An Author's Surprise

Some of my research notebooks, Photo credit:  Lyn Fenwick

As I have explained in book talks and other sources, one of the challenges I faced in finding a publisher was my determination to research as if I were writing a scholarly book but to write for general readers so that it would read like a story.  Academics already know about the Populist Movement, but most of us (including me when I began), know little about the era of our nation's most successful third party movement, the People's Party.  I wanted to write for people who might never read a scholarly book but who would love the story of a bachelor homesteader and his community.

The generation who lived during that time are gone, as are their children and many of their grandchildren.  But, many other descendants are alive, unaware of the courage and hardships of their ancestors.  I wanted my book to be of value to scholars, but it was particularly for those descendants, as well as for general readers who love history, that I wrote "Prairie Bachelor, The Story of a Kansas Homesteader and the Populist Movement."  Bravo to the University Press of Kansas, and particularly to a wonderful editor named Bethany who understood my intensions and fought for them! 

I spent 11 months transcribing Isaac Werner's 480-page journal, but I also did an Ancestry.com search on every person mentioned in the journal, and particularly on the Werner family of which Isaac was a part.  The two books to the far left in the picture above, with the bright pink labels reading "Werner" and "Names" contain my Werner family records and the local friends and acquaintances mentioned in the journal.  The research documents on famous people mentioned in the journal are filed elsewhere.

This photograph shows some of the books I used in my research.  Because I researched and wrote over a period of ten years, there were many books, not including the travel, interviews, cemetery visits, and other conventional and unconventional sources I sought.  Blogs over the years have described many of those.  In the 1970s and 1980s several surrounding towns published Centennial books, which were very important to my research.  I also read many books written by the famous and once famous men and women of the Populist era.  Because Isaac Werner wrote in his journal about the books in his own library,  I read those, such as Caesar's Column by Ignatius Donnelly, Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, William J. Bryan's memoir, The First Battle, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, and The Great Revolt and It's Leaders written by the son of the populist newspaper editor in Medicine Lodge.  As well as academic books, I read Shakespeare (whom Isaac loved), the business records of Andrew Carnegie's lawyer that were kept during the Homestead Strike, the records kept during the march to Washington by what came to be called "Coxy's Army," and so very many more reference sources that allowed me to better understand the era about which I was writing.

Photo credit:  Lyn Fenwick

Among those books was one titled Belpre, Kansas, The Story  of a Small Town, written by David M. Kearney, and published in 1978.  That particular book had belonged to my mother-in-law, along with several of the Centennial books I used.  For some reason I overlooked an author's note stating Kearney's age.  I assumed the book had been written by an old timer.

What a pleasant surprise when someone who attended one of my book talks recently informed me that Mr. Kearney is a living author.  I managed to locate him and we had a wonderful phone visit.  He was pleased to learn that he and his book are referenced in the Bibliography of  Prairie Bachelor, and  footnoted as well.

Here is what I hope:  I hope that someday children not yet born will discover Prairie Bachelor and will pick it up and begin reading.  Maybe they will discover an ancestor's name, or they might recognize the name of a place where ancestors homesteaded.  Maybe they will pick up the book and notice it was signed and wonder why their family had a signed book about a homesteader and the Populist Movement.  

Many living people today are descendants of homesteaders, and many more yet to be born will continue the line of descendants of homesteaders.  I hope they read my book and are proud of the heritage they discover.  Isaac Werner passed the heart of the story to me in his journal, and I hope I can pass the story to a few more generations.  As David Kearney can confirm, an author never can tell who might find his or her book and read it!

 

Battling Abuses in the 1800s, A Series, #1

One of Isaac's favorite authors

Among the first things that appealed to me about Isaac was his love for books.  I have written about that in this blog before, but this series goes beyond prior posts.  A good place to start is to understand Isaac's (and the populist movement's) belief that education was essential.  

As a young druggist Isaac had read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, but when he read the book as a homesteader trying to make a living breaking sod for farming, he realized that what he had learned from reading Smith as a merchant had been interpreted differently from his reading as a struggling farmer. 

I have discovered from observing quotes posted online that words I interpreted to mean one thing are sometimes construed to mean just the opposite by someone else.  We all respond to information based on our own experience and the bias we have.  As  Carlow Ruiz Zafon wrote in The Shadows of the Wind, "Books are mirrors:  You only see in them what you already have inside you."

