Pique of the Week – Page 20 – Local History Collections

2011-04-14

“I care not a whit for the laugh or the sneer…”

April is National Poetry Month, so here is a poem by Kingston’s own romantic versifier, Benjamin “Cousin Benja” Mitchell. Born in 1828, Benja lived with his parents and sister in picturesque Thatchwood Cottage on what is now Brookdale Street near the Duxbury line. He spent much of his life roaming the woods and fields, communing with Nature and God, then returning home to inscribe his bursting spirit on the page. He wrote poems, short essays and obituaries in verse, many of which were published in literary journals.

After suffering from consumption for several years, Cousin Benja died on April 23, 1865. His beloved sister Julia gathered his papers and had his works published in 1866.

"Verily your friend, Benja R. Mitchell, Kingston, 1864"

Natural and Happy

I am Nature’s own child — I am wild and romantic,
I love the green fields and the shady old wood ;
And the songs of the streamlets — oh, they drive me most frantic,
As they dance o’er the pebbles in frolicsome mood !

There’s the old rustic bridge that was built by our fathers,
And the wall by the cow-path, so mossy and old,
Is more dear to my heart than a bag full of dollars ;
Than the rustling of silks, or the shining of gold ;

And oft when my hopes in the future do falter,
And visions of darkness have shrouded the mind ;
With a mossy old stump in the woods for an altar,
Have I prayed that my heart be kept gentle and kind.

Let those who delight heaps of gold to be piling,
Pile on, if they choose, till it reaches the blue ;
But be sure that when death sends his arrows a flying,
That a balance of credit has been given to you !

I know it is thought when the beard has grown stronger,
And a row of dark whiskers has mantled the face,
That we should be childlike and gentle no longer,
And to “become like a child” is almost a disgrace !

Just let a man live in accordance with Nature,
Appear as God made him, and use common sense,
He would soon take a trip out to Taunton or Worcester,
Where his board would be paid as a public expense !

I know that my friends are oft shocked at my capers,
And wish I would learn to behave like a man ;
Wear fashionable airs in preference to Nature’s —
And I’d like much to please them, but ’tis more than I can.

They may laugh at my notions, and say that I’m odd,
But I care not a whit for the laugh or the sneer ;
If I’m true to my nature, and true to my God,
‘Twill be well with me always, with nothing to fear.

2011-04-01

New exhibit: Taxes

Tax bill for Judah Washburn's two-person, one-horse chaise with a top, 1799

New (and very timely) exhibit on taxes in the Library.

2011-03-31

View looking north, no date

View of Kingston looking north from Horatio Adams' House, no date

From Abram’s Hill, you can see a quite a way. This view shows the back of the Frederic C. Adams Library at lower left and the houses along Summer Street down through Kingston center. The Reed Community Building was not yet standing (it would be at lower right), so the photograph dates between 1898 when the Library was built and 1926 when the Reed Building went up.

2011-03-24

Heartbroken

Looking for tax-related documents for an upcoming exhibit today, I found death instead (or perhaps it found me?), in a small, but heart-breaking moment from the past.

Note to Horatio from Father and Mother, October 1870 (date supplied)

On October 29, 1870, Bradford Adams died of typhoid fever aged 15 years, 11 months and 3 days. Father and Mother are George T. and Lydia T. Adams; Horatio is our old friend the capitalist.

Wendell Adams, Rufus Toby, Winslow Faunce, Bradford Adams, Charles Everson, no date — Wendell Adams, Rufus Toby, Winslow Faunce, Bradford Adams and Charles Everson, no date

In this group portrait, Bradford sits at right and his older brother Wendell — more formally George Wendell — stands at center. Sadly, Wendell had died just weeks before Bradford of the same disease.

A third Kingston teenager, 17 year old Clara Winsor, had also died of typhoid fever that fall, but beyond these deaths, Kingston was spared an epidemic. Through the 1860s and 1870s, outbreaks of typhoid fever struck around the world, particularly in densely populated and rapidly industrializing areas. By 1884, the bacteria that caused the disease was identified and over the next two decades, effective vaccines were developed.

Receipt for monument and curbing, May 29, 1871

But in the spring of 1871, George T. Adams added a new stone to the family plot in Evergreen Cemetery, most likely for his two boys.

