Jennifer Bohnhoff's Blog, page 29

GLORIETA, BATTLE OF THREE RANCHES: Pigeon'S RANCH

Depiction of The Battle of Glorieta Pass by Roy Anderson The Battle of Glorieta Pass is sometimes called 'The Gettys-burg of the West" because it is the battle that marks the farthest north the Confederate Army got in the New Mexico Campaign. Had H.H. Sibley's forces not been turned back here, they might have taken the Colorado gold fields, then turned west and taken the gold and harbors of California, and the Civil War might have ended very differently.  But this battle could easily have been called The Battle of Three Ranches because of where it was fought. The Battle of Glorieta Pass ranged through a narrow mountain divide in the Sangre de Cristo mountains just east of Santa Fe on March 26-28, 1862. The pass was part of the Santa Fe trail that had connected Old Santa Fe to Franklin, Missouri for nearly half a century. The three ranches involved in the battle were also used as way stops along the trail. Three very different characters owned and operated the ranches.

Union troops were headquartered at a ranch on the eastern end of the pass that was owned by a Polish immigrant named Kozlowski. You can read more about him and his ranch here.

The Confederate base was at Johnson's ranch, located at the western mouth of the canyon.  Pigeon's Ranch in the 1880s. Between Kozlowski's and Johnson's place sat Pigeon's ranch, which operated a hotel and saloon and was a popular watering hole along the trail. Pigeon's Ranch was the frequent venue for fandangos, the local dances.

Pigeon's ranch was owed by a French immigrant whose very name is a matter of speculation. Some records list him as Alexander Pigeon. Some sources, however, say that Pigeon was a nickname he received because he strutted and flapped his elbows when he danced, making him look rather like a pigeon. On some documents, he is named Alexander Valle. Some historians suggest that Valle is less a surname as a placename given to him because his establishment was in the center of the valley. Both Pigeon and Valle are names that can be found in France, so either may be the man's correct name.
Early in the morning of March 26, a Union scouting party led by Lt. George Nelson encountered and captured a Confederate scouting party near Pigeon's Ranch. The two armies clashed west of the ranch later that day. By nightfall, Union Forces had fallen back to Pigeon's ranch, which had become a hospital for wounded and dying men on both sides. Two days later, the ranch was the center of the battle, its short adobe walls shielding Union soldiers from the oncoming Confederates. In 1986, a mass grave with the skeletons of 31 Confederate soldiers was discovered on the property.  Jennifer Bohnhoff is an educator and author who lives in the mountains of central New Mexico. The view from her backyard includes the Sangre de Cristo mountains. Part of her novel Glorieta, book 2 of the Rebels Along the Rio Grande series, takes place at Pigeon Ranch. 

Now Available!

I am pleased to announce that Glorieta , book 2 in the Rebels Along the Rio Grande series, is now available in paperback! You can purchase your copy here.

If you prefer ebooks to paperbacks, you can pick up your download of Glorieta here. 

​And if you would rather buy a signed copy directly from the author, you can buy your copy here.

​Glorieta is the story of two boys. Jemmy Martin is a farm boy from San Antonio, Texas. In  Valverde , the first book in the series, Jemmy joins H.H. Sibley's Army of New Mexico. Sibley invaded New Mexico in the hopes of conquering the Colorado and California gold fields for the Confederacy and fulfilling a dream of manifest destiny for the south by extending its territory to the Pacific Ocean. He does so not because he has strong Confederate sympathies, but because his brother has sold the family's mules to the Confederate army and he feels the need to protect them and return them home. The second boy in Glorieta is Cian Lochlann. Cian came to America with his parents to escape the Irish Potato Famine. The family settled in Boston, but by the time he enters his teens, Cian is an orphan. He travels west to try his luck in the Denver gold boom and then, at the outbreak of the Civil War, enlists in the Colorado Volunteers, who are sent south to stop the Confederates.  The two armies, and the two boys, meet in the mountains east of Santa Fe in what becomes known as the Battle of Glorieta Pass. Jemmy and Cian must make a life-changing decision.

