Posted on by TracyC

Lady Margaret’s Ghost

Felicity, An American Girl

Lady Margaret’s Ghost by Elizabeth McDavid Jones, 2009.

This book is one of the mystery stories published to accompany the American Girl series of historical books. The main character of this book, Felicity Merriman, lives in Colonial era Williamsburg, Virginia, around the beginning of the American Revolution.

Felicity’s mother is going on a trip to visit a relative, along with Felicity’s younger siblings. As the oldest girl in the family, Felicity will be in charge of the household while her mother is gone and her father and his apprentice, Ben, are working in the store her father owns. It’s a big responsibility and an honor that Felicity’s mother considers her capable of managing the household, but because Felicity is still young and some household tasks involve heavy work that is difficult for her to do alone, her mother has hired a temporary cook, Mrs. Hewitt, to help her. Because Felicity is known as a daydreamer who doesn’t always pay attention to what she should be doing, her mother reminds her to focus on the task at hand while she’s minding the house, although she has faith in Felicity and is sure that she will do a good job.

Soon after her mother leaves, a crate arrives at the house for Felicity’s father, along with a letter. The letter explains that a cousin of Felicity’s father has died and that the crate contains some family heirlooms that his cousin left to him. These heirlooms once belonged to a common ancestor of theirs, Sir Edward Merriman, a wealthy nobleman and the first member of their family to live in the colonies, more than 100 years earlier. Felicity’s father didn’t know his cousin well because they never lived very close, and his cousin was much older, but he does know the history of the heirlooms. The heirlooms include a lady’s silver vanity set and a silver cup and rattle for baby. The story is that Sir Edward’s wife, Lady Margaret, owned the vanity set, and the rattle and cup were for their infant son. Unfortunately, the baby was stillborn, and Lady Margaret died shortly after the birth. After her death, her husband and the household servants believed that she still haunted the house. The haunting may have been part of the reason why Sir Edward decided to leave his home in England and go to America, but even though he later remarried and had other children, he could never bring himself to part from the things that belonged to his first wife and child. Even before Felicity’s father tells her about the ghost story, Felicity gets a strange feeling from the vanity set, and she wonders if the objects could be haunted.

However, Felicity soon has to turn her attention to household issues. Mrs. Hewitt, the temporary cook arrives, and she is a brusque and unpleasant woman. She is rude and condescending to Felicity when they are working in the kitchen together. Because Mrs. Hewitt is so rude, Felicity is nervous and makes mistakes, making her look like more of a fool to Mrs. Hewitt. They can’t easily replace her because cooks are in demand right now because this is Publick Times in Williamsburg, and there are many visitors to the city. Everyone is busy tending to them. Mrs. Hewitt was the best they could find available. Felicity’s father does speak to her about her rudeness to Felicity. After that, Mrs. Hewitt is sullen and resentful, and she is even more pleased whenever she sees Felicity doing something wrong.

There is also an exciting event taking place. Felicity has entered her horse, Penny, in a horse race at the fair in town! Ben, her father’s apprentice, will ride her. The day of the race, Penny seems to be doing well, but then, she suddenly develops a problem during the race. When Felicity and Ben check her out to see what was wrong, they discover that someone put burrs under Penny’s saddle! Worse still, the wounds caused by the burrs become infected. Felicity is very upset and worried about Penny, and she wonders who would have hurt her horse. There were a couple of men looking at her before the race. There was also a boy named Dawson and a girl called Anne.

Dawson turns out to be a runaway, but he also has some knowledge of horses. Although Felicity is a little suspicious of him at first, Dawson helps to heal Penny’s wounds. He also says that he saw Anne gathering burrs, but it was probably on behalf of someone else.

When Felicity realizes that her treasured coral necklace, which her mother also wore as a girl, has disappeared, Felicity questions whether she carelessly lost it or if someone has stolen it. Felicity has been doubting herself and her ability to manage the household because of all the mistakes she has made since her mother left, and the clasp of the necklace was a little loose. This could just be another disastrous mistake, but it is suspicious that Anne seemed so friendly to her at the race and then ran away from her later. Anne also literally bumped into Felicity at the race. Could she have taken the necklace? Dawson seems to think so, but then again, can Felicity really trust everything he says?

Felicity still gets an odd feeling from Lady Margaret’s heirlooms, and she thinks that she sees something white moving around at night. At first, she thinks that it could be Lady Margaret’s ghost, but then, strange things begin happening around the house. Things disappear, and Felicity worries that maybe she carelessly mislaid them. Then, her necklace unexpectedly turns up, and Lady Margaret’s vanity set vanishes! Are these strange things part of the haunting of Lady Margaret or the work of a thief? If it’s a human thief, is it the work of the runaway Dawson, mysterious Anne, unpleasant Mrs. Hewitt, or the mysterious person who arranged for Penny to be hurt?

The book ends with a section of historical information about Colonial era Williamsburg. The story is set during Publick Times, which was when court was in session in Williamsburg. People would gather in Williamsburg during Publick Times to see the trials in court and attend a public fair in Market Square. The fair offered various kinds of entertainment, games, and races, like the horse race in the story.

My Reaction

The story leaves it a little ambiguous at the end about whether Lady Margaret’s ghost exists, but if she does, she is not harmful and has nothing to do with the thefts in the story or what happened to Penny at the horse race. As the section of historical information explains, there are many new visitors in Williamsburg during Publick Times. This was a good setting for the story because there are many strangers to the city with unknown pasts and motives, and crowds at the fair might harbor thieves.

Part of the story and part of the section of historical information in the back focuses on the subject of orphans. Both Dawson and Anne are orphans, and neither of them is really being cared for. Dawson admits that he used to steal to support himself after his father died, but he is seriously looking for work. Anne technically has a guardian, but her guardian is abusive and uses her as a servant rather than taking care of her.

When the thefts occur and mysterious things start happening around the Merriman house, both Dawson and Anne look like the best suspects, but there are also possible adult suspects. Even after Felicity realizes Anne’s situation, she isn’t entirely sure which of the men at the fair that day is Anne’s guardian. Mrs. Hewitt also looks suspicious because she is so unpleasant and seems to be trying to make trouble for Felicity. I though the book did a good job of supplying an array of suspects to consider. The solution to the mystery was one of the possibilities I thought was most likely, but there were enough other possibilities to make the story interesting.

Posted on by TracyC

Thanksgiving on Thursday

Magic Tree House

Thanksgiving on Thursday by Mary Pope Osborne, 2002.

There is a letter to the readers at the beginning of the book, where the author briefly describes the history of the Thanksgiving holiday and how it started as a three-day harvest festival and didn’t become a regularly-celebrated holiday until President Lincoln declared it as a national holiday of thanksgiving to be celebrated annually on the last Thursday in November in 1863. The separate prologue to the book explains that Jack and Annie have started learning magic, and they’ve been going on a series of missions to find different types of magic.

It’s Thanksgiving, and the children know that they will be leaving for their grandmother’s house soon, but they can’t resist going to the tree house to see if there’s another message from Morgan. There is a message that tells the children that they are about to find a new kind of magic. A book in the tree house takes the children back in time to the first Thanksgiving in the American colonies.

They read about the Pilgrims and the voyage of the Mayflower, and they realize that they are now in 17th century Plymouth. Annie remembers how her class at school put on a play about Thanksgiving, and she gets excited, thinking about how they’re about to meet some of the people they studied in school. She dashes off, eager to get a look at them, although Jack thinks they should pause and work out a plan before they approach anyone. Unfortunately, Jack gets caught in a hunting snare.

A group of people, Pilgrims and Native Americans, come to see what got caught in the snare, and they find Jack and Annie. When they question the children, Jack isn’t sure exactly what to say, so he tells them that they came from “a village up north” and that they’re here to learn how to grow corn. Remembering something else from the book, he claims that his parents sailed to the colonies with Captain John Smith when he and Annie were babies. Captain Standish says that Squanto knew Captain John Smith and that he might remember them. To the children’s surprise, when Governor Bradford asks Squanto if he remembers two babies called Jack and Annie who sailed with Captain John Smith, he says he does. Jack wonders if he’s mistaking them for two other children from the past.

The children witness the arrival of Chief Massasoit and his men. Priscilla tells the children that they were invited to join the harvest festival (something that historians debate), but they weren’t expecting such a large group, and they wonder if they’re going to be able to feed everyone. The Wampanoag say that they will go hunting to provide more food, but the Pilgrims say that they will also gather more food.

Jack and Annie are invited to join the food-gathering efforts, although it’s difficult for them because they’re not used to hunting and fishing, like 17th century children would be. Annie thinks it won’t be so bad because they’ve helped their parents prepare for Thanksgiving before, but the types of food at this harvest festival are very different from the “traditional” Thanksgiving food the children would have expected, and the methods of preparing them are old-fashioned. Jack and Annie find themselves trying to catch eels and find clams and trying to tend things cooking over an open fire. The children’s efforts don’t go well, and at first, they’re afraid that they’ve ruined the feast, but the magic they came to seek saves everything.

My Reaction and Spoilers

The magic that the children find is called the “magic of community.” Even though Jack and Annie think that they haven’t contributed much, and they burnt the turkey they were trying to cook, their mishaps haven’t ruined the feast because the entire community was helping all the time. Because everyone contributed something, there is enough for everyone. Besides learning how the first Thanksgiving was different from the holiday they know, Jack and Annie learn about cooperation, how people share and support each other.

At one point, Jack asks Squanto why he says that he remembered them. Squanto seems to realize that Jack and Annie aren’t quite what they said they were, but he says it wasn’t really them that he was remembering. He explains a little about his own past and what it felt like to be an outsider in a strange place, reminding the children to remember that feeling and to be kind to others in the same situation.

I liked the author’s noted about the history of the Thanksgiving holiday. For another book that explains the first Thanksgiving feast from the point of view of both the Pilgrims and their Wampanoag guests, I recommend Giving Thanks by Kate Waters.

Posted on by TracyC

The Matchlock Gun

The Matchlock Gun by Walter D. Edmonds, illustrated by Paul Lantz, 1941, 1969.

Ten-year-old Edward Van Alstyne lives with his family on the mid-18th century American frontier in upstate New York, not far from Albany, during the French and Indian War. His father is captain of the Guilderland militia. Edward has had a long fascination for the large, old matchlock gun that his great-grandfather brought to America from Holland and wonders why his father never uses, preferring his smaller musket. His father shows him the old matchlock gun and explains to him how it works and how it’s old-fashioned, very large, and more difficult to use than his musket.

While Edward’s father, Teunis, prepares to go out on duty, Edward’s mother, Gertrude, worries about what will happen if Indians (Native Americans) attack while he is gone. Teunis doesn’t think that’s likely, but he says that Gertrude can take the children and go to his mother’s house. Gertrude and Edward’s grandmother do not get along because Edward’s grandmother has never approved of her. His grandmother never thought she was good enough for her son because she doesn’t come from a Dutch background, like they do, and because her family is poor. Gertrude would rather not turn to her for help except as a last resort, and Teunis doesn’t blame her.

Gertrude is still nervous after Teunis leaves, and she refuses to let Edward take some butter over to his grandmother’s house, as he often does. She doesn’t want the children going too far from the house, in case there’s trouble. Then, a family friend, John Mynderse, stops by with a message from Teunis, saying that he is fine, but the “French Indians” (the Native Americans aren’t actually French, but they’re allies of the French – I’ll explain below) have burned settlements, and he won’t be home tonight. It’s worrying news. Later, they see smoke on the horizon and worry about how far away it is, unsure of the exact distance.

Although Gertrude tries to be brave, she admits to Edward that she thinks that the fires are close. Edward asks if they should go to his grandmother’s house, but Gertrude would prefer to stay in their own house and wait for Teunis to arrive home. Privately, Gertrude has realized that the old brick house where the grandmother lives is more visible from the main road than their small wooden house. She doesn’t think that there’s anything they can do to help Edward’s grandmother, but she is hoping that she and the children will be overlooked if the Indians come through their area.

Gertrude begins coming up with a plan for defending their house, and she asks Edward if he would be afraid of firing the big, old matchlock gun. Edward wouldn’t mind firing the big gun, but it’s so big, he doesn’t know if he could manage to hold it. Gertrude says that she has a plan for that. Although they are inexperienced, Gertrude and Edward manage to get the gun loaded, and Gertrude chops a hole in the side of their house that they can fire through. Gertrude doesn’t expect Edward to actually aim the gun or hit anything. They just prop it up at the hole, and Gertrude tells Edward that, if she calls his name, he must use a candle to light the powder in the gun. When the powder is lit, Gertrude says that the big gun will go off with a huge bang and might scare off any attackers.

The Indians do come and attack the old brick house, and then, they come for the house where Gertrude and the children are. Gertrude is struck by a tomahawk as she runs for the house as the Indians approach, but she calls out to Edward, and Edward fires the gun. The attackers are killed in by the explosion from the gun, but the family’s house is set on fire. The children manage to drag their injured mother to safety, and Edward rescues the matchlock gun from the burning house.

When Edward’s father and the militia arrive, Gertrude is injured but still alive. The old brick house did not burn, as Gertrude had thought, but the barns were destroyed. The grandmother and her slaves barricaded themselves in the brick house. Edward is praised as a hero for defending his family at such a young age and for killing more Indians by himself than the adults did. (That last part is a little creepy, but they do praise him for that.)

This book is a Newbery Medal winner. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

The Backstory

This is one of those books where I find the backstory much more interesting than the book itself. This is one of those historical novels for children written and published during World War II that looks back on American history and past conflicts, trying to reinforce historical lessons, instill patriotic feelings, and help children come to terms with the war that was happening around them at the time this book was new. This particular story takes place in the Hudson Valley in New York, not far from Albany, before the American Revolution in a community that’s largely settled by people of Dutch descent.

The family in the story is based on the real Van Alstyne family, and the incident with young Edward helping to protect his family from attackers by firing the family’s old matchlock gun really happened. The story emphasizes the family’s Dutch background. The mother of the family, Gertrude, is described as having a Palatine background, which means that her family was Germanic, but the major emphasis is on the Dutch influences in their background. There are Dutch words and phrases throughout the story.

