Eureka Moments: Researching for Second Wives

MUSE MONDAY

What a fun guest post we have today. Please welcome Patricia McAlexander to Discover... on Muse Monday.

While writing fiction, one has, I think, sudden bursts of insight and inspiration. They might be called Eureka moments. When I was writing my historical fiction Second Wives, many such moments came as I researched  the past.

Second Wives is based on three generations of my German Kornmeyer ancestors. I knew that the first two generations—a father and his seven children—came from Baden to New York in 1850 as steerage passengers on a ship named the Jane E Williams. I experienced one of my first Eureka moments when I simply googled the Jane E Williams—and up on the screen came a painting of a sailing ship with its US flag stiff in the wind. It was labeled "The Barque Jane E. Williams of New York, 1848, oil on canvas 18 x 25.5 inches” and signed by artist Lorenz Petersen (1803-1870).  The actual painting had been sold, but its image made my ancestors’ voyage across the Atlantic suddenly vivid and real for me.

Another Eureka moment came when I found on Ancestry.com the manifest listing the passengers on the Jane E Williams, which arrived in New York Harbor from Rotterdam on October 7, 1850. The names of my great-great-grandfather Martin Kornmeyer (age 38, male, Baden, farmer) and his seven children, written in the archaic cursive of the recording official, was another lightning bolt from the past. It made me see the family standing on the deck of the docked ship as the official checked off their names.

A third such moment came in my own home, this one involving my grandmother, Emma Kornmeyer, born in 1877, daughter of Martin’s oldest son.  In one of my dresser drawers I re-discovered her engagement ring, which I had inherited years before—a small circle of gold, with two amber topaz stones.  I had read of her beautiful 1902 wedding in a yellowed newspaper among my mother’s mementos, and now, holding the ring, I could even more fully imagine the love between her and the young man who had given it to her.  I put these lines in my novel describing his proposal:

He took a small box from his pocket and handed it to her. Emma lifted the lid. There was a double-stoned topaz ring, the amber stones set in gold, winking in the sunlight.

“Will you take this as an engagement ring?”

“Oh, it’s beautiful.” Emma took the ring out of the box and slipped it onto her finger. “It fits perfectly. And the two stones side by side—they are you and me.”

This husband died long before she did. One of the ring’s stones was now missing, a dark hole bordered by the loosened prongs that had held it. As I looked down at the ring, now with just one stone, I felt the pain Emma must have felt when she lost him. Another Eureka moment.

 

Book blurb

Amid the political chaos of the German Confederation in 1848 and with crops on his Baden farm failing, thirty-six-year-old Martin Kornmeyer persuades his wife, Esther, to emigrate to America with their seven children and her widowed younger sister, Rosa. When Esther falls ill on the journey, the family is delayed in the Netherlands for two years—a time marked by guilt, new love, and death while they strive to follow the dictates of their Catholic faith. At last, the family crosses the Atlantic and settles in the farming regions of western New York State. As decades pass there, first Martin’s oldest son, Karl, and then Karl’s daughter Emma also face love and loss and look to that earlier generation for guidance.

Inspired by the author’s ancestors, this historical saga traces the lives of three generations through marriage, loss, and the possibility of renewal through a second love. 

 

Excerpt

Martin reached down, scooped up a handful of soil, and, opening his fist, showed it to her. “I’ve loved this land, worked this soil, all my life. It will always be a part of me. But the crops have failed too many times. The farm is mortgaged. We would lose it if we stayed longer. And you know the political situation here.” He let the soil sift through his fingers back to the ground.  “I will find new land in America. It will be a better home there for Esther and our children and their children.”

Rosa recognized in his eyes, his voice, the kind of passion she’d seen in Johannes when he talked of politics, of revolution. She turned away to look out past the farmhouse and barn to the winter-barren land beyond. She thought of the ragged men in the cities, of their angry demonstrations, of what Johannes had said about America. She turned back. “Yes, I see why you have to go.” Pulling her hood back over her head, she began moving out into the wind. “And it’s time for me to go back to Stuttgart. I’ll find work there as a governess.”

 “Rosa!” He reached out and took her arm. “Esther and I want you to come with us.”

 

buy link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GTWT772K

Email: mcalexanderpatricia@gmail.com

Website: https://patriciamcalexander.weebly.com 

Bio:

Originally from upstate New York, Patricia McAlexander earned degrees from the State University of New York at Albany, Columbia University, and The University of Wisconsin, Madison, all in English. It was in Madison that she met her Southerner husband, Hubert, a fellow graduate student. They made Athens, Georgia their home, raised their son there, and taught at the University of Georgia. After retiring, Patricia has had more time to garden and travel while renewing her interests in photography, history, and, most of all, writing fiction.. Since 2020 she has published four contemporary novels of romantic suspense—Stranger in the Storm, Shadows of Doubt, The Student in Classroom Six, and The Last Golden Isle. In Second Wives she combines the romance and psychological complexity of her previous works with family lore and genealogical research to create her first novel of historical fiction.