Isaac was a serious scholar and own this title

Another book that Isaac read was Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, the story of a wealthy young man struggling with insomnia, who is hypnotized to help him sleep, but like Rip VanWinkle, the young man awakens years later to a completely different world.  I had read the book years ago because it remains on many reading lists as a classic.  At that time, I read superficially, seeing it simply as an interesting tale about awakening in a changed society.  However, when it was originally published, people struggling to survive economically read it as a sort of guide to what could be a more equitable society if social changes were made.  The book was so popular during Isaac's time that Bellamy Clubs were formed around the world to encourage the sort of changes represented in the novel.

Edward Bellamy, author

Isaac also read Henry George, most famous for writing Progress and Poverty, which advocated Land Rents rather than taxes on land.  It would have eliminated owning land for speculation or investment, prohibiting the wealthy from acquiring and holding land to manipulate prices.  Collecting the land rents would, according to George, have been simpler than collecting taxes on production from the land, and would not have penalize successful farmers.

Farmers believed in the importance of learning, and they pooled their money to buy books.  Isaac gifted many of his books to their common library and built a cupboard at the school house where their books were stored.  I agree with Zafon that we see in books what we have inside us, but I also believe reading lets new light into our minds.  If we only read books and other material that reinforce what we already believe, we shut out the illumination of new perspectives.

Next week's blog will look at other books of that period with a different focus more aligned with urban issues.

Isaac's Library

I immediately formed a kinship with Isaac because of our common love for books. When Isaac's Journal begins in December of 1870, he is a druggist in Rossville, Illinois, in his mid-twenties. He is prospering, with every bit of money he can set aside spent on books, views for his stereoscope, and portrait cards of famous people that he kept in albums. He had a curious mind that he wanted to fill with the writings of great authors, pictures of the world, and images of important people, and he was determined to build his collections, despite being criticized by some of his less literary friends. About the money he spent, he wrote in his Journal: "Some get rid of a good deal [of money] in horses and buggies, great many in whisky, and how many on women? Ike [Isaac] fools good deal away in Books and Views and Pictures." That is not to suggest that Isaac wasn't keeping his eyes open for a well-educated young lady. He tried charming one young miss by loaning her some of his art books, and he paid particular attention to a bright young bookkeeper at Henderson & Lee's store, the first female employed in that position in town. He was also quite interested in a young woman who played chess and appreciated music, but unfortunately for Isaac, none of these relationships matured into a romance.

From his successful business he had assets he could have invested or loaned at profitable rates of interest, but instead he continued to buy books, explaining in his Journal: "How interesting and delightful such reading is and the daily increase in familiarity with such noble literary monuments. When I think back over all my best investments yet made, what I done [sic] in good Books I must consider the Master stroke of all. What a permanent and ever increasing value does such an investment bring..."

These words were written when he was young, but even during the hard times as a homesteader on the Kansas prairie, he treasured his books and added to his library occasionally. Most of the later additions were of a practical nature and often pamphlets rather than beautifully bound volumes, but he never doubted the value of books. Isaac would have agreed completely with Barbara Tuchman, who wrote, "Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill."

Many of the books in Isaac's library are still read today--Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad, Gibbon's History of the Roman Empire, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, Cervantes's Don Quixote, monthly issues of "Scientific American" which he had bound. He also collected books of art, philosophy, engineering, law, economics, political theory, logic, travel, and languages. He had reference books about Shakespeare, the Bible, and Dictionaries of words, authors, and artists. Among them all, he seemed to love Shakespeare best. I can picture Isaac sitting in his early dugout, before he had built his house and still lacking a horse to ride to the nearest town, reading Shakespeare by lamplight.

I was so curious about the books Isaac read that I went to some of my favorite used book websites and ordered the oldest editions I could find of titles he had mentioned. I guess you might say that Isaac and I formed a book club! Pictured are the following: Progress & Poverty by Henry George, Twain's Innocents Abroad, A Comprehensive Dictionary of Organ Stops, Classical Antiquities, Cuba with Pen & Pencil, Theory of Spencerian Penmanship, Bain's Logic: Deductive & Inductive, Cooper's Justinian, and The Culture Demanded by Modern Life. The books on art and travel that I would have particularly enjoyed could not be found, but the sampling I read impressed me with Isaac's thirst for knowledge. Surely you can understand why I must tell the story of this remarkable man!

[The stereoscope and views in the photograph belonged to my ancestors. I do know from Isaac's Journal, however, that he visited my great grandparents, Aaron & Susan Beck, and shared his stereoscope views with them.