Walking the Berkshires

In Memoriam: What Henry Knox has to do with 9/11

In January, 1776, Henry Knox and his civilian teamsters  passed through Egremont, Massachusetts on their way through the Berkshires with a train of cannon and other war supplies destined for Boston.  In September, 2001, hijacked passenger airliners were deliberately crashed into the heart of New York's financial district, the Pentagon, and (after passenger intervention) a field in Pennsylvania.  As is evident from the photograph at left, these two separate events are now commemorated together in North Egremont.

The vertical marker is one of the 30 granite and bronze monuments placed in 1927 to commemorate the Knox expedition by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts during the Sesquicentennial of the American Revolution.  The route taken by Knox is poorly documented by primary sources, and in 1975 this marker was moved from its original location along Rte 23 in South Egremont to its present site in North Egremont to reflect a different theory of where Knox crossed the Taconics into the Berkshires.  The monument itself remains the property of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the small patch of open space on which it is situated is owned by the municipality.

The nearly horizontal plaque and its stone and cement base were physically integrated with the Knox memorial in 2002.  The North Egremont 9/11 memorial reads as follows:

"This monument is dedicated to the thousands of men, women and children killed by terrorist attacks in New York City, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania on September 11th, 2001.  They died for our country and our freedom.  We shall not forget.  Dedicated on September 11, 2002 North Egremont, Massachusetts"

As a war memorial with the fresh association of 9/11, these conjoined monuments have attracted both a small American flag and someone's personal offering of a conch shell.  Visually, as a piece of public art, the Knox memorial is now the headstone, casting its shadow on the graves of 9/11.

In many ways, these memorials seem more dissimilar than alike, reflecting a great deal both about the events they commemorate and the values and attitudes of those who erected them and how we remember today.  There is something very intentional about the union of these two monuments, with one the visible extension and successor to the other.  There is a very clear message that those died in the terrorist attacks were as patriotic as those who dragged the cannons to Boston.   The North Egremont memorial was an expression of fresh grief and resolve to give meaning to terrible losses.  Whereas the Knox commemoration was an expression of state pride in the accomplishments of a favorite son and role that Boston, and the cannons brought from Ticonderoga, played in our Nation's founding. 

People in 1927 could look to recent victory in Europe - "Lafayette, we are here! -  as the coming of age of that nation which their Revolutionary ancestors helped to establish.  These monuments, which along with their counterparts in New York represent one of the earliest "heritage trails" established in America, gave a local connection to larger events.  That connection is precisely what this September 11th memorial is all about.  There is a strong cultural connection in this part of western New England to New York City which is home to many of our part-time residents. Many of us lost love ones there, or are close to others who did.

Local commemorations, however, often reflect individual sensibilities and the need to make the personal very public.  I do not know who was behind the North Egremont memorial, or the decision to physically integrate it with the Knox monument. I can contrast it with a private effort by her friends to plant a native American Elm cultivar with a stone plaque in the memory of a Salisbury, Connecticut resident who died that day.  I can also compare it to the current controversy in Kent, Connecticut over a grieving father's insistence that the wording of a public 9/11 public memorial to his son include the phrase "murdered by Moslem extremists."  The complete wording as proposed is as follows:

James Gadiel
February 3, 1978
A gentleman and a gentle man
Lifelong resident of Kent
Murdered by Moslem extremists
September 11, 2001

In recent days, what previously had divided a small town is now a conservative cause celeb thanks to national exposure.  I will note, as an aside, that "Muslim" and "Moslem" are not interchangeable, with the latter word an older transliteration that less accurately reflects the Arabic pronunciation /mʊslɪm/.  Some Muslims, I understand, find the older word offensive, analogous, perhaps, to calling Beijing "Peking". I rather doubt that changing from one self referential word to the other would address the controversy, but thought it worth considering that "Moslem" is the word proposed for the memorial.

