CC0 image from Pxhere.com. 

I am maintaining a balancing act this week – the project with Stephanie M. Hopkins, editing Dan Bush’s script/novel, finishing the first draft of my own work-in-progress, and – oh, yeah – the church! I have my usual duties as educator and communications director. And there’s also a room that we no longer use as a classroom that needs to get tidied up. So I’m a little short on time.
 
So today I’m giving you a peek at the The Good Community, the fifth novel in the Saint Maggie series. Remember, this is only a first draft so it is not exactly polished yet!
 
This scene takes place after Maggie and Emily have started a school for the children of color who live on Water Street. There is no school for them, the school board has proclaimed that it is not economical to provide a teacher and supplies for the small number of black children, and the town will not integrate its common school. In New Jersey at that time, some schools were integrated, and some were not.
 
Naturally, the Greybeal School of Practical Studies, the private school founded by Maggie, Emily and friends causes a bit of controversy. Hey, it’s a Saint Maggie story, controversy happens.
 
The scene revolves around a group of older boys who think it’s a good idea to harass the Water Street children on their way to school. What they don’t anticipate is the reaction of the man who is driving their wagon: Grandpa O’Reilly.

I usually use Scribd to put up long pieces of text from my work - but it is not working correctly at the moment - so I'm just cutting and pasting. Not as "professional" looking, but there you are. Technology is great. When it works.


​On Tuesday morning, Grandpa took the wagon down to Water Street as usual to pick up the children. He no longer needed to shout to get them to come out of their houses. Rather, they ran willingly to the wagon and clambered aboard. The old man grinned at his passengers.

“And how are you this fine morning?”

A chorus of “We’re well, thank you,” greeted him.

Pleased, Grandpa O’Reilly shook the reins and Romeo began to the journey to Greybeal House.

They were traveling down Bell Avenue when a group of older boys leapt out of the woods at the side of the road and began to throw rotten eggs at the wagon. Romeo started and Grandpa struggled to control the horse as the children behind him shrieked.

“Go back to where you belong!” one boy shouted.

Another began calling the children names.

Yet another started beating on the wagon with a large branch he obviously had found in the woods.

“Dammit!” Grandpa shouted at the horse. “Whoa, Romeo! Whoa!”

The horse complied, if only for a moment, giving the old man the opportunity to reach under the seat. An egg splatted against his arm. “Dammit!”

“Go home! Go back to Ireland!”

“I am home, ya little git!” His fingers finally grasped the item he was seeking

One of the boys shook a badly made noose at them. “How about a taste of this?”

The students screamed.

Grandpa stood up, shouting, “Scare little children, will you? It’s time you had a scare of your own!” He brandished the thing he was holding in the air. It was a pistol.

“He’s got a gun! Run! He’s gonna kill us!”

Grandpa discharged the weapon into the air.

Screaming in panic, the boys raced back into the woods.

Flopping back onto the driver’s seat, Grandpa shook the reins. “Giddyap, Romeo! Giddyap!”

The horse took off with the children holding on to the wagon and each other for dear life.
 
When they arrived at Greybeal house, they were making such a racket that Maggie and the other women dashed into the yard. The noise of crying and screaming also brought Nate running from his workshop.

“Good heavens!” Maggie lifted a sobbing Magnolia Baldwin from the wagon. Then she got a good whiff of the child’s clothing. She wrinkled her nose. “Oh, my! What is that? Rotten eggs?”

Grandpa climbed gingerly down from the wagon. “Aye. A group of four young toughs attacked us on Bell Avenue near just before it meets Oak Street. Came outta the woods, they did. Throwing all manner of nasty things. I had to fire me pistol to chase ‘em off.”

“Grandpa! You didn’t hurt anyone…”

“No, daughter. I’d never do such a thing unless one of ‘em grabbed a child. I just wanted to scare ‘em. Nothing more.”

Nate was helping the women get the children off the wagon. “They have no right to attack children.”

“None whatsoever,” the old man agreed. “And you should have heard the language they used. Poor little things. Scared the life out of them.”

“We’ll clean them up,” Rosa said.

