Tales from Granary Burying Ground: James Otis and the Lightning Bolt

I love the term "burying ground," don't you? There's something very raw and primitive about it, but at the same time it's kind of charming because no one really uses the term anymore. Modern people inter their dead in cemeteries, not in burying grounds or even graveyards. I can understand why. Cemetery is a more gracious sounding word that masks what happens to the deceased, while burying ground is quite blunt. Yup, this is where we bury them.

The Granary Burying Ground on Tremont Street is one of Boston's oldest cemeteries. It was originally founded in 1660, and got its current name in 1737 from a granary that stood next to it. In the 1830s some Bostonians tried to rename it to Franklin Cemetery, after Benjamin Franklin's family who are buried inside the graveyard. The name didn't catch on, though, and we still know it by it's older, blunter, primitive name.

Many famous people have their final resting places within the Granary Burying Ground: patriots, Puritans, mariners, politicians and poets. Some of them, like lawyer James Otis, have strange stories surrounding their lives and deaths.

James Otis's grave on a stormy evening.

James Otis (b. 1725, d. 1783) is probably best known for coining the phrase "Taxation without representation is tyranny." It's a phrase many children learn in school while studying the American Revolution. Otis uttered those words during a five-hour (!) speech he made arguing against the "writs of assistance," which were laws that allowed British troops to search any colonist's home without needing a search warrant or even probable cause. Naturally the writs were extremely unpopular in Massachusetts. Otis lost his case agains the writs of assistance but parts of his epic speech were reprinted as a pamphlet and helped rouse ant-British feeling in the colonies.

Surprisingly, Otis had originally been pro-British. He came from a prominent Loyalist family, but he joined the revolutionary cause when his father was denied a promised appointment as Chief Justice of Massachusetts. Perhaps his abrupt transition from Loyalist to Revolutionary helps explain why the British troops despised him so much. In 1769 he got into an argument with several British officers in a coffeehouse. The fight turned physical, and one of the officers struck Otis on the head with a cudgel.

Here comes the strange part of the story. After the attack Otis's mental capacities declined precipitously and he was unable to work further as a lawyer. Some sources say his mental decline began before the fight, while others claim the blow to his head caused it. Whatever the cause, Otis left the Boston area to live at a friend's home in Andover. His sister came to visit often, and whenever she did Otis told her that he wished God would take him from this world with a lightning bolt. I guess he wanted death his to be fast, painless, and just a little dramatic.

James Otis

He got his wish on May 23, 1783. While standing outside the Andover house with some family members, Otis was struck by a bolt of lightning. He died instantly. No one else was injured, and Otis’s body was not burned or damaged in any visible way. Witnesses say the corpse had an expression of calm repose.

Did God hear his wish? Was it just luck? It's hard to say. In Ancient Greece it was considered a holy act to die by lightning, and Otis's contemporaries in Massachusetts seemed to feel the same way. Many years later, in the 19th century, workers who opened his grave discovered the roots of a mighty elm tree growing from his skull. This too was taken as a good omen, as his brain "had been transformed into branch and leaf and blossom, thus breathing itself forth again into the free air and the Universal Flow.”

The elm tree is long gone but you can still visit Otis's grave, which is prominently located in the front of the burying ground near Tremont Street.

Simeon Smith: Wizard, Necromancer, and Patriot

Simeon Smith was one of the early settlers in the New Hampshire town of Wentworth (located near Waterville Valley). Town records indicate that he arrived in 1772 or 1773 and built a farm on the border of the nearby town of Warren.

Simeon held town office in Warren (thinking that's where his property really was), and named his first-born son Warren as well. Simeon was employed as a tailor but also fought with the Continental army. One of his sons grew up to be Wentworth's first town historian.

All in all, Simeon Smith sounds like a good, upstanding citizen. He sounds like the kind of patriotic, hard-working individual New England was built by.

Suprisingly, he might also have been a witch. I guess he was also the kind of mean, malefic individual who built this region.

The following is a quote from George Plummer's History of Wentworth (1930):

The old people, or many of them, did believe in witches; there is no doubt about that... The archwizard and head necromancer of our town was no doubt Simeon Smith. He, it was commonly believed, had supernatural powers and thereby made his neighbors uncomfortable at times. 

What exactly made his neighbors so uncomfortable?

Wonderful were the feats he could perform. Sometimes, from sheer malice, he would saddle and bridle one of his neighbors and ride and gallop him all over the country round. The butter would not come and he was in the churn. The children behaved strangely and he bewitched them. Smaller than a gnat, he could go through the keyhole; larger than a giant, he was seen at twilight stalking through the forest...

Most of those are the typical actions of witches found in New England folklore: riding neighbors in their sleep, disrupting household tasks, and afflicting the children. Turning into a giant is a new one to me though!

It's hard to reconcile the patriotic New Hampshire pioneer with the malevolent necromancer who tormented his neighbors. He obviously cared about his town, but it's clear his neighbors disliked him enough to called him a witch.

Several stories tells how Simeon's witchcraft and patriotism were united in acts of evil magic. For example, in the early years of the Revolutionary War he once rushed out of a Sunday meeting because he had seen through second sight a battle happening far away. This was not entirely unusual. He would often go into a trance like state while mounted on his horse, but neighbors assumed he was "gazing upon fiendish revels", aka the witches sabbath.

Here's another story. A Tory family named Merrill lived in Wentworth and Simeon decided to torment them because they supported the British cause. He bewitched their son Caleb, making him go deaf and causing him to "run up the sides of the house or barn like a squirrel."

