ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

Below is a very limited list of the books, articles, scholarly papers, etc. I used during the two years I spent researching material in order to provide historical accuracy for many of the details in my book. 

Selected Bibliography

 
Boyd, Julian P., and Robert J. Taylor. The Susquehannah Company Papers. Wyoming Historical & Geological Society, 1930.

Bushman, Richard Lyman. “Markets and Composite Farms in Early America.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 55, no. 3, 1998, pp. 351–374.

Campbell, Thomas. Gertrude of Wyoming; or, The Pennsylvanian Cottage. D. Appleton & Co., 1858.
 

Chapman, Isaac A. Sketch of the History of Wyoming. S.D. Lewis, 1830.

DeLacy, Margaret. “Puerperal Fever in Eighteenth-century Britain.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 63, no. 4, 1989, pp. 521–556.

Dunn, Mary Maples. “Saints and Sisters: Congregational and Quaker Women in the Early Colonial Period.” American Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 5, 1978, pp. 582–601.

Dye, Nancy Schrom. “History of Childbirth in America.” Signs, vol. 6, no. 1, 1980, pp. 97–108.

Dziak, Mark G. The Battle of Wyoming: for Liberty and Life: the Whole Story of the 1778 Battle and Massacre in Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania. The Author, 2008.

Egle, William Henry, ed. Documents Relating to the Connecticut Settlement in the Wyoming Valley. E.K. Meyers, 1890.

Grubb, Farley. “German Immigration to Pennsylvania, 1709 to 1820.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 20, no. 3, 1990, pp. 417–436.

Harvey, Oscar Jewell. A History of Wilkes-Barré, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, from its First Beginnings to the Present Time: Including Chapters of Newly-discovered Early Wyoming Valley History, Together with Many Biographical Sketches and Much Genealogical Material. Raeder Press, 1927.

Historical and Biographical Annals of Columbia and Montour Counties. J.H. Beers & Co., 1915.

Hollister, Horace. Contributions to the History of the Lackawanna Valley. W.H. Tinson, 1857.

Johnson, Ella Roberts. History of Pittston. - taken from a manuscript of notes compiled in the years 1910–1912. http://greaterpittstonhistory.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/04/EC-Johnson-Pittston-History- Part-1.pdf.

Johnston, Henry P., ed. The Record of Connecticut Men in the Military and Naval Service During the War of the Revolution 1775–1783. Case, Lockwood & Brainard, 1889.

Joyce, Mary Hinchcliffe. Pioneer Days in the Wyoming Valley. S.n., 1928.

Lossing, Benjamin J. The Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution; or, Illustrations, by Pen and Pencil, of the History, Biography, Scenery, Relics, and Traditions of the War for Independence. Harper & Bros., 1851.

Lottick, Sally Teller. Wyoming Valley’s Earliest Settlers. Wyoming Historical and Geological Society, 1997.

Lowens, Irving. “The Bay Psalm Book in 17th-Century New England.” Journal of the American Musicological Society, vol. 8, no. 1, 1955, pp. 22–29.

Lutnick, S. M. “The Harassed History of Bundling.” The School Review, vol. 70, no. 2, 1962, pp. 233–239.

Main, Gloria L. “Naming Children in Early New England.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 27, no. 1, 1996, pp. 1–27.

Matthews, Alfred. History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe Counties, Pennsylvania. R.T. Peck & Company, 1886.

Miller-Lanning, Darlene. “Dark Legend and Sad Reality: Peck’s Wyoming and Civil War.” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, vol. 65, no. 4, 1998, pp. 405–444.

Miner, Charles. History of Wyoming, in a Series of Letters, from Charles Miner, to His Son, William Penn Miner, Esq. J. Crissy, 1845.

Munsell, W. W. History of Luzerne, Lackawanna and Wyoming Counties, Penna. W.W. Munsell & Co., 1880.

Munson, Myron Andrews. 1637 – 1887 The Munson Record: a Genealogical and Biographical Account of Captain Thomas Munson (A Pioneer of Hartford and New Haven) and His Descendants. Printed for The Munson Association by The Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Press, 1895.

Myers, Charles E. A Connecticut Yankee in Penn’s Woods: the Life and Times of Thomas Bennet. Wilkes University Press, 1993.

New England Historical and Genealogical Register. Following Connecticut Ancestors to Pennsylvania: Susquehanna Company Settlers. The New England Historical and Genealogical Society, 1985.

Ousterhout, Anne M. “Frontier Vengeance: Connecticut Yankees vs. Pennamites in the Wyoming Valley.” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, vol. 62, no. 3, 1995, pp. 330–363.

