Growing up in Monmouth County in New Jersey, where her mother was from, Diane Rogers was immersed in the history of the American Revolution. And when it came to learning about the Civil War, she was always pro-Union, she said, even though her father was from Tennessee.
“I always thought that if I had been born during the Civil War, one side of my family would have been Union, one side Confederate,” she said.
After she moved to Missouri in 1989, she wrote a book whose main character makes a trip by horseback across Tennessee, and learned that her father’s family probably would not have sided with the Confederacy, as there were pockets in the state where the residents remained loyal to the Union.
That, and moving to Missouri, changed everything she thought she knew about the Civil War, she said, including its causes and the people who fought it. Correcting ignorance about what people know about the Civil War is what motivates her to write historic fiction based on hard fact.
“There were good and bad on both sides,” she said. “I always try to show someone who helps someone on the other side.”
Diane will be speaking at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Sept. 23 at Old Settler’s Day, a free event at the Henry County Museum Homestead. Her topic is “Women’s Roles in the Expansion of the West,” but Civil War buffs will also be interested, as most of Diane’s books are set during the Civil War in western Missouri.
She has not run out of plots.
“I love Missouri,” she said. “The history is amazing.”
Her biggest seller is “Elizabeth’s War,” about a Missouri widow and her children who left home in September of 1863 and traveled to Osceola after General Ewing issued General Orders Number 11. The orders, which followed Quantrill’s Raid on Lawrence, Kansas, decreed that families in rural areas of four border counties of Missouri had to move their households to within one mile of four forts in the area, or leave those counties completely. The orders were supposedly for protection against bushwhackers, but actually prevented people from supporting them.
The orders caused a mass exodus out of those counties during a heat wave and drought, Diane learned, which dried up the creeks and churned the roads to dust.
The book also relates what happened in Dayton, Mo., which, except for one house, was burned to the ground. The reason: federal troopers heard Confederate recruiters were working in Dayton, so rode 25 miles on New Year’s Eve to the town. Failing to catch the recruiters, they ordered the women in town to cook them breakfast, ate every chicken in town, and ordered everyone out of their houses, including an invalid who was carried out, then torched the houses.
Diane’s “Perils on the Missouri” is about the Steamboat Arabia, and “Crossfire in the Streets” covers the 1862 battle Lone Jack. The books are carefully researched and historically accurate, but not politically correct.
“People don’t talk about it,” she said of that period of history. “I’m trying to talk about it. They fought for their county, or their state, not to perpetuate slavery.
“Most who fought for the Confederacy didn’t even own slaves.”
She also wrote a book about the 400 women and children who worked at the Roswell, Georgia, mill that made “Roswell Grey” fabric for Confederate uniforms, and were arrested and taken to a Confederate prisoner of war camp in Louisiana.
“It’s not for the squeamish,” she said of the book.
She recommends “Elizabeth’s War” for middle and high school students, along with “Treachery at Midnight,” about the Brown family, owners of the Brown House in Harrisonville. Researching what went on in border counties in Missouri, she realized that Missouri was one of the most difficult places to live during the Civil War and afterwards. The Drake Constitution banned Confederate veterans from voting, running for public office, preaching or teaching, she said, and people whose homes and crops were burned after they were evicted from their property still owed four years of back taxes.
“Enlightening people about that history is big part of what I do,” she said. “My books are based heavily on fact, but are not politically correct. You have been warned.”
Diane’s appearance will also be inspiring to people who have always wanted to write a book. She started her first effort in fifth grade, she said, a mystery with an improbable plot in the youth-sleuth genre, like Nancy Drew books she read. But it was reading formulaic novels as an adult that prompted to start “plunking around on the typewriter” in 1989.
The rewards: readers telling her that they love her books, even the ones that are hard to read, and fans asking her for the next installment of her historic fiction.
The “White Oak” series started as a single book and grew to a trilogy, then to a 10-book series, she said, when an editor told her she had finished the book, but hadn’t finished with the story. Readers she met at events every year also kept asking for more. Her first book, “Tomorrow’s Promise,” starts as a tale of survival on the Oregon Trail and ends when the Civil War starts. Diane has also written a prequel to the series.
Her book, “Maggie,” is about a suffragette/reporter who works for the Sun newspaper in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and reports on a fire that destroyed much of the town of Deadwood in 1879.
Missouri history buffs will want to read her book set in Independence, Mo. It covers the history of the town — its opening, the flood, the expulsion of the Mormons and the two cholera epidemics, Diane said. For her work, she was presented a “Women in American History” award from the Daughters of the American Revolution chapter in Independence, Mo.
Diane, who writes under the name D.L. Rogers, will have copies of her books for sale at Old Settler’s Day, and sign them for readers.
The bottom line: Diane is unapologetic about writing Missouri history as she uncovers it through her research.
“History is being lost, white-washed and destroyed,” she said. “That’s not what I write.”
Diane lives on a ranch in Archie, south of Kansas City. For more information, go to dlrogersbooks.com.
Old Settler’s Day is a fun, free event sponsored by the Henry County Historical Society, featuring live music at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., plus games and demonstrations of frontier crafts from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., the Cattlemen’s Association will be grilling burgers and brats to raise money for the restoration of the ante-bellum Dorman House. Lunch, a hamburger or brat, with sides and drink, is $15. The Homestead is located across from the Henry County Museum, 203 W. Franklin, Clinton, Mo. 64735.
