GILDED!

The Protagonist 

It’s been a while since my last blog. A lot of progress has been made over the past few months toward the completion of my manuscript, “Gilded!”. There is still work to do; thoroughly researching the nearly eighty-six-year lifespan of John Hiram Beckley has been more challenging than initially thought. However, I’m sufficiently near the finish that I feel it’s time to begin introducing the cast of characters through pictures and snippets of their cameo roles within the main story. 

John Hiram Beckley was born in 1857 and was Susannah Reigle Beckley’s first son; she had three daughters before him. The novelization of John Hiram’s life serves as a sequel to my first book, “Oh! Susannah”, and readers will discover ties in “Gilded!” to my earlier historical fiction work, and yet, the forthcoming book stands on its own without the need for introduction. 

This picture shows John Hiram (on the left) as a fifty-five-year-old man who had ventured away from his farming community located in Palermo, Carroll County, Ohio, for the first time in his life. He rode a train to visit his youngest brother, Edward, in Dennison, Ohio, which is about a fifteen-to-twenty-mile trip.  

Edward was a well-known person in Dennison as he labored in the town’s fire department, and he used his connections to impress his older brother. John Hiram received the “royal tour”, and one of the highlights was visiting the local theatre, where he watched a moving picture show for the first time. However, it was the ride on the city’s streetcar, pictured here, that left John Hiram awestruck. John Hiram told the local news reporter, “It was nothing like I expected. I expected to see the cars elevated. I had no idea they would be running along the ground.” 

And yet, this was not the only surprise in store for John Hiram. The streetcar that January morning in 1913 had a special passenger; Albert Kail (the man in the picture on the right). Mr. Kail was an employee of the streetcar company as a conductor, and he was being reassigned back to his old route. Kail was onboard that morning familiarizing himself when he bumped into John Hiram and Edward Beckley. Introductions were made as a matter of courtesy. Then, John Hiram enquired of Albert Kail where his family was from, for he looked familiar to him. Soon the two men, John Hiram and Albert Kail, were reminiscing of their old schoolboy days in Arabia, Carroll County, from fifty years past!  

Other than this trip to Dennison, Ohio, John Hiram Beckley spent his entire life within the ten-mile Carroll County, Ohio farm belt that stretched from west (Palermo) to east (Harlem Springs). His story is mainly based within the Palermo/Algonquin farming community but also touches upon national and international events that occurred between 1870 to 1943. 

 The middle years of Beckley’s life, commonly referred to as “The Gilded Era”, was known for this phrase accredited to author Mark Twain, from one of his early manuscripts. Twain’s objective was to sarcastically question much of the change being forced upon people during this time. “Gilded” means covered in a thin layer of gold and Twain warned the public that the chief end of men, businessmen especially, was to get rich; not necessarily improve the public’s lives. Thus, Twain’s famous quote, “What is the chief end of man? - to get rich. In what way? Dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must.”  

In my story, “Gilded!”, Twain’s skepticism is lived out in John Hiram’s everyday life, and his perspective on each new and improved invention that was introduced to Americans during this time. John Hiram Beckley never used mechanized farm equipment, nor did he own or drive an automobile, despite hundreds of cars during the 1920’s being driven locally. John Hiram was eighty years old before experiencing the marvel of electricity within his farmhouse; he had no indoor plumbing. John Hiram’s efforts to live a simple life weren’t fool proof. Despite never using a bank nor investing in the stock market, his one hundred forty-three acres of Carroll County, Ohio farmland wasn’t isolated enough to totally insulate him from outside events. 

I look forward to introducing to you in the coming months, through pictures, the cast of characters who interacted with John Hiram Beckley during his lifetime.