Boxcar Children

#7 The Woodshed Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1962.

Grandfather Alden’s sister, Aunt Jane, calls and tells the family that she’s decided to move back east. She’s been living on the family’s old ranch out west, but she has decided that she would like to return to the east, where Mr. Alden and his grandchildren live. She asks Mr. Alden if he can buy back the old farm where the two of them grew up, so she can move back there. Mr. Alden is pleased that his sister will be moving closer so he and his grandchildren can see her more often and that they have a chance to reclaim their old home.

He calls the man who now owns the farm, Elisha Morse, and finds that he’s selling it pretty cheaply because it’s gotten pretty run down. Mr. Morse says that Mr. Alden probably won’t like the farm now because it’s in rather poor condition and has a leaky roof. He’s selling it because he couldn’t really afford to maintain it. However, Mr. Alden says that’s fine and agrees to buy it. He and his grandchildren go there to get it fixed up and ready for Aunt Jane’s arrival.

Grandfather Alden tells his grandchildren about the village near the farm and their neighbors as they drive to the farm. One house in particular used to be owned by the Bean family. Aunt Jane was once fond of their son, Andrew, and there was a point when she might have married him, but he got into some serious trouble as a young man and left town over it. Apparently, he used to shoot at trees in the area to scare away trespassers from his family’s farm, but one day, he accidentally set the woods on fire. It was a pretty bad fire, and he felt like he couldn’t show his face in town again. Last they heard of him, he’d gotten a job as a sailor and was traveling around the world. Nobody knows what he did after that or where he is now.

The Alden farm is very old indeed. It was originally built in 1750. The house has four chimneys, a barn, and a woodshed. It’s painted white, and when the Aldens approach it, it doesn’t look like it’s in such bad condition to them. The Aldens go inside and look around, admiring the old-fashioned fireplace and other features. The place is dusty and dirty, so it needs a thorough cleaning, but other than that, they don’t see any serious problems.

They talk to the son of the man who sold them the house, Simeon “Sim” Morse. His father said that he would be able to help them fix the leaky roof, and Mr. Alden presses him to tell him why his father thought the house was in such bad shape when it doesn’t really look that bad. At first, Sim Morse hesitates to say anything, but when Mr. Alden insists, he admits that it’s not so much about the physical condition of the house so much as the feeling it gives people.

People have regarded the area as bad luck since the incident when Andy Bean caused the fire. The rumor is that he did it while playing with a gun that he actually found on the Alden farm, an antique that appears to date from the Revolutionary War. Since then, it seems like people who have tried to live on the Alden farm have had bad luck, and nobody seems comfortable staying there, although nobody seems able to point out anything specific that gives them that odd feeling about the house. Sim Morse’s father still has the antique gun that apparently started the fire, and Mr. Alden says that he’d like to see it. He also arranges with Sim Morse to make some repairs to the house and to add a couple of indoor bathrooms because the house never had indoor bathrooms.

When the Aldens see the antique gun that Mr. Morse has, it turns out to be an old flintlock gun. When Violet reads a book about the Revolutionary War that she found in the farmhouse, she sees a picture of a gun that looks a lot like the one Mr. Morse has. It’s in a section of the book that talks about leaders of the Revolution hiding and their men hiding weapons to use in the war. The Aldens start to wonder if that gun could have been one of those hidden weapons.

Then, they discover that someone has been hiding and camping out in the old woodshed on the property. When they search the woodshed, they find a hidden cave or tunnel. Could this be the secret of where Andy Bean once found the old gun? Could the person who’s been hiding in the woodshed know something about a secret that dates back to the Revolutionary War?

My Reaction

This book is one of the original 19 books in the Boxcar Children series, written by the original author. Because it is one of the original books in the series, the child characters have aged from the first book. Rather than being the usual ages from the first book and from the later ones, with the children’s ages frozen at Henry being 14, Jessie being 12, Violet being 10, and Benny being 6, we are told at the beginning of the story that Henry is now in college and both of the girls are in high school, Jessie as a senior and Violet just entering. (Although, I kind of quibble with that because there’s supposed to be only 2 years’ difference in age between Jessie and Violet, so if Jessie is a senior, I would expect that Violet would be a sophomore, unless Jessie skipped a grade ahead.) Benny is still in elementary school because he’s much younger than the others, but he’s no longer a little kid.

We also get more of the backstory of the Alden family in this book. They’re not the first family to own the old farmhouse, and during the story, we do learn who owned the farm at the time of the Revolutionary War. However, we also learn some things about the Aldens when Mr. Alden and his sister Jane were young and living on this farm. Jane admits that she made a mistake when she was younger, not marrying Andy Bean when he asked her, and she admits that her primary reason for not wanting to marry him was ridiculous. The fact is, Jane thought that “Bean” was a silly last name, and she just didn’t want to be known as “Mrs. Bean.” Because she put Andy off and because Andy left the area after the incident with the gun and the fire, the two of them went their separate ways for years. Fortunately, the theme of family members or old friends becoming reconciled after years of estrangement crops up a lot in the Boxcar Children books. As the children investigate the matter of the antique gun and the odd things happening around the farm, they eventually learn where Andy is, and he and Jane reconcile. In later books in the series, Jane and Andy are married, although in later books, the children often come to stay with Aunt Jane when Andy is out of town on business, so we don’t always see him and Aunt Jane together.

I didn’t think the mystery was too mysterious, but I enjoyed seeing the Alden children during the books when the children are starting to grow up and seeing the Alden family grow and chance while getting a glimpse of their past. Because Jessie is a teenager in this book, it’s also hinted that she and John Carter, a former FBI agent who works for her grandfather, have a mutual crush. John Carter disappears as a character in later books, especially because the children’s ages become frozen, and it would be inappropriate for him to have a crush on Jessie when she’s only 12 years old for the rest of the series. In this book, if Jessie is a high school senior, she’s probably either 18 years old or almost 18, which is more acceptable.

Similarly, I think it’s worth pointing out that the Alden children are able to do some of the things that they do without adult supervision partly because, especially in these earlier books, they’re aging, and they’re not as young as later books in the series declare them to be. At this point, Henry is a legal adult in college, and Jessie is either at or close to legal adult status. At their ages, they’re not only legally old enough to be on their own in many instances but also old enough to take charge of younger siblings without other adults or local authorities thinking it unusual.