Elizabeth Bell, Author

Undeniable Love. Unflinching History. Unforgettable Fiction.

Research

My Debt to Colonial Williamsburg

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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.

What’s in a (Character) Name?

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In Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare famously wrote:

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title.

But he gave those words to a lovestruck teenager. I suspect Shakespeare himself felt differently, that all writers do. Names matter. It matters whether you call someone “a slave” or “an enslaved person.” It matters whether you call a person Zizistas (their name for themselves, which means “the People”) or Cheyenne (another tribe’s name for them, which means “we do not understand their language”). It even matters what you call a rose, as my character Joseph discovers in Lost Saints.

The rose called Maiden’s Blush—or less demurely, Cuisse de Nymphe Émue. If you don’t speak French, plug that into Google Translate for a rough idea of why it’s naughty. For a better translation, read Lost Saints. 😉
Photo by Nadiatalent

I’ve agonized over the names of every one of my characters. Across the quarter century I spent writing the Lazare Family Saga, I changed their names many times till I found just the right ones. In this post, I’ll share some of the character names I rejected after finding they didn’t fit and explain why I chose the names I did.

In early drafts, Joseph’s relationship with Tessa (Necessary Sins and Lost Saints) was only backstory to David, Clare, and Ésh’s love triangle (Native Stranger and Sweet Medicine). My fictional priest wasn’t yet a point-of-view character. At that time, he wasn’t Joseph and she wasn’t Tessa.

Instead, my priest was named Thierry, a classic French name. I liked the sound of it: TEE-i-ree, with a silent h and lovely rolling r’s. But for a main character, it’s too French; English speakers are sure to mispronounce it. For a while, I switched to Étienne, also sadly too French. Not wanting to lose Thierry or Étienne entirely, I gifted them to more minor characters, Joseph’s relatives.

For my priest, I chose Joseph, naming him after both Biblical men with this name. Old Testament Joseph is enslaved, but his sufferings have a purpose; because of them, he’s able to save his family. He’s also famously chaste. So is New Testament Joseph. In Catholic iconography, Mary’s husband Joseph is often portrayed not as his young wife’s age but as an old man with white hair, reinforcing the Catholic dogma that he and Mary never had a sexual relationship. Not even after Jesus was born. Heaven forbid she should be so “defiled”! No, Saint Joseph is beyond all that. So my character Joseph’s name is a reminder of this impossible standard of “purity.” My Joseph tells himself that God gave him Tessa as He gave Mary to New Testament Joseph—to admire but not to touch. Ever. Really?

Saint Joseph with the Infant Jesus by Guido Reni, circa 1635

Tessa was initially named Aisling (pronounced ASH-ling). I loved the Irish legend behind the name, a legend about a beautiful woman who foretells change the way this mortal woman changes Joseph. Aisling means “vision.” An Irish character should have an Irish name, I thought. Not so fast. As I got deeper into my research, I realized that a good Catholic family like Tessa’s would never give their daughter a pagan name like Aisling. I needed to find a saint’s name. Furthermore, because the British Crown controlled Ireland in the 19th century, Irish people had Anglicized names.

So decided to name Joseph’s beloved after Saint Teresa of Ávila. She’s called Tessa, which sounds softer and more feminine. It also invokes the heroine of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891), a work to which I am indebted for some of my themes. Even before he meets Tessa, Joseph has a relationship with Saint Teresa. He marvels at Bernini’s statue of the saint in Rome, and Tessa herself deeply admires her patron saint. I explain why in Necessary Sins.

The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Photo by Benjamín Núñez González

Until the final few drafts, Tessa’s daughter was named Cara. Her father wanted to name her Carolina after his state. Tessa and everyone who really loved the girl called her Cara, which is both Italian for “dear one” and Irish for “friend.” Perfect, right? But like Aisling, Cara wasn’t Catholic enough. There aren’t any saints named Cara. Her final name, Clare, honors Saint Clare of Assisi. It also honors the beautiful Irish county where Tessa grew up.

The Cliffs of Moher in County Clare, Ireland, where my characters Tessa and Liam were born

David was initially named Donatien (do-nah-TYENH), a French name meaning “gift.” Yep, same root as the English word “donation.” Again, I loved how it rolled off my tongue; but again, it was too French, and English speakers were sure to mispronounce it. When I learned it was the first name of the infamous Marquis de Sade (who is nothing like David), that was the nail in Donatien’s coffin.

Instead, I named Joseph’s nephew for the Biblical King David, whose name means “beloved.” King David sins about as badly as a man can sin. He covets Bathsheba, who’s already married to David’s friend Uriah. So David has Uriah killed to get him out of the way. Yet the Catholic Church canonizes King David as a saint. God not only forgives David, He blesses the fruit of his sin: Bathsheba bears David sons, and their descendants are both New Testament Joseph and the Virgin Mary. Scholars doubt that Bathsheba married her husband’s murderer willingly. So the name David ties into my “necessary sins” theme: it invokes grace and good coming from bad.

With both Cara/Clare and Donatien/David, I kept the first letters of their names the same. Sometimes a letter simply sounds right for a character, so I concentrate on names that start with that letter till I find one that fits.

My saga’s fifth major character was initially named Iye. I found this name in Connie Lockhart Ellefson’s The Melting Pot Book of Baby Names, one of many name books I consulted as I pondered what to call my characters. This was before websites like “Behind the Name“—I was researching old school.

Connie Lockhart Ellefson’s The Melting Pot Book of Baby Names (1990)

This Melting Pot book was my favorite because it organized names by cultures and countries and told me how to pronounce those names. Under the North American Indian section, I found the male name “Iye (EE-yeh): smoke.” It didn’t mention a tribe of origin, but it was close to a Scottish name I wanted to use for this character’s “white” name: Ian.

Yet again, I realized few readers would pronounce this name properly. Even if they did, Iye was a bit too close to Eeyore from “Winnie the Pooh” or the nonsense syllables “E-I-E-I-O” in the nursery rhyme “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” My work is for adults. My heroine is going to be saying this name in intimate scenes, and nobody should be sniggering.

I sense a pattern here: younger me had a penchant for giving characters exotic-to-me, difficult-for-English-speakers-to-pronounce names. Research, revise, and learn. Bizarre, anachronistic names are a sign of an amateur writer who’s pleasing her own fancy and doesn’t care about authenticity.

Most importantly, this fifth character was Zizistas (Cheyenne); he needed a Zizistas name. I could write a whole post about Zizistas names. To be brief, I settled on Ésh, short and sweet with an appropriate meaning: “sky.” Unlike Zizistas babies, this (mostly) white baby was born with sky-blue eyes.

One of my early readers asked why the name Ésh has an accent over the É. Acute accents (´) usually signify emphasis on a syllable, so monosyllabic words don’t need them. My reader was wise to ask. In fact, the word Ésh has two syllables, but I’ve elided one (omitted it). The word should properly be spelled Éshe. The Zizistas language has whispered syllables, meaning that final e is almost but not quite silent, like a breath. I thought leaving it off aided with pronunciation, so that readers wouldn’t say “Esh-eh” or “Eh-shee” in their heads. I retained the accent mark because I thought “Esh” looked less foreign and had less dignity. To my Charleston characters, Ésh is an “other.” His thought processes are different than theirs. He’s the primary “native stranger” of Book 3’s title, and I wanted his name to reflect that.

You’ll notice I’ve been purposefully vague about who Ésh actually is. If you want to find out, you’ll have to read my saga. 😉

When the Research Rabbit Hole Leads You Back Home

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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.