The Velvet Bridge
by
Anita Stubbs
This true-to-life rags to riches tale, my first novel, is set during WWII and could have actually happened if not for one thing: Mattie Featherstone never existed, other than between the covers of this 381-page book. But the lifestyles, the culture of the time, and some of the places ring so true, you'll wonder. It's classic 1940's, Dallas, Texas, in and around Oak Cliff.
Too young to be
widowed and too pretty to be alone, Mattie Featherstone is both. Suddenly
impoverished, this confused, tormented woman abandons her children and seeks
refuge in an encampment for vagrants situated near the Trinity River on the
west side of Dallas during World War II.
When a twist-of-fate encounter eases Mattie out of destitution into the
genteel world of her paper doll dreams, she manages to conceal the truth
about her past from her benefactors. She even justifies - in her own mind -
the abandonment of her daughters.
However, everything changes when yet another unforeseen event turns her life
into sensational headline news, revealing more than even she could imagine.
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There’s A Story There
As a family genealogist, I often discover, during research, mysterious occurrences where the facts beg to be more closely examined. Odd circumstances poke at me—questionable events my natural skepticism finds a little too coincidental. Actual recorded facts, or the absences thereof, nag at me and I wonder what happened? How could that be? Why? In order to ease frustration accompanying the realization that some things can never be known, I simply shed my restrictive genealogy hat, and don my fiction writer’s cap, for there is always a story there.
For instance, when I came across an old family bible recording the deaths of three of my grandfather’s brothers—all unknown to my parent—my first response was, Whoa, something is very odd about that! The record revealed that the family’s third child, Marvin, one and a half years old, died on August 5, 1891. The next year, on August 4, his brother Early B. died. He was four years old. Then, eight years later, again on August 4, a third child died. His name was Dallas L. He was only three and a half. In each case, the mother either was expecting a child, or had one a year old, as revealed through census records. Now, there’s a story there.
My files bulge with these kinds of rich possibilities for fiction writing. There is the puzzling fact concerning the mystery Friddles, as I refer to them. They were the original grantees for land in Texas before my Friddle ancestors settled a portion of the same land, purchased from new owners, forty years later. I have found no documentation to relate these two lines of Friddles, although at some point in colonial times, in their common state of North Carolina, I intuitively know there must be a link. Was it by coincidence, or by direction, that they settled the same piece of land four decades apart? Did they know each other? What is the connection? There is a story there.
That same pioneering ancestor who settled that land leaves me wondering about something else. He died suddenly, at a young age, a few short years after coming to Texas from Alabama. He had just paid off the note on their new farm. Two weeks later his wife died, leaving a house full of children. Court death records show he died in July, of a stroke. Family reports say he worked himself to death clearing land. Could he have died of sunstroke in the July Texas heat while cutting trees? His wife died two weeks later of a strangulated hernia. Was her hernia related to his death? Did she carry him to the house, injuring herself? What happened? There’s a story there.
Another opportunity for a tale found among the facts, involves the predicament of one great grandmother at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Legal documents show that when Fannie was thirty-three years old, her husband died suddenly one day plowing his fields. He left her with seven children, and no will.
The children were made wards of the court, when it came to their financial well-being, and Fannie could not even sell her own land without petitioning the county. Legally, the land belonged to her children, and the court. As their father’s heirs, their rights trumped those of their mother simply because she was a woman. She raised the children with money gained from selling the farm, portions at a time, as mandated by the court. By the time her children were grown, the land was gone. There’s a story there.
Another ancestor, Sir Thomas Wilford, lost his life and fortune while supporting King Charles against Parliament at the beginning of England's Civil war. In 1676, his son, Captain Thomas Wilford, was one of three prominent landowners who joined Nathaniel Bacon, Jr. in that famous Virginian rebellion against heavy taxes and Governor Berkeley's failure to suppress Indian massacres. Through their efforts, James Towne, now Jamestown, was partially burned and Gov. Berkeley temporarily driven from the capital. At the peak of the rebels’ success, however, Bacon died suddenly.
The Governor promptly sent out raiding parties and captured the three. Two of them, one being my captain, were taken before Berkeley's court on shipboard in the eastern shore area, where they were condemned and later hanged. The third man, records show, escaped a similar fate only because he had died in prison "of hard usage." The property of all three was confiscated.
One historian wrote, "Captain Wilford, the third of the distinguished prisoners, was the second son of a knight who had lost his life and estate in the late King's quarrel with his parliament. 'He was a little man, yet he had a great heart, and was known to be no coward.' Bacon had made use of him with the Indians as an interpreter. In the recent fighting he had lost an eye, but he made a jest of it, declaring that, as the governor had long ago promised him a hanging as being one of those who went out with Bacon in his first expedition against the Indians, it made no difference whether he had one eye or two, for . . . the governor would see him well guided to the place of execution . . . ." There’s a novel to be found in that actual incident!
One great, great, great, grandfather came to America when he was twelve, from Canada. He had joined the British Army during the War of 1812 as a drummer boy. The Americans captured him and family legend says he simply chose to stay in this country, where he later became a naturalized citizen. He never had contact with his parents or siblings again. An early family historian pondered why, in his account of that family. Recently I found the probable answer. I discovered the ancestor’s name on a list of British deserters from the War of 1812. No wonder my ancestor kept his whereabouts from his family back home. The British dealt harshly with deserters, and his own father had been a professional soldier. There is a story there, a work now in progress.
My grandfather mysteriously spent two weeks in a Mexican jail during the Great Depression. There is a story there. During WWII, a plane crashed in the field near our house. The pilot came to our door in the middle of the night for help. This fact inspired my short story, Sara’s Secret.
My first novel, The Velvet Bridge, grew from a short story inspired by Dallas County court records about my husband and his sister’s abandonment by their mother, and their subsequent adoptions. Another story, Family, grew from factual pieces of information I obtained about his sister’s early experiences in the foster care system. Again, my imagination filled in the blanks with plot and characters supporting the notion driving most of my stories—that without lemons, there can be no lemonade.
I encourage you to dig into your own, or someone else’s, fertile history. Everyone has someone interesting, most likely outstanding, and just waiting to be found! Uncover the ancestors’ participation in real life historical events, both the heroes and the villains. Let your mind's eye explore and discover the invisible, the unknowable—the fairytales. There are wonderful stories there.