Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

Brookhaven

Finding an Army Medal in a Small-Town Antique Store

By 2 Comments

I’m always suspicious of Facebook messages coming from people I don’t know. If it seems that a message might possibly be legitimate, I’ll check the person’s profile page. More often than not, it’s people from Hong Kong or the Philippines or Africa, or people who names and profile photos clearly don’t match. Click delete.

A few weeks ago, one arrived that raised my suspicions, but the sender seemed legitimate. And he was. He asked me if I was the author of this article at Emerging Civil War: “Research for a Novel Upended a Family Legend.” Yep, that was me.

He said he had an interesting story to tell me, and we eventually connected by phone. 

Cross of Military Service

Some weeks before, he’d been in an antique store in Paris, Texas, north of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He collects Civil War memorabilia, and he’d found a medal with a serial number on the back.

The medal was a Cross of Military Service. It had been awarded by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDAC) to veterans whose ancestors fought in the Civil War and who themselves were veterans of World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, and/or the Global War on Terror. He said finding a medal like this was highly unusual, because families tended to hold on to them, even after the awardee’s death. 

He contacted the UDAC and learned that this one was even more unusual – it had been awarded to a woman for her service in both World War II and Korea. Her name was U.S. Army Major Ruby Edwina McCain. She was born in 1913 and died in 1991. The UDAC was able to tell him that her Civil War ancestor was Jarvis Seale, born in 1824 in Amite County, Mississippi, and died in 1862 at the Battle of Shiloh. Ruby was his great-granddaughter.

The man who found the medal went looking for Jarvis Seale, and what did he find but my article at Emerging Civil War.

Ruby Edwina McCain

For a long time, Jarvis Seale was the mystery man in the Young family Bible records. No one knew why he was there. Family Search eventually revealed the reason – he had married a Martha Young, the oldest sister of my great-grandfather Samuel, who originally bought the Bible and entered all of the family records. Samuel would have known his brother-in-law and remembered him in the Bible. Samuel also lost his two older brothers in the war.

What puzzled my new friend was what had puzzled several people – why was Jarvis listed in Find-a-Grave and Family Search as buried in a cemetery in Clarksville, Texas? The fact is, he wasn’t. He was buried in one of several mass graves for Confederate dead at Shiloh. At some point years later, one of his daughters moved with her husband to Clarksville, and she had placed a memorial stone there in the family plot. That was two mysteries solved – the Bible’s mystery name and the Texas gravestone.

Ruby McCain was from Clarksville. Her grandmother had been the one to arrange for the memorial stone. Clarksville is about 20 miles south of the Oklahoma border, and 30 miles east of Paris, Texas, where Ruby’s medal ended up. Our best guess is that a relative (Ruby had no children) had included the medal in an estate sale or given it away, and it ended up in the antique store.

Jarvis and Martha furnished their names for characters in my novel Brookhaven. A medal, a memorial stone, and a book brought them back from the past, facilitated by Facebook messenger and a phone call.

What Happened to the Fireside Poets?

By Leave a Comment

When I first envisioned my novel Brookhaven, I focused on a family story passed down through generations, which turned out to be a legend, as in, almost entirely untrue. But two things shifted my focus. 

First, in 2022, I had the old family Bible conserved. It had seen better days; my father gave it to me wrapped in grocery store bag paper and tied with strong. My contribution had been to remove the paper and string, wrap it in acid-free paper, and store in an acid-free box. It sat on a closet shelf for years, until I brought it to a book conservator in St. Louis. He discovered something tucked in the Book of Isaiah that both my father and I had missed – a yellowed envelope containing a lock of auburn hair.

For various reasons, I believe the hair belonged to my great-grandmother Octavia. She died in 1888 at age 44. Unusual for the time, my great-grandfather Samuel never remarried. He died in 1920. And I thought to myself, “There’s a love story here.”

Second, also in 2022, we saw a movie entitled “I Heard the Bells.” It’s a snapshot of the life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) during the Civil War, including both the tragic death of his beloved wife and the near death from a war wound of his oldest son Charles. Both events contributed to Longfellow’s writing the poem that became a Christmas hymn, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” 

To continue reading, please see me post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Illustration: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Research Doesn’t Stop with Publication

By Leave a Comment

It was a year ago that the manuscript for my historical novel was attached to an email and sent to the publisher who requested it. I felt an incredible sense of relief. The thing was done. I could take a break from literally years of reading and research about the Civil War. Nine years of reading and research. 

I had started this even before I’d thought about writing a historical novel. I started reading about the Civil War because I was interested in it. It was only when I stumbled across an event called Grierson’s Raid, a Union cavalry raid in 1863 that the idea for a novel arose. The raid began at the border between Mississippi and Tennessee, swept down through the state, and eventually ended at Baton Rouge in Louisiana. It was designed as a diversion for Ulysses S Grant to quietly move his Union army across the Mississippi and attack Vicksburg from the east.

My ancestors had experienced that raid. They lived in the Brookhaven, Mississippi, area, one of sites that Grierson’s raiders had visited.

I researched everything I could about the raid and the broader war. Once I knew I would be writing a novel, my research intensified. By the time I sent the email to the publisher, I was close to exhausted, at least mentally.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW Blog.

Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride”: Creaing a National Legend 

By Leave a Comment

It’s a tossup as to whether the most famous or best-known poem in America is Clement Moore”s “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (aka “Twas the Night Before Christmas”), first published in 1823, or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride,” (1860). My money is on “Paul Revere’s Ride.” Whole generations of schoolchildren, myself included, grew up reciting the lines that begin “Listen my children, and you shall hear…” 

Both poems are no longer taught in most of America’s public schools, but I know from my grandsons’ experience that they are taught (with great gusto) in many private schools, especially those offering a classical education. “Paul Revere’s Ride” commemorates one of the significant of the beginning of the American Revolution, a horseback ride at night to warn the cities of Lexington and Concord that British troops were coming.

That ride occurred 250 years ago tomorrow.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Artwork: the illustration accompanying the poem in the January 1861 edition of The Atlantic Magazine.

Meeting with a Monthly Book Club on “Brookhaven”

By 4 Comments

Last week, I sat with seven or eight members of a local St. Louis book club. I was there at their invitation to discuss my historical novel Brookhaven, which they’d chosen for their monthly reading. I was there to talk about the book and answer their questions.

The hostess was more than knowledgeable about the Civil War, having an ancestor who served on the Union side. She even had his picture and other memorabilia. Her husband had an ancestor who published Origins of the Late War in 1866.

As usually happens when you talk with engaged and knowledgeable readers – really engaged readers – you’re the one who comes come away with a new understanding of your own work. 

Brookhaven

What was the inspiration for the story?

My family history, supposedly passed down from my great-grandfather Samuel Young, who was a Civil War veteran. The family story was that he was too young at the start of the war, so he became a messenger boy. At the end of the war, he had to make his way home on foot from the Eastern Theater to southern Mississippi. 

What a great story!

As I discovered in the middle of writing Brookhaven, it was also untrue. Completely. I had to piece together the real story from U.S. Census records, family memories from another branch, old military records, and the family Bible. The received story was so untrue that I suspect someone was pulling someone’s leg, or the story was artfully embroidered by people who weren’t there. My father, for example, said that we came from a long line of shopkeepers who never owned slaves. The census records tell a very different story. We came from a long line of farmers who had indeed owned slaves.

Women’s fashions in 1915

Any other inspirations for the book?

In early 2022, my wife found a reference to a book conserver in St. Louis, and I turned over the family Bible to repair what could be repaired. He did a great job; he also found a lock of auburn hair in the Bible. Given that all the recorded family records were in my great-grandfather’s hand, the lock likely belonged to my great-grandmother Octavia. She died at 44; my great-grandfather never remarried even though he was 43 when she died and lived until he was 75. That lock of hair and his remaining a widower told me there was a love story here.

How long did it take to write Brookhaven?

The writing itself took about eight months, but it wasn’t a solid eight months of non-stop writing. The research took considerably longer; I started reading about the Civil War in 2016, I think inspired by the red-blue divide that was just beginning to rage in contemporary America. The emotions aroused today are not unlike the emotions aroused prior to the Civil War, although the reasons were and are considerably different.

And the story is not just about the Civil War, of course, because it’s actually set in 1915, fifty years after the war ended. So that required two research efforts, like the clothes men and women wore, the kinds of automobiles driven, what you would see at county fairs, whether indoor plumbing was available in small-town Mississippi, and a whole lot more. One historical fact I learned that becomes a small part in the story was that Brookhaven in the 19th and early 20th centuries had a large Jewish population, unusual for a small Southern town.

Men’s fashions in 1915

How do you write? Do you have a set time each day?

My wife will tell you that I’m always writing, even when I’m not. Brookhaven was written in the mornings, afternoons, and evenings. The manuscript came with me when we spent three weeks in London in 2023, and I worked on it there and on the plane both ways as well. When I’m not sitting in front of the desktop or laptop, I’m often writing and rewriting in my head, like when I take long walks.

Do you write from an outline or plan?

No. I write from an idea in my head, but not from an outline. There’s a phrase for it, “writing into the dark.” When I start writing, I don’t know how the story is going to end. One of the main characters, the young reporter Elizabeth Putnam, was a relatively late addition to the story, because I kept stumbling over the need for a reason that the story was being told 50 years later. It was another main character, Sam McClure the Civil War veteran, who looked me in the eye one day and said, “You know, you really need a reason for this story being told in 1915.” Writing into the dark mean you learn to trust your characters. I know it sounds bizarre, but that’s how I write.

Related:

Research for a Novel Upended a Family Legend.

7 Tips for the Novice Historical Writer – Learned the Hard Way.

How My Novel Originated in the Family Bible.

Relearning Civil War History to Write a Novel.

10 Great Resources for Teaching the Civil War.

Top photograph: The Brookhaven, Miss., train station about 1915.

10 Great Resources for Teaching the Civil War

By Leave a Comment

I was drafting and researching what would become my historical novel Brookhaven, and I looked at the census records for Pike County, Mississippi. I’d been having trouble finding my ancestor Samuel Young listed anywhere in Confederate rosters. The only one clue I’d previously found was a listing for S.F. Young, who joined a Mississippi rifles unit late in the Civil War and was sent to Texas. And I thought the census record might have another name by which he was known.

I found the list of Youngs. And the family I’m looking for. There he was – Samuel F. Young, age 13. My eye traveled up the list to his father, Franklin. And the occupation listed was farmer. The same occupation was listed for Samuel’s two older brothers. 

Something was wrong. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: The 1885 (first) edition of The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant.