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The Mysterious Horseman

The Mysterious Horseman: An Adventure in Prairietown, 1836, by Kate Waters, 1994.

This book is part of a loose series of books by Kate Waters, showing child reenactors at living history museums, having adventures in the roles of the characters they play. While most of the books are set in Colonial times at Plymouth and Colonial Williamsburg, the setting for this story is the Connor Prairie living history museum in Indiana, which shows life in a small town in the 19th century.

The story centers around a boy named Andrew McClure. He is the only one of his siblings left still living with their parents. His older sister is now married, and his baby brother died of an illness during the last year. His family is still grieving for his little brother. Andrew’s best friend is a boy named Thomas Curtis, who lives nearby, and Andrew works part time at a local inn to earn some money.

One day, while Andrew is doing some sweeping at the inn, he overhears some men talking in the taproom. He doesn’t hear their entire conversation, but he hears them talking about a mysterious rider without a head who chased a schoolmaster. Andrew is startled, and he wonders if that has something to do with the new schoolmaster who is supposed to arrive in town.

When Andrew is done with his work, he goes to the schoolhouse, and he finds his friend Thomas and Thomas’s sister, helping the new schoolmaster to clean the schoolhouse and prepare it for lessons to start. Andrew wants to talk to Thomas about what he overheard at the inn, but the schoolmaster only wants to talk to the boys about lessons.

Later, Andrew does have a chance to talk to Thomas, and both of the boys are spooked by the idea of a headless rider. They even think that they hear the rider on the road! The frightened boys go see Thomas’s father, the blacksmith, and tell him about the rider. Fortunately, the blacksmith knows what the men were talking about, and he can settle the boys’ fears.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

I didn’t know about this book until I was looking up Kate Waters’s books for my younger cousins. I was surprised because Kate Waters’s living history museum books are mostly set on the East Coast or focus on the Colonial era. This 19th century book set in Indiana somewhat departs from the theme and has a different feel from the other Kate Waters books, but I enjoyed it. I’ve been to Connor Prairie because I have relatives in the area, and I enjoyed my visit. It’s been years since I’ve been there, so I didn’t immediately recognize the setting. When I read the explanation in the back of the book, I was fascinated to realize that I had visited that location before.

Andrew has a fascination for life on the frontier because he often watches people pass through his town on their way further west, and he daydreams about going west himself. His family is also still coming to terms with the death of his little brother, so the subject of death is still on Andrew’s mind. The deaths of children due to illness were sadly common in the 19th century and on the frontier, and the mourning in Andrew’s family adds to the melancholy and spooky atmosphere of the story.

Most adults and older children will probably recognize what the men at the inn where actually talking about when they were discussing the headless rider who chased the schoolmaster. When the boys talk to Thomas’s father, he immediately recognizes the story as the plot of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving, originally published in 1820, about 16 years before the story in this book is suppose to take place. The men at the inn were just discussing the plot of the story, not something that they saw on the road themselves.

Posted on by TracyC

On The Mayflower

On the Mayflower by Kate Waters, 1996.

This book is part of a series by same author about children growing up in Colonial America. Each of the books is the series has photographs of historical reenactors portraying real people from Colonial history. This book focuses on two children who are traveling on the Mayflower in 1620, heading to what would become the Plymouth colony. One of the children is a girl who is a passenger on the ship, and the other is a boy who is part of the crew, a ship’s apprentice. In the section of historical information in the back of the book, the author explains that the girl was based on a real girl who was a passenger on the Mayflower, although the boy was not based on a specific apprentice; he is just meant to show what a ship’s apprentice would have been like at that time and to help explain the duties of the various crew members as he assists them.

The ship’s apprentice is called William Small. He is specifically apprenticed to the ship’s master, Christopher Jones (historical character). As an apprentice, he is learning basic navigation skills and assists the regular crew members with various tasks, including serving food.

The girl is named Ellen Moore. She and the other passengers are traveling in cramped quarters, and people are often seasick or trying to find ways to keep themselves occupied during the long journey. Ellen is traveling with younger siblings, and she plays with them in between performing routine chores, like sewing and preparing food.

