Divorce by consent, the basis of Napoleon's code, which�according to the powerful religious and conservative factions in France—aimed a blow at the very foundation of the institution of marriage, was no longer permitted under the new law of 1884-6.
In terms of adultery, too, conservative principles held sway. Male rights were predominant as they had been through the centuries. The adultery of a wife was punishable upon the information of a husband by three months to two years imprisonment; that of the husband only by a fine of from one hundred to three thousand francs (at the time, twenty to six hundred American dollars), and then only in case the husband had harbored his concubine under the conjugal roof. Further, the murder of a wife and her paramour taken in flagrante delicto by a husband was excusable; not so the murder of a husband or his concubine by a wife under similar circumstances.
11. Miles City had the first phone exchange in Montana in 1881. Both Butte and Helena had central telephone exchanges in 1882 and long distance service between the two cities was operating by 1884. Crank phones were used for outlying areas with a range of up to thirty-five miles if the lines were well grounded. Electric street lights first appeared in use in Helena in August of 1882 with businesses swift to take advantage of the new technology.
12. In 1879 George Eastman invented a machine that could manufacture dry plates of uniform quality and eight years later he produced a flexible, transparent base for film to replace the rigid glass plate. His idea was to sell the film in rolls loaded in a holder that could be used with existing cameras, but photographers of that period weren't ready to give up their glass plates. So Eastman turned to popularizing photography. In 1888 he introduced the Kodak, the world's first "snapshot" camera. It was loaded with enough film to record one hundred images. When all the images were exposed, the camera was returned to Rochester, N.Y. The film was processed and printed, the camera reloaded, and the prints were returned to the photographer.
13. So great was the influx of foreign capital on the northern range that by 1885, the territorial legislature of Montana passed restrictive legislation. The law denied the privilege of owning property in the territory to any corporation of foreigners, or to corporations of which more than twenty percent of the stock was owned by foreigners. After a report of the House Committee on Public Lands, submitted to Congress in 1886, purported to show that up to fifty million acres were already owned by foreigners, a federal law was passed prohibiting alien land ownership in the territories by individuals or corporations more than ten percent foreign controlled. (The railroad companies were thoughtfully ex-empted from the law so as to preserve their access to foreign money.)
But neither the state nor federal laws were more than an annoyance to those foreigners possessed of the resources to evade them. The citizenship requirement was commonly avoided by having employees who were citizens make the necessary filings and then take title from them. Or—since the federal law allowed a noncitizen to simply signify his intention of becoming a naturalized citizen, a buyer could swear to that intention and file in his own name.
The alien land law prohibition was more difficult to circumvent, but it was normally accomplished by having title taken in the name of a domestic entity (such as a corporation or trust), with the benefits flowing to the foreign beneficiary. Many foreign-owned cattle companies made their ranch manager president of the corporation to avoid the restriction. In a typical example of the circumvention prevalent at the time, one foreign-owned corporation simply reorganized, changing the corporation title from its foreign name to The Vermont Cattle Company. The same people and same money continued to operate the corporation.
Dear Reader,
I began my first story Blaze with no intention of writing any future books about Hazard Black's family. Without rational explanation, however, as I was finishing Blaze, Trey Braddock-Black appeared, very near death, in a stormy winter scene that figures in the early pages of Silver Flame, and I was impelled to tell his story. In a similar fashion, the Duc de Vec simply walked out of the anonymous crowd of men surrounding Empress in her drawing room in a late scene from Silver Flame. There was no logical reason; an anonymous crowd of suitors was perfectly acceptable to the scene, and with the exception of having numerous gypsy ancestors in my Finnish heritage, I don't know why he stepped forward or how he made his presence so powerfully known. Even then… I wasn't planning on writing a book about the Duc de Vec until I was adding the last few lines of my epilogue to Silver Flame. At that point, I saw Daisy in vivid, startling imagery, standing across from the Duc de Vec… their instant antipathy palpable.
In writing the Braddock-Black books, beyond the portrayals of love and relationships, of emotion and feeling, Ihope in some small way to indicate, through one family's evolution, the exceptional achievements of many others of Native American heritage. Like women's history, Native American history is essentially undocumented, but Native Americans, during the course of America's development, contributed doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, businessmen, sheriffs, stockmen, all manner of educated and successful pursuits to the advancement of not only their people but of this country. The Indian way of life has evoked sympathy and interest, fascinated scholars and laymen, inspired poets and roused reformers… and left a lasting imprint on our history. In the images of their spiritual, and at times, idyllic cultures, in their brave defense against overwhelming odds, in their concepts of man and nature as one, the Native American heritage remains so powerful and evocative that stories continue to be told…
A salute from the Braddock-Blacks to you all.
Best wishes,
P.S. I enjoy hearing from readers. If