What is written in stone is meant to be gospel.  What we cast in bronze we intend to endure beyond our span of years.  What we chose to record, and how we record it, is what we want others to remember.  Yet time and the distance from living memory can make some public monuments lose their meaning, especially when demographics change and the old surnames on the war memorials are no longer represented in the community.  Three of the Knox monuments in New York have simply vanished, and others have been moved about in response to development.  "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!".

Imbuing the Knox memorial in North Egremont (which was moved to its current site just a few decades ago)  with the meaning of 9/11 may have rescued it from obscurity, even if for the benefit of modern interpretation of the more recent event.  As an historian I find the pairing troubling, but I also know that the object is not the event, but rather an artifact of its own time.  It is therefore subject to reinterpretation by subsequent generations, revealing much about what we remember, and how we recast the past to give meaning to the present.

Last Week in the LJ

I meditated on the fringed gentian in last week's Nature Notes article in the Lakeville Journal, readable here

with free registration.

...Fall blooming plants fill a fascinating evolutionary niche. They eschew competing for pollinators throughout most of the growing season, serving as welcome nectar sources for migrating butterflies and other species when other wildflowers have gone to seed.   A number of asters, including some of the showiest, also bloom in late summer and into the fall, as do the various goldenrods.

The gentian, though, standing singly or in isolated patches, is nearer to earth than the swaying asters and nodding goldenrod. Poets note its lonely solitude, a lovely sentinel at the ragged end of summer. Victorians invested great meaning in flowers, with the gentian a symbol of enduring hope in the face of certain mortality...

Counterfactual Founder

John Dickinson had this to say to his colleagues in the 2nd Continental Congress as they debated Independence on the first of June, 1776:

"...Suppose on this Event Great Britain should offer Canada to France & Florida to Spain with an Extension of the old Limits. Would not France & Spain accept them? Gentlemen say the Trade of all America is more valuable to France than Canada. I grant it; but suppose She may get both? If she is politick, & none doubts that, I aver She has the easiest Game to play for attaining both, that ever presented itself to a Nation.

When We have bound ourselves to a stern Quarrel with Great Britain by a Declaration of Independence, France has nothing to do but to hold back & intimidate Great Britain till Canada is put into her Hands, then to intimidate Us into a most disadvantageous Grant of our Trade. It is my firm Opinion these Events will take Place, & arise naturally from our declaring Independence...

...Suppose we shall ruin [Great Britain]. France must rise on her Ruins. Her Ambition. Her Religion. Our Dangers from thence.  We shall weep at our misfortune brought on by our rashness...

...The War will be carried on with more Severity. The Burning of Towns, the Setting Loose of Indians on our Frontiers, has Not yet been done. Boston might have been burnt though it was not...

...A PARTITION of these Colonies will take Place if Great Britain cant conquer Us. To escape from the protection we have in British rule by declaring independence would be like Destroying a House before We have got another, In Winter, with a small Family; Then asking a Neighbour to take Us in and finding He is unprepared..."

Dickinson, once among the most vocal champions of American rights, fell from the pantheon of the Founders when he argued against declaring Independence and predicted the outcomes described above as its likely result.  Though history ultimately took a different course, Dickinson was not so far off base in his predictions as hindsight makes him seem.  My manuscript counterfactual novel of the Revolution reaches some of the same conclusions, which I fear vindicates my assumptions rather than his own.  But then, that is the advantage of being the one who rewrites history.

Dickinson, unable in good conscience to sign the Declaration, later served as a private soldier at Brandywine and was back in Congress and supportive of the Independence struggle the following year.  Aside from his namesake college, when he is remembered today is is generally as a foil for John Adams and those who ultimately persuaded the delegations from each of the colonies not to block Independence.

"Miranda" Unwrapped

Emily received an extraordinary quilt from her grandmother on her 9th birthday yesterday.  Mom is a gifted fabric artist, and her creations never fail to amaze.  Her incredible work has been well received at national juried quilt exhibitions, such as last year's Lowell Quilt Festival where her "Praise for the Morning" took third place in the small, non traditional category.

