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Elizabeth Bell, Author

Undeniable Love. Unflinching History. Unforgettable Fiction.

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    • Lazare Family Saga, Book 1: Necessary Sins
    • Lazare Family Saga, Book 2: Lost Saints
    • Lazare Family Saga, Book 3: Native Stranger
    • Lazare Family Saga, Book 4: Sweet Medicine
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African-American History

My Debt to Colonial Williamsburg

January 2, 2023 by Elizabeth Bell

Most of my Lazare Family Saga series takes place in the 19th century, so you might think visits to an 18th-century living history museum wouldn’t be terribly useful to my research. In fact, Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia was one of the richest sources for my fiction set mostly in 19th-century South Carolina. Here’s how!

After I moved to Virginia in 2004, I visited Colonial Williamsburg as often as I could and absorbed its historical delights like a sponge. This is how I read nonfiction as well; I rarely know which details will be useful, even crucial, in my historical fiction, so I devour them all. Finally, I had to cut myself off from travelling, finish writing my Lazare Family Saga, and publish it. Then COVID hit. It’s been six years since I last visited Colonial Williamsburg. 

I remedied that in December 2022. Before, I’d always stayed “on the cheap.” For the first time, I was able to rent one of the Historic Area’s Colonial Houses: a restored 18th-century kitchen with a working fireplace and a canopy bed. I’d never slept in one before, and I loved its coziness.

My cozy canopy bed and fireplace inside the Market Square Kitchen, a restored 18th-century building and one of the Colonial Houses in Williamsburg. Joseph and Tessa could be hiding behind the bed curtains!

My visit reminded me of all the reasons I love Colonial Williamsburg. To me, its two greatest aspects are ones I hope I’ve recreated in my historical fiction: Colonial Williamsburg awes me with both its scale and its depth. The Historic Area isn’t just a handful of restored or reconstructed 18th-century buildings. It’s the largest living history museum in the world: 301 acres and 604 buildings—truly an epic recreation of the past. The people who interpret these spaces often spend decades researching their characters and unearthing forgotten details from primary sources. In the Historic Trades, master craftsmen must apprentice for seven years just as they did in the 18th century. 

Lafayette outside the Governor’s Palace
Martha and George Washington

These interpreters’ dedication inspires me as a writer. Colonial Williamsburg was the foil that allowed me to see and correct the gaps in my 19th-century knowledge. Because CW interpreters know daily 18th-century life so thoroughly, they challenged me to think about my characters’ primary century in new ways. 

My Lazare Family Saga does begin in the 18th century, albeit in the last decade and in the Caribbean, not in Virginia. Nevertheless, when Marguerite dons a detached pocket (Necessary Sins, Chapter 4), this comes straight from my visit to the milliner’s shop in Colonial Williamsburg. The wigmaker helped me understand that curious fashion. Cooking over an open fire didn’t change much from the 1700s to the 1800s. Nor did blacksmithing.

Milliner’s shop
Governor’s Palace Kitchen

Happily, many of the objects displayed in the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg are from the 19th century. I studied several examples of men’s neckwear to describe Joseph’s (Necessary Sins, Chapter 21). Tessa’s brown cloak with white lining in Chapter 29 was based on a cloak I saw in the CW Museums as well.

I researched The Lazare Family Saga for so many years and visited Colonial Williamsburg so many times, I can’t always parse chicken from egg: Did I read about Noah’s Ark toys (Lost Saints, Chapter 11) in a book before I saw a complete set in the CW Museums? I think I researched 19th-century couches online and chose the perfect shape for Tessa’s méridienne before I spotted one on display in the Museums—but having that real-life example helped tremendously and directly inspired the tasselled pillow I mention in Lost Saints, Chapter 8.

A late 1800s Noah’s Ark toy set
A circa 1820 couch shaped like Tessa’s green mérdienne
https://emuseum.history.org/objects/68744/couch#

On my tour of the Randolph property, I learned about an enslaved maid named Eve, inspiring me to give René’s mother the French version, Ève, for her slave name (Necessary Sins, Chapter 1). The real-life Eve escaped slavery as well. Tragically, she was recaptured and sold to the West Indies as punishment.

