ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN, PART TWO , CHAPTER ONE

 Part Two : Wyoming
 

O it will be beautiful.
—Gabrielle Calvocoressi, from “At Last the New Arriving”

 

 

The Anchor

Wilmot Munson, sixteen years of age,
was short and stocky like his father, Diah.
Marked by the gap-toothed smile and dimpled chin
passed on from time to time to Munson sons,
Wil shared Diah’s energy and strength,
his keen blue eyes, his fiery red hair,
and most of all his eagerness to move
beyond the boundaries of Connecticut.
But unlike Diah, Wilmot’s voice and heart
were softer than his father’s ever were.

Born on a summer night when the moon was full,
this second child and second son was quick
to learn the skills reserved for boys and men.
But Rachel, in her wisdom, taught her Wil
not only how to cipher, read and write,
but also all the chief domestic arts—
cooking, sewing, gardening, how to cure
the common illnesses—and by example,
how to live an honorable life
of industry, humility and grace.

Barnabas, the eldest, was away
at Yale when Diah left the family
to clear his pitch in the Wyoming Valley.
Thus it was that Wil, as next in line,
was tasked to stay behind to care for Rachel
and his siblings. He assumed this role
with constancy, but not without a twinge
of wounded pride and smoldering resentment
he tried without success to hide from Rachel,
who knew his thoughts as though they were her own.

 

 STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO, CHAPTER TWO

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN: INTRODUCTION BY GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE

 

 

Before we continue with Part Two, I reprint below the short introduction to Annals of the Dear Unknown,  by George Elliott Clarke, 7th Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada, author of Where Beauty Survived: An Africadian Memoir (Knopf, 2021)

 

Raised in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, poet Catherine Chandler 

spelunks into, excavates, and recovers her Euro-American-settler 

genealogy, while examining the U.S. Revolutionary War and 

its disruptions of agricultural endeavour and frontier households, 

noting the economics of trade with Indigenous peoples and 

their sometimes violent disaffection with the offerings of settler-interlopers.

In Annals of the Dear Unknown, Chandler recognizes that 

“Uncertainty and ambiguity / must either be rejected or embraced, / 

leaving room for mystery and truths / more beautiful for having been imagined.”

The Richard Wilbur Award-winning bard presents her narrative 

verse in basically decasyllabic lines in trios of ten-line stanzas. 

Americans will hear Wilbur, here, but also Longfellow 

(Evangeline), while Canadian readers may be reminded of E.J. Pratt 

(Brébeuf and His Brethren). Whatever the echoes that one may 

recognize, this verse saga is original, rich with true incident, and 

even a kind of chronological preface to William Carlos Williams’ Paterson.

Enjoy here and now these Annals of the Dear Unknown.

—George Elliott Clarke, 7th Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada
Author, Where Beauty Survived: An Africadian Memoir (Knopf, 2021)

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART ONE, CHAPTER FOUR

 

Colonel Dyer pitching his scheme to Connecticut landowners

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Certain Tract of Land       

 

 

A piece of paradise. Glib promises

of fertile plains and valleys so unlike

the rocky fields they farmed. Connecticut

was filled with eager, able-bodied men

whose fathers’ lands, bequeathed, could not suffice

once divvied up among their many sons.

And so, when Colonel Dyer pitched his scheme

one summer evening at the Meeting House,

two hundred fifty men subscribed at once,

and soon thereafter, some five hundred more. 

 

 

How can we possibly go wrong? they thought,

plunking down five dollars for the chance

to start anew along the Susquehanna.

Although it lay three hundred miles away,

and there were rumors that the land belonged

to Pennsylvania or the Iroquois,

they cast their lot with Dyer and his friends.

Joel Munson, skeptical, declined,

but passed along the word to nephew Diah,

who bought and held a half-share, biding time.

 

 

Following the birth of their tenth child,

when he’d disposed of almost everything

he owned in Farmington, one autumn morning

Diah packed a hatchet and an axe,

an adze, a saw, an auger, and a mallet,

his firelock, a tinderbox, some shot,

a butcher knife, a skillet and a spoon,

some cornmeal, bread and bacon, applejack,

a woolen blanket and his deed of sale.

Rachel watched him from the dooryard, silent.

 

 [END OF PART ONE]

 

 

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART ONE, CHAPTER THREE

 

 

 

 

 Pattern on a 1771 woven coverlet, reprinted by permission of 

The National Museum of the American Coverlet, Bedford, Pennsylvania

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Reason Weaves          

 

                                               

Diah was a superstitious man

who looked for signs and omens in his dreams,

the moon, and shooting stars. He’d not abide

a black cat in the barn. He counted crows,

and slept feet facing south. Contingent on

the farmland’s need—or not—for sun and rain,

he’d find and kill a snake and either hang

or drown it. Even as a little boy

he’d kept a lucky charm—a codfish bone—

and drew his stockings on, first left, then right.

