Jennifer Bohnhoff's Blog, page 38

Celebrating a Civil War Coffee Hero

Maryland has one of the most unusual war monuments ever created. It doesn’t show a heroic charge or the valiant defense of a fortified position, but a soldier carrying a bucket and cup.

The battle of Antietam was raging, and the boys from Ohio had been fighting since morning. Their spirits and their energy were waning. But then a 19-year-old private named William McKinley appeared, hauling a bucket of hot coffee. He ladled the steaming brew into the men’s tin cups. They gulped it down and resumed firing.

“It was like putting a new regiment in the fight,” their officer recalled.
When McKinley ran for president three decades late, people remembered this act of culinary heroism and voted him into office.
Coffee was such an important staple in the Union soldiers’ diet that the Army issued about 35 pounds of it to each soldier every year. They drank their hefty ration before marches and after marches, while on patrol, and, as McKinley proved, even during combat. Men ground the beans themselves, often by using their rifle butts to smash them in their tin cups, then brewed it using any water that was available to them.  “Settling” the coffee, getting the grounds to sink to the bottom of the vats in which it was boiled, was so important that escaped slaves who were good at it found work as cooks in Union Army camps.

The Union blockade assured that most Confederates soldiers were not so lucky. The wide variety of attempts at creating substitutes speak to how desperately they wanted a cup of joe. Southerners tried making coffee substitutes from roasted corn, rye, chopped beets, sweet potatoes, chicory, and all sorts of other things. Although none of these brews were good, enjoying them was a source of patriotic pride. Gen. George Pickett, whose failed charge at Gettysburg is also a source of Southern pride, thanked his wife for the delicious “coffee” she had sent by saying that “no Mocha or Java ever tasted half so good as this rye-sweet-potato blend!”

Coffee may not have won the war nor earned McKinley his presidency, but it certainly was one of the small determining factors in both endeavors.

The soldiers in Jennifer Bohnhoff's newest book, Valverde, drink a lot of coffee. A recipe for Union Camp coffee and Confederate acorn coffee will be included in Salt Horse and Rio, a companion cookbook of Civil War recipes that will come out next month.

Unusual responses

I've been writing a blog for about three years now. Most of the time I feel like I'm writing to myself. I don't get a lot of comments posted. When I do, I'm grateful. I appreciate it when someone learns something from my blog. I especially appreciate it when I'm told that one of my posts made a reader think about something they'd never thought of before.

But sometimes the comments that get posted really make me scratch my head and wonder who is reading my blog and why.

This week someone called topqualityessays posted a comment regarding my post Paddy Graydon Scheme to Stop the Confederacy that said "Thin air is the blog about the writer create this because of their books history to save their record on the line. First of all this a good decision for their online record saved books where we can search now on the system to develop our environment and the new technology of generation."  Also this week, theconfidentopywriter commented on Americans in Paris, saying "Embarrassingly clumsy up to your post and sit tight for your next posts.Request Comcast has an extraordinary plan and great design. I have seen few pictures that have such incredible hues."

Huh?

When I first got comments like this, I got panicky, thinking they were some sort of cyber attack or spam. Now I wonder if someone in a third world country is using my blog to practice their English. I'm not sure if I'll ever know.

Potato Bread

The nineteenth century was a thriftier time than the present. Nothing was thrown away and everything, even the water that potatos were boiled in, was put to good use. Potato water was used to starch shirts, fertilize plants, thicken gravies, and supplement bread.

This recipe is adapted from one in James Beard's Beard on Bread, a cookbook which has seen a lot of use in my house over the years. Mr. Beard noted that this bread, with its moist and heavy texture, is reminiscent of breads from the nineteenth century. I don't know if Ms. McCoombs, the mother in The Bent Reed, my novel set during the Battle of Gettysburg, would have made this bread, but if she did, she would have started with a home-grown yeast and her loaves would have risen not in the refrigerator, but in the root cellar.

You can make up the dough on Saturday, and have a warm loaf all ready for Sunday supper.
Old Fashioned Potato Bread Dissolve 1 pkg active dry yeast and 1/2 cup sugar in 1 1/2 cups warm potato water. Let proof for about 5 minutes.

Add 3/4 cup of softened butter,  1 1/2 TBS salt, 2 eggs, and mix well.

Add 1 cup leftover mashed potatos and mix well.

