InsaneJournal

NAME: Elijah Meriweather Donovan (goes by Eli)

DOB/AGE: May 6, 1834 -- age 33

SEXUAL PREFERENCE: heterosexual

ETHNIC BACKGROUND: Irish; parents immigrated to America just after they were married, so Eli is American born.

OCCUPATION: stablemaster and horse trader; apprenticed with father for ten years starting at age fifteen, then left home to strike out on his own. New Shelby will be his first time running his own stables.

FAMILY:
Mother; Teresa Donovan
Father; Patrick Donovan
Sister; Anne Donovan Murphy (married w/ two daughters, below)
Sister; Jennifer Donovan (wild_at_heart)
Nieces; Annabelle Murphy (age 7), Abigail Murphy (age 5)

CURRENT RESIDENCE: New Shelby, in a little house just separate from his stables.

APPEARANCE:
Eli has dark brown hair and blue-grey eyes, with slight dimples when he smiles. He's a bit short at 5'7", but broad shouldered and sturdily built. Given his occupation, he has numerous small cuts and bruises at any given time, but only one major scar -- a jagged scar that runs from his right hip down three inches to his right thigh, from a glancing blow from a horse's kick when he was seventeen.

PERSONALITY:
Eli is laid back and difficult to fluster -- he's nearly unflappable, which is why he's settled so quickly in New Shelby. He's easy to talk to, and possesses a dry sense of humor that sets most people immediately at ease, and serves him well in his interactions with potential customers. Eli is organized and efficient, and highly capable in dealing with half a dozen different things at once. He's got a creative streak that he doesn't often showcase -- he's generally a practical man, but given the time and opportunity, he's clever with a pencil and sketchpad. It takes an act of God to get him to lose his temper, but when he does, it's glacial -- cold, calculating, and absolutely ruthless. He is polite and respectful, particularly to women, and expects the same from the men around him. A widower, Eli is unconsciously hesitant to get involved in a serious relationship -- he's afraid of losing someone the way he lost his first wife.

SPECIAL SKILLS/WEAPONS:
Aside from his obvious skill with horses, Eli has a bit of an artistic bent; he's very good at sketching, and he's tried his hand at painting once or twice, although it's a hobby he really doesn't have either the time or money to indulge. He's a fairly good dancer when he can be coaxed into it, and although his father was an accomplished musician, Eli didn't really inherit that particular skill, and only knows enough to get himself in trouble with a handful of instruments. He's a passable shot with a gun, and his strength is nothing to scoff at, even if he's not a skilled fighter.

WEAKNESSES:
Eli is used to being around women -- between his sisters and nieces and his mother's sewing circle growing up -- but he's generally fairly oblivious when their attentions are focused on him. Despite the fact that he gets along with them easily enough, he wouldn't realize he's being flirted with unless a woman smacked him upside the head with a red-hot poker. He's stubborn and willful when he gets it in his head that he's right about something, and has to be convinced at length to change his mind about anything. Despite his quickness and strength, he's still on the short side, and not likely to do more than hold his own in a fight, especially if his opponent is skilled.

HISTORY:
Teresa and Patrick Donovan were Irish immigrants who came to America not long after they married, and settled in Philadelphia for better opportunities for work. Patrick raised horses, and was reasonably talented at it, and Teresa found work as a seamstress. Elijah Donovan was born May 6, 1833, their second of three children and only son. He ran wild during his childhood, constantly getting into scrapes and wriggling his way out again. He especially enjoyed tormenting his two sisters, although as they got older he tended to team up with the more mischievous Jenny against Annie, more often than not.

Eli mellowed as he entered adolescence, and by the time he was fifteen, his father decided he was old enough to learn a trade. He apprenticed with his father, and over the course of the next decade, learned everything he could about raising and caring for horses, from breeding to foaling to trading effectively. He's fully qualified as a stablemaster, but Eli decided at a young age that he wanted to buy and sell horses as well as stable them. He left home at age twenty-five to strike out on his own, and worked steadily as he began to save enough to start his own stables.

Two years after leaving home, Eli met and married a young woman named Katherine Morris -- a feisty, outspoken young woman who didn't allow Eli to remain oblivious to her interest in him. The two of them settled in Carson City, Nevada, and within the first year of marriage, Katherine discovered she was pregnant. Unfortunately, she lost the child midway through the pregnancy, and never fully recovered, physically or emotionally. A year later, Katherine died of influenza, already weakened from her miscarriage. Eli was left a widower, and decided to pick up and move on to give himself a new start. He buried his young wife in Carson City, and then struck out on his own again, older and more determined than ever.

After a few more years working, Eli finally had enough saved to start up his own operation. He'd been steadily working his way toward west, and heard rumors about New Shelby, which sounded ideal for his purposes. He relocated again, and set up the Donovan stables with access near the center of town, providing food and shelter for local horses, as well as buying and selling horses to locals and travelers alike.



MUN: Stacey
PB: Kavan Smith

See Eli's in-game
TIMELINE

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Random facts about Eli:

• He's got a high school education, but nothing further. He's literate, at least, and good enough with figures to keep his own books, but he's not really intellectual. Most of his intelligence -- and he's no dummy -- is focused on his horses and his business, with little focus left over for anything else.

• His stables are built to house up to thirty horses, but he usually has less than two dozen on hand at any given time. He has three mares (bay Trixie, sorrel Bella, and chestnut Penny) and a stallion (chestnut Odysseus) for breeding purposes, and the rest are geldings that he turns over regularly. He'd like to expand and take on another stallion for stud, but unless New Shelby has some sort of population boom, he can't really justify the expense.

• He has two nieces: Annabelle and Abigail, aged seven and five respectfully, and the daughters of his older sister Anne. He doesn't get to see them very often, but he writes regularly, and Abby has started to write back, to the best of her ability.

• He's not completely oblivious to female attention. He knows when he's being scrutinized, he just doesn't consider himself all that interesting or attractive -- so he dismisses it by assuming it must be for some other reason. It is possible to get through to him, but it would take a very persistent, stubborn woman -- much like his first wife, Katherine.

• His mother can be held responsible for Eli's attitudes toward woman. Teresa Donovan is extremely hard working, an excellent mother, and has an Irish temper to boot, so he's used to strong, feisty women, and he doesn't see anything unusual with a woman who's capable of supporting herself. Likewise, he tries very hard not to judge what a woman alone might have to do to support herself, as with the girls at Reed's House.

• He'd never even consider going to Reed's House on personal business. While he doesn't begrudge the women their preferred means of supporting themselves, and can see why some men might want the release, he personally doesn't believe in being intimate with a woman without some kind of emotional connection. He's just not hardwired that way, and he's learned to ignore the frustration.

• He's Catholic, but not extremely devout. God may have rested on the Sabbath, but horses still need to be fed.

• Much like Floyd, one of his best employees, Eli has a habit of talking to his horses as if they're people; he's just a bit more subtle about it than she is. It's not unusual to see him muttering to a horse under his breath about whatever pops into his head. It's one of the reasons he and Floyd hit it off so quickly -- they understand each other, and she's become something of a third sister to him.

More to come...