The Foreword to the story explains the family’s history, but I actually recommend that readers save reading the Foreword last instead of reading it before reading the story. It explains not only the family’s past, but what happened to the family after the incident in the book. Little Trudy grew up and married a man named Hogle, and she became known as an excellent spinner, or spinster, in the professional sense rather that the unmarried sense. Her spinning ability was attributed to having to help her mother from a young age because her mother’s shoulder was permanently damaged from the tomahawk injury she suffered in the story. Trudy is credited as the one who passed on the story about her brother and the matchlock gun to future generations.

When interviewed about his historical novels, which were more for adults than children before he wrote this particular book for children, the author said:

“I want my readers to get out of my books a sense of the relation of history to the present day. History is often taught as a study of dead things and people; or else, and worse, from the debunking angle. What I want to show are the qualities of mind and spirit of plain, ordinary people, who after all carry the burden of human progress. I want to know about people, how they lived, what they hoped for, what they feared. I want to know what it was like to be born into this time or that, and what a man left behind when he died.”

I see the point about focusing on the lives of ordinary people because history is largely made up of daily life. Much of my historical education had this focus as well, not just focusing on the famous people or the major events, which are usually a reflection and extension of what’s happening on the ordinary and every day level. Much historical writing these days also does focus on debunking, which requires prior knowledge of what’s being debunked and why to be really effective, so I don’t think it works too well on level of children.

My personal approach to history, however, is to put things into context. I’ve given you the context of WWII, when this book was written and published, and the author’s view, but to get the full story behind this story, it helps to understand the French and Indian War. In the book, the attacking American Indians are just shown in their role as attackers, attacking innocent women and children and burning their homes. It’s a savage image that leaves a bad taste in the mouths of modern people, but it helps to understand what’s happening in the larger conflict.

In spite of its name, the French and Indian War was not fought between French people and American Indians. Instead, the French and Indian War, also called the Seven Years’ War (1754-1763), was fought between the British and the French, with the French aided by Native American allies. Both the French and the British were claiming territories for colonies in North America to support their empires, and as rivals for territory, each side was trying to assert its authority and control over certain regions. The Native Americans enter into the conflict because each side had Native American allies.

The reasons why Native Americans were willing to ally with these foreign powers and actively fight and risk their lives in the conflict were based on their perceptions of the treatment they were likely to receive from each side and the other tribes that were already allying with each side because of the war and their estimates of how the war was likely to affect their own territories and which side’s victory would be most likely benefit them. When European colonists entered North America, started their colonies, and began instigating these territorial conflicts, they were already entering a land inhabited by groups of people who had their own home territories and their own systems of alliances, relationships, and conflicts with each other. Essentially, the European colonists and this French and British conflict were destabilizing and unsettling Native American groups, and those Native American groups were trying to both work out new alliances with some of these newcomers that would grant them a greater degree of security and to push out groups of newcomers who seemed to represent the greatest threat to them and their territory. What each of these Native American groups wanted most out of this conflict was whatever they thought would best allow them to hold their own territory and put them in the strongest possible position to defend against rivals for that territory. Not all groups were eager to join this fight, but those who did believed that it was their best opportunity to protect themselves. In Walter D. Edmonds’s words, this is “what they hoped for, what they feared,” and this is what they were willing to kill and die for.

The reason why this war is important to American history is not only because it was a territorial struggle between major powers but also because it was one of the events that led to the American Revolution against Britain. The British colonist disputed having to pay Britain’s expenses for this war. The treaty and settlement that ended the war helped shape westward expansion that continued after the Revolutionary War. This war was also part of George Washington‘s early military experience, before he became the famous general of the American Revolution.

Part of what makes the Van Alstyne family’s experiences of this war both fascinating and tragic are that they belong to neither of the major sides of the war. They are not British or French. They are primarily of Dutch descent. That is emphasized repeatedly in the story. It’s how they think of themselves, and they are living among other colonists and settlers of similar backgrounds. Their misfortune is that they are living in one of the regions that is under dispute by larger powers. I think that’s part of the reason why the concept this story appealed to the author of the book. It’s about ordinary people caught up in larger events, and it shows the effect that larger conflicts have on ordinary people.

However, since the main hero of this story is a ten-year-old boy, I have to admit that it does make sense that the boy probably didn’t understand much about the larger conflict going on around him. The story only takes place over a little more than a day. His father leaves one evening, the children go to bed, the family is nervous the end day, they are attacked that night, and then, the father comes home. From the boy’s perspective, this attack on his family might have been the conflict in a nutshell. The territorial disputes between larger colonial powers was likely beyond him, which is why he doesn’t think about them during the course of the story. I still think that readers should understand it even if the characters don’t, though.

A Slave-Owning Family

One other thing that I think is important to mention is that there is slavery in the story, and Edward’s own family has slaves. In particular, Edward’s grandmother uses slaves. The slaves are not actually shown as characters in the story, but they are discussed. At one point in the story, Edward’s younger sister, Trudy, asks their mother why their grandmother has slaves and they don’t. Their mother explains that the old brick house where their grandmother lives and the land and slaves connected to it actually belong to the children’s father, as his father’s heir. So, technically, the slaves actually do belong to Edward’s father. However, their grandmother is very attached to the old brick house, so their father lets her live there and use the slaves to manage the house and estate.

A major reason why they explain all of this is so readers understand the setting of the story better and the relationship that this family has with the grandmother. Teunis built the wooden house where he lives with his wife and children so they could have some independence from his mother. He is willing to let his mother live by herself in the family’s big, old house with slaves to look after her and run the place, but it’s really better for his wife and children if they don’t live with her because of her attitudes. In particular, it’s her attitudes toward the mother of the family that make life difficult for them and leave them not wanting to get closer to her, not her attitudes about slaves. Teunis and Gertrude are willing to manage their smaller house without the help of slaves because it’s worth it to them to have to do without extra help in exchange for some separation from Teunis’s disapproving mother, which tells readers a few things about the grandmother we never see and the relationship the rest of the family has with her. Edward’s grandmother seems to be an overbearing and disapproving woman. While Teunis cares about her and her feelings, their relationship with her is better when they don’t live together in the bigger house, even though they could, making use of the household slaves themselves.

No one in the story disapproves of the idea of slavery, which also leaves a bad taste in the mouths of modern readers. Modern heroes and people who really believe in the ideals of freedom would have sympathy for enslaved people, not people actively practicing slavery itself. Since the family in the story is based on a real family, and keeping slaves was something that this real family actually did, it’s understandable from an historical viewpoint that the Van Alstynes are being described as they actually were. It’s important to acknowledge the way things actually were, even when they weren’t pleasant. But, there’s nothing that says that modern readers have like it. Just because the Van Alstynes are the main characters of this story doesn’t mean that you have to like everything about them or everything they do.

The focus of the story is a young boy who did a brave thing during an emergency situation and saved both his own life and the lives of his mother and little sister in the process. That’s ultimately what the author wanted the children of his time to take away from this story. His focus is on the boy and his family, and he doesn’t explain anything about larger social issues or even the background of the conflict they find themselves in. This is fairly short chapter book, a little less than 100 pages, and it seems aimed at younger elementary school students, not dealing with anything more complex than the main incident and adventure of the story. However, outside the story, readers can understand the wider context of things that happen in the story, and they can feel any way they want about that. If you understand the broader situation enough to have feelings about it, I think that’s a good thing.

For another review of this book, I recommend trying this one. It’s much shorter than mine, but it also has some thoughts about how people feel about historical aspects of this story.

Posted on by TracyC

Johnny Tremain

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes, 1943, 1971.

The story takes place in Boston around the time of the American Revolutionary War, and famous historical figures appear in the story.

Fourteen-year-old Johnny Tremain is a young apprentice to a silversmith. Even though he is one of the younger apprentices, he has talent and is favored by the silversmith. His favored position allows him to boss the other apprentices, and the silversmith is even considering having him marry one of his granddaughters when he has completed his apprenticeship so he can inherit the business. Johnny doesn’t mind the idea of marrying one of the granddaughters, although he is in the habit of teasing them, and inheriting the business would give him a steady future, although the business isn’t particular lucrative. Most people basically like Johnny, although one of the older apprentices, a boy called Dove, resents him.

Johnny has one particular flaw, and that is that he is arrogant and prideful. While he is talented, he gets overconfident and too full of himself because of his talent. The silversmith even warns him and lectures him about it, telling Johnny not to lord it over the other apprentices that they are not as gifted as he is.

However, Johnny doesn’t listen to him, and he soon pays the price for it. The reason why the silversmith’s shop hasn’t been very lucrative is because the silversmith is getting old, and he can’t work as hard as he used to. That’s one of the reasons why Johnny feels like he has to push the pace in the shop and keep the other apprentices in line. When the silversmith is late making a particular order, Johnny takes it on himself to complete the work on a Sunday, which is forbidden by the laws of Boston at that time and would have been forbidden by the pious silversmith, too, if he knew what Johnny was doing. While Johnny is working, Dove hands him a crucible with a crack it in, thinking to embarrass Johnny by ensuring that the work will go wrong. Unfortunately, it turns out to be worse than that. Johnny’s hand is badly burned by molten silver.

With a crippled and useless hand, Johnny doesn’t see how he can continue his apprenticeship and become a silversmith. For the first time in prideful Johnny’s life, he is an object of pity, and he seems to have no future ahead of him. There aren’t many kinds of work a person in his time can do with only one usable hand. The silversmith’s youngest granddaughter has always been sickly, and people think that she isn’t likely to live to adulthood. Even the girl’s own mother says that it hardly seems worth the effort of raising her when she isn’t likely to survive, and privately, Johnny has also agreed. Now that Johnny is disabled, seemingly useless, and without a future, is he also hardly worth anyone’s help?

The silversmith’s daughter-in-law, Mrs. Lapham, seems to think he isn’t worth anything. In spite of her being the one who originally insisted that he do the task on Sunday that crippled him, she begins giving him repeated and casual insults like “lazy good-for-nothing” and “worthless limb of Satan.” Her previous praise and encouragement for Johnny and wish for Johnny to marry one of her daughters hadn’t been based on any liking for Johnny but only based on what she thought Johnny could do for her and her daughters in the future. Now that he can’t take over the business, Mrs. Lapham is ready to kick him to the curb. Mrs. Lapham discourages Johnny from eating much food, tells him that she’ll be needing the place where he sleeps soon for someone else to help her father-in-law with his shop, and tells the silversmith that he should get rid of Johnny. The silversmith refuses to kick the boy out onto the street with nothing and no prospects, especially since Johnny has been doing small chores for the family to earn his keep. The silversmith tells Johnny that he cannot continuing learning the silversmithing trade, so he’s going to have to find a new one. He encourages Johnny to explore the city and watch different people at their trades until he can find one that he thinks he can do, and then, he will give the contract for Johnny’s apprenticeship to his new master.

However, Johnny is still prideful and can’t see himself doing any of the unskilled trades that might take him, and he only half-heartedly tries to find a new position. He still sees himself as a craftsman, and that’s all he really wants to be. He still feels like other jobs are beneath him. One day, he goes inside the printing shop for the Boston Observer, which the silversmith disapproved of for trying to stir up dissent and resentment against the English king among the colonists, and immediately is fascinated at the way the boy working in the shop interviews a woman about an advertisement for her lost pig. Johnny feels an odd friendly feeling toward the boy, who is a good and patient listener. When the woman leaves, Johnny finds himself pouring out his own story to the boy, whose name is Rab, without his usual arrogance. Rab understands Johnny’s feelings and agrees that most of the jobs that would be open to him now are the unskilled jobs he doesn’t want to do. He says that the Observer could hire him, but it would be a position as a delivery boy and messenger, but that doesn’t sound like the kind of work Johnny really wants. Still, Rab tells him that if he can’t find anything else, he could come back and take the messenger job. Johnny hopes that he can come back and tell him that he’s found a much better job.

However, Johnny still can’t find someone to take him. When he tries to get a job from John Hancock, whose project was the one that ruined Johnny’s hand, John Hancock is repulsed at the sight of Johnny’s hand and won’t even take him as a cabin boy for one of his ships. Johnny is angry and despairing when John Hancock sends him away, but John Hancock sends a slave after him with a whole back of silver, apparently out of guilt. Hungry because he’s had so little to eat lately, he goes to a tavern and orders a great deal of food. He is disappointed to see how much of his money he wasted and realizes that he has been a fool for ordering too much all at once. He spends the rest of his money buying presents for the silversmith’s daughters and new shoes for himself. When Johnny comes home in his new shoes, Mrs. Lapham accuses him of stealing them from someone because she can’t imagine that he could earn enough money to buy them. The girls are happy with the presents until the youngest one suddenly gets upset at Johnny touching her with his bad hand because it looks weird and she’s afraid of it, ruining the moment.

There is one last thing Johnny has that might help him. He has had a silver cup his entire life with his full name on it: Jonathan Lyte Tremain. The cup also bears the family crest of the Lyte family, a wealthy merchant family in Boston. Johnny’s mother never introduced Johnny to her relatives before she died, although she said that she was from a genteel and educated background and their own names, Jonathan and Lavinia, were family names. Johnny knows that the head of the wealthy Lyte family is also named Jonathan Lyte, so he thinks that he could be a relative. For some reason, his mother didn’t want him to show the cup to anyone, although she told him to keep it in case he ever needed it. She said to only show it others if he was in dire trouble and it seemed like even God Himself had forsaken him, and his current situation certainly qualifies.

When Johnny goes to see Mr. Lyte, Mr. Lyte doesn’t believe that he’s really a relative. He thinks that it’s just a story to get some of the Lyte family’s money, and he’s heard stories like this before. Johnny argues unpleasantly with Mr. Lyte before telling him that he has a silver cup that will prove the relationship. Mr. Lyte seems interested in the cup and tells Johnny to bring it to him that night. Before returning to Mr. Lyte with the cup, Johnny goes to Rab and tells him what he’s about to do. Rab gives him some food and a change of clothes before he goes but warns him that Mr. Lyte has been deceptive and unethical in his business dealings.

