It's Not Just Sew Sew

It’s Not Just Sew Sew

The old West had a shortage of everything except hard times and backbreaking work and there was sure plenty of that. Pioneer women took extra pains with all their belongings and to lose something as small as a button really was difficult to take.

Buttons have been around approximately 4,000 years with its history dating back to Egypt. Archaeologists have unearthed them in ancient tombs and in archaeological digs.

At first buttons were used entirely for decoration. Men and women both wore buttons to adorn themselves. King Louis XIV of France spent $600,000 a year on buttons and King Francis I once had 13,600 buttons sewn to a single coat. The First Duke of Buckingham had a suit and cloak covered in diamond buttons. Talk about extravagant.

From ancient times, buttons have been fashioned from pearls, shells, glass, metal, wood, bone and antler, precious stones, porcelain, and leather among other materials. It appears that our ancestors made buttons from everything imaginable that was available at the time. Buttons with images of angels on them date back hundreds of years. Early buttons showed beautiful artistry. Artists filled their time painting portraits and scenery on them. Europe became so button crazy the church denounced them as “the devil’s snare,” mainly because of women’s buttoned-front dresses. Even the Puritans condemned buttons as sinful.

No one is quite sure when someone came along and fashioned the first buttonhole, but it was quite an accomplishment. Everyone jumped on the band wagon. It was so nice to able to make form-fitting garments that didn’t have to be secured with a belt, rope or other device.

Sadly, decorated buttons have become a lost art. These today are made of plastic.

Vintage Buttons 

Button collecting began in the 1930’s. The National Button Society was formed in 1938. There are thousands of collectors today. People collect all kinds and shapes and some of the prices fetched for a single button is outrageous. Recently, a button was sold in auction for $850.

The Smithsonian Institution has an extensive button collection as do many other museums.

Did you know that March 13-19 is National Button Week?

I'll have a new book out on May 5th! The second one in the Bachelor of Battle Creek series -- TWICE A TEXAS BRIDE!

Scars of the past run deep inside former saloon owner Rand Sinclair, leaving jagged pain and two certainties. He'll never fall in love again. Never marry. He finally has the ranch and land he's dreamed of owning and that's enough.

But when he finds a woman and little boy hiding out in one of his outbuildings in the bitter cold, he can't turn his back. He offers her a safe haven and the warmth of his fire.

Callie Quinn is on the run from a killer outlaw who has vowed to see her dead and take the boy.

Slowly, Rand uncovers her secrets and realizes the only way to keep her safe is to push all his chips to the center of the table. He risks everything...his name...and his heart...for the woman who's awakened a fierce hunger for love.

Locked in a desperate battle to rid themselves of the outlaw's special brand of terror, Rand reaches deep inside for every weapon in his arsenal.

Whoever wants to harm her will have to go through him.

And he’ll go through hell for her.

* * *

Here's a short excerpt involving buttons:

Sliding her hand beneath the soft hair at the nape of his neck, she parted her mouth slightly. When his tongue dipped inside, she faintly tasted peaches. She’d never felt so much need well up inside. She needed Rand like she needed air and food and to be loved. How could she have lived this long without him?

A second later, he removed his mouth from hers and murmured. “You drive me crazy, woman. Would you mind if I unfasten some buttons of your dress?”

“How many?” What a dumb question, but her brain had deserted her. The tingles doing back-flips and twirls up and down her spine had made forming coherent thought impossible.

“Three. Or four. You have so many.” He flashed a fleeting grin. “I have the greatest desire to feel my wife's skin. Will you welcome me?”

“Yes,” she managed to whisper.

The cool air was welcome on her flesh as he undid the four buttons she’d allotted. But he didn't stop. She covered his hand with hers. "You said four and that's what I agreed to."

"I never was much good at arithmetic." He took her hand and kissed each of her fingertips before he resumed his mission. 

* * *

Do you have a stash of buttons? Can you imagine wearing a piece of clothing that has over 13,000 buttons sewn on it?

I'm giving away a book to two people who comment. Their choice of Texas Mail Order Bride or Twice a Texas Bride in either print or e-book.

Amazon Links:

Texas Mail Order Bride: http://amzn.com/1492602817

Twice a Texas Bride: http://amzn.com/1492602841

Linda Broday, Historical Romance Author

I'm a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. My interest in reading and history came very early, so when I began writing historical romances it was no surprise to anyone. I reside in the Texas Panhandle on land the American Indian and Comancheros once roamed. I love scouring history books and the internet for little known details to add to my stories. I've been accused, and quite unjustly I might add, of making myself a nuisance at museums and libraries. Humble roots and the love of family have become focal points of each book I write. I hope you like the stories I endeavor to bring to you and that you'll try my new Bachelors of Battle Creek series.

You can Contact me:

Visit me at: www.LindaBroday.com

On Facebook: www.facebook.com/linda.broday1

Facebook Author Page:  http://www.facebook.com/lindabrodayauthor 

On Twitter: http://twitter.com/lbroday  

Google:  http://google.com/+LindaBroday

Don't Fence Me In: the Texas Fence-Cutter War

(photo with permission from Darius Norvilas)

Don’t Fence Me In: the Texas Fence-Cutter War

By Kathleen Rice Adams

“I’m Going to Leave Old Texas Now” (The Cowman's Lament)

I’m going to leave old Texas now.

They’ve got no use for the long-horn cow.

They’ve plowed and fenced my cattle range,

And the people there are all so strange.

I’ll take my horse and I’ll take my rope,

And hit the trail upon a lope.

Say adios to the Alamo,

And turn my head toward Mexico.

The hard, hard ground shall be my bed

And my saddle seat shall hold my head.

