Showing posts with label Rocks Village. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rocks Village. Show all posts

January 06, 2020

Aunt Mose, the Rocks Village Witch

Aunt Mose was reputed to be a witch and the people of Rocks Village (a rural part of Haverhill, Massachusetts) blamed their misfortunes on her. If the butter didn't churn properly they blamed Aunt Mose. If the lamps flickered and went out at a party they blamed her too. One of her neighbors, Captain Peaslee, covered his house and barn with horse shoes to deflect her evil magic. 

Once a group of neighbors who had gathered together for a corn-husking were troubled by a junebug that kept flying around their heads. The insect was quite persistent and wouldn't leave. Finally someone swatted it to the ground with a stick. The next day Aunt Mose was seen limping around the Village. She said she had fallen down the stairs but no one believed her. Clearly, people whispered, she had assumed the form of a junebug and been injured when it was swatted. Clearly she was a witch.

Like many people accused of witchcraft, Aunt Mose did not have much money. She lived for many years in a small house but was forced to sell it. On the day of the sale she angrily told the family who bought it that they would never be happy there. She was right. The family's spinning wheel stopped working as soon as they moved in and only worked properly when Aunt Mose borrowed it. When she returned it to them it stopped working again. Even worse, the mother of the family sickened and died eighteen months after moving in. At her funeral everyone remembered Aunt Mose's angry words...

Of course, the rumors infuriated Aunt Mose and she always denied she was a witch. In an effort to preserve her reputation she went to the local Justice of the Peace and asked him to draft and notarize a document declaring she was not a witch. The JP didn't have any such document, but he wrote one and signed it just to humor the elderly woman.

A 19th century daguerreotype
A young man once fell in love with Aunt Mose's daughter. His friends warned him that her mother was a witch but he just laughed at them. When he told them he was going to Aunt Mose's house that night to announce his intentions they decided to play a prank. They arranged big old chains above the door of her house that would fall when he opened it and scare him off. But things didn't quite work the way they planned. As the young man approached the house a strange light illuminated the doorway and he saw the chains. The prank didn't go off the way they wanted, but the young man was frightened by the strange light and decided not to court Aunt Mose's daughter. 

When Aunt Mose finally died no one could find her will but it was believed to be held by the local wealthy squire. The squire, however, had plenty of other things on his mind and was in no rush to find the document. 

A few months later the squire was sitting next to his fireplace when he got the strange impression he was not alone. Looking up he saw Aunt Mose sitting next to him. He was frightened since she had seen her put into the ground. They sat there in silence, Aunt Mose puffing ferociously on her pipe, until the squire finally spoke:

"Aunt Mose," he said at length, "for the Lord's sake, get right back to the burying-ground! What on earth are you here for?" 
The apparition took her pipe deliberately from her mouth and informed him that she came to see justice done with her will; and that nobody need think of cheating her, dead or alive." (quoted in William Sloane Kennedy, John G. Whittier, the Poet of Freedom, 1892. Note: Kennedy's text calls her "Aunt Morse.")

Aunt Mose then stepped out in the dark night. The squire made sure the will was executed according to her dying wishes the following day. 

*****

I think most small New England towns had their "witches," usually eccentric elderly women that were convenient scapegoats for life's misfortunes. Most of them have been forgotten now but the legends about Aunt Mose have survived thanks to John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 - 1892), the famous poet who was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Aunt Mose lived on Corliss Hill behind Whittier's childhood home and he mentioned her in his poems and other writings. Other local residents added their remembrances to Whittier's, giving us the colorful stories we have today. 

John Greenleaf Whittier
Aunt Mose was a real person but it's not entirely clear who she was. In some stories she is called Aunt Mose and in others she is called Aunt Morse, which makes things complicated. The Rocks Village Historical Society suggests that she was Sarah Flanders Chase, who was born in 1762 and was the wife of Moses Chase. Perhaps she was called Aunt Mose because his name was Moses, or perhaps because she was called Aunt Morse because she was related to the Morse family. The Society also suggests that another woman named Chase may have been involved in the sales of the cursed house, not Aunt Mose, so several legends might be conflated. 

In the 17th century being accused of witchcraft was a serious matter, but by the early 19th century being called the town witch was much less dangerous. It was still inconvenient and unpleasant though. I find the stories about Aunt Mose charming (and maybe a little spooky) but I suspect her life was not an easy one. I like reading these old witch tales but have no desire to live in the past. 