Rab’s warning is prophetic. When Johnny produces the silver cup, Mr. Lyte agrees that it is part of a set that the family has, but he says that the cup was stolen from his house only two months before. He accuses Johnny of being the thief and has him arrested. Rab finds out about it and asks Johnny if he showed the cup to anyone else before the date when it was supposedly stolen. With his mother dead, the only other person who could vouch that Johnny had the cup before is Priscilla, the Lapham daughter that Johnny was originally supposed to marry before the accident that ruined his hand. Priscilla, called Cilla for short, is willing to testify in court that Johnny showed her the cup before, but Mr. Lyte begins exerting his influence on the Laphams. He places a large order for silver and pays in advance as a kind of bribe, and Mrs. Lapham, who has already decided that Johnny is no good, declares that she will keep Cilla locked up on the day of the trial so she can’t speak on his behalf, even though she knows young Johnny will be executed without her testimony.

Rab correctly realizes that some of the attitudes of people against Johnny are because Johnny is an arrogant hothead who has made enemies because of the sharp and snooty remarks he’s made to them and about them in the past. He points out that these people, who have felt oppressed by Johnny are now taking their opportunity to get even with him and get rid of him, just like the rival apprentice whose dangerous trick ruined Johnny’s hand. If Johnny is going to get out of this mess and change his life, he’s going to have to change his own attitude and behavior and learn to make friends, develop some humility, and show gratitude for the help that he receives.

Fortunately, Rab knows a lawyer who is willing to take Johnny’s case without pay, Josiah Quincy (historical figure – Johnny notices that he has a dangerous-sounding cough, like the kind his mother had before she died, and the real-life Josiah Quincy did die of tuberculosis), because Mr. Lyte is a Tory who has crossed the Colonial Patriots who call themselves the Sons of Liberty with his crooked business dealings. Johnny’s trial becomes the latest skirmish between the two sides of the Revolution that is building. For the first time in his life, Johnny does have cause to be truly grateful to others. Unfortunately, he has also made one more enemy. Mr. Lyte is publicly embarrassed at having been shown to bring a false charge against an unfortunate boy in court, and if anyone is even more proud and arrogant than Johnny has been, it’s Mr. Lyte.

Johnny takes the job of delivery boy for Rab’s newspaper and becomes more involved in the politics of the Colonies and the growing Revolution. He learns how to ride a horse for the first time, even learning to manage a previously abused and skittish horse. Johnny becomes known as a good messenger and finds other side jobs. He develops his use of his uninjured left hand and even increases his use of his damaged right hand. He becomes better read and educated as he builds his messenger career. However, Johnny is also drawn into the growing conflict and learning the truth about his relationship with Mr. Lyte.

The book is a Newbery Medal Winner and available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It was made into a movie by Disney in 1957.

My Reaction

The Background of the Book

Because this book is an award-winner and has patriotic themes, it is a popular book for children to read and study in American schools. I didn’t actually read the book when I was in elementary school, probably because it contains works like “slut”, but I remember our teacher showing us the Disney live-action movie version from 1957. I still sometimes think of the Liberty Tree and the Sons of Liberty song from that movie. If you read the comments below the YouTube clip of that song, some people were commenting about seeing this movie when they were in 5th grade at school, and that’s about when I saw it, too, back in the 1990s. I found the song stirring then, although it looks a little corny to me now. For patriotic musicals, I prefer 1776, which I saw in high school and which is also corny but brings up some interesting historical topics. 1776 was based on a Broadway play written as the US approached its Bicentennial. If you look at my page of books from the 1970s, you’ll see that people were writing books for children focusing on the American Revolution, Colonial America, and other patriotic themes because the Bicentennial was on people’s minds at the time. The 200-year anniversary of the country was something people wanted to celebrate, and they used it as an opportunity to educate children about the history and lore of the country. Part of what makes Johnny Tremain interesting is that the original book was written in the middle of WWII, which was more of a worrying time rather than a celebration. The Disney move was made after the war, when people were in a celebratory and triumphant mood about how well the country was doing, and it ends on a triumphant note, but the original book was much darker.

During WWII, children’s authors had a choice about whether or not to mention the war in the books they were writing. If you look at my page of books written during the 1940s, you’ll see that some children’s authors addressed the war directly and even worked it into the plots of their books while it was still happening. I’ve marked which ones did that on the 1940s page. However, for those who didn’t want to write contemporary stories mentioning WWII, there were other options. Some authors wrote just-for-fun stories that had nothing to do with the war at all, which were good for helping children relax and take a break from the harsh realities going on around them, and some wrote books with historical themes.

The books with historical themes, like Johnny Tremain, often had a patriotic focus, putting the current war into perspective by reminding children that the country had been through struggles and dark times before, and reinforcing the patriotic ideals that made the struggle worth it. You can see these themes in both American and British books written around the same time, trying to help children understand that concepts of the war, what people were fighting to protect, and why the sacrifices and deprivations of the war were necessary.

There is a scene in Johnny Tremain where James Otis tries to make sure that the Sons of Liberty who are ready to fight the British understand what they’re really fighting for, the larger implications for the rest of the world, and the sacrifices they might make, including their lives. Some of his speech seems a little anachronistic with its mention of rights for everyone, regardless of race, because slavery is practiced during this era. I suppose it’s not impossible that Otis said something like that at some point, but racial equality would not have been high among the priorities of these people in real life. It felt like it was meant more for modern, 20th century audiences. He also makes a reference to rich people in France running down poor children in their carriages, which sounds like a reference to a scene in Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, from 1859. My impression is that Otis’s speech in the book is meant more for the book’s original audience of children during WWII than for the original Sons of Liberty. Dr. Warren later makes comments about young men who give up their lives so that others can stand up like men and how a hundred or two hundred years later, men will be doing the same thing. I think those comments are also meant to help 1940s children understand why the men of their time, possibly their own fathers and brothers, might be willing to sacrifice themselves as soldiers.

Johnny Tremain is really a rather dark story in places, which is probably why my teachers showed us the Disney movie rather than having us read the book. They did have us read plenty of other dark stories when I was in school, even ones much darker that this one, although most didn’t have the kind of objectionable language this book does.

Story Themes

Although this is an historical novel, the main focus of the story is the transformation in young Johnny’s life and character as he suffers from misfortune, redeems himself, and plays a part in larger events and history. At the beginning of the story, even though Johnny is an orphan, he seems to have his future made at a young age. He has a particular talent for working with silver, and he’s in an apprenticeship and poised to take over the master’s business someday. However, like many classic heroes, he has the fatal flaw of hubris – he’s too proud of himself. It makes him arrogant and overconfident. His arrogance makes enemies of his fellow apprentices, and in one moment when he pushes his luck, his chief rival does something that seriously harms Johnny and apparently ruins his future. Johnny, who has never had any real patience or sympathy for other people who are less gifted or fortunate than himself finds himself in the position of needing patience and sympathy from others. His master sees the difficulty Johnny is in and tries to help him learn the lessons of humility that he needs to cope with the situation, but for someone as proud as Johnny has been, it’s not easy to cope with his humbled position. It’s a serious struggle for Johnny to find a new place in the world and a new path for his future. There are people who openly despise him for his weakened condition, which is unfair, and initially, he passes up some opportunities for improvement because he considers the jobs beneath him.

Johnny life changes when he finds himself in a situation so hopeless that he is really dependent on the help of other people. Some of those other people help Johnny in the court trial, not just out of a desire to help Johnny but also to embarrass Mr. Lyte by publicly exposing him for bringing a false charge. Still, they save Johnny’s life, and Johnny gains a new life by working for Rab’s family as a delivery boy and following Rab’s example in behavior. Rab is calmer and more thoughtful than Johnny, and he encourages Johnny to learn to be more thoughtful and to think before he speaks and acts. As Johnny does so, he notices that people begin treating him better because he begins giving the chance to do so instead of thoughtlessly offending them or picking fights. With Johnny’s change of attitude and behavior, he is able to forge new relationships, and new opportunities open up for him. While Johnny’s hand getting damaged seemed to be the end of everything to him and the delivery job at first seemed to be beneath him, these changes in his life actually lead to personal growth for him.

Through his work for the newspaper and the Sons of Liberty, Johnny becomes part of the American Revolution. It brings him into contact with many notable Revoluntionary war figures, including John Hancock, Josiah Quincy, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, John Adams, and Dr. Joseph Warren. Not all of these figures are pleasant figures in the story. John Hancock, in particular, doesn’t treat Johnny well when he’s at the lowest point of his life. Dr. Warren is kind and attempts to help Johnny with his hand when they first meet, but at first, Johnny doesn’t want him to even look at it because he’s still ashamed of it and how it was damaged. Johnny later regrets that, and explains the details of his injury to him. The book ends with Dr. Warren performing a procedure to remove the scar tissue that has kept Johnny’s hand deformed. Without it, his hand will move more freely, and he will be able to fire a gun in the coming war and do other things he thought he would never be able to do again. It is uncertain whether or not he will ever regain enough dexterity to be able to return to being a silversmith, but his eyes have been opened to many other possibilities in life, and he has a cause to fight for first.

During the course of the book, Johnny also takes part in the Boston Tea Party and Paul Revere’s famous ride. His role as one of the participants in larger events is partly to teach and reinforce history lessons and patriotic feelings for the young readers of this book but also to show that even a flawed and somewhat disabled person like Johnny is worth something, has a future, and can participate in larger events and make their mark on the world. The more Johnny does participate in larger events and make connections with other people, the more his life also changes for the better and the more opportunities open up for him.

Life is Full of Mixed Feelings

I also noticed that there are many cases where people have mixed feelings about each other. As I said before, although Johnny becomes allied with the Sons of Liberty and believes in their cause, not all of them really treat him well, at least at first. Johnny also realizes that he doesn’t agree with all of their personal attitudes. At one point, he realizes that Sam Adams wouldn’t approve of the quality of mercy toward his enemies, but Johnny actually does. Although Johnny doesn’t like the British soldiers, there are moments when some of them do something kind or honorable. He doesn’t like them as a group, but he privately acknowledges that he can like certain ones as individuals in certain circumstances. Johnny comes to see the British soldiers as human beings who can be likeable, and as he sees that the situation around them is going to lead to war, he realizes that having to fight and maybe even kill some of these people would be painful. Although he still believes in his cause and is willing to fight for it, the seriousness and pain of war becomes clear to him.

Johnny’s ability to see multiple sides to people’s personalities and the capacity he has to show mercy even toward people he doesn’t like or who have actively tried to harm him are important developments of his character. Mrs. Lapham, Dove, and Mr. Lyte were all pretty bad to Johnny, in different ways. As the story progresses and Johnny’s condition in life improves and he has some separation and independence from both of them, he feels less resentful toward them both and even begins to see them in a better light. Personally, I don’t think that erases the unlikable and even dangerous sides of these characters. Mrs. Lapham would have happily watched Johnny be hung for a crime he never committed and was perfectly willing to take a bribe to lock up her own daughter, knowing that she was an important witness who could save him. That side of her personality is a definite side of her personality, and that is something that she definitely and knowingly did. However, Johnny later has a feeling of nostalgia when he remembers that Mrs. Lapham did have a hard life in some ways and yet was a hard worker, who always tried to look after her household, even when it was difficult, so she isn’t wholly evil. In some ways, her evil side and opportunism is a reflection of the hard life she’s lived and what she thinks she has to do to get ahead in the world and provide security for her fatherless daughters. Again, I don’t see her as being a really good person as a person because of what she does, what she thinks is acceptable to do, and how she treats other people, and I don’t believe that much of that was as necessary or excusable as she seemed to think it was. However, with some time and separation, Johnny starts to remember that she did have some relatively good sides.

I do note that, while it’s good that Johnny sees people for what they are, even acknowledging that unlikable people have their good sides, this does not mean that it would be good or healthy for Johnny to allow himself to be at the mercy or under the control of these people eve again. No matter how hard a worker Mrs. Lapham is, I can’t help but notice she is fundamentally untrustworthy. Knowingly helping to frame a helpless boy for a crime with a death penalty is pretty close to deliberate murder, and that’s about as bad as a person can get. The argument could be made that Mrs. Lapham didn’t know that Johnny didn’t steal the silver cup, but I don’t think that’s true. I’m sure that she was fully aware that he didn’t because of her declaration that she would lock up Cilla on the day of the trial, which indicates that Cilla told her what she knew and that the cup was honestly Johnny’s from the beginning, and she was determined to prevent Cilla from telling the truth in court, making sure that Johnny would die so she and her family could profit from Mr. Lyte’s bribe. No, from what I’ve seen of Mrs. Lapham, merely being a “hard worker”, while a good trait by itself, isn’t enough to redeem her as a character or make her trustworthy because she definitely doesn’t have that hard-working trait in isolation from her willingness to throw people under the proverbial bus and even try to get them killed for the sake of money.

Although Dove is never as sorry for the accident that hurt Johnny’s hand as he told their master he was. Behind the master’s back, he is gleefully cruel to Johnny when he has the opportunity. Admittedly, what Rab says about that being Dove’s form of retaliation for Johnny’s own arrogant meanness toward him is true, but it is equally true that Dove’s own behavior never improves even when Johnny’s does. Initially, Johnny swears revenge against Dove, but when he sees that his life isn’t really ruined by him and Dove gets some comeuppance in other ways, Johnny begins to feel a little more kindly toward him and no longer feels the need for revenge. (Although, he does get Rab to help him toss Dove into the harbor during the Boston Tea Party because Dove was trying to steal some of the tea for himself, in spite of the participants agreeing not to do that ahead of time, and attempting to lie about it. It’s not the grand revenge that Johnny initially envisioned, but it is a brief moment of comeuppance.) Johnny even treats Dove nicely after he goes to work as a stable hand for the British troops. Dove is loyal to the British, but the British are not nice to him in return, largely because Dove isn’t particularly competent at what he does and because he is obviously self-interested. Johnny realizes that he is lonely and could use friends, but even when Dove admits that Johnny and Rab treat him better than anyone else does (largely so they can pump him for information about the British troop movements), Dove still repeatedly tries to tell the British that Johnny is a spy for the Sons of Liberty and openly admits it to Johnny. Dove feels like it’s his duty as a loyal Tory to turn Johnny in, not showing loyalty to the people who have shown him the most kindness. Johnny understands all of that. While Johnny’s behavior has changed and improved, and because of that, Johnny is more respected by the even the British than Dove is. In the end, Dove is his own worst enemy, and his own behavior is the reason why more people don’t like him.

