Whoever Hateth His Brother Is a Murderer

History is not exactly "everything that happened in the past." It's more like "everything that happened in the past of interest to human beings that has been written down or otherwise recorded." According to the latter definition, the town of Wilbraham, Massachusetts has precious little history. Before its settlement in 1636 by white Europeans (mainly English), the area was populated by nothing more than beaver, salmon, otter, mink, deer, skunks, and Nipmuc Indians, none of whom had any written language--hence, no history.

For centuries afterward, the history of Wilbraham consisted mainly of a dry chronology of births, marriages, deaths, and real estate transactions, punctuated every few decades by a colorful anecdote. In the early 1700s, somebody named Peggy fell off of her horse into a shallow marsh on the way to Sunday meeting, soaking her best clothes, on a road still to this day called Dipping Hole. On August 7, 1761, young Timothy Mirrick was fatally bitten by a "ratel snake" while mowing a meadow. A famous ballad was written about that "pesky sarpent." On June 15, 1763 the town was officially incorporated as Wilbraham. No one bothered to record the origin of the name or who came up with it, only that "the name was very grevious to us and we are hardly reconciled to it yet." WTF?? On April 29, 1799, six young people fell out of a boat on Nine Mile Pond and were drowned. Their bodies sank like stones, although for several hours "the red skirts and white bonnets of one or two of the young ladies" as well as "a solitary hat or two" could be seen floating upon the surface of the water. In 1854, some zealous Millerites were sure the world was about to end in a great conflagration and, sure enough, within a week of each other, not one, but two barns east of Main Street burned to the ground.

But perhaps the most notable event ever to have occurred in Wilbraham was the murder, in 1806, of a young farmer named Marcus Lyon. His horse came home one day without a rider, and sometime later his body, shot and bludgeoned, was found in the Chicopee River. A young boy recalled having seen two Irishmen walking down the Boston Post Road that day. That seemed to be sufficient evidence. Dominic Daley and James Halligan were found, arrested, jailed in Northampton, tried, found guilty, and hanged on June 5 of that year. According to Chauncey E. Peck's 1913 The History of Wilbraham, "of the 15,000 supposed to be present, scarcely one had a doubt of their guilt. Daley and Halligan were natives of Ireland."

The Reverend Jean-Louis Anne Madelain Lefebvre de Cheverus, first Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Boston, was allowed to visit them in jail. He counseled them, heard their confessions, held the first Catholic Mass in Northampton in their cell, and at their request preached what was deemed "an appropriate and eloquent discourse" on Gallows Hill just before they were put to death. His text: 1 John 3:15, "Whoever hateth his brother is a murderer."

It seems obvious from our contemporary perspective that the murderous brother-haters to whom the Reverend Cheverus referred were the 15,000 over-eager spectators, and not the accused. On St. Patrick's Day in 1984, then-governor of Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis, officially exonerated the two men. A marker was placed on Gallow's Hill, a.k.a. Pancake Plain, presently called Hospital Hill, easily viewable from Route 66. A yearly ceremony on St. Patrick's Day and another on the anniversary of the hangings commemorates the sad event.

This year Retired Massachusetts state trial court judge Michael Ryan spoke at the commemoration. He likened old-timey prejudice against Irish immigrants to contemporary attitudes towards Blacks and gays. While I see his point, I think he missed a better analogy. When a crime is committed these days, we don't automatically assume it's a homosexual. We've got Muslim "terrorists" for that.

Sad Fire

I hear sirens all the time from my house, but I don't think much of it. I'm only two blocks from both the police and fire headquarters, and emergency vehicles on their way to just about anywhere in the city start off right in my neighborhood. A siren doesn't necessarily mean that anything is going on nearby.

Yesterday morning, however, when I walked the dog, I discovered that the fire trucks I'd been hearing during the night were bad news for the Armoury-Quadrangle historic district. A beautiful home around the corner from me at 25-27 Elliot Street was severely damaged, and a firefighter injured as well.

This home was built in 1872, a year after mine, in the same style. It's a second-Empire style Victorian with slate mansard roof. Originally built as a duplex for Charles Blackstone and Peter Bailey, it was owned for years by Rita McGinnis, an cool octogenarian who sold it only recently when she married. The new absentee owner, Marjorie Fallon of Wellesley, had a bit of it rented out, but didn't give it much TLC.

I spoke with the owner of the Alexander House next door. His place, which gets plenty of TLC although he lives on the Cape, was thankfully not damaged by the fire, although he's got a soggy yard and cellar, and a trampled garden. He says the prospects for rebuilding the Blackstone-Bailey House are dim. Mrs. Fallon had told him the house was riddled with termites anyway and that the bricks were soft (??!). He sounded sorrowful.