Add up to 6 cups of flour. Stir it in, 1 cup at a time until you can no longer stir it, then turn out the dough onto the counter and knead it, adding flour whenever it becomes sticky. When the dough is smooth and elastic, place it in a very large mixing bowl or storage container that has been buttered and turn to coat all sides with the butter. Cover tightly and let rise in the refrigerator overnight. You want to use a very large container: this bread will more than double in size.

When you are ready to bake, remove from refrigerator and punch down. Knead on a floured counter for 5 minutes, then shape into two loaves. Place in well buttered bread pans and let rise until doubled in size. Because this bread was cooked, this may take up to 4 hours.

Bake 40-45 minutes in an oven set at 375. To test if they are done, turn a loaf out of its pan and rap the bottom. If you hear a hollow sound, the loaves are cooked through. Turn the oven off, turn the loaves out, and set them directly on the oven rack, where their crusts will crisp and brown.  Cool completely before slicing.

A short history of yeast

Bread wasn’t always as easy to bake as it is now. Bread gets its airy structure by capturing gas bubbles in the elastic gluten of wheat. But how does one get those gas bubbles into the dough to begin with? The answer is leavening.

Throughout history, most households kept a crock of leavening in a warm corner of their kitchen. A small portion of this soft, dough-like substance was used to start each new lot of bread dough. The rest was replenished with water and flour and kept, sometimes for generations.

If a housewife neglected her leavening, it might cease to rise and turn into a vile smelling, pink slime. In that case, she threw it wout and either borrowed a bit of leavening from a neighor or began a new batch by setting out a crock of water mixed with flour and hoping that it would begin to produce foam. Some women knew that adding the husks of stone ground wheat would often hasten the process.

Leavening was used in bread and cake batters. Often, a dose of beer or wine dregs was also added.

What those housewives had been collecting and tending in their flour and water filled crocks were living organisms, wild yeasts that lived in the air, but settled into the crocks and multiplied, eating the starch and expelling carbon dioxide. Wild yeasts were also present in the wheat husks and beer and wine dregs.

It wasn’t until the late 1860s, when Louis Pasteur placed some leavening under a microscope, that anyone realized this.

Shortly after that, scientists began to isolate yeast in pure culture form. By the turn of the 20th century, they had created a way to dry it, thereby forcing it into dormancy. No longer did housewives need to replenish the leavening crock every few days!

Commercial baker’s yeast much like what you buy in red and yellow packets or glass jars in the supermarket soon followed.
 
Tommorow, look at my blog for a recipe for an old fashioned bread that uses new fangled commercial yeast.
 

Running out of Time to kickstart a dream

My Kickstarter for Valverde ends on Tuesday. If you were interested in participating, you're running out of time.

If you've never heard of a kickstarter before (except for those on motorcycles), welcome to the club. I'd never heard of one either until my hip, millennial son explained to me that they are how modern-day entrepreneurs acquire the capital for beginning, or kickstarting, new projects. Unlike some crowdfunding, like GoFundMe, on which people just ask for money and hope someone gives it to them, or DonorsChoose, where teachers ask donors to give money to buy supplies for their classes, people on Kickstarter promise their backers something in return for their money.

What I've offered is my latest book, Valverde, at a significant discount over what it will sell for when it comes out later in April.

I've offered some additional rewards, too. I'll be creating a book of Civil War recipes that some of my backers are going to get. It won't be available anywhere else except through this Kickstarter for at least the foreseeable future. I'll also be working on a teacher's guide that will follow Common Core Standards.

But supporting a Kickstarter doesn't have to be about good deals. It can also be about good deeds. My philanthropic friends and supporters can buys single books or even whole classroom sets and teachers guides for classrooms in low income areas. 

What am I going to do with the money I get from this Kickstarter? First, I'm hiring a professional to make a truly attractive cover for Valverde. Second, I'll be marketing this book to educators throughout the state. If I earn enough, I'll create a large print edition so that the elderly and those with vision disabilities can read Valverde. If I earn even more, an audio book will come out.

Expanding the reach of my readership and providing large print and audio books are big dreams for me. I am grateful for the son who helped me find a way to make these dreams become a reality. It's exciting to see who has chosen to back my Kickstarter. Some are old friends and family members, but many are people I've yet to meet. It's exciting to attract new readers to my circle.