Mr. Lyte deliberately tried to have Johnny executed for a crime he didn’t commit. That was pretty horrible, and Mr. Lyte also steals the silver cup from Johnny when he attempts to sell it to him. It’s all the more horrible when Johnny is a young relative of his. However, there is something of an explanation behind it. Mr. Lyte didn’t recognize Johnny as a relative because he knew Johnny’s father under another name and had believed that Johnny’s mother, who was his niece, had died childless. Mr. Lyte is still an unethical man, both in his personal and business dealings, but although he was wrong about Johnny not being related to him, the one thing he was honest about was saying that was what he believed. His beliefs were wrong and the actions that were based on those beliefs were also wrong, but he wasn’t actually lying about those particular beliefs, even though he has lied about other things. Later, when Johnny’s life changes, he no longer cares about having the silver cup or any relation to the Lytes.

On the other hand, there are also some characters who seem likeable initially but who prove to have dark sides. The most notable character of this type is Lavinia Lyte, the daughter of the wealthy merchant, Mr. Lyte. At first, Johnny has a crush on her because she is pretty, although he knows that they are probably related in some way. However, he eventually discovers that Lavinia Lyte is silly, shallow, spoiled, snobbish, and uncaring. She takes Cilla and her little sister Isannah into her household as servants and companions when their family doesn’t have much money. It does help Cilla and Isannah monetarily, but Johnny notices that Lavinia treats them very differently. She initially only wanted Isannah because Isannah is a pretty and adorable little girl. Lavinia is supposedly mentoring Isannah as a protege and raising her to enter high society, but really, she treats her like a pet lap dog or a living doll she can dress up and play with. Isannah is young and impressionable and has never been much of an independent thinker, often imitating other people throughout the story. Under Lavinia’s influence, Johnny sees that Isannah is becoming spoiled and badly behaved, just like Lavinia, and is not developing properly, either intellectually, morally, or emotionally. Meanwhile, Lavinia treats Cilla like an ungrateful servant, calling her “stupid” when she doesn’t do things right, even when she is merely doing precisely what Lavinia told her to do in the first place. Johnny gets fed up with this situation and tells Lavinia off for it. In return, she snobbishly tells him that he’s just a ragamuffin boy. Although Johnny still feels some attraction for Lavinia because of her looks, he learns what her personal character is really like and what being around her really involves. This remaining attraction he feels for her dies when he understands their real family relationship.

Rab is generally a good character and a positive influence on Johnny, but even he has his faults. People in his family don’t communicate their feelings as much as they should, and Johnny becomes jealous and angry with Rab when he discovers that he’s been courting Cilla behind his back and not talking to him about it. Rab’s desire for a gun so he can fight in their cause also gets him into trouble a couple of times. Even as one of the nicest characters in the book, Rab isn’t perfect, either.

The characters in the story feel very real because they do have multiple sides to their personalities and often cause mixed emotions. Johnny also comes to realize that feelings about people and relationships can change over time. Some relationships develop for the best and others for the worse. It is a sign of Johnny’s growth as a character that he can see and acknowledge the complexity of the characters of other people and his own feelings regarding them. His ability to understand and manage his feelings grows throughout the story.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Ben and Me

Ben and Me by Robert Lawson, 1939, 1967.

I remember reading this book in elementary school. It’s about Benjamin Franklin’s friendship with a talking mouse (fictional, of course), and how his mouse friend helped inspire him in his work.

The book begins with the author saying that this manuscript, supposedly written by Amos the mouse, was found in a small compartment in a room in an old house that was being renovated. The little compartment was furnished with miniature pieces of Colonial style furniture. The author goes on to say further that the manuscript has been authenticated as being early American and that the National Museum of Natural History has confirmed that the handwriting of the manuscript was done by a mouse. (I’d love to see comparisons of different animals’ handwriting and hear their explanation of how the handwriting of a mouse differs from the handwriting of other members of the rodent family, but trust us, kids, this is all very scientific.) The author says that this account of Benjamin Franklin’s life differs from the stories told by later scholars, but he trusts the descriptions of this mouse who was so close to Benjamin Franklin. (Yeah, sure, why not?)

In the “manuscript”, Amos says that he’s writing not long after the death of his friend, Benjamin Franklin, and some people have attempted to write about the life of Benjamin Franklin, but Amos isn’t satisfied with their accounts of his life and wants to write the truth himself. (Benjamin Franklin also wrote a famous autobiography, but they don’t mention that. I know that this is a story about a talking, writing mouse, but I’m just saying.) Amos says that, much as he liked Ben Franklin, Franklin was kind of stupid at times and that, as Franklin’s secret adviser, he was actually the source of many of Franklin’s greatest ideas.

Amos says that he was born into a large family of poor church mice. Then, during the winter of 1745, food grew scarce, and as the oldest of his siblings, Amos decided to set out to seek his fortune and maybe a way to help provide for the rest of his family. It’s a cold night, and lured by the smell of cheese, Amos finds his way into the house where Ben Franklin lives. He finds Franklin sitting and sneezing in a chilly room near a small fireplace. Ben is trying to write, but because of the sneezing, he’s not making much progress. Amos, cold and tired, climbs up on Ben and curls up in his fur cap and goes to sleep.

When Amos wakes up in the morning, the fur cap is hanging on the bedpost, and the room is still cold. Amos talks to Ben, recommending that he put more wood on the fire. Ben doesn’t question why a mouse is talking to him and just retorts, “Waste not, want not.” Amos points out that there will be plenty of waste and extra expenses if the cold makes him sick. Ben agrees with that and decides to use more wood on the fire. Then, Amos points out to him that the fireplace would be more effective at heating if it was in the middle of the room, explaining how his family used to gather around a hot chestnut to warm themselves. Ben is intrigued by the idea, and they discuss how a fireplace could be located in the middle of the room and how to handle the smoke from the fire. Ben excited sets to work building the stove according to Amos’s suggestions. His first attempt is a bit crude, but the stove works much better at heating the room than the fireplace did, and Ben is pleased. He shares some bread and cheese with Amos, and the two of them become friends.

Ben begins writing about the design of the stove as if he had created it all by himself, but Amos points out that Ben had acknowledged his contribution. Amos doesn’t care about getting fame or public credit for his contribution, but he needs food and has a large family to help provide for, so he and Ben work out an agreement: in exchange for Amos’s companionship and help, Ben agrees to leave regular supplies of food at the church for Amos’s family and to provide Amos and any descendants he may have food and a home in his fur cap. Ben sews some special compartments in the fur cap so that Amos has secure places to sleep and store a little food. There’s also a little compartment near Ben’s ear where Amos can quietly whisper suggestions to Ben.

Life with Ben isn’t easy. Amos hates it when Ben goes swimming and leaves his cap on the ground. One day, a dog steals the cap (along with Amos), and Ben has to chase the dog in order to get the cap and Amos back. Ben promises not to take the cap off his head ever again.

Amos also doesn’t like Poor Richard’s Almanack and doesn’t consider the facts or maxims it offers to be worth much. Ben points out that people do use his paper and its predictions of sunrise, sunset, and high and low tide, and the money the paper makes helps support them both. It also seems weird to Amos that Ben attributes everything to do “Poor Richard” when there is no such person. Amos starts substituting his own name for “Poor Richard” in the paper, and he also changes some of the predictions of times for the tides. It turns out that this is one area where Ben knows better than Amos because Amos predicts the wrong time for high tide and some ships are stranded. Confronted by the angry men from the ships, Ben points out that the paper with the wrong time says “Amos” instead of “Poor Richard”, so it can’t be his work. The angry people realize that Ben is right, and Amos realizes that he shouldn’t interfere with the paper.

Amos also hates it when Ben starts to experiment with electricity and Ben shocks him. He tells Ben to leave him out of his electrical experiments. However, Ben continues his experiments with a group of other interested people, disappointed that Amos doesn’t seem to understand what he’s trying to accomplish. Amos finally reads Ben’s writings about electricity and his experiment, and when a boy Ben got to assist him at one of his meetings uses Ben’s electrical device to shock the governor, Amos urgently whispers to Ben to stop the boy. Ben doesn’t consider the experiment to be a failure because it very effectively demonstrated how electricity affects human beings, although some people, including the governor, start avoiding Ben after the experience.

Then, Ben starts wondering if lightning and electricity are the same thing. Amos says he doesn’t care because both to those things should be avoided, whether they’re the same or not, and Ben says that he has “no vision.” Ben’s first experiment with lightning rods is frightening, even terrifying Ben to the point where he modestly refuses to take credit for the invention. In spite of that scare, Ben continues to wonder about the nature of lightning. He starts taking Amos with him while he flies kites for fun, and he rigs up a little car on the kite string for Amos so Amos can ride on the kite and come down when he wants to. Ben suggests that Amos that he could get a better view of lightning and describe it to him if he stays on the kite during a storm, and Amos refuses to consider it, but one day, Ben tricks him into doing it anyway. Amos is angry at Ben for making him suffer through the storm while he took shelter in a shed and refuses to discuss what he experienced with him. Burned with electrical shocks from the storm, Amos returns to his family at the church, where they dress his wounds, and he rests.

Ben comes to see Amos about their earlier agreement. Amos tells him that the electrical experiments were never part of the agreement and he will never return to him while he is doing these things. Ben agrees to stop all of the electrical experiments, and he and Amos write a new agreement with each other.

At this time, troubles are arising between England and the Colonies, and Ben is concerned. He tells Amos that he needs his skills for gathering information and asks him to accompany him to England to present the Colonies’ case before the King and Parliament. Amos initially agrees to go, but he backs out of the voyage when he sees that Ben has attached lightning rods to the ship. Pointing out to Ben that the lightning rods are a violation of their agreement, he returns to the church and lets Ben go to England alone.

While Ben is gone, Amos hears the people of Philadelphia talking about current events, like the stamp taxes, and how they feel about them. Amos finds himself siding with the colonists and wanting to do something to help, and he realizes that Ben is his best chance for helping to accomplish something. When Ben returns from England, Amos rejoins him, and he goes with Ben to the committee meetings he attends, including the one for writing the Declaration of Independence. Amos helps Ben by gathering information from other people. Amos meets another mouse named Red, who comes to Philadelphia with Thomas Jefferson and starts preaching revolution to the mice in town. Amos borrows some of the pieces of writing from Red’s Manifesto and tells them to Ben, who in turn, tells them to other members of his committee so they get included in the Declaration of Independence.

Then, George Washington says that the Colonies could really use some help and support from another country. Amos persuades Ben to suggest France. George Washington accepts the suggestion, and Amos accompanies Ben to France to ask for help from the French government. Ben enjoys the attention he gets from the ladies in France, frequently dining with his admirers. Amos is afraid of the ladies’ pet dogs and cats, though, so he persuades Ben to put most of his attention on a woman who doesn’t have cats. It turns out that this lady also has a mouse who lives with her named Sophia. Sophia is actually married, but her husband has been exiled to the United States, and her children are being held in the palace of Versailles. Amos wants to help Sophia, but he’s not sure how until after the Revolutionary War ends and Red arrives in France with Thomas Jefferson. Amos explains the situation to Red, and Red is more than eager to help assemble a force to stand up to the oppressive aristocratic French mice.

The mouse battle that follows terrifies the human French court, but the mice successfully rescue Sophia’s children. Ben suddenly finds himself a social outcast for bringing mice to the royal court, so he’s ready to return home, bringing Sophia and her children with them. Ben is welcomed home as a hero by the humans. Sophia is reunited with her husband, and Amos remains a friend of the family. Three of Sophia’s oldest children marry Amos’s three youngest siblings, tying their families together.

The story ends with the mice giving Ben a nice, new hat for his birthday. Ben keeps the old one just as a house for Amos to live in, but Amos is mostly retired, his time occupied by teaching his young nieces and nephews.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). There is also a Disney film based on the book that is also on Internet Archive (about 21 minutes long).

My Reaction

I remembered liking this story when I was a kid, but I’m not as fond of it now. I don’t like books with intentionally stupid characters, and in this case, the intentionally stupid character is a real, historical person, which doesn’t seem fair. I know it’s supposed to seem humorous, but it just doesn’t seem to hold up after all these years.

I also hated the part where Ben intentionally kept the poor mouse up in a kite for half an hour during a terrifying storm. It’s just so cruel, even though it’s supposed to humorous. What can I say? I have a soft spot for cute, fuzzy animals, and I just don’t like to think of any little animal suffering, even if it’s in blatantly ridiculous circumstances.

I had forgotten about the Disney cartoon, although I think I remember seeing that when I was a kid, too.

Posted on by TracyC

Mystery of the Empty House

Mystery of the Empty House by Dorothy Sterling, 1960.

Patricia Harrison’s family has recently moved from their apartment in New York to a house in Haven. Her father used to live in Haven when he was a boy. His mother still lives in town, and he still knows some of the other people who live there. Patricia, called Pat, is still unpacking her belongings when a boy from across the street, Jim Gray, calls to invite her to play ball with him and some of his friends in the field behind her house because his mother used to know his father when they were kids. Pat isn’t very used to playing with boys because she went to an all-girls school when she was in New York, but she agrees to go play ball with the boys.

When she goes to meet the boys, some of the other boys, the Paine brothers, don’t want her to play with them. When Jim said they were meeting “Pat”, they assumed that “Pat” was another boy. Jim says he doesn’t care if Pat is a girl or not because they could really use another player. Pat thinks they’re rude, and since they don’t seem to want her, she starts to leave, but Jim stops her and persuades her to stay. Even though Pat is usually good at baseball at school, she finds herself making clumsy mistakes when she plays with the boys, probably because she feels uncomfortable with them. Finally, she hits a home run, which is great, but there’s a problem. She accidentally hit the ball into the window of an old, abandoned house nearby that looks haunted.

