Blogging A-Z X Is For Xanthic

I like sprinkling “gems” of description through my writing. I don’t go into great detail about every person and every item, though I do offer more than many writers do. Instead of describing a round, yellow green apple of medium size, sometimes it’s more efficient to just say, “He bit into the Granny Smith apple…

Blogging A-Z W Is For Wiretap

George Ellsworth Gen. John Hunt Morgan Mention wiretapping and everyone automatically thinks of FBI, NSA, smarmy illegal eavesdropping by unethical private investigators and various other modern scenarios, but it actually began long before. Some people elevated it to an art form during the Civil War. George Ellsworth was one of those men. Ellsworth was Canadian…

Blogging A-Z V Is For Vivandiere

Vivandiere’s were first used by the French. They were women who followed the armies, as sutlers or canteen keepers. In the American Civil War, they assumed nursing duties mainly, often tending wounded on the battlegrounds even during the battles. Sometimes, just taking water to wounded was enough to save a life. Several of these women…

Blogging A-Z Q Is For Quinine

I have a steamer trunk similar to this and it would be like some of the trunks Lorena and Imogene have. Some of the traveling Victorian vanity cases in were quite elegant. With the outbreak of war, supplies of medicines and manufactured goods soon became a problem in the South, which was definitely a agrarian…