Happy Galentine's Day!

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Here’s to strong women 

May we know them 

May we be them 

May we raise them. 

What is Galentine’s Day? 

Observed on February 13, the day before Valentine's Day, Galentine's Day celebrates platonic friendships, usually among women. It was created by the character Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), on the TV series Parks and Recreation as a day exclusively for women. 

Specifically it's the day when she and her female friends leave their husbands or boyfriends or empty houses to have breakfast together and celebrate one another. 

A fake holiday? Maybe. But a fun one! As Amy says…“It’s only the best day of the year!” 

So, who will you celebrate with? Who is the wind beneath your wings? 

Tops for me: 

My 101 year old mom Kitty… kind, generous, hard-working and my model in all things baby-taming! 

my friend Maria with my mom Kitty

my sisters… 2 here and 2 passed over, all ever loved 

The sisters Charbonneau

my daughters, teachers in all things that matter...

with my daughters Abby and Marya

 my pals…writing sisters, school chums, fellow women’s club members, library boards and other fellow servers in our community.

 

writing pals and sisters...

school chums...

          How rich I am in tremendous women…

I hope you are too!

The life of a female in the past—Tricia McGill

Now available for pre-release--on July 3rd

I’ve said it many times, much as I admire the women who were full of spirit and gumption in the past, there is no way I would like to share their lives other than in my books. I have often thought it would be great fun to be a time traveller so that I could return to the ages I have written about, just to be sure it really was as horrible, nasty and unhygienic as the historians tell us it was. But be sure, I am glad I live in a time when we have mod cons and the niceties in life.

When commenting on my historicals and time-travels I have always stressed my admiration for the women, especially those who had to endure tremendous hardships as the wives of the early settlers, regardless of what continent or time period. Even today, there are still women who have to endure all kinds of deprivation in certain countries where they have no running water or sanitation.

The inspiration for book one in my Settlers Series came from a book I happened upon at the library. This gem contained letters sent home to the country of their birth by women who, whether by choice or circumstance, were forced to follow their menfolk into what must have seemed like the gates of hell to them. Most of these women left comfortable lives in Britain, brought up in genteel households that possessed, if not running water and heating at a touch, in some cases housemaids to pander to their needs. Elizabeth Hawkins sent letters home telling of the journey across unfriendly seas and then the trek in 1822 across the Blue Mountains west of Botany Bay to a fledgling Bathurst, where her husband was to take up a position as Commissariat Storekeeper. This family were the first free settlers to cross the barrier of the mountains. They travelled with eight offspring aged from I to 12, and Elizabeth’s 70-year-old mother. If you read Mystic Mountains, you will see just why I hold women like Elizabeth and her mother in such high esteem. On top of enduring the constraints of a corset in much hotter weather than they were accustomed to, there was the lurking threat of snakes and venomous creatures they would never have encountered in their homeland.

Love, as the song goes, is a many splendoured thing. It convinced many women to get on a sailing ship that would take them and often their children to a far off country on the other side of the world. Apart from the odd snippet garnered from newspapers or the like, of the conditions in this New World, they had sparse knowledge of what awaited them. I’ve seen enough movies set on sailing vessels in the 1800s to understand the horrendous conditions aboard a ship that took weeks upon endless weeks to reach its destination. I recently viewed “To the Ends of The Earth” a series on TV with Benedict Cumberbatch. As a naïve young gentleman, his character is on his way to take up a Government post in Australia. This movie brought home more than some just how horrendous the conditions were aboard a sailing vessel, even if you were a man of substance assigned a cabin of your own.

Life in the fledgling colony was horrendous for the women who were transported, in some cases for petty crimes, such as stealing a loaf of bread to feed their children or perhaps taking a fancy to a strip of ribbon or a bauble of little value that wasn’t theirs to take.

My third book in this series starts in 1840 when certain improvements had been made, but even so, conditions were still unsanitary. My characters take off from Sydney Town on a trek to seek out adventure in a new colony recently settled down south in Port Phillip. The journey took a month—that’s four weeks travelling over a barely surveyed land on horseback. The threat of escaped convicts turned bushrangers lurked, even the scattering of inns along the way were ill prepared for travellers. Forget bathrooms or hot and cold running water. Then there was always the other inconvenience shared by young women—imagine a life with no sanitary products.

My heroine appreciates the magnificent achievements of the earlier settlers and her wish is to do something similar with her life. Women such as Caroline Chisolm, who recognised the need for assisting migrant women who arrived in Sydney but could not secure employment. Apart from sheltering many new arrivals in her own home, she took groups of them out to the bush where they easily found work with the settlers. By 1846 when she returned to England she had helped about eleven thousand people to either find work or establish themselves as farmers in outback New South Wales. Without her assistance, many of these women would have been forced to walk the streets as prostitutes in order to survive.

