Author Archives

Laurie Winslow Sargent

Author and Speaker

Laurie Winslow Sargent is the author of Delight in Your Child's Design and The Power of Parent-Child Play, has contributed stories to a dozen other books, and has had articles in national magazines with 300,000 to one million readers. Radio interviews with Laurie have aired in 48 U.S. states and abroad. Her current nonfiction book in progress is based on 1920s to 1930s expat experiences of an American couple in British Raj India. She is also executor for the original manuscripts of Hayden Howard, award-winning 1960s author.

Posted on

Adventures in the Attic

by

How a vintage suitcase, overflowing with 1920s-1930s jungle honeymoon adventures, birthed a book.

This photo includes invitations from the Maharaja of Jaipur and The Governor & Viscountess Goschen; a love letter from Ken; and letters home to Walla Walla from Gladys in Port Blair, Andaman Islands.

UPDATE! This blog post led to a Mid Day News story on May 31, 2020, by Prutha Bhosle: American Author Traces Her Ancestors Love Story Through Letters ~ A North Carolina-based author relies on a trunk full of letters from 1920s India and Google Earth to reconstruct a love story of her ancestors for an upcoming book~ Mid Day is called “India’s most engaging newspaper” with a reported 25 million page views per month. How exciting is that?!

A Discovery of near-100-year-old Letters

My eyes adjusted to the dim walk-up attic, sun spilling through cracks between beams. I was surrounded by yet more to purge or make agonizing decisions about. But this time I was on a hunt for one battered, square, beige suitcase — about 1930s vintage. I spied it and dragged it into better light. Heavy.

I smiled at the name Winslow, scrawled in fancy letters in black marker. I’d written that myself, back when as a teen in the 70’s I thought that old suitcase “cool”. I’d claimed it to store my stuff, including an old peace-sign necklace and a mood ring. It had since been emptied, then refilled, several times. 

A stuck-on yellow note had Pearce Papers scribbled on it. I knew the suitcase was stuffed to the gills with musty documents given to Mom when her parents (Gladys Gose Pearce and J. Kenneth Pearce) passed away. However, I’d never looked at the papers closely.

A belt was wrapped tightly around the suitcase, which was fit to burst with a weak old lock. Sure enough, when I pulled hard to uncinch the belt, the lid popped open.

Poof. Dust flew out; I sneezed. My curiosity would have to duke it out with my allergies.

I pulled out handfuls of sepia-toned photos, faded newspaper articles, and certificates. I sneezed again.

Then I found a bundle of letters, tied with a string. The top one was postmarked 1926, from India. My heart beat a little faster.

It was addressed to Thomas and Mrs. Gose, Walla Walla, Wash, USA.  It struck me that that letter had traveled across the world to a small town where everyone seemed to know Thomas – no street address was needed, and no zip code.

It’s a little miraculous that the letters are in my attic. They had been moved from at least five different homes in three states before finally landing in my house, nearly a hundred years later. It’s a testament to the Pearce hoarding instincts, often criticized but in this moment appreciated.

I gently untied the string and pulled out that first letter. “Dear Mother and Father….”  And after reading a few paragraphs, I shouted, “There you are!”

By “you” I meant Gladys — her zip, her personality, her wit and humor.  Although she had graduated from high school way back in 1915, then college in 1919, I was instantly whisked back in time as I read her words.

I could now see her, hear her, as a young woman.

Jungle Honeymoon

Prior to finding the letters, I’d wrestled with something our family called ‘the book’: typed pages bound together with a black cover, which Gladys had titled Jungle Honeymoon. Gladys, an aspiring writer, had written it in midlife in the 1960s among other stories and poems. (In the 1990s she’d asked me to help her get published and be her co-author, but at that time I was still a budding writer myself.)

The settings in Jungle Honeymoon were fascinating. Gladys described the aristocracy of the British Raj era in the 1920s and 1930s, elephant-powered logging camps, and the convict colony in the Andaman Islands.  

And oh, the stories! One described how local villagers begged Grandpa Ken to shoot a tiger that had eaten their family members. I also read about that and other exciting tales in newspaper articles about the couple after they returned to America. (There are also archived documents at the University of Washington about Grandpa’s work in India.)

