Bringing Your Setting to Life with the Research Arsenal, by Steven Dacus

Research Arsenal provides access to thousands of primary documents including photographs, letters, diaries, ordnance returns, quartermaster specifications and more.

When writing historical fiction, it’s the little details that bring your world to life, that take it from a flat background to a vivid landscape that engages your readers and lets your plot and characters shine through. Unfortunately, doing historical research for a setting is often difficult and you can find yourself spending hours trying to nail down a little detail without knowing where to search.

As a historical database focusing on the American Civil War and mid-19th century life more generally, the Research Arsenal has a wealth of information for writers creating works in this era. Our focus is on primary documents, so you can learn about the era from the people who lived it as well as browse through thousands of photographs that are keyword-tagged to help you know what you’re looking at.

Building a Setting through Letters

If you’re planning to write a story based in a specific state or region of the United States, you can begin by searching for letters from that state or written by soldiers from that state. Letters written by civilians often have a great deal of information about community life as well as concerns about running farms and other businesses during that time.

Letters are also a great source for learning about customs and traditions that fell away in later generations. For example, many letters contain good natured grumbling from older siblings that they were forced to dance in a pig trough at a younger sibling’s wedding. This is an old Pennsylvania Dutch tradition that is seldom heard of today, but was very common at the time.

You can also keyword search to find letters addressing specific topics. As surprising as it sounds, a frequent topic in letters is the price of various goods like butter, cheese, apples and various types of clothing. This can save you hours of tedious research if you want to make sure any spending in your stories matches prices of the time.

Many letters also have vivid descriptions of camp life, including what soldiers ate, how they set up their tents, the things they carried with them, the various types of plants and trees they encountered on the march, and the things they did throughout their day. When they wrote, they wanted to paint a clear picture of their lives for their loved ones at home, and for modern readers those letters serve as an invaluable glimpse into the life of a soldier.

Building a Setting through Images and Other Documents

In addition to the letters the Research Arsenal has at your disposal, we have thousands of period photographs available as well. These range from portraits of soldiers, to the aftermath of battles, to soldiers on guard duty in towns, and much, much more. Browsing through photographs is a sure way to get a feeling for the times and help paint a vivid scene in your mind.

Photographs have the same comprehensive metadata tagging as letters, so it’s easy to search for specific items like “coffee pots” and bring up multiple images that contain the exact item you’re looking for. Our collection also includes an extensive amount of civilian images and portraits, which makes it possible for you to get a detailed look at clothing from the time.

Along with images, the Research Arsenal also has the complete quartermaster’s and ordnance specifications for the military. These specifications contain exact details on how every item used by the military should be made, the exact dimensions it should have, and other details that give you a thorough description of each item.

These specifications are so detailed that they will even tell you where specific types of ammunition should be placed in an ammunition chest, and what items should be kept in each drawer of a medicine cabinet. There are also specifications for surprising formulations for everyday items. For example, the Quartermaster’s Manual contains detailed instructions for making a type of glue out of cheese.

Enhancing Dialog through the Research Arsenal

A character’s voice is often the most distinctive part of who they are. When it works, we know who is speaking even without a dialog tag telling us who said the words. By drawing on real phrases and expressions from the mid-19th century, you can be sure your characters will have an authentic feel and more engaging dialog.

The best way to understand how mid-19th century Americans spoke is through reading letters. At the Research Arsenal, we have thousands of letters written from across the nation by both men and women. Not only do these letters reveal their honest thoughts and feelings about life in the 1850s and 1860s, but they are also an invaluable resource in learning the frequent phrases and slang of the day. It is hard to read more than three or four letters without finding the writer lamenting things that have been “played out” or noticing how much more often a writer will say “on account of” rather than “because.”

Reading letters also gives you a sense of the different belief systems people held and how those guided them. Some letters will have very strong religious language, while other writers will never make a single mention of God, focusing instead on their day-to-day realities. The more letters you read, the better sense you’ll have of what drove people and what their hopes and fears were.

Conclusion

The Research Arsenal is the best way for you to quickly and easily take a deep dive into the life and times of mid-19th century Americans. Through our collection of primary documents, you can learn about the details of everyday life, develop a vivid picture of the setting in which they lived, and get a feel for how people of the time thought and spoke. 

Keyword searching through the documents makes it easy to answer the million small questions that come up when building a setting, saving you countless hours of trawling through academic papers and history books trying to find an answer. Finally, reading letters and documents from the Research Arsenal may even inspire your next story. Perhaps you’ll stumble upon a heartfelt love letter or be inspired by a tale of courage and daring. Whatever type of stories you write, the Research Arsenal can help answer all of your tricky questions about crafting a setting and help you create a full, believable setting worthy of your plot and characters.

Steven Dacus

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About the Author

Steven Dacus grew up in Casper Wyoming and even as a child, had a deep interest and desire for American History. When the movie "Dances With Wolves" came out in 1990, it solidified his passion for the American Civil War. After graduating from Oklahoma State University with a BS in Fire Protection Engineering, Steve fought fire as a wildland firefighter with a variety of federal and state agencies and settled back in Casper, Wyoming when he accepted a position as a firefighter/EMT with the Casper Fire Department. After moving back to his hometown, he started volunteering at Fort Caspar Museum as a docent and helped plan and execute the 150th Anniversary of the major conflict at the fort in 2015. He started becoming a "hobby-historian" while researching western cavalry and quickly became obsessed with primary records and researching at local, state, and federal archives. After becoming frustrated with having hundreds of folders on his computer in an effort to organize all of the different primary records,  dozens of spreadsheets, and countless notes, he decided to make his own research database that would make it easier than ever to search and access all the primary records he had scanned. That initial effort quickly escalted into the public database known as the Research Arsenal. Steve's mission with the database is to tell "the rest of the story" of the soldiers who fought and died in the American Civil War, as well as their wives, mothers, and loved ones left at home. Steve's objective is to accent the amazing work that Ancestry.com and Fold3.com have done and help expand on the story of that time period of American History.  Find out more at www.researcharsenal.com on Facebook and YouTube