Pearce, Stewart. Annals of Luzerne County: a Record of Interesting Events, Traditions and Anecdotes, from the First Settlement in Wyoming Valley to 1866. J. B. Lippingcott & Co., 1866.

Peck, George. Wyoming; Its History, Stirring Incidents, and Romantic Adventures. Harper & Bros., 1858.

Scholten, Catherine M. “‘On the Importance of the Obstetrick Art’: Changing Customs of Childbirth in America, 1760 to 1825.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 3, 1977, pp. 426–445.

Treckel, Paula A. “Breastfeeding and Maternal Sexuality in Colonial America.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 20, no. 1, 1989, pp. 25–51.

Wallace, Paul A.W. Indian Paths of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1965.

Westerkamp, Marilyn J. “Engendering Puritan Religious Culture in Old and New England.” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, vol. 64, 1997, pp. 105–122.

Weyburn, Samuel Fletcher. Following the Connecticut Trail from the Delaware River to the Susquehanna Valley. The Anthracite Press, Inc., 1932.

Wyoming Historical and Geological Society. Proceedings and Collections of the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society. E.B. Yordy, 1898.

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - MAPS

 

 

Position of the Wyoming Forts, 1770s

Description:

A Marks the site of Fort Durkee

B, Wyoming or Wilkesbarre Fort

C, Fort Ogden

D, Village of Kingston

E, Forty Fort

F, the battleground

G, Wintermoot’s Fort

H, Fort Jenkins

I, Monocasy Island

J, the three Pittstown stockades

Source: Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution, vol. 1, p. 353. Harper and Brothers, 1851
Map Credit: Courtesy of the private collection of Roy Winkelman, PhD, Projects and Permissions Manager, Florida Center for Instructional Technology, College of Education, University of South Florida

MAP OF THE MINISINK AND OTHER PATHS

Pennsylvania State Archives/MG-192
Source: Wallace, Paul A.W. Indian Paths of Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Pennsylvania
State Archives, 1965

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN: PART FOUR, CHAPTER FOUR

 

All Ye Need to Know

[The Susquehanna Democrat, Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania,

8 October, 1819. List of unclaimed letters

at the Post Office, one addressed to Walter Munson.]

John Eton Jones—himself a foster-child

of silence and slow time—as time went on,

surmounted incredulity and all

the turmoil and resentment he had felt

at realizing he’d been lost, then found.

He learned that Wil had sold the Trucksville farm

to Walter Munson, so he wrote to ask

his brother for Wil’s forwarding address.

Walter claimed the letter, sent it on

to Wil who, overcome with joy, replied.

[The Democratic Pioneer, Upper Sandusky, Ohio,

February 2, 1849. List of unclaimed letters

at the Post Office, one addressed to Wilmot Munson.]

As time went on, John Eton Jones and Wil,

though never having met again, kept up

infrequent correspondence. Wil had left

Chenango for Ohio when his wife,

Patience Cooper Munson, passed away.

John Eton Jones, now seventy years old,

in an instinctive moment of nostalgia,

had signed this latest letter as Benoni;

but Wil had died in eighteen-forty-five.

The unclaimed letter was at length returned.

There’s only so much one can know for sure

in an attempt to trace the dear unknown.

Uncertainty and ambiguity

must either be rejected or embraced,

leaving room for mystery and truths

more beautiful for having been imagined.

Those unclaimed letters did, in fact, exist.

But were they written by John Eton Jones?

And was it true the last one held a swatch

of white and sky-blue linsey-woolsey cloth?

THUS ENDS

 ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN

MAPS. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, AND A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY WILL FOLLOW IN THE UPCOMING DAYS

The chapter titled All Ye Need to Know refers to a line in “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats.

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART FOUR, CHAPTER THREE

 

Unable To Close the Distance

The Munson farm and orchard had combined

a local market trade—the bartering

of family surplus crops for metal goods,

molasses, liquor, salt and cloth—with one

where ample yields of produce, wheat and rye

found marketplaces far afield. The year

Wil drove a loaded cart of apples down

to Berwick, twenty miles away, his wife

had asked him to bring back some sewing needles,

buttons, and a hat for Wilmot Jr.

Jones Mercantile & Millinery stood

at Market Street and Second. Jones’s wife

—Wil had surmised—was measuring a length

of cotton for a customer. Wil browsed

the store for hats, and hoped perhaps, despite

the prevalence of Joneses . . . Someone asked

if he might be of help. As Wilmot turned

and faced the likeness of his younger self,

he knew his search was at an end. Benoni!

The terse reply, The name’s John Eton Jones.

John listened skeptically as Wil recounted

the sad events that ushered in this moment.