*****
My other main source for this post was Rebecca Ingersoll Davis's Gleanings from Merrimac Valley, Sheaf Number Two, 1886.

August 06, 2019

Visiting Strange Graves: A Scary Encounter with the Countess

It was a November night in 1984, and we had just seen A Nightmare on Elm Street in my hometown of Haverhill, Massachusetts. The "we" in this case were me, my friend Christine, and Cesar, an exchange student from Mexico spending the year at our high school. We had screamed and been appropriately terrified during the movie, and we were in the mood for more scary stuff after it ended. We had watched teenagers encounter terror and death. Maybe we wanted to encounter them ourselves?

"Let's go to the Countess's grave," Christine suggested in the parking lot.

"Yes!" I said. I knew about the grave but never been there myself.

"What is the Countess's grave?" Cesar asked.

We tried to explain. I had first heard about the grave when I was in fourth grade. Some kids from Haverhill's Rocks Village neighborhood told me what they were doing on Halloween night. They were going to wait outside an old cemetery to see if the Countess emerged from her grave. I'm not sure what would happen next, but having seen old Dracula movies I assumed that a countess must also be a vampire. They seemed to feel the same way too.

As a teenager I knew the vampire legend probably wasn't true but the grave still had a reputation as being spooky and somehow supernatural. Perhaps it was haunted, or possibly cursed. It was the perfect place to visit after seeing a horror movie so we got in Christine's car and followed the river until we reached Rocks Village. The old Colonial homes of Rocks Village are charming during the day but they were pretty spooky that night. The Greenwood Cemetery was even spookier, surrounded as it was by a black iron fence.


The Countess's Grave. Photo from Haverhill Public Library.

We drove into the cemetery. Spookiest of all was the Countess's grave. Her gravestone was surrounded by a black iron cage. What supernatural evil had it been built to contain? What horror was trapped within? What...

Suddenly we heard something scratching on the roof of the car.

"Oh my God!" Christine said. "Did you hear that?!"

Conversation came to a stop as we listened intently. Then we heard it again. Something scratching on the roof. It sounded like fingernails, or maybe knives. We had just seen Freddie Kruger terrorize teenagers with his knife-fingered glove...

Then we heard laughter from the back seat. Christine and I turned around to see Cesar with his hand out an open window, scratching his fingers along the car's roof.


*****

We didn't know it at the time, but the Countess's gravestone had originally been enclosed in the iron cage to keep tourists from chipping pieces off as souvenirs. Mary Ingalls (1786 - 1807) was apparently the United States's first countess, a title she assumed after marrying Count Francois de Vipart when she was only 21. Count de Vipart had wound up in Rocks Village after fleeing a rebellion in Guadaloupe and he supposedly fell in love with Ingalls at first sight. Their marriage was passionate but unfortunately short-lived. Mary died a few years later after they wed and her husband returned to France. 

Their doomed romance was immortalized by the poet John Greenleaf Whittier in his 1863 poem "The Countess." The poem was quite popular in the 19th and early 20th century and Mary's grave became a tourist attraction. Fans of the poem who visited the grave chipped off small pieces as souvenirs until an iron cage was put up around it. 

I say Whittier "immortalized" the Countess but none of my friends knew anything about his poem or the Countess's real life. They certainly weren't taught to us in high school literature or history courses. We just knew that it was a strange grave, and a strange grave must have a strange story attached to it. Not knowing the real story we just made one up that seemed appropriate.

This is actually pretty common in New England. There are lots of strange-looking graves that are perfectly innocuous, but strange legends arise because of the grave's unusual appearance. Here are just a few I know about:

Midnight Mary's Grave, New Haven, Connecticut. Mary Hart's epitaph describes how she died at midnight on October 15, 1872 and contains this ominous quote from the Book of Job: "The people shall be troubled at midnight and pass away." Because of that ominous quote, legends have developed claiming that Mary was buried alive, was an evil witch, and/or that she kills anyone who visits her grave at midnight.

Black Agnes, Montpelier, Vermont. This large sculpture of a robed figure is actually titled Thanatos (death in Greek) and marks the grave of a wealthy businessman. Most graves in the Green Mount cemetery are much more modest, and so folklore has transformed Thanatos into Black Agnes, a statue that kills anyone who sits on it.