While growing up, I recall Grandma Gladys telling me stories over English Breakfast tea, poured from a flowered turquoise Chinese tea set, served British-style with sugar and cream. She and the teenage me wore silk Japanese kimonos she’d bought during her steamship travels. I remember trying to avoid dipping the giant square sleeves in my tea.

Later in life, armed with an enormous VHS camera, I videotaped Grandpa Ken describing how that tiger could have done him in: he’d only had one shot in his rifle. I’m glad he won — not the tiger, or I wouldn’t be here, nor my kids nor grand-babies.

Missing Pieces

One problem I found with Jungle Honeymoon is that the funny Gladys I knew was missing. In her attempt to write as she thought an author should, her words hadn’t revealed her personality adequately. Or perhaps her words were a bit stiff because too much time had passed since her immersion in her experiences. (She came home from India in 1933 and worked on Jungle Honeymoon in the 1960s.) Since her essays needed heavy editing, I considered turning them into a work of fiction based on real life, to get more personal voice back into the stories.

Hence, my discovery of her letters was monumental. There she was: real, raw, right in the midst of those experiences! Conversational, using contractions the way people actually talk. And not wasting an ounce of precious paper space on letters that would take weeks by steamship to get home to Mother. And I found more than just letters: wedding invitations from royalty and photos that now make the words in Gladys’ letters truly come alive. 

The Birth of a New Book

At long last, I found a way for Gladys and me to coauthor a book about her her experiences. In our final book (to be published soon) you will travel vicariously along with us, alternating between her perspective in the 1920s and ’30s and my own in 2020. Now nearly a century has passed since Gladys was a young woman in India, and in the meantime new technology allows us to dig deep and richly see what she experienced in a far more advanced way than we could have, had she and I partnered in this in the 1990s.

For example, with tools like Google Earth and YouTube, together we can all pretend we are in 1920s India. Research is literally at my fingertips. While reading about a royal wedding Gladys and Ken attended, within seconds I pulled up photos from that wedding via Google. I could visualize my grandparents there, in that very room in the photos. On YouTube I can listen to music they listened to, or watch a silent film seconds after reading a 1930s letter about a “new film” Gladys recommended her mother see.

To read more fun stories, click HERE or the Jungle Diaries tab!

To not miss future stories from Gladys’s century-old diaries, Subscribe to this blog via email or Follow via WordPress Reader (if you’re logged into WordPress).

ALSO, feel free to comment with any questions or thoughts these posts provoke, and I’ll try to respond. I’d love to hear your thoughts! Let me know what country you are from, and if you also have a blog.

I hope you’ll enjoy on this blog my excerpts from some of the 100+ funny, poignant and adventurous stories from the new book by me and Gladys. You can begin with reading One Less Crocodile, 1923: Ken in the Raj, A Naughty Baby Elephant, and 1929: New Motherhood in Ooty.

Laurie

P.S. I hope you’ll join me at my Facebook Page, Laurie Winslow Sargent, Author for Readers, Writers, and the Eternally Curious to share your own thoughts about stories in vintage family memorabilia.

Posted on

1929: New Motherhood in Ooty

by

In 1929, expat Gladys sent this sweet note on motherhood from Ooty, South India to her mother in Walla Walla, Washington.

Baby in a teddy bear suit.
Photo by Brytny.com on Unsplash

Today, I (Laurie) in 2020 had the delight of Skyping with my daughter and grand-babies. In this modern age of motherhood and grandmotherhood, I can see them instantly. I can even capture video or screenshots of them while we video-chat! My oldest granddaughter, 2 1/2 years old, is so accustomed to this she is mystified when we have a regular phone call. “Grandmama? Grandmama? I can’t see you!”

But nearly a century ago, news from Gladys to her mother about her babies took ages to arrive. Letters and photos traveled via very long, slow steamships from India to America.

She and her husband Ken, a forestry expert from Seattle, were living at Ootacamund Hill Station among British officers (and occasional royalty) during the British Raj era.