If the house comes down, what will take its place? As the land sits right next to the new federal courthouse, it's probably too valuable to remain empty. It's in a local historic district, supposedly the most protected status, but so what. The courthouse is as well, and there's nothing historical or historical-looking about it. So what's to prevent a raised ranch, a Butler building or a Sunglass Hut from coming in? In this city, probably nothing.

Old First Church

Today I attended the last service at Old First Church in Springfield. Founded in 1637, just one year after William Pynchon bought the land it sits on (along with the rest of Springfield, Longmeadow, and Agawam) for "eighteen fatham of wampam, eighteen coates, 18 hatchets, 18 howes, and 18 knifes," it is one of the oldest churches in the country. The current building is the fourth meeting house, built in 1819.

At a meeting last September, the membership of the struggling church voted to cease worship services and programming activities effective January 1, 2008. The congregation only numbered 150, maintenance costs were huge, and the church had depleted almost all of its endowment trying to stay afloat.

The service was very, very sad, with hymns like "We gather here to bid farewell," and weeping members sharing their memories. Everyone concluded that what had made Old First Church special was the people, not the place, and that they would continue to support one another even though the building was closing its doors.

I guess I was the only one there wondering, who speaks for the building? But, in fact, the City of Springfield has just agreed to buy it for $900,000, possibly to use it as a meeting place. If incoming mayor Sarno doesn't decide to tear it down or morph it into a casino, I guess that's good news.

When the first meeting house was built in 1645 (before that, services were probably held in people's homes), there was no separation of church and state. Church services, marriages, funerals, and town meetings alike were held in the meeting house. Throughout the settlement's first century of existence, residents, beginning with John Pynchon, rented out portions of the building for the storage of grain. One of the requirements for service as a deputy of the general court was soundness "in judgment concerning the many points of the Christian religion, as they have been held forth & acknowledged by the generality of the Protestant orthodox writers." So preserving the building and using it for public gatherings of a secular nature makes perfect sense.

Old First Church is about five blocks from my house. Within five miles of me are at least a dozen other churches of the same denomination, United Church of Christ. Although a 20th-century trend toward unity of traditional Christian denominations culminated in 1957 with the formation of the UCC, a counter-trend of formation of new denominations has continued. So you've got the Family Church, the World Tomorrow Church, the Victory Cathedral, the New Creation Discipleship Ministries, the All Nations Church of God, the Glorious Gospel Church, the Temple of Praise...and most of these are in the heart of the city. I pass four different churches when I walk around the block every morning with the dog.

What was special about Old First Church was its social progressivism. It was a stop on the Underground Railroad, and host to abolitionist John Brown. It was host to the city's oldest and largest AA meeting, and Open Pantry's Emergency Food Program and the Loaves and Fishes meal program. It wasn't easy, despite all the churches in town, to find new locations for those last two; as an OP board member, I've got all the program reports to prove it. Let's see who'll come forward to take up the burden now.

Pretty Creepy

OK, things are starting to get pretty creepy around the Emory House, ever since I began writing a screenplay.

I decided to write about things that happen in a Victorian house. I created a character, Alice, living in the house in the 21st century. Alice becomes increasingly interested in the history of her house. She digs and digs to uncover information about the original owners, and finally discovers some secrets.

So far, so good. I got this idea before I ever lived in a Victorian house...back when I didn't particularly even like Victorians, in fact. It actually came as a surprise to me when I realized that my situation was similar in many ways to my protagonist's, and that I didn't have to look any farther than my own parlor for story ideas.

The creepy thing is how driven I am all of a sudden to do all the things that Alice does in the screenplay. It's as if I can't write the next scene until I act it out myself. Take yesterday, for example.

I had gone to the Genealogy Room of the Historical Museum to research my own house. I learned that the Emory's only child, Carrie, was buried in Springfield Cemetery. So off I went to look for the grave. The cemetery office was closed, so I drove around slowly, looking for the headstone. The cemetery is huge, but I figured that since the family had been prosperous, the monument was probably large, and I was right.

The Emory plot is in a section of contemporary grave sites. The family monument and the individual headstones are granite, an extremely durable material, so they look brand new. I had found what I was looking for, but my discovery led to several new mysteries.

First of all, Carrie was not an only child. She had two older sisters, Etta, who died aged 22 years, and Flora, who died aged 16 weeks. Carrie herself lived to be nearly 80.