The Witch's Grave, York Maine. Mary Nasson's grave in York's Old Burying Ground is covered with a huge stone slab. A plaque nearby explains that the slab was placed there to keep animals from digging up her body but local legends claim Mary was a witch. The slab keeps her restless soul from rising out of her grave.

Colonel Buck's Monument, Bucksport, Maine. The large funerary monument erected to honor the founder of Bucksport has a strange stain on it shaped like a boot. The stain is probably caused by iron in the stone. Legends claim that it was placed there as a curse by a witch the Colonel executed.

You get the idea and may even know of some similar graves yourself. These legends may not be historically accurate but they definitely are psychologically powerful. Cemeteries remind us of our own mortality and these strange graves speak to us with particularly loud voices. 

Like a good horror movie they tell us the scary things we secretly long to hear. They tell us about the thin line between the living and the dead, about our darkest fears, and about the inescapable power of death itself. But also like a horror movie, our encounters with these strange graves are voluntary. We choose to visit them and (possibly) experience frightening things, but (usually) escape intact in the end. 

The Countess's gravestone was removed for repairs and sadly no longer stands in the Greenwood cemetery. I haven't seen Christine or Cesar in many, many years but I still fondly remember that night we visited a haunted grave.

October 30, 2011

Witchcraft in Rocks Village and Beyond



When I was in grade school in Haverhill, I spoke with some kids who lived in the Rocks Village neighborhood. They said that on Halloween night, they were going to wait at a crossroads to see if a dead countess buried in a nearby graveyard would walk down the street. I'm not sure what they'd do if they did see her, but the story really impressed me. At the time, I didn't wonder too much about why a countess would be buried in Massachusetts.

When I was in high school, I drove with my friends Christine and Cesar to the countess's grave one night after we saw Nightmare on Elm Street at the movie theater. We were spooked to see that her grave was surrounded by an iron cage! Then Cesar scraped his hand across the roof of the car a la Freddy Krueger, we all screamed, and drove home.

It was only later I learned why there was a cage around Countess Mary Ingalls's grave. She was the first countess in the US, a Rocks Village native who married refugee Count Francois Vipardi in the 1700s. Their romance became the subject of a popular poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, and the cage was to protect the gravestone from souvenir seekers. The stone is now kept in a building to protect it from vandalism.

I don't know where the spooky story about the countess originated. Perhaps it's just that when Americans of a certain generation see the word "count", they think of vampires.

The countess may not be a ghost or vampire, but there is some interesting folklore about witches in Rocks Village. Charles Skinner in Myths and Legends of Our Own Land relates the following stories:

Some people having a party one night in Rocks Village were pestered by a large beetle. The beetle flew in their faces relentlessly, buzzing its wings angrily. Finally, one of the partygoers swatted the insect and crushed it with his foot. At that very moment, Goody Mose, a local woman with a sinister reputation, fell down the stair in her house. Clearly, the beetle had been sent by her to disrupt the party.

Goodman Nichols, another Rocks Village inhabitant, cast a spell on a neighbor's son, "compelling him to run up one end of the house, along the ridge, and down the other end, troubling the family extremely by his strange proceedings..." Skinner doesn't share what caused Nichols to cast the spell, or how the bewitchment was resolved.

Rocks Village lies along the shore of the Merrimack River, and some neighboring towns also had their share of alleged witches. In Amesbury, Barrow Hill was supposedly where both Indian shamans and witches gathered. (The two were identical to the Puritans.) Fires burned on top of the hill late at night, and figures could be seen dancing around it. Even in the 19th century some locals said strange lights could be seen on the hill at night. Amesbury was also the home of Goody Whitcher, whose loom kept moving and making noise long after she was dead.

In West Newbury, Goody Sloper had a reputation as a witch, but redeemed herself when she rescued two people from drowning in the river. And in Newburyport, Goodwife Elizabeth Morse was accused of witchcraft in 1679 by neighbors who had grudges against her. One neighbor even claimed that she made his calves dance on their hand legs and roar. She was sentenced to death but ultimately pardoned by the governor.

I feel lucky to live someplace where there is so much folklore waiting to be discovered. Have a great Halloween!