She is also exceptionally generous about passing her quilts along to those family members and close friends who would take the most delight in them.

Mom usually works from patterns of her own design and ideas that she has developed in her mind's eye. This is a small quilt which she completely as part of a master class taught by Christine Fries-Ureel, who made the pattern and showed Mom how to make the swirling fabric of the dress and stitch the windswept hair.  The quilt is called "Miranda", and is based on a Pre-Raphaelite painting by John William Waterhouse of Shakespeare's Tempest.  The sea foam is made from strands of sheep's wool, and the dress has unusual depth and three-dimensionality.

Mom excels at making "picture quilts, and as she was acquiring new skills in this class she had in mind her grand-daughter and her love of theater, faeries and myths.  "Miranda" has a proud place in a shaded corner of Emily's room, paired on the adjoining wall with the gorgeous, traditional mariner's star quilt her Gramma gave her on the year of her birth.  Boundless love radiates from every careful stitch and splash of color.

Tuning up the Spring Symphony: This Week's Lakeville Journal Article

I has music in mind when I wrote this week's Nature Notes article for the Lakeville Journal, readable here with free registration.

"... What grace notes are lost if they leave us? Do our woodlands remember the chestnut snows of summer that crowned their canopies with creamy white flowers? Is the drumming ground of the extinct heath hen, or the river without Atlantic salmon, diminished by their absence? Or is this symphony played on a scale far beyond our span of years?  With no one left to hear the sound, to whom will it matter when a tree falls in some future forest?"

"Be on My Side, I'll Be on Your Side": Top 10 Murder Ballads

I'm not altogether sure I want to know what it says about me that on a gorgeous day without a cloud in the sky, I have murder ballads running through my head.  Yesterday's electric folk post may have gotten me started, and the truth is that some very fine music has been made that is steeped in lyric gore.  This is especially true of those traditional songs that come from northern Europe, and those bluidy Scots and Scandis whose folk songs often tell of vengeful revenants and cruel mothers.  Cleaned up and taken out in polite company, such stuff went gold for the Kingston Trio and lauched the modern folk movement.

There are many songs, not strictly in folk ballad form, which could rightly fall in the genre.  Some of them are elevated to exquisite heights by one particular performance.  Others are simply classic no matter who does them. 

Here are my picks for the top Ten Murder Ballads, based on one or the other of these criteria.  No doubt you could add a few of your own, as indeed I struggled mightily over which would make the cut (and cleverly stretched to fit in an eleventh, as you shall see).

"Down By The River"  Neil Young  This one often gets drawn out into an extended jam in live performance. 

Be on my side
I'll be on your side
There is no reason
for you to hide
It's so hard staying
here all alone
You could be taking
me for a ride
She could drag me
over the rainbow
Send me away...

"Hey Joe"  The Jimmi Hendrix Experience made it a classic.

I'm goin' way down south, way down south
Way down to Mexico way, yeah
I'm goin' way down south, way down south, baby
Way down where I can be free

Ain't no one gonna mess with me there, baby
Ain't no hang-man gonna
He ain't gonna put a rope, a rope around me, yeah

"Crazy Man Michael" Dave Swarbrick/Richard Thompson.  Richard wrote the lyrics for a traditional tune that was later replaced by a new one of Dave's composing. 

O where is the raven that I struck down dead
And here did lie on the ground o
I see that my true love with a wound so red
Where her lover’s heart it did pound o

"Matty Groves", traditional, arranged by Fairport Convention:  A lady seduces her servant, and taunts her husband who slays them both:

"A grave, a grave!'' Lord Darnell cried, "to put these lovers in.
But bury my lady at the top for she was of noble kin."

"Pretty Polly"  various.  Joan Baez did a classic rendition, and another by Hilary Burhan was used in the closing credits of an episode of HBO's "Deadwood".  It is related to many older ballads, including Childe #90, and the best melange of these is another arrangement by Broadside Electric entitled Jellon Grame:

"Lie you there, oh father dear
My mother's curse to rue
The place that she lies buried in
Is far too good for you."