Rachel’s death. The willing wet-nurse friend.

The exodus in opposite directions.

His dying father’s quest to find the child.

John disavowed all knowledge of the Munsons,

but granted that he had a twin, Susannah,

that his late mother’s name had been Rebecca,

but brusquely brushed it off as happenstance.

The birthmark on his cheek told otherwise.

The chapter titled Unable To Close the Distance comes from Andrew Forster’s poem “Brothers”

COMING SOON: PART FOUR, CHAPTER FOUR 

(the final chapter)

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART FOUR, CHPTER TWO

Wil's Word

Wilmot Munson loved Wyoming Valley.
But one more war with Pennymites, two floods,
and twenty years of drawn-out legal wrangling
went by before the courts would recognize
the early settlers’ private right of soil
and compensate for losses they’d sustained.
Westmoreland, once a town, was history.
And as the eighteenth century neared its end,
Wilmot bought a farm and apple orchard
near Toby Creek in Trucksville, Luzerne County.

Wil learned, to his dismay, about the flood
of ’84, and how the Susquehanna,
swollen by unseasonable rain
and choked with massive floes of melting ice,
had swept away all houses, livestock, fences,
hay and grain, and even burial grounds—
including Rachel’s—lying along its banks.
He felt as if he’d let his mother down;
yet one more promise he had made to Diah
and to himself remained to keep: Benoni. 

He spent the winters visiting the farms
of all the elder settlers in the townships
for clues, however insignificant,
but came up empty-handed. Everyone
for miles around knew Wil was on a quest—
a wild-goose chase, to some. The word got out.
It traveled over roads and forest trails;
it rode on merchants’ arks and timber rafts
downstream and back again. But it was Wil
who found Benoni, quite by accident. 

 

COMING SOON - PART FOUR, CHAPTER THREE

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART FOUR, CHAPTER ONE

His Place in the Family of Things

 
More than a quarter century would pass
before the Reverend Joshua Williams preached
at Diah Munson’s funeral. Meanwhile,
his fifth son, Ephraim, enlisted and
survived the war. But Daniel, who had served
as Life Guard under General Nathanael Green,
died of typhus following the siege
of Yorktown. Every effort Diah made
to find Benoni ended in defeat.
Wil promised he would keep the search alive.

It was impossible for him to know
that, as the years went by, the names had changed.
Having had no news from Diah Munson,
Rebecca moved to Harris’ Ferry, where
she raised Benoni as John Eton Jones,
“twin brother” to Susannah. Afterward,
Rebecca married tailor Gerhard Scholl;
so anyone attempting to locate
the widow Jones and young Benoni Munson
would only meet with bitter disappointment.

Time, as it must, went on. As businessman
as well as farmer, Diah recommenced
his dealings in immoveable property
in Northbury and later, Harwinton.
Though often he’d bemoan each wasted cent
he’d sunk into the grim “Wyoming disaster,”
Diah never spoke about the loss
of Rachel, baby Rachel, or Benoni.
Their souls inhabited his quiet hours,
their absence weighing on his failing heart.

 

The chapter titled His Place in the Family of Things comes from “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver.

 

 

COMING SOON - PART FOUR, CHAPTER TWO

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN: PART FOUR - PENNSYLVANIA AND BEYOND

 

 

Imagined image of refugees arriving at Harris' Ferry

Part Four

 
Pennsylvania and Beyond
 

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep . . .

—Robert Frost, from “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” 

 

The final four chapters in this book are:

 

1. Her Place in the Family of Things

2. Wil's Word

3. Unable to Close the Distance

4. All Ye Need to Know 

 

COMING SOON: PART FOUR, CHAPTER ONE

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART THREE, CHAPTER NINE

The Wyoming Monument - inscribed is the name of Ichabod Tuttle

 

In a Lonely Field

For weeks marauders made their presence known
in what was once Westmoreland. As they left
the scene of carnage, so did all the circling,
hissing, satiated turkey vultures,
who, for now at least, would have to settle
for an injured warbler or a woodland vole.
In late October, settlers who’d returned
to salvage what they could of wasting crops
were ordered to recover and inter
the remains of those who’d perished in July.

Distinctive shoes helped to identify
a few of them, but not with certainty,
for most had been reduced to scattered bones
and rotting rags. The men dug two mass graves
and laid their families and friends to rest
as best they could. The Battle of Wyoming
lived on in the collective memory,
though older settlers died and new ones came
to harvest trees and later mine for coal.
A monument would mark the sacred site.

