Unfixed Timelines 3

By Dawn Vogel

A Wild West icon meets her match, a budding scientist tests a theory in a dust storm, fashion turns deadly, a daughter learns the reality of her mother's superstitions, two young girls stumble across a ghostly legend, the perils of dueling in an age of resurrection men, witches operating in secret, and an unusual artist with a penchant for drawing the aftermath of fires. In this third volume of fantastical history, you'll find seven stories and a poem in which history and fiction are blended. Each piece is accompanied by a brief essay detailing the history that the story or poem twists.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DefCon One Publishing
• Release date: Oct 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215101810

Dawn Vogel

Dawn Vogel has been published as a short fiction author and an editor of both fiction and non-fiction. Her academic background is in history, so it’s not surprising that much of her fiction is set in earlier times. By day, she edits reports for historians and archaeologists. In her alleged spare time, she runs a craft business, helps edit Mad Scientist Journal, and tries to find time for writing. She lives in Seattle with her awesome husband (and fellow author), Jeremy Zimmerman, and their herd of cats.

Book preview

Unfixed Timelines 3

Dawn Vogel

Cover art by Dawn Vogel

Copyright 2023 Dawn Vogel

Smashwords Edition

historythatneverwas.com

patreon.com/historythatneverwas

Green-Eyed Phantom and Charcoals from an Unidentified Chicago Artist are copyright 2020.

Death, in a Fashion is copyright 2021.

Memento Mori is copyright 2022.

All other pieces are copyright 2023.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Essay: Calamity Jane's Glorious Lies

Memento Mori

Essay: The Dust Bowl

The Experiment

Essay: Dying for Green

Death, in a Fashion

Essay: The Kharisiri

Eyes of Fire, Eyes of Smoke

Essay: The Ghost Known as Green Eyes

Green-Eyed Phantom

Essay: Body Snatching and Dissection Laws

Áftharto Sóma

Essay: Vardø Witch Trials

Desperate and Rebellious Hearts

Essay: Chicago Fires

Charcoals from an Unidentified Chicago Artist

About the Author

Essay: Calamity Jane's Glorious Lies

Most of what we think we know about Calamity Jane is probably wrong. Some basic things are true--her real name (Martha Jane Canary), the details of her arrival in Deadwood (in the summer of 1876), the date and place of her death (August 1, 1903, in Terry, South Dakota). But beyond those scant facts, popular depictions of Calamity Jane--including her own autobiography--are riddled with lies.[1]

One of the many stories about Calamity Jane involves another Old West legend, Wild Bill Hickok. Stories cast them as close friends or something more than friends, with Calamity Jane grief-stricken after Wild Bill's death, to the point that she included the following in her autobiography: on hearing of the killing made my way to the scene of the shooting and found that my friend had been killed by McCall. I at once started to look for the assassin and found him at Shurdy's butcher shop and grabbed a meat cleaver and made him throw up his hands, because through the excitement of hearing of Bill's death having left my weapons on the post of my bed.[2] While there is evidence to suggest that Calamity Jane was in Deadwood at the time of Hickok's death, the story she tells of pursuing his murderer does not seem to have a basis in fact.[3]

Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok were acquainted with one another and traveled to Deadwood together, but one of Hickok's other associates, Joseph White Eye Anderson, wrote in his memoir that the two of them first met shortly before traveling to Deadwood. He also wrote that Hickok surely did not have any use for her.[4] Others have noted that at most, the two were acquainted for about six weeks and only in Deadwood for twenty days before Hickok's murder. Calamity Jane did not stay with Hickok and his other companions in their camp, though she did visit when she was hungry, and also possibly to tap their keg of whiskey.[5]

However, stories like that of the embellished connection between Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok led other, later storytellers to elaborate even further on their relationship, going so far as to paint them as lovers, despite evidence to the contrary.[6] One woman took things even further, claiming that Calamity Jane and Hickok had been secretly married and had a child together, and that she was that child. Her name was Jean Hickok McCormick, and she offered proof of her story in the form of her purported mother's diary and letters. According to her, her parents had met in 1870, six years prior to Hickok's death, and she had been born in 1873 in Montana, though Hickok was not present for her birth.[7] However, there were discrepancies in McCormick's story: the content of the diary and the number of letters changed over time, providing a slippery, ever-winding trail to follow.... The diary also added experiences not in other sources.... Even more noteworthy are happenings the diary omits that were front and center in other sources, including some in Calamity's autobiography published in 1895-96.[8] In addition, no other samples of Calamity Jane's handwriting exist, leading most to believe that she was illiterate, either functionally or fully.[9]

Though McCormick's story persisted for decades, even garnering a mention on Calamity Jane's Wikipedia page that only gives the caveat that the letters' authenticity is not accepted by some,[10] historian James D. McLaird systematically proved the fraudulent nature of the diary, letters, and McCormick's claims in his 1995 article, Calamity Jane's Diary and Letters: Story of a Fraud.[11] Other authors note that McCormick's claims can be seen as the successor to the larger legend that rose up around Calamity Jane, perpetuated by her own "myth-making (much of which Canary orchestrated herself through newspaper interviews).[12] Or as author Mairead Small Staid puts it succinctly: When Calamity was young, she knew myths were being made; she found gaps in the stories told around her and inserted herself.... Today, her name evokes not the facts of her life, but the legend she made of it. When we think of Calamity, we think of her glorious lies."[13]

Notes:

[1] Mairead Small Staid, The Calamity Prayer, The Georgia Review (Summer 2017), https://thegeorgiareview.com/posts/the-calamity-prayer/.

[2] Martha Jane Cannary Burke, The Autobiography of Calamity Jane: The story of Martha Jane Cannary Burke, in her own words, 1896, https://readerslibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/The-Autobiography-of-Calamity-Jane.pdf. Note that Calamity Jane was likely illiterate and that her autobiography was likely dictated to someone for publication; the misspelling of her given name here is as it appeared in conjunction with her autobiography. See Richard W. Etulian, The Life and Legends of Calamity Jane (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014), 159–60.

[3] Etulian, The Life and Legends of Calamity Jane, 60.

[4] Quoted in Etulian, The Life and Legends of Calamity Jane, 55.

[5] Margot Mifflin, The real Calamity Jane, Salon, December 6, 2005, https://www.salon.com/2005/12/06/mclaird; Etulian, The Life and Legends of Calamity Jane,