The boys are mad because it’s the only baseball they have. Pat says they could just go get the ball, but the boys say they can’t. When she asks them if they’re scared, they say that’s not the problem; they’ve just promised that they won’t go near the old house. Pat says that, since she didn’t promise, she can just go get the ball, but Jim stops her from going into the house. He tells her that they can just buy a new ball. When Pat asks him why he doesn’t want her to go in, Jim says that it’s a secret having to do with the Paines. Pat says that she’s sick of the Paines and insists on going into the old house.

The old house is dark and spooky. When she climbs in through the window, Pat is startled when she runs into another person inside. At first, she can’t see the other person too clearly because it’s dark, but when she asks the girl who she is, the girl tells her that she’s Patricia Harrison. Pat is shocked and tells her that she can’t be Patricia Harrison because that’s her name. The girl finally laughs and admits that her real name is Barbara Thomas. Barbara lives next door to Pat’s grandmother and decided to stop by and meet her. When she saw Pat playing with the boys, she decided to go explore the old house instead.

Barbara is the one who explains the history of the house and the Paines’ attitude to Pat. The Paine family used to live in the old house. It’s the oldest house in town, dating back to the Colonial era. Nat Paine, the oldest of the Paine boys, was always proud of his family’s old home and used to brag about how George Washington and Lafayette visited the house during the Revolutionary War. It was even occupied by British soldiers at one time. Unfortunately, the father of the Paine boys was killed during the Korean War several years earlier (dating this story to the late 1950s or 1960, the year it was published). Since then, the family has fallen on hard times, and they’ve been unable to pay the taxes on the house. Now, because of the unpaid taxes, the town council is threatening to sell the old house to pay the unpaid taxes. The Paines have been forced to move out of the house and into a much smaller place, and Nat is very upset about it. Plus, he’s been going through this phase where he’s decided that he hates girls because he’s just getting into middle school, where all the boys either start developing crushes or decide that they hate girls. His younger brothers are being pests because they’re following his lead.

Barbara says that her father felt bad about what happened to the family and tried to convince other people in town to help the Paines pay the taxes on the old place. They could have helped, but they’ve made it plain that they just don’t want to. As Barbara’s father put it, “people in Haven are a bunch of rock-ribbed, rugged individualists who wouldn’t help their own grandmas.” (I have strong feelings about that, and I’ll explain them in the reaction section.) Barbara reveals right away that the secret Jim is keeping for the Paine brothers is that Nat made his brothers take a vow with him that they wouldn’t enter that house again “until it was rightfully theirs.” Barbara says that Nat’s sense of pride talking, and “You know how boys are.” She thinks Nat’s being overly dramatic, although she sympathizes with the family’s plight. When Pat suggests that maybe they shouldn’t be in the house, either, Barbara says that she comes there all the time to explore. Barbara thinks the old house is fascinating and that there might be a secret passage somewhere. She invites Pat to help her look for it sometime.

At dinner that night, Pat finds out that her parents already know about the death of the boys’ father and the trouble that the family is having over their old house. Pat’s mother says that the old house is a good example of the saltbox style of house that was popular in Colonial New England. (I remember my old high school history teacher explaining how the slope of the roof was meant to help snow slide off during the winter, but the uneven slope also allows more living space to be added onto an existing house.) However, Pat’s mother says that there probably aren’t any secret passages in the house because houses from that time were built pretty simply and didn’t even have closets or bathrooms. She doesn’t think that there’s any place in the old house to conceal a secret passage.

Now that Pat knows the issues with the Paine family, she begins to feel better about them, and they start being nicer to her. As Pat begins settling in, she becomes better friends with Barbara and is happy that she has another girl as a friend. They ride their bikes downtown together, and Barbara sleeps over at Pat’s house. As the girls are getting ready for bed, Pat looks out the window and sees a light in the old Paine house when no one is supposed to be there. Barbara says that whoever’s in the house is probably looking for the secret passage and the treasure. When Pat asks what she means by “treasure”, Barbara says that there’s a rumor that there’s treasure hidden in the house from Revolutionary times. The family used to be rich, but after the American Revolution, when the children of the family returned to the house after their parents were killed, the family fortune had vanished. People think that the ancestors of the Paines hid their fortune somewhere during the war and that it’s still waiting to be found. (I already had some misgivings about the people of Haven and their intentions in kicking the Paines out of their house, and now, suddenly, my suspicions are even worse.)

Barbara says that they can’t just let this mystery sneak steal what should rightfully belong to the Paines and ruin the only chance they have left of regaining their house. The girls sneak over to the house to spy on the intruder, and they end up frightening him away. The girls tell the boys about what they witnessed the next day, and they persuade the Paine brothers to come into the house with them in spite of their “vow” to look around and see what the intruder was searching for. As they inspect the kitchen fireplace, where the man was searching, and look at the flashlight he dropped, the man shows up again. It turns out that he’s a college student doing research on the Paine family.

Back in Revolutionary times, the family that lived in the house was the Woodruff family. (A Paine ancestor married into the Woodruff family, changing the family name, but the Woodruffs are also ancestors of the current Paines. It’s the same family.) The college student, Robert Popham, found some old papers that indicate that the head of the Woodruff family, the first Nathaniel Woodruff, was a Tory. Nat, who was named for this ancestor (full name Nathaniel Woodruff Paine IV), angrily denies it, saying that his family was known to associate with George Washington and Lafayette, hosting them at their house. Robert explains more about the papers he found, but he also says that the last letter Nathaniel Woodruff wrote to his wife before he was killed indicates that he feared for his life and left something hidden in an old post box to pass on to his young son. However, as Nat points out, the date on this final letter was shortly after Nathaniel Woodruff’s wife was murdered by unknown assailants. (She was found scalped, so people blamed her death on American Indians, but it’s also possible that she was killed by someone else who just wanted to make it look that way to cover up the real reason for her murder.) Nathaniel Woodruff didn’t know his wife was already dead, and since she never got the letter and he was also killed soon after, the box is probably still hidden somewhere. Robert thinks that what Nathaniel hid was proof that he was actually a spy for the Patriots and that he feared for his life because he suspected that the British knew he was a spy. He says that he wants to find this hidden box and the information it holds because it would make a fantastic historical research paper.

The kids are completely on board with the search for the hidden box, both because the Paines want to preserve the reputation of their ancestors and because there may be valuables hidden in the box that will help the Paines pay their taxes and keep their home. However, they only have until August 15, the date that the town council has set for selling the Paine house. They only have until the end of summer to figure it out!

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. The book is also known by the title Secret of the Old Post Box.

My Reaction and Spoilers

To begin with, I didn’t like the people of Haven right from Barbara’s description of them as “rugged individuals who wouldn’t help their own grandmas.” It is pretty cold to turn out a war widow who is working as an underpaid nurse in the community and her children after their father was killed serving his country. I completely agreed with Barbara’s father’s assessment of the townspeople’s levels of generosity from the first. I suppose at least some of the townspeople of Haven probably thought they were actually being kind, giving Mrs. Paine several years after her husband’s death to come up with the mounting tax money, while doing nothing to help her and not actually paying her enough to manage and letting her family sink deeper into the hole until there was no way for them to escape, but in realistic terms, that’s not really kind at all.

We don’t actually hear the townspeople express their own feelings because the children don’t talk to the adults about their search and discoveries until they’re sure of what they found. When Barbara explained how her father felt about the townspeople’s unwillingness to help the Paines, I was also a little suspicious of their motives, and when Barbara mentioned that there’s been a popular rumor about hidden treasure in the Paine household for years and everyone has heard of it, I got really suspicious. Basically, I started looking for thieves among the townspeople. I immediately suspected that the “rugged individuals”, or at least some influential ones in the community, wanted to steal some historical treasure from a veteran’s widow and orphans because people who would would kick the widow and orphans out of their home might as well be out to steal their legacy, too.

If that was part of their plan, they weren’t very good at it, and they never even show up in the story. Perhaps I’m judging them a bit harshly, although in a way, I’m a little disappointed because that kind of Machiavellian plot would have made the story much more exciting. From the way the story goes, the townspeople might just not believe that there’s any treasure to be found because that rumor has been going around for so long and nothing has come of it. Still, I was suspicious of them for a good part of the book because it looked like the author was setting them up to be suspicious.

I was also annoyed by the townspeople because I found them ineffectual and uncreative in their approach to a community problem. They miss opportunities, and worse, they deny opportunities to others because they’re apparently stuck in their “rugged individual” mindset and won’t even entertain ideas that might help themselves as well as others when people like Barbara Thomas’s father suggest them. I often think that high-and-mighty rugged individualistic attitude cuts out so many genuinely fun, creative, and amazing possibilities that can make a community rich in character as well as money. It’s maddening to a person who thrives on creativity and likes to consider possibilities.

When I started getting really irritated at the townspeople, I guessed that, before the end of the story, they would do something to redeem themselves that would simultaneously leave me unsatisfied. I figured that the point where the townspeople finally come together would probably result in something that I thought they should have been working on from the beginning, and then, they’d act like it was such an amazing idea that they’d never thought of before and I’d be really irritated with them all over again because I thought of something like it very early in the story. Actually, that’s not how the story goes, and it’s still irritating to me.

So, what would I want them to do in this situation? Basically, the community wants its tax money, and the family wants to keep their house with a living wage that can support them. Fine. So, I asked myself, why not make this historic house, which is known to be the oldest house in town, into a community project which would actually contribute to the common good of the community (I don’t think “common good” is a dirty word, although I’m aware that some “rugged individualists” think so) and provide the Paine family with an additional source of income? If the town council invested in fixing up the house, which is also known to contain some very interesting Colonial antiques as well as fascinating architectural details and a unique history, the house could be turned into either a museum or a period bed-and-breakfast to encourage local tourism. (Sleep where George Washington and Lafayette slept!) Since it does have original furnishings and actual bedrooms, it probably wouldn’t take a lot to make the conversion for either of those projects.

The town and its business owners would benefit from the tourism, giving them an actual monetary return on their investment, and the Paine family could stay on with the house as its caretakers, receiving additional wages from visitors. People couldn’t say that the Paines simply received a handout because they would be doing valuable community work to support the town’s image and industry. It would satisfy Nat Paine’s family pride because he could talk to tour groups on the weekends and during the summer about his family’s great legacy to the history of his town. The whole community could even expand on the idea to further attract visitors, setting up a sort of local living history center, where people can learn Colonial crafts and recipes (something like what the Townsends demo on their YouTube channel), and schools from neighboring towns and cities could book field trips. Local business owners could support it with a themed restaurant and shops selling Colonial-era replicas and memorabilia and books about the time period. The town could hold special celebrations a few times a year to draw in more visitors, like a big Fourth of July parade or a Colonial Christmas celebration (although I known not all of the American colonies actually celebrated Christmas) or a re-creation of old harvest parties (more historically accurate) with plays by the local theater group (if they don’t have one, they could form one) or dramatic readings from Washington Irving at the local library or a themed fair with people selling local artisan crafts. They wouldn’t have to do all of this at once, but they could start with the matter of the house and build up from there. It’s an idea that has the potential for future expansion. This story is even set pre-Bicentenniel, so imagine what the town could do if they already had everything up and running by July 4th, 1776! Doesn’t anybody plan ahead? That’s creative use of resources. That’s community action. That’s job creation. Even if it’s not as big as Plimoth Plantation (now called Plimoth Patuxet to better incorporate the Native Americans) or Colonial Williamsburg (which both already existed by the time this story was written and could have provided inspiration), it’s still a money-making industry that is inherently built into the town’s very nature and won’t disappear tomorrow because some outside business decides to move or close a job-providing factory or something. Even if they didn’t get national or international attention, they would probably still be a destination for people from around their state and neighboring ones, and there’s potential for continued development. The project just need to be supported and promoted by the community.

Unfortunately, that’s not what they do. My griping aside, I guess if the solution was really that simple and the townspeople were more thoughtful and pro-active, we would lose the source of tension and the obstacle that our heroes have to overcome. The August 15th deadline is what pressures the kids to hurry up and find the treasure, so as irritating as it is to me, I have to put up with it.

The treasure hunt part is a lot of fun, and I liked the children’s logical, methodical approach to their search. When the children eventually find the hidden box, the story isn’t over. There are coded messages in the box that they have to decode to learn the full truth about Nathaniel Woodruff. Part of the story explains how they figure out how to decode the substitution code and the book code that compose parts of the message. The story they learn about Nathaniel Woodruff is better than anything the Paines had originally thought.

So, did they save the old house and do anything cool, like start a unique museum? Yes, and no. Although they don’t find any jewels, gold, or traditional sort of treasure, the letters that they find in the box are worth quite a bit. They sell them to a wealthy local business owner, and he donates them to a local university library. (So, you know, the wealthy business owner who never makes an actual appearance in this story and who wouldn’t have helped a war widow and her orphans for their sake can buy their family legacy and present it as his magnanimous gift to the university. I can’t say that he’s terrible for doing this because it does help, but I still think my idea was better.) The Paine family has enough money to keep their house and fix it up. It’s a pretty good ending, but I still prefer my vision. The story points out that it’s not a matter of everyone living happily ever after because they’re all their imperfect selves and still have some problems, but one lesson that they all learned from this experience is how to create their own book code to use for passing notes in class. It’s not profound, but codes are fun.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Hester Bidgood

Hester Bidgood, Investigatrix of Evill Deedes by E.W. Hildick, 1994.

Hester Bidgood was a character in one of the McGurk fantasy mysteries, which involved time travel, and in this book, she investigates a mystery of her own in her own time, the late 1600s, Colonial America.

Goody Willson’s cat has been found, badly injured, with the shape of a cross burned into it. Some people are spreading the rumor that this is a sign that Goody Willson is a witch and that the injuries to the cat were a sign of God’s disapproval for Goody Willson’s “witchy ways.” Of course, Hester and her friend, Rob, don’t believe that. Old Mistress Brown worries that if the witch rumors go too far, everyone will soon be a potential witch suspect, like in Salem. Rob takes care of nursing the cat back to health, while he and Hester try to determine how the cat came to be injured in such a strange manner.