Ordered West: One Soldier's Account of Life in the Territory

I love writing historical fiction. 
And I really love doing the research. I read over 20 books as I researched Glorieta, the second in my trilogy about the Civil War in New Mexico. 

One of the books that I really enjoyed was Ordered West: The Civil War Exploits of Charles A. Curtis.I couldn't use much of what I read in Glorieta; by the time Curtis came to New Mexico in 1862, the Confederates had already lost and were heading back south to Fort Bliss, on their way home to San Antonio. Some of What I read might end up in Peralta, the third and final book in my series.
Charles Curtis came to New Mexico with the 5th United States Infantry. He stayed here on garrison duty until 1865. Years after his service, Curtis wrote a memoir of his time in New Mexico and Arizona while he was president of Norwich University. His memoir was serialized and published in a New England newspaper. Alan and Donald Gaff compiled those stories into a book that is heavily and informatively footnoted so that the reader knows who Curtis is referring to. There are also lots of pictures and maps to help orient the reader.
But what I really found interesting were Curtis' descriptions of places in New Mexico that I could identify. One place he talks about is the aguas termales in the Jemez mountains, hot springs so hot that he claims to have frequently boiled eggs in them.Curtis says that in the river opposite the spring was an island about a hundred feet long and encrusted with sulfur so pure that it would burn when lighted with a match. Anyone who's ever been to the Soda Dam knows exactly what he is talking about.  Another interesting episode is the building of winter quarters near Peralta, New Mexico. Curtis describes how the whole command goes into a low area near the river and cuts terrunos (turfs) using axes and spades. The thick, clayey turf is scored with long parallel lines, cut across every nine inches. Each terron was about six inches tall. These were stacked six feet tall, using local mud as mortar to make huts that were the same size as the tents the men used in summer. Stout spars were lashed together and set over the hut  and a wall tent was pitched over the top of the spars to make a roof. No windows were necessary since light came through the canvas. Each hut had a wide, open fireplace in the back wall and a wooded door hung on hinges at its front. Curtis says that the alkali soil from which the huts were made dried white and crusty, making the huts look like they were covered with frost. After the hut was made, water was poured on the floors and more dirt added until the floor was a foot higher than the outside. When dry, Curtis said the floor was hard and solid. I have seen lots of pictures of Fort Craig and Fort Union, but this description of how quarters were built really brought the process to life for me. Jennifer Bohnhoff is an author and educator who lives in the mountains east of Albuquerque. You can read more about her books here. 

Ordered West is available from the Albuquerque Public Library,  on Amazon, and through independent bookstores.

Samuel H. Cook, Miner and Soldier

Samuel H. Cook came to the Rockies in 1859 in search of gold. 

By summer of 1861, he and his partners, George Nelson, and Luther Wilson, were out money, out of food, and nearly out of hope.

Reading a newspaper near their Golden, Colorado claim, Cook saw an advertisement that stated "the United States Government desperately need troops to wage war and defend itself from secessionist aggression."

The article claimed that any man who could recruit 25 volunteers would be an officer and lead his own troops.

Cook rode the fifteen miles into Denver and had recruiting posters printed. He plastered those posters throughout Rocky Mountain gold mining towns. Men began to show up at his tent to sign up the next day. Luther Wilson Cook's first two recruits were his mining partners. George Nelson became Captain Cook's First Lieutenant, and Luther Wilson his Second Lieutenant.

But these three were not the only men in the Colorado gold fields who needed a fresh start. The prospect of regular meals, warm clothing, and a comfortable bed attracted many hungry miners from across the region. By mid August, Cook was able to report that he had 87 volunteers ready to ride with him to Kansas to join the Union Army. Cook's old friend, Colonel Jim Lane, wrote back from Leavenworth, Kansas with Cook's appointment, welcoming him. Cook and his men never made it to Kansas.
They stopped for lunch in Denver on the first day of their ride to Kansas, and William Gilpin, the territorial governor, treated Cook to a meal at Sutherland House, one of the fanciest eateries in town. During that meal, Gilpin convinced Cook that the territory needed protection just as much as the Union did, and that he and his men would do well to stay in Colorado. 

