One of the best aspects of writing historic fiction is going down rabbit holes. Hey! It’s research! And, since you never know what information is gonna turn out to be important, no rabbit hole is too weird.
For instance, writing The Weight of Cloth, I found a record of Eliza Lucas Pinckney’s will, which of course listed the enslaved “property“ that she was bequeathing. To see names of people written out like this was one of many moments that drove home the inhumanity of chattel slavery. But also, the testamentary disposition provided me with a list of names, and I used many of them for secondary characters in the book.
In another rabbit hole, I found the terms of Sarah Rutledge’s father’s will, which informed how I crafted her character. These are just two examples.
On Saturday (Nov 8), I found a PhD thesis written by an archaeology student about the Fairbanks household in Dedham, Massachusetts. In it, he mentions that either Ebenezer Fairbanks Senior or Ebenezer Fairbanks Junior (Jason’s father and brother) (or both) enlisted to serve in the Revolutionary War. The very next day on Sunday, the magazine section of The Boston Globe covered Ken Burns’s upcoming documentary about the Revolutionary War. There was mention of an Ebenezer serving. Now his Ebenezer wasn’t from Dedham, but the echo of Ebenezer soldiers in less than 24 hours was a moment of synchronicity that made me sit up and pay attention. Moments like these are always affirming.
So that’s the thing in writing historic fiction — historic fact is both limiting and propulsive.
