The origins of the contemporary Valentine's Day stem from ancient Rome when hedonistic pagan fertility rituals were the norm. Between the days February 13 and 18, young Roman men and women would gather for a festival near the cave of Lupercal on the Palatine Hill where it was believed Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome, had lived as children centuries before. As the festival progressed with animal sacrifices and scantily clad ceremonies, eligible bachelors with raging hormones would also find a romantic companion by drawing the name of an young lady in attendance out of a box or urn. Naturally, this time of year became a popular time for Roman marriages, and why we still associate this holiday with love and sexuality.
But how did Valentine's Day get its name? Legend has it around the year 269 CE, Valentinus, a Christian priest, was performing marriage ceremonies around Rome in defiance of the Emperor Claudius II, who had banned them because he desperately needed all able-bodied young men for military service to drive out the numerous invasions of the Roman Empire by Goths and other Germanic tribes. Claudius had Valentinus summarily arrested, but in his cell he scribbled "valentines" or messages to his followers. Perhaps by design for dramatic effect and intimidation of any others who might violate his marriage ban, Claudius ordered Valentine's execution on February 14, 269 CE during the Lupercalian Festival. Over the next century or so, Christianity became the official faith of the Roman Empire, and this February pagan festival was eventually replaced by the holiday on the same date to honor the martyr St. Valentine. For more information, click here http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Exhibitions/Valentines/origins.htm
But how does this connect to New Hampshire history? By the nineteenth century, the holiday to honor St. Valentine which we enjoy today had crossed the Atlantic. Below is a poem which was published in the Portsmouth Journal on February 13, 1830:
Nearly thirty years later, there is strong evidence that the practice of exchanging valentines was quite popular in New Hampshire. For example, in the January 26, 1856 edition of the Dover Gazette appeared an advertisement for the shop of Daniel Lothrop opposite City Hall on Washington Street, where he sold a "splendid stock of Valentines" that could not be "surpassed in the United States for cheapness, variety, or beauty." But on Valentine's Day in Brentwood in 1841, the hands of Richard Bean would not be carrying a message of love for his wife Nancy, but instead be stained red with her blood.
In a tragic irony, Richard and Nancy had just passed their fortieth wedding anniversary on February 6, 1841, a date which they may have chosen in the days of their young, budding love for its proximity to Valentine's Day.(1) Over the subsequent decades, the Beans had a large brood of children but apparently all did not go well. The following notice appeared in the May 13, 1822 issue of the New Hampshire Patriot & State Gazette:
Nearly 40 years later, it seems that Richard's lack of success in life had turned him into a bitter, alcoholic old man who took out his rage on his wife. On Sunday, February 14, Nancy Bean went home for supper after having spent a few days taking care of an ill neighbor. One of her other neighbors who knew her husband's violent tendencies tried to dissuade Mrs. Bean from going home as "he thought she not would be safe with her husband." She declined this offer of protection, and it was a decision that would have deadly consequences.(2)
The next morning, when the same neighbor passed by the Bean residence, he was shocked to see Mrs. Bean's contorted body lying on the ground near the house, nearly frozen solid by the temperature which had dropped to under 10 degrees during the night.(3) This man called out to surrounding neighbors who rushed to the scene. To their disbelief, they could see Richard Bean moving around inside the house as if nothing was amiss. When they demanded to know what had happened and why he had not carried his wife inside, Bean said "he did not know anything about it-he had only been to the door for a handful of wood, and had not seen his wife since Thursday."
The listeners were incredulous, and pushing Bean out of the way, carried the frozen corpse into the house and sent for a coroner. Near the body, there were torn pieces of her dress, evidence of a "severe struggle" which had taken place. This crime scene would have been a goldmine for modern forensic examiners, but during this primitive era of criminal investigation, certainly some evidence of who perpetrated the murder must have been destroyed when the body was moved inside and the ground trampled under foot.(4) It makes sense that she was laid to rest in the Old Town cemetery in Brentwood, but I am still trying to verify that.
The listeners were incredulous, and pushing Bean out of the way, carried the frozen corpse into the house and sent for a coroner. Near the body, there were torn pieces of her dress, evidence of a "severe struggle" which had taken place. This crime scene would have been a goldmine for modern forensic examiners, but during this primitive era of criminal investigation, certainly some evidence of who perpetrated the murder must have been destroyed when the body was moved inside and the ground trampled under foot.(4) It makes sense that she was laid to rest in the Old Town cemetery in Brentwood, but I am still trying to verify that.
But when the victim was examined before she was buried, it was discovered that her nose was broken and she had suffered a "large" wound underneath her left eye. But apparently, none of these wounds could have caused death alone. Rather, it appeared at the time that she was attacked outside and left there, probably unconscious. Then, covered in her own blood, "she endeavored to return to the house and fell and died before reaching it." She had once married her husband with a warm heart flush with the hopes of youth in the midst of winter, and now forty years later, the frigid blast of February had sealed her awful fate.
Contemporary reports had no doubts that that Richard Bean had committed this brutal atrocity, noting that he had been "for many years intemperate and abusive." But like many victims of domestic violence today, Mrs. Bean would not (or could not) leave him, caught in a cycle of violence and psychological manipulation. She "cleaved to him, labored hard for his support, and declined the invitations of her children-(some of whom are respectable and doing well in the world)-to take up her abode...with them." Her children must have suffered greatly knowing they had tried to save their mother but were powerless to avert this tragedy.
In September 1841, Richard Bean was tried for murder and was sentenced to thirty days solitary confinement and life at the State Prison in Concord.(5) However, he was pardoned by Governor Samuel Dinsmoor in November 1849. Within a few weeks, Bean had died of "old age" in Lowell, Massachusetts on December 3, 1849 at the age of 72 years and six months.(6) But why had he gone to Lowell? It seems that was where one of his eldest daughters, Sophia, was living there at the time, and the nasty old man had no where else to go to die.(7) But the question will always linger, did Sophia forgive her father for killing her mother as he lay gasping his final breaths?
The image of a bloodied, beaten Nancy Bean martyred by her husband on the front yard of their home on Valentine's Day, February 1841 is a disturbing one that does not leave the mind easily. Perhaps the editor of the Exeter News Letter pondered this tragedy when he wrote of Nancy Bean:
"She did toil on and suffer till her sun went down in blood."(8)
Endnotes
1. Marriage Certificate State of New
Hampshire, # 00456459, New Hampshire State Archives, Concord, NH.
2. New Hampshire Statesman & Journal, February 27, 1841.
3. Portsmouth Journal, February 20, 1841.
4. New Hampshire Statesman & Journal, February 27, 1841 (all further quotes come from this source.)
5. Dover Gazette, September 28, 1841.
6. Massachusetts Vital Records to 1849, accessed at www.americanancestors.org on February 9, 2013.
8. New Hampshire Statesman & Journal, February 27, 1841.