Cook convinced his men to join the 1st Regiment of the Colorado Volunteers, which Gilpin had appointed Colonel John P. Slough to lead.
Slough wanted to run an infantry regiment, but two of his companies, one of which was Cook's Company F, refused to give up their horses. 

Cook is credited with being the first Union casualty in the Battle of Apache Canyon, the name given to the first day of the Battle of Glorieta Pass.  He was his three times in the thigh by buck and ball before his horse went down. He survived his wounds.
Samuel Cook, George Nelson, and Luther Wilson are characters in Jennifer Bohnhoff's newest novel, Glorieta. The second in the series of novels about the Civil War in New Mexico, Glorieta continues the story begun in Valverde. 

Mrs. Bohnhoff is an educator, historian, and author who lives in the mountains of central New Mexico. You can read about all of her books here. 

Pike's Peak or Bust!

The Pike's Peak Gold Rush, which began a decade after the California Gold Rush, attracted a hundred thousand miners and prospectors to the Pike's Peak Country of western Kansas Territory and southwestern Nebraska Territory. These men were known as the "fifty-niners."

Gold was first discovered a decade earlier, in July, 1848 by a group of Cherokee on their way to California over the Cherokee Trail. The Cherokee did not stop to work the stream beds, but they reported their find to members of their tribe. William Green Russell, a Georgian who was married to a Cherokee woman, was working in the California Gold fields when he heard about the reported gold in the Pikes Peak region. He organized a party that included his two brothers and six companions, and in February 1858 they set out for Colorado. They finally hit pay dirt in July at the mouth of Little Dry Creek on the South Platte, in the present-day Denver suburb of Englewood. By the middle of the 1860s, most of the easy to get gold was gone. Placer deposits and shallow hard-rock mines were depleted. Men were giving up by the droves, selling their claims to richer men and companies who had the resources to acquire the materials required to go after ore that was deposited deeper in the ground or to chemically extract gold from mixed ore. Although there was still plenty of gold in them thar hills, the rush was over.
Jennifer Bohnhoff' is an educator and author who lives in the mountains east of Abuquerque, New Mexico. Her newest novel, Glorieta, begins in the gold fields of Colorado. It is now available as an ebook preorder, and will be released on February 26. The paperback will be released in early March. 

​You can read her short story about mining in Colorado, which features the characters from her novel, here. 

A Confederate Point of View

When historians want to know what it was like to be part of the Confederate invasion of New Mexico, one of the people they turn to is Alfred Brown Peticolas.

Peticolas was was born on May 27, 1838, in Richmond, Virginia.. In 1859, he came west to Victoria, Texas, where he set up a law partnership with Samuel White.

On September 11, 1861, he joined the Confederate Army. Peticolas enlisted in Company C of the Fourth Regiment of Texas Mounted Volunteers,. This was part of Henry Hopkins Sibley's Army of New Mexico, a brigade with which Sibley intended to capture the rich Colorado gold fields, then secure the gold and harbors of California for the Confederacy. Throughout his time in New Mexico, Peticolas kept a diary in which he set down his keen observations about the country through which he traveled. He was also an artist and sketched his surroundings. The diary filled several books, the first of which was destroyed when the wagon in which is was stored was burned. Peticolas sketched the San Miguel mission church in Socorro, New Mexico. After the Civil War, Bishop Lamy remodeled this adobe church.. .  He also drew San Felipe church, in Albuquerque's Old Town. In his sketch, the Confederate flag flies from a flag pole in the center square of the village, right in front of the church. 

The Confederate, Mexican, Spanish, and American flags, flew over Albuquerque's Old Town representing all the governments that had controlled the town. In 2015, deemed too controversial, the stars and bars were taken down. Departing Albuquerque, Peticolas' unit traveled through Tijeras Canyon, then turned north, taking the road now known as N14 towards Santa Fe. They camped for over a week in the mountain village of San Antonio. The church, the building at the far left of the picture, burned down and was rebuilt in 1957. The Confederate tents and wagons are on the far right of the picture.  After Sibley's retreat back to San Antonio Texas, Peticolas participated in the Louisiana Campaign. Finally, illness led to his reassignment as a clerk at the quartermaster headquarters, and he finished the war behind a desk.  ​Rebels on the Rio Grande: the Civil War Journal of A.B. Peticolas, edited by Don E. Alberts, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1984 is a compilation of the passages from the diary that related to New Mexico. 