Second of all, the large monument has two names on it. "EMORY" is carved on one side, and "STACY" on the other. The monument is on a corner, set diagonally, with Emory headstones along one side and Stacy headstones along the other. Who the hell were the Stacys??? Mrs. Emory's maiden name wasn't Stacy, it was Lane, and none of the daughters married.

Third of all, there was a large pot of geraniums on the Stacy side. For a moment I was excited, thinking that some descendant was still keeping up the graves. But a follow-up to the office revealed that Carrie had paid for perpetual care. Still, I suppose in my screenplay I could have Alice discover someone tending to the grave. That could be a way for her to unearth some family secrets.

It's not fair that Alice should find out more about her house's family than I do about mine. If she gets her hands on a trunk full of old photos, I want to get ahold of a trunk full, too. Although that would be really, really creepy.

Silly Sitcom Situation

I was awakened this morning by a phone call from someone I hadn't seen or heard from since 1965. This high school acquaintance, now living thousands of miles away, was back in town helping her mother organize a move to a kinder climate. A mutual friend (someone I have kept in touch with over the years), told her I was nearby, computer literate, and had a nice camera. My Long Lost Friend was desperate for a favor.

The all-too-common tensions with relatives were surfacing around this move, specifically over "stuff." Who gets what, in other words. In-laws were battling, Mom was getting extremely upset, and my friend (let's call her Susie to protect the innocent) was getting a lot of grief, despite her having taken a month-long hiatus from her high-powered career in order to help out.

Susie had been informed that all the family photographs were being shipped off, and she wasn't allowed to have any of them or even to make copies. Of course it was possible that tensions would abate, the rift would heal, and the recalcitrant in-law would graciously scan everything and send it on to her, but possession is nine-tenths of the law and Susie wasn't taking any chances. While she was in the same house as the photographs, she wanted to have copies made, just in case things got worse and not better.

Time was of the essence. The albums couldn't leave the house. Mom couldn't know what was up. Could I come right over with my camera? Our mutual friend (let's call her Anna) would pick me up within the hour.

Well, I'm easy. And always up for other people's harebrained schemes. Anna showed up with a camera of her own and we zipped over to Susie's. Susie let us in surreptitiously and went back to keeping Mom busy in the bedroom, sorting sweaters, while we tiptoed into the dining room to snap pictures of pictures.

Now, I distinctly remember the phrase "a couple of dozen pictures" uttered casually over the phone. In fact, there were a couple of dozen albums, plus several cartons of framed photographs. Unquestionably thousands of pictures all together.

Anna and I pulled out our cameras and, hearts racing and ears pricked for sounds of footsteps, a session of furtive and furious snapping began. Snatching framed items from the cartons, whispering frantically, we clicked and clicked, cursing the poor light, the reflecting glass, the curled edges, the stubbornly wrinkled plastic film on the album pages. We were boat people on a sinking ship, Cherokees about to leave on the Trail of Tears, pioneers whose oxen had given out, desperately trying to save the last, most precious mementos.

Before we could complete our task, Susie was back, pantomiming an exit. We had to leave, right that minute. We would take some albums with us and finish at home. She assembled a large moving box and filled it with albums, motioning Anna to help her lug it to the car. Obediently, I followed. Back in my kitchen, I spent the entire afternoon taking pictures, burning the results--close to a thousand pictures--onto CDs.

My daughter was indignant. You're too nice, Mom, she said. Dropping everything for someone who comes out of the woodwork and needs a favor. Not accepting money for a huge project which takes your professional expertise. Documenting artifacts is what you do for a living!

She's right, I suppose. Cataloging Judaica involves, among many other things, scanning or photographing every item. Sometimes I do large collections of community history. A commemorative booklet from a synagogue in the Andes, listing the names of all the founding families of a tiny outpost of Jewish immigrants, is invaluable material for scholars trying to reconstruct history, especially when so much and so many have been destroyed in the Holocaust or during other violent periods.

Perhaps because I do so much of this kind of work, I could sympathize with my friend. In one day, I followed her family history, from studio portraits of turn-of-the-century immigrants, to her mother's babyhood, to black-and-white snapshots from the forties and fifties, to Susie's school years captured on Instamatic and Polaroid color film, to orangey and degraded '70s shots of her early marriage and babies, to rolls of Kodachrome from her empty-nesting parents' vacations. I recognized the Rockport rocks where I vacationed as a kid, the same prom I attended in high school, her closest friends who were also my schoolmates. All I ask in return is a leisurely date for coffee or lunch before Susie flies out again so we can catch up--without any references to the current stressful situation--on what we've been doing for the last forty years. Putting captions on all those pictures, so to speak.