Sources: MC-21 Hathaway Collection; MC-23 Helen Adams Collection; Town Clerk’s Report, 1870; Wikipedia article on typhoid.

2011-03-17

After fire, Prospect Hill

]Prospect Hill lies on the north side of Smelt Brook in south-east Kingston. And Major Bradford’s Town tells us that the devastating fire occurred in July 1908. Beyond that, there’s not much information on the hill, the fire or this haunting image. More later, if more can be found.

2011-03-12

“IT WILL…ROLL ITS GREAT EYEBALLS!”

Last week’s look at the capitalist Horatio Adams leads to this week’s pique. Among the many stockbroker’s receipts, enticements to buy land in Nebraska, an 8% Gold Bond for the Death Valley – Arcalvado Consolidated Mine Company, and stock in the Association Salt Company is a beautiful little booklet.

Yes, in January 1893, a friend of Horatio’s sent him a golden opportunity, a chance to invest in a Colossal Elephant to be built at the Chicago World’s Fair. The patent holder J.V. Lafferty had already built two others: Lucy the Margate Elephant near Atlantic City, NJ, and the Elephantine Colossus in Coney Island. He and his partners hoped to raise enough money to build an even grander “work of art and mechanical genius.”

While Lucy stood a mere 44 feet tall and the Colossus stretched to 100, the proposed Chicago model would take on “a more elaborate scale…200 feet to the top of ‘Howdah’ or observatory, from which a grand view can be had for miles.”

Better yet, “beyond the increase in size over any yet attempted, and also of great importance and attractiveness, is the fact that when this Elephant is finished, IT WILL RAISE ITS TRUNK PERPENDICULARLY, ROLL ITS GREAT EYEBALLS, FLAP ITS EARS AND WAG ITS TAIL as naturally as a live elephant.” A “monstrous Electric Calliope Organ in his throat” would add sound.

After some discussion of the profit potential in soda fountains and “segar” stands, the prospectus notes that “the Elephant and plant will be insured against fire,” a good plan as the Coney Island Colossus would be destroyed by fire just a few years later.

As tempting an opportunity as the eye-rolling, ear-flapping Colossal Elephant represented, Horatio was not swayed. And it seems he was not alone in turning down the investment: searching through books and photographs and postcards related to the Fair yields not a single clue that the Colossal Elephant was ever built.

2011-03-07

Kingston Capitalist

On the 1900 Federal Census, as on others before, each head of household was asked to give his (or more rarely, her) occupation. Along Summer Street, these included dry goods merchant, station agent for the railroad, boarding house keeper, stone cutter and teacher, until the census taker came to Horatio Adams, who declared “Capitalist.”

Here is the Capitalist at his desk.

And the tools the capitalist used to manage his labors? The book atop the glass case reads “Neapolitan Ice Cream” probably a business directory of some sort, and inside the case, “A Fragment of Plymouth Rock” with a certificate attesting to its authenticity. There’s a telephone and an electric lamp, a fountain pen and a blotter. There are law books piled and documents filed in pigeon holes. There’s also a picture on Horatio’s desk of someone sitting at a desk which looks at lot like this one.

Horatio Adams in his Boston office, no date

The second photo seems earlier: there’s no phone or electric lamp, though the desk looks the same.

Horatio Adams, according to his obituary, worked in the Boston Office of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, then moved to New York with the company for a year. He returned to Boston to work for Frank Hay, “an expert accountant,” and was employed by the firm of John A. Burnham and Sons for many years.

His connection with the Old Colony Railroad and its various 19th century incarnations began early. He was born on the day the first train passed through Kingston, November 8, 1845 and except for his year in New York, took the train to Boston every day until his death on April 7, 1911. His obituary noted that he was the oldest commuter in and out of Boston.

Horatio is also closely connected to the Kingston Library. His portrait hangs in the Local History Room and photos of him appear in numerous collections. He and his mother Lydia (Mrs. George T.) Adams donated land upon which the Town built KPL’s predecessor, the Frederic C. Adams Library, funded by the will of Horatio’s uncle. Horatio served as a Trustee for Adams Library for some time.