 

 

His journeys rarely started on a Friday;

he never trimmed his finger-nails on Sunday;

and in accordance with the local lore,

he married on a Wednesday afternoon.

Thus Diah was alarmed when Rachel placed

the linsey-woolsey paneled coverlet

that had been passed on down from Granny Tuttle

and Rachel’s mother—both of whom had died

not long past forty—on their wedding bed.

He voiced his dread in no uncertain terms.

 

 

So Rachel put the coverlet away,

wrapped in calico, where it would lie

unseen, unused, but not unvisited.

For, in those rare and scattered unfilled hours,

she’d open up the cedar dowry chest,

remove the coverlet, and lose herself

in the embrace of its remembered scents

and in the white and sky-blue warp and weft

of other lives now absent from her own.

One day it would become a winding sheet.

 

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART ONE, CHAPTER TWO

 

AI-generated image based on my description

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Disposing of Their Children

 

In January, seventeen forty-six,

Nathan Tyler deeded to his neighbor,

Obadiah Munson, one hundred acres

in Wallingford, Connecticut. The pact

included Tyler’s house and barn, its mills,

and the tacit understanding Tyler’s daughter

Rachel, nine years old, would wed the younger

Obadiah ("Diah"), then fifteen,

when Rachel came of age. The two men closed

the deal with several tankards of hard cider.

 

 

And after seven years had passed, they wed.

When Barnabas, their first of twelve, was born,

Obadiah Senior, out of  “love, 

good will and natural affection,” gave 

his son the the house and sixty acres of

as well as all improvements made thereon,

the selfsame bartered tract. And thus began

the young man’s unremitting appetite

for land, an uneventful run of years

when gains outnumbered losses. Wallingford

was good. But Diah Munson needed more.

 

 

The years went by. They moved to Farmington,

where Rachel loved her plain and sturdy home,

her busy life, the brand-new Meeting House,

the blessings and the bounties of the farm,

but felt uneasy when she heard the men

and Wil, their teenaged son, discussing plans

to settle in that godforsaken place

where uncle Ephraim Tyler had outrun

Lenape warriors in ’63.

And all the trouble brewing ever since.

 

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN: PART ONE, CHAPTER ONE ("at the big river flat")

 

 

 

 

Part One

 

Xwewamënk

 

 

 

Hushed the streams, and quiet

the rocks beside the streams.

The Lenape, like all of them, unspeaking.

The Spirit guardians whose masks hang on the posts, silent,

The four walls, hushed,

Silent the far quarters of the world.

 

~Daniel Hoffman, from Brotherly Love

 

   

“at the big river flat”   

 

 

Along the North Branch of the Susquehanna

within the folded Appalachian Mountains

lies a geological depression—

canoe-shaped Ridge and Valley Province.

Before it had a name, when blue-veined ice

receded some twelve thousand years ago,

nomadic hunter-gatherers arrived.

Yet all that one can ever know of them

is what can be divined from potsherds, bones,

tools and weapons carved from stone and wood.

 

 

In time, through woodlands dense with oak and birch,

hemlock, hawthorn, hickory, pine, and beech,

new men pursued the white-tailed deer and elk.

In spring, with cradleboards upon their backs,

their women broke the soil with deer-bone hoes,

planting seeds of maize and squash and beans.

The Lenape had described this blessed land—

dreamt up by Kishelamakank, and formed

by spirits, where a shad-filled river flowed

and waterfowl were plentiful— Xwewamënk.

 

 

Wyoming to the settlers from the east,

who claimed the Endless Mountains and the fields,

the forests and the sacred hunting grounds,

attempting to possess what can’t be owned,

waging war with brothers over deeds

and documents, until a greater cause

united them in an uneasy peace;

while farther north, Haudenosaunee chiefs

no longer of one mind, would one day mourn

their forfeiture of solidarity

 

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN: "NAMED PARTICIPANTS"

 

The grave of Wilmot Munson (1731-1845)

NAMED PARTICIPANTS (in order of appearance):

(for reference purposes as you read the story -- some only appear briefly

 - those in yellow are major characters)

 

There seems to be a requirement that the play must find its own finale, with participants tossed along impersonally to the end.[1]

 

 

Little Girl, author of this verse-tale, descendent of Diah Munson and Rachel Tyler Munson

Nathan Tyler, father of Rachel Tyler Munson

Obadiah Munson (Sr.) (1703-1773)

Rachel Tyler Munson (1736-1778), wife of Diah Munson and mother of their twelve children

Obadiah "Diah" Munson (Jr.)  (1731-1805), son of Obadiah Munson (Sr.) (1703-1773),  husband of Rachel Tyler Munson

Barnabas Munson (1754-1792), eldest child of Diah and Rachel

Uncle Eph, Rachel’s uncle Ephraim Tyler

Granny Thankful Doolittle Tuttle, Rachel Tyler Munson’s grandmother

Colonel Eliphalet Dyer, Representative of the Susquehannah [former spelling] Company of Connecticut

Joel Munson, Diah’s uncle

Wilmot Munson (Wil) (1755-1845) Diah and Rachel’s second child. The protagonist of the story.

