My Crazy Woman Trilogy begins in 1861 and spans the ten-year period from then until 1871. I’m writing in the first person, and was having some trouble getting the verbiage right.
I also wanted to get the sewing, embroidery and quilting right, and so I Googled “southern embroidery 1870.” Some pretty interesting books came up. One A Descriptive Catalogue of the Lace and Embroidery in the South Kensington Museum by Fanny Burry Palliser has fabulous pictures and descriptions of laces created before and during the 1870s.
But my favorite find was Eliza Andrews’s diary, which I previewed on GoogleBooks. She is keen witted, her language is delightfully “modern,” and the insights she offers on daily life in 1870 is priceless. I especially love her comparison of Southern and “Yankee” culture on her trip to see her northern cousins in 1870.
She is saddened that her Yankee cousins are bothered by drop-in guests at dinner—she feels the southern acceptance of things not always going according to schedule much more pleasant. She also rues the Yankee need for order (sweeping on Mondays, washing on Tuesdays, etc.) but is chagrined by the fact that they only change out their towels once a week. “At home,” she says, “we change towels as soon as we use them, and clean when things get dirty.”
She is bothered by the fact that the people in the north are always in a hurry. There are no front porches for folks to just sit and enjoy the weather. Taking children to the park, she says, is regimented. The children, she says are forced to be in such a hurry that they have no time to play.
I ordered both this book and her Civil War diaries from Amazon. Can’t wait for them to come in!