During the voyage, there is a terrible storm, and the passengers are all confined below deck without light because lanterns and candles would pose too much risk of fire while the ship is rocked during the storm. William has to help the ship’s carpenter to repair leaks. Before the storm is fully over, Mrs. Hopkins, one of the passengers, gives birth to a baby she names Oceanus (historical person, the real Oceanus made it through the voyage although he sadly died young, possibly about age six, but the date of his death is uncertain).

The book ends with their arrival in the Americas. Because the storm blew them off course, the Mayflower did not arrive at its intended destination in Virginia but further north at Cape Cod in what is now Massachusetts. Because winter was setting in, the passengers decided not to risk further travel and established their colony there, 65 days after their ship first left England.

In the back of the book, the section with historical information explains more about both the characters in the story and the reenactors. The historical Ellen Moore and her siblings were traveling to the colony without their parents, under the guardianship of the other families, acting as young servants in their employment. The book mentions that the Moore children were without their parents because of a family tragedy but is not specific about what it was. I looked it up, and the story is both sad and bizarre. I can see why the author didn’t want to explain it in a children’s book. Apparently, the children’s parents had an arranged marriage and were not happy being married to each other. The children’s mother had a long love affair with another man, and also apparently, all of the children were the biological children of her lover. The mother’s husband began to notice that the children physically resembled his wife’s lover. The couple bitterly divorced, and after the husband was granted custody of the children (which, apparently, weren’t his anyway), he decided to send them away to the Americas with the departing pilgrims, paying for them to be taken on the voyage, never seeing them again. Sadly, Ellen probably did not survive the first winter at the Plymouth colony because she disappears from the historical record during that time. Out of the four Moore children traveling on the Mayflower, only one survived to adulthood, Ellen’s young brother Richard. Richard married twice in his life and had seven children of his own. He became a sailor and ship’s captain and eventually died an elderly man in Salem, Massachusetts, during the 1690s, not long after the Salem witch trials. None of this information about Richard is mentioned in the book, but I thought it was interesting background information. In the book, there is also additional information about the ship, The Mayflower, and the reproduction ship used in the pictures, The Mayflower II.

The book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.

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Giving Thanks

GivingThanks

Giving Thanks by Kate Waters, 2001.

This book describes the feast of 1621 that we think of as “the first Thanksgiving” from the point of view of two boys: Resolved White (a six-year-old English colonist) and Dancing Moccasins (a fourteen-year-old Wampanoag).  The book explains that the reality of this feast is somewhat different from the way many people think of it.  For one thing, the exact date is unknown, and it wasn’t really a single meal but a kind of harvest celebration that took place over several days.  The events of that celebration were re-created using reenactors from the Plimoth Plantation living history museum.

In the beginning of the book, Dancing Moccasins explains that his family has been harvesting their crops and preparing to move to the place where they live in the winter. Wampanoag lived in different places depending on the time of year, moving between them when the seasons changed.  At their winter home, they would continue hunting and fishing, returning to the place where they planted their crops at the end of winter.

GivingThanksBeginning

Similarly, Resolved’s family has finished harvesting their crops and have stored up food for the winter.  Now that most of the hard work is over, they have time to relax and celebrate.  The community is planning a feast.  Resolved and his friend, Bartle, follow some of the men, who are going out hunting and target-shooting.

The colonists meet up with some of the Wampanoag, which is how Dancing Moccasins and Resolved first see each other.  Dancing Moccasins returns home and tells his father what he has seen.  Then, a messenger arrives from their chief, Massasoit, saying that he will be visiting the colonists soon, and Dancing Moccasins’s father is invited to come.

GivingThanksMessenger

Just as Dancing Moccasins is wondering about the purpose of this visit, Resolved is wondering the same thing because word has reached the colonists that they will soon be visited by the chief and representatives of the tribe.  (The book explains in the back that the exact reasons for the Wampanoag visit to the colonists are unknown today, only that it happened at the same time that the colonists were planning their harvest feast.) The two boys meet again when Dancing Moccasins accompanies his father on the visit to the colonists’ village.

