revolution website. We’re a million strong as we work to preserve history, promote patriotism, and educate future generations of children. A beautiful, noble work!

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It’s always interesting to look back on the past year in pictures. A brief snapshot of your life in a few significant frames. These are my Top 9 photos from my Instagram account based on the number of likes. I hide likes for my posts as I’m not a numbers person so they mean little to me. I do have to pay attention to how many books are sold, however!

Looking at these Top 9 photos reminds me of what’s truly important. My ministry or calling is books but there are only 3 book-related photos. Most of them are of family & the central event of our year, Wyatt & Faith’s wedding on 4.3.21 There’s even a somewhat vintage photo of our own wedding almost 28 years ago. How times have changed even in picture quality! Our romance began before social media, texting, & all the rest. I’m so grateful yet at the same time I wish we had had the benefit of stellar photography & video to capture those shining moments. The only unrelated photo is from the show Miss Scarlet & the Duke on PBS. Season 2 is coming & I highly recommend it!

So, here’s to 2022. And I’ve decided this coming year I’m going to TAKE MY TIME. I have a hurry habit. I even walk fast. My firefighter son recently encouraged me to slow down. This was after a bad fall over a curb which I was rushing over & didn’t see. That injury reminded me that I’m no longer 20! The only thing I don’t rush is my writing/work. If you read my novels then you know I’m not in a hurry:)

 I’m hoping for a brighter, more Christ-centered 2022 for each of us. We’re not the same as we were in 2020 or 2021. Much has changed. But God is so good at silver-linings. And for those of us who truly know Him, we have a very happy ending💛

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My grandmother was a girl of eight when the Spanish flu struck in 1918-19. She was one of eight children born to a poor family in rural southwest Virginia. These old photos are from that time period, showing her on the left in a family portrait and then again a little older wearing a hat. Her dress looks clean if stiff, perhaps from hanging on the clothes line, and is stained.

How a poor family came to have their photograph taken is a story in itself and one I’ll never know. My grandmother passed away in 2007 at nearly one hundred years of age. I dedicated my debut novel The Frontiersman’s Daughter to her. How I wish I’d asked her more about that tragic time in which she lost three of her older siblings – Reggie, Gaye, and Stella, all in their teens. I recall Granny saying that only she and her father didn’t get the flu. I imagine they took care of all those who had it and watched them die. I can’t imagine the loss.

Not long after she went to work at the mayor’s fine home as a domestic servant and then a few years later someone arranged for her to go to Berea College in Kentucky, known for poor Appalachian youth. It seems a miracle she not only survived but made it to Kentucky through someone’s kindness and far-sightedness. I find a lot of hope in her story. She was an extraordinary woman who lived during an extraordinary time.

The poem below was written in 1869 by Kathleen O’Mara then reprinted during 1918-19 Pandemic.

And people stayed at home
And read books
And listened
And they rested
And did exercises
And made art and played
And learned new ways of being
And stopped and listened
More deeply
Someone meditated, someone prayed
Someone met their shadow
And people began to think differently
And people healed.
And in the absence of people who
Lived in ignorant ways
Dangerous, meaningless and heartless,
The earth also began to heal
And when the danger ended and
People found themselves
They grieved for the dead
And made new choices
And dreamed of new visions
And created new ways of living
And completely healed the earth
Just as they were healed.

Photo taken during Spanish Flu

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Daniel Boone would have chuckled to see us frontier fans concoct a meal in the leanness of late winter that they only dreamed about. And at Fort Boonesborough, to boot. While I longed to eat with a pewter fork on a pewter plate, modern paper reigned. Water, so often spoiled back then, took the place of their usual small beer or ale. But the fare… Oh my!

THE MENU:

Oxford Kates Sausages with a selection of mustards

Sops

Chicken Fricassee ~ Brown, in a Good Gravy

Potatoes

Peas Francoise

Another sort of little Cakes

Tea

FASCINATING FACTS:

Settlers ate seasonally. Whatever was growing depending on the time of year became the bulk of their diet. In spring, when nettles were new & tender, they ate these, etc.

Fort women often followed the cows into the woods to see what they ate and then they ate that, too.

Spoons came in a multitude of sizes. There was no such thing as a uniform spoon. Utensils of any kind were carried by the person who ate. Often several diners partook from a shared dish or trencher.

Corn crops took 2 years to take hold and land on the setter’s table.

Settlers ate green ham, a far cry from the country ham of today.

Spices were often kept in horns like powder horns.

Men hunted for furs, not only meat, so there was a lot of waste. Most settlers consumed meat with every meal. Almost immediately the game began to scatter and hunting became harder and harder.

A baby boom began in Kentucky after 1780 but not before due to women’s health being poor and the struggle to eat and simply survive. Once corn became commonplace, a midwife was escorted in by armed men to help deliver all the babies being born.

Men often carried nutmeg graters in their pockets, especially when frequenting taverns. A grating of nutmeg took a drink to the next level.

Tea leaves were often several years old in colonial America. STALE. The tea dumped overboard in Boston was mourned by no one.

MY TAKEAWAY:

Frontier cuisine is quite tasty. I had seconds on the peas. Bohea tea, a staple in my novels, is delicious especially when paired with a little Caribbean sugar and cream. Today we have very little grasp of how hard it was to simply serve up a meal back then. From the wood that had to be chopped first thing to kindle a fire, fresh water drawn to cook, animals to butcher, eggs to gather (only in season)…

Hats off to Michael Dragoo and Emily Burns! “Michael is a contributor to https://savoringthepast.net/ and the video series called 18th Century Cooking with Jas. Townsend & Son, These media have been started as a means to share authentic recipes, foodie history, and all of the details they found most interesting from their research and experimentation. We invite you to join us at the table as we savor the flavors and aromas of centuries past.”

Fort Boonesborough Living History

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