Custom Sensor Solutions, Inc.Custom Sensor Solutions, Inc.The day Pat and I discovered Agatha, I sat on the stairs by the window seat and Agatha told me the bare bones of her story. She told me her name, age, that she had come from Ireland, and that she was en route to California as part of a covered wagon expedition when her daughter died. As for her life after Sarah's death, she told me she'd had help from the Indians and I drew the house they'd built her, which I later learned was called a wigwam. In fits and starts over the next several years, I wrote for her. Whenever I thought of all the details needed to complete her story, I would wonder how I'd ever be able to get it written, since, as a Canadian, I knew nothing of U. S. history in the 1800s. The thought of the project, taken as a whole, was overwhelming. I found I had to work on it one small section at a time, and not think about the entire story.
Each week, I would start out with a two or three page outline of a section of her story. My family provided feedback on the content. Using the questions they asked, I would return to the outline and add the detail. When I was on the right track, the words seemed to flow onto the page. But there were times when I couldn't write anything in response to suggestions; I knew then I was trying to write something that hadn't happened to Agatha. For instance, my husband was sure that she must have encountered Joseph Naper, or some members of the Naper Settlement. Agatha hadn't given this information to me, but Bill made a good argument for it, so I sat down to write it. For the next week, I tried to write about such an encounter, but I was unable to put one paragraph together. Finally, I trusted my own feelings and said, "Okay, Agatha, apparently you didn't meet the settlers, so tell me how you avoided them." Then my pen flew across the pages as she described being forewarned of their approach because of their noise, and thus being able to avoid them.
After I'd finished writing about specific periods of time in her life, in detail, I would visit the library and track down information about the place and time I'd described. It was always exciting to discover that nothing I'd written conflicted with the history for the time. In fact, so little is actually written about pioneers in the 1830 time period, that I had to search through a great many books, and use other sources of information, to find the factual confirmation I needed. An example was Agatha's coffee supply. People who read what I was writing told me that she couldn't have had access to real coffee in North America in the 1830s. They suggested that I say she used a coffee substitute, such as chicory. But Agatha had said she had coffee, so I began to look for evidence that coffee had been available in the area at that time. I hunted for this information off and on over the next few months. I could find many textual references to coffee during the 1840s, but nothing earlier. I contacted the sales director of a Chicago-based coffee company and was told that Agatha could have kept coffee for several years in the green bean form if she kept it in a cool, dry place. Unfortunately, he couldn't tell me when coffee had actually become available in North America. Finally, after seeking in all sorts of obscure places, I remembered the Encyclopedia Britannica; in it, I read that coffee was first sold in Boston in the 1670s. By the mid 1700s, coffee was available in all the major cities in the colonies. Whenever I wondered if the work came from my own imagination, such confirmations bolstered my belief that I was writing for Agatha. Indeed, I had no difficulty when writing from her point of view. But later, when I started to write my own part of the story, the words did not come as easily.
Over the years, the writing was interrupted several times for legitimate reasons. As with all habits, once I had stopped writing, it was difficult to get started again. When this happened one summer, the small coffin form appeared once again in the front lawn. I returned to the writing, and the coffin disappeared.
Current May 26, 1998
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