Gladys, who loved to write, used sweet prose to describe her newborn:

Braemar, Ootacamund Hill Station

7 May, 1929

Dear Mother and Dad,

I’ve just tucked Pamela, now seven weeks old, in her little bed. She is a fascinating little miss. The last I saw, she had both little hands flying back and forth and she was agoo-ing for all she was worth. Not a whimper when I left and the light went off. Her little bed is alongside ours so I know what she is doing. 

She is getting so plump — little dimples in her elbows and back and one below her little mouth at one corner. The other day, three children came to see her and she cooed and “talked” to them in the cunningest way I’ve ever seen. Babies seem to speak to other children in a language we do not understand.

Pamela as yet refuses to let us know what color her hair is, and whether it is to be straight or curly. Her first hair was brown and decidedly straight. Now her little head is covered with a fine down that at times looks yellow and at other times brown with auburn lights.

She has very keen eyes. When she awakens they just shine and she reminds me of a little bird. Her mouth is an adorable rosebud and she is just finding her tongue and loves making gurgling noises, and then looks so surprised and delighted. She is now placing the direction from which sounds come, like approaching footsteps. Most gratifying of all, she knows me.

The monsoon has come early. We have heavy rain every afternoon and evening. Tonight it simply pelted down. There was some hail in it. 

There are beautiful walks out from Braemar. Now the rain has settled the dust, it is nicer than ever. Sunday home mail brought by the last ship was a tremendous success: I got 11 letters. I scarcely know where to begin answering them.

I am knitting a pull-on teddy bear suit for baby for travel. Pamela sends a kiss to each of her grandparents, and says tell you she will be coming home to you soon for home leave. I also send love and much of it.

Your daughter, Gladys

From Laurie: Isn’t it funny that teddy bear outfits are still considered cute on babies? My own grand-babies have a few sweater hoods with bear ears!

Posted on

Quiz: Your Child’s Got Personality!

by

Here’s a fun little quiz to help you appreciate your child’s strongest personality traits. (Excerpt from: Delight in Your Child’s Design)

Delight in Your Child's Design book cover image

Today, in honor of Mother’s Day, I’m momentarily departing from my current history/writing blogging themes. As a parenting author too, it’s hard to resist sharing this previously published book of mine, with its gorgeous cover created by Kendall Roderick. Because of course, all books are labors of love! They are our other “babies”.

I promise that with my next posts, I’ll get back to Gladys and her 1920s jungle adventures, with more stories like One Less Crocodile, A Naughty Baby Elephant and 1923: Ken in the Raj. But if you are a parent or grandparent, you may find this fun:

Regarding your child’s character traits, do you ever wonder: “Why does my child act this way?”

In some ways, determining your child’s personality is an inexact science. She is likely a blend of more than one personality type, and a child’s relationships and experiences also influence behavior.

This fun little quiz, written by Kim Miller (one of my superb former editors at Tyndale), was originally posted at my Parenting by Faith site. It has nine questions — after question 2, click Read More to see the rest of the quiz.

By answering these questions, can you can discern a pattern in your child’s behavior? That may help you understand and identify some of his or her strongest personality traits:

1. You can truthfully say, “I’d be a millionaire if only I could bottle and sell my child’s . . .”

a. optimism.
b. persistence.
c. kindness.
d. confidence.

2. Your son keeps you up until 2 a.m. the night before his school’s science fair because:

a. though he’s been talking for days about his great plans, he casually mentions over dinner that he hasn’t actually started his project yet.
b. he refuses to go to bed until you help him make sure that each planet in his model of the solar system is exactly to scale.
c. he spent so much time helping his best friend finish his project that he’s starting his own late.
d. he’s willing to sacrifice sleep in order to be sure his complicated and innovative project is better than anyone else’s—and will win the blue ribbon.

3. When you take your daughter to her first overnight camp, you are impressed because she:

a. charms her counselor and makes five new friends before she’s unpacked her bags.
b. completes all five levels of the Red Cross swimming safety course in just one week.
c. is able to restore peace to her cabin after one camper unfairly accuses another of swiping a CD.
d. organizes and emcees the final night’s camper talent show.

