Author: Jnana Hodson

In downsizing to a remote fishing village in Downeast Maine, this eclectic writer feels everything's coming together.

At first, I thought the ‘Mariner’ was a redundancy

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

 Capt. Mariner S. Crosby. Given his Christian name, it was inevitable that he would take to the sea. That’s what struck me the first time I wandered through Hillside Cemetery.

The second time I went to the graveyard, I was looking for that marker but couldn’t find it. Back home and at my computer, Find-a-Grave led me to the rest of the inscription, which is admittedly rather worn away, as well as some additional facts.

What I found was this:

“Lost at sea with his family and the Brig Sarah B. Crosby,” named for his wife. She and the four children, one of them an unnamed infant, are then listed on the white memorial – Jacob W., Mary B., and Lucy B.

The date of their demise is uncertain, “around Oct. 25, 1867” – in season for a hurricane or some other vicious storm, although a fire in a wooden ship can’t be ruled out.

I trotted back to the cemetery for a closer look. Here it is:

The broken column symbolizes the loss of an upstanding citizen in his prime.

The Chamber of Commerce website reveals more:

“Mariner Crosby was the master of the brig ‘Maria White’ in 1852 and the schooner ‘Mary Jane’ in 1855. From 1861-1863 Mariner was the master of the barque ‘Charles Heddle,’ also built by C.S. Huston,” in Eastport. Around the corner from me, actually. “Mariner’s last command was the brig ‘Sarah B. Crosby,’ named for his wife, which was built in Pembroke. He commanded this vessel from 1863 to 1867 when the vessel was reported overdue. Mariner, his wife Sarah and four children, as well as the crew and passengers, were lost at sea without a trace.”

The pillar is a broken mast, as the three rings of rope emphasize. And there’s a carving of a brig going down, all but one of its square sails blown away.

We’re not even told where the ship was bound, much less about its cargo, passengers, or crew. And a brig did require significant manpower to manage the massive square sails.

The two-masted 316-ton “Sarah B. Crosby” was built in Pembroke by George Russell in 1863 and then based out of Portland, bound for ports such as New York and St. John, New Brunswick.

I started to investigate and found a bit more.

She knew the travails of the sea, having wrecked at treacherous Sandy Hook, New Jersey, on March 1, 1865, with the passengers and crew safely removed. And then, after being abandoned, she was reclaimed and repaired, with shipments of coal from Halifax, Nova Scotia, later in the year.

On March 19, 1867, the New York Herald carried this notice: “Brig Sarah B Crosby (of Portland), Crosby, Measina, Jan 27, with fruit to Lawrence, Giles & Co, passed Gibraltar Feb 16; has had heavy westerly gales, with snow and hail, and split sails. Mar 13, latitude 41 30, longitude 65, spoke ship Michigan, from Liverpool for London.” (Measina, a mystery unto himself, was first mate. They would have been just off England at the time this information was relayed.)

I would like to know more in general about wives and children traveling with captains. It turns out to have been common, with a significant number of the children being born at sea or spending a large part of their childhood there. Wives were partners with shares in the business, whether they went abroad or stayed ashore. They even learned navigation, but did not interfere with the cook aboard ship. There were strict lines of authority. Beyond that, what were Sarah’s views and experiences? Was she even related to the 1841 Robert Bates house a few doors up the street from me? She was only 33 or so at the end; there’s no age for Jacob, though Mary would have been around 11 and Lucy, only seven.

While Mariner grew up in Eastport, the son of a Nova Scotia immigrant, Sarah was the daughter of a hotelier in Calais, Maine, best I can tell. Her father came from Massachusetts; her mother, New Hampshire. Mariner Crosby and Sarah E. Bates were married in Eastport February 12, 1855, by the Baptist minister Nathaniel Butler, of note himself. We have no idea how they met.

Mariner came to the sea naturally. At least two of his four brothers were also sea captains. Not just sailors or first masters but skippers.

Capt. Jerry died in Havana in 1879.

And Christopher Crosby led the racing yacht “Coronet” that defeated the “Dauntless” in a famed trans-Atlantic race in 1897. He went to sea at age 17 and was skipper by the time he turned 19. Yes, born to the sea.

And that’s as much of their story as I’m able to find, all prompted by one name in stone.

Witchcraft in New England before the Salem hysteria

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Something I pretty much skip over in my history of Dover is the Puritan authorities’ close examination of the bodies of the early Quaker women missionaries for any signs revealing them to be witches, from 1656 on.

That was down in Boston, for one thing, and I’ve seen no indication of similar actions along the Piscataqua watershed in New Hampshire and Maine, the center of my new book.

But it has come back to haunt me.