To protect their son the Merrills fought back with their own magic. They put some of Caleb's urine into a bottle and set it by the fire. As the boy's urine boiled, Simeon Smith, miles away in his own home, bled from his eyes. But the urine ran out through a crack in the cork, and Simeon recovered.

The Merrills tried again. This time they put Caleb's blood in the bottle, and stuck a small blade through the cork until it reached the blood. This was some serious magic! The next day Caleb recovered his hearing and told his family that Simeon Smith was dead. When they investigated they found the "archwizard and necromancer" of Wentworth had indeed passed away.

However, his magic lived on after his death. Simeon was buried underneath an apple tree (per his will), but children never stole any fruit from the tree. The apples that grew on it were "crabbed and bitter beyond belief."

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The information about Simeon Smith is from Richard Dorson's Jonathan Draws the Long Bow (1946), George Plummer's History of Wentworth (1930), and this genealogy site.

God of Wine Part I: The Windham Bacchus

One of the archetypal images of New England is the white steepled church standing next to the town common. These churches can be seen all over the region, and are a testament to early settlers' devotion to Christianity.

Sometimes, though, a little bit of paganism crept in, as this story illustrates. 

On June 10 in the year 1776 the British ship Bombrig was captured by American naval forces in Long Island Sound. Four of the ship's crew were sent to a crude jail in Windham, Connecticut.

The four men were Edward Sneyd, the ship's commander; John Coggin, the ship's Irish boatswain, who supervised the deck crew; John Russell, the ship's carpenter; and a fourth sailor named William Cook. Although the men were not tortured or particularly mistreated, prisons and jails in the 18th century were grim places where prisoners were confined in small, poorly ventilated cells and fed poorly.

Luckily for the sailors, the owner of a tavern on the other side of Windham's Green (the town common) took pity on them and provided them with good food and plenty of alcohol. Very little is known about the owner except her name - Widow Carey. Who Mr. Carey was and how he passed away is unknown. History is also mute about why she acted so charitably towards the prisoners, but it doesn't take much imagination to guess why a lonely woman might be drawn to four needy sailors. Some people just love a man in uniform!

To repay Widow Carey's charity the sailors asked their wardens for a large log, which they were given. Using just their jackknives they carved from it an image of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine.

The Windham Bacchus

Roughly two feet tall, the Windham Bacchus portrays the god as a naked chubby man astride a keg of wine. Bacchus holds a bowl of grapes and apples in front of his unmentionables, and he has chubby cheeks and a big smile. Widow Carey accepted the carving from the sailors and mounted it in front of her tavern.

In November the sailors escaped from Windham's jail and made their way to Norwich, Connecticut, where they stole a canoe. While paddling their way towards Long Island, the canoe capsized and Sneyd, Russell and Cook drowned. John Coggin survived but was recaptured.

The sailors met a grim fate, but their masterpiece lived on. Widow Carey kept it in front of her tavern for many years, until she married another tavern owner and moved it to his establishment. From there Bacchus was sold in 1827 to Lucius Albee, who ran the Staniford House tavern. Albee hung Bacchus from a giant elm tree, where it remained for many years until a large storm blew the sculpture down, breaking one of its arms. After languishing in a woodshed Bacchus was purchased for twenty-five cents, repaired, and celebrated as an iconic image from the Revolutionary War. You can now see it (or should I say him?) in the Windham Free Library.

I like to read about ancient Greco-Roman religion, so this story made my antennas perk up. I don't know much about the history of New England taverns, but it's interesting that tavern owners in Puritan-founded Connecticut would exhibit a statue of a pagan god. It's also interesting how the historical events surrounding the carving parallel ancient Bacchic myths and rituals.

Bacchus is the Roman name for Dionysos, the primordial god of wine and ecstasy. It makes sense for him to be associated with a tavern, but what about those British sailors? Dionysos was associated with water and the sea, and in some Greek rituals a statue of the god was pulled through the streets in a wagon shaped like a ship. In many myths Dionysos seeks refuge in the sea from his oppressors, and also emerges from it to triumph over his enemies. In one famous myth, Dionysos is kidnapped by sailors who want to sell him into slavery. He transforms them into dolphins and they leap into the sea.

Dionysos was also associated with trees and even was addressed as Dionysos Dendrites ("Dionysos of the Trees"). Paintings from Greece show people worshiping his image attached to a tree, and he also guarded orchards. It's only fitting that Lucius Albee hung him from an elm.

Unfortunately there is a dark side to many of Dionysian myths. People who introduced his worship into an area or city often died by drowning, much like the sailors. For example, Dionysos taught Icarius of Athens to make wine, but Icarius was drowned in a well by drunken shepherds who erroneously thought he poisoned them. As an infant Dionysos was nursed by his aunt Ino, but she was driven mad by the jealous goddess Hera and drowned herself and her son Melicertes in the sea. At the god's sanctuary in Lerna a lamb was thrown into an allegedly bottomless lake as an offering to underworld deities. 

Was there some supernatural or divine force at work in 18th century Windham? I don't want to speculate too much. After all I don't want to sound too paranoid. Maybe historic events just sometimes follow ancient mythic patterns.

On the other hand, there was an actual Bacchus cult in Windham County in the 19th century. But that's my post for next week!

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I got my information from History of Windham County, Connecticut (1889) by Richard Bayles, and The Story of Bacchus (1876) by Brigham Payne, William Lawton Weaver, and Samuel Peters.