As she, Emily, Beth Benny, and Abigail began ushering them inside, Maggie heaved a weary sigh.  “This was the last thing I wanted.”

“But it should have been the first thing you expected.” Nate took Romeo’s reins and turned to Grandpa. “Go on inside and wash up, O’Reilly. I’ll take care of all this.”

The old man nodded his thanks and disappeared inside.

Maggie followed Nate as he led the horse and wagon to the barn.

“What should we do?”

“I don’t know.” Nate began to unhitch Romeo from the wagon. “This poor fella’s still scared. Look at his eyes.”

“It terrified everyone.” She patted the horse’s neck. “I’ll bring you a nice lump of sugar later, Romeo.”
Nate led the animal into the barn to remove his harness and bridle and wipe him down. “We need to let Eli know trouble’s coming.”

It was so quiet and peaceful in the barn. Maggie leaned wearily against the stall. “Oh, Nate… Why does trouble always come to us?”

Nate suddenly began to chuckle. “Are you serious, Maggie? Time and again you, I, and the rest of this family walk around thinking we’re just like everybody else when we all know dang well that we’re not.”

She cast her eyes down at the barn’s dirt floor. “I realize we fly in the face of convention.” She lifted her head to meet her friend’s eyes. “But I never cease to be bruised by the hate. Why are people like that?”

“I don’t know. I think deep inside we’re all alike. Men and women can be as loving as Christ one moment and mean as the devil the next. Maybe people just don’t like to be shaken out of the things they always thought were true.”

“Does that apply to us, too?” Hands on hips, Maggie began to pace back and forth in front of Romeo’s stall. “Maybe we’re wrong, Nate. Maybe people are supposed to be divided and embattled forever. Maybe I should expect everyone to be ensnared in anger, resentment, and hate.”

Nate left Romeo and walked to her side. “Now, Maggie, you know what’s right and what’s wrong.”

“Yes, I do.” She looked up. “Love is right. Jesus taught it. Jesus lived it.”

“And you know what he said about the Kingdom of God.”

She smiled faintly. “It’s among us when we love. It’s as close as our next breath.”

“That’s right. Give me your hand.”

She held it out and Nate grasped it and put his other hand over hers. “We’re doing this together, as sister and brother. But, Maggie, this is what it’s like for my people. We take a step or two forward and get pushed back eight. A day doesn’t go by that we don’t walk into pain, disappointment, or fear.” He smiled. “But at the end of our walk… at the end of that walk we know we’ll find the hope and warm grace of God… and with it, equality and freedom.”

Maggie called up a smile. “Thank you.”


​
Hope you enjoyed it the sneak preview.

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Until Friday!

Philip H. Smith and his wife, Mary A, Miller. Their children (left to right): Wesley (boys and girls wore dresses as young children in those days), Luther, Mary (Maidie), Ada, and Minnie. From my ancestry.com account. I have some personal photos of Mary as a great-grandmother, but need to dig them out.

Friend Stephanie M. Hopkins and I are working on a new project. I’m usually a solo writer, except when co-working with my partner, Dan Bush. This time around, though, I’m creating with a female friend. I can’t go into many details at the moment, but I can tell you that the story is set in Civil War America (Stephanie and I both have an interest in the period) and will involve two girls who are cousins. My job is to create a character to interact with her character.
 
That means first item on the table for us is to create central characters. In the past, I have done this in multiple ways. Sometimes I imagine that the character looks like an actor or even like a person I know. Seeing and hearing the character in my mind helps with development and interaction with the other characters. Other times, though, I might have an idea of how I want the character to be. I ask myself, “What qualities, foibles, lifestyle, and relationships do I want this character have?”
 
For this story, however, I recalled that I have an ancestor who fought in the Civil War. So, off I went to ancestry.com, where I discovered that his daughter was one of my great-grandmothers on my father’s side. And that I knew her!
 