"Stagger Lee" various.  Take your pick:  Ma Rainey, Mississippi John Hurt, Duke Ellington, Taj Mahal, the Grateful Dead...

"Tom Dooley "  The Kingston Trio.  The one that got the ball rolling in the late 1950s.  My aunt learned this song while in college around this time and it is a standard at family sing alongs.

"Bruton Town" various artists.  I am partial to the 1972 Sandy Denny version, as wel as that by Broadside Electric on their album "With Teeth":

"Now welcome home, my dear young brothers,
Our serving man, is he behind?"
"We've left him where we've been a-hunting,
"We've left him where no man can find."

"Childe Owlet": Childe #291 performed by Steeleye Span.  This one breaks all the rules.  A man is condemned by false witness to be torn apart by horses because he spurns the advances of his kinsman's wife, who gets away with it.

Lady Erskine sits intae her bower
A-sowing a silken seam
A bonny shirt for Child Owlet
As he goes out and in
His face was fair, long was his hair
She's called him to come near
“Oh, you must cuckold Lord Ronald
For all his lands and gear.”

"Where the Wild Roses Grow"  Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, from an album of nothing but Murder Ballads:

On the third day he took me to the river
He showed me the roses and we kissed
And the last thing I heard was a muttered word
As he stood smiling above me with a rock in his fist

In the News

A alternate version reprise of my recent Quickenings post appears this week in the Lakeville Journal, readable here with free registration. The on-line version omits the opening Wind in the Willows quote that appears in the print article:

"Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing..."

Dark Secrets on Gallows Hill

Gallows Hill lies east of the neighborhood of Lime Rock in the Town of Salisbury Connecticut, overlooking the confluence of Salmon Creek with the Housatonic River and just across the water from Falls Village.  It is a place of high bluffs and twisted stone, a lonely spot with a lonely name.

I have often wondered about how it came by that name, naturally assuming that perhaps it had been a place of execution.  Instead, this eminence seems to have a darker history, for either a suicide or a lynching once took place there, and still remains shrouded in mystery.

An 1883 guide entitled New England: A Handbook for Travellers offers a brief explanation:

"W. of [Falls Village] is the far-viewing Gallows Hill,  where according to the tradition, the corpse of a negro was once found hanging from a tree, and no one ever knew how he came there, or who he was."

Another 1896 text repeats the story, adding that "a strange black man was found hanging, dead, to a tree near its top one morning."   Strange fruit indeed, but by whose hand it came to be there has been left unsolved and the event itself has passed into forgotten local lore.  An 1853 map of the Town of Salisbury contains the name "Gallow's Hill", but an extensive 1898 article in Connecticut Quarterly magazine fails to mention Gallows Hill by this or any other name in its breathless enumeration of the Town's many points of interest. 

The hanging would have taken place sometime in the first century of Salisbury's settlement.  All but the steepest hillsides would have been denuded for charcoal to fuel the iron furnaces that made the region prosper even as they fouled the air.  There would have been trees, though, in the dark hollows and sheer cliffs of Gallow's Hill.  The place lay at the very margin of the community, and like all frontiers held both risks and attractions to those marginalized by society.

In 1756, a Colonial census enumerated just 31 negroes in Litchfield County and none in Salisbury.  Connecticut's slave codes severely restricted the mobility of even free blacks and slavery was not completely abolished until 1848.  The state vigorously prosecuted fugitive slaves.  Even in the first half of the 19th century, a lone black man might have chosen to skirt around a rural Connecticut village rather than pass directly through town. 

Today the place is locally known as Brinton Hill, and indeed Brinton Hill road passes just to the north and about 200' below the summit.  It follows a saddle between the Hill and Falls Mountain, and would have been the logical route for the unknown black man to have taken, either from Falls Village or Lime Rock (in early days simply known as The Hollow), to the spot where he met his end.  Whether by choice or compulsion one can only guess.