While he is not represented in Jennifer Bohnhoff's trilogy of novels about the Civil War, his material was instrumental in shaping the narrative and illuminating it with the little details that make historical fiction feel accurate. 
Jennifer Bohnhoff is an author and educator who lives very close to the mountain town that Peticolas sketched. Valverde, the first novel in her triology Rebels Along the Rio Grande, came out in 2017. The second, Glorieta, will be published in the spring of 2020, and Peralta will follow.

Fake Money to Raise Real Troops

William Gilpin believed in the west. A native of Pennsylvania, Gilpin was born in 1813. He attended school in England for two years, then went to the University of Pennsylvania, finally graduating in really 1836 from the United States Military Academy at West Point

In 1843, Gilpin joined Kit Carson and several other notable westerners on John Charles Fremont's expedition to map the route over the Continental Divide as far as Oregon. A few years later, Major Gilpin marched his regiment to Chihuahua City during the Mexican-American War. He did well enough there that Gilpin received command of a volunteer force organized to suppress Indian uprisings in the West and to protect the Santa Fe Trail. After this, Gilpin settled in Independence, Missouri, where he set up a law practice and gave lectures on the health and wealth that was available in the Rocky Mountains.
In February of 1861, Colorado was organized as a territory of the United States, and President Lincoln appointed Colonel Gilpin to be its Governor. Upon arriving in the Territory, Gilpin realized that one of the most important tasks he had was to defend against a Confederate invasion. Almost all of Colorado's regular Army troops had been called east when the Civil War began, leaving the rich gold fields of the Rockies vulnerable. Not realizing that Confederate General Henry Sibley wasraising an invasion force in Texas, Washington refused to support Gilpin's  request for the organization of Union forces in Colorado Territory.  Gilpin then took it upon himself to protect the territory. He organized the First Colorado Regiment of Volunteers and paid for it by issuing $375,000 in negotiable drafts that were payable from the national treasury. The drafts became known as Gilpin Scrip, and the Colorado First Volunteers, a force of 1,342 men the scrip helped arm and house, became known as Gilpin's Pet Lambs.

At first, the merchants of Denver were all too happy to exchange their goods for Gilpin Scrip. However, Washington considered the scrip illegal  and the U.S. Treasury refused to redeem them. Despite traveling to Washington to plead his case, the cabinet removed Gilpin from office by a unanimous vote. Ironically, Gilpin achieved his purpose. His illegally funded First Regiment distinguished itself, participating at the Battle of Valverde outside Fort Craig, and routing Confederate General Henry Sibley's Army at Glorieta Pass. Jennifer Bohnhoff is a writer and educator in central New Mexico. Her next book Glorieta, tells the story of this Civil War battle and is written for midgrade readers. It will be published this spring. If you would like to know when it is published, join her email list here. 

One very entertaining book on Gilpin is Colorado: A History, by Marshall Sprague (1984).

Glorieta: Battle of Three Ranches Ranch One: Kozlowski's Ranch

The decisive battle of the New Mexico Campaign of the Civil War took place on March 26-28, 1862. Called the Battle of Glorieta, it ranged through a narrow mountain just east of Santa Fe. Three ranches owned by three very different characters were settings for this battle.  Martin Kozlowski in front of his trading post. The Pecos River meets Glorieta Stream in a wide, flat area at the far east of the valley. It was here that Martin ( who in some records is called Napoleon) Kozlowski established his ranch.

Kozlowski wasn't the first person attracted to this area. The Santa Fe Trail passed through this area, providing opportunities for those who wanted to provide food and lodging for travelers. Some of the earliest surviving buildings on the site date from the 1810s, and thus predate the trail. But even earlier, the Pecos Pueblo had been established around AD 1100. The Pueblos was inhabited until 1838, when Comanche incursions made the remaining inhabitants relocate to the Walatowa Pueblo in Jemez. Kozlowski used some of the timbers and bricks from the pueblo to build his buildings.