Her name was Mary E. Smith Lape Frost. I knew her as “Nana.” Nana lived with my family for a short while when I was no older than 6 or 7 years of age. My memory of Nana is that she was a small, skinny old lady with white hair and wire-rimmed glasses. My clearest memory of her was sitting on her lap at her desk in her bedroom and writing a letter to Captain Kangaroo. (Look it up if you haven’t experienced children’s TV in the 1950s.) I scribbled on the piece of paper before me and then sat back against her and said, “What did I just write, Nana?” Nana very wisely did not say, “I load of gibberish, dear. You don’t know how to write yet.” Instead, she said, “What do you think it says?” I remember being completely flummoxed that she couldn’t understand my scrawls. The truth is that all writing looked like nonsense to me at that age. I always needed an adult to interpret everything in print or handwriting for me. And so I wondered, what was Nana’s problem that she couldn’t interpret my letter of appreciation to Captain Kangaroo?
 
When my great-grandmother died in 1961, my mother took me to see her body at the funeral parlor. Mom very gently explained to me that because I was nine years old, I was old enough to see what someone looked like when they were dead. So I went, I saw, and I thought that she really didn’t look much like the Nana I knew. (P.S. there was no traumatic scene in which I was forced to kiss a dead relative goodbye. My mom knew way better than to do that with her skittish first-born child.)
 
That was part of the inspiration. The other part involves my great-grandmother Mary’s father, Philip Henry Smith, who enlisted in the Union army as a volunteer on 3 February 1863. The records say was a private in the New York 6th Cavalry, Company F. For a while I thought that perhaps he was one of those dashing fellows riding along with a sword in one hand and slashing the heck out of the enemy (erghh… gross). But I was wrong and here is why: before the war he was a blacksmith. Most likely he forged the shoes for the horses and replaced broken equipment on the wagons and other equipment. He also could have been a farrier, or someone who specializes in shoeing and carrying for the horses’ hooves.
 
Given that information, questions began to arise. What would have happened in a town when the blacksmith left to enlist in the army? In real life, there appears to have been two blacksmiths in the town where my family lived. But what if there had only been one blacksmith? Who would have stepped up during his absence? And who would have provided for his family?
 
And just like that I had a setting and questions to develop my fictional character and her family. I have decided that the character will have my Nana’s first name, Mary, and will be called by what may have been Nana’s nickname, Maidie. However, my great-grandmother was born in 1869 and I need my character to be eighteen at the start of the story, so I have given the fictional Mary an earlier birth date of 1842. I don’t have a last name for her yet, but that is coming.
 
But all that brings up something central to writing fiction: it is all about asking “what if?” Or at least that is the starting point for an author. In my case with this project, the question has taken me to my own family for inspiration.
 
 
Have a good Monday (if you can)! I’ll be back on Wednesday.
 
Also, I encourage you to visit Stephanie M. Hopkins over at her blog, Layered Pages: https://layeredpages.com/
 

William Still. Photo from African American Registry.
https://aaregistry.org/story/william-still-philadelphia-abolitionist/


​I’d like to give you some stories about people who traveled on and worked with the Underground Railroad.
 
One story I came upon happened in 1840. It was about four siblings named Davie, Isaac, James, and Hannah Arthur who escaped eastern Maryland with the hope of getting to Haddonfield Quakers who were active on the Underground Railroad. The parents of the young self-emancipators had died and so they dared to run away to ensure that they would be together. Enslaved people always had the fear that they would be sold to someone else and be forced to leave family and friends. Although we don’t know what age the four Arthurs were, we do know that they traveled mostly by foot and managed to cross three state lines. And they did all this while evading slave hunters. Once the quartet entered southern New Jersey, they were identified by people working with the Underground Railroad, who got them safely to Haddonfield. The Arthurs stayed in the area and their descendants live in Lawnside (near Haddonfield), a town founded in 1840 by former slaves and other people of color. (Fiaschetti).
 
There also is the story of William Still (born 7 October 1819 or 1821), whose father, Levin Steel, purchased his freedom from his owner in Maryland and moved to New Jersey. Levin then changed his name to Levin Still, to protect his wife Sidney, who remained enslaved in Maryland. Sidney made one escape, got caught, and was returned. Luckily, her second escape was successful, and she was able to join her husband, but could bring only two of their children with her (National Underground Railroad Freedom Center).
 
