In my last post, I wrote about visiting St. Louis and the museums at the Arch and Forest Park to learn more about its history for my upcoming novel, the fourth book in the Adventures of Hannah True series. I learned enough to realize I needed a new name for the novel: That buildings with false fronts were not really a thing in 1861 St. Louis. Also, while there, I purchased a book of essays, Historic Tales of St. Louis, which was the first step on a journey to the city’s past.
Mining Bibliographies
Many of the articles in Historic Tales of St. Louis were relevant to the 1861 time period, others were not. I skimmed article titles, such as “Army Secretly Sprays St. Louis in Chemical Weapons Program,” “Cary Grant Starts a Trend: Chocolates on a Hotel Pillow,” and “Gaslight Square: See Barbara Streisand for Two Bucks,” and focused on the articles dealing with the 1840s through the 1860s. These included “Brewers and Their Caves,” “Cholera Outbreak of 1849 Kills 10 Percent of Population,” “From Horses to Streetcars,” and “The Great Fire of 1849.” The bibliography in this book led me to an interesting online article, “St. Louis Beer History: Underground Beginnings.” You might have guessed from two of the titles that my novel has scenes in caves where beer is brewed. Until I read these articles, I had no knowledge of underground beer brewing.
An online search led me to another excellent source, A Most Unsettled State: First-Person Accounts of St. Louis During the Civil War. I ordered the book through Emporia’s bookstore, Middle Ground Books, and the excerpts from diaries and letters in the first two sections put me emotionally in the city at the time of my novel. Instead of a bibliography at the back of the book, the source information is given at the end of each excerpt. I was captivated by Galusha Anderson’s description of St. Louis as a city built with red brick, which included homes, businesses, warehouses, and even sidewalks. Wanting to learn more, I searched for his book written in 1908 and found it online: The Story of a Border City During the Civil War.
Another source that helped me understand the tensions between neighbors was Julius Rombauer’s The Union Cause in St. Louis in 1861: An Historical Sketch. Both Galusha Anderson and Julius Rombauer lived in St. Louis during the time of Hannah True’s next adventure, and their books are adding to my knowledge of the people and their world.
Now that I have such excellent historical sources, I am using them to set the scene for Hannah’s first case, a murder mystery set in January 1861 in St. Louis. My goal is to finish the novel and publish by August 2025.
Series in Progress 