Martin Kozlowski came to the area by a circuitous route. He was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1827 and fought in the 1848 revolution against the  Prussians. He was a refugee for two years in England, during which time he met and married an Irish woman named Ellene. The two immigrated to American in 1853, and Martin enlisted in the First Dragoons, who were fighting Apaches in the Southwest.

Martin must have fallen in  love with New Mexico during his Army years. In 1858 he mustered out and used his 160-acre government bounty land warrant to purchase the land on which he built his ranch. His 600 acre spread included 50 improved acres, which included a home for the family, a trading post, a tavern, and rooms for travelers. It had a spring for fresh water, and lots of forage for horses and mules. The 1860 agriculture census shows that Kozlowski grew corn and raised livestock, but a lot of his livelihood came from accommodating for travelers on the Santa Fe trail.

Kozlowski's ranch became the headquarters for the Union Army during the Battle of Glorieta. The forces were comprised mostly of men from the Colorado Volunteers who had come down through Raton Pass and were planning to engage the Confederates in Santa Fe. Their journey from Camp Wells in Denver seemed to be one long foraging expedition; many of the towns and ranches they passed complained to the government that they had lost provisions and animals to the Army. By the time they reached Kozlowski's ranch and established Camp Lewis, they seemed to have learned their lesson. After the war, Kozlowski complimented them, saying “When they camped on my place, they never robbed me of anything, not even a chicken.” Perhaps their good behavior was because Kozlowski was former military himself.

After the Battle, the Union Army maintained a hospital in Kozlowski's tavern for another two months.

The early 1870s appear to be the high point for the Kozlowski family's enterprises. In 1873, U.S. Attorney T.B. Catron sued him for violating a federal law that prevented non-Indians from settling on pueblo land grants. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, but ultimately Martin paid  $1,000 and was able to keep his land. In 1880 the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad ran its line through the canyon, effectively ending the lucrative Santa Fe Trail traffic. Soon thereafter Kozlowski moved to Albuquerque, where he died in 1905. After that, the ranch traded hands several times, alternating from working ranch to dude ranch. In 1939 it was bought by a Texas oilman and rancher named  Buddy Fogelson, who  married the actress Greer Garson. The ranch was donated to the National Park Service in 1991, and is now part of Pecos National Park.   

Samuel M. Logan: Man of Action

Samuel M. Logan isn’t a name that many would recognize as a Civil War personality, but he played an important supporting role in the Colorado Volunteers and has a small role in my novel Glorieta, the second of three books in Rebels Along the Rio Grande.

Samuel M. Logan was a Mexican American War veteran who was working as a blacksmith in Denver when the Civil War broke out. He didn’t waste any time in showing on which side his sympathies lay with a grand gesture.

On April 24, 1861, just days after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the southern sympathizers who owned Wallingford and Murphey’s Mercantile on Larimer Street in downtown Denver raised the Confederate stars and bars on the pole atop their building. The flag attracted an angry mob of pro-Union sympathizers who threw rocks at the store and demanded that the flag come down.

This is when Logan swang – literally - into action. He climbed a hitching rail and swung himself onto the roof of the store.  Accounts of what happened next contradict each other. Some accounts say that the Marshal showed up at this point, dispersed the crowd, and allowed Wallingford and Murphey to continue flying the Confederate colors. Other accounts say that Logan pulled down the flag and ripped it to shreds as the crowd cheered him on.

Whichever is the case, Logan’s stunt made him popular enough that he was able to recruit a company of men to follow him into the volunteer army that William Gilpin, the newly appointed governor of the territory, was raising. In those days, whoever brought in the required number of men was given the commission to lead them. Samuel M. Logan, blacksmith and climber of roofs became Captain Samuel M. Logan of Company B of the Colorado Volunteers.

Logan’s reputation for quick and dramatic action led him to receive some orders that made for exciting press releases. In late August, his Company was ordered to clean out the Criterion, a saloon that was a notorious gathering place for secessionists. Logan and his men stormed in with bayonets fixed. They confiscated a large pile of weapons and ammunition and became the darling heroes of Denver.