 

Diah Munson never did go back
to place a proper headstone on the grave
of Rachel Tyler Munson, wife and mother
of their dozen children, living, dead, and lost.
Within six months he married Eunice Bradley,
a cousin whom he kept as bedmate, cook
and nanny. And because the Pennymites
had occupied his Susquehanna claim—
and later were awarded title to it—
Diah bought a grist mill and moved on. 

 

The chapter titled In a Lonely Field comes from “The Fall of Rome” by W. H. Auden

 

END OF PART THREE

 

NEXT: PART FOUR - PENNSYLVANIA AND BEYOND

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART THREE, CHAPTER EIGHT

 

Delaware River at Shohola

Together They Come

As Wilmot shepherded the family
across the Minisink’s first sixty miles,
he anguished over what had come to pass—
his mother dead, Benoni given up,
the settlement about to be destroyed,
the grief soon to befall his father, Diah.
He knew the dangers lurking in the woods,
yet sensed a deep and unseen power of grace.
Little Walter walked most of the way
and rarely asked to ride the patient horse.

As Diah rode back from Connecticut,
unsettling news he’d heard along the way
from families heading eastward on the trail
made sleep next to impossible. He reached
the shallow crossing on the Delaware
and stopped to rest his horse and stay the night
at Sam Wares’ inn and tavern at the clearing
Lenape named Shohola—Place of Peace.
He rose at daybreak, hoping to be back
with Rachel well before the week was out.

 

Diah saw them first. Bedraggled, barefoot,
at the water’s edge, waiting their turn
to mount the horse and ford the Delaware.
Beside himself with joy, he cried out, Wil!
then realized that Rachel wasn’t there.
On hearing every detail of his loss,
Diah neither wept nor censured God;
but, shouldering the blame for everything
that had occurred, he barely spoke a word
as they made their way back to Connecticut. 

 

The chapter titled Together They Come comes from the poem “Joy and Sorrow” by Khalil Gibran.   

Together they [joy and sorrow]come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Note: The author is directly descended from Walter Munson, the little boy in this chapter. The fact that he walked most of the way from Pennsylvania back to Connecticut is recorded in The Munson Record (Volume I).

 

COMING SOON - PART THREE, CHAPTER NINE

 

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART THREE, CHAPTER SEVEN

 

 

 

 

 

 

Departed

Eliza Tuttle waited anxiously
at Forty Fort throughout that hideous night.
As one by one the women learned the fates
of fathers, sons and husbands, any hope
she held out for her Ichabod’s return
was dashed when David Inman told of how
his friend had been pursued by Seneca,
then shot and scalped before he reached the river.
Her husband dead, her home burnt to the ground,
Eliza and her sons fled to the mountains.

John Phillips and his family left their farm
for Fort Brown and the Blanchard garrison.
The settlers’ livestock had been freed or stolen,
crops destroyed, cabins sacked and torched.
One night, Lenape warriors appeared,
commanding all the refugees to leave.
Meschatamen recognized the man
who’d given him his shirt and quarter horse.
He painted John and Mary’s foreheads black,
thus promising safe passage through the woods.

 

Wilkesbarre lay in ruins. Those who could,
hastily built rafts and poled downstream
to Fort Augusta and beyond. But most
trekked through the Poconos. Some wandered off
and were not seen again. Though many died
of sickness, sheer exhaustion and despair,
Eliza Tuttle, her sons, the Phillipses,
and hundreds more at last attained the fort
at Stroudsburg, with accounts of devastation
almost too harrowing to be believed. 

 

The title of the chapter Departed comes from Eliot’s “The Waste Land” with the repeated phrase, “The nymphs are departed.” (happiness, idyllic life, protection, is gone). Part III, The Fire Sermon

 

COMING SOON: PART THREE, CHAPTER EIGHT

 

 

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART THREE, CHAPTER SIX

 

 

 

 

The Burning Sky

Wil could see and smell the colonnades
of acrid smoke rising from Fort Jenkins
across the river from the Munson farm.
His packhorse, loaded for the journey back
to Farmington, stood stock-still in the heat.
He quickly gathered up his frightened siblings,
gave Rebecca Jones a haversack
of money for Benoni, and departed,
taking—as Diah had—the east-west road,
assuming they would meet up on the trail.

Rebecca Jones was ready. When she heard
the drumbeats and the fifer’s piercing notes
of On Saint Patrick’s Day, and soon thereafter,
musket-fire and whoops, she grabbed Wil’s cash,
the proceeds from the shad sales, the saltpeter
ten-pound bounty she had earned, and laid
Susannah and Benoni in the boat,
hopped in, and paddled down toward Fort Augusta,
drifting when the babies wailed for milk
or when she took a snack of bread and rum.

