Sextant Volume XVI, Spring 2008

SEXTANT The Journal of Salem State College 

Spring 2008

Volume XVI, No. 1

Note & editor’s

acknowledgments

T President Patricia Maguire Meservey Provost and Academic Vice President Diane Lapkin Dean of the Graduate School Marc Glasser Editors Patricia Johnston, Art Eileen Margerum, Communications Editorial Board Susan Case, Biology Susan Edwards, Archives Heidi Fuller, Sport, Fitness and Leisure Maureen McRae, Nursing Ellen Rintell, Education Leah Ritchie, Management J.D. Scrimgeour, English Stephen Young, Geography Design & Production of Volume XVI, No. 1 Susan McCarthy, Publications Photography Kim Mimnaugh, Art

Sextant is published by the faculty of Salem State College.

Opinions expressed by writers are their own and do not necessarily reflect College policy.

Copyright © 2008 Sextant encourages readers to submit letters or comments to:

Sextant Salem State College 352 Lafayette Street Salem, MA 01970-5353 pjohnston@salemstate.edu Please include your name, address, phone number, and email address.

Letters may be published and edited according to space.

978-542-6488 www.salemstate.edu/sextant

his issue of the Sextant features articles and artwork that examine, in multiple ways, natural and human conflicts. Jack Sweeney’s memoir of scientific research in the face of threats from the vast ocean wilderness sets the stage. Krishna Mallick describes ways philosophers categorize the tense interrelationships between people and nature; John V. Goff and Alan Young explain how political conflicts between Native Americans and French and English colonizers in the 17th century shaped the culture of the present Salem area. Ken Reker’s assemblage sculptures crafted from found objects challenge viewers into thinking about human effects on the landscape and potential for renewal and reuse. Other features are concerned with human conflict: Rod Kessler’s tale of relationships ending and beginning, and Elizabeth Kenney’s chronicle of domestic abuse and divorce in the 19th century. In addition, we are pleased to present creative works by Benjamin Gross and Kevin Carey.

I am grateful to the many people who worked on the content and design of this issue, first among them, the Editorial Board. The board reviewed and provided substantive critiques of all submissions. Two long-time members, Steven Young (Geography) and Maureen McRae (Nursing), are rotating off the board. For their many valuable contributions to the Sextant, we are all grateful. The Editorial Board would like to recognize the capable, enthusiastic contributions of Sandra Fowler, Professor of Communications, who passed away in January 2008. We dedicate this issue of the Sextant to her memory.

This issue represents a fine blending of word and image. Several of the articles are illustrated by works of members of the visual arts faculty. Philosophy Professor Krishna Mallick’s article on current thinking about ecology is enhanced by Art Professor Mary Mellili’s elegant abstract landscape paintings. Becalmed, an excerpt from English Professor Rod Kessler’s novel-in-progress, is expertly illustrated by Kim Mimnaugh’s photography.

For allowing Ms. Mimnaugh access to their Gloucester garages and for their expert modeling, we thank Steve at Linsky’s, Dennis at Car Shop, and Nino at Tony’s. For additional modeling we are grateful to Cheryl Lynne Goolsby.

Other articles are illustrated by materials from New England museums. Elizabeth Kenney’s article is illuminated by images from the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, the Mattatuck Historical Society in Waterbury, Connecticut, and private collections.

For John V. Goff and Alan Young’s article, we are grateful to Christine Michelini, Photo Resources and Archives Manager at the Peabody Essex Museum, to Marilyn Angel Wynn of Nativestock Pictures, to Kayleigh Merritt ’08, and to Jim McAllister of Derby Square Tours in Salem. The image of the 1635 John Smith map was acquired through the efforts of Steven Young, Matthew Edney (University of Southern Maine), and Brian Dunnigan (University of Michigan).

The exciting layout of this issue of the Sextant is again the result of creative design

by Susan McCarthy, the lead designer for the journal since it first appeared in 1987. As readers will see, her color sense and page design give the publication its dynamic feel.

In addition to her creative work, Ms. McCarthy coordinates the journal’s production.

Many other people on campus contributed to this issue of the Sextant. Eileen Margerum, Professor Emerita of Communications, ably stepped in during my leave of absence. She worked closely with many of the authors, enriching their texts with her practical and elegant sensibility. Susan Case, Professor of Biology, graciously proofread the final copy; Scott Prewitt and the staff at Imperial provided high quality printing.

We also thank Joyce Rossi-Demas, Rose Cooke, Roland Ricard, Derek Barr, Nancy Ranahan, Evelyn Wilson, Joan Thomas, and Kris Cowles.

The support of the SSC Graduate School has been crucial. Dean Marc Glasser has been a steadfast supporter of faculty research. The Graduate School also supported two graduate assistants for the journal. I am particularly grateful to Cristina Rivera ’09, the Sextant’s fall semester Graduate Assistant, for arranging for the copyright permissions from museums and for taking care of many other details for image permissions. Josilyn DeMarco ’09, our spring semester assistant, was an expert proof reader.

A number of SSC administrators have been key supporters: Provost and Academic Vice President Diane Lapkin, Dean of Arts and Sciences Anita V. M. Shea, and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Amie Marks Goodwin. We welcome President Patricia Maguire Meservey and look forward to her future support.

—Patricia Johnston

SEXTANT

Spring 2008

Volume XVI, No. 1

Self portrait, watercolor on ivory, 1 3/4" x 1 5/8" Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartfort, CT. Bequest of William B. Goodwin

E S S A Y A New Philosophy of Ecology 6 Krishna Mallick Paintings by Mary Melilli

Nouveau France versus New England: 17th Century Conflicts in Naumkeag (Ancient Salem) John V. Goff and Alan M.Young

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The Great Divorce Case 38 Elizabeth T. Kenney

A Young Man with White Stock Samuel Farmar Jarvis

M E M O I R Summer Solstice

Jack Sweeney

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P O R T F O L I O Assemblage

21

Familiar Faces

36

Ken Reker

Ken Reker

Benjamin Gross

Parasite, detail

F I C T I O N Becalmed 28 Rod Kessler Photographs by Kim Mimnaugh

Kim Mimnaugh

P O E T R Y Running 48

Kevin Carey

B O O K S H E L F Recent books by faculty and staff

Inside back cover

On the cover: Fields of Gold by Mary Melilli, mixed media on canvas, 5' x 6' (See page 6).

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M E M O I R

Summer Solstice Jack Sweeney

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t was the 22nd of June 1988, the last day of a shoreline gravity survey around Burnaby Island in the Queen Charlotte archipelago off the west coast of Canada. The work was a small component of a multifaceted study by the Geological Survey of Canada to assess the natural resource potential of the region. My job was to determine the underground size and shape of a minor granite body exposed on the eastern half of the small island. A large, buried granite formation would trigger detailed mineral exploration because valuable ore deposits are often found near such features. Gravity surveys are a quick cheap way to determine just how much granite is actually there.

Changes in the local gravity field anywhere on the planet are related to changes in rock density underfoot. Stronger gravity indicates denser rocks and vice-versa. Granites are well suited to gravity analysis because they are usually much less dense than their host rocks. Subsequent computer modeling of the collected gravity data showed the Burnaby Island granite to be just three kilometers (1.9 miles) thick with vertical sides, too small to be of much interest to mining companies. Our data helped determine this.

Dave Seemann, my young black-haired clean-shaven associate, and I camped at the edge of the impenetrable rain forest on this uninhabited island and used a twelvefoot Zodiac rubber inflatable boat with outboard motor to land in the tidal zone at points along the coast and take readings. On this wet and cold day, wind-swept chop produced continual bone-jarring bounces on the boat rides between setups.

The survey went like clockwork until a sharp barnacle sliced a hole in the bow compartment of the boat at one of the stops. It was a blowout and we couldn’t pull the damaged craft ashore safely at that steep rocky location.

Seemann backed out into deeper water and headed along the coast toward a sandy beach about a half mile away.

I yanked the limp bow section up toward myself to prevent a nosedive and certain swamping as we bounded along.

The beach offered a protected place to effect emergency patching with a bicycle inner tube repair kit. Seemann scuffed up the surface around the puncture and coated it with rubber cement. After he pressed it down hard for a few minutes the patch bonded to the glue. A small onboard foot pump connected to the intake valve reinflated the compartment. The job was quick and sloppy but it worked well enough that we continued the survey.

Finished at last, we negotiated the Zodiac on the long final run for home past Scudder Point, the outermost protrusion of Burnaby Island into Hecate Strait, the so-called “inside passage” for commercial ship and cruise liner traffic between Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska. Sixfoot sea waves refracted around the headland, making the turn particularly slow and rough. It was a painful ride with our knees and ankles banging against gear. Without warning the Johnson engine sputtered and quit in maximum swell between two shoals at the point. The ocean crashed on the bedrock shore in spray and foam not 100 feet away.

The roar was distracting without the engine noise to mask it. Our fate seemed clear. In two or three minutes we would make a very unpleasant landing in high surf, damage or lose some equipment, and likely face injury. A tough but routine day of gravity survey work suddenly required extraordinary measures.

We watched the surf rhythmically charge and retreat with intense anticipation. In seconds it was clear that we weren’t closing on the beach, instead the current moved us northward parallel to it. To the north lay endless Hecate Strait, Alaska, and the open Pacific Ocean. Seemann tried and retried the engine. It was seized up. Our trip back to camp dissolved promptly into something serious, immediate, and dangerous.

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When the wind dwindled and the rain tapered off, we felt reprieved. If Seemann and I stayed calm the situation was survivable. We fashioned makeshift paddles, jury-rigged a sail from a small plastic sheet, and planned what to do if we made land. Would it be a sandy beach or a rock cliff?

Either way, this far north it would never be too dark to tell at summer solstice.

A bristling sensation passed through my body as I realized our predicament. The sea was rough.

Occasional swells splashed over the transom and left seawater sloshing around my feet. The current and wind carried the little Zodiac away at a surprisingly fast clip. In just a few minutes the roar of the surf on the shore faded into the background. Very quickly the only sounds were the wind, breaking ocean waves near the boat, and raindrops bouncing off our plasticcoated hats.

Seemann tried the handheld marine radio that he had packed for just such an occasion. He dialed the emergency rescue channel. No response. He called every ten minutes. No contact. I scanned the engine Map of Queen Charlotte Islands off the coast of British Columbia manual, hoping to discover showing distribution of gravity stations. Solid dots near some remedy that would resbottom outline the coast of Burnaby Island. urrect the dead Johnson. It said, “let cool, then restart. If engine does not restart, see Dealer.” No solution there.

We felt helpless. Was this really happening? When the wind picked up and the rain swept in, I endured a foreboding feeling of imminent death. One big wave, one large gust of wind—and we would be swamped.

In those frigid waters hypothermia works fast. The two of us sat there bobbing in our twelve-foot open boat gripped in the moment.

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An Orca breached fifty feet from the bright orange Zodiac, presumably considering whether or not this object was edible prey. To the killer whale, the silent little boat must have resembled an exceptionally large red snapper. I mused, “So exposure to the elements isn’t the only way to cash out here.” The big mammal disappeared into the depths.