Quickenings

"Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said `Bother!' and `O blow!' and also `Hang spring-cleaning!' and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat. Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the gravelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to the sun and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, `Up we go! Up we go!' till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow."

- Kenneth Grahame "Wind in the Willows"

There was a chorus of spring peepers singing praise songs in the twilight when I stepped outside last evening.  Nature's Great Revival is underway.  The maple sap run is over, the salamanders are on the march, and with the first ospreys back in Buzzards Bay, can the herring be far behind?  The finches at the feeder are shedding their olive drab for canary yellow, and redwings rasp in the marshlands.  Our human neighbors emerge from their dens on about the same schedule as the local black bears, shaking off their winter torpor and reclaiming their sometimes overlapping territories from long disuse. 

If the senses of my species were not dulled by progress and evolution, they would quicken with every fresh scent on the warm Spring wind.  They would pulse with the first impossible bloom of skunk cabbage, literary melting its way through the frozen earth through the heat of its cellular respiration.  They would feel the stirring of the aged and tattered mourning cloak, one of the longest lived butterflies, reemerging in senescence to mate with the impulse of youth.   They would thrill with the drone of insects drawn to sticky buds and rank wet earth.

This is the season of quickenings.  The word itself derives from the old English "cwic", meaning living or alive, but its modern usage is also appropriate for a season of accelerations.  The fetus is said to quicken when its movements can be felt in the womb.  The heart quickens with life and vitality.  The poetic language of the Nicene Creed proclaims the second coming "in glory to judge the quick and the dead."  It is no accident that the Christian celebration of Easter falls at this time, when new life is self-evident. 

My birthday is also an early Spring arrival.  In these parts, the daffodils will be in bloom a week afterward, and as a young boy I worked out for myself that the last patch of snow would be gone the week before.  The first of the spring ephemerals are working their way upward in the bare light below the leafless trees.  Dutchman's britches, wild leeks, trout lily and trillium will usher in April's wildflowers, along with the winking yellow eyes of blood root, and clusters of marsh marigolds adding their splash of color to shadowy wetlands. 

All these awakenings take place in a brave, bright time when frogs lay eggs in ice-rimmed pools and early birds battle for prime nesting sites.  Even as the season advances, a fickle rain can blight the apple's bloom just as surely as longer days call forth its flowers.  All around us, nature is striving, seeking, obeying urges as involuntary as breathing.  Spring is a serious business, yet still given over to the domain of the heart.   "Hang spring cleaning" says the industrious Mole, with a spirit that soars on diaphanous wings.  Even a raw wet day like today has a sweet expectancy, like a kite that strains on its tether, ready to take wing.

Uncommon Soldiers

Joseph Plumb Martin was the most influential soldier from the American Revolution that most of us know nothing about.  His 1830 memoir - originally published as "Private Yankee Doodle" - is among the most referenced, 1st person accounts of the war.  With the sole exception of Washington's papers, you would be hard pressed to name a more commonly cited source in either the academic or popular histories of the Revolutionary period, especially those of the past few decades.  Martin has become the Patriot everyman, the subject of a PBS documentary, and his narrative is now available under different title in several print editions. 

Martin's account appeals to readers and writers of Revolutionary history for a number of reasons that together contribute to its ubiquity in the literature.  It is widely acclaimed as the most comprehensive account of the war by a common soldier.  Its wry and accessible style is colorful and self aware, and therefore engages the general reader.  It is full of anecdotes that brings the life of a teen-aged soldier in the ragged Continentals vividly to light, and is thus a major source for the impressions of soldier life depicted by period reenactors.   There are even a few fortuitous 1st-hand accounts that seem to verify the stuff of legend, such as the woman who served a cannon at Monmouth.

All these are reason enough to explain the multitude of historians who draw from Martin's observations, but there is also the fact that it is widely available.  One need not delve into the dusty archives of various rare book collections or have access to academic search engines when a quote of Martin's will serve.  I own the Signet Classic edition, and I must agree that it is an engaging account, though not always for the reasons most cited.  Neither is its mere existence as singular as its publishers would suggest, for there are other accounts by common soldiers, though you have to work a littler harder to find them.