Stephen Munson stayed behind. He’d taken
the ferry to Forty Fort and volunteered.
Though wounded in the foot, he made his way
across the meadows and the fields, until
he reached the riverbank. Then, after dark,
he slowly swam back to the eastern shore,
unhitched the horse he’d hidden the woods
and rode away, the air pervaded by
the stench of burning flesh and by the howls
of Patriots he was helpless to set free. 

The Chapter titled The Burning Sky comes from the following poem by Amy Lowell:

 

            The throats of the little red trumpet-flowers are wide open,
            And the clangour of brass beats against the hot sunlight.
            They bray and blare at the burning sky . . .
            Splitting the sunlight into ribbons, tattered and shot with noise.

 

            ~Amy Lowell, from “The Trumpet-Vine Arbour”

 

 

 

 COMING SOON - PART THREE, CHAPTER SEVEN

 

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART THREE, CHAPTER FIVE

 

 

 

 

 

Her Cabin’d, Ample Spirit

Stephen found and brought back Doctor Sprague,
who breathed his patient’s vein, to no avail.
Rachel Tyler Munson, forty-two,
had reached the limits of her breeding life.
As June progressed into July, she passed.
The turmoil in the Munson house was such
that Wil and Stephen barely could control
the desperate keening of the younger ones.
Rebecca volunteered to nurse Benoni,
to which expedient Wil acquiesced.

Besides the doctor, Stephen Munson brought
frightful news of an immense flotilla
of Tories, Loyalists and Iroquois
descending the Susquehanna towards Westmoreland.
Families were flocking to the forts,
and Wil knew they would need to leave before
a proper funeral could be arranged.
His Fort Brown friends helped Wil dig Rachel’s grave
in the burial ground along the riverbank,
and built for her a rough-hewn pine box coffin.

They used the white and sky-blue coverlet
for Rachel Tyler Munson’s shroud, but some
was cut away for a blanket for Benoni.
Wil and Stephen set a sandstone rock
to mark the burial site until such time
as they’d return with Diah to retrieve
their baby brother from Rebecca Jones;
when they would place a proper death’s-head marker
for the one whose pious psalm-tune lullabies
would sing forever in their broken hearts. 

The title of the chapter Her Cabin’d, Ample Spirit comes from the poem “Requiescat” by Matthew Arnold.

 

COMING SOON: PART THREE, CHAPTER SIX

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART THREE, CHAPTER FOUR

 

Son of My Sorrow

Eliza Tuttle and Rebecca Jones
arrived, children in tow, at Diah’s house,
prepared for any length of lying-in.
They tried their best to soften Rachel’s dread
at this one’s coming well before its time,
legs kicking low, its head beneath her ribs.
But Scripture only added to her fears.
The local midwife, Nanny Dunn, smeared grease,
bound the nascent baby’s feet with cloth,
and eased him out into a world of hurt.

Why Rachel named her newborn son Benoni
can only be conjectured. She had borne
her labor pains as well as in the past.
Though undersized, his cries were deafening.
With plentiful red hair and dimpled chin,
he was the image of his father. Still,
her brow was furrowed with anxiety,
a pins-and-needles sense of worriment.
Perhaps it was the solar eclipse, or
the flame-like port-wine stain upon his cheek.

Rebecca and Eliza cooked and cleaned
and tended to the children. Two days later,
when Rachel asked her eldest daughter, Hannah,
to fetch the heirloom coverlet—for she
felt cold despite the heat—then threw it off,
her breathing short and quick, her milk suppressed,
Stephen went to bring back Dr. Smith
or Dr. Gustin. Neither one arrived,
both being in mourning for their wives, who’d died
of childbed fever just the week before.

 

 The chapter titled Son of My Sorrow comes from this Bible passage:

 

            And as she was having great difficulty in childbirth,

            the midwife said to her, “Don’t despair, for you have

            another son.” As she breathed her last—

            for she was dying—she named her son Ben-Oni.

 

            ~Genesis 35:16-18

 

 

Note: Ben-Oni, translated from the Hebrew language, means “son of my sorrow.”  Benoni Munson is listed as child number twelve of Obadiah Munson and Rachel Tyler Munson (page 460, The Munson Record). The death of baby Rachel (child number eleven) is also listed on that same page.

 

COMING SOON: PART THREE, CHAPTER FIVE

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART THREE, CHAPTER THREE

A Joyless Eye

Bound Brook. Brandywine. Germantown.
Valley Forge. As Stephen Munson spoke
of all he’d seen and done the past three years
while serving in the Continental Army,
his parents listened in intense alarm.
Knowing that the war was far from over
despite the victory at Saratoga,
and that the current military stalemate
meant the outcome could go either way,
Stephen kept his musket at the ready.