A tall narrow white object broke the horizon to the north. It was easy to spot against the solid green of the islands. Funny, neither of us noticed it before. We watched this stationary feature for a while. Perhaps it was a building, a lighthouse. Maybe someone was there in the middle of this vast wilderness. Seemann retrieved a small flare gun shaped like a fountain pen from his shirt pocket and screwed a cartridge into the end of the barrel. He held the little gun high over his

Dave Seemann

The author at lunch with Zodiac and aluminum gravity meter case in background.

head and fired. The flare streaked aloft as we stared at the distant white object for some sign that they spotted us. No response. We returned to paddling and radioing for help.

batteries in his marine radio were too old to hold a charge.

The radio never worked out there in the Zodiac.

What an ultimate piece of luck to be sighted by the only other boat within miles of this remote location. Our pickup We felt helpless. Was this really from the Burnaby Island camphappening? When the wind picked up site wasn’t scheduled until the next day. If we drifted for twenty and the rain swept in, I endured a more hours before anyone came foreboding feeling of imminent death. looking for us—our boat would over forty miles northOne big wave, one large gust of wind— travel ward into commercial sea lanes.

A fast moving cruise liner or a and we would be swamped. large cargo vessel might steam right over a tiny Zodiac without Some minutes later Seemann cast another glance toever knowing it, regardless of weather, or the round-theward the white object. His glance instantly turned into a clock daylight at summer solstice. But we were rescued. gaze. The image was east of its earlier position and ever so slightly larger. A definite sail. He fired another flare. Was it Acknowledgments: The author thanks Rob Brown of the Communiheading our way? This was encouraging. cations Department and members of the 2007 Salem State College The wind stiffened. The water surface shivered from its effects. I estimated our drift rate to be more than 2 mph by observing the boat’s passage along the distant coastline at least 2,000 feet away. It was important to keep busy, stay positive, keep planning. I thought about endurance. How long could someone last in this weather?

summer writers’ workshop for their comments on earlier drafts of the book-length manuscript from which this article is excerpted.

Kim Mimnaugh

The sailboat was a 92-foot yacht from Pacific Synergies, a chartered adventure tour company out of Vancouver.

The captain, Dr. Al Whitney, observed through his field glasses what he thought was an orange buoy on his horizon when it fired a flare. That was when he lowered his jib and altered course to rescue the two passengers in the Zodiac.

Seemann and I went from predicament to luxury in short order. Once on board, the cup of hot chocolate I was offered was easily the best I ever tasted. The yacht delivered us to the main Geological Survey of Canada bush camp on Moresby Island, the large landmass just west of Burnaby Island. Seemann discovered later that the rechargeable

Jack Sweeney, Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at Salem State College, divined the mysteries of the deep Arctic sea floor and analyzed gravity anomalies over impact craters and granite bodies around the world. He published numerous research papers, edited a few research volumes and served on several international advisory panels during his career with the Geological Survey of Canada.

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E S S A Y

A New Philosophy of Ecology Krishna Mallick Paintings by Mary Melilli

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hen it was announced in November 2007 that the Nobel Peace Prize would be shared equally by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former Vice President Al Gore, the citation read that they were being honored “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.” Linking humancaused damage to the planet with the threat of war raised to a new level the general awareness of how serious Public inattention and our current situation is.

Popular Thinking About the Environment

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he roots of contemporary America’s interest in the environment reach back to the 1960s. In 1962, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was the first scientifically-based book to link chemical pesticides to damage in the environment. Carson’s research had identified the widespread use of the pesticide DDT as a cause of the diminishing number of birds; she discovered that increasingly higher pesticide levels in their food caused corporate influence birds to lay eggs with thin have long created a disconnection between shells. Because the shells But not even the Nobel protect them, Committee’s award can what people say they believe in and what they couldn’t fewer birds were hatching change our fate; we must actually do in relation to the environment. each year. This disrupted do that ourselves. And, in the balance of nature, beorder to do that, we need cause insect populations were no longer in check. At first, to understand how we think about the world around us her research was condemned by the chemical industry; and our role in it. We need to recognize that our current but Carson’s work resulted in the pesticide DDT being ways of thinking have flaws that need to be recognized and banned in 1972. corrected.

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Mary Melilli, mixed media on canvas, 2' x 4'

Impressions

In 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 took a picture that riveted the world. Shot from the surface of the moon, it showed the blue Earth set against the blackness of space. For the first time, Earth was seen from afar, a fragile and lonely planet. Popularly called “Earthrise,” the NASA photo caused poet Archibald MacLeish to describe our planet as “small and beautiful in the eternal silence/where it floats.”

That sudden awareness of the limits of Earth and the danger that the human species could unwittingly do to our home planet lay as a basis for many of the popular actions taken over the next decade.

The 1970s saw a mix of popular activism and formal legislation. The first Earth Day celebration was on April 22, 1970. Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson successfully pushed a bill through Congress initiating Earth Day, as a response in defense of the Earth, after he saw in 1969 how a major oil spill had damaged the coastline of Santa Barbara, California. Rallies and teach-ins across the nation proved that people cared. But, because many people involved in Earth Day also participated in the then-prevalent protests

against the Vietnam War, it created the impression that interest in defending the planet was just another “hippie” idea. In 1972, the United Nations formally adopted March 21 as Earth Day. On college campuses, there was a resurgence of interest in nature writings by 19th-century Americans. Henry David Thoreau became doubly-popular: his Walden became the bible of the “back-to-nature” movement while his essay Civil Disobedience justified the individual’s right to resist unpopular wars. John Muir, whose writings about Western wilderness inspired the formation of the Sierra Club, became a kind of patron saint.

The federal National Environment Policy Act was enacted late in 1970. It caused few restrictions on commercial use of natural resources, but gave a veneer of respectability to the movement. Public service advertisements, like the U.S. Forest Service’s “Give a Hoot. Don’t Pollute” cartoon campaign featuring “Woodsy the Owl” and Keep America Beautiful’s “Crying Indian” ad became parts of popular culture.

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The link between environmental awareness and sustained action has not been one of steady progress. Public inattention and corporate influence have long created a disconnection between what people say they believe in and what they actually do in relation to the environment.

products results from our awareness that disposable plastic or paper items clog fast-closing landfills; at the same time, we’re learning that making these products causes air and water pollution and that their production depletes resources that are slow or impossible to replace.

With the start of the new millennium, there has been irrefutable photographic evidence that ice caps at both the North and South Poles are melting. There is a new awareness and sense of panic about Earth’s future. But it has taken almost four decades of action by those involved in the environmental movement to recapture the attention of most Americans.

Yet, despite our knowledge and our feelings, human beings—who ought to know better—continue to generate large quantities of waste and continue to support, or at least not to oppose, industries that pollute. Knowing and feeling do not translate into doing.

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Why?

he failure, some critics say, is in our approach to the environment. Most of popular actions and opinions regarding the environment are based on the assumption that nature serves the needs of mankind. This “anthropocentric” view considers all of nature only in relation to how it can be used by humans, and evaluates everything in nature on a scale that puts human beings at the top.

This attitude toward nature is rooted in both Western philosophy and religion. Aristotle declared that “nature has made all things specifically for the sake of man” (Politics, Bk. 1, Ch. 8.) In Genesis, the first book of the JudeoChristian Bible, God says to Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over fish of the sea, and over fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” (1:27-28).

We feel good and noble when we talk about our “stewardship of nature”; we feel angry or upset when we see a beautiful beach or pasture destroyed by others’ carelessness; we become afraid when the collapse of faraway ice glaciers threatens sea level rises that could flood our homes. Even the current proliferation of so-called “green”

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In the most recent data on recycling, less than 50 percent of recyclable household waste, including aluminum cans and glass bottles, is actually recycled. The rest is still sent to landfills. Given a choice of transportation options, most people still choose their personal automobile, and most still prefer large vehicles with relatively inefficient internal combustion engines. Only the pinch of high gas prices has begun to sway some buyers toward choosing hybrid cars.

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Deep Ecology

n contrast to the popularly accepted attitude toward mankind’s responsibility to the natural environment, there are the “deep ecologists.” They argue, in word and deed, that nature does not exist for the benefit of humans and, in fact, that humans do not have an unquestioned right to do what they want with the Earth.

Mary Melilli, mixed media on canvas, 1' x 2'

The term “deep ecology” was first used by Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess in 1973. Contrary to what he de-

When Naess’s ideas came to America, they were blended into already-existing ideas about land use. John Muir’s influential writings had inspired The Land of Little Rain by Mary Hunter Austin (1903) and A Sand County Almanac (1949) by Aldo Leopold—long-term observations of life in ecologically-fragile areas. This “land use” movement imbued nature’s entirety, including water, air, and land as well as all the creatures living in or on it, with unquestioned rights. The movement lead to lawsuits against land developers and the U.S. Forest Service, among others, arguing that the land’s rights must be recognized. These lawsuits rarely succeeded but they did raise public awareness about resource exploitation. In the 1980s this idea was radicalized by ecological groups such as “Earth First!” and “Earth Alliance” as justification to burn houses built on newly-cleared Western land, to sabotage land clearances, even at the cost of human lives, and to attack water-development projects. Their behavior resulted in the movements’ leaders being jailed.

Naess’s lack of clarity about how humans should act to assure “biospheric egalitarianism” also led critics in undeveloped nations to complain that they would be denied the chance to improve their living standards if this philosophy was implemented.

They argued that the developed nations, which had already exploited their own natural resources, had little right to demand that poor nations live up to a higher standard of ecological purity that would mean they could Horizon not benefit from their own natural resources.

Perhaps the most extreme off-shoot of “deep ecology” and the claims for the rights of nature is seen in the recent book The World Without Us (2007) by Alan Weisman. Its premise is simple: the world would be better off without human beings. Using New York City as one example, he details how quickly and inevitably the works of human beings, from the subway to the skyscrapers, would crumble

scribed as the “shallow ecology movement,” he proposed a view of humans as being part of nature, not apart from it, and argued the whole “biosphere” (including all living things) was made up of “nets” of interrelated living creatures. In this view, humans had no right to use nature as they saw fit. Inspired by his experiences as a mountaineer and his familiarity with the culture of the Sherpa people of Tibet, Naess argued that all living things had an equal right to live and flourish.

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Coevolutionary ethics recognizes both the need of and disappear. (Only plastic would survive for centuries.) humans to live and thrive on the planet and the rights of He cites the condition of the two-and-a-half mile wide other species to survive. It does not try to assign priority Demilitarized Zone that cuts across the peninsula and to one species, but it does recognize that human beings separates North and South Korea. The area has been offare the agents for many of the changes that take place on limits to human beings since 1953, when a tentative peace Earth. agreement was signed by both sides; it was heavily laced with land mines to assure that Advocates for coevolutionneither side would launch an Economic stability also encourages ary thinking argue that social attack across it. Having been will lead to environthe creation of a sense of community justice left without humans more than mental justice. As has been fifty years, he contends that the recognized by environmental among those who have a common DMZ has evolved into an imsince the Earth portant refuge for endangered vision for their lives and their futures. organizations Summit in 1992, human povAsian animals. erty causes more ecological damage than the quest for improving human life. IroniCoevolution: A New Answer cally, the depletion of natural resources in impoverished countries seldom raises the standard of living; for exf the human-centered, anthropocentric ecology is too ample, the deforestation of hillsides and clear-cutting of dangerous to the planet, and nature-centered, bioforests leaves indigenous populations vulnerable to floods centric ecology leads to extreme thinking, the answer and mudslides that further impoverish them by destroying lies between the two. Missing from both extremes are the their homes and their land. ideas of environmental justice and social justice.