Much of my argument regarding the readiness for a significant portion of the Dover population’s joining Quakers has to do with the ways they differed culturally from the Puritan majority in the Massachusetts Bay colony and Connecticut. What David Hackett Fischer terms “folkways.”

For example, in all of their fearful piety, what made the Puritans so morbidly curious about the naked female flesh, anyway? And just what, exactly, were they looking for? This gets weird, doesn’t it? I’m not sure I want specifics, as in details, much less in those parading through Salem, Massachusetts, these days in preparation for Halloween. I’ll have to admit that part leaves me feeling queasy.

Puritan Costumes. Illustration from The Comprehensive History of England (Gresham Publishing, 1902).

Just consider the stereotypical presentation of witches in pointed hats and black capes and then recognize how much that resembles the dress of Puritan women in New England at the time. As for flying on brooms? How strange! Just how did that conflation happen, anyway? Put another way, witches didn’t dress differently than anyone else. As for the brooms? Every housewife had one.

Well, maybe that points to the male authority role in all of this, something I’m perceiving as a gender power play.

Back to the Quakers. As historian Arthur J. Worrall explains, “Two groups of Quakers arrived in 1656. The first, led by Anne Austin and Mary Fisher, came to Boston in July. The Massachusetts government promptly imprisoned them for five weeks; after checking them for signs of witchcraft, they expelled them in August. A second group of eight Quaker missionaries came to Boston two days after their expulsion,” aboard the Speedwell.

“Massachusetts imprisoned this group for eleven weeks and expelled them also, after the clergy had examined and debated with them.”

For perspective, Fischer notes that from 1647 to 1692, the Puritan colonies accounted for ninety percent of the accusations and eighty-five percent of the executions for witchcraft in English-speaking America. That is, almost ALL of them.

Moreover, “In England, every quantitative study has found that the recorded cases of witchcraft were most frequent in the eastern counties from which New England was settled.” Specifically, the Puritan heartland, in the motherland and then in the New World.

“Even white magic was regarded as a form of blasphemy. In 1637, for example, Jane Hawkins was punished for selling oil of mandrakes in Boston. Many other magicians and sorcerers were treated in the same manner.”

So just what defined a “witch,” anyway? Anyone who drew on folk remedies? Or even a midwife who knew more than she was supposed to?

Fischer goes into ways the Puritans’ Calvinist teaching and likely their earlier folkways combined to make them especially fearful.

As I observe, Salem itself was a cauldron of controversy from early on and a place where the Puritan invasion clashed with the existing population. Like Dover, the Puritans were latecomers there.

I’m still curious about the zealot ferocity of the Puritan outburst at the time of the infamous mistrials in Salem, 1692, in a perfect storm that may have fused an outbreak of hallucinogenic ergot in rye, a clash between traditional ways of examination versus newer ones, a gap in the governorship and jurisprudence, and a drive to curb the influence of the now well in place Friends by attacking their servants instead. Many, many other factors, perhaps even the weather, likely also come into play. All of the other angles I’ve heard point in the same direction.

One of the overlooked aspects in all the controversy is how the witch persecutions in Salem solidified the collapse of the rigid Puritan reign in New England. In a way, the old guard overplayed its hand and had to bear the consequences. With widespread revulsion at the executions and their abuse of the court system, a new strand of teaching and emphasis emerged in the Congregational churches. In another century-and-a-quarter, many of them would even become Unitarian, a far cry from the Puritan orthodoxy.

What makes witches so romantic for so many today?

Did the accused “witches” have their revenge in the end?

Too many zeroes for zero

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as I repeated through hazy defaced New Jersey and New York via Fort McHenry Tunnel just before afternoon traffic congealed, Singing along, too, just see what you’ve done? all your fault, baby  (ask me about the Greek who got a banker’s check from France with a few too many zeros which the local bank cashed so he abandoned his Dairy Queen and fled home with several million in his pocket and the FBI on his tail . they couldn’t find him but our reporter did . good old Gus.) Carnally encased desiring a conjunction of such calculations

This sight caused a shudder

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When I was last in Dover, 18 months ago, the downtown was booming with construction. But on my return a few weeks ago, when I first glimpsed this rising over Central Avenue, I thought a skyscraper was going up and I’d somehow missed the news.

I am impressed by the cloud as a backdrop.

A second look, though, had me realizing it was the clock tower on city hall, getting spiffed up for the city’s big 400th anniversary next year.

Well, it kind of look likes a space rocket about to take off, too.

Banners proclaiming that event are already along the major streets.

Getting fit with Eastport’s hot ladies

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There I was complaining about not being able to continue swimming laps since Covid curtailed everything, especially followed by my relocation from Dover and its wonderful indoor pool. I certainly wasn’t getting in any regular exercise routine once I moved up here, and one month of yoga down by the waterfront did impress me with just how much this body’s deteriorated from 50 years of neglect. Geeze, how humbling!

