Why is all the rum gone?

I live in Louisiana, in the parish that is the dividing line for cotton and sugar country. The rise of Louisiana in the 18th century isn't so much tied to cotton as it is sugar. Admit it, we all love sugar. Sugar was one of the many reasons Jefferson wanted New Orleans.

There's a theory out there that says sugar was discovered as a by-product of making rum. It's not true, but it sounds cool. The process of boiling cane juice to make sugar was discovered in India in the first millennium, B.C. Herodotus knew of it in the fifth century, B.C. The plants slowly spread from India and South Asia to the Mediterranean, probably thanks to Alexander the Great, and then Columbus took it to what is now the Dominican Republic in 1493.


The first attempts at cultivating sugar in Louisiana were dismal failures.  Jesuit priests brought it from the Caribbean islands to New Orleans in 1751 and attempted to cultivate it without much success. The variety they brought in didn't like the weather. After much trial and error a variety known as Creole cane finally took root and grew very well in our strange, borderline sub-tropical climate.

But it still wasn't making money. Enter Etienne de Bore, a French Creole. The year is 1795. the place is Destrehan Plantation. De Bore was an innovator and figured out if he could streamline the process of making sugar and speed it up, untold riches were available. So that's exactly what he did in 1795. The same year the cotton gin was invented.

Sugar is still a vital part of Louisiana's economy. We produce thousands of pounds of sugar every year, along with cane syrup and molasses. I freely admit it, I'm partial to Louisiana sugar. It's available at every store with Domino's Sugar on the shelf. Sugar is also produced from sugar beets and corn, but those two can't make brown sugars, cane syrup and molasses.

Many people think white sugar comes first in the process. That's not true. Raw sugar comes first. Then dark brown, light brown and finally white. The crystals don't turn white until the last drops of molasses have been extracted. The juice itself looks and feels like slimy water that's been sitting in a bucket for two weeks. It has a slightly sweet scent, but most people never guess it holds white gold.

Which brings us to the rum. And pirates. Rum is fermented cane juice and it comes in many varieties. The clear stuff is the lightest grade. The darker the rum, the higher the molasses content. Some brands of dark rum are so dark and thick, at first glance you could mistake it for molasses. Only the bite of the alcohol when it hits your nose or taste buds tells you it's not molasses. Dark rum makes great eggnog, according to my dad.

In the 18th century sugar came in cones, like the ones pictured here. They can be purchased from Jas. Townsend and Son, Inc. You can also buy the pictured sugar nippers.

Back then, making sugar smelled like molasses cookies fresh from the oven. I know it first-hand from working at Kent Plantation House. Every second Saturday in November is Sugar Day, when the reproduction 1840's sugar mill is lit and sugar is made. Nowadays it smells like an elephant died under your window.

Tons and tons of waste is produced, and many Louisiana mills now burn that waste to generate the electricity the mills use. Some of it is now being turned into paper, which is heaven to write on and more environmentally friendly than other papers.

Francis Cabot Lowell: Businessman, capitalist, spy

After winning physical independence from England, economic independence was next. And that independence was tied to textiles.

In the 1760's, a British businessman, Richard Arkwright, committed industrial espionage to establish his waterframe spinning jenny and his power loom. These two machines revolutionized the textile industry in England and led to the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in order to keep up with demand for raw cotton. Before the gin cotton fabric cost as much as 60 cents a yard. After, 10 cents a yard.

In 1810, Francis Cabot Lowell (1775-1817)  from Massachusetts took a trip to Europe and ended up in Manchester, England. For his health he said. His real purpose was to tour the Manchester mills and bring the machinery schematics back to America. A successful venture capitalist and businessman from an old Boston mercantile family, he graduated from Harvard the same year Whitney invented the gin, in 1795.