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Mary Melilli, mixed media on canvas, 2' x 4'

But the key to such a coevolutionary future is one that is still missing. It requires moderation: taking only what is needed from the environment. The idea that humans have an unquestioned right to exploit the Earth, to use without explanation or regulation or compensation, must be rejected as wrong and destructive. Innovation is needed to develop more life-affirming alternatives: for example, better ways to heat and light our residences, better methods of transportation, more efficient means of producing goods and in general, less consumption of natural resources.

In a biologically rich, life-supporting planet, the diverse inhabitants of Earth would have the opportunity to flourish and evolve.

For this, humans have individual and collective responsibility at the local, national, and planetary levels. There may be tension between the preservation of nature and the demands of social justice but it should be realized that they are not opposed to each other. They must fit together; theory must be matched with practice in specific contexts.

Sunset on the Bay

Kim Mimnaugh Kim Mimnaugh

Relief of human poverty and more equitable distribution of whatever is produced, exchanged or distributed, would lead to a more economically sustainable living for everyone in a region. This, in turn, would reduce the pressure to exploit, for short-term gain, the region’s natural habitat. A more stable economic environment would also allow residents to think about improving their land because they would be able to envision using it in the long-term instead of just using its short-term produce.

Economic stability also encourages the creation of a sense of community among those who have a common vision for their lives and their futures.

A community that has confidence in its own future can then deal equitably with others who are equally sure of their futures. Linked across a country, or among countries, this stability can create greater ecological and economic prosperity. Ideally, prosperity leads to peace.

In this setting, the natural environment is able to flourish as well. Inhabitants will want to sustain the land and its resources so that they can continue to be used in the future.

Krishna Mallick is the Chairperson and Professor in the Philosophy Department at Salem State College. She has co-edited with Dr. Doris Hunter An Anthology of Nonviolence: Historical and Contemporary Voices (Greenwood Press, 2002). Her research interest is in the interdisciplinary areas of environmental studies, peace studies and women’s studies in the context of India.

Mary Melilli is an Associate Professor in the Art Department at Salem State College as well as a practitioner in both graphic design and fine art. She earned a BA in Studio Art at Wellesley College and an MFA in Graphic Design from Yale University. She enjoys the challenge of working in a variety of media ranging from web site design to painting.

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Salem in 1630: Pioneer Village courtesy Jim McAllister, Derby Square Tours

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E S S A Y

Nouveau France versus New England:

17th Century Conflicts in Naumkeag (Ancient Salem) John V. Goff and Alan M. Young 13

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he area we now know as Salem played a critical and early role in the founding of “New England”—which in turn contributed to Americans speaking, and this article being written in, English rather than Algonquin or French. During the early 1600s events in and around Salem shifted the region’s definition and identification from part of a Native American tribal domain to part of a coastal trade association with France and Nouveau France centered in Nova Scotia and points north, and ultimately to coastal trade associations with England. Land ownership, territoriality, and regional and national affiliations changed radically for people living or trading in the place now called Salem, Massachusetts.

from local tree bark, along with dugout canoes called mashoons. Crescent-shaped stone fishing knives found along the shores of present-day Salem and Marblehead presumably were used for slicing and slabbing coastal fish such as cod and salmon so they could be salted, dried, cured, and put up in great numbers to help the tribe guarantee each year’s winter survival.

Prior to 1619, Naumkeag’s leading Sachem, Sagamore, or Chief was Nanepashemet. He guided his tribe and people seasonally from their winter camps along the Mys-tick (big river) which flows from the current towns of Eastern Massachusetts Winchester, Arlington, and Although sometimes also called soils have routinely produced Massachusetts, to the artifacts and stone chips that Pawtuckets . . ., Nanepashemet’s people Everett, favored places near Massabequash illuminate the antiquity of were know as the Naumkeag natives, (great calm waters)—Salem our lands and their earliest ocHarbor. In a very real sense, cupants. From the end of glaand the Massachusett peoples. the nightly movements of the ciation some 12,000 years ago moon, the daily movements of until around 1600 AD, coastal The tribal name Massachusett, from the sun and tides, the annual Massachusetts locations were which our State name Massachusetts migrations of the fish and anioccupied continuously, if only mals, and the seasonal migraseasonally, by Native Ameriderives, in Algonquin meant the tions of the people all followed cans. Esther K. and David P. “Great Hill Place” (Massa-adchu-sett.) each other. Nanepashemet’s Braun, in The First Peoples of people were keenly aware of the Northeast (1994) show that nature’s cycles, which dictated Native American tribal groups the movements of animals and people. in the Paleolithic period 10,000 years ago gathered roots and plants, used spears to hunt large animals such as cariThe season-centered lifestyle, which evolved over genbou and mastodons, and changed camp locations seasonerations, promised to put people naturally in the best places ally, from inland locations in winter to coastal camps in the at the best times. The coastal waters of Naumkeag (Salem) summer months. Over the centuries, a great many Native provided fishing in the early spring, precisely when the American technologies evolved, leading to the adoption of Atlantic cod returned to shore in great numbers and great agriculture about one thousand years ago. Innovative peosizes—a gift of the Creator for the People. The fabled “three ple crafted and used spears, bows and arrows, and hunting sisters” (Indian corn, beans, and squash), a legendary satraps, which they used to catch animals—prized for bone, cred gift from the Crow, sustained the people in the warm meat, sinews, and furs. Coastal locations along the current months and provided dried corn and ground cornmeal to Salem Harbor shore have yielded a wide range of ancient last through the cold winters. When, at the end of summer, artifacts, including projectile points, stone knives, and the cold fall breezes and departing birds signaled a major scrapers. change to come, Nanepashemet’s people packed all their tribal goods in their mashoons and followed the rivers inThis region was especially valued for its abundant miland to the winter camp where life would be sustained in a grating fish, such as Atlantic cod, eels, and salmon, all of hibernation not unlike the connawa, the bear. which were caught and processed in large numbers each Summer coastal villages built along the shore by 1600 year. By 1600, the greater Salem area was called Naumkeag engaged in corn farming and gardening; stone tool manu(Naum-ke-aug or Naum-ke-auk), literally “fishing place” or facture; gathering, harvesting, and processing fish for winter “fish processing place.” We know from the accounts of survival; fur and hide processing and leather manufacture; Roger Williams that Atlantic cod, up to six feet boat building; and maritime trade. The people who regularlong, packed the coast and coves by the hunly camped, fished, hunted, gathered wild foods, and farmed dreds in season, and red fish (salmon) and here became adept fishermen, as well as hunters, leather eels swarmed up the rivers. The Native producers, and processors of animal hides and furs. Hunted Americans caught these fish with weirs, animals such as deer, beaver, martin, fox, moose, and carihooks, harpoons, and spears made bou provided an abundance of meat for Indian stews. from wood and bone, and line twisted 14

Courtesy Clements Library, University of Michigan

The 1635 version of John Smith’s map of New England.

“Naumkeag” becomes “Salem” When and why did “Naumkeag,” an Algonquin name meaning “fishing place,” become known as “Salem,” from a Hebrew term “shalom” meaning “peace”?

According to Sidney Perley’s A History of Salem Massachusetts (1924), the Massachusetts Bay Company voted in 1629 to establish a managing government, based at its plantation in Naumkeag. One of those chosen to serve on the governing council was Rev. Francis Higginson, who had recently come from England to spread the Gospel among the Indians. Higginson had been at Naumkeag less than a month when, at his suggestion, the name of Salem was given to the plantation, apparently honoring a peaceful agreement reached after a disturbance with the neighbors, presumably the local Indians or vying government groups. Based on dated letters, Detail it appears that sometime in May 1629 Naumkeag was renamed Salem.

Captain John Smith published A Description of New England, accompanied by the first map of the region in 1616. In a 1635 amended version of the map he added the recently adopted name Salem and replaced several indigenous names with English town names suggested by Prince Charles (at Smith’s request) as more appropriate for this new England.

Very few of the new names were retained, the most notable being the name of the region itself —“New England.”

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recent times one fort survived locally on a conical hill near Salem’s South River as “Castle Hill.” Although sometimes also called Pawtuckets (named for the tidal waterfalls where fishing was pursued on the Merrimack River to the north), Nanepashemet’s people were know as the Naumkeag natives, and the Massachusett peoples. The tribal name Massachusett, from which our State name Massachusetts derives, in Algonquin meant the “Great Hill Place” (Massa-adchu-sett.) Revered high hills, presently called the Blue Hills, were located south of Boston, and at Wachuset, meaning “Hill-at the” or “hill” in central Massachusetts. Unfortunately for Nanepashemet’s people, these high hill forts ultimately proved inadequate to defend the region against a series of vicious invasions.

The pelts and skins were used to make a great many other survival necessities, such as animal-skin-covered lodges for winter housing, clothing for wearing the full year around, and quivers for carrying arrows on the hunt. Perhaps the most prized of these animals was the common beaver, Castor canadensis, which was caught in large numbers using wood deadfall traps set in swampy areas such as the presThe Native Americans caught these ent Thompson’s Meadow, the headwaters of the Forest River fish using coastal fishing weirs, which empties into Salem Harhooks, harpoons, and spears made bor. Many thousands of beaver pelts were processed, cured, from wood and bone, and line tanned and readied for conversion into clothing. twisted from local tree bark, along These natural resources with dugout canoes assured the survival of local peoples, but, eventually, the abundance of fish and animals in the region attracted the attention of other Native American tribes and European traders to the north. To defend themselves from potential invaders Nanepashemet’s people built strong forts on Massa adchus (great hills) in what is now Marblehead and Salem, as well as along the Mystic River. Until fairly

called mashoons.

Between 1603 and 1615, especially significant changes occurred in Nanepashemet’s realm. In the same way that a great kowas or pine tree was felled, these changes came as a series of sharp blows and shocks.

One of the impacts on the systems regulating life in Native North America came when the French government dispatched Samuel de Champlain and others in 1603 to establish a French presence and French fur trade in America. These Europeans came with exotic technologies, foreign concepts, and a proposition to create a new economy. Their technologies included noisy gunpowder and explosive rifles, as well as steel

Fish weirs, made of sharpened wood stakes and woven branches, were constructed in the tidal waters of eastern Massachusetts and facilitated the catching of fish.

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Marilyn Angel Wynn, NativeStock Pictures

Mashoons or dugout canoes were also made in great numbers to support both fishing and tribal transportation.The technology of making these was taught to the 17th century English as well. At summer camp sites, Native houses called wetus were often built by securing slabs of bark for rain resistance to a domed or ovoidal framework made of bent and lashed wood saplings.

Champlain’s men eventually headquartered their Nouveau France fur trade in what is now Nova Scotia. Port Royal was the name given to the French King’s outpost in the New World. The ancestors of the Micmac settled close to the French. Fluent in Algonquin and familiar with the ways of other Natives, the protoMicmac or so-called Tarratines befriended the French and secured positions as Native American scouts and trade

intermediaries. They journeyed down the coast, exchanging French goods for furs, and returned north to trade for more French supplies.

By establishing themselves as intermediaries, the Tarratines carved a new niche for themselves in the new economy, while safeguarding their unique ties to the French.

Kim Mimnaugh

armor, likely not seen before in North America. For metal knives, trade goods, and other enticements, a great number of Native Americans in what is now Canada and Maine befriended the French. Extended trade networks promised unlimited access to European products and wealth in exchange for beaver pelts and other animal skins.