William Still was born in Burlington County, New Jersey. He took a job in 1847 as a janitor with the Philadelphia Society for the Abolition of Slavery, but soon began giving aid and shelter to fugitive slaves, one of whom was his brother Peter, who had been left behind when their mother escaped (National Underground Railroad Freedom Center).
 
Still kept meticulous records about his activities, however he destroyed many of them before the Civil War started to protect those he had helped. In 1872, he wrote a book, The Underground Railroad, which “is one of the most important historical records we have.” The book emphasizes self-emancipators “as courageous individuals who struggled for their own freedom” (National Underground Railroad Freedom Center).
 
Lawnside, New Jersey (known as Snow Hill back then) was also home to Peter Mott, a free man. He was preacher and Sunday school superintendent at Mt. Pisgah African Methodist Episcopal Church. Mott purchased a lot in 1844 and on it built a two-story house, which served as an Underground Railroad station. Local Snow Hill women reportedly would bring food to the Mott house when Peter and his wife hid runaways The story goes that Mott took self-emancipators by wagon to Quakers living in Haddonfield and Moorestown so they could move further north. The Mott house was purchased and restored in 1992 by the Lawnside Historical Society and is open to the public (Fiaschetti). It certainly would be worth your while to visit if you live in or near New Jersey.

The Peter Mott House. Photo by the Lawnside Historical Society
http://www.petermotthouse.org/museum.html

​People not only are still uncovering the history of the Underground Railroad, but also the history of the many black communities established in New Jersey. One such group lived in Sourland Mountain, a place with which I’m familiar. In the 1700s, the first African Americans in the area worked as slaves on farms in the valleys around the mountain. As New Jersey began to prohibit slavery – a process that took nearly 30 years – self-emancipators hid in the dense woods of Sourland Mountain (Stoutsburg/The People), most likely on their way to Underground Railroad stations in New Brunswick.
 
The Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum “was born out of decades’ worth of research conducted by two of its advisory board members, Beverly Mills and Elaine Buck." The two women were working to establish the Stoutsburg Cemetery as the burial place of William Stives, who fought in the Revolutionary War and was among the early black settlers in the Sourlands. As Mills and Buck got into their research, they uncovered more information about the early African American settlers and realized that these powerful and uplifting stories needed to be made public. So, the two wrote a book, If These Stones Could Talk, which they hoped, would “be used as an addendum to the little known, missing black history facts left out of our family histories, our textbooks and libraries. The goal is to engage readers - and educate students - not only in New Jersey but also across America and beyond” (Stoutsburg/About). Do I need to say that I want to get that book?

I brought the information about the Stoutsburg museum up because it is important to know the history of all the people, not just a few. I’m glad the folks working at the Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum have undertaken this effort, making them part of a greater group throughout the USA doing the same.
 
The story of the Underground Railroad, the bulk of its history hidden, needs to be uncovered as fully as it can be, as do the other aspects of black history.
 

Sources for this blog:

Fiaschetti, Patricia Weigold.  “Freedom’s Path: The Underground Railroad in New Jersey,” New Jersey Monthly Magazine, 23 January 2015.
https://njmonthly.com/articles/historic-jersey/freedoms-path-underground-railroad-nj/

“William Still.” National Underground Railroad Freedom Center website.
https://freedomcenter.org/content/william-still
 
Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum. “The People.”
https://www.ssaamuseum.org/thepeople
 
Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum. “About.”
https://www.ssaamuseum.org/about
 
 
 
Other Sources Relating to Previous Blogs:
 
Bordewich, Fergus M. Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America’s First Civil Rights Movement. (New York: Amistad-Harper Collins Publishers, 2006)
 
McCauslin, Debra Sandoe. Reconstructing the Past: Puzzle of the Lost Community at Yellow Hill. (North Charleston, SC :Book Surge Publishing, 2007)
 
Papson, Don and Tom Calarco. Secret Lives of the Underground Railroad in New York City. Sydney Howard Gay, Louis Napoleon and the Record of Fugitives. (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2015)
 
Switala, William J. Underground Railroad in New York and New Jersey. (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2006)