At first Lowell tried to legally obtain the machinery plans. When that didn't work he drew on his fascination and aptitude with machines--and his photographic memory--to commit the intricate looms and spinning jennys to memory. There is some speculation he may have used secret compartments in his steamer trunks to hide notes from the very thorough British customs officials. If those notes did indeed exist, he destroyed them.

He returned to Boston in 1812 and began the task of recreating what he'd seen. And improving and speeding up the machinery. Both tasks were accomplished and left elite engineers and mathematicians of the day in awe of his mechanical genius. Two years later he presented the first working model. By 1815, over 27 million pounds of cotton had been spun and woven in the United States.

He built his first mill in Waltham, Massachusetts, on the Charles River. This picture is that building. It was the first mill to cover the entire production--from raw fiber to finished cloth--in one building. 

The town of Lowell, Massachusetts--the center of the 19th century cotton textile industry--was his vision, but he did not live to see it built. The filthy, dangerous, deadly conditions in Manchester appalled Lowell and he knew it would never work in America. Using the paternalistic mindset common in his social class he created an entirely different model for a mill town.

After his death in 1817 Lowell'ss brother-in-law, Patrick Tracy Jackson, moved the mill 30 miles north of Boston on the Merrimack River, to a place where the river fell 32 feet in less than a mile. This down slope provided the water power for the mills. Now known as the Merrimack Manufacturing Company, it dominated the textile industry here for close to 100 years.

Next time you wear your favorite cotton dress or shirt or even your favorite pair of jeans, thank Francis Cabot Lowell's photographic memory and skills as a spy.

In Ye Olden Days: Baking on an Open Hearth

Ever wonder why the only breads frontier people ate were cornbread and biscuits? I'm here to answer that question.

It is impossible (to my knowledge) to bake yeast breads on an open hearth. The reasons are simple. An inability to keep the heat even, and no room for the bread to rise as it bakes. I worked for four years as a tour guide at Kent Plantation House in central Louisiana and Kent is one of a small handful of plantation museums with a working open hearth kitchen. I learned a lot about cooking in an open hearth. I also learned cornbread baked in a Dutch oven is the closest thing to tastebud heaven we'll ever know on this earth.

The above picture is an open hearth. All that brick is where most of the cooking and baking is done. Only soups and stews are placed directly over the fire, on the crane. The top door on the left is a bread oven that's been used twice since the hearth in this kitchen was rebuilt in the mid-80's. Beneath is wood. The first time it was fired up it took three days to get it hot enough to bake cookies.

The first step is coals. Lots and lots and lots of coals. Preferably made with oak. Pine has too much pitch in it, makes a lot of smoke, and clogs up the chimney.



The curly thing in this picture is a trivet. Coals are piled underneath, the skillet goes on top, and then the lid goes on. The round thing to the right of the trivet here is a lid with a lip on it. This lip keeps the coals from falling off the lid. Most iron pots and skillets in the 19th century had two lids. A domed one and a lipped one.

Coals on top of the skillet create the rest of the heat to cook the cornbread. Or the biscuits or the cake. Yes, you can bake a cake on an open hearth and it is very good. The coals have to be replaced at least once during baking, on top and bottom. You can also fry things on an open hearth, and my sister makes an amazing peach upside down cake. Just make sure and use liberal amounts of butter to keep the cake from sticking.

Many plantation cooks wore wooden shoes, and their skirts were shorter than everyone else's. While cooking in the kitchen where I took these pictures, my sister once caught her shoe on fire stepping on what looked like a dead coal. More than one cook at Kent has caught her skirt or apron on fire.

Since you obviously can't use potholders or an apron around live coals, what do you use? S hooks. Called S hooks because they look like an S. Every blacksmith made hundreds of them. They come in all sizes from three to four inches long to over a foot. They were also used to adjust the distance between the soup pot on the crane and the coals beneath.