A great many different woodcarving tools were carefully made out of locally found or quarried stone.

Between 1607 and the early 1630s the Tarratine Wars, a series of brutal coastal attacks, followed the trade routes of the Tarratines and French south into “New England.” It appears that a Native American trade dispute in Saco, Maine, erupted into a full fledged battle between Maine Natives and the Tarratines. Under Chief Membertou, the Tarratines probably used French weapons and gunpowder, and sailed in French-provided 17

Courtesy Kayleigh Merritt ’08

One of the chief plants grown to support Native culture here in the Northeast was Indian corn or maize.

distinct coastal attacks are known, on Saco, Maine, in 1607; on the Pemaquid, Maine, area circa 1615; and finally on the Naumkeag area, with branch extensions south to Cape Cod, also around 1615.

The Naumkeag and Cape that Nanepashemet Cod attacks were likely aimed at removing from power and the Massachusett tribe who Local lore holds that NaneNanepashemet of the Massapashemet and the Massachusett summered at Naumkeag became chusett. The chief reportedly tribe who summered at Naumsurvived by retreating south involved militarily after the chief keag became involved militarily and west up the Mystic River. after the chief sent a war party sent a war party north to strike a Historians maintain that north to strike a Tarratine holed up in Tarratine group in revenge for coastal Nanepashemet group in revenge for coastal atsturdy timber forts along the tacks and losses in Maine. The Mystic, seeking to maintain attacks and losses in Maine. advance served merely to bring tribal control. However, ultinew clouds of hostile advances mately the Mystic forts were to Naumkeag. Overlapping with the coastal attacks, a over-run, and Nanepashemet was killed by the Tarratines series of pandemic plagues sent death in all directions. in 1619. ships when they launched a series of attacks on coastal villages in Maine. Traditionally, the Tarratine Wars have been overlooked, but in the past twenty years, several historians including Emerson Baker, Bruce Bourque, and John Goff Local lore holds have addressed the topic.

Between about 1607 and 1615, the Tarratines launched at least three major military attacks to the south, which, along with diseases, succeeded in depopulating most of coastal Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. Three 18

Historians estimate that as much as 90 percent of the population in some areas of Nanepashemet’s realm, especially along the coast, were lost through either direct warfare or plagues. Great corn fields and villages all along the coast were abandoned; all that remained were graves and

carnage. Thousands of years of accumulated knowledge was lost.

Those who remained sought stronger military allies to fend off future attacks.

The weakened Massachusett political power afforded the English an opportunity to gain a new foothold in this part of the coast. Since the 1610s, they had called the region “New England” following the optimistic assessments of Capt. John Smith, who voyaged to Naumkeag after leaving Jamestown, Virginia.

The French understandably claimed the region as their own (Nouveau France) while Massachusett Natives traded with both the English and the French. Even Smith had to wait for French ships to leave before entering Naumkeag harbor to trade for furs.

In 1621, the Mayflower Pilgrims traveled north from Plymouth across Massachusetts Bay to meet with the leaders of the Massachusett.

In Mourt’s Relation (1622), Edward Winslow later explained how the north shore of Massachusetts Bay, after the last of the major Tarratine attacks, was characterized by vacated cornfields, abandoned forts, and traumatized people.

Winslow described a fort on the Mystic River where:

desiring to establish a new fishing station in New England, founded the Dorchester Company’s colony at Cape Ann (Gloucester). By 1626 the Cape Ann colony moved south to the old location of Naumkeag and re-settled under Roger Conant’s leadership. Here, John Endicott settled in 1628, and Gov. John Winthrop brought the Arbella fleet and the new Massachusetts Bay Colony Charter in 1630.

Winthrop and the Arbella fleet passengers sought to maintain good relations with the surviving Massachusett natives and met with Squaw Sachem, Nanepashemet’s widow. The English asserted their desire to be friends and promised a military alliance with the Massachusett against common foes.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

Between 1620 and 1630, Massachusetts and New Eng-land thus experienced a grafting of English “plantations” upon Native American territories. North of Plymouth, New England took root on Nanepashemet’s ancient homelands of the Massachusett through a careful experiment in husbandry. The fur trade, the Tarratine Wars, and the illnesses that spread from ancient Naumkeag radically Nanepashemet was re-shifted the region. Never This stone effigy or sculpture of a bear was excavated in the killed, none dwelling again would the eastern half 19th century near Essex Street (an old Indian trail) in Salem. in it since the time of of Massachusetts be Nanehis death. At this place pashemet’s Algonquin speakwe stayed, and sent two savages to look for ing realm—or part of a broader piece of coast called the inhabitants, and to inform them of our Nouveau France. It became part of New England ends in coming [peaceful trade] that they where we speak and write might not be fearful of us. in English.

Two years after the Plymouth Pilgrims contacted the small North Shore population, English settlement began. In 1623, Thomas Gardner and other West Country Englishmen,

Stone pestles were crafted and used for grinding food and medicines.

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Courtesy Jim McAllister, Derby Square Tours

Salem in 1630: Pioneer Village was built in 1930 as one of America’s first living history museums.

Located in Salem’s Forest River Park, it is being restored by Salem Preservation, Inc.

The Native American alliance with the English resulted in the redevelopment and prospering of the Massachusetts coast as a new place called New England. English guns, gunpowder, and armor were used to resist new claims.

After the 1620s the French released their claim on this part of the Atlantic coast and ceased sailing south from

Canada to trade for furs. Massachusetts was never again an independently ruled sovereign Native nation. It became part of New England and a foothold for a new independent English-speaking nation. Traces of the earlier times that led to these changes survive as artifacts in our ancient Massachusetts and Salem shoreline soils.

Kim Mimnaugh

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Kim Mimnaugh

Kim Mimnaugh

All of the projectile points and stone tools illustrated in this article were found in eastern Massachusetts and are part of the collection of Alan M.Young.

JohnV. Goff is a restoration architect, preservationist and historian who lives and works in Salem. In 2003, he helped found Salem Preservation Inc. which has been working with the City of Salem and others to restore Salem in 1630: Pioneer Village as a living history museum and First Period history education center.

Goff also maintains strong interests in the Native American history of Massachusetts.

Alan M.Young is a Professor of Biology and the coordinator of the Marine Biology Program at Salem State College. He received a BA in Biology from Clark University and an MS and PhD in Marine Science from the University of South Carolina. He joined Salem State in 1991. Dr. Young has published numerous marine biology papers in scientific journals and has previously published articles in Sextant and Salem Statement dealing with such diverse topics as Sherlock Holmes, T. R. Malthus, and Australian plants and animals.

P O R T F O L I O

Ken Reker

For Robin, All Style No Substance, 2007 Mixed Media/Found Object Assemblage 102˝ x 114˝ x 42˝

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Mixed Media/Found Object Assemblage (Detail)

For Robin, All Style No Substance, 2004

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, 2006

22 Mixed Media/Found Object Assemblage 77˝ x 80˝ x 42˝

Mixed Media/Found Object Assemblage 78˝ x 504˝ x 24˝ (Dimensions variable)

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Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, 2006

Kim Mimnaugh

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Mixed Media/Found Object Assemblage 38˝ x 62˝ x 22˝

Tip of the Iceberg/Bottom of the Barrel

Flap, 2000

Mixed Media/Found Object Assemblage 7˝ x 42˝ x 7˝

Mixed Media/Found Object Assemblage 72˝ x 60˝ x 40˝

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All Things Want to Fly, 2006

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Parasite, 2006

Mixed Media/Found Object Assemblage 122˝ x 30˝ x 30˝

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Artist’s Statement

y assembled sculpture consists of discarded objects and castaway materials found in streets, alleys, and on the shoreline. Many of the materials that I collect for these constructions are chosen for their deformities and irregularities that occur through decay and use. I am drawn to an object’s strangely exotic appearance after it has been abandoned. The transformations involve combining and, in some cases, repairing these objects. The scavenged souvenirs are arranged and rearranged to mingle personal history with the unknown past of the found material. While assembling the collected elements, I want to reclaim some of their previous dignity without removing the dirt, rust, scars, and damages that trace their former lives. The sculptural forms that result express my cynicism, empathy, and hope. They embody the uncertainty of any human effort. These poetic objects of spiritual reclamation and physical repair sustain my continual urge to analyze and reconfigure the natural world.

My sense of wonder in nature initially led me to make art and continues to inform my current work.

From a literal visual study of nature through landscape, my artwork has evolved to more conceptual explorations of what constitutes our understanding of nature. The sculptural assemblages on the previous pages explore physical dimensions of nature and psychological aspects of human relationships with it.

Kim Mimnaugh

Mixed Media/Found Object Assemblage 60˝ x 4.5˝ x 4.5˝

Ken Reker, Assistant Professor of Art, received an MFA in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA in drawing and printmaking from the University of Louisville. He teaches foundation studio courses and sculpture. He recently completed a public commission for the Boston Children’s Museum, assembling objects from the museum’s Chinese collection into a large window installation that represents a three-dimensional Chinese landscape painting.

Untitled/Missing Children, 1996

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Becalmed Rod Kessler Photographs by Kim Mimnaugh 28

F I C T I O N Edelman would recall the scene as Walter Carling might have written it: Long lay the sun upon the grassy hills and pine forests of the land to the north of the great city, the land as yet incompletely usurped by the transforming engines of modernity, the land still in patches farmed, still in patches fallow, where birches here and there mixed among the stands of fir and pine, where solitary hawks swept lazy circles high among the thermals, where staghorn sumacs and spears of goldenrod nodded in breezes along the great asphalt highway down which, southward and city-bound, speeded the glinting chariots and mechanized behemoths of our late age.There, on the margin of the roadway, becalmed and silent among the whining of motors and the rush of traffic, waited a small, lusterless white automobile, its hood propped up, its windows open, its driver and sole occupant standing beside it, now glancing down into the engine, now looking at his wristwatch, now staring off down the roadway.

If the years of a man’s life can be likened to the hours of day, this man’s morning and noon had passed.Yet much of the afternoon stretched before him, and a long evening and perhaps night as well.Though some would judge his day well-started, others would have it still young. A close look revealed creases and lines complicating his forehead and temples, as though he were no stranger to cares, but his hair was as thick and fair as an oat porridge, unflecked by even a curd of gray.

Oat porridge?

Gray curds? A thickening cloud heavy with the possibility of rain or embrowned by the shadows of a heath? Edelman here left Carling in his tomb (or tombs, since some of him—the lion’s share—lay in Westminster Abbey while the rest, his heart, had been interred in his native Somerset, beside the great Tor above Glastonbury town.)

Edelman waited a dreary hour along the highway before a state trooper appeared. He radioed for a wrecker and drove off, and it was another wait before the tow truck arrived. There Edelman was, book in hand, sitting in the grass in the pitifully narrow shadow of his car.

“So?” the mechanic began. He was a big man built powerfully. The sun had worn squint lines around his eyes, but the eyes were bright and ironic.

“The car died out,” Edelman explained. “It just sort of lost power.”

The mechanic stood there.

“I’m lucky I got it to the side of the road.”

“Didn’t overheat on you?”

Edelman shrugged.Years ago back in high school, he could have taken automotive shop, but the guidance counselor wouldn’t hear of it, not for a boy so clearly heading along the college track.