Rob knows what it’s like to be an outcast. Although he’s a white boy, he lived for a time among the Native Americans as a young captive and adopted many of their habits. He doesn’t know how to read, and Hester has been helping him. However, there are people in the community who don’t trust Rob because of his connections to the American Indians, and they call him derogatory names.

Hester and Rob consider that the mark on the cat could have been made by a branding iron. They go to the blacksmith and ask him if he has an x-shaped branding iron or if anyone has asked him to make one, but he says no. But, then Hester begins to consider that maybe the cross isn’t really a cross. A cross sign could also be made by putting two capital ‘T’s together at an angle.

Their investigations also take them to the old Morton homestead, where the entire Morton family was killed by American Indians some years before. Someone has been staying there in secret, and there are signs of blood, possibly from the injured cat. Gradually, Hester and Rob begin to put the pieces together, realizing who the person responsible must be and how this evil deed is actually connected to an earlier crime.

I didn’t really like this book because of the cruelty to animals. It wasn’t just what was done to the cat but also when Hester remembers Rob finding a dragonfly and considering taking off its wings. Hester stops him from doing it, but it’s still a disgusting thought. I thought that the villain was pretty obvious from the beginning, too, although I didn’t know the motive. When there’s a witch hunt, the person who is the most guilty is the first one to bring up the subject of witches.

Posted on by TracyC

Colonial American Holidays and Entertainment

Colonial American Holidays and Entertainment cover

Colonial American Holidays and Entertainment by Karen Helene Lizon, 1993.

Colonial American Holidays colonists arrive

This book explains how people living in Colonial America would entertain themselves and celebrate holidays. Both entertainment and holidays varied between time periods and geographical areas.

In the early days of European colonies in North America, life was hard. People were occupied with daily survival and the establishment of their communities. As their communities expanded and became more settled, they were gradually able to have more leisure time. The book begins with a general history of the American colonies, briefly explaining the range of countries the early colonists came from, the effect their arrival had on Native Americans, and the role that indentured servants played in society and the adoption of slavery as a means of obtaining workers.

Colonial American Holidays slaves

I was glad that they brought up the point about indentured servitude and slavery because I remember discussing it in my college history courses. Indentured servants were people who would agree to work for someone for a period of time in return for having that person pay for their passage to the colonies. There was a benefit for both sides in indentured servitude. For the indentured servants, they used their labor as a means to pay for transportation to the colonies that they could not have afforded by themselves, and once they had worked for the required period, they would be free to establish themselves independently in the colonies. For those who paid for the indentured servants, they would have guaranteed workers for the period of the indenture. However, plantation owners and other employers soon realized that they were not finding as many indentured servants as they wanted, and they didn’t like losing their labor force when their terms of indenture ended the workers left their employ. Therefore, they began to turn to slavery as a means of gaining a steady stream of workers who could not say no to them, no matter what the working conditions were like, and could never leave. Slavery wasn’t so much about race in the beginning as economics and employers who wanted cheap, permanent labor and didn’t care how they got it or what it would mean to the people they bought. But, I have other books that say more about what that led to. This book is mostly about lighter subjects, but it does acknowledge the serious aspects of American history and also makes the point that these completely unwilling immigrants also became a part of American society and, like other groups who came to America willingly, also brought traditions and folklore of their own that would gradually become part of American society, entertainment, and celebrations.

During the Colonial period, celebrations and entertainment varied throughout the regions of the American colonies, depending on the mixture of colonists living there and the holidays and traditions they brought with them from their homelands. Some of their holidays were ones that we still celebrate today, while others have fallen out of favor.

The book is divided into chapters based on different aspects of entertainment, and I’ve given a brief description of each, although all of these sections have more detail than I’ve provided. I particularly recommend reading the book if you would like more information about Native American entertainment or the lives of slaves because there is more information about these topics than I’ve described.

The chapters are:

Winter and Spring Holidays

Christmas seems like one of the most obvious holidays for colonists to celebrate, but it wasn’t so straight-forward. First, not all of the colonists were Christian (there were some Jewish people in parts of the colonies, and they celebrated Hanukkah in the winter), and even among those who were Christian, not all actually celebrated Christmas. The Puritans, who wanted to separate themselves as much as possible from traditions which they thought were not part of pure Christianity, did not celebrate Christmas. In fact, they didn’t celebrate many holidays or special days at all. Apart from the Sabbath, they only had a Day of Humiliation and Fasting and a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise, and those were not regularly scheduled events to be held on any specific date; they were only declared when it seemed that circumstances called for them. A Day of Humiliation and Fasting would happen at a time when things were going badly and the community was suffering, and the Puritans would use that day for prayer, reflection on their sins, and repentance. A Day of Thanksgiving and Praise would happen when the community was prosperous and felt blessed, and it was a time of prayer and feasting.

Colonial American Holidays Thanksgiving

Also, among the Christians who did celebrate Christmas, not all of them celebrated it on the same day, and different groups had different customs for Christmas, depending on where they were originally from. People from Sweden celebrated St. Lucia Day on December 13th, and people from the Netherlands celebrated Sinterklaas Eve and Day on December 5th and 6th. It was also common for Christmas celebrations to continue through the Twelfth Night from Christmas itself, January 6th, also call Epiphany (the day that the Wise Men visited Jesus).

Colonial American Holidays New Year in New York in 1640

Easter is a common Spring holiday in modern times, but in Colonial times, it wasn’t so widely or elaborately celebrated. Colonial children were not told stories about an “Easter Bunny” delivering eggs or candy, although colonists from the Netherlands did decorate eggs with natural dyes and scratched designs into the shells.

A spring holiday that many of the colonists celebrated (but not the Puritans) but few people celebrate in modern America was May Day. On May 1st, people would gather flowers and dance around a Maypole.

Summer and Fall Holidays

The Fourth of July is the essential summer holiday of modern America, but it didn’t exist until the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Colonial American Holidays harvest in New England

Many people’s lives centered around agriculture in colonial times, so fall was harvest time for them. Some colonists (although, not all, and definitely not the Puritans) also celebrated Halloween. The holiday was particularly celebrated in communities where there were people of Irish descent. (This book doesn’t say so, but at this time, it was particularly a Catholic holiday, the eve before All Saints’ Day on November 1st, although some other Christians celebrated it, too. Some Protestant groups, especially the Puritans, shunned the holiday as being too Catholic. I covered the general history of Halloween in more detail on my site of Halloween Ideas, including how Halloween became a secular American holiday.)

In some areas, colonists celebrated an anti-Catholic holiday called Pope’s Day on the 5th of November, where they would burn effigies of the pope. This was an older holiday than the English Guy Fawkes Day, celebrated on the same day, and that holiday was also celebrated in the parts of the colonies with English influence.

Of course, both colonists and Native Americans had harvest celebrations in the fall, including the periodic Thanksgiving feasts that led to our modern Thanksgiving holiday.

Sports and Recreation
Colonial American Holidays bowling

Much of the lives of the early colonists focused on basic survival and the establishment of their new communities. (The book explains some of the ways Native Americans helped the early colonists to survive and adapt to their new environment and to unfamiliar foods.) There was always work to be done, and even young children had to help with daily chores. Still, they found ways to enjoy themselves. Hunting expeditions were a kind of adventure, and children were often assigned the fun chore of picking berries.

Then they had leisure time, they would enjoy games like shovelboard (like shuffleboard but played on long tables), ninepins or bowling (done at first outside on the village green), and billiards (some of the more prosperous families had their own billiard tables). In the 17th century, ninepins was the primary form of bowling with pins instead of our modern ten-pin games. Ninepins, also called Skittle, was the game that Rip Van Winkle played in the story set during this time by Washington Irving. When they talked about just “bowling”, they didn’t use pins at all, instead rolling a ball toward a designated mark on the ground. Boys played stick-and-ball types of games, like stool ball. Even Colonial women enjoyed a game of stool ball. Other games and sports Colonial people enjoyed include quoits (a ring toss game), tennis, battledores, swimming, canoe races, foot races, wrestling, and horse races. Wealthy families even engaged in fencing and (believe it or not) jousting.

During the winter, children built snow forts and had snowball fights and went sledding. Both adults and children went ice skating.

Games and Toys
Colonial American Holidays children with marbles

Many Colonial children’s toys were homemade. It was common for boys to whittle wooden toys for themselves such as whistles and windmills. Boys also had toy guns and bows and arrows. Colonial children liked to roll hoops, either homemade wooden ones or metal hoops from an old barrel. They rolled the hoops upright along the ground using a stick to keep them going, and the object was to go as fast as possible without loosing control of the hoop or having it fall. (They did not use hoops as hula hoops.) Native Americans also played with hoops, and they liked to make it a challenge to throw a spear through a moving hoop. In modern times, jump rope is often considered a girl’s game, but in Colonial times, it was more popular with boys, and they had their own jump rope rhymes. Colonial children also played with spinning tops, marbles (Native Americans had their own traditional marble games as well), jackstones (a precursor to modern Jacks), kites, toy boats, balls, and swings. Girls had dolls (usually homemade and sometimes corn husk dolls at harvest time and paper dolls they made themselves), and some of the more fortunate girls had doll cradles and dollhouses with furniture. Many homemade toys were actually very durable and were passed on through families for generations.

Children also played many games that are still popular on modern playgrounds, including various forms of tag, counting-out rhymes (like the kind modern children use to choose who is going to be “it” in a game), hide and seek, blindman’s buff, leapfrog, cat’s cradle, and hopscotch (which they called “scotch hoppers”). Sometimes, they played board games, like Checkers, Chess, Backgammon, and Nine Men’s Morris.

People throughout the colonies played various types of dice, domino, and card games, some of which were gambling games. Gambling rules and taboos differed throughout the colonies, but in some areas, even children were allowed to gamble.

Social Amusements
Colonial American Holidays tea party

A primary form of entertainment in Colonial times was visiting friends and neighbors, and they developed a form of social etiquette around visiting. Some people had specific days when they were expected at friends’ homes, and people often left calling cards to show that they had visited. (Since people couldn’t phone someone to say that they were coming to visit, they either had to prearrange the visit ahead of time to ensure that they were expected or leave a calling card if the person they were visiting happened to not be home, so they would know that a friend stopped by and wanted to talk to them.) Women who lived in towns held tea parties, and pioneer families had picnics that included fishing and berry-picking.

There were seasonal fairs in spring and fall with entertainment like juggling, puppet shows, tightrope walking, fortune-telling, music, exotic animal shows, and various types of contests. The fairs were also part business and involved trading and selling various types of products.

Colonists’ social lives also included political and religious community meetings. Towns would hold meetings to discuss town business and issues of local concern. Election days for public offices often had an air of public celebration as people watched public speeches and debates and booths sold good things to eat to the spectators. Citizens were welcome to attend criminal court trials and witness public punishments designed to humiliate offenders. Communities held market days when farmers, businessmen, and even Native Americans could gather to buy, sell, and trade products.

Colonial American Holidays tavern

Church attendance and activities varied by denomination and geographical location. In some areas, church attendance was mandatory, and people would not engage in any other business or activity on Sunday. In areas where neighbors didn’t live close to each other, church was one of their main opportunities to see each other, and it was common for families to meet and share meals after church or for young men to visit with girls they liked.

Taverns, inns, and coffee houses also became important community meeting places. They could be uses as places for community meetings, political discussions, arranging business deals, distributing news and mail, and (as a later chapter explains) sometimes theatrical performances.

Entertainment and Pastimes
Colonial American Holidays children at chores

Because Colonial life was often hard and full of work, learning how to entertain yourself at home and keep yourself amused while performing chores were important. Work and entertainment often went hand-in-hand, and social occasions were often accompanied by chores and activities to keep the hands busy. Children started learning useful skills early in life. By the age of five years old, girls were able to sew. They also learned knitting, weaving, and embroidery, showing off the range and variety of stitches they knew in hand-sewn samplers. (Originally, samplers were meant to be exactly that – samples of the variety of sewing stitches a girl knew how to do. They were meant to be a demonstration of learning and accomplishment. They were very different from modern samplers that only contain one stitch – cross stitch.) Girls as well as boys knew how to whittle wood, and it was common for children to trade things they had made themselves for other things they wanted. Families had gardens where they grew vegetables, herbs, and flowers that the family could enjoy, and some women developed side businesses selling vegetable and flower seeds from the family garden.

Colonial American Holidays entertainment at home

While not everyone knew how to read, many people did, and they would read books like the Bible, works by Shakespeare, and books of poetry. Some people even wrote poetry for fun. Benjamin Franklin opened the first lending library in Philadelphia in 1731. Families often provided their own entertainment in the evening, telling stories and folktales around the fire.

Communities also had musical performances and public dances. Different colonies had different customs regarding dancing, with some communities making it taboo for men and women to dance together. Wealthy plantation owners held fancy formal balls. Music was a common part of children’s education because people who knew how to sing or play an instrument could help entertain their families at home. Some people simply used improvised instruments made out of various objects that they happened to have on hand, like a comb covered in paper, spoons, or tin kettles.

Early American Observances

Aside from the holidays described earlier, there were other special occasions that communities celebrated. Families gathered to celebrate births, baptisms, and weddings. Even funerals, while being a time of mourning, were also social gatherings. Sometimes, wealthy families would give little gifts to those who attended family funerals.

Some children had birthday parties. In the early days of the colonies, people were too occupied with the business of survival to bother much with remembering birthdays, but as communities became more settled and stable, birthdays were increasingly celebrated, especially among the more prosperous families. Sometimes, children were excused from chores on their birthday, and they were often given practical gifts.

Native American groups also had their own seasonal festivals and ceremonies of thanksgiving that varied among tribes. These seasonal festivals marked times for planting or harvesting crops or moving to seasonal quarters. They would also have ceremonies to mark special life events, like testing boys to see if they were ready to be men in their communities.

Working Bees
Colonial American Holidays quilting bee

As I said, work and fun often went hand-in-hand in Colonial America, and sometimes, the colonists would hold special working parties called “bees.” When people got together in big groups to take care of major chores, the work got done faster, and they could have fun talking and visiting with each other while they did it. When they finished with whatever task they set out to do, they would finish the event with food, games, and other fun activities.