GivingThanksGovernorDinner

When the Wampanoag arrive at the village, they are treated as honored guests, and some of the Wampanoag go deer-hunting to provide a present for their hosts.  The chief dines with the governor of the colonists.  The Wampanoag build shelters for themselves, where they will stay during their visit.

GivingThanksShelters

Eventually, Dancing Moccassins invites Resolved to play a game with him and some other Wampanoag boys when he sees him watching them.  Some of the Wampanoag men also join in the games that the English men play, like competing to see who can throw a log the farthest.

GivingThanksGames

At the end of the day, Dancing Moccassins and Resolved each eat with their own families, but there is plenty for everyone.

There is a section in the back with historical information about the harvest feast, traditions about giving thanks among both the colonists and the Wampanoag, and how Thanksgiving eventually became a national holiday in the United States.  There is also information about food and clothing in the time of the story and a recipe for samp (a kind of corn pottage eaten by the Wampanoag and later adopted by the English colonists).  The book also has some information about the Plimoth Plantation living history museum and the reeanctors.  It is part of a series of books by the same author about the lives of children in Colonial America.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Tapenum’s Day

Tapenum's Day

Tapenum’s Day by Kate Waters, 1996.

This is about a day in the life of a Wampanoag boy living in the area around Plymouth, Massachusetts during the 1620s.  His life is reenacted by Issac Hendricks, who was a participant in the Wampanoag Indian Program at the Plimoth Plantation living history museum.

In the beginning, Tapenum introduces himself, explaining a little about his people and the strangers who have only recently come to their land, the English colonists, whom the Wampanoag call wautaconuoag (meaning “coat-men”).  Tapenum has just learned that he was not among those young men chosen to train as pniesog, a special kind of warrior among the Wampanoag who also possessed spiritual powers and acted as advisors and diplomats for their chief.  It has come as a great disappointment to him that he was not chosen for training.  To improve his chances of being chosen later, Tapenum has decided to train himself to improve his strength and hunting abilities.

Tapenum's Day Begins

Tapenum goes out hunting early in the morning, while his mother and sister are still asleep.  He starts before eating anything because he says that being hungry “makes the hunter more serious.”  Eventually, he catches a rabbit and a squirrel.  His mother is pleased with his catch, although his father has done even better by bringing home a wild turkey, which is even more difficult.

Tapenum's Day Hunting Trip

Later, Tapenum meets up with a friend, Nootimis.  The two of them go fishing in a canoe.  Nootimis knows that Tapenum is disappointed about not being chosen, but Tapenum says that at least he can still spend time with him before (hopefully) going away for training next year.

Tapenum's Friend

After fishing, Tapenum goes for a run as part of his training, and he sees smoke.  When he investigates, he finds an old wise man named Waban making a canoe.  Waban was a pniese himself when he was younger, and Tapenum offers him the fish he caught, hoping that Waban can tell him some things that will help him to be chosen for training.

Tapenum meets Waban

Tapenum ends up spending the rest of the day with the older man, learning and perfecting his skill at fletching arrows.  Waban also explains to him the importance of patience.  Tapenum is in too much of a hurry to grow up and begin serious training, but growing up takes time and so does developing the kind of strength and wisdom that he will need as warrior.

Tapenum learns some lessons

There is a section in the back of the book that explains more about the Wampanoag people, the the Wampanoag Indian Program, the Plimoth Plantation living history museum (now called Plimoth Patuxet), and the boy reenacting Tapenum’s life.

This is part of a series of books focusing on the lives of children in Colonial American history.  It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

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Colonial Crafts

Historic Communities

ColonialCraftsColonial Crafts by Bobbie Kalman, 1992.

In Colonial America, everything had to be made by hand.  There were people whose entire profession was to make certain types of things, and this book describes common types of craftspeople, how they learned their skills, the goods they made, and how they practiced their trades.