The mechanic smiled. He seemed interested less in the condition of the engine than in the contents of the back seat. “Moving, are you?”

“It’s everything I’ve got,” Edelman admitted.

He circled the car, staring in at the mass that filled the passenger compartment all the way to the roof.

He pointed with his thumb. “A lot of books.”

“I teach,” Edelman told him, “That is, I’m going to. In Minirumpsett.”

The man shook his head. This was no apprentice but a seasoned mechanic, tanned, lined, laconic. He was wearing a grease-suit, trousers and shirt together, a zipper down the front, and he stood with his legs apart and his hands on his hips, each hand dark with stains and large, large and muscular, each finger a meaty bratwurst.

“Minirumpsett,” he said, and shook his head again.

“The college?”

“That’s right.”

“And you teach what?” he asked.

“English literature,” Edelman said. “Nineteenth century, and whatever else they give me.”

He spat. “To be or not to be, that is the problem?”

“Something like that,” Edelman said. What else could he say?

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“And a lot of bullshit about kings and princes and people marrying their mothers and making speeches?”

Edelman looked at the mechanic’s thick boots mashing the weedy grass. How sturdy he seemed, how well-planted upon the earth. Edelman could picture him foregoing his truck here with its massive engine, its hoist, its levers.

He could picture him ambling off into the woods behind the grassy margin of the highway, shouldering the curious tools of his trade, like one of Carling’s rural artisans —heading for some rustic cottage, its roof thatched, a plume of smoke feathering up from its chimney stones.

Was this man a stranger, his tribe unknown, his annals unrecorded? Certainly not. Let him spit at English, at Shakespeare, at the nineteenth century, at the whole of Minirumpsett College. Literature had caught and preserved his progenitors, often with dignity, more often still with compassion.

Edelman got behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition while the mechanic poked around under the hood. But no luck. He’d have to tow it in, and that would be an extra thirty bucks.

Edelman sat beside him in the crowded cab of the wrecker, his feet resting on a box of heavy tools on the floorboards, the car hooked and chained and dragging behind. Neither said much. Edelman studied the land beside the highway, the immense blue dome of sky, the

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tall grass along the road, the streaks of purple loosestrife bright in the frank sunlight. For the moment, things were out of his hands and he let the vigilance and tension drain from his body. It had been such a long time, figuratively, since someone else had been in the driver’s seat, since he hadn’t had to focus narrowly on the road ahead and have the world’s weight on his shoulders.

They left the highway at the Trammelbury exit, the mechanic’s shop lying a mile or so down the old highway, past a couple of filling stations, a donut place, and a Pizza Hut. According to a road sign Boston lay some fifty miles beyond Trammelbury but Minirumpsett was only twenty miles distant.

But would Edelman get there? Off the road on a rise stood a motel, six identical units in a low row parallel to the roadway, each unit with an identical lamp showing in the exact middle of its identical picture window, the whole establishment garnished with a swimming pool of stunningly blue water, unnaturally blue. If the car couldn’t be repaired in a day, he guessed, he’d probably end up there.

The repair shop was little more than a quonset hut wide enough to service two cars on lifts and maybe a third, in the back, on jacks. A radio antenna poked above the roof, and a tiny office had been built out from the front wall, and that’s where Edelman sat, on a torn leather seat, grateful for the rotating ceiling fan.

Outside in the dusty yard stood an old-fashioned gas pump, eight or nine junkers, and the wrecker itself. The place was called Junior’s—a painted sign stood on a pole out in the sunlight, and Junior’s was stenciled on the side of the truck.

mechanics work. He wasn’t uncurious, he simply took it for granted that anyone performing delicate work would prefer to do it without an audience of strangers.

But he listened. He was listening for the symphony of the The mechanic’s help was a The man shook his head.This was no working man, for the music young fellow, a muscular kid of honest craft and workmanapprentice but a seasoned mechanic, dressed in overalls, shirtless. ship. He listened without tryEdelman saw him in the office tanned, lined, laconic. He was wearing ing to comprehend what each after they’d pulled in, sitting represented. How had a grease-suit, trousers and shirt together, sound in the leather chair, his legs Whitman put it? The blab of propped on the desk, a book a zipper down the front, and he stood the chaff? Over the whir of the or magazine in his hand. He office fan and the occasional with his legs apart and his hands on looked old enough to be out crackle of static from the radio of high school. For all Edelreceiver he could hear from his hips, each hand dark with stains man knew, he could be heading the service bay the purposeful for Minirumpsett College in a and large, large and muscular, whine of the hoist, the ring couple of weeks, the same as and tap of tools upon metal, each finger a meaty bratwurst. he. Twenty miles—it occurred the eclipsed conversation of to Edelman that he’d probably the two men. At one point he have students from Trammelbury and all the other little was sure that his car actually let out a huge sigh—or death towns around here. And this one had actually been reading. rattle: some impressive exhalation.

Good for him.

Junior strode into the office wiping his fingers on a rag But while Junior and the kid worked on the car and as dark with oil and grease as his hands. The fuel pump was after Edelman had settled into that same leather chair, he gone, he explained. It was an electric fuel pump and they saw that the work of literature lying on the armrest was were notorious on foreign pieces of shit like Edelman’s. an old, worn Beetle Bailey comic book.

His helper stood beside him in the office. It looked now like they were father and son. Big Junior and his boy.

Edelman was not one to stand around and watch 31

Junior and Son. Junior leaned over the work desk and dashed off a few items on a yellow work order, the ball point dainty in his massive hand. A new fuel pump was going to set Edelman back about two-hundred and twenty bucks. Edelman might find one second-hand for less, if he had time to scout the junk yards, but he wouldn’t recommend it, not with the troubles these foreign jobs had with the fuel pumps. Chances are Edelman would be getting one just as bad.

But that wasn’t all. The generator was hardly charging worth shit and, if Edelman intended to keep the car, he should replace the alternator. He wouldn’t guarantee that Edelman would make it as far as Minirumpsett, even with a new fuel pump, not with that alternator.

Junior looked down at the yellow work order and shook his head. “Your fuel filter too.”

“How long will it take?”

Junior shrugged. “I get the parts—maybe by tomorrow.

Wednesday at the latest.”

So there’d be a couple of nights in the motel to pay for too.

The car had over a hundred and forty thousand miles on in. It was the car that had taken him and Rainie east from New Mexico, just the year before—less than a year. And before that he’d been to never-ending graduate school in it, many times driving the stretches from Dos Serpientes up to Albuquerque and Taos, or down to Los Cruces and even out to Berkeley a couple of times. And there had been Rainie’s reading tours, up to Denver and Fort Collins, over to Phoenix and Tucson, even down to El Paso. Where hadn’t that car been?

But five hundred dollars was another matter—and the whole idea of the motel with the blue swimming pool. Another matter.

The car wasn’t worth it, he knew.

And that’s just what Junior was putting to him as Edelman stood there pondering.

Still, he’d lived off meager student stipends for too many years not to know that the costs of salvaging this car had to be weighed against the costs of replacing it. The money was more than he had, not without hitting up his family, which he considered himself too old to do comfortably. But he wouldn’t find another car for any five or six hundred dollars.

Edelman asked if solving the generator problem might put the electric fuel pump to right. “Maybe it just needs more charge?”

The two mechanics exchanged sorry looks. Junior led Edelman out to the service bay, over to his car, and pointed to parts of the mechanisms, explaining things all over again.

“How much is this all going to cost?” Edelman asked.

They went back into the office, where Junior wrote some more on the work order. “With labor, about five hundred dollars—not counting the tow.”

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Something else influenced his thinking, something that Rainie had tried to get across to him. It was her notion of change, of transcendence.

In her words, only the naked passed through the needle. She meant the eye of the needle and even that was just a metaphor for the birth canal.

Or should he say the rebirth canal?

Rainie had taken this idea, as she did every idea, to its extreme. Her notebooks, the copies of APR and Iowa Review and all the others that had published her poems, the back issues of Caduceus from her days as poetry editor back in Dos Serpientes—all of it had gone into the pyre or been cast aside, as he’d been. The photographs too, bracelets and earrings, even her clothes including the odd hats and the scintillating flight jacket she’d worn most of the time, the one that seemed fashioned of silk and gold foil. The chore of cleaning up the remains, naturally, had been Edelman’s.

Edelman didn’t imagine that she’d gone off literally naked, her thumb out for passing motorists, but he wouldn’t put even that past her. More likely she’d walked or hitched her way to some town and bought a tee shirt and shorts and whatever underneath—maybe nothing—and then dropped into a trash can the clothes she’d arrived in.

Edelman understood his role in Raine Jones’s life as somehow complementing her, completing her. His steadiness would make up for her instability. Let her exult in the typhoon winds of her vision, let her raise up the full spread of sail of her talent—he was the heavy keel and there’d be no capsizing.

And if she laughed at him now and then and told him Edelman could picture that, picture Rainie’s exaggerthat his attentions to Carling were, to her, like a fly’s attenated performance holding her old blouse at arm’s length tion to the rotting cow pies of the fields, so what? “Whatover a garbage can as though it were contaminated. And ever his genius,” she’d say, “whatever his understanding, her smile would be dazzling. To doubt or regret would why live off of what’s already never occur to her. Not a dead?” shred of material connectedMore likely she’d walked or hitched her ness would bridge the Raine So, he’d been no keel at Jones she was abandoning way to some town and bought a tee shirt all, nor steadying ballast, so and the Raine Jones she was far as she was concerned. and shorts and whatever underneath— becoming. She’d come naked He’d been an anchor chain. into this life to begin with, maybe nothing—and then dropped into And like the rest of it, the and she’d come naked now heavy books, the files of into some new life. a trash can the clothes she’d arrived in. notes, the souvenirs of her publications—it had all been Edelman understood weighing her down. Couldn’t he see that he’d be better off what Raine had attempted—well, more than attempted, jettisoning everything too? accomplished. But he accepted it without recourse or alternative, as he also accepted the reality of death or the Junior was prepared to take the car off his hands for $150 remoteness of the stars. By nature he was an archivist, a —for parts. Junior indicated the carcasses of other autocollector. What were his researches into Carling all about mobiles on the lot, all dusty and somnolent, some resting if not the preservation of the man and the holding at bay on blocks, some with their hoods open. He’d go farther and of forgetfulness and oblivion? forget the costs of the tow, making it, in effect, $180. The car was a heap of scrap, but he had enough of those foreign And what if Carling (perish the thought!) had gathered jobs coming in for repairs to make it worth his while. his drafts, his notebooks, his letters, and had burned them?

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Sure, Edelman knew, at that price he was being taken.

The wheels and tires alone could be worth that much. The battery had been replaced not that many months before.

And what about the starter? And the windshield wiper engine that never missed a beat?

But memories of Rainie, reawakened in him, pushed him now. Maybe she had been right about coming over the line with absolutely nothing but the skin he’d been born in? Where does this leave me, he had asked her that last night. Don’t you see?

I am showing you the doorway, the threshold, the way out.

He walked out to the car and stared at the windows, covered here and there with the expired stickers from campus parking lots and with the decals of the public radio stations he’d pledged money to over the years when he could afford it.

KUAT. KUNM. What would it feel like to give up the car?

