A California Landscape of Women, Words, and Wonder
Join me on Wednesday, March 24th, 3 pm, for a Webinar about Emily Hoppin – Yolo Pioneer, Women’s Activist, and as my Great-Grandmother, the inspiration for Eliza in Heart Wood.
Zoom link: https://yolocounty.zoom.us/j/96613600322
Note to reader: I am struck by the irony of my post Creating Historical Fiction that I planned for today. Start with the facts, I write, but if you want a richer, more powerful story, try converting your story into a fictionalized version. We’re living in a time when a president is attempting to stay in power by creating a fictional version of the election. Future historians will help us understand the facts and how we responded thereafter. (SD – 1/12/21)
A thin, wavering curtain separates historical facts from the imagination of fiction. Research files may bulge with historical documents that provide the framework for fictionalized ancestors, but imagination and inspiration weave them into a deeper story.
Nearly every family has colorful characters and fascinating stories. You can probably think of a few yourself; maybe you have considered writing about them. But how? When I first became interested in my gold-rush era great-grandmother, I decided to write a biographical account of what I knew about how she came to California, ran an 800-acre farm, and worked to better the condition of her community.
At some point, I realized there was a larger story to tell – not just of her life and work, but how it related to the present generation, and even to our unknown future generations who will inherit our stories. I was encouraged to stretch into the realm of historical fiction. Gary Noy, editor of The Illuminated Landscape, A Sierra Nevada Anthology, agreed that fictionalized history carries an emotional resonance that far exceeds the presentation of facts. By writing a novel inspired by historical facts, I was free to tell a deeper, unhindered story.
Like the tip of an iceberg, fictionalized characters are more believable because of the bulk of research that lies beneath their story. Now that my fictionalized version is published, I return full circle to all the facts that launched Heart Wood. In conducting years of research, I’ve been delighted to know my great-grandmother as a larger-than-life thinker, writer, and activist. This research is now posted on my website under “Historical Research.” I am pleased to share my findings with my greater family and to make it available to the public for historical research.
I invite you browse the research that went into the creation of the past in Heart Wood. Perhaps it will be an inspiration to create something from your own family’s story!
The ancestors whose story inspired me to create Eliza and Silas in Heart Wood
I have recently posted over 25 documents and photographs on my website , including:
Charles Hoppin’s letters home from the Gold Rush (1850-1863)
An oral history with my grandmother, Dorothea Hoppin Moffett, about growing up on the Yolo Ranch with her mother, Emily Hoppin
Pages of Emily Hoppin’s personal scrapbook (1890s-1915) with news clippings of her campaign for president of the California Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1915
Photographs, maps, and selected documents from internet research
The Internet was unheard of when I first started investigating my family’s history in the late 1980s. To locate and read documents back then, I had to get in my car and travel to distant libraries and archives. Today, it’s a different world: my recent internet search for “Emily Hoppin, Yolo” found over 240 references to her in the California Digitalized Newspaper Collection!
AND…without the invaluable assistance of the Yolo County Archives and Records Center, Emily’s scrapbook would still be sitting on my bookshelf. I am grateful to Coordinator Heather Lanctot who scanned each page with their large-sized scanner so that the scrapbook can be read on my website, and in time, will be a permanent public record at The Yolo Archives. Like all volunteer-based organizations during this time of COVID, The Yolo Archives appreciates donations (bit.ly/fyca-join).
I hope you will enjoy browsing my Historical Research page and perhaps be inspired to be creative with your own family’s history. If you’re curious about writing historical fiction, traditional memoir, or a biography, you can find a wealth of support on the internet, on-line classes, writing coaches, and books.
“Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges into the past.” – James Joyce, Ulysses
Heart Wood can be purchased online and at all bookstores
Thank you for supporting independently-published authors and local bookstores!
HERE: To support your local, independent bookstore
Years ago, when Heart Wood was in its infancy, I created my first website and blog. Having since outgrown the space, I’ve been working with a web designer to give it an updated look with new rooms and décor. Please stroll around and take a look!
There is one last room I want to remodel and I’m hoping readers can help me. If you click on the “Research” tab, you’ll see tabs for Past, Present, and Future. These are where I’m gathering Present data and evidence of mankind’s cumulative impact on the Future, as well as my family’s historical documents from the Past.
If you’ve read Heart Wood, you may share my concern for what we’re doing to our air, water, food, and earth, and the impact on our health and longevity – especially of our children. You can contribute by sending articles and links that I can post. Discussions welcome!
Thank you to Sky (who actually spent her first years in the mythical “Luna Valley”) for this first article: Why the World is Becoming Allergic to Food https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-the-world-is-becoming-more-allergic-to-food?utm_source=pocket-newtab. Cue the rise of Pharm.food!
For history buffs, especially my family, I will post all the documentation I gathered about my great-grandparents, Emily and Charles Hoppin of Yolo, California – the inspiration for the characters of Eliza and Silas in Heart Wood. In my research, I found previously unknown speeches, writings, and interviews with Emily Hoppin. She was a woman before her time and now, 100 years later, her voice can be heard! I invite anyone with information about Charles and Emily Hoppin to add to this documentation on my website.
Please sign the guest book by leaving a comment. If you see any corners that need attention, let me know. I’m learning how websites nowadays must work across all types of screens: computers, tablets, and mobile devices – rather like a three-dimensional tic-tac-toe board! My appreciation to Katie (who also grew up in the “Luna Valley”) and her design team at Urban Sherpa Marketing: www.urbansherpa.marketing
A cherished story in my family is that Great Grandma came to California by covered wagon during the 1849 Gold Rush. Only she didn’t. Hard as I try to hold on to the version of my great grandparents making a tortuous six-month wagon “road trip” from Michigan to California to start a new life together, the evidence just isn’t there.
Nonetheless, I refuse to be swayed by facts. So what if dusty historical biographies and frayed yellow obituaries record that it was actually 1874 when Emily Anna Bacon Hoppin accompanied her new husband, Charles, back to his 800 acre ranch in Yolo, California. She might even have taken the new transcontinental railroad, recently opened in 1869 for all we know. But inside of me is a small child who won’t release her fingers around a favorite shiny pebble. In my heart, Great Grandmother did come to California by covered wagon during the Gold Rush.
“It’s the storyteller’s right to embellish the story,” my Grandma Dot-Dot once confessed as she spun yet another legendary tale about her mother’s life in the late 1800’s. I interviewed Grandma before she died and transcribed her stories into a book which I gave to the extended family. It was a meritage of memory and facts. From her child’s-eye perspective of early California ranch life, Grandma fashioned her mother into a larger-than-life figure who was not to be reckoned with. “Emily Hoppin was known as a woman who stood by her principles,” Grandma told us. “Why she and her women friends threatened to close down the local saloons so many times, they were known as the Three Musketeers. Grandma delighted in planting family stories into our fertile imaginations. She was our myth-maker.
I learned from Grandma Dot-Dot that stories are more important than facts. Stories nurture the heart; facts languish in the head. This is why I describe the novel I’m working on as part historical fiction, part memoir, and part future-fantasy. Despite my struggle to be historically accurate, I’m finding that the family’s mythology is much more enduring.
In my next blog, I’ll describe my discovery of an historical detail while traveling through the Nevada desert – a fact that somehow never made it into the family’s records or mythology.
© All materials copyright Shirley DicKard, 2015, except as otherwise noted.
Shirley DicKard 