by Sandra Merville Hart

The heroine in my recent release, A Not So Peaceful Journey, Book 3 in my “Second Chances” series is a telegrapher in Hamilton, Ohio. I researched to find out about the daily activities required by the job in 1884.

Female telegraph operators had been hired for the job as early as the 1840s. In 1846, Sarah Bagley performed that job in Lowell, Massachusetts. Three years later, Phoebe Wood accepted the position in Albion, Michigan.

During the Civil War, the need for telegraphers heightened when the men enlisted in the military for both sides, putting more women in the industry. Training for female telegraphers became more available when Western Union opened a school for them in 1869. A year later, 4% of the telegraphers were female and that number continued to rise.

One fun thing I learned in my research was that the increased number of women in the profession sparked public interest. This led to novels and stories being written about them.

A new literary genre, telegraphic romance, was born. In these stories, young women found romance with operators they “met” in the course of their job.

Desiring to learn more about the day-to-day job of the telegraphers, I read Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes by Ella Cheever Thayer. It was published in 1880 and it provided all those daily details—and more—that I needed for my story.

In the novel, Feisty Nattie Rogers is a telegraph operator. She meets the mysterious “C”, a telegraph operation in another station on her wire. He refuses to tell her his full name and they develop a friendship over the wire that soon has her dreaming of love.

Nattie tells her fellow boarders all about “C” and they can’t wait for the two of them to meet. But the course of true love meets some hurdles.

This book is written in the omniscient viewpoint. The reader knows what everyone is thinking all the time. Written in 1880, this story has the long conversations prevalent in writings of that day. I confess that I skimmed over some of those, but still enjoyed the story.

What was important to me wat that the author gives a thorough overview of a telegrapher’s job in the story.

What fun that this occupation inspired a new genre in the late 1800s!

Sources

Thayer, Ella Cheever. Wired Love, 1880.

“Women in telegraphy,” Wikipedia, 2022/10/19, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_telegraphy.