The fact was, the car had been with him through so much that it had become a part of himself. Losing it, leaving it behind here irrevocably, would punch another hole of numbness in his viscera. He experimented with how it would feel, deciding just tentatively to abandon the thing to Junior. There was a pang in his gut. It would be another portion of himself falling away, leaving him reduced, diminished, lessened.

Still, the books and bags were his past, and what was he doing lugging it along like this? Why not abandon it all to Junior and the kid? Why not just slash the anchor chain and float off, thumb out, á la Raine Jones? He could arrive in Minirumpsett with nothing at all and then build from there, absolutely from scratch.

But why begin at Minirumpsett at all? Why settle there simply because a position and an apartment awaited? Why start a life there and not somewhere else? Other jobs existed, other apartments existed, all over the country. Why not cut loose and see where life would fling him?

But no, this was impossible. This was the evocation of Rainie, subverting what little stability he might have at hand to grab onto.

The truth was, he wasn’t on some sloop straining against the drag of a heavy anchor. He’d been shipwrecked. He was bobbing about among the flotsam, trying to keep his head above water.

What would it feel like to give up the car?

The fact was, the car had been with him through so much that it had become a part of himself. Losing it, leaving it behind here irrevocably, would punch another hole of numbness in his viscera.

But also lightened. It would be a disencumbrance, too, and he had to face it that if he patched the car up this time, there would be an equally expensive next time, and a time after that. He’d had that car a long time, and its hundred and forty-two thousand miles had been good service.

He would sell Junior the car.

But why stop there? Edelman looked beyond the windows at the crammed assortment of his possessions. It was 34

remarkable enough that he’d squeezed his life into so small a load at all. Rainie aside, who else did he know whose earthly lot could travel in the back of a tiny import?

If anything of what remained could bear him along in the currents, shouldn’t he grab for it?

Among his things were a backpack and a pair of suitcases. He sorted among the books and papers, grabbing the items that seemed irreplaceable, including Carling’s lesser works not likely to be in print again any time soon, his copy of the dissertation, his graduate degree itself, rolled in a cardboard tube. He took his winter coat and boots, his toothbrush. He arranged with Junior to return soon for the rest of his possessions, Junior grunting that sooner would be better than later, he wasn’t in the warehousing business.

Edelman packed the suitcases and the backpack until they were heavy and bulging. Junior’s assistant conveyed him to the bus depot, really a parking lot off the interstate with a temporary building where the agent handled ticket sales and accepted packages and freight—it could have been a mobile home or a construction site office. There would be a wait for the next bus, and it would mean heading directly to Boston and then traveling back out to Minirumpsett. It was late afternoon now, the air cooling off, the shadows lengthening.

search of directions and his new apartment. Back in Boston a number of trash receptacles between the bus terminal and North Station had become the repositories of great heaps of Edelman’s research notes from his graduate school days.

When the bus arrived, he boarded.

Kim Mimnaugh

Kim Mimnaugh is the Staff Assistant for photography at Salem State College. She has her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art. Ms. Mimnaugh lives in Gloucester, Mass. and photographs extensively there. She is a frequent contributor to Sextant.

Mary Melilli

Hours later he arrived at the Minirumpsett commuter rail platform. He stood beside the tracks and watched the red lights of the commuter train from Boston lumbering on up the line toward Cape Ann. The sun had set and the stars revealed themselves between heavy clouds. He could make out the great hill that rose above the town, dotted now with the lights of the distant houses and street lamps.

More lights spread down from the hill to where he stood and, he imagined, continued all the way to the harbor.

Edelman couldn’t see the waterfront, but he thought he smelled the brine. The engines of a few automobiles came to life and the late commuters who had detrained with Edelman headed out. Edelman looked in vain for a taxi.

He hoisted his valises with relative ease and walked off in

In the fall of 1983 Rod Kessler joined the Salem State College English Department, conducting fiction and nonfiction workshops and teaching courses on writing and sentence grammar. He helped develop the college’s visiting-writers’ series and served for eight years as coordinator of the Honors Program. He is a past contributor to Sextant as well as a former editor. In December of 2007 he enjoyed a residency at the Vermont Studio Center. “Becalmed” is a chapter from his novel-in-progress.

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P O R T F O L I O

Familiar Faces Benjamin Gross

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Jack Of All Pomades

How DoesYour Garden Grow?

“Primordially Eternal” (Egon Schiele)

ViP

“The Pain Passes, But The Beauty Remains” (Auguste Renoir)

“Until The Last Small Twig Has Grown” (Kathe Kollwitz)

Best Man

Photo OP

All American Smile (Jasper Johns)

Namesake

Designer Jean

Zombastic

Love Of My Life

Little Lady

Little Dude

Artist’s Statement

Familiar Faces is an ongoing series of serigraphs. As the title implies, the images are inspired by people. The words familiar and familial are connected in my work. What is family to some may also be familiar to others.

The viewer may recognize the individuals portrayed as someone they know, have seen, or even just recognize. Some famous artists are portrayed in the series as well as family and friends. The focus explores issues of gender, identity, character, humor, personality, and ethnic heritage. The face is a poignant element in the work and capturing gesture and expression portrays its graphic significance. The artwork allows the viewer to find parallels between the subject matter and their own experience with others. A comparison can then be constructed through the identities that are portrayed.

The black and white format allows me to get to the fundamental root of the process and the content. It is deliberate, immediate, and revealing.

Benjamin Gross, an Associate Professor in the Salem State College Art Department since 1997, earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Delaware and a Master of Fine Arts from Me Two Cranbrook Academy of Art. His work has been exhibited in regional, national, and international exhibitions. He is the head of both the Printmaking and Interactive Multimedia Design Concentrations and was Salem State College’s Winfisky Gallery Director from 2000 to 2008.

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Oil on canvas, 3" x 4", private collection

Samuel Farmar Jarvis, age 15, by Edward Greene Malbone, c. 1801

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E S S A Y

The Great Divorce Case Elizabeth T. Kenney

O

n Friday, June 7, 1839, the leading article in Hartford’s Daily Courant, Connecticut’s main newspaper, read, “the examination of witnesses, and the arguments of counsel, in the case brought to the General Assembly

by Mrs. [Sarah McCurdy Hart] Jarvis against her husband, the Rev. Dr. [Samuel Farmar] Jarvis, for a divorce, which has occupied the attention of a committee of the House of Representatives for a week past…concluded. No case before the General Assembly, or the courts of law, ever excited more public attention, or stronger feelings, in a large part of the community, than this.” A pamphlet entitled The Great Divorce Case! described the case in similar superlatives: There has never been a case presented for action of the Legislature of Connecticut that excited so widespread and absorbing an interest. The very high standing of the parties—the array of counsel on both sides—the reputation for beauty and accomplishments of the fair petitioner, and the character for learning and talents enjoyed by the respondent; his great wealth—the magnificent style in which he lived, and the great publicity given to their domestic differences, in various parts of this country, and in Europe, all conspired to produce a degree of tumultuous excitement, that has never before been witnessed in Connecticut.

Many documents related to this divorce have survived, in archives and in attics, including pamphlets describing the trial, newspaper reports, lawyers’ notes, personal letters, and legal records; collectively, these documents reveal much about cultural tensions during the early republican period. As the new nation self-consciously crafted an identity, passionate debates about gender roles, marriage, family, religion, race, class, and the role of the law in constructing these social identities and relationships raged in public forums—in the courts, in newspapers, and in pamphlets. One recurring debate centered on socially and legally sanctioned grounds for divorce. Under what 39

Oil on canvas. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT. Bequest of William B. Goodwin

Oil on canvas. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT. Bequest of William B. Goodwin

Reverend Abraham Jarvis by John Durand, c. 1772

Mrs. Abraham Jarvis (Anne Billhop Farmer) by John Durand, c. 1772

circumstances does private misery appropriately become beauty and elegant accomplishments; they were widely matter for public interventions? How far must behavior known as ‘the beautiful Miss Harts.’ It would be impossible deviate from socially-recognized norms to warrant legal to describe the brilliant and romantic career of these ladivorce? What are the rights of a woman within a mardies…such glamour surrounds their memory…they were riage? Is the relationship of husband and wife analogous so famous in their generation.” Sarah’s sister Ann married to that of master and slave? Empire and colony? Ruler and Commodore Isaac Hull, of Old Ironsides fame; another subject? Language of tyranny and rebellion, public and sister, Elizabeth, married Heman Allen, minister to Chile. private, debasement and elevation, saturates the literature When Ann and Elizabeth accompanied their husbands related to the Jarvis divorce. The case brought wide-spread to South America on a diplomatic mission, they brought attention to the definition of their younger sister Augusta. abuse within marriage, because What are the rights of a woman within Shortly after their arrival, this of its very public nature and beannouncement appeared in the a marriage? Is the relationship of cause it was tried three times— Connecticut papers: “Splendid twice in Connecticut, and once Marriage Contract. It was husband and wife analogous to in New York. The publicity the matter of considerable that of master and slave? Empire and legal arguments ultimately surprise that President Bolivar contributed to changes in remained so long at Lima… and colony? Ruler and subject?

Connecticut’s divorce law. but it is now…happily explained. The Illustrious LiberaWhen Sarah McCurdy Hart Jarvis brought the petitor was detained by the silken cords of love, and actually tion for divorce in 1838, she was 53. She was the oldest forming a marriage covenant with one of our republican of seven daughters born to Jannette and Elisha Hart of beauties of Connecticut…Miss Augusta Hart of Saybrook.”

Saybrook, Connecticut. Hart had used his ships against the (She returned unmarried.) Another sister, Jeanette, British in Long Island Sound during the War for Indepenpublished several novels anonymously and was courted dence; after the war, his ships delivered fashionable articles

by Samuel F. B. Morse. for his daughters, including the first piano in town. Sarah’s mother was unusually well-educated for her day, and her In 1810 Sarah McCurdy Hart married Samuel Farmar daughters all attended one or another of the new schools Jarvis, the only son of the Episcopal Bishop of Connecticut, for girls, such as Miss Pierce’s famous school in Litchfield, Abraham Jarvis. As a leader in the Anglican church, Bishop Connecticut. A hundred years after Sarah’s birth, a niece Jarvis had been a loyalist during the War for Independence. wrote that the seven sisters “were celebrated for their Samuel was an only child; his mother had been in her late 40

forties when he was born, and his parents kept a close eye on him, even moving to New Haven when he attended Yale. After his ordination in 1811, Samuel began his career in fashionable churches in both New York and Boston and launched what would become a remarkably prolific career of publishing on a wide range of topics, from Native American languages to the evils of the Church of Rome.

He was a noted bibliophile and linguist whose final work, undertaken as the first official historiographer of the Episcopal Church in America, was massive in scope— A Chronological Introduction to the History of the Church.

Jeanette Hart

An unusual insight into the Jarvis’s courtship and marriage is provided by a “fable,” The Owl and the Dove, published anonymously in the Hartford Evening Courier on July 29, 1839, during the divorce proceedings. It was written by Sarah’s younger sister, Jeanette Hart, who had lived with the Jarvis family in the early years of their marriage.

THE OWL AND THE DOVE: A FABLE Once upon a time, an Owl became deeply enamored of a Dove, and sought her for his mate.This Dove was the pride not only of her parents and family but of all the region round about where she dwelt. Her plumage was the smoothest, her form the most symmetrical, her eyes the softest, her voice the sweetest— in short she was one of the prettiest doves in the world.