People who worked with their hands learned their trades directly from others in their profession by serving apprenticeships.  Schools as we know them were less common in Colonial times and were mainly for upper class families, especially the sons of wealthy men.  Girls typically learned domestic crafts such as sewing, weaving, and candle-making.  Girls were mainly expected to marry and be housewives, and boys often learned their father’s trade.  How long an apprenticeship would last depended on the trade, but apprentices usually started performing very basic chores for their masters and gradually worked their way up to more difficult tasks as they learned the trade.  At the end of an apprenticeship, the apprentice would produce a work called the “masterpiece” to show off their new skills.  Then, the apprentice would become a journeyman, traveling around and looking for work in their trade until they earned the money they needed to open a shop of their own.

ColonialCraftsBaskets

Some of the trades covered in the book are cabinetmaker, leatherworker (including related trades like shoemaker and harnessmaker), cooper (someone who makes barrels), wheelwright, blacksmith, silversmith, gunsmith, printer, and milliner (someone who could make and alter clothing and sell fashion accessories).  The descriptions for each profession include not only details about the trade and tools of the trade but interesting facts such as the fact that, in Colonial times, shoemakers did not make shoes different shoes for left and right feet.  Both shoes in a pair were shaped exactly the same because it was easier for the shoemaker and because people thought that the tracks of identical shoes looked neat.  Aside from the professional crafts, the book also explains a little about domestic crafts, the kinds of things that people made in their own homes.

The book is full of pictures of historical reenactors demonstrating different crafts and trades.  It is currently available online through Internet Archive.

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Mary Geddy’s Day

MaryGeddyMary Geddy’s Day: A Colonial Girl in Williamsburg by Kate Waters, 1999.

This book is part of a series of historical picture books about Colonial America.

Mary Geddy was a real girl living in Williamsburg in 1776. In this book, she is reenacted by Emily Smith, a young interpreter at the Colonial Williamsburg living history museum. The story follows her through a single day in her life as it would have been typically experienced by girls around the beginning of the American Revolution (lessons, chores, shopping, and visiting with her friend) up until the moment when the vote for independence at the Fifth Virginia Convention was announced.

Mary Geddy’s father was a silversmith, which put them in the middle class for the times.  They had a comfortable house with a shop next door where Mr. Geddy sold his silver work.  The Geddy family also had slaves to take care of household chores.

At the beginning of the story, Mary knows that the Fifth Virginia Convention is voting on the subject of independence from Great Britain.  Mary is concerned about the prospect of war, and she knows that if the vote is for independence, she will probably lose her best friend, Anne.  Anne’s family are loyalists, and her family plans to return to England if the colonies decide to break away.

All through the day, people are speculating and worrying about what is going to happen as they go through the typical routines of their day.  Mary explains the clothing that colonial girls would wear as she gets dressed in the morning.  Then, her mother sends her out to buy eggs at the market.  Although she can see Anne there and hear some of the talk about what’s happening, Mary is kept at home for most of the rest of the day, practicing her sewing, learning to bake a pie with her mother, helping in the garden, and having her music lessons. She is learning to play the spinet.  She envies her brothers, who are allowed to help their father in his shop and therefore able to hear more of the talk than she is.

I particularly liked how they showed the coins that Mary uses when she goes shopping.  Even though Mary’s family lives in an English colony, she’s using pieces of eight, which is Spanish money.  The book doesn’t explain what currency she’s using or why, but that’s why the coins are those little triangular shapes, like little pieces of pie. Let me explain.