Sound intriguing? Click here to see more about my Kickstarter. But don't wait too long. This campaign closes on Tuesday, April 4.

the life of a civil war soldier

If you are curious about what it was like to be a soldier during the Civil War, there's no better place to start than John D. Billings' memoir, Hard Tack and Coffee. Historian Henry Steele Commager calls it "one of the most entertaining of all civil war books."

Subtitled The Unwritten Story of Army Life, this book was published in 1887 by Billings, who served in the 10th Massachusetts Volunteer Light Artillery Battery under General Sickles and General Hancock. It is not a history of the war, and doesn't talk about battles and strategy. Instead, it explains what it was like to enlist in the Union Army, how soldiers managed the every day acts of eating and sleeping, of punishments and pastimes, and what it was like to keep the Army on the move.
While some of the information in Billings' account is specific to his experiences in the Army of the Potomac, most of it would be useful for anyone who wanted to know about the life of the average soldier. Where else would we learn that troops camped near brooks washed their clothes in the running water until they realized that boiling them got rid of wood ticks and lice much better. To kill vermin, soldiers boiled their clothes in the mess kettles that also cooked their stews and boiled their coffee.
While the writing is witty and the humor wry, the more than 200 pen and ink drawings are what really make Hard Tack and Coffee a treasure. The illustrations were created by another Civil War Veteran, Charles Reed, who served as bugler in the 9th Massachusetts Battery. Reed was awarded the Medal of Honor for saving the life of his battery commander at Gettysburg.
Reed shows the reader what a Sibley tent looked like. Invented by the man who left the Union Army to become a Brigadier General in the Confederacy, Sibley tents were used by both the North and the South. They resembled the teepees that Sibley would have seen while fighting Indians on the great plains and in New Mexico Territory, which Sibley invaded in 1862 in an attempt to conquer it for the South. One of my favorite pictures shows an interior view of a Sibley tent, and how the soldiers "spooned," or slept nested against each other in an attempt to keep warm.
General Sibley features prominently in Valverde, my historical novel about New Mexico during the Civil War. Reed's illustrations are now part of the public domain and are used in the Kickstarter Campaign for Valverde, which continues until April 4. Click here to see more of Reed's pen and ink sketches, and for information on how you can preorder a copy of Valverde at a discount.

Paddy GraYdon Scheme to Stop the Confederacy

The Library of Congress calls this "a jurilla." Paddy and the members of his spy company probably didn't look much better. While enormous Union and Confederate Armies battled each other in the east, a relatively small Confederate Army was attempting to conquer the American Southwest. Their ultimate aim was the rich gold fields of Colorado and the deep harbors of California. Luckily for the Union, the American's had Paddy Graydon to destroy the Confederate's plans.

Paddy Graydon was a rough, hard drinking, disagreeable man who was quick with his fists and short on temper, but his recklessness has earned him a place in the Civil War lore of New Mexico.

 Paddy, whose Christian name was James, came to the United States from Ireland in order to escape the Potato Famine. It was 1853, and he was just 21 years old. Like many indigent immigrants, he joined the Army. Paddy became a dragoon, or light mounted infantry. He was posted to the southwest, where he learned to speak Spanish and Apache. Graydon's deprived childhood prepared, the blue eyed, 5' 7" man for the hardships of life in the saddle fighting Indians, bandits, renegades, and claim jumpers in an area that stretched from Santa Fe to the Mexican border. He stayed in the service for five years, until 1858.

Graydon opened a saloon near Sonoita, Arizona when he was discharged from the Army, His patrons were well-known for their rough and violent ways, but even such a tough clientele didn't provide Graydon with the excitement he was used to. The tough Irishman continued to track horse thieves, rescue captives from the Indians, and guide army patrols in his spare time.

When Confederate General Henry H. Sibley threatened to invade New Mexico in 1861, Graydon offered his services to Colonel Edward Canby, the highest ranking Union officer in the state. He formed an independent company of spies, most of them recruited from his former saloon patrons. Graydon's spies were known for being undisciplined and dangerous. They refused to wear uniforms or participate in drills and parades. But they were very good at collecting information. Graydon and his men excelled at wandering into Confederate camps and gathering information while posing as rebel soldiers. 