The Owl was a very learned Owl, and what was more remarkable, he was not only very learned and very wise, but he was very affable, mild, soft, and very bland.

The gentle dove, however, could not be moved by all this combination of excellences. She…rejected the offer of his heart and hand. [The] difficulties served but to inflame the passion of the Owl, and moreover aroused the natural obstinacy of his disposition, and he determined to leave no arts unpracticed to obtain her: he therefore assumed a more humble demeanor, and pressed his suit with so much meekness…that [she] became his bride.

The Owl…for a time treated her with all the tenderness, respect, and consideration which she merited.…At length the Owl began to show traits of character which hitherto he had taken care to conceal, and which greatly alarmed the Dove.

He imagined she did not show that deference to his opinion which was due to his superior wisdom, and [when] she sometimes ventured to express sentiments contrary to his own…he would give way to the most ungovernable rage, and sometimes would seize her in his talons and shake her violently.

Some of these strains in the marriage showed in 1823, when the Reverend Jarvis experienced professional difficulties with his congregation at St. Paul’s in Boston.

He believed that his wife had sided with the discontented parishioners. She responded to this suspicion in a poem:

Our peace has oft been wounded—Ne’er again Let cold suspicion in your breast remain.— If thoughts unkind arise, conceal them not— Had this been done, happier had been our lot.

Ah! had you known me as you should have known, The thought that she, your bosom friend alone, Could secretly cabal, or wound a husband’s name, (A thought unworthy of yourself, unworthy of your name,) Had never chilled your love, nor prob’d her heart Who seeks nor peace nor honor from yourself apart.

In 1826 the Reverend Jarvis’s relations with St. Paul’s were severed and he moved the family to Europe in order to educate the children and collect books for researching his history of the church. There were four children: John Abraham, 12; Jeanette, 11; Christianna, 7; and Samuel, 1.

Another, Sarah Elizabeth Marie Antoinette, was born in Europe. Mrs. Jarvis was 38 when the family arrived in France.

In Europe, Mrs. Jarvis moved comfortably in an elevated sphere, of which a glimpse appears in a letter from James Fenimore Cooper to Mrs. Peter Augustus Jay in October of 1826. Writing “some of the Gossip of this part of the world,” he describes a dinner party: As I know you like a little quality binding, I shall give you an account of a dinner I was at…

—it was a great honor to be present, being one of the regular diplomatic entertainments…but Mrs. Brown…saw fit to ask, Dr. & Mrs. Jarvis —Mrs. C. and myself…[lists all the people, in order, around the table]…next, the Baron Fagel, Netherlands minister and Envoy-next, Mrs. Jarvis-next, Mr. Canning-Prime Minister of England-next, the Countess de Villele….

After dinner, [Canning] did me the honor to desire Mr. Gallatin to present me, and I had ten minutes talk with him…he enquired very particularly after his neighbor at the table, Mrs. Jarvis, and seemed struck with her appearance and conversation.

Another American observer was less favorably impressed

by Mrs. Jarvis’s conversation. Fanny Appleton, later Mrs. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote in her journal on December 29, 1835, “It is very odd to see daily so many Boston faces. Paid our respects to Mrs. Jarvis...she was chatting in French to a hideous, sallow old woman whom she introduced to us as Mde. Lafayette. I was astonished that such a face of antiquity could be a daughter-in-law to the General. Mrs. Jarvis is a suitable dawdle. She is extremely pretty but her speeches are like an omelets souffle without being half so nice.”

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In 1835 Dr. Jarvis returned alone, leaving his wife and children in Europe, explaining to his friends that the children’s health and education required that they remain.

He brought back with him the fruit of diligent collecting throughout Europe–one of the largest private libraries (he had purchased a portion of the historian Gibbon’s library) and one of the largest private collections of art in America at the time. Mrs. Jarvis returned a year later, having had to borrow money from her brother-in-law and father for the return fare for herself and children.

Although Dr. Jarvis’s friends and advisors favored a separate establishment for his wife and children, he stipulated that she must confess that the complaints she made against him in her petition for divorce were untrue. She refused, saying she could not deliberately lie, and so the case came to trial. In addition to the Jarvis’s lifestyle and their connections on both sides to many notable figures of the period, another feature contributed to the case’s notoriety: it was tried before the Connecticut Legislature.

Mrs. Jarvis’s options became more seriously limited when her husband acted on his belief that her actions in seeking the divorce constituted new proof of disloyalty to him. On October 8, 1838, Dr. Jarvis wrote to Dr. Fuller at the Hartford Retreat for the Insane, “Her objective evidently is to drive me to allow her a separate maintenance; but were I to consent to this, and allow her to go to her friends, I should release her from all my control, and increase her power of doing mischief....It appears to me therefore that I have only one alternative; either to place her at once under your care, [at the Hartford Retreat for the Insane] or having taken such preparatory steps for that purpose as would render resistance on her part unavailing, to threaten her with such a course and endeavor to frighten her into submission.”

(sometimes with variations such as “desertion and married to another woman”) and occasionally life-threatening physical abuse or severe intemperance and failure to support. In situations not covered by these grounds, petitioners could appeal directly to the State Legislature. Each year the Legislature appointed a new divorce committee and that committee set criteria for granting divorces, so decisions could vary significantly from one year to the next.

Connecticut has a complex history of divorce The Reverend Doctor Although Dr. Jarvis’s friends and advisors legislation. Connecticut was Jarvis, as he now became comprised of two known, had been called to favored a separate establishment for his wife originally separate colonies with very a church in Middletown, and children, he stipulated that she must different divorce practices, Connecticut, where he began some of those practices refurbishing a former hotel confess that the complaints she made against and continued even after the to contain his library and art him in her petition for divorce were untrue. colonies united. In the origicollection. When his wife “Connecticut Colony” and children arrived, he sent She refused, saying she could not deliberately nal (Hartford, Windsor, and them to live with his cousin Wethersfield), one directly Harriet Jarvis. Startled and lie, and so the case came to trial. petitioned the legislature offended by her reception, for divorce. Since the legislature had no formally codified Mrs. Jarvis sought counsel from her family and lawyers. grounds for divorce, it would pass an individual law or speAll agreed that she should seek reconciliation and shelter cial act for each divorce it granted. On the other hand, in under his roof; then, if he were unwilling to have her there, the “New Haven Colonies,” the courts had the sole power negotiate a separate maintenance allowance. This was the to grant divorces, and there were recognized grounds for common strategy for families in their social sphere; they granting divorce: adultery, failure of the husband to fulfill would typically pursue a private agreement, often brokered conjugal duties, and desertion. Following the unification by friends and family, in which the husband provided apof the two colonies in 1655 into the single colony which propriate financial support for the wife to live separately. became Connecticut, one could secure divorce through The children often remained with the mother under this either of the two channels—the legislative or the judicial. arrangement, while in a formal divorce, fathers were likely to be given custody. The public humiliation of a divorce trial During the 1830s the courts continued to recognize and potential loss of custody prevented many women from only limited grounds for granting divorces: court records pursuing a divorce. from the period frequently cite adultery and desertion

Dr. Fuller replied on October 17, “Nothing should be done without much reflection. Mrs. J. has rich and powerful friends, and has ingenuity and address, and will be able to convince half the world, that she is sane, and that you are abusive….I have no doubt, from the history of Mrs. J.’s case that she is a monomaniac—this opinion however may be considered hasty as I have not seen, or studied her case.”

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Mrs. Jarvis included instances of physical abuse in her petition to the Legislature. One of the most dramatic had occurred one winter night in Sienna. Dr. Jarvis had the Italian cook forcibly drag Mrs. Jarvis to her room, where he locked her in. When their son intervened on his mother’s behalf, he was locked out in the snow. But Mrs. Jarvis’s appeal for divorce was also based on what we would now identify as psychological and emotional abuse or what the later nineteenth century called “mental cruelty.” Because the courts in 1839 did not recognize non-life-threatening cruelty or abuse as sufficient grounds for divorce, she appealed to the legislature. The Jarvis case, with others like it, sparked public debate about the nature of marriage and

Portrait of Reverend Samuel F. Jarvis by Gilbert Stuart and Jane Stuart, c. 1811

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Oil on panel, 36 5/8" x 26 1/8". Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT. Bequest of Miss Ellen A. Jarvis

Oil on canvas, 30" x 25". Collection of Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, CT. Gift of Mr. Roger Baldwin, 1957.

Africans involved the legal status of kidnapped African men the rights of women within it, contributing to the legal who had been sold into slavery in Cuba in violation of the recognition of emotional and psychological abuse as 1817 Anglo-Spanish treaty grounds for divorce. outlawing the slave trade.

Mrs. Jarvis’s petition to the While being transported from legislature claims, “Mr. Jarvis Havana to Puerto Principe on had a disposition wholly incathe Spanish schooner Amistad, pable of domestic happiness. they seized the ship and sailed His spirit was tyrannical, and it up the American coast. his temper towards your peWhen they were captured and titioner, violent, reckless, and brought into the harbor at New ungovernable. Without any just London, Connecticut, the men provocation, he has inflicted were held as pirates. Roger on her cruel blows, and by Sherman Baldwin was part of his debasing, and severe exacthe team of lawyers retained by tions has humbled her in the abolitionists to defend them. dust.” The charges that follow His arguments in the Amistad include striking her “several case shared crucial elements times upon the temple” during with his arguments in the one of her pregnancies, showJarvis case. ing an improper partiality for In the Jarvis case, Baldwin “a German female…employed argued that Mrs. Jarvis should by the family as a governess,” be granted a divorce even installing the governess at the though there were no existing head of the table after locking legal grounds—no “positive” his wife in her room, charglaw “on the books” that would ing his wife with insanity, and apply to her case. Baldwin’s argiving “charge of the keys gument lasted three hours acof the house to her second Governor Roger S. Baldwin by Nathaniel Jocelyn, c. 1840 cording to one source, but the daughter, and installing her grounds on which he based his in authority over her mother.” case can be stated succinctly.

Mrs. Jarvis’s petition contends In the Jarvis case, Baldwin argued that She asks for a divorce, he says, that her husband had not conthe ground that the disfined his actions to the private Mrs. Jarvis should be granted a divorce “on position, temper, and conduct family sphere: “In addition to of the respondent towards her these domestic injuries, he even though there were no existing have for a long period been has lately availed himself of legal grounds—no “positive” law “on such as not only to destroy all his high standing as a scholar, and a clergyman, and a man the books” that would apply to her case. her hopes of happiness, but to render it essential to her of wealth, to circulate most safety to be protected from his wrongful and injurious reports cruelty.” He continues, “A divorce on this ground…seems for the purpose of turning against her the current of public to be founded on a law of nature: for as marriage was opinion.” In closing, her petition reads, “These unmanly and instituted by God in a state of innocence, it must of conseoutrageous attacks upon her person, her character, and her quence be for the mutual help and comfort of each other: peace, have reduced her to a state of wretchedness which and therefore a cruel and severe usage frustrates one of the can be endured no longer.” ends of that state.”

