Intersection Column | Dancing Through History

by Ann H. Gabhart

I’m not a dancer. I’ve never whirled around a ballroom in an elaborate, ruffled and beribboned ballgown. About the most dancing I’ve ever done is the Hokey Pokey or the Bunny Hop at 4-H camp when I was a kid. But isn’t it wonderful that we have imaginations to take us to places we’ve never been or to imagine doing things we not only have never done but perhaps never even want to do?

Not that I wouldn’t want to dress up in one of those fabulous dresses and do some waltzing. That is, if I didn’t have to wear one of those corsets drawn so tightly around my middle I could hardly breathe. It’s no wonder fainting couches were necessary for the ladies in the 1800s. But back to those balls.

I write historical novels with Kentucky settings. I enjoy delving into the history of my state and coming across ideas that spark a story. I’ve discovered things about my state that I would have never learned in a history class at school.

Some years ago, when I wrote my Shaker novel, The Gifting, I did some research on the Graham Springs Hotel that was not all that many miles away, as the crow flies, from the Shaker Village here in Kentucky that I used as a model for my fictional Harmony Hill Shaker Village. In that book, I contrasted the Shakers’ simple life with the very social and fancy atmosphere at the hotel that was something like a spa where people went to “take the waters” in hopes of being healed of various health ailments. In my story, The Pursuit of Elena Bradford, I suggested it could also be a place where a lady might be cured of spinsterhood since the socially prominent spent weeks there in the summer being pampered and entertained.

One of those entertainments was ballroom dancing. The owner, Dr. Christopher Columbus Graham, believed exercise was as important as his spring water for good health. People should have embraced Dr. Graham’s ideas since he lived to be 101 years old!

I might not reach that advanced age, but I do agree with the doctor’s thoughts. It’s good to stay hydrated and physically active. That’s why every day I’m outside walking my dogs here on my farm.

Dancing isn’t the only exercise, but Dr. Graham thought it a good one. He also had many walking paths through beautiful gardens on the grounds of his two-hundred-acre resort. I could have enjoyed those walks, and so naturally I let my character, Elena, love the gardens in my story. I even let her be socially rebellious and leave off the corset now and again. She also hated wearing bonnets, but she did wear them or carry a parasol to keep freckles from popping out on her nose. In that day and time, a tan or freckles were a definite no-no for ladies. A pale complexion was a must. In fact, some women took arsenic to keep that look. Fashion can be hard to understand.

I had stored away what I had discovered about Graham Springs in my earlier research and always wanted to revisit the place with a story. That sent me back to the history of Graham Springs to search for a new idea.

I found the spark to set off my story excitement when I read again about the “dancing lady”:

A young lady showed up at Graham Springs Hotel one day, claiming to be someone she wasn’t. She was beautiful and loved to dance. At the ball that night, she danced every dance with different partners, as was expected at the time. What wasn’t expected was the young woman dying in the arms of her last partner that evening. Through the years since 1844, many have tried to solve the mystery of who this woman was and what caused her death. That mystery drew me in, and I wrote yet another story set in my favorite state, Kentucky. In the process, I got to imagine whirling around those ballrooms in a beautiful ballgown with Elena who manages to survive the dances.

About the Author

Ann H. Gabhart is the bestselling author of many novels, including The Song of Sourwood Mountain, In the Shadow of the River, When the Meadow Blooms, Along a Storied Trail, An Appalachian Summer, River to Redemption, These Healing Hills, and Angel Sister. She and her husband live on a farm a mile from where she was born in rural Kentucky. Ann enjoys discovering the everyday wonders of nature while hiking in her farm’s fields and woods with her grandchildren and her dogs, Frankie and Marley. Learn more at AnnHGabhart.com.

About the Book

At twenty-two, Elena Bradford has never met a man who made her consider marriage. But when her father dies and leaves the family deeply in debt, she becomes their only hope. As her mother schemes to find Elena a wealthy husband, Elena finds herself drawn to two men her mother would never consider.