Christmas in Early New Hampshire

First of all, I want to apologize for the vast expanse of time between posts--- life has been crazy! And this blog requires a lot of research! Ok, enough excuses…

Well, given the time of year, I thought it might be a good time to write about something not quite so dark and sinister, though the celebration of Christmas in New Hampshire was not without controversy. While the general public might think that modern Christmas celebrations originated during the mid-nineteenth century heeded by Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol, the origins of holiday tradition we enjoy today actually began much earlier. And the typical stereotype about colonial New England is that the observance of Christmas was taboo because in the minds of the the Puritans, it was a holiday linked to the papacy and the pagan yuletide festival celebrating the winter solstice.  But in New Hampshire at least, this was far from the reality. 

The historical evidence reveals that Christmas was actually quite boisterous in Portsmouth before the American Revolution, much more so than the quaint, contrived tourist attraction it has become today. In the December 28, 1770 issue of the New Hampshire Gazette published in downtown Portsmouth, printer and editor Daniel Fowle commented that local celebrations of Christmas in fact reflected the “degeneracy of Christians…Why the evening preceeding and whole Night is spent by many in Rioting & Drunkeness, Tumult and Noise.”  But apparently early Christmas celebrations in New Hampshire had a much darker side than a bunch of noisy drunkards. Fowle was far more disturbed by the "cruel mode of Diversion of torturing the helpless Feathered Species, by throwing of them ‘till they are murdered disgraces our Religion and insults our Humanity.”  Despite their quest for authenticity, I don’t think we’ll be seeing that recreated at any historical holiday events such as the Candle Light Stroll at Strawbery Banke!

Anyway,  even in 1770, Fowle believed this custom to be a "vestige of Gothic Cruelty", and my research shows that he may well have been largely accurate about its origins. The practice of sacrifice around the winter solstice was a very ancient ancient one, and even the word "Yule" associated with Christmas for a very long time, is believed to have origins in the Norse word "jul" which translates as "cycle" or "sacrifice."  In Britain in particular, surviving letters of those who converted the island, such as St. Augustine, reveal that this pagan custom was allowed to continue under the veil of Christianity to ease the transition between the two belief systems.  While it certainly changed over the centuries and logically made it way across the Atlantic to the British colonies, even today in Britain the treatment of animals, particularly fowl, on Christmas is a topic of considerable controversy: 
http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/CAMPAIGNS/living/ALL/563/

 An early proponent of animal rights perhaps (though it is beyond doubt that Fowle participated in the slave trade via his newspaper), in 1770 he urged action to stop the abuse of animals on Christmas: “We can impute the Continuance of this brutal Custom to nothing but Inattention, for even out Select-men and others…by a law may put an effectual stop to such Cruelty.” And his compelling plea for reform did not fall on deaf ears. In fact, only two days before Christmas Day the following year in 1771, the provincial assembly of New Hampshire passed a law to “prevent and punish Disorders usually committed on the twenty-fifth Day of December, commonly called Christmas-Day, the Evening preceding and following said day.”  The language of this legislation provides further insight into how wild these colonial Christmas celebrations were. Specifically the authorities ordered that, “no person or persons, within the town of Portsmouth, shall on the evening or night next immediately preceding Christmas-Day, assemble with others, in a routerous and tumultuous manner…or travel though the streets with beating of drums, and firing guns, or hallowing and huzzaing…and any boys playing with balls in any streets, whereby there is danger of breaking the windows of any building, public or private, may be ordered to remove to any place where there will be no such danger.”  Those darn kids!

The potential penalty for anyone caught engaging in the above activities ranged from a fine not more than five shillings, imprisonment in the colony’s jail for not more than two days, or sitting in the stocks for up to two hours. Interestingly, the colonial authorities stipulated that “boys under twelve years of age, be excepted from suffering the penalties aforesaid.” This law suggests that the provincial authorities were primarily concerned that Christmas celebrations had dissolved into chaotic, unruly gatherings that could potentially ferment rebellious sentiment towards the Crown.  For Christmas 240 years ago, in 1774, colonial New Hampshire was teetering on the edge of outright rebellion. Portsmouth became the stage for the first armed assault against a royal military installation, when New Hampshire militiamen raided Fort William & Mary in New Castle for its valuable barrels of gunpowder and other provisions. Days after on December 17, the New Hampshire Gazette reported residents of nearby Greenland celebrated this event by raising "a Liberty-Pole" at Folsom's tavern to symbolize their "fix'd Determination to defend the Privilege of Americans with their lives and fortunes." To see what this event could have looked like, click here to visit the page of my living history unit, Cherry's Company, 2nd NH Regiment and see the photos: https://www.facebook.com/CherrysCompany.2ndNH