Walter Munson (1771-1836), Diah and Rachel’s tenth child - Catherine Chandler's 4th great-grandfather

The twelve Munson children: Barnabas, Wilmot, Hannah, Stephen, Daniel, Ephraim, Irene, Sarah, Obadiah III, Walter, Rachel, Benoni

Captain Amos Ogden, Pennsylvanian settler, owner of a fortified blockhouse near Mill Creek

Francis West “Frank” Phillips, Wyoming Valley settler originally from Rhode Island, Diah’s friend

Private Ichabod Tuttle, Rachel’s cousin, settler in Westmoreland, killed in the Battle of Wyoming, 1778

Elizabeth “Eliza” Matthews Tuttle, Ichabod’s wife

Thankful Tyler Smith, Rachel Tyler Munson’s sister

Doctor William Hooker Smith, physician and minister, Westmoreland

Lucy Pierce, a girl from Kingstown

Patience Cooper Munson, Wil Munson’s wife

John Phillips, Wilmot Munson’s friend, son of Francis Phillips

Mary Chamberlain Phillips, John’s wife

Meschatamen, Lenape warrior. His Lenape name translates into English as “He who remembers”

Eton Jones, blacksmith at Fort Brown, one of the Pittstown stockades, friend of Diah Munson

Rebecca Jones, Eton Jones’s wife, wet-nurse to Benoni Munson, mother of Susannah Jones

Susannah Jones, Rebecca and Eton’s daughter

Ishmael Bennet (not Bennett), another local blacksmith

Nathan Jones, Eton Jones’s brother, Wyoming Valley settler

Nanny Dunn, local midwife

Benoni Munson (1778 - ?), youngest child of Obadiah Munson and Rachel Tyler Munson, renamed John Eton Jones

Dr. Lemuel Gustin, local physician

Dr. Joseph Sprague, one of the first physicians in the Wyoming Valley settlement

David Inman, Ichabod Tuttle’s friend

Sam Wares, proprietor of a tavern and inn at Shohola

Eunice Bradley, Diah Munson’s second wife

The Reverend Joshua Williams, pastor, First Church of Christ, Harwinton, Connecticut

John Eton Jones, Benoni Munson’s adoptive name (1778-unknown)

Gerhard Scholl, tailor, Rebecca Jones’s second husbanD

 

TOMORROW:  PART ONE, CHAPTER 1

---

[1] Myers, Charles E. A Connecticut Yankee in Penn’s Woods: the Life and Times of Thomas Bennet. Wilkes University Press, 1993, p. 205

 

 

ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN: PROEM -- TAKING STOCK

 

Downtown Wilkes-Barre, PA, early 1950s

Proem

Their lives are part of my life’s inventory;

my role grows smaller when I glimpse the whole.

Today I pocketed a lump of coal.

These are the facts, but facts are not the story.

 

~David Mason, from Ludlow

 

       

Taking Stock 

 

 

By the middle of the twentieth century,

“King Coal” had been dethroned by natural gas

and oil. In a place tagged Diamond City,

daily life had lost much of its luster.

But to the sad eyes of a little girl,

taking in the glitz of movie house

marquees mirrored in the rain-slicked street

of Public Square that blustery April night,

her Trailways slowly rolling toward the station,

Wilkes-Barre spangled, scintillated, shone.

 

 

No one had told the little girl, back then,

that Yankee blood was coursing through her veins,

nor that the subject of the “Doodle” ditty

had anything at all to do with Rose,

the woman sitting stern and ramrod straight

in that old gilt-framed sepia photograph

hanging on an uncle’s parlor wall.

It was the present moment, nothing more―

a father far away with polio.

A North-End double-block. A soothing thumb.

 

 

That night, the little girl slept unaware

that over nine-score years had come and gone

since Rachel Tyler Munson was interred,

unmarked, along the Susquehanna’s banks,

her children fleeing for their lives; a time

when Eton Jones would chip the glistening rock

from local outcrops for his blacksmith forge,

long before the Knox Mine tragedy.

A time when rival passions for the land

burned like the hot blue flame of anthracite.