A sweltering heat wave swept across the valley.
As danger lurked upon the edges of
Westmoreland, Rachel, with a baby due
in late July, endured a weightiness,
not only from the pregnancy and heat,
but even more so from her husband’s absence.
Believing he had ample time to ride
to Farmington and back, to find a place
where they could all ride out the war in peace,
Diah had left them in the care of Wil.

 

Wil hid provisions in a hollow log
and left the family livestock free to roam.
He buried stores beneath the floor. He lent
Rebecca Jones his fifteen-foot canoe.
But there was nothing he could do about
the newly-planted sweet corn or the flax
and barley harvests of the coming weeks.
Then, one stifling late-June afternoon,
just as a new moon veiled the blistering sun,
Rachel fetched the birth-stool from the barn. 

 

 The title A Joyless Eye is from a line in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem, “To the Moon.” 

 

COMING SOON - PART THREE, CHAPTER FOUR

 

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART THREE, CHAPTER TWO

 

The Mystic Shining Cup

One fine June morning, after the spawning run
was over, Eton Jones, as was his custom
when running low on stone coal for his forge,
took up his pickax, shovel, several sacks,
and rode his packhorse up near Dial Rock
to dig as many lumps of shiny black
slow-burning anthracite as he might need
to get him through the month. His wife, Rebecca,
had given birth to their first child, a girl
they named Susannah, just the day before.

As he approached the outcrop site, the warmth
of the noonday sun upon his back, the scent
of laurel blossoms, and the lively chorus
of nesting thrush and warblers filled the man
with such a sense of cheer and raw contentment
that his wild rendition of the Liberty Song
rang through the air and echoed off the hills.
He made a mental note to gather up
an armload of the laurel for his wife
on his return trip to the settlement.

Afterwards, as Eton Jones was loading
the sacks of coal and tools into his cart,
three Seneca appeared, unhitched the horse,
shot Eton through the heart, and took his scalp.
Later in the day, another blacksmith,
Ishmael Bennet, came upon the scene
and brought the body back to the stockade.
Eton’s brother, Alden, buried him
and urged Rebecca, numb with grief and fear,
to gear up for a move to Fort Augusta.

 

The chapter title The Mystic Shining Cup comes from this poem:

 

            When with proud joy we lift Life's red wine
            To drink deep of the mystic shining cup
            And ecstasy through all our being leaps—
            Death bows his head and weeps.

 

            ~Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Death”

 

COMING SOON: PART THREE, CHAPTER THREE

 

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART THREE, CHAPTER ONE

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Finer Forge

Eton Jones’s simple blacksmith forge
was situated in the Pittstown fort
where Diah Munson owned Lot Number 5.
The shop was dark and reeked of molten iron,
coal dust, quenching metal, copious sweat.
Though mainly sought out as a farrier,
Eton Jones, a Patriot at heart,
in bold defiance of the British law,
produced the township settlers’ scythes and spades,
their axes, wheel rims, cowbells, pots and pans.

Jones was a buoyant, easygoing man
whose raucous singing often could be heard
above the cadenced clanging of the hammer
and the relentless breathing of the bellows.
He never pressed a customer for pay,
and often bartered horseshoes for a sack
of cornmeal, chestnuts or a beaver tail.
This vexed his solid, levelheaded wife,
Rebecca, who equated industry
with reckonings in shillings, pence and pounds.

 

And there was money to be made each spring—
shad season on the Susquehanna River,
a time when Eton Jones and Diah Munson
would drag a seine in tandem on its banks.
In May of ’78, when they had netted
thirty barrels of the spawning fish,
their cheerfulness at such a bounteous catch
was overshadowed by disturbing news
of raids and disappearances upriver
and sightings of the Tories at Tioga.

 

 

 

The chapter title The Finer Forge comes from this poem:

  Least Village boasts its Blacksmith—
  Whose Anvil’s even ring
  Stands symbol for the finer Forge
  That soundless tugs—within—

   ~Emily Dickinson, from “Do you see a Soul at the White Heat?”

 

COMING SOON: PART THREE, CHAPTER TWO

 

 

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN: PART THREE - WESTMORELAND

 

 

 Part Three

Westmoreland

If they could, the trees would lift you
and carry you from valley to valley,
and you would pass from arm to arm,
as a child walks from father to father.