Graydon's most famous escapade happened on a bitterly cold night in February, 1862, on the night before the Battle of Valverde. Under cover of darkness, Graydon and several volunteers crossed the icy Rio Grande and snuck up on the Confederate encampment. When they neared the corral that held Sibley's pack train, Graydon lit the fuses on boxes of explosives mounted on two old mules, then shooed them towards the Confederate lines. Unfortunately for Graydon, the mules turned back. Graydon and his men ran for their lives, and the mules blew up too far away to cause the carnage he had planned. However, the explosion caused Confederate pack mules to stampede down to the Rio Grande, where Union troops rounded them up.

Because of Graydon's scheme, the Confederate Army lost over 100 animals. Without their mules, they had to abandon many of the supplies that they desperately needed if they were going to conquer New Mexico and the rich gold fields of Colorado and California that Jefferson Davis had hoped to use to finance his fledgling country.
Jennifer Bohnhoff teaches New Mexico History to 7th grade students in Albuquerque. Paddy Graydon and his escapade with the mules shows up in her next book, Valverde,  a middle grade historical novel about the Civil War in New Mexico which will be published in April. You can preorder a copy from this kickstarter campaign.

Manuel Armijo: New Mexican Hero?

Manuel Armjio was dead by the time of the Civil War, but he’s important enough in New Mexican history that he still has a cameo in Valverde, my historical historical novel due out in late April. In an early scene, Raul Atencio, one of the main characters, is walking past the cemetery in San Miguel Mission, and he nods as a way of paying respect to the man who was, at that time, considered New Mexico’s greatest hero.

Armijo began his public career in 1822, when he served as alcalde, a combination mayor and judge, in Albuquerque. During this period he protected his town by leading attacks against the Apache Indians, and was well respected for his administrative abilities. He was so well loved by the people that he was appointed governor in 1827. 
While governor, Armijo sent reports to the central government expressing concern with poverty caused by the concentration of lands in the hands of a few people, and by drought. He asked for relief for New Mexicans who lived in poverty and hunger. Although his reports were ignored, his concern won him the appreciation of the people.
Armijo also expressed concern with illegal beaver trapping by Americans who were driving the animals to the point of extinction. He tried to impose tariffs and impound illegal furs, but  the vast distances in the frontier made policing difficult. Unsurprisingly, his actions caused animosity with American traders and trappers, who retaliated by circulating rumors that the money gathered from tariffs and the resale of impounded furs lined Armijo’s pockets instead of helped New Mexico’s poor. Pictures of him in American papers depict a rotund man in a foolish and fancy uniform.
Armijo had returned to private business by 1837, when a rebellion broke out and the governor, a Mexican named Albino Perez, was murdered. Armijo led troops against the disorderly mob. He hung the four rebels responsible for starting the rebellion and executed the rebel governor the rebel-appointed governor.
When the Mexican government appointed Armijo to a second term as governor, Armijo imposed tariffs on American and New Mexican traders who brought goods over the Santa Fe Trail. He also distributed large land grants, ostensibly to draw in settlers from Mexico and the United States and widen the tax base. However, much of the money from those grants did not make it into New Mexico’s coffers. For instance, when Armijo granted Guadalupe Miranda and Charles Beaubien a large tract of land east of Taos along the Cimarron and Canadian Rivers in 1841, they deeded Armijo one-fourth interest in the land in exchange for his guarantees to support them against any future claims. They deeded another fourth to Charles Bent, who would later become Territorial Governor and be murdered by an angry mob for his alleged siphoning of money away from the people.
While Armijo was making a bundle on land, the Republic of Texas was threatening to take it all away. Texas claimed that their western border followed the Rio Grande, effectively cutting New Mexico in half. In 1841, a group dubbed the Texas-Santa Fe expedition attempted to make good on that claim. When their guides abandoned them, the Texans got lost in the Llano Estacado, where they endured frequent attacks by Apaches. By the time the expedition finally arrived in New Mexico, they were half-starved and in no condition to battle Armijo, who had a large force of well-armed soldiers from Mexico, which was angry about losing Texas. The Texans surrendered and were marched 2,000 miles under harsh conditions to Mexico City. They languished in Perote prison until the United States negotiated their release a year and a half later.
New Mexicans considered Armijo a hero for defeating the Texans, but the Texans felt otherwise, vilifying the governor. The father of Jemmy Martin, another character in Valverde, was a part of the Texas-Santa Fe expedition, and paints a rather brutal picture of the treatment the Texans received.  In his account of the expedition, journalist George Wilkins Kendall depicted Armijo as an uneducated man from a poor family who worked his way up by stealing. This was untrue. Manuel Armijo’s family ranked among the ricos of Rio Abajo, which meant they were hacendados owning large herds and large tract of land.
In March 1844 Governor Armijo resigned his office. The man who replaced him raised tariffs on imported goods and taxed the people even more. In order to avoid revolt, Armijo was re-appointed to his third and final term as governor by mid 1945.
When the Mexican-American War began in May 1846, hundreds of enthusiastic but ill-equipped, ill-trained citizens answered Armijo’s call to arms against the American invasion. Although many of his volunteers were armed with nothing more than pitchforks and machetes, Armijo sent them to fortify Apache Canyon, a narrow space on the Santa Fe trail, just east of Santa Fe. By this time Armijo has grown so fat that a horse could not support his weight. When the rotund general arrived on the battlefield astride a strong-backed mule, Armijo found his men lined up against General Stephen Kearny and his 1,750 well armed and well trained soldiers. Armijo abandoned his forces. Some accounts say he even abandoned his own wife. What he didn’t abandon were the fine carpets, silver and china of the Governor’s Palace, which were loaded into carts. He, his treasures, and his bodyguard of 75 dragoons retreated to Chihuahua, Mexico, allowing General Kearny to take Santa Fe without a battle.
When asked why he abandoned New Mexico, Armijo justified himself by saying “I had but seventy-five men to fight three thousand. What could I do?” American writers, in their negative depiction of Armijo, have suggested that he accepted a bribe from the Americans for not opposing Kearny, but there is no concrete evidence to support this assertion. Armijo was tried for treason, but neither the Mexican Supreme Court or Congress found enough evidence to convict him. In January 1850 Armijo returned as a hero to New Mexico. He died at his home in Lemitar, New Mexico in January 1854 and was given a hero’s burial.
Jennifer Bohnhoff teaches New Mexico history to 7th graders in Albuquerque. She is the author of three historical novels for young readers. Valverde will be published in late April, but is currently available for preorder at a discount through Kickstarter.​

New Mexico Nicho

There's a small nicho in the entryway of my house. It's filled with things that remind me of the great state of New Mexico, its people and its history and distant past.

I made the quilt that hangs on the nicho's back wall. The fabrics have pictures of chili peppers and cacti, and the colors remind me of a New Mexico sunset.

My youngest son made the ladder when he was learning how to lash sticks together with the Boy Scouts. It is similar to the ladders used in Pueblos and cliff houses. If you want to climb one, a great place to visit is Bandalier. Nestled at the feet of the ladder is a decorated gourd bowl and two small pots that my husband and I received as wedding presents. I think they are from the Jemez Pueblo. There is also a rug that my husband's secretary gave him long ago. Many people assume that a rug made in New Mexico would be made by an Indian, and they'd be wrong. The Spanish brought sheep and weaving to the Southwest. Some Hispanic shops, such as Ortegas, have been weaving for hundreds of years. 

My greatest treasures are older than the pots and gourds. My oldest son made the display case that holds an operculum that I found a few miles away from the site of the Robledo trackway, in the southern part of the state near Las Cruces. The operculum came from an ammonite  that swam in the ocean that covered New Mexico during the Cretaceous era. Look back at the small pots in the picture above and you'll see a fossilized ammonite from that same sea. I didn't find that fossil, but know if was found in Texas.
I also have a large chunk of petrified wood in my nicho to remind me that this desert was once forested. This chunk is from Arizona's Petrified Forest, but I have picked up smaller pieces in many arroyos in New Mexico and in the dry bed of the Rio Puerco west of Rio Rancho. Probably the most spectacular place to see petrified forest is in the Bisti Badlands near Farmington.

New Mexico hasn't always been the desert that it is today, but it's always been an interesting place. I've got the mementos to prove it.

Do you have any New Mexico momentos?

Celebrating an American inventor

There are many ways to leaven bread. One way is to incorporate whipped egg whites, such as is done in angel food and sponge cakes. However, this was difficult and time consuming before Willis Johnson patented the eggbeater on February 5, 1884.
Bread wasn’t always as easy to bake as it is now. Bread gets its airy structure by leavening: capturing gas bubbles in the elastic gluten of wheat.
Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical and other novels for middle grade and older readers and is fascinated by quirky inventions.