On a visit to CW’s Great Hopes Plantation (sadly this site seems to be closed now), I saw a modern blacksmith’s recreation of a slave collar. I combined this atrocious design with a slave collar I’d seen in a Louisiana museum in order to describe such a collar in Chapter 9 of Necessary Sins. In Chapter 40 of Native Stranger, Cromwell mocks Easter for eating too many ginger cakes. Every time I visit CW, I do exactly this. 

In Chapter 6 of Necessary Sins, the racist Marguerite commands her grandson Joseph: “Don’t you ever trust a negro with your shaving razor!” This remark was inspired by a walking tour of Colonial Williamsburg that discussed the enslaved population. Our guide gave personal grooming, including shaving razors, as an example of how intimately the lives of enslavers and enslaved intertwined.

George Wythe’s office. Note the portmanteau and microscope case atop the desk at right
One of Colonial Williamsburg’s live oaks and tourists in a carriage

The most iconic tree of the antebellum American South is the live oak (Quercus virginiana). These don’t grow in Northern Virginia where I live; but they do grow in Williamsburg! The Colonial Garden may be the first place I saw pomegranate blossoms. I know it’s where I learned about cold frames (Necessary Sins, Chapter 17). What might a man of science have in his office? How do flintlock firearms work? How does one climb into a carriage? CW answered these questions among countless others.

Colonial Williamsburg is truly hands-on history, and these are some of the ways it’s had a profound impact on my historical fiction. I can hardly wait to return.

Filed Under: African-American History, Authenticity, Historical Fiction, Interpretation, Racism, Research, Writer's Life Tagged With: authenticity, inspiration, Research

When the Research Rabbit Hole Leads You Back Home

April 3, 2020 by Elizabeth Bell

It’s funny how I’ll puzzle over a story problem for months only to realize that the answer has been all but staring me in the face. Although most of my historical series, the Lazare Family Saga, is set in South Carolina and (what is now) Wyoming, I live in Northern Virginia near Washington, D.C. That will soon be relevant. Journey down the research rabbit hole with me…

The Lazare Family Saga grapples with racism and slavery in the antebellum American South. Sweet Medicine, the fourth and final book, takes the characters into the Reconstruction era after the Civil War. I had to figure out what the Lazare family should be doing during this momentous period in American history, something that would make a fitting capstone to my saga and “bring it all together.”

The title of Book 4, Sweet Medicine, has multiple meanings. One of these is literal: two Lazares are medical doctors. Another meaning is figurative, referring to spiritual healing. For one particular character (I’m being deliberately vague to minimize spoilers), I wanted his Reconstruction choices to encompass both literal and figurative healing. Although he is a physician dedicated to helping others, he is himself psychologically wounded.

I wanted this character to be involved in educating newly freed African-Americans as a way of reclaiming his ancestry and healing his fractured identity, since the Lazares are a multiracial family who have been “passing” as white for most of the series. Before Emancipation, penalties for teaching an enslaved person to read included imprisonment and hefty fines. An enslaved person caught with a book would be whipped and often sold because his/her master considered an educated slave dangerous. Both during and after slavery, when an African-American learned to read, it was a way of declaring his/her personhood, of declaring that (s)he was worthy of more than manual labor. During Reconstruction, whole families—from children to grandparents—eagerly attended classes. After the devastation of slavery, education provided a means for African-Americans to heal themselves spiritually. White supremacists understood the symbolic and practical importance of education and frequently targeted schools and teachers.

But how could I pair this pro-education idea with literal medicine? The Reconstruction part of my story appears as an Epilogue. I don’t have fully fleshed out scenes to go into great detail. My characters’ Reconstruction choices must pack a satisfying emotional punch within a few paragraphs. Since the character in question commits a felony in South Carolina earlier in Sweet Medicine, I had to keep him away from that state. Beyond this limitation, the possibilities were mind-boggling. This is the part of historical fiction where the author conducts much more research than she’ll ever use, because she needs to eliminate possibilities.