First, the American colonies had a currency problem.  They actually had a shortage of English currency because England didn’t want wealth to leave the English economy and go out to the colonies.  One of the measures they took to prevent wealth from leaving England was to make it illegal to export higher-value pieces of currency to the colonies.  People in the colonies needed something to replace the pieces of currency that they didn’t have or had in too short supply, so they resorted to other methods of exchange such as barter, IOUs recorded in ledgers, and currency from other countries.  They had some standard units of exchange for converting different currencies into British money because that was the way people in British colonies thought about money.  One of the most popular coins in use was the old Spanish dollar or piece of eight, which was worth eight reales (unit of Spanish currency).  However, sometimes, people wanted to use a smaller piece of currency for small purchases and transactions (like buying eggs), so they physically cut one coin into eight pie-shaped pieces (hence, “pieces of eight”), each worth only one real.  They had to do the coin cutting very carefully because the value of this type of money was based on the amount of silver in the coins themselves, and if they cut a coin unevenly, it would impact the value of the sections.  Each section of a piece of eight was called a “bit“, and two bits would be worth one-quarter of the value of the original coin, which is why some people in the US refer to a US quarter as “two bits.”  That’s what Mary is holding in her hand in the picture.  For more information, see the YouTube video from Townsends about The History of Money in America.

When they discover that the Convention voted for independence, there is celebrating in the streets, and Mary goes with her parents and brothers to see everything.  Her little sister is afraid of the noise and stays at home with the slaves.  Everyone is excited, but Mary is worried because she knows that her friend will leave and nothing will be the same again.

Throughout the book, you can see that the slaves are always a part of the family’s activities.  They do chores together, and when the family is not doing housework, the slaves are still working in the background.  Having slaves didn’t mean that the family never had to do any chores themselves, but they had to do less of them, giving them more time for other things, like music lessons and visiting with friends.  When the celebrating starts, the boy slave, Christopher, who is about the age of the Geddy children, wants to go and see what is happening himself, but he has to stay and help look after the younger girl in the family.  Although the slaves live as part of the household and seem to be on friendly terms with the Geddys (Mary speaks of them fondly, wishing that Christopher could join in the celebration and is happy that Grace, the slave who mainly works in the kitchen as the cook, seems proud of her for learning to make a pie), they have no say in making decisions and are expected to follow the orders they are given, even when they don’t want to or larger events are taking place.

In the back, there is more historical information about the period and the Geddy family.  There are also instructions for making a lavender sachet like the kind Mary and her friend Anne make and a recipe for apple pie that was used in Colonial Williamsburg, like the one that Mary learns to make in the story.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

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Sarah Morton’s Day

sarahmortonSarah Morton’s Day: A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Girl by Kate Waters, 1989.

This book is part of a series of historical picture books. It features a young girl who was an historical interpreter at Plimoth Plantation, a living history museum, playing the part of a real pilgrim girl who lived in 17th century Plymouth.  The pilgrim girl’s name was Sarah Morton, and she was nine years old in 1627, the year that Plimoth Plantation reenacts.

As Sarah Morton, the girl takes readers through a typical day in her life.  She demonstrates the chores that a pilgrim girl would have to perform.  She explains the clothes that a pilgrim girl would wear and what people ate.  There is a recipe for 17th Century Indian Corn Bread, a simple recipe that readers can make at home, but it warns that modern people wouldn’t think that it tastes very good.  It’s basically just water and cornmeal grits.

sarahmortonpic1Although much of Sarah Morton’s day is taken up with chores, she also discusses her relationship with her mother and her new stepfather.  The death of a parent was something that pilgrim children often experienced.  After her father’s death, Sarah’s mother remarried, and Sarah is concerned about whether her new father likes her.

However, her stepfather is a good man who cares about her.  He gives her lessons in reading and writing, something that not every pilgrim girl would have.  He also gives her a special toy: a knicker box, which is a wooden box with arches for rolling marbles through as a game.  She gets to play with her friend, Elizabeth.

The two girls are also excited about a ship that has been sighted out at sea.  Soon, new people will be coming to their colony, and they wonder if the ship is also carrying letters from England or special goods that they would like, like a new bolt of cloth.

In the back of the book, there are sections explaining a little about the Plimoth Plantation living history museum, the real Sarah Morton, and the girl portraying Sarah Morton, Amelia Poole. The Plimoth Plantation site has more information about the real Sarah’s Morton’s life, including what happened to her when she grew up.  If you’re curious about what Amelia Poole is doing today, she is a fiber artist and lives in Maine.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

sarahmortonpic2