Returning to Horatio’s capitalist ways, stock certificates and investment prospectuses in LHR collections show his interest in all kinds of ventures, including the development of Fort Payne, Alabama and office buildings in the Mid-west. Perhaps the most interesting is the booklet prospectus for the Colossal Elephant. Stay tuned for that.

Sources: Two obituaries, dated April 7 and April 15, 1911, from an unknown newspaper in the Obituary Notebook in the LHR

2011-02-26

Lives Alone – The Story of Kingston’s Famous Hermit

Thinking of those who are under-represented in archival collections, of the undocumented figures of history, hermits have to be in the top ten, right? That just doesn’t seem right, so…

Dan Fuller the Hermit in front of his hut, 1893

here’s the story of Kingston’s famous hermit, drawn from a cabinet card, a few entries in town records, a newspaper article, a hand-written rebuttal and an anonymous letter.

Vital records provide the bare bones of biography: Daniel Weston Fuller was born to Consider and Hannah (Eaton) Fuller on January 5, 1812 and died of pneumonia on June 7, 1894, the year after his story was published in the Boston Journal.

In 1893, a reporter* traveled south to investigate “the trapper of Smelt Pond.” The story that followed – published on March 17, 1893 then reprinted in the Kingston News a few weeks later – romanticized the recluse with quaint, yet peculiar anecdotes. He slept in a molasses barrel, renounced society over an unrequited love, and shot game with a muzzle-loader that had belonged to Daniel Webster, a friend of Dan’s brother Samuel. Dan “educated” an owl for a pet and shot his own dog when “ ‘he got so dainty he wouldn’t eat raw potato skins. Didn’t have any use for a dog such as that’.”

After moving out of the hogshead, Dan lived in a 12’ x 6’ hut, a former shoe-shop on Wapping Road later moved deep into the woods between Elm Street and Ring Road. He kept count of snowstorms with tick marks on one “greasy black” wall, and the number of mice caught on another. He festooned his small room with garlands of duck egg shells. What money he earned came from bounties on crows and woodchucks, once netting $17 for 34 heads, or from ducks brought to town, “really very nice if disassociated from the grimy hands that brought them.” His sustenance came from the forest, though in his later years, he did accept food, wood and tobacco from friends. The reporter noted that the hermit’s “piercing black eyes” turned sociable when presented with a gift box of fruit and bread.

The next piece of evidence appeared in response to the article: an unknown friend of Dan’s wrote to the editor that “there was no unrequited love in his case. He was a born son of the forest to begin with,” sleeping on a bed of leaves at 5 years old. His family was “old fashioned even for them days 1820.” Consider Fuller allowed his children to roam the woods, counting them every Sunday and “if they was all there or was not missing two Sunday mornings in succession, he was satisfied.” Daniel’s defender noted that he made his living from the wilderness, selling furs and skins, wild honey and feathers for pillows, and stated that “Daniel cannot care for tomorrow.”

The last document is a semi-anonymous letter dated February 6, 1935, from Katie in Canton to her Aunt Addie recounting Roger’s memories of Dan the Hermit, including the well-told tale that he never washed. There is not much more detail, but the letter does show that the hermit’s story was still in living memory more that 30 years after his death. As late as 2003, the foundation on which Dan’s “rude hut” sat could still be seen, deep in the woods of Kingston. Those stones, along with a yellowed clipping, a two page recollection and a single letter are all that remain to tell the tale.

*Emily Fuller Drew, who transcribed the article in 1938, believed it was written by Elroy Sherman Thompson, newsman, editor and publisher of the Kingston News.

Sources: Vertical File: Dan Fuller; Town Clerk’s Reports; Vital Records of Kingston to 1850.

2011-02-18

“I send you…

patriotic greetings on his birthday.”

From the chock-full-of-holiday-goodness of the Loring Postcard collection.

2011-01-21

New exhibit: Bills, Bills, Bills!

January is not only cold and snowy, but usually swamped with bills from the previous month’s holiday extravagances. For example, in December of 1893, the Town of Kingston spent $2.50 at John C. Dawe’s establishment. Eschewing groceries and grains, bypassing sails and spars, avoiding coffee and varnish, the Town settled on a single item: a new feather duster for the hearse house.

Stop by the Library to see a selection of Kingston bills in the exhibit case.