—Gabriela Mistral, from “Bosque del pino”
(translation by Catherine Chandler)

 

 

CHAPTERS IN PART THREE:

(!)    The Finer Forge

(2)    The Mystic Shining Cup

(3)    A Joyless Eye

(4)    Son of My Sorrow

(5)    Her Cabin'd Ample Spirit

(6)    The Burning Sky

(7)    Departed

(8)    Together They Come

(9)    In a Lonely Field 

COMING SOON: CHAPTER ONE - THE FINER FORGE

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART TWO, CHAPTER NINE

 

“He who remembers”

As Diah Munson and two hundred more—

and then two thousand more—arrived to settle

with their families in Wyoming Valley,

most Lenape had already left

for Wyalusing and Ohio, though

from time to time they made their way downriver,

exchanging bear and beaver pelts for tools,

textiles, blankets, guns and alcohol,

weighing Yankee-Pennymite enmity,

eventually siding with the latter.

One Sunday afternoon in ’77,

John Phillips—son of Frank—his wife and children,

while foraging in the fields and open woodlands

for morels, wild strawberries and chicory,

met up with hunters of the Munsee tribe

who’d likely traveled downstream from Tioga

to barter at the Wilkesbarre trading post.

Mary pulled the children close, while John,

who sensed no danger, cautiously approached

the obvious leader of the group, and smiled.

Meschatamen—a tall, tattooed young man

with penetrating eyes, who knew enough

of English to get by—held out a haunch

of venison, a turkey and a buckskin,

in exchange for Scout, the quarter horse,

John’s linen shirt and Mary’s cap and bonnet.

John hoped the trade, though disproportionate,

perhaps had gained their trust and amity.

Meschatamen and John would meet again

one summer night, within a year or so.

Meschatamen is a word from the Lenape (Delaware) language that translates to "to remember" or "he who remembers" in English. It is historically documented in early Lenâpé-English dictionaries. (snakepower.org)

 

END OF PART TWO 

NEXT: PART THREE  -  "WESTMORELAND"

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART TWO, CHAPTER EIGHT

 

Fair Laughs the Morn

The settlement now had a name: Westmoreland.

Connecticut had legally attached

the town to Litchfield, many miles away.

The residents felt safe and more secure,

and with a confidence—however flawed—

fell to the business of enacting rules

and regulations, building schools and mills,

improving roads, providing for defense,

expelling bogus Yankees, working hard,

but worshiping and resting on the Sabbath.

Wilmot Munson, twenty-one, had bought

a half-right in the upper Pittstown district

near the confluence of the Lackawanna

and the Susquehanna, where, in time,

he hoped to build a home and raise a family.

Since spring, he had been courting Lucy Pierce,

a tall, outspoken, buxom honey-blonde

from Kingstown, who invariably won

the river common spinning bees, and wore

her homespun frocks with patriotic pride.

This interval of peace would not last long—

the Continental Army needed men.

Three Munson sons were quick to heed the call

in June of ’75, though Wil returned

the following March when Boston was secured.

But in the meantime, faithless Lucy Pierce

had switched her loyalties and bundled with

a Tory, had a child, and moved away.

Wil harbored no resentment toward the girl.

Years later, he would marry Patience Cooper.

NOTE: The chapter titled Fair Laughs the Morn comes from the poem “The Bard: A Pindaric Ode” by Thomas Gray.

COMING SOON: PART TWO, CHAPTER NINE

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART TWO, CHAPTER SEVEN

 

 

 

Of the Fresh Earth

It started with a mild sore throat that spring,

along with unaccustomed lethargy,

a lingering cough, a hoarseness to his tone

which he attributed to having worked

the previous winter months surveying roads

from Pittstown to the Delaware. All men

who owned a settling right were called upon

to help, from time to time, with its construction.

The daily wage, one shilling sixpence, proved

welcome income in a spartan season.

But Diah had unwittingly brought back

a killer with his pay: diphtheria,

known in that distant age by many names—

throat distemper, children’s plague, cynanche.

A week’s rest, eel broth, canker root and honey

were all that Diah needed to recover.

But baby Rachel slowly choked, and all

that Doctor William Hooker Smith could do,

both as physician and as man of God,

was offer prayers for her immortal soul.

Little Walter did not understand

the reason why his siblings sobbed and bawled;

and in the doleful days and weeks that followed,

Wilmot took them all under his wing,

watching his parents mourn, each in their way.

Rachel went about her daily tasks,

grateful that the others had been spared.

Diah laid his daughter in the earth,

pursed his lips, took up his axe, and chopped

the little cradle into firewood.

NOTE: The chapter title Of the Fresh Earth comes from the poem “Home Burial” by Robert Frost.

COMING SOON: PART TWO, CHAPTER EIGHT

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART TWO, CHAPTER SIX

 

A Bantam Little Shadow

Diah had planted more than corn that spring.