Baking and cooking on an open hearth was very time consuming and very dangerous. Because of the fire danger, on plantations the kitchen was always a separate building. That often was not practical on the colonial frontier. Heat was another reason the kitchen was separate in the South. Even in October here in Louisiana it gets up in the 90's and the temperature in Kent's open hearth kitchen can easily top 100 degrees. Up north heat wasn't as much of a concern, and there often wasn't enough room to build a separate kitchen.

If you ever have the chance to see an open hearth kitchen in action, take it. It's an amazing experience that pictures cannot capture.

Research On A Shoestring: Books

Writers aren't made of money. Unfortunately for us. While the Internet--specifically Google Books--has become an invaluable resource, sometimes Google doesn't have the answer you need.

There are many instances where the library won't do either. A book we're after can be used for multiple projects, you can't find it in a library system and don't want to wait x number of weeks for it to arrive via World Cat or inter-library loan.

So what's a writer to do when you need to buy a book, but the price on Amazon is enough to cause a heart attack? I experienced that about eight months ago when I stumbled across The Cotton Planter's Manual by J.A. Turner. I found it for free on Google Books, but I also looked for it on Amazon. All the sellers wanted nearly $30 for it! That's unreal.

But there's another trick I want to share with you. What do you do when Google lets you down and the price on Amazon makes you faint? Panic attacks over price are not outside the realm of possibility for those of us who write in more... obscure time periods and settings.

Used.addall.com is a researcher's other best friend. Many of you have probably never heard of it. I only know about it because I'm a Nancy Drew, Judy Bolton and Hardy Boys collector. In the world of children's series books, Addall is a gold mine. It searches every reputable used book store on the Internet, including some you've never heard of.

There are multiple ways to use Addall. You can search for a specific title, a specific author, or just by keyword. Since Google Books is always my first stop I usually know exactly what book I'm after. The research book I'm reading now, The End of An Era: New Orleans, 1850-1860, is $25 new. My research budget isn't even big enough to be called a shoestring, so that was too much. I hopped over to Addall and found a gently used copy for $5.

One caveat. I recommend you make sure the box for Alibris is NOT checked. Alibris is notorious for over-pricing. Serious book collectors don't do regular business with Alibris sellers.

Next time you're pulling your hair out over your skyrocketing research budget and Google lets you down, Addall is your new best friend.

Research On A Shoestring: Fashion

We writers are a cheap lot. Many of us don't have a big budget for our research books. And let's face it, not everything we need or want or think we need can be found on the Web. In four years of managing the gift shop at Kent Plantation House in Alexandria, Louisiana, I gleaned some great, cheap fashion resources.

For the writer on a tight budget, Dover Publications is one of your very best friends. There's a ton of cheap, great resources there for nearly any time period and subject you can think of. But this post is dedicated to fashion, so I'm going to share a few tips for building your fashion research library without breaking the bank.

Tom Tierney. He is a costume historian, and an artist. Among other things, he does paper dolls for Dover. As of this writing when you type his name into the search box at Dover's website it comes back with 160 results. He's done everything from classic movie stars to American presidents and the musical Mikado.

But I want to specifically point your attention to his American Family series. He's done a variety of periods, including American Family of the Colonial Era and American Family of the Federal Era. If you read this blog, these two are must haves for your library.

What makes these paper dolls truly stand out is multiple generations of the family are represented. There are grandparents, parents, older teens and grade school age. The dolls are in period correct undergarments and each page of costumes includes a detailed description. Best of all they're $6.95. Coloring books are usually $3.95.

There are dozens of other gems hidden at Dover. Fashion plates from Godey's Lady's Book turned into paper dolls. Coloring books for anything you can imagine, paper dolls of Queen Victoria and Empress Eugenie, Emperor Franz Joseph, Byzantine era, French Baroque, American Family in the Pilgrim Era, Marie Antoinette, ancient Egypt, Shakespeare, Henry VIII and his wives, Carmen Miranda and Vivian Leigh. And I've barely scratched the surface here! You can even get reprints of Sears catalogs. I have one of fashion from the 1920's.