4. Your daughter comes home from school crying because:

a. a boy drew laughs after school by mimicking her enthusiastic cheering during the previous day’s football game.
b. despite carefully following all her teacher’s detailed directions, she received a C on her art project.
c. she watched another child being mercilessly teased on the bus ride home and was unable to stop the bullies from picking on that classmate.
d. she lost her class’s election for a seat on the student council.

5. When your child’s teacher tells you how much she enjoys having your son in class, it is most likely because:

a. he’s creative, cheerful, and comes up with great new ideas.
b. he doesn’t quit but keeps working on a project until it’s done right.
c. he listens calmly and intently in class and does everything he can to please his teachers.
d. he catches on to material quickly and enjoys teaching other kids what he knows.

6. At age four, your child likes playing in the big sandbox at the park because:

a. it is the best place to find a new friend to play with or someone else to talk to.
b. he loves to use his forty-eight-piece sand-castle kit to build intricate buildings.
c. he can see you sitting on the nearby bench at all times and knows you’ll step in to help if an older child tries to steal his toys.
d. he has a captive audience and can tell everyone else what to build.

7. Your child’s excuse for not cleaning her room on Saturday morning is that:

a. she wants to tell you all about your neighbor’s new puppy first.
b. there’s nothing to clean. You walk in her room and find out she’s right—everything is already clean and neatly organized.
c. she’s unsure where to start.
d. she shouldn’t have to clean her room until you start cleaning the rest of the house.

8. When you ask your child whether he’d like to return to your family’s favorite vacation spot or take a sightseeing tour to New York City this summer, here is his reaction:

a. New York City! Maybe he’ll actually run into celebrities when your family walks down Broadway. In fact, maybe one of them will even invite him to a casting call!
b. He’d prefer to return to the same resort, where he knows the schedule and what to expect each day of the week.
c. He’d choose your family’s traditional spot; it holds warm memories for him.
d. He would pick New York City. It will be a new adventure, and he can already tell you the four sites your family must not miss.

9. Other people are always remarking on your child’s:

a. energy and enthusiasm.
b. attention to detail.
c. thoughtfulness.
d. leadership ability.

If you circled mostly a’s, your child is likely to be primarily interested in being with other people and having fun.

If you circled mostly b’s, your child is probably tends to focus most on getting things just right.

If you circled mostly c’s, your child most likely cares deeply about others’ feelings.

If you circled mostly d’s, your child probably most values adventure and being the leader.

Note: Many children have several characteristics from several of these types.

For loads of tips and ideas for encouraging a child’s positive personality traits and dealing with parent-child personality conflicts, check out the book Delight in Your Child’s Design.

Also, don’t forget to subscribe to Writing Tips and History Tidbits (subscriber form, top right) if you’re a fan of quirky, fun posts — including those history related — and enjoy creative nonfiction writing tips.

SPECIAL GIFT!

By the way, I’m offering something special to my readers to help celebrate Mother’s Day everyday in May. If you download the Kindle version of this book, I’d be pleased to mail you a signed first edition paperback (published by Tyndale/Focus on the Family) for free. (Free shipping to US addresses only.)

Use my Contact form here at CrossConnectMedia.com to send me your mailing address (or that of a mom friend or teacher) with details about your Kindle purchase. I can even gift wrap the paperback if you like.

Laurie Winslow Sargent

Posted on

1923: Ken in the Raj

by

While Gladys worked as a physical education teacher in San Diego, she received letters from India describing strange and wonderful tales. Ken, hoping for romance, had finally gotten her attention.

Envelope postmarked from India, Taj Mahal Hotel Bombay. Addressed to Miss Gladys Gose c/o Roosevelt High School, San Diego, California, U.S.A.
Taj Mahal Hotel Bombay, 1923

In 1915, Ken and Gladys had been classmates at Walla Walla High, in Washington State. He’d grown up among various lumber mills, educated in one-room school houses in the Northwest. (One day as a child, in a small sawdust town, he’d sat on his dad’s shoulders while witnessing a gunfight. )

Gladys, a year older than Ken, paid him little notice. After high school graduation (he at only age 16, as he was quite brilliant) their friendship grew at the University of Washington in Seattle.