There is, for example, the Military Journal of Jeremiah Greenman, published in an annotated edition as Diary of a Common Soldier in the American Revolution, 1775-1783.  Like Martin, Greenman served for virtually the entire length of the conflict, and while Martin ended his military career with the rank of Sergeant, Greenman's last promotion was to regimental adjutant.   One significant different is that Greenman's journal is a primary record kept during the conflict (though there are places that appear to have been revised at a later date).  Martin, on the other hand, wrote his narrative in his old age, and while many historians assume he based his work on a diary, no such account survives.  As a primary source, Greenman's is therefore closer to the events it describes, and remained unpublished until 1978.  Martin wrote with veiled anonymity, but his narrative was published during his lifetime, and the author's agenda must therefore be taken into account when assessing its value as a primary source.

Perhaps other editions of Martin's narrative benefit from comprehensive annotations, but mine certainly lacks such historical context and in my opinion would have benefited from more of it.  There are many obscure references that are left unexplained.  Greenman's diary is published by an academic press and transcribed as literally and faithfully as possible while preserving legibility.  The archaic prose and irregular spelling remains intact, which may result in a more challenging read for a general reader.  To the historian, though, it is a valuable work that deserved more exposure than it has thus far received.

Martin's is undoubtedly a superior work of literature and is truly unique for its period.  It is not really fair to compare the two texts along these lines, as they are entirely different kinds of writing and written many decades apart.  Martin's narrative is actually much more akin to another work of a later war - Sam Watkins' memoir of his Confederate service "Company Aytch" -  and fulfills much the same role as that frequently cited source does in Civil War history writing.    Martin's prose appeals to me particularly for its memorable anecdotes, such as a cat streaking in flames from a burning building, or a drunken lark on the ice of the frozen Hudson.  I am a bit more skeptical about his recollections of Molly Pitcher, which are often cited as evidence of her existence:

"One little incident happened, during the heat of the cannonade, which I was eye-witness to, and which I think would be unpardonable not to mention.  A woman whose husband belonged to the Artillery, and who was then attached to a piece in the engagement, attended with her husband at the piece the whole time; while in the act of reaching a cartridge and having one of her feet as far before the other as she could step, a cannon shot from the enemy passed directly between her legs without doing any other damage than carrying away all the lower part of her petticoat, - looking at it with apparent unconcern, she observed, that it was lucky it did not pas a little higher, for in that case it might have carries away something else, and ended her and her occupation"

Historian and artist Don Troiani depicted Molly Pitcher with the tattered petticoat described by Martin.  It is a wonderful description, and had it been included in a contemporary diary like Greenman's, rather than a memoir written more than half a century later, I should be blackguarded for not taking him at his word.  As Molly Pitcher's story was then known (and the woman most frequently associated with her still living), one has to wonder whether Martin truly saw what he says he remembers.  Many historians take Martin's statements at face value, but what memoir written in old age is free of embellishment?

I am glad that individuals like Joseph Plumb Martin and Jeremiah Greenman took the time to record their experiences, and so in addition to their hard service made valuable contributions to our understand of those times.  I am grateful that their accounts were though worthy of preserving and subsequent publication.  Each has its strengths and limitations, and each offers something different from the other.  Each needs to be taken on its own terms as well, and if Martin should be read with a grain of salt and Greenman should be more widely read and referenced, that in no way diminishes their importance.  Nor are they the only uncommon voices of common soldiers who left an historical record of their service in the Revolution.  A quick search of Google Books reveals Elijah Fisher's Journal, the Memoir of William Burke, the Diary of David Howe and the  Journal of Soloman Nash.    It would be refreshing if some of their observations found their way intothe next round of Revolutionary War histories.  Martin has seen hard service, and deserves a furlough.