Once American independence was achieved after eight long grueling years of war, there is no doubt that all segments of New Hampshire's citizens definitely observed the Christmas holiday. On December 25, 1789, the New-Hampshire Spy in Portsmouth reported that “This day, being Christmas, His Excellency the President of this State, the Members of the Hon. Council, Senate and House of Representatives, attended divine service at the Episcopalian church in this town.” The “president” of New Hampshire at this time was my hometown of Rollinsford’s most famous son, General John Sullivan. Three years later in Concord, according to the editor of The Mirror, Christmas was “observed with grateful hearts--- In the evening, an ingenious…discourse, suited to the occasion, was delivered in the court house, to a crowded and respectable auditory.” Christmas also became a time for smaller, yet no less significant celebrations in everyday life; for example, on Christmas Eve 1805, the Political Observatory of Concord announced that on “Christmas evening” in Alstead, Mr. Anson Graves married Aceneth Slade.” One can only hope they lived happily ever after. 

Another revelation is that the tradition of using pine saplings to decorate homes in New Hampshire really did begin during the 18th century. As early as 1791, on July 2 in fact, the New-Hampshire Spy published an article that discussed ancient pagan British customs “as the reason of evergreens being used on Christmas Day,” which indicates this practice was already prevalent in New Hampshire before 1800. By the mid-nineteenth century, many New Hampshire homes were adorned with fresh cut hemlocks or pines from the nearby woods. In 1850, Joseph Cilley of Nottingham noted in his diary that his family had erected “a Christmas tree this eve-it looked well.” On January 3, 1852, the New-Hampshire Statesman in Concord mentioned that at the Christmas party at the Sunday school of St. Paul’s Church, “the chief charm of the occasion…was the Christmas Tree, which was loaded with some concealed gift, for each member of the school. The ceremony of plucking the tree and presenting to every scholar his own, was novel and interesting.”

 But how did folks actually put up a Christmas tree a century or two ago before modern stands were invented? An article which appeared in Godey’s Lady’s Book and Magazine in December 1860 indicated that large stone jars or crocks were used as a base and were filled with damp sand or earth to keep the tree upright and from drying out too quickly. According to the Farmer’s Cabinet of Amherst, in December 1855, the congregation of the First Church in Mason paid thanks to their pastor by putting up a Christmas Tree in his parlor and soon “its branches became the depository of a liberal sum of money, and many useful articles, which, together with hay, wood and provisions…amounted to upwards of $80.” New Hampshire’s strong holiday tradition also directly contributed to our national obsession with the Christmas tree. In December 1856, it is widely believed that New Hampshire native Franklin Pierce became the first President to put up a Christmas tree in the White House, establishing an annual tradition that continues today. So if you like Christmas today, you can in a large part thank the people of New Hampshire's past!

Sources

1. Medieval Celebrations, Daniel Diehl and Mark Donnelly, Stackpole Books: 2011. 

2. Christmas: A Candid History, Bruce David Forbes, Berkely: University of California               Press, 2007. 
3. Merry Christmas! Celebrating America's Greatest Holiday, Karal Ann Marling,                           Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.

A Tale of Two Boys: A Strange Story of Somnabulism

 This remarkable tale also involves children, yet with a strange twist, for both the perpetrator and victim were both minors. It began not in New Hampshire, but in Richmond, Virginia just before the outbreak of the Civil War, where on January 13, 1859, John Sherman Emerson was born to thirty-six year old Richard Emerson and his wife. Emerson was originally from Candia, New Hampshire, fought in the Mexican War during the late 1840s, and relocated to Virginia, where he married Margaret Wade and started a family. By 1860, the federal census documents that John Emerson was the youngest of five children, including Clara, Margaret, Mary, and Sarah. This document captured a moment in time before the turmoil of the Civil War changed the fortunes of the Emerson family.

