Authors: Celia Rees
Sorceress (24 page)
Rebekah and Tobias eventually went back with others to rebuild their devastated town. Somewhere in the process it was renamed Deerfield. The town was not without future troubles, but the Morse family stayed on and prospered. Some of them live there still.
Note 6. Quilt
From the Rivers/Morse quilt provenance. Extract from:
Sewing Serendipity
, 1916.
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Eveline Travers Harris adds to our occasional series ‘Old Quilts of New England’ with a fascinating family tale about an extremely unusual quilt from her very fine collection.
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The Morse quilt
It may not be much to look at, being all of one colour and a drab one at that, but it is not colour or pattern, cleverness of working or intricacy of stitching, that makes the Morse quilt (as we call it) something special. Its age does that, and what it means to us. It has been in our family for ever, and I do mean ever. It was not manufactured here in the United States – or the Colonies, as it would have been back then. The quilt started life in England, so family tradition tells us, some time in the seventeenth century, so it is of very great antiquity.
It came here with one of the first families. Some say a Morse brought it with them, some say a Rivers, and some say that it originally belonged to someone else entirely, but one thing we do know for sure. It has been in the family ever since that time, and is always passed down on the female side. It has seen every conceivable threat and danger, Indian wars and rebellion, not to mention the War of Independence and the Civil War, and survived them all, just as our family has.
So it means a lot to us, not least in the family traditions that go back to those ‘first times’. It is said that Rebekah Rivers Morse (1643–1714) of Deerfield was the first owner. When she gave it to her daughter Mary Sarah on the occasion of the girl’s marriage, it was with the instruction that the quilt was to be passed on to her daughter, and so on. If there was no daughter, then the quilt was to go the wife of the eldest son. Curiously nearly all of the mothers had daughters, right down to this current generation.
The quilt was never used for its original mundane purpose, right from the start it was treasured. It was kept in its original box, and only brought out at the birth of a child, when it was spread over mother and offspring in the belief that it would protect both of them in those first few perilous weeks, childbirth being a risky business for both mother and babe until relatively recent times. Now, what with antiseptics and anaesthetics, it might be said that we are no longer in need of the quilt’s protection and many might feel inclined to dismiss the tradition as mere superstition. To them I would reply that no baby ever died who had the quilt spread over it, all of them thrived, and no mother lost her life to the fevers that claimed so many after the birth of a child.
I certainly intend to carry on the family tradition. I look forward to the day when I can give this wonderful quilt to my daughter, Etta May, on the occasion of her marriage.
Eveline Travers Harris
, September 17th, 1916
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Eveline Travers Harris died 1981. Quilt bought by J. W. Holden 1985. On his death (1996) it became part of the Holden Collection at the Holden Foundation Museum.
Note 7. Jack Gill
Transcript of interview with Richard Gill of Nantucket 4/6/99.
AE: I’m interested in a man called Jack Gill. Are you any relation?
RG: Sure am. Been Gills on this island since pretty near the time of first settlement. I’m Richard Gill. Jack’d be my great-great-and-some-grandfather going way back. [Pause] Well, now. Old Jack Gill. Jack Gill was from off island. He weren’t first family. But he came pretty near when the colony started. From Long Island, so they say, but he’d been up and down the eastern seaboard from Nova Scotia to Virginia, to the West Indies and back again.
He’d gotten together a goodly sum in the process, but he couldn’t rest, couldn’t settle, it was like he was looking for something, someone. Then his ship called here, caught in a storm she was, running for shelter. He came ashore and met up with an island girl. A pretty thing by all accounts, eyes as grey as a winter sea and hair as gold as the sands. Maybe he’s ready to stop his roving, maybe he left off looking, but anyways, he fell in love and she fell in love right back.
Now she
was
first family, and Quaker over that, so when she married him, she married out, that’s what we call it. He didn’t turn Quaker, but he never left the island again.
AE: So what did he do?
RG: He didn’t want to do trading no more, so he turns to whaling. There was whaling, even back then, carried on in a small way compared with what came later. The boats operated from the shore. Lookouts were set along the coast and when a whale was sighted a crew would go out in pursuit.
AE: What kinds of whales were they hunting?