However, the same qualities that made him a man of action didn’t make him a beloved leader. By September, Company B had delivered a petition to Governor Gilpin requesting that he remove Captain Logan, “whose overbearance and tyranny have become untolerable.”  The Governor chose to ignore this petition.

Logan’s Company engaged the enemy on both days of the Battle of Glorieta. On the second day, it was part of the group that Major John Chivington led over the top of Glorieta Mesa in what was intended to be a flanking movement to attack the Confederate force in the rear. Instead, they overshot and instead of fighting in the Battle of Pigeon’s Ranch, descended from the mesa at Johnson’s Ranch, where they were able to destroy the Confederate baggage train, effectively destroying the Confederate Army’s ability to wage war in New Mexico.
​
From then on, Logan’s rise through the military was tied to that of John Chivington’s because the two were men of fiery and decisive action who held a “take no quarter” attitude, especially when it came to treatment of American Natives. By spring of 1864, Logan had been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, bypassing other officers who argued for more leniency in dealings with the Plains Tribes. With Chivington, Logan participated in the infamous Sand Creek Massacre in November 1864. Jennifer Bohnhoff is a writer and educator who lives in New Mexico. Her second book in Rebels Along the Rio Grande, a trilogy of novels about the Civil War in New Mexico, will come out this spring.

Cian's Scones

A replica of the Stone of Scone outside Scone Palace. A recent cold, foggy morning inspired me to dig through my recipe box for the yellowed and tattered newspaper clipping that has a recipe for Traditional Irish Scones. I have no idea how long I've had this clipping, but if I had to guess, it's 20 years old. 

Scones themselves are much older. They probably originated in Scotland in the earth 16th century. The first scones were most likely made with oats and baked on a griddle (or, as the Scots say, a girdle.) 

How they acquired their name has been lost in the fog of time. Some have suggested that their name it comes from the Dutch word ‘schoonbrot’, which means beautiful bread. Others believe the name is related to The Stone of Scone, also known as the Stone of Destiny,. This is a rock that Kings of Scotland were seated on when they were crowned, and it has an interesting history of its own. Perhaps both the food and the rock were both named after the town of Scone, which is close to Perth.

Anna, the Duchess of Bedford (1788 – 1861) is credited with making scones a part of the English tradition of Afternoon Tea when she ordered the servants to bring tea and some sweet breads one afternoon. The treats included scones, and they became popular throughout the United Kingdom and, eventually, the world.

The tattered and yellow clipping calls this variation Traditional Irish Scones. I have no idea how authentic the recipe is, but when I pulled it out, it occurred to me that the main character in my next novel is Irish. Would Cian's mam, I wondered, have made something similar to these for his breakfast? Cian learned to cook from his Mam, and this skill helped ingratiate himself to his fellow prospectors in Colorado's gold mining frenzy and his fellow soldiers in the Union Army. If Cian cooked scones in either place, it likely would have been in a dry, floured pan over a medium-low heat, turning once to brown both sides. You can try it this way, too!

If you don't have buttermilk iyou can make an acceptable substitute by adding 3 TBS of Vinegar to 3/4 cup of milk and waiting for it to clabber, a fancy word for develop lumps.

Traditional Irish Scones
​
3 cups all purpose flour
3 TBS sugar
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
6 TBS chilled unsalted butter
1 egg, beaten to blend
¾ cup plus 3 TBS buttermilk
1/3 cup dried currants (raisins, dried cranberries or the little dried blueberries that Trader Joes sells can take the place of the currants.)
 
Preheat oven to 425
 
Mix flour, sugar, baking soda and salt in a large bowl.
 
Slice butter into pats and drop them all over the flour mixture. Use a fork, a pastry cutter, or your fingers to blend in the butter until the mixture resembles a fine meal.
 
Mix in fruit pieces.
Mix in egg and enough buttermilk to form a soft dough.
 
Turn the dough out onto a flour surface.  Pat the dough into three ¾ thick rounds. Cut each round into quarters. Or you can use a round cookie cutter to cut out the scones.
 
Transfer scones to a lightly floured baking sheet. Brush tops with milk and sprinkle with sugar. Bake until scones are golden brown and cooked through, between 18-20 minutes.
 
Makes 1 dozen scones.