John S Emerson recorded as a one year old child of Richard and Margaret Emerson in the 1860 US Census

 Even though he was from New Hampshire and had served previously in the U.S. Army, during the Civil War Richard Emerson served as a private in the 25^th Battalion Virginia Infantry, which was organized to defend the city of Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. However, in May 1864, Emerson’s ragtag regiment was called into the field by General Robert E. Lee to reinforce the decimated Southern army in the massive battle of Spotsylvania. By the time he was discharged from the Army of Northern Virginia in 1865, Richard Emerson was listed on the official records as being a musician.¹ But for some unknown reason, Emerson abandoned his young family after the war ended and went to California, where he died soon after. A few years later, his estranged wife Margaret Emerson also passed away, and John Emerson, only eight years old, was left an orphan. There was nothing left for him in Virginia, so he traveled north to the birthplace of his father, and where some of his older siblings had already relocated: New Hampshire. And yet it was in the Granite State, where young John Emerson sought refuge in a land desolated by war, that he would nearly lose his life in what one contemporary described as one of the “most singular tragedies of which there is any record in criminal annals.”²

 While John Emerson spent his early childhood in Virginia, another boy about the same age named Wilfred Fitts was growing up in Candia. Wilfred was described as having a “pleasing appearance” and he was also “a good scholar in school, and well liked by his teachers.” Once arriving in New Hampshire, John Emerson began living with different families in Candia who had known his father’s family and doing chores on their farms. He soon became “a favorite among the citizens of that town” and was described as being “very intelligent.” At one point, John lived with Wilfred Fitts’ uncle, Jesse, and the two boys got to know each other well. According to those who knew them, “there had never been much trouble between the boys and they appeared to enjoy each other’s company.”³ But in April 1873, when both John and Alfred had entered their teens, a bizarre incident occurred that would change the course of both their lives.

On the night of Monday, April 14, young Emerson was boarding at the farm of Charles Rowe, a farmer who lived with his wife, two children, and his elderly mother on North Road in Candia. Earlier that evening, Mr. Rowe had left for Exeter, where by some odd coincidence he had been summoned for jury duty the next day. Rowe must have been shocked to learn that during his absence a murder had nearly transpired at his own home. According to riveting account from the Independent Statesman of Concord on April 17, John Emerson and seventy-six year old Sarah Rowe, who perhaps served as a surrogate grandmother figure for him, slept in adjacent rooms and around midnight, a commotion in John’s room caused her to awake. After calling to him twice and receiving no reply, Mrs. Rowe rose out of bed to see what was wrong. Groping in the darkness, she touched the bed and was “horror-struck by feeling his body and the hot blood pouring...into the bed.” The rest of the household had been awakened by her screams and ran to get help at the nearest farm, which belonged to Jesse Fitts where Alfred was staying, some three-quarters of a mile away. When he arrived at the scene of the crime, Mr. Fitts was astonished to discover that lying near John Emerson’s bed was an axe smeared with blood which he instantly recognized to be from his own workshop. But how did it get there?

But before that disturbing question could be answered, the Rowe family turned their attention to the young victim who was life was ebbing away before their very eyes.  Jesse Fitts rode hard through the darkness to the residence of Dr. Edward Berry, who quickly traveled to the Rowe residence and found John Emerson “very much exhausted from the loss of blood, but having his senses. He found a terrible gash extending from the right corner of the mouth into it and back to the neck, under the ear; another gash extending from just below the nose on the left side, about two inches long, penetrating into the mouth and separating the jaw and cutting out a piece thereof, and pushing out several teeth.” During what must have been his attempts to fend off his attacker, John Emerson’s thumb on his right hand was severed completely and two other fingers cut so badly that they had to be amputated. Despite these serious injuries, Dr. Berry “entertained strong hopes of his recovery, the lad being conscious and bearing his pain with much fortitude.” Here we get a prophetic insight into the resilient character of this teenager who had an intimate brush with death.

While John Emerson’s condition was stabilized, an inquiry began the next morning to determine who had perpetrated the attempted murder and why. Who would have had access to that particular axe? Suspicions immediately fell on fifteen-year old Wildred Fitts, who apparently for some months had been known in Candia for being a somnambulist. This obscure medical term is derived from the Latin words for sleep (somnus) and walking (ambulus). For months, stories had circulated around town that in the middle of the night Wilfred would “conceal his school books and clothing in obscure parts of the house, being unable to find them afterward, and accusing others of having hid them.” Only about a week before the assault on John Emerson, Wilfred had been found sleepwalking inside the nearby home of Augustus Robbins, standing upright with an axe in his hands. When Robbins approached the teenager carefully and discovered he was asleep, Wilfred had to be escorted back to his uncle Jesse’s farm.  After this incident, the Fitts family had taken measures to make sure he stayed in his room at night but did he?