No transcript of the trial was kept, but two differThe distinction between natural law (“instituted by ent pamphlets were published which detail the dramatic God”) and “positive” or man-made law, was being applied evidence, and the papers of one of Mrs. Jarvis’s lawyers, to other legal situations during this period. At the same Roger Sherman Baldwin, have been preserved and include time that he was developing Mrs. Jarvis’s case, Baldwin was his court brief for the case. Roger Sherman Baldwin’s making a similar appeal to natural law over positive law in grandfather, Roger Sherman, signed both the Declarathe case of the Amistad Africans, arguing that all men have tion of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Baldwin, rights that exist prior to any legal constructions devised by twice governor of Connecticut and also U.S. senator, is a nation. In Baldwin’s view, what is “natural” is what God best known today for his role in the Amistad case in1839 intended. Since marriage preceded the fall from grace, he in which he represented the “Amistad Africans,” first in argues that it reveals God’s original intention and not man’s Connecticut district court and finally, with John Adams, corruption of that intention. And, thus, because marriage before the U.S. Supreme Court. The case of the Amistad 44

Private Collection

preceded both the nation and its “positive” laws, marriage Legislature, Mrs. Jarvis described the following incident, exists for the ends of “mutual support and comfort,” or which took place when the family was living in Sienna: mutual happiness. Having established this premise, “One little daughter, having accidentally let fall a drop Baldwin asks, “Will this committee...require of ink upon her book, Dr. Jarvis immediately her to return to the house of her husband, seized the book, and struck the child in the there to remain a degraded...woman face, which sent her crying from the room. not treated in any respect as a wife & Your petitioner, under the influence of sneered at & threatened as a maniac?” a mother’s feelings, remarked that the punishment seemed too severe for the When Baldwin, throughout his offense. Upon which her husband brief, refers to Mrs. Jarvis as a came in a great passion at her, and “debased” woman, he is not just seized her by the nose, and held and appealing to the emotions of his wrung that with one hand, while readers, he is underscoring the with the other he beat her violently perversion of natural law. The on the side of the head.” natural order is overturned in the family’s private domestic sphere In his written response, Dr. Jarwhen Dr. Jarvis humiliates his vis describes the incident like this: wife and lowers her “natural” sta“A small unbound book...had been tus within the family, for example, badly blotted by his second daughter. by giving their daughter the houseThe respondent [Dr. Jarvis] reproved hold keys and authority over the her for her carelessness, and told her servants or charging her with insanity that she deserved to have her and preparing a separate apartment on ears boxed. So saying, he tapped her the third floor of the house where he gently on each side with the open book....

Re planned to have her guarded.

The petitioner [Mrs. Jarvis] uniformly interv. D 6 82 r. S a 1 .

One example from among Mrs. Jarvis’s fered with the authority of her husband and c m uel F r v i s, a r m a r Ja charges, followed by Dr. Jarvis’s response and oftentimes with unmeasured language. On this octhen Baldwin’s comments, show how Baldwin uses this casion she called him a tyrant, and used other abusive epiidea of violation of the “natural” relationship that should thets, all calculated to destroy his influence. He had found exist between husband and wife. In her petition to the from experience that any attempt to reply, or stop her

Home purchased by Samuel Farmar Jarvis on his return from Europe to house his library and art collection.

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Baldwin shifts the focus from whether or not there was phystongue by entreaty, argument, or authority, had no effect. ical violence and insists that even if we accept Dr. Jarvis’s acRidicule was the only effective method of relieving himself count, Jarvis has violated the natural law governing marriage from her attacks. He therefore advanced towards her, and by consistently degrading and addressed her in a tone of irony, stroking her cheek, and telling Mrs. Jarvis’s 1839 petition for divorce insulting his wife. her that she had no conception Mrs. Jarvis’s 1839 petition for was not granted by the legislature. how much her present anger divorce was not granted by the added to her beauty.” legislature. Reports issued by Reports issued by divorce committee divorce committee members to Baldwin comments: “A man members to the newspapers revealed the newspapers revealed that the moving in refined circles—a committee had decided to apply gentleman, a professed follower that the committee had decided to strict criteria similar to those of Christ—much more a clerapply strict criteria similar to those used by the courts, although indigyman, who could be guilty of such conduct towards his wife, used by the courts, although individual vidual members of the committee to publicly clarify that in presence of his children, as members of the committee hastened to hastened this decision was not intended to he himself admits, proves himDr. Jarvis. The New York self to be capable of any of the publicly clarify that this decision was vindicate Commercial Advertiser of June 14, acts detailed in the petition.... not intended to vindicate Dr. Jarvis. 1839 reported the speeches of It would not be remarkable two members of the Committee that a husband who can boast on Divorce, quoting the Hon. Mr. Perry as saying, “I cannot of the success of the gross insult to his wife which this Rev. justify Dr. Jarvis’s conduct to Mrs. Jarvis, his...conduct in Gentleman is pleased to call a stratagem to provoke her inthe affair at Sienna admits of no justification. The committee dignation and anger and drive her from his presence, should on divorce, however, came to the conclusion early in the sesattempt still further to degrade and insult her by showing sion, not to recommend the granting of a divorce, expreference for another.” cept in cases where the cruelty of the respondent was such as to hazard the safety of the complaining party.

In this case they have not found such facts as within the rule they had adopted would warrant a divorce.”

Mr. Rockwell, another committee member said, “Both of the parties appear to have sustained fair characters....I do not at all justify the conduct of Dr. Jarvis. His conduct at Sienna was entirely unjustifiable. A man has no right to use the violence towards his wife that he did on that occasion. I think him entirely wrong. But that is not enough to authorize the granting of a divorce—it requires much more. In my judgement, if the facts stated in the petition were proved, it would not be enough to warrant a divorce, and on this principle I have acted in voting against most of the applications in the present session. In regard to Mrs. Jarvis, nothing has appeared to prevent her from standing perfectly fair in the community. Dr. Jarvis has been entirely wrong in the course he has pursued for seven years past, by insisting on a separation in fact, although occupying the same house, except upon the exact compliance with the conditions prescribed by himself....Dr. Jarvis has peculiarities. It appears to me that this is a case which should not have been here...a liberal and proper settlement should have been made

by Dr. Jarvis on his lady.”

Letter from Sarah M. Jarvis to her sister Jeanette in 1839: “I believe the eye of innocence is more terrible to the guilty than a drawn sword & hence my presence is so irritating to him.”

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Ann Hart Hull

Mary Ann Hart

Elizabeth Hart Allen

Jeannette Hart Jarvis Loomis

No known portrait of Sarah McCurdy Hart Jarvis exists, but it is most likely that one was painted. Portraits (or their copies) exist of several of her sisters. Ann Hull, wife of Commodore Isaac Hull, was said to most closely resemble Sarah.

The portraits of her sisters Jeanette (page 41), Mary Ann and Elizabeth show the style of hair and clothing of Sarah’s youth.

The portrait of her daughter Jeannette Loomis also suggests what Sarah might have looked like. from Washington, D.C. in 1848, “Who do you think is here? In all her silk attire? The mother of your children, looking I was about to say, younger than ever. Never gayer, never brighter, dressed in a new costume every day, and I may add, dressed in taste. On one occasion she stood by my side richly appareled in black, with a fashionable black bonnet and a gentleman all attention to her. The next day I saw her leaning on the arm of a senator making their way to the reserved seats for distinguished strangers on the floor of the senate.”

When this letter was written, Sarah Jarvis was 62. In July of the same year, the Seneca Falls Convention published the Declaration of Sentiments, which claimed for women “a position to which the laws of nature and God entitle them,” including “the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Elizabeth T. Kenney is Assistant Dean in the Graduate School and Visiting Assistant Professor in the English Department at Salem State College. She is completing a book based on the considerable archival materials related to the Jarvis case.

Kim Mimnaugh

Dr. Jarvis, however, continued to feel that he was not obliged to support his wife. In 1840 Mrs. Jarvis, who was living in New York, brought a case in the New York Chancery Court to seek a settlement. William Kent, her New York lawyer, wrote to her Connecticut lawyers, explaining the limitations of the New York divorce laws: The law of our state you will find stated, with sufficient minuteness, in 2d Kent’s Const. p. 126. A husband may conduct himself with detestable temper towards his wife; he may effectively destroy her peace of mind and all the happiness of the married state, & yet the Law affords no relief. Our Vice Chancellor is a strict constructionist of the marriage tie, and the Chancellor himself...is equally adverse to separations on any ground short of bodily injuries.

Mrs. Jarvis was unsuccessful in her New York Chancery case. However, in 1842, she again brought her petition to the Connecticut State Legislature and was granted a divorce from the Rev. Dr. Jarvis and $600 a year in alimony.

The reason for her success was in part political; the composition of the divorce committee was different, and she now had a number of relatives and friends in the legislature.

But attitudes towards and definitions of human rights, women’s rights among them, were also changing, through high-profile cases like that of the Amistad, tried before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1842, and the natural law discourse of the abolitionists and suffragettes. In 1849, Connecticut passed a divorce act that included an omnibus clause giving judges discretion to grant divorces for “any misconduct of the other party as permanently destroys the happiness of the petitioner, and defeats the purpose of the marriage relation” (Public Acts 1849, Ch.21).

And afterwards? Far from being shunned and socially marginalized, as her husband and his friends predicted, Mrs. Jarvis retained a distinguished social position. One of Dr. Jarvis’s friends, Eliza Hamilton Holly wrote to him

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P O E T R Y

Kevin Carey Running

Kim Mimnaugh

48

Kevin Carey teaches Literature and Writing at Salem State College and is a seventh grade basketball coach at The Glen Urquhart School. Recent publications include The Literary Review, Comstock Review, Still Waters: Crime Stories by New England Crime Writers, The Paterson Literary Review and The White Pelican Review where his poem,“Shredding Me,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

The children yell from the schoolyard in little blue pants and white shirts and kick a big red ball between them like a pinball game and it doesn’t seem that long ago; playing kickball or ring-a-lievio or running over the buckled hot top to catch a rubber pimple ball, not so long ago when I skinned my knees running on the sidewalk and cried looking in the mirror because my chin bled red, my blood darker now when I nick myself shaving like even that has aged.

I turned fifty this year and a half of century seems like a history lesson, like someone should be answering an essay question about my childhood for extra credit, or scanning my homework written in long hand as some withered yellow parchment, and wasn’t it true that the trees grew taller then in my back yard and we built snow forts as big as apartment buildings, but my grandmother lived to be ninety-nine and in the end smiled with no teeth and wrapped pennies up in napkins that she tucked into her sleeves, that’s forty-nine more years for me, a lifetime if you consider my friend Fitzy, dead at thirty-six from a brain tumor, or three lifetimes if you think about Kenny Percell crossing the highway after a paper route.

The children at schoolyard run like I used to before a knee injury, run for the bases, from getting tagged by the big red ball, run from getting punched when the nuns aren’t looking, they run instinctively as if what they’re running from is lurking around every corner.

B O O K S H E L F

Recent books by Salem State College faculty and staff

City in Amber

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Jay Atkinson

“They Take Our Jobs!” and 20 Other Myths about Immigration Aviva Chomsky

Men Without Hats: Dialogue, Discipline and Discontent in the Madras Army, 1806–1807 James W. Hoover (Frey)

The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft & Conflict in Early New England Emerson W. Baker

The People Behind Colombian Coal: Mining, Multinationals and Human Rights

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Aviva Chomsky, Garry Leech & Steve Striffler

 Courting Equality:

A Documentary History of America’s First Legal Same-Sex Marriages Patricia A. Gozemba & Karen Kahn

The Fifth Field

Kenneth A. MacIver

SSC_PUB_329/08

Becalmed

Kim Mimnaugh

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