At harvest time, they would hold harvest parties to harvest food and prepare it for storage. At apple bees (the parties, not the restaurant), people would peel and core apples and make apple-based foods, like cider and applesauce. At husking bees, they would husk corn. There was also an element of flirting to husking bees because, if a man found an ear of red corn, he was allowed to kiss a woman sitting near him.

At other times of the year, they would hold different types of bees for specific tasks or crafts. “Raising days” were when people got together to build a new building, like a house, barn, or public building, like a schoolhouse. Women held quilting bees and knitting bees. Children today still compete in spelling bees, just like colonial children did. “Sparking bees” were kind of like colonial singles meetups. Single young people in the community would come to the bee to meet each other, and if they found someone who “sparked” their interest, they could begin a formal courtship with that person.

Games, Goodies, Gifts

The final chapter of the book has words for the counting-out rhyme “Intry, Mintry” and the rules for the tag game Fox and Geese and the spinning top game Chipstones. There are recipes for Maple Sugar-on-Snow, Furmenty, Speculaas (a Dutch Christmas cookie), and Raspberry Flummery (a sweet drink). There are also instructions for making a pomander ball.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

The Witch of Blackbird Pond

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare, 1958.

This is a book that is often used in American schools or recommended to students, but because of the complexity of the story and dark subject matter, I wouldn’t recommend it to young children. It’s more appropriate for middle school level children and older.

The year is 1687, and a sixteen-year-old girl named Kit (short for Katherine) Tyler is traveling by ship from Barbados to the Connecticut Colony. Kit was born in Barbados, where her grandfather owned a plantation, which he received in a grant from the king. However, Kit was orphaned at a very young age, and now, her grandfather has died, so Kit is on her way to live with her Aunt Rachel, her mother’s sister, who is married to a Puritan and is living in Connecticut.

In Barbados, Kit was part of a prominent, slave-owning family, but in Connecticut, she’s just another girl. The people in Connecticut are Puritans, which puts Kit on the opposite site of a political conflict. Her father’s side of her family in Barbados was on the side of the Cavaliers, who supported the king against the Puritans, or “Roundheads” in the English Civil War (1642-1651). Because her Aunt Rachel has married a Puritan, Kit’s Connecticut relatives are on the side of the Roundheads. When Kit first sets off on her journey, she has very little idea of the difference between the two and what it’s going to mean for her future life.

People in Connecticut do things differently, and from the very beginning, Kit strikes them as strange and unpredictable. She is impulsive, and even her grandfather used to warn her about thinking before she acts. Kit is accustomed to living in luxury, giving orders to slaves, and generally being allowed to do as she pleases. It comes as a shock to her that not only can she no longer do these things, but others may heap harsh judgement on her for behaving oddly, even when she does it in the name of a good cause.

Kit gets her first impressions of what life in Connecticut will be like when she talks to the ship captain’s son, Nat Eaton, and an aspiring clergyman named John Holbrook. John Holbrook is the son of a tanner who has had to work by day and study by night since he was young, and he struggles to complete his education because his family doesn’t have enough money to send him to college. Because Kit’s grandfather was wealthy, Kit has never really had to think much about money before. She never had to work or even do chores when she was young, and when she tries to talk to John Holbrook about the books that she’s read, he disapproves of her choice of reading material because he thinks that reading should be reserved for the serious study of religion.

Kit’s naivety and views of slavery are challenged when Nat Eaton talks her about the horrible conditions slaves endure when they are transported from Africa to the Americas and how many of them don’t survive the experience. Kit is accustomed to owning slaves and having them work for her, but just as she has never had to think about the cost of the fancy clothes and other luxuries that her grandfather gave her, she realizes that she’s never given a thought to where slaves come from and how. Kit learns that, while there are people in the North American colonies who own slaves, there are others who vehemently disapprove of the practice, including Nat Eaton. He says that if his family had dealt in slaves, they could have a lot more money, but they’re doing fine carrying more humane cargo and passengers.

Note: Racial issues are more of a side issue than the main part of the story, and this is the part of the story that addresses the issue the most. I can’t say that Kit ever comes to reverse her early view of slaves completely, but this is the beginning of a revelation to her, one of the first indications to her that the life she previously lived is actually the exception instead of the norm, and not everyone looks favorably on people who live the way she used to live. None of the main characters in the story are black.

Kit is dismayed that there seem to be few topics from her old life (politics, money, slaves, the luxuries she owned, the relative freedom she had, not having to work, having plenty of time to read whatever books she liked whether they were useful or instructive or religious or not, etc.) that don’t cause some awkwardness, discomfort, or disapproval from the people who live in the community she is about to join and who will now be playing significant roles in her life. People don’t seem eager to be friends with her, and they look at her suspiciously as a stranger.

As her ship nears its destination, a little girl on board loses her doll overboard and Kit jumps into the water to get it back, alarming everyone. Most of the other women and girls don’t know how to swim, and they think it’s strange when Kit says that her grandfather taught her how to swim when she was little. The sea around Connecticut is too cold for swimming, so they’re not used to the idea of recreational swimming. (This time period was part of the Little Ice Age, so the area was even colder then than it is today.) Some people also consider that one of the tests for witchcraft involves seeing if a woman could float in water, and they begin whispering that Kit might be a witch.

When Kit finally arrives at the town where her Aunt Rachel and Uncle Matthew Woods live, Wethersfield, she is disappointed to see that it’s much more rural than the community where she used to live. The streets are not paved. Kit is dressed in an overly-elegant way for the community and even for her own family. When she finally meets her aunt, she thinks that she must be a servant at first because she is dressed so plainly. Aunt Rachel is happy to see her, and Kit meets her cousins, Judith and Mercy. Judith is very pretty, and Mercy walks with crutches. Kit is surprised at the very simple way they live, and they are taken aback at her fine clothes and all of the possessions she brought with her in her trunks from Barbados.

Her relatives are stunned when they find out that Kit plans to stay with them. They had not even expected her to come for a visit, and they had not heard about her grandfather’s death. Uncle Matthew asks why she didn’t write to tell them that she was coming, and Kit admits that she was afraid to write to them because she didn’t want them to tell her not to come and she didn’t have any other choice but to come to them. After her grandfather’s death, the overseer of the plantation sold off the entire crop and kept the money for himself, and all of the other plantation owners in the area presented Kit with debts her grandfather had with them that needed to be repaid, so she was forced to sell off the slaves and almost everything else to pay them. (From Kit’s description about the sudden influx of supposed debts after her grandfather’s death, I wondered whether at least some of these supposed debts were fraudulent and if Kit was simply too young and naive to challenge them, being accustomed to her grandfather handling all of the family’s money and business arrangements, but I can’t really be sure. She doesn’t go into detail about what proof the creditors offered of the debts or if she simply took them at their word, and its only real importance is in helping to provide her with a reason for going to live with her relatives.) Aunt Rachel says that Kit did the right thing by repaying the debts and coming to them, but Uncle Matthew seems less sure. He disapproves of Kit’s grandfather for being a royalist and seems reluctant to take on a now impoverished relative accustomed to a luxurious life.

Kit tries to share some of her fancy clothes with her cousins when they admire them, and Judith and Mercy love the new clothes, but Uncle Matthew puts a stop to it. He disapproves of Kit’s clothes because they are just too fancy and he thinks they encourage vanity. Uncle Matthew is very direct with Kit, explaining to her that people in this family and in this community live a very different life from the one she is used to, and she is going to have to adjust to their ways if she wants to live with them. Adjusting to this new life, which is so different from everything she knew before, is a major struggle for Kit throughout the story.

Privately, Kit confides in Mercy that she had another reason for wanting to leave Barbados. There was a man there who was a friend of her grandfather’s. Her grandfather also owed money to him, but he would have forgiven the debt and paid the other debts if Kit had agreed to marry him. Other people in Barbados said that it was a smart match and that she should marry him, but he was fifty years old, and Kit couldn’t bring herself to marry someone so much older than herself. That’s why she wanted to leave Barbados in such a hurry and didn’t want to wait even long enough to write to her relatives. (The issue of the girls’ marriage options and what they mean for their family and future lives is a major focus of the story. It is taken for granted throughout the story that all of the girls will get married at some point and that their primary future occupation will be being someone’s wife. However, what being a wife means for them depends on who they marry, what their husband’s occupation and position in society are, and the type of lifestyle they can support.) Mercy says that Kit did the right thing by leaving Barbados and that her Uncle Matthew will get used to her being there if she can demonstrate that she can be useful (an important factor in the occupation of being a wife or daughter of a Puritan family).

Being useful is a problem for Kit, who is unaccustomed to doing work of any kind. She doesn’t know how to do even basic chores. People need to explain to her how to do everything, and even then, Kit is extremely clumsy and lacks the patience to follow their instructions properly. Judith loses her patience trying to teach her and isn’t happy to learn that they’re now going to have to share a bed. Kit appreciates Mercy for her understanding and her quiet strength. Even though some people disregard Mercy because of her disability, Kit knows that Mercy has valuable skills and that she can work as hard as anyone. Life with the Woods family is a monotonous series of chores that previously Kit would have thought of only as labor for slaves that she would never have to do.

Then, there are religious differences between her and her relatives. When Kit lived with her grandfather, they never attended regular church services, but Uncle Matthew’s Puritan household is strictly religious, so Kit is expected to go to church with the family. At the church services, she sees that other people in the community are wearing clothes that are about as fashionable as her own, so not everyone in the community is as strict in their dress as the Woods family is. However, Kit is bored by the services (which last all day), the other parishioners don’t seem very friendly, and it seems like word has spread that Kit is a charity case that her aunt and uncle have taken in. However, she does attract the attention of a young man named William Ashby, and Judith meets John Holbrook for the first time.

As Kit spends more time with her relatives, she discovers that Uncle Matthew is a local selectman but that he has political disagreements with some of the other men in town, and some of them think that he is less loyal to the king than he should be. Kit also becomes involved in the romantic interests of her cousins and confronted with some choices she needs to make about her own future. William Ashby is from a wealthy and socially prominent family, but Uncle Matthew dislikes the Ashby family for being Royalists. Kit learns that Judith was interested in William Ashby before she came, and she worries that Judith will be angry with her for attracting his attention, but Judith tells her not to worry about it because she is now in love with John Holbrook. Kit still feels uncomfortable at William’s sudden interest in her because she has only just come to live in the area, she knows very little about William, and the two of them don’t seem to have much to talk about during his visits with her. However, Aunt Rachel and her cousins encourage her to pursue the relationship because William Ashby’s family is prosperous and he can provide a good living for her. Kit is flattered by William’s attention because he admires her whether she is “useful” or not. With his family’s money and position, William Ashby could give Kit a life similar to the one she had before with her grandfather with nice clothes and relative freedom from routine household chores.

However, Kit’s views and ambitions in life begin to change when she starts helping her cousin Mercy to teach young children in the community’s dame school. Basically, a dame school was when a woman of the community would teach children basic lessons, such as reading and writing, informally in her own home for a fee. (For more information, see Going to School in 1776.) Mercy explains that after children learn to read in the dame school, they can go on to the more advanced lessons in the community’s formal grammar school. Kit always enjoyed reading and discovers that she likes working with the children. As a dame school teacher, Kit earns fees from the students and performs a useful service that she enjoys much more than weeding gardens, scrubbing floors, and other household chores. Kit was not raised to have a profession, but there is more than one kind of work in the world and even in this small community, and this particular kind of work suits her. It pleases Kit that the students appreciate her and enjoy her lessons and stories.

The girls’ romantic dreams and life decisions as they come of age and begin making lives for themselves in the community could make for an interesting historical novel by themselves, but there is more to this story. This is a witch trial story. Kit has already had people making witch comments about her because of her odd behavior, but through her work at the dame school, she demonstrates other odd habits that cause her to get on the wrong side of community members. When she gets the idea of having students act out the story of the Good Samaritan instead of simply listening to it, the situation gets out of hand. She is criticized for using the Bible for play-acting, and the dame school is temporarily closed. Then, Kit befriends Hannah Tupper, a somewhat eccentric widow who lives in an undesirable area near Blackbird Pond that often floods. Nobody understands why she wants to live out there, all alone with her cats, and people in the area say that she’s probably a witch. The truth is that she is known to be a Quaker, and the Puritan community doesn’t like to associate with her because of her religion. Kit likes Hannah because she is kind and understanding to her and calms her when she is upset, but her family doesn’t like her to associate with Hannah, saying that evil can seem innocent at first. Kit also realizes that, while William Ashby admires her, he is also scandalized by her behavior. Hannah, on the other hand, is supportive of Kit and helps her continue to secretly teach a young girl whose mother doesn’t want her to have reading lessons.

Kit’s friendship with Hannah gets her into trouble with community and even puts her life in danger. People in Wethersfield start to die from a disease that has struck the community, and Hannah is blamed. Kit risks her life to save her from an angry mob. Although she successfully gets Hannah to safety, Kit is also accused of witchcraft and put on trial.

I often find stories of people falsely accused frustrating, but this one has a good ending. There is a note in the back of the book that explains the historical background behind the story. Kit Tyler is a fictional character, but there are some real historical characters in the book, and the political situation involving the colony’s charter is real.

