Autumn in Rockport – November 18-06

To Mrs. Cynthia Peckham, I owe a debt of gratitude. This morning, I marched up to the Sandy Bay Historical Society at the top of King Street and she let me into the old house (by arrangement), once owned by one of her ancestors, Levi Sewall when he built it in 1832 out of granite from his quarry. She led me up into the reading room, where there were volumes of books, some of them entire genealogies for some of Rockport’s residents who take an interest in their provenance. There were also town records, history books and literature, as well as letters that I never even got to during my two hours.

But I found a plumb resource, a journal written in 1848-49 by a young Susannah Norwood Torrey, when she was in her early 20’s and newly married, living a middle class life in Rockport. It was a revelation to read something so similar to what I’ve created in my own head and committed to over 100 pages so far; the language, the overall mood, were eerily like that of my character, Marianne Parsons. I took away some pages of introduction to the transcribed journal and about two pages of what Susannah Norwood Torrey had written to get a feel for her daily rhythm. I am in complete disbelief. Susannah is, forgive me, almost a dead ringer for my protagonist, Marianne Parsons, with an aspect of her that veers a little away from the conventional just as Marianne’s nature tends to do.

Mrs. Peckham, curator of the Historical Society, is a descendant of the Norwood and Poole families; the Norwoods being great landowners going back to the early 18th century, the Pooles among the earliest settlers of Sandy Bay (founded in 1690 and which became the town of Rockport in 1840), once part of Gloucester. Mrs. P., in her 80’s herself, was generous with facts and remarkably clear-headed. She had much to offer and was happy to oblige as I ferreted through this and that stack she handed me, skimming a book or two before moving hungrily onto the next thing and losing myself in what I felt was the prize; the journal and the file on Hannah Jumper.

Before I knew anything about her other than that she was queen of Temperance, I had slipped Hannah Jumper into my book without knowing when she lived and died. The trail I’d begun to sniff a few days ago (on the internet) brought me to a book written about her by Eleanor C. Parsons, detailing the day Hannah and dozens of homemakers took to the establishments in Rockport, hatchets hidden under their lace shawls (July 8, 1856), to lay waste to any liquor they could find. Never married, an enterprising seamstress and handy with rendering medicine from herbs which is how, it is recorded, that she knew and was admired by Rockport’s women, Hannah Jumper was a spry 75 when she led that revolt against illicit supplies of alcohol. Though I hadn’t known until today about that riotous day in Rockport’s history and its effect on Temperance (which ended here in 2005 when the law of no liquor licenses was repealed in Rockport), I realized that if she’s going to be a guest at a dinner party at the Pringles’ table in my book, I had better figure out if she was still alive.

Of course, she wasn’t, not in 1870; she died in 1865. And, not only was she dead, this morning Mrs. Peckham told me that Hannah Jumper’s line is gone. She has no descendants, although Story Parsons, Eleanor Parsons' late husband, was descended from Hannah Jumper (I learned this later) whose maiden name was Parsons; how to keep it all straight! So, looking at the day the hatchet gang went on their liquor vanquishing rampage and realizing, too, that it was before the Civil War into which Rockport sent some of its men to fight but which was also not as significantly a part of their lives as in other parts of the Northeast, I’ve decided that I might place the diary in 1856-57 (a year in Marianne Parsons’ life) and include this historic event in my book as a bit of backdrop. I now have a document, written in 1933, of the account (as told to, and eye witnessed) of Hannah Jumper’s siege. It’s actually told in a decidedly light tone, and seemed even then to be a source of some amusement. The triumph of her will is celebrated.

The other touchstone I’ve been led to when researching Hannah Jumper is Eleanor C. Parsons, Rockport’s resident historian, perhaps one of several. To her enormous credit, Mrs. Peckham is definitely a fount of history with her familial ties to a rich legacy of town folk through the centuries. And this morning I asked this marvelous curator if Eleanor Parsons is accessible to anyone. So, she gave me her address and tel. number, saying the Mrs. Parsons would enjoy being “bothered,” as she’s often bored. Boredom can be lethal to an elderly person. No wonder Mrs. Parsons uses that still lucid brain to keep writing historical books.

Now I’m set to meet with her tomorrow afternoon. Her late husband is Story Parsons from Rockport, his family dating back to its earliest days. Though Mrs. Peckham – a woman, I soon learned, with an eagle eye for accuracy and truth in non-fiction - more or less waved her hand in dismissal of my worry that using the Parsons name might be a problem in my fictional work, I plan to ask the nonagenarian history maven if I can use her surname; just dumb luck on my part to have chosen it in the first place. She’s written an embarrassment of books on Rockport’s history, one of them about Hannah and her Hatchet Gang, and she’s 91 years old. She’s still writing and publishing!

So, I called the venerable Mrs. Eleanor Parsons and we spoke a few minutes. I figured, I’m only here another day and uncertain as to when I'll be back; I must make hay while the sun shines. She was only too happy to agree to a 2 o’clock meeting tomorrow at her house, down the street from the Sandy Bay Historical Society which is just a few minutes’ walk from the inn. I feel a little like a sleuth even though much of what I’m discovering seems organically to sprout from the thing I discover and turn over before it. But this is what research is and I don’t want to get too deep into it yet, just gather bits here and there to inform my story so that I can proceed and return later to facts and places as they occur and arise.

Right now, Joe is upstairs in our cozy room doing his own work and in an hour or so we’ll stroll back into town for dinner. We took a walk this afternoon after lunching on some crackers, cheese and fruit (and a bit of Port wine for me; my favorite in small, self-indulgent doses) which really hit the spot. I’m setting this elegantly furnished living room on fire with the after effects of too much cheese.

Later today or tomorrow, Tobey Shepherd, the proprietress of the Linden Tree Inn (along with her husband John whose English lineage – he’s from a naval family in Plymouth, England – is rich indeed) where we stay when we come here, is going to show me the interior staircases in this house where I’ve set my novel. In the four years and half-dozen times we’ve been coming to the inn, these staircases were unknown to me. This house is filled with rooms, two deep stories of them, topped off by a widow’s watch that I like to visit just to look through the ogling windows on all sides. Today they were steamy and I could only peer through one tiny space out to one of the twin Thacher lighthouses in the distance.

Being here with Joe, feeling the presence of the ghosts of my book’s characters, absorbing the warmth and comfort of this 155 year old house, is my heaven. Joe is cheering my efforts on when I gush about my discoveries, is happy to enjoy the surroundings as much as I do. He is a good companion.

In February when we were here, I struggled with the continuation of the book, my confidence and convictions wobbling. But it is nine months later, the full cycle of a pregnancy, and I’m ready to nurture it to the end and watch it grow beyond its beginnings; most vitally to help it along since it can’t grow without me to nudge it further.