Rachel, in a late November letter

to her sister, Thankful, back in Wallingford,

described her new life in Wyoming Valley—

the ample, well-built house and open hearth,

the Susquehanna River close at hand,

the flora and the fauna of the forest,

the children diligent and dutiful,

the first year’s meager yield of winter wheat.

Her dread at being pregnant once again.

But since she knew no eastbound travelers

to whom she could entrust her forthright letter,

and later, thinking it had seemed too boastful,

while at the same time fearing she might hurt

her sister who had given birth but once,

Rachel burned the letter, page by page,

one night while stirring the next day’s cornmeal pottage.

And as she stirred, she thought about the baby

due in three months’ time, whose birth, despite

her inner reservations, pleased her husband.

Diah called to mind the midwife’s warning

back in Connecticut, and knew the toll

that Walter’s birth had taken on his wife,

and yet he welcomed this eleventh child.

Humming to himself Saint David’s Tune,

he carved a rocking cradle out of oak

and pledged that, should the baby be a girl,

she’d take her mother’s name. And so it was,

that on the twenty-eighth of February,

baby Rachel came into the world.

The chapter title A Bantam Little Shadow comes from the poem “Song of the Egg” by Deborah Warren.

COMING SOON: PART TWO, CHAPTER SEVEN

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART TWO, CHAPTER FIVE

 

 

 Corn Planting Moon

The Munson wagon was all set to go—
three yoke of oxen and a dairy cow,
feed, a water barrel and provisions
to last the journey and the summer months,
seeds of corn and wheat and flax, a hoe,
a shovel, scythe and rake, a spinning wheel,
a bucket, pots and pans, their clothes and linens
wrapped in Rachel’s heirloom coverlet.
They left the first of May in ’72.
A Friday. Diah knew, but let it pass.

Diah walked ahead with the nameless sumpter.
Rachel, Wil, and Stephen manned the wagon.
Daniel, Hannah, Ephraim and Irene
gently spurred the oxen with their goads.
Sarah, Obie and the baby, Walter,
wedged between the boxes and the bales.
The trip was uneventful till they ferried
across the Hudson River at Newburgh Bay,
when, fearing they would surely drown, the children
clung to each other, wailing in dismay.

 

They met up with the Tuttles one day later—
Rachel’s cousin Ichabod and his wife,
Eliza, five months pregnant with their first.
The Minisink, although not much improved
and barely wide enough for them to pass,
was even, high and dry, and more direct
than other paths that led through swamps and bogs.
So, when they made their camp upon Cobb’s Mountain,
the Munsons and the Tuttles slept beneath
the full Corn Planting Moon in perigee.

 

 

 Coming soon - PART TWO, CHAPTER SIX

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART TWO, CHAPTER FOUR

Promis’d Joy

 
Other settlers shared in Diah’s joy
that day upon the summit of Cobb’s Mountain.
They, too, had left their families behind—
for now; but, confident hostilities
with angry Pennymites had been resolved
with Captain Ogden’s ousting, they believed
their future in the valley would be bright,
and that, come spring, the town would boast a school,
a Meeting House, impenetrable forts,
a grist mill, and a saw mill, and a name.

The emigrants divided into crews.
Diah, ox-strong, joined the logging team;
likewise Frank Phillips from Rhode Island. Soon
the two became fast friends, and Frank, who claimed
as yet no settling right, helped Diah clear
his lot and daub his hewn-log house. At night,
the tired men bunked down in the Pittstown fort
they called Fort Brown, exchanging tales of home,
though talk of their ambitious dreams eclipsed
all wistfulness for wives and honey cake.

 

As autumn turned to winter, Diah left,
but Frank stayed on. He manned the Munson right
against intruders, thieves and bogus claims.
In mid-December, Frank obtained the right
to settle in the valley, purchased land,
and built his house along the Lackawanna,
a few miles north of Diah’s. Unbeknownst
to these devoted men, their elder sons
would lead—when happiness reversed to sorrow—
their families from a valley set ablaze. 

NOTE: 

The title for the chapter Promis’d Joy comes from the poem “To a Mouse” by Robert Burns

 

            An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,

            For promis'd joy! 

 

Historical Note:  Pittstown Fort (originally spelled Pittstown and later becoming Pittston, Pennsylvania) was a aignificant colonial and Revolutionary war stockade. In historical military rosters and regional records, it is also frequently cross-referenced or identified as Fort Brown (or Brown's Fort/Blockhouse), which was erected on a local farm owned by the Brown family.

 

 Coming soon: PART TWO, CHAPTER FIVE