Thursday, July 25, 2013

A few notes on my research

When trying to learn about logging in England in the 18th century, I couldn't turn up anything. Why? England had practically no forests left. I could and did turn up information on logging in the New World, but had to look at it with a critical eye and a grain of salt.

Why? Well, if you read about logging in a New England context, it was done in the winter. This was because it was easier to drag those great big trees around when there was a thick blanket of snow on the ground. New England had so much snow and ice that horse-drawn sleighs were the winter mode of transport.

Yeah, England doesn't get that much snow. If they travelled more in fall and winter, it's because the roads were an impassable muddy mess in wet weather.
Perhaps it would be similar to logging in the American West in the 19th century. The two cultures are completely dissimilar, but the tools could be the same...? I couldn't find out which season logging took place in. It's not the kind of thing people write in books. Transportation? Where the railroads didn't go, the trees were transported by water. Railroads weren't invented yet in the 1760s, so river it was. That team of horses is dragging the trees to the river, where they will float downstream to their destination.

In the end I used mid-1800s photographs of logging in the American West... and  didn't go into much detail, since my information is not too reliable.

I check dictionary.com on any words that I'm not certain are period-correct. Here's a sample of the things I looked up yesterday. I'll let you try to figure out why:

Correct: dwarf, pygmy, freak (certain meanings of the word)
Not: Circus(not invented), midget, side-show(American West), penny gaff (1800s), belittle (American in origin).

Uncertain: The difference, at this place and time, between a tea house, coffeehouse, and tavern. All were places where men gathered socially and talked sports, gambling, politics, etc. A club was similar but required membership. An inn offered overnight accommodation? One of more of these is probably the equivalent of bar, but it's hard to be sure. None of them equates to a dance club- these were men's haunts. There were dance hall assemblies, viewed somewhat dubiously, and private parties where dancing might take place, but on the whole, the sexes didn't mingle much socially.

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