I’ve never been one to pursue a solo fitness regime.

But then, when some enlightened souls opened the high school gym for walkers in the early morning, I stepped up, apologies for the pun, but it was something and definitely not at the mall, not that we have anything like that anywhere around. Well, I have posted some photos of Shead High’s gym. Maybe I was getting into shape for some summer hiking?

In the process, I met some interesting folks, all women – guys my age rarely seem to recognize how out of shape they’ve become, apart from maybe weight lifting – and the suggestion kept arising that I should try the twice-a-week fitness sessions at the, uh, senior center. (I really hate that term and definitely prefer to call it the Old Firehouse.)

Most of the time, though, once I started attending, I was the only male in the circle. What a revelation! Yes, I remember ages ago when I would have killed for such odds in my favor, yet these days I’m definitely married. (Got mine!) But still, you wouldn’t believe what I hear. It could be a highly rated TV series, if we could find a focus. Oh, well. As they say, laughter is the best medicine.

The hour-long class is definitely well planned, a blend of stretches, isometrics, cardios, and the like. It can challenge the beginner and adept equally well.

Nonetheless, when the temperature approaches 60 or so, indoors or out, they insist on opening the windows. Claim it’s too hot.

I am, on the other hand, still freezing.

 

Were they or weren’t they friends?

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Back in my undergrad days, I was hired by a retired jazz musician or some such insider to gleam through microfilm copies of the Indiana Daily Student and other sources as research for a bio or history book he was writing in New York.

The project opened my eyes to a wide range of 1920s’ history revolving around Bloomington, especially the legendary cornet player Bix Biederbecke and the Hoosier native Hoagy Carmichael. Yes, the place was a jazz hothouse, hard as that might be to believe.

I wish I still had carbon copies of my correspondence on that effort, but I do remember learning of a hitchhiking trip to a Harvard-Indiana University football game that Carmichael shared with Ernie Pyle, editor-in-chief of the Indiana Daily Student.

Seems it took them three weeks or maybe six to get back to campus from Massachusetts.

It’s a great story, no question, kind of pre-hippie, in this case two future celebrities back before they became famous.

The only problem, I’m not finding any corroboration online. Worse yet, I’m not sure how much Pyle and Carmichael’s timelines overlap. Besides, they were members of different fraternities, lessening the likelihood of a joint spree.

The game happened in October 1927, the same time Carmichael was making the premiere recording “Star Dust” in Richmond, Indiana. Pyle, meanwhile, was likely employed by either the New York Post or Evening World and had married. Some of his details get fuzzy.

I don’t remember who the writer was or whether his book ever came out.

By the way, IU lost, in a 26-6 rout.

Any number of things can happen with the color

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Golden perfection.

As you likely know, trying to record the changing colors is a challenge. Does your camera ever get the hues and shades to match what you’re seeing? Or is it usually either too cool or too garish? How about those of you who are instead using watercolors, oils, pastels, or acrylic?

One spoiler for a photo, as I’ve found the hard way, is utility lines along most roadways. They’re the prime culprit among a host of other distractions your eyes don’t catch but the lenses do. This year, I was on guard and enjoyed the color in those stretches without stopping to take a shot.

Since most of Maine’s forests is evergreen, I scoped out stretches of deciduous trees free of those intrusions before the color change and kept checking in weekly, at minimum. In my case, the core of the route was an unpaved lane in the Baring district of the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge, as well as the country roads getting there.

There’s no way of predicting how things will develop. Drought, blight, storms can take a toll.

But we know what will follow. Boy, do we.

Here’s a look at how it all unfolds here.

It is an invitation to kayak.
Round Pond.
How swiftly it passes.
Even when half of the leaves have already fallen, there’s more to come.
Loud geese take flight. Quaking aspen and birches give the forest a dominant range of yellows.
By midmonth, the palette is turning somber.

And if you want to see what I experienced in New Hampshire, go to my Chicken Farmer blog, where I’ve also posted in-depth reflections on the soul of New England itself. The posts and slideshows appear in the New England Spirit category from August through October 2013.

 

Having a back cover, too

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One big difference between paper books and ebooks is the back cover. The digital versions simply don’t have one – the blurb has to go on the retailer’s website instead.

Yes, the two formats have their differences. An ebook is more like a scroll, but one that can be easily searched and rewound.

A paper book, on the other hand, is more like a box, with the covers working like the wrapping on a present, full of enticement. Even the lettering on the spine can work that way.

Better yet, the back cover can start talking to you even before you open the pages. “Come on in,” you can hear it address you, even in a crowded bookstore.