RG: Right whales, mostly. Called that because they was the right kind to kill. They came past every autumn migrating to their breeding grounds in the south. Still do, matter of fact, what’s left of ’em, that is. Well, old Jack, he goes along with this for a while, but he has bigger ideas. He takes his craft farther and farther out into the deep ocean, way off shore, out of sight of land. Here he catches him a sperm whale, probably by accident first time round. Now sperm-whale oil is better quality than right whale oil. In particular the oil in its head, they call it the case, is light and pure and worth a whole lot more. That’s what Jack is after. He dreams of having a fleet of sloops – these’d be judged small by later standards, thirty, forty tons, but they’d be capable of going to the deep waters. He has big plans, but he’s getting to be an old man. He can’t do it himself no more. He can’t manage the steering oar or handle the killing lance. He’s too old to go to sea.
[Pause]
AE: Too old to go to sea?
RG: What I said, be in his sixties by this time.
[Pause]
AE: OK. So, so how did he die, then?
RG: Old Jack? He died in his bed.
AE: Huh?
RG: What’s wrong with that?
AE: Nothing. Go on. Go on with his story.
RG: He hands the business on to his son Ichabod. He will take the sloops out to the deep ocean where Jack dreamed to go. There he’ll hunt the great sperm whales.
Now these beasts are a different prospect from the right whales they’ve been used to hunting. These are bigger, grander; more valuable, yeah, but a whole lot faster and harder to catch. And mean. You read
Moby Dick
? They’ve been known to stove a ship.
[Pause]
RG: Anyways. Where was I?
AE: Ichabod?
RG: Oh, yeah. Ichabod was a Quaker, like his mother had been before she ‘married out’. He joined the Meeting, something Jack never did, and he married into one of the island’s Quaker families. He was as ambitious as his father, but he lacked Jack’s spirit of adventure, his wayward streak. Ichabod left nothing to chance. He was as strict as they come and chance is a thing Quakers don’t have no truck with. No truck with superstition either, so before the voyage, when the old man pressed his lucky piece into his hand, Ichabod gave it right back, saying he got no need for it.
AE: This lucky piece? What was it?
RG: Half a silver coin, given to Jack by the captain of some ship he served on. Jack swore by it all his life, never went to sea without it.
AE: What happened to the other half?
RG: Never would say. My guess was he gave it to a sweetheart – it’s what sailors did in them days. Anyways, Ichabod sails out without the lucky piece and he doesn’t come back. His whale boat was stove, the whole crew lost. When the sad news came back, his only son dead like that, the old man never got over it. He took to his bed and his soul went out on the very next tide. They found him cold in the morning, his fist closed tight around that half a silver shilling.
AE: So it was Ichabod who was killed by the whale, not Jack at all?
RG: Yeah. That’s what I been telling ya.
Note 8. Ephraim Carlton
Brass plaque set into stone by the side of the Missouri River:
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This plaque is dedicated to the memory of
voyageurs
Ephraim Carlton
,
Jean Dupré
, and Tonsa their native guide, who passed this spot in February 1695 and were among the first explorers to open the way for the exploration and subsequent settlement of the vast American continent.
Additional information on Mary’s mother E.G.
Provisionally identified as Elinor Garfield, wife of Colonel Garfield, a commander in Cromwell’s army and signatory to Charles I’s death warrant.
Contemporary sources describe Elinor as a woman of exceptional intelligence, courage and resourcefulness, ‘above the ordinary pitch of women’. She served the Commonwealth cause with great loyalty and stuck with her husband through great adversity, saving him from execution when the monarchy was restored.
Although a great deal is known about her adult life, little is known of her girlhood and young womanhood, save that she lived in a large manor house outside the town of Warwick, deep in what was then the Forest of Arden. Her own mother died when Elinor was born, so she would have been given over to a wet nurse (who may or may not have been Eliza Nuttall). Her father and brother were among the first to join on the side of Parliament on the outbreak of the Civil War. They were both soldiers in Cromwell’s New Model Army. Before her marriage to Colonel Garfield, a friend of her father’s, Elinor would have been alone in the house while her menfolk were away at the war.
We can only surmise that it was during the time of solitude that Elinor conceived and Mary was born. As for the father? We have no information about him. I personally believe he was the Erl King.
Alison Ellman, 31 August, 2001
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Celia Rees
Celia Rees is one of Britain’s foremost writers for teenagers and her titles for Bloomsbury have enjoyed huge success.
Witch Child
is required reading in secondary schools up and down the country, and has been translated into over 25 languages. A former English teacher, Celia also has a degree in history, a strong interest in which is evident in her brilliantly researched books.
Sorceress
,
Pirates!
and
Sovay
have all met similar critical acclaim and are loved for their strong characters and skilfully plotted adventures. Her most recent book for Bloomsbury is
Sovay
, which was longlisted for the Carnegie Prize 2009. Celia Rees lives in Leamington Spa, with her husband and has a grown daughter.
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