The book is a Newbery Award Winner. It’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

The time period of the story is a time of witchcraft suspicions, like those that sparked the infamous Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts (1692-1693). Historically, suspicions of witchcraft and actual witch trials were more likely to occur in communities suffering from internal divisions and instability, especially when the community suffered some further calamity with no apparent explanation, such as a sudden epidemic of illness (possibly ergotism in Salem), heaping panic on top of existing community tension and anger. Then, the community would take out its feelings on someone who was generally disliked by a majority of community members, usually targeting someone who lacked resources to fight back against the allegations of witchcraft, like a poor woman or a widow. Basically, the community wanted someone who could serve as a convenient scapegoat (as described by the Salem Witch Museum) or whipping boy for the commu,nity’s roiling emotions and real problems that they either didn’t want to address or lacked the means to address. Even when it became obvious in hindsight that they had killed innocent people, most of those involved wouldn’t even suffer feeling guilty or bad about themselves for murder because there was always Satan and his trickery to blame for their own actions and decisions. No one could prove that they hadn’t been honestly deceived by the devil, so they would not be held responsible by their friends, who liked them personally and had been actively involved in the entire episode themselves. The community would already be accomplished at mental blame-shifting, so their minds would be relatively untroubled by personal responsibility. Knowing that they didn’t experience regret or remorse for their actions, that they felt right and good about their personal choices, doesn’t help the people they killed, the families of their victims, or people vicariously experiencing the injustice through history or historical novels. Miscarriages of justice are deeply frustrating, which is why I don’t normally like this type of story, although in the past, I’ve been fascinated by the historical background of this incidents, which is why I wrote a couple of papers on witchcraft trials, both American and European, in college, back when I majored in history. (Don’t make the mistake of saying anyone was burned at the stake for witchcraft in America. It’s not true, not even at Salem. The accused were hanged, and some were pressed to death with heavy rocks, but nobody was burned at the stake for witchcraft in the American colonies. That happened in Europe but not America, and it always annoys me when people get that wrong.)

In the book, the community in Wethersfield has all of the historical elements necessary for producing a witch hysteria. From the beginning, Kit notes the the political divisions in the community. Particularly, her uncle is at odds with other prominent community members about specific local issues and the amount of loyalty owed to the king, and there is also a conflict over the colony’s charter. Even though Kit would be the side of those favoring the king, more so than her uncle, the feelings that community members have about her uncle’s political position would give them a natural prejudice and suspicion toward what they would view as the strangest and most problematic member of her uncle’s family. Then, there is a sudden sickness that causes community members to die. The community also has an outcast who would make a convenient scapegoat, Hannah Tupper. When Kit first hears about her, her cousin Judith tells her that some people already think that she may be a witch. As both a widow and a Quaker outcast, she would have been unable to save herself from the townspeople without Kit’s help. When Kit provided that help, and the community lost their first choice of scapegoat, they picked Kit as their second choice, an acceptable substitute.

On the one hand, my own anger at the injustices of the past leads me to return the witch hunters’ judgement with some harsh judgement of my own. Some of the world’s most judgemental people are so unaware of any other emotions besides their own that they are shocked to discover that other people actually have minds and feelings and an equal ability to look back at them and assess what they see. I suppose that these people wouldn’t have guessed what future people would think when they looked back at them because their views of themselves wouldn’t match what independent observers, seeing their actions and the consequences across time, would see. Human beings often have internal fantasies about themselves where they are more brave, clever, attractive, and on the side of moral right than they actually are, and I think the witch hunters are a definite example of that. I don’t like people who wriggle out of personal responsibility, no matter why they do it, and if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, I only consider people as “good” as their own personal behavior and the way they affect other people around them. Nobody’s “good” simply because they say they are or like to think of themselves that way, especially if their real actions say otherwise. Actions speak louder than words. There are many things about the people in the community in this story (as well as in real historical communities) that don’t live up to my high personal standards. Offending me isn’t a criminal offense, and there aren’t many consequences for doing it, but it does provoke a lot of griping.

I think that there’s little point in having standards if you don’t actively live them, and although I think some of that sentiment would have been in the witch hunters’ thoughts, I further believe that everyone has an equal responsibility for both the standards they have and how they choose to demonstrate them. If people would give more thought to the “hows” of their actions and the consequences of what they do, I think there would be fewer problems in the world in general. I also think letting people get away with harmful behavior and not at least clearly criticizing it sets a terrible precedent that is likely to lead to further harm. In the book, once Kit’s name is cleared, she is inclined to forgive her accusers, although she is offered the opportunity to charge them with slander. I understand the reasons why Kit would decide not to pursue these charges, but at the same time, there is clearly one person in the story who was more responsible than the others for the charges brought against Kit and who has also been shown to be hostile toward her own innocent young daughter, and this person does not receive punishment for her actions in this story. I did feel better that the father of the child, realizing that his wife has been wrong about their daughter, falsely labeling her as a half-wit and keeping her from the education that she should have, stands up for the child and her continued education in the end, but I still kind of wanted to see the rest of the community give the mother more of a direct, official warning or censure to bring it home to her that there would be consequences for further misbehavior on her part because of the serious consequences, even possible death, that she almost imposed on others. Sometimes, I feel like this sort of conflict comes to an end too quickly and easily in stories with kind of an air of “We’re all good here now” without some of the underlying problems really being confronted or resolved. It happens sometimes like this in real life, but it’s not very satisfying, and just because some people say “We’re all good here now” doesn’t mean that everything is really fine and everybody involved is really fine. I’m never comfortable with pretending that things are okay that are clearly not. The mother of the child seems to have some mental issues of her own and some kind of emotional conflict over her own child that gives her a warped view of reality. That isn’t fully explained or resolved in the story, probably because the other characters don’t fully understand it, either.

Perceptions are important, but a person’s perceptions don’t stop reality from being, well, real. I know that, in real life, all or many of the supposed witch threats probably seemed real to the individual accusers in the middle of their personal panic, but the reality of the situation is that they did a great deal of harm to innocent people who were unable to stop them. In fact, they specifically targeted people they knew couldn’t stop them, which sounds pretty calculating. They did it because of their own personal problems and the demons that lived in their own minds, whether or not those mental demons had any supernatural help. It’s frustrating because you can’t communicate completely rationally with determinedly irrational people any more than you communicate can with dead people or fictional people and convince them to change their minds. There are times when there’s just nothing you can do when there is no way for the other person to receive new information or they’re just determined not to and no way to help someone who not only doesn’t want help but doesn’t think they need it and would be deeply offended and suspicious at the mere offer. On the other hand, the psychology of such incidents is kind of interesting.

Years ago, I attended a talk given by a team of professional ghost hunters where they said that people who call them to investigate hauntings in their homes tend to be people who are already troubled about something else in their life, such as money problems, marital problems, health problems (mental and/or physical), problems with their kids, or some combination of these. Then, when something happens that seems strange and inexplicable, they get startled by it because they’re already on edge. People who are more secure in their lives and are generally happy might brush off one or two odd things that happen as just rare oddities and forget about them, but people who are already upset about something else tend to seize on them. They become hyper-vigilant. They start noticing more and more odd things that they might otherwise have overlooked and draw connections between these things in their minds, actively looking for more. Soon, they have themselves convinced that they’ve got a full-blown haunting in their house, when at least some of what they’ve experienced is just the ghosts in their own minds. In one case, they said that a man was troubled by a mask he bought at a garage sale. He thought it was cursed because, soon after he got it, a bunch of bad things happened to him. (As I recall, his wife divorced him, he lost his job, and he had health problems.) The ghost hunters said, “To be fair, we don’t think that this mask was cursed when the man bought it. We think it became cursed because he bought it, and he continually blamed it for every bad thing that happened to him around that time, even though these things were probably going to happen anyway.” This is basically the same process that leads to witchcraft trials, except that in witchcraft trials, it happens on a larger scale. Witchcraft trials involve whole troubled communities instead of just a single troubled household.

This still happens in modern communities, but in places where people don’t believe in witches, it’s more likely to take the form of a kind of moral panic, where people get upset about a possible infiltration or excess of people seen as some kind of disruptive moral deviants, rather than a witch hysteria. In both cases, the community experiences extreme fear or paranoia about some perceived threat, but in moral panics, the perceived threat comes from some part of human society, like Communists during the Red Scare or some variety of criminal, not a supernatural force. Actually, I believe that we’ve been living in a state of moral panic in the US for at least the last few years, probably longer, on more than one front. I can’t help but notice that much of what’s been happening in modern times fits all the criteria and follows the typical stages of a moral panic, particularly the parts about the “hidden dangers of modern technology“, a belief in “a ‘hidden world’ of anonymous evil people“, and fear of an “evil stranger manipulating the innocent” (which, weirdly, is what I think is behind the willingness of some people to believe conspiracy theories in the first place as they accept stories that come from apparent “friends”, or at least people who look like people they might want to get a beer with or something – some people use them as their primary source of media, thus checking another box in the requirements for a moral panic and leading up to the final point). In my experience, the fear is particularly about evil people who want to “control” others and tell them what to do, the ultimate community boogeymen where I live. I’ve heard a lot about it for years from real people who habitually like to tell me what to do and how I should feel about things themselves.

This is kind of a digression from the story, but I put it here to illustrate that we might not have to question how people can get themselves into community hysteria over perceived threats, most of which prove to be not that threatening in the long term. Most people might not believe in witches anymore, but they’ve found plenty of creative substitutes for the same basic process over the years. A complete list would take too long to compile, but if you spend any amount of time on social media, you can come up with several “evil” or “deviant” groups or ideological concepts that people hate and fear in the space of a few minutes. Thanks to modern technology, you don’t have to wonder what’s going on in people’s heads. You can Google it. Many people will just tell you right up front what boogeymen are lurking in their minds, and they’ll gladly share that information with untold numbers of total strangers through Twitter, Facebook, and Quora, feeling validated and supported if faceless usernames agree and spread their stories, no matter why they do, and often raging against sinister forces trying to spy on them at the same time. It’s not rational, but it is recognizable. I put it to you that a few moments of honest self-reflection, considering not how you feel but what you’re actually going to do and what it’s going to mean in real terms, can be the stitch in time that saves nine. There are dangers to modern technology, but I don’t think they’re really that hidden. They’re the same dangers human society has caused itself in the past, just much faster, and they come mostly from the demons in the minds of the people involved. There is nothing online that wasn’t designed, written, promoted, spread around, and ultimately accepted by individual humans. It’s when people lose touch with the realities of the situation and the consequences that their actions have for real people around them in the real world that I really worry. It seems to me that blaming the Internet or the media for the things people have decided to do themselves has become the 21st century version of “The devil made me do it.”

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Phoebe the Spy

Phoebe the Spy by Judith Berry Griffin, illustrated by Margot Tomes, 1977.

Phoebe Fraunces is a thirteen-year-old girl living in New York in 1776. The Fraunces family is black, but unlike most black people in the American colonies at the time, they have never been slaves. (There were some free black families who had never been slaves during this period of history, but they were uncommon.) Phoebe’s father, Samuel Fraunces owns a tavern called The Queen’s Head. It’s a popular place for people to meet, and Samuel Fraunces allows some prominent Patriots to meet there in secret and discuss their plans. Being party to such meetings could come with consequences as the colonies are on the brink of war.

One day, in April 1776, Samuel confides in his daughter that he has overheard something disturbing. He believes that George Washington’s life is in danger, that there are soldiers who are willing to kill their general for money. Samuel is worried about what he heard, but he isn’t sure what the plot against George Washington actually is and has no proof of what he heard. He’s afraid that if he tells Washington about what he heard too soon, without proof, the conspirators will just wait for a safer time to strike, so he asks Phoebe to help him uncover the truth. Samuel knows that George Washington will be coming to New York soon, and he has asked Samuel to help him find a housekeeper for the house where he will be staying. Samuel wants Phoebe to take the housekeeper position and to keep her eyes open for signs of danger.

Phoebe doesn’t know if she can do what her father wants her to do. She isn’t sure what she’s supposed to be watching for, and she doesn’t know how she could stop the plot if there is one. Her father tells her that she should look out for a man who is part of George Washington’s bodyguard and whose name starts with the letter ‘T’. This is all that Samuel was able to tell about the conspirator from the conversation that he overheard. He tells Phoebe to be careful, not to trust anyone, and to meet with him regularly in the market to tell him what she has learned. The two of them also discuss how odd it is that a man like George Washington, who owns slaves, would be at the center of a fight for freedom. Phoebe hopes that he will free his slaves after the war is over, although her father doubts that will happen. Still, the Fraunces family supports the cause of the Patriots, and Phoebe agrees to help her father find the conspirators and save George Washington’s life.

Phoebe is young to be a housekeeper, but she is accepted into Washington’s household. There, she meets Mary the cook and her son Pompey. Pompey also performs chores for the family, like carrying firewood. The work isn’t too hard for Phoebe because much of it is what she is accustomed to doing for her family’s tavern, like making beds, cleaning the silver, and making sure that meals are served on time. George Washington doesn’t say much when he’s around Phoebe, but she carefully observes the people around him. Every day, she goes to the market to buy food and see her father.

At first, Phoebe has nothing to report to her father. Everyone around George Washington seems to be nice or at least behaving normally, and nobody’s last name begins with the letter ‘T’. Mr. Green, a member of George Washington’s bodyguard, seems a bit unfriendly, but a younger man, Mr. Hickey, seems rather nice and sometimes gives Phoebe little presents.

However, there is a traitor among the household, and although it pains Phoebe when she learns who it is, she must do her duty and protect the life of the person she has promised to protect.

Some of the pictures in the book are black-and-white drawings, and some are in muted colors.

The original title of this book was Phoebe and the General. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Historical Background

The story is based on the real Fraunces family of New York. Samuel Fraunces really did own a tavern called the Queen’s Head and allowed Patriots to meet there. A note in the back of the book explains that after the war ended, he was given a reward by Congress, and he changed the name of the Queen’s Head to Fraunces Tavern. Fraunces Tavern still exists today, and it is still a restaurant, although part of it has been converted into a museum.

The racial identity of Samuel Fraunces has been in dispute for some time. No one is completely sure what he actually looked like. There is a portrait of a white man that has been reputed to be Samuel Fraunces, but the true identity of that portrait is in dispute. Samuel Fraunces is known to have had the nickname of “Black Sam”, but different sources describe the family differently. All that is known of Samuel Fraunces’s background is that he was born around 1722 and was originally from the West Indies. It’s possible that the Fraunces family may have been mixed race because some sources refer to Samuel Fraunces as “mulatto” (an old term for someone born to a white parent and a black parent, not considered a polite term now), which might explain the other, differing accounts of the family’s race.

The story of Phoebe Fraunces saving George Washington’s life is legend, but the facts regarding that incident are also in dispute. The legend might be based on a misunderstanding, and Samuel Frances’s real daughter, Elizabeth, does not seem to have been old enough at the time to have taken part in this adventure. The story has had a tendency to appear and reappear around patriotic milestones in the United States, first around the centennial in 1876 and then around the bicentennial in 1976, when this book was written.