Guest Post by Heather Blanton, author of Bestselling Romance in the Rockies Series:
Martha Jane Cannary. Name doesn’t ring a bell?
Then you might know her by her legendary moniker “Calamity” Jane.
Ever wonder how she got the name?
4 STARS for the 1879 title, Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes. As an amateur historian determined to learn what I could about the telegraph and its impact on American society, how it worked, and the challenges telegraphers faced, this sweet (innocent) love story fit the bill!
The history of America’s Memorial Day, sometimes called Decoration Day, is rooted in the American Civil War.
American women in the late Victorian Era often cut and curled bangs at the forehead. Many photographs (cabinet cards) show this hairstyle, with the rest being upswept and pinned, as women grew their hair to amazing lengths–all except those stylish bangs. If the curls about the forehead were not a hair piece (purchased by mail), then they most often required a curl. Victorian curling irons (their prices, designs, and heating methods) might surprise you–after all, it’s not (only) like Laura Ingalls Wilder described in her fictionalized memoirs of coming of age and cutting her hair in this style.
Victorian-era Americans (both men and women) had ready access to commercially prepared human hair pieces. Women wore them to achieve the style of the day without cutting their hair or to achieve the fullness and length considered stylish and desirable when their own hair couldn’t grow to such amazing lengths. Mail-order catalogs of the period provided a wide variety of products, appealing to men and women alike, including products purported to restore gray hair to the color of youth.