Dover is a great resource no matter what you're researching. And if you're a homeschooling mom, the coloring books are an excellent learning tool. My mom has at least fifty Dover coloring books that we used as part of school. And just looking through the search right now to write this post, I see at least three coloring books that I "need" for my own research purposes. (and so I can color in them)

In Ye Olden Days: A Men's Fashion Primer

Dressing women is fun. All those beautiful dresses and accessories and shoes and hair and hats. Alas, our novels are not populated only by women. Men show up too. While not as diverse as women's fashion in the 18th century, the men still got their gaudy on.

We all know men wore breeches in the 18th century. Those funny pants that come to the knee, and from the knee down is either a white stocking or a leather boot. You're probably wondering why there's a picture of Captain Hook over there. The reason is simple: Everyone knows Captain Hook.

What everyone does not know is he's wearing the typical clothing of an early 18th century man. With the exception of the massive feather and cartoon shoes, obviously. We see something very similar in the opening scenes of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Except Will is wearing boots. Elizabeth's father, Governor Swann, also wears knee length coats in the first three films. I'm particularly fond of the one he's wearing in At World's End. You know, when he's dead.

Men's clothing is always simpler than women's, in regards to getting dressed. In the 18th century it consisted of breeches, shirts, waistcoats (what we call vests), and coats. The coats is where you find the most variety.

For the first half of the century coats like the one pictured here on the right, and the one Captain Hook is wearing, were the norm. This style of coat is called a justaucorps.

That lace at the throat is called a cravat. Cravats continued in fashion through the Civil War. They could be as elaborate as the lace one pictured here, or as simple as a solid colored piece of cloth to match the waistcoat.

Most men didn't wear royal blue and bright red. This red one, oddly reminiscent of Captain Hook's, is from France circa 1750. You can see how the front of the coat is cut different from the blue one above, and different still from the one Captain Hook wears that buttons all the way down. Though in cartoon land you can't see the buttons.

The working man didn't have money to spend on lace ruffles and fancy embroidery and expensive dyes. His wardrobe stayed in the earth tones category. Blacks, browns, fawn, tan. Everything we associate with the farmers during the Revolution.

Of course, no 18th century man is complete without a tricorne hat. Other types of hats existed, such as the ever popular slouch hat. But who thinks of slouch hats when they hear 1700's? Not me.There's a good reason for that. The slouch hat was a farmer's hat. The tricorne hat is what anybody who was anybody wore. It's not hard to imagine a young man from the country pinching pennies away to buy himself a tricorne hat.

You didn't really think I'd talk about Pirates of the Caribbean and not include a picture, did you? This one from Dead Man's Chest--with Governor Swann front and center--shows some excellent examples of tricorne hats, wigs, and wouldn't you know it! One of those outlandish prints that were so popular in the 18th century. They didn't just show up on women.

Now, if your character is in the Navy or the Army, I'm afraid I'm of no help. Military uniforms throughout history are well documented and easy to research. If you're researching uniforms, don't forget the buttons!

Book Review of Redeeming the Rogue by C.J. Chase

Redeeming the Rogue by C.J. Chase


Love Inspired Historical


August 2011




Review by Rachel Wilder




I'm going to start off by saying I'm not your typical book reviewer. If you're looking for a rehash of the back cover copy or a synopsis, you're in the wrong place.


My mom bought the book last week without even knowing that I wanted to read it or was supposed to review it. I hadn't told her yet. Fashion nerd that I am the first thing I noticed was the hero's trousers. An actual proper button flap on them!


This is CJ's debut novel, and it is a rich historical romantic suspense. Yes, suspense.


Kit DeChambelle has spent ten years as a spy and his deceit and choices haunt him. Innocent blood stains his hands and his heart. I was very surprised and pleased to see him dealing with his guilt in a way that many people did back then. He turns to drink. Whiskey and brandy. As weird as this sounds, this is one of my favorite things about the book. Kit's humanity is palpable.