At first, I placed my character at Hampton Institute. Today, this is Hampton University, located in my adopted state of Virginia but a solid 2.5 hour drive from me. I liked that enslaved people first escaped to Union lines near Hampton. I liked that Hampton University continues to thrive today, one of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities a.k.a. HBCU (meaning their student bodies are primarily African-American). But there was no medical connection with Hampton.

Another central subject in my work is Native Americans. They too were educated at Hampton, which would seem to be a vote in its favor. However, Hampton was one of the colleges where the white teachers sought to “kill the Indian, and save the man”—in other words, to strip the Native students of their culture.

Even with its black students, Hampton focused on vocational and agricultural degrees. This was actually called “the Hampton Idea.” Instead of being offered a “higher education,” students were trained to do manual labor because many white people thought freedmen were not (yet) intellectually capable of more cerebral careers. Even black people like Booker T. Washington advocated the Hampton Idea, which argued that African-Americans should “stay in their place,” accept racial segregation, and not expect to become social equals with white people. By placing my character at Hampton Institute, I felt I would be endorsing harmful prejudices.

So where should I place my character during Reconstruction? As it turns out, I have lived near the solution for over a decade and have borrowed books from its library many times: Howard University in Washington, D.C. I knew Howard was also one of the HBCU. I vaguely knew it was founded just after the Civil War (1867). But I didn’t realize how special Howard was.

Howard consisted of multiple colleges from the beginning: law, theology, normal (for training teachers), and medicine. Its founders understood that given an equal chance, African-Americans are every bit as capable of succeeding in intellectual professions as white people.

Not only that, Howard’s advanced curriculum was open to all races and both sexes from its 1867 founding. Howard admitted at least a few Native American students. Two of its medical professors in the 1870s were men of color, and one professor was a white woman. The #1 fear of white supremacists is black men intermingling with white women—and that very “amalgamation” was happening at Howard during Reconstruction.

Considering the segregation to come, Howard University circa 1870 was ahead of its time and Too Awesome Not to Use. Eureka! I’d found the perfect capstone to my family saga—practically in my own backyard.

Dr. Isabel C. Barrows earned her degree at Woman’s Medical College of New York City in 1869 and also studied in Vienna, Austria. She was a professor in Howard University’s Medical Department from 1870-1873 (a year too late to appear in the below group photo). She specialized in diseases of the eye and ear.

You might notice that the professor on the far left is a man of color, Dr. Alexander T. Augusta. In fact, so is the second man from the right, Dr. Charles B. Purvis.

Dr. Alexander T. Augusta was born to free black parents in Norfolk, Virginia. He earned his degree at Trinity Medical College in Toronto, Canada in 1856. He was the first black medical officer during the Civil War, commissioned as a major and appointed head surgeon of the 7th U.S. Colored Infantry. Dr. Augusta was also the first black hospital administrator in the United States; the first black medical professor, teaching at Howard from 1869-1877; and the first black officer buried at Arlington National Cemetery (1890). You can see a photograph of him looking dashing in his Union uniform here.

Dr. Charles B. Purvis was born to free black abolitionists in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He served as both a nurse and a surgeon during the Civil War and earned his degree at Wooster Medical College in 1865. Dr. Purvis was a professor in Howard’s Medical Department from 1869-1907. After the Financial Panic of 1873, the university was in dire straights and could no longer pay its faculty. Dr. Purvis continued teaching without a salary for three decades because he believed in Howard’s mission. Without him, the medical school probably would not have survived.

You’ll notice from these photographs that Dr. Purvis could have passed as white. He identified as black and was refused admittance to the American Medical Association because of it. Dr. Purvis’s father, Robert Purvis, was born in Charleston, South Carolina and was active in the Underground Railroad. Finding him was another lovely “full circle” moment in my research, a real-life echo of my fictional Lazare family.


All images in this post taken from the book Howard University Medical Department: A Historical, Biographical, and Statistical Souvenir by Dr. Daniel Smith Lamb, published in 1900. You can view the book in its entirety here: https://dh.howard.edu/med_pub/1

For the history of Howard as a whole, check out Howard University: the First Hundred Years, 1867-1967 by Ralph W. Logan, published in 1969.

Filed Under: African-American History, Historical Fiction, Racism, Research, Writing

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