Modern medical research has demonstrated that sleepwalking occurs often in children as they enter their teens. They may get up and walk around, or do complex activities such as moving furniture, going to the bathroom, and dressing or undressing. The episode can be very brief or it can last for thirty minutes or longer, but most episodes last for less than ten minutes. If they are not disturbed, sleepwalkers will go back to sleep.  This is an relevant observation, since an examination of the crime scene at the Rowe’s home in 1873 “showed that whoever committed the crime took an old chair from the barn, placed it to the parlor window and got in there, passed through into the hall, up stairs and through an intricate hallway to the rear of the house, where Emerson was asleep, and went out...the same way. On the window-sill was some blood.”⁴

The morning after John was assaulted, Wilfred was found asleep in his bed and there was no apparent blood on his clothing, but there was a track of footprints leading away from the house. Later that morning, he was told to return to his parents in Lowell, and while passing the Rowe farm, “desired to call and bid John Emerson goodbye, appearing to have no knowledge that his friend was injured.” To those who believed this was indeed an incidence of somnambulistic violence, Wilfred’s behavior seemed to provide more convincing evidence that he was completely oblivious about the attack. Nevertheless, on Wednesday April 16, Wilfred Fitts was taken into custody by authorities and brought to Exeter, where the Rockingham county prosecutor, J. S.H Frink had to decide how to proceed with this unorthodox case. How could he prosecute an attempted murder committed without an apparent motive or malice and a defendant who claimed not to remember committing the crime?

In the meantime, more information came from the Fitts family which seemed to confirm that Wilfred may have inherited his sleepwalking condition from his mother, who told reporters that “she herself was accustomed, when young, to rise from her bed without knowing it; and that on two or three occasions in her earlier married life she had, in her sleep, clutched her husband by the throat in fancied defense of some assaulter..” The theory that Mrs. Fitts could have passed on her past sleepwalking behavior genetically to her son is actually supported today by clinical research. In a recent book on the subject, three prominent psychologists affirmed that “it is clear that sleepwalking is highly hereditary...If both parents sleepwalk, there is a 60% chance any child will sleepwalk. If only one parent sleepwalks, the risk is 45%.”⁵ In Candia, where people knew both of boys well, most citizens agreed that the deed had been committed by Wilfred in his sleep.  The Farmer’s Cabinet of Amherst described the incident as “one of the most horrible freaks of a somnambulist ever recorded.”

But according to the Independent Statesman in Concord on May 1, some residents  of Candia were skeptical and believed that “Fitts committed the assault in full possession of his faculties.” This wasn’t the first time in nineteenth-century New England that sleepwalking had been used as an alibi by a defendant. In New Hampshire during the 1830s, Abraham Prescott attempted to elude the gallows by claiming he was a somnambulist but was still hanged in 1836 for the murder of Sally Cochran. In the 1840s, Albert Tirrell of Boston was tried for murdering his wife and then setting fire to the crime scene, though he was acquitted partly thanks to attributing his actions to sleepwalking.⁶ In a way reminiscent of modern debates about the impact of violent video games and television, some of Wilfred Fitts’ contemporaries believed that the sensational print media had incited the teenager to commit an act of violence. They claimed he was “impelled to it by a morbid craving after notoriety, superinduced by reading accounts of murders and assassinations, in the papers, and dime novels.” But the legal authorities of New Hampshire were to take a much more lenient view of the case.

 By late April, fortunately John Emerson had begun recovering from his wounds and his survival seemed certain, indeed he would thrive. On Tuesday, May 6, 1873 a hearing was held at the Congregational Church in Exeter because the crowd who came to witness the unique proceedings was so large. After visiting the scene of the crime, and hearing the testimony from about a dozen witnesses, including the Fitts family who claimed that their son had shown symptoms of somnambulism for an extended time and that they had sent him to live in Candia to get better, “Judge Cross and the County Solicitor said they did not regard the boy as responsible for the assault.” They requested that if the boy was placed in an asylum to treat his condition, no charges would be filed.  Whether Wilfred Fitts did actually attempt to murder John Emerson while sleepwalking will always remain an enigma, but even today psychologists continