Putting a Story to a Face
Take a look at the woman to the left.
What color is her hair?
What type of woman do you think she is? Tall? Agile? Efficient? Industrious?
Is she wearing glasses? Is she, perhaps, some sort of ancient librarian?
When you write historical fiction, you often choose your characters based on photos–or in my case, out of your family history stories. You look at a face and imagine things about that person and apply creativity to constructing their story.
As to the woman, her name was Louezer–maybe plain Louisa with an odd pronunciation (it’s how Louisa is pronounced in a number of Jane Austen films).
I’m one of her name sakes.
She was my great-great-grandmother. I saw her face for the first time two nights ago.
I’m not over the thrill yet.
Growing up in southern California, one of the few family stories we had was a possible link to Abraham Lincoln through his mother Nancy Hanks. When I researched and wrote my massive family history at the end of the last century, I specifically sought information about that connection.
How were we related to the Great Emancipator? If we’re related to him?
Through Louezer’s husband James S. Hanks, whom I’ve written about elsewhere.
Because of that possible Lincoln connection, I’d always seen myself as a Clara-Barton type: handsome (not beautiful), efficient, strong Union supporter.
And then I dug up Louezer’s history.
Clara Barton?
What color is Louezer’s hair?
What if I tell you she was the daughter of Isaac Dial and Permelia Cunningham of Laurens County, South Carolina?
Her hair was red–a color not seen again in my family until eighteen years ago when my niece was born.
Okay, so Louezer had red hair and was married to a stuffed-shirt man with an odd haircut related to Abraham Lincoln.
What else can you surmise about her?
Here are some more facts:
James Steele Hanks was her second husband, 24 years her senior. He owned a cotton plantation at the start of the War of the Northern Aggression, along with 21 slaves. Louezer’s first husband, Dr. Nathan Bell, was a handsome doctor who died young. Her last husband, P.W. Ezell, was a successful merchant, one of James’ pals.
Clara Barton?
Genealogically speaking, I’m closer to Scarlett O’Hara!
Louezer was a small woman, raised on a plantation, married to successful men. She bore seven children, five of whom lived to adulthood.
When you write historical fiction based on real people, truth becomes important. I take the basic facts and then I embroider them with my imagination and my knowledge of history. (That’s how I found her photo; I was researching someone else and casually took a tour through my ancestry data base).
In my novella An Inconvenient Gamble set in 1867, James Hanks refers to his wife as being pregnant (with my great-grandmother it turns out), and not able to cook.
I don’t know if Louezer was familiar with the kitchen at that time, I took the idea of her inability from A Centennial History of Anderson County, Texas:
The average Southerner before the war of 1861-65, could not vision an existence void of slaves. The housewife had never learned to cook and scrub, no more did the husband till the soil Nature (to their way of thinking) created the negro for menial tasks.
I’ve posted a picture before, from the East Texas Genealogical Society website which is not currently functioning. The photo notes the people are Dunns, Poseys and Bells, so I know I’m related to everyone at that picnic. I just don’t know who anyone is. Take a close look. Do any of the older women look like Louezer?
Perhaps the woman in the middle with the little girl on her lap?
Maybe I’ll know someday.
What do you think?
In the meantime, I have found a little more information about Louezer that slipped into the newspapers at the traditional time in 19th century America.
In 1884, she was noted as having provided a delicacy for a local barbeque. In November 1905, an article wrote about her marriage to P.W. Ezell: “both the bride and groom have a large circle of relatives and many friend who offer congratulations to them.”
Two and a half years later, she died of pneumonia, “which had a quick and fatal termination. . . . The death of this good lady was a great shock to her family as well as a large circle of friend . . . Mrs. Ezell was a splendid woman, and was loved by all who knew her.”
I look at the photo of a woman with red hair and wish I, too, could have known her. I’d like to have heard her voice–no doubt with a South Carolina drawl–as well as her stories.
Have you got an ancestor or relative who has caught your imagination?
How far back does your oldest family photo go? Click to Tweet
How to embroider an old photo with imagination Click to Tweet