When I waken from my dreams

I’ll eat my bread and my sardines.

When I die, please bury me

In a narrow grave just six by three.

I’ll tell Saint Peter that I know

A cowboy’s soul ain’t white as snow.

Yet in that far-off cattle land

He sometimes acted like a man.

(Texas folksong, source obscure)

In the late 1860s and early 1870s, Texas saw a massive influx of former Confederates dispossessed by the Civil War and seeking a place to start over. Texas seemed like a good spot: The state offered plenty of open range and brimmed with feral cattle called longhorns. Many a man with nothing more than guts and grit built a fortune and a legacy by shagging longhorns from deep scrub and driving the tough, stubborn, nasty-tempered critters north to the railheads in Kansas and Nebraska. Others pushed herds to Montana and Wyoming to begin new lives where the West was even wilder.

Between 1866 and 1890, cowboys drove an estimated twelve million longhorns and one million horses north. A crew of twelve to twenty men could push a herd of 2,000 to 3,000 beeves about ten to fifteen miles a day, reaching Kansas railheads in three to four months.

The development of barbed wire in the mid-1870s—along with an incursion of sheepmen and farmers—put a crimp in the cattle drives by crisscrossing Texas’s wide-open spaces with miles and miles and miles of fence. To protect themselves and their herds from the yahoos who would use Texas range for something besides Texas cattle, wealthy ranchers strung wire around the land they owned or leased, often extending their fences across public land, as well. What once had been open range across which cowboys drove enormous herds of beef on the hoof became parceled off, causing no end of frustration and unfriendly behavior.

Fence-cutting began almost as soon as the first wire went up. Small confrontations over “the Devil’s rope” happened frequently, with wire-nipping taking place in more than half of Texas counties.

In 1883, the conflict turned deadly. Instead of merely cutting fences that got in the way during trail drives, bands of armed cowboy vigilantes calling themselves names like Owls, Javelinas, and Blue Devils destroyed fences simply because the fences existed. Fence-cutting raids usually occurred at night, and often the vigilantes left messages warning the fence’s owner not to rebuild. Some went so far as to leave coffins nailed to fenceposts or on ranchers’ porches. During one sortie, vigilantes cut nineteen miles of fence, piled the wire on a stack of cedar posts, and lit a $6,000 fire.

In response, cattlemen hired armed men to guard their wire…with predictable results. Clashes became more violent, more frequent, and bloodier. In 1883 alone, at least three men were killed in Brown County, a hotspot of fence-cutting activity, during what came to be known as the Texas Fence-Cutter War.

The bloodiest period of the Fence-Cutter War lasted for only about a year, but in that period damages from fence-cutting and range fires totaled an estimated $20 million—$1 million in Brown County alone.

Although politicians stayed well away from the hot-button issue for about a decade, in early 1884 the Texas legislature declared fence-cutting a felony punishable by a prison term of one to five years. The following year, the U.S. Congress outlawed stringing fence across public land. Together, the new laws ended the worst of the clashes, although the occasional fracas broke out in the far western portion of Texas into the early part of the 20^th Century.

The Texas Rangers were assigned to stop several fence-cutting outbreaks, and being the Texas Rangers, they proved remarkably effective…with one notable exception. In February 1885, Texas Ranger Ben Warren was shot and killed outside Sweetwater, Texas, while trying to serve a warrant for three suspected fence-cutters. Two of the three were convicted of Warren’s murder and sentenced to life in prison.

In 1888, a brief resurgence of fence-cutting violence erupted in Navarro County, prompting famed Texas Ranger Ira Aten to place dynamite charges at intervals along one fence line. Aten’s method was a mite too extreme for the Texas Adjutant General, who ordered the dynamite removed. The mere rumor of the explosive’s presence brought fence-cutting to a rapid halt in the area, though.

In my debut novel Prodigal Gun, a barbed-wire fence touches off a war in the Texas Hill Country, bringing an infamous gunman to Texas for the first time since he left to fight for the Confederacy sixteen years earlier.

To celebrate the book’s release, I’ll give an e-copy in the winner’s choice of formats to one person who comments today!

Prodigal Gun

A dangerous man. A desperate woman. A love no war could kill.

Widowed rancher Jessie Caine buried her heart with the childhood sweetheart Yankees killed on a distant battlefield. Sixteen years later, as a Texas range war looms and hired guns arrive to pursue a wealthy carpetbagger’s agenda, Jessie discovers the only man she ever loved isn’t dead.

At least not yet.

Embittered by a brother’s betrayal, notorious gunman Calhoun is a dangerous man, come home to do an unsavory job. A bushwhacker’s bullet nearly takes his life on Jessie’s land, trapping him in a standoff between the past he tried to bury and the infamy he never will. One taste of the only woman he ever loved puts more than his life and her ranch in the crossfire.

With a price on his head, a debt to a wealthy employer around his neck, and a defiant woman tugging at his heart, Calhoun’s guns may not be enough to keep him from the grave. Caught between his enemies and hers, Jessie faces an agonizing choice: Which of her dreams will die?

LINKS:

Amazon: http://amzn.com/B00PJEEKCG

Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/prodigal-gun-kathleen-rice-adams/1120743393

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/492507

Paperback will be available Thursday, Nov. 20

 Kathleen Rice Adams

A Texan to the bone, Kathleen Rice Adams spends her days chasing news stories and her nights and weekends shooting it out with Wild West desperados. Leave the upstanding, law-abiding heroes to other folks…even Kathleen’s good guys wear black hats.

Visit Kathleen on the web at:

KathleenRiceAdams.com

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Kathleen-Rice-Adams/e/B00GAI0L2I/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kathleen.riceadams

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DisorderlyWords

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/disorderlywords/