But it wasn’t until 1923 that Gladys began to eagerly tear open his letters. Ken, with his degree in forestry and logging engineering, had been hired by the government of India.

Ken sent this letter to Gladys from India, ten days after his arrival:

J. Kenneth Pearce, Taj Mahal Hotel, Bombay, to

Miss Gladys Gose, ℅ Roosevelt Junior High School, San Diego, California, U.S.A.

7 Oct, 1923

Dear Glad:

I like India! At least from all I’ve seen of it so far. Everything is big and airy and cool — you don’t notice the heat nearly as much as in the states, because your whole life accords with tropical conditions.

Our hotel room is as large as an ordinary cottage in the states, with a ceiling twice as high. Electric fans all around instead of windows. Plenty of good cooling “likker” (no prohibition, here!) and the crowning convenience of all, a “bearer” (a Travancore Hindu) who acts as my valet, butler and servant extraordinaire.

He takes care of all my belongings, prepares my bath, puts on my shoes, lays out my clothes, takes care of my luggage while traveling, etc., etc., all for the princely sum of 40 Rupees or about $13.00 a month. He has been an army officer’s servant for many years – through the Mespot Campaign and in France.

In addition, the Government furnishes me a “tour clerk” or private secretary, who looks after my traveling arrangements, accounts, correspondence, etc.  He is also an interpreter in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Malayan and English — the prevalent language in South India. 

The government also supplies me three “duffadors” or orderlies who stand outside my door, run errands, convey messages, and do everything I, the “Sahib” desires. It keeps me busy sometimes finding work for all my staff to do!

Railway travel (First Class) in India affords a luxury unapproached by anything in the U.S. short of a private car. Each compartment is the entire width of the car, with two big leather lounges instead of seats (you carry your own bedding), a private showerbath and electric fans. A servant’s compartment adjoins so someone is always at my call.

Haven’t been in the jungle yet (only got to India Sept 29th), as it takes some time to get a kit together and must first make rounds and get acquainted with all the Gov’t officials, Ministers, Secretaries, etc., etc., with whom it is well to be on good terms.

I wrote to you from France, then either Belgium or Germany, and Port Said, I believe. Hope you got the letters. I sent them ℅ your sister at Seattle, but lost the street number, so just put Ravenna Blvd.

The Red Sea lived up to its reputation as being one of the hottest places in the world, to the extent that one of the native ship’s coal stokers (a Punjabi) jumped overboard. Our voyage across the Indian Ocean was calm and quite uneventful except a fancy dress (masquerade) ball at which I portrayed an American flapper — most successful — but to the horror of the missionaries. One of them–you won’t believe this—graduated from Whitman in ’19.

 I was very glad to get your letter of 4 Sept on my arrival in India. I hope your work continues interesting and all life likewise. And remember I’m always hoping to hear from you.

Cheerio! (as we Britishers say)

Ken

Note from Laurie, (nearly 100 years later): I can’t resist giggling at the image of my grandpa, as a young man, dressing up as a flapper during that costume party aboard the steamship!

This was the beginning of a ten-year adventure for Ken; seven for Gladys when she finally sailed off to marry him. Want to be sure you read future posts with their wild and funny stories? Click my Subscribe box (top right on this page) to get new posts via email, or subscribe via WordPress Reader.

Did you miss these previous posts?

1918: A Day She Beat the Boys — In 1918, Gladys was not to be deterred from winning the race against the frat boys, so she ditched her cumbersome ladies’ “swim dress”.

A Naughty Baby Elephant — When elephant Kitty gave birth to the first baby elephant born in Nedangayam lumber camp in S. Malabar India, Kitty’s Baby became a beloved pet to all — until she outgrew her welcome.

1929: Dearest Funny Baby — Kenneth — 91 years ago — wrote this note to his wife and new child when all were confined to home. Ken and Gladys, Americans, were expats in Ooty, India and their home called Braemar.

One Less Crocodile — This 1926 jungle story is from the diary of Gladys Gose Pearce, a Seattle woman who lived with spouse Ken in India during the British Raj era.