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