While I was doing the research of my current series, the Kansas MacPherson stories, I came across a magazine from the 1850s. It was titled The Illustrated Annual Register of Rural Affairs and Cultivator Almanac. The more I looked at the magazine, the more I wanted to add things to the MacPherson farm in Kansas. The only problem was all those wonderful things would cost a lot of money. If I wanted to create this prosperous farm, I had to come up with a good way for Angus and Mary’s son, Bearnard, to have been able to afford it. So, I worked backward to discover how Bearnard could have come up with the money. I knew some years before the Kansas series began, Angus, Mary, and many of their children and grandchildren had settled in Pennsylvania and farmed there before moving to Kansas. From book 1 of the Kansas series, Angus’ book, I knew there was a problem with the boys’ mother, Kirstie. As I spent time with her, she revealed more about herself–and why her father would pay such a large dowry for Bearnard to marry her when they lived in Pennsylvania. When his father-in-law died, Bearnard inherited his wife’s portion of her father’s estate. Now I know how he was able to purchase all he had. But how had Kirstie react to what her father had done? The answer is all part of the Kansas MacPherson stories that will come out later this year.
Bearnard MacPherson had a strangely large amount of money…