I guess my admiration for strong women stems from the high regard I hold for two special women in my life. Our mother reared ten children through two world wars and depressions, without the help of a washing machine, or any of the other appliances we take for granted these days. She struggled daily to make ends meet but always put a meal on the table for her children and our father, probably surviving herself on a mouthful or two. I rarely heard her complain—women just ‘got on with it’ in those days. The other woman was my dear sister whose life I have written about in “Crying is for Babies.”

Could be the reason why I have little patience for people who moan about their lot in life, as they chatter on their mobiles—or drive about in their cars.

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Besides his wife, Elizabeth Schuyler, Alexander Hamilton had nother strong women in his life—one of them, his mother, Rachel. She was the daughter of a French Huguenot, John and his wife, Mary Uppington.  John was a physician and a minor planter, whose land lay high up the volcano on the island of Nevis—not the easiest ground to work. They had two daughters, Ann and Rachel.
 

Ann married James Lytton, a planter of St. Croix. In 1745 Rachel’s father died, leaving everything to her, the unmarried daughter. At sixteen, by all accounts lovely, Rachel was, in a small way, an heiress. Alexander, who didn’t reveal much about his stormy childhood, termed hers a “snug fortune.” Mary, eager to make a good match for her child, welcomed several suitors. One was an older man, James Lavien, a Dane, whose fancy clothes and reserved manner hid the fact that a.) he was a tyrant and b.) he had already lost most of the money he still pretended to have.   

Mary seems to have pressured Rachel to marry this apparently respectable, stable older man. Unfortunately, it did not take Lavien long to go through his young wife’s money. By 1750, all masks had been discarded. Although we don’t know the details of Rachel’s suffering, her husband was the kind of man who would have  her imprisoned for three months a damp cell in the dark, disease-ridden fortress of St. Croix after signing a complaint which accused her of “whoring with everyone.”

Perhaps Rachel had refused to share his bed, but, perhaps she, spirited as she was, had found a lover. As a modern woman, I say "more power to her!" We'll never know the complete story. If Lavien thought prison could break her, however, he was much mistaken. As soon as she was released, she fled the island with her mother, returning to Nevis. Having no rights in the matter, Rachel also abandoned a young son, Peter, when she escaped.  I see this as a measure of her desperation. Years later, Alexander would write: “Tis only to consult our hearts to be convinced that…individuals revolt at the idea of being guided by external compulsion.”

Still, this act would have endless consequences, first for Rachel and later for her sons by James Hamilton. As there was never a legal separation, Lavien could, some years later, under Danish law, divorce her and name her adulteress. This was a charge she could no longer defend herself against, for she was, by this time, living with James Hamilton on Nevis. Over the years, Lavien, (and, later on, Peter, too,) would continue to persecute the Hamilton children. After Rachel’s death, Lavien promptly reappeared and claimed all his ex-wife’s property for her “only legitimate son” Peter. She, clearly a better businesswoman than either of her men, had created enough wealth to make this action worthwhile.  Alexander and James, barely in their teens, were now penniless, orphaned, and labelled, courtesy of the Danish probate court, as “whore children.”

 

In a world where a woman had almost no legal standing, I believe Rachel Faucette made the best decisions she could. She fled from a brutal husband and then tried, with James Hamilton, to find a happily-ever-after.  Abandoned, again without a man to shelter her after James Hamilton—charming and feckless—abruptly decamped, she found a way to support herself and her children. She kept a small retail store and rented out the slaves, which she, like almost every other white person in the islands, owned. In her store she retailed dried beef, rice, apples, flour, fish, butter and textiles.

 

Alexander first helped his mother in her shop. After her death, he clerked for the international trading firm of Cruger and Beekman, but he no doubt had his first lessons in bookkeeping and management from her. Rachel also taught him French. These skills would serve him well when he joined George Washington's official family during the Revolutionary War. During his childhood,  Alexander also learned about power, about the darker side of human nature, and about injustice, first-hand--subjects he would ponder till the end of his life. 

For very obvious 18th Century reasons, Hamilton almost never spoke of his mother with outsiders, but "she was recollected with inexpressible fondness and (he) often spoke of her as a woman of superior intellect, highly cultivated, of elevated and generous sentiments," and an "unusual elegance of person and manner." *

* John Church Hamilton, fourth son of Alexander Hamilton, "The Life of Alexander Hamilton," published 1854.  

Sources:
Hamilton I (1757-1789) by Robert Hendrickson, ISBN: 9780884051398
Hamilton by Forrest McDonald, ISBN: 9780393300482
 Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow ISBN: 1594200092
The Young Hamilton by Thomas J. Flexner, ISBN: 9780823217892

~~Juliet Waldron
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