Mattie Fraser is in London seeking revenge on the British naval captain who impressed her brother. She is armed and dangerous and more than willing to pull the trigger. Again, her humanness stands out. I don't read a lot of LIH's because so many of them tend to gloss over the seedier parts of life. Not this time. Mattie's had a rough life and she struggles to leave it behind.


Neither character starts out as a Christian. By the end, both have come to Christ, of course. This is a Christian novel after all. Their journeys to faith are well done, believable, and don't come across as preachy. This is something that's very important to me.


The street orphan, Nicky, is a wonderful addition to the cast of characters. I immediately fell in love with him. Again, CJ deftly handled the reality of the time without getting bogged down in the gory details.


This debut is a thrilling read that I heartily recommend. I look forward to more from CJ!

An 18th Century Ladies Fashion Primer

This is my first post to Colonial Quills and I'm so happy to be here. I'll be sharing about fashion, textiles, and colonial Louisiana.

Unlike the 19^th and 20^th centuries, fashion in the 18^th century didn’t change very much for several decades. One can identify a dress from the 18^th century with only a couple of tools in her arsenal.

The first is silhouette. When most people think of dresses in the 1700’s, their mind immediately conjures up the riotous cartoons from Louis XVI’s France. Cartoons of wild, towering wigs decorated with birds or fruit or even boats. The cartoonists weren’t just lampooning Marie Antoinette’s wigs. They were going after the pannier too, which reached ridiculous proportions in the 1750’s and was brought back by Marie.

I found this picture from the University of Michigan. I have no idea if the photograph is in their collection or if the pannier and stays is in their collection. It’s a good example of a pannier and stay of the time. I don’t know the date, but I’m guessing it’s from sometime in the 1750’s to the 1770’s.

There are stories of Catherine the Great, Empress of All The Russias, once having worn a pannier that was eight feet across from one end to the other. The blue dress here is a British court dress from the 1750’s in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.

At the beginning of the century, the silhouette wasn’t all that different from the 15^th and 16^th centuries. Full skirts, three-quarter length sleeves with lace at the cuffs, ribbons, embroidery and sometimes garish prints. That silhouette flowed into the mantua, a cone shape silhouette so popular that for decades, tailors and seamstresses were often called mantua makers.

From the conical shape of the mantua, came the pannier. Introduced probably in the late 1740’s for court dress, it quickly became popular, reaching its zenith of size in the 1760’s with the above referenced dress worn by Catherine.

Only in France did the pannier continue to be popular. In the 1760’s a style of dress commonly called the saque dress came into style. While still having that definitive big hips silhouette, it was much smaller and featured what I think is one of the most flattering things in all of historical costume: a pleated back that fell from the neckline to the floor in one graceful piece of fabric. See what I mean? I love it. These two dresses are also at the Met in NYC.

From here we enter the 1770’s and the styles seen at Colonial Willamsburg and on the American Girl doll Felicity. The pannier is still present, but it’s continuing to shrink in width. By 1785, panniers had almost completely disappeared and the silhouette returned to a more normal shape. But if you look closely at the skirt, it’s not hard to imagine where the bustle of the 1870’s and 1880’s came from. There truly is nothing new in fashion. If you look back far enough, with the exception of the mini-skirt, it’s been done before.

In 1790, the pannier is dead, never to be resurrected. The silhouette is columnar in form, with a skirt that’s losing fullness by the year and a waistline that’s moving up. In 1800, the Regency/Empire style is in full force.

The second tool is fabric choice, though it’s not as reliable as silhouette. Western block printing was perfected in the mid 1700’s and this led to an explosion of elaborate, striped floral fabrics. For some reason they also loved bows and ruffles. Lots of them. At the same time. On fabric with very busy patterns. Particularly in France. It’s really quite easy to see why French fashion of that century was a favorite subject for cartoonists.

Next time we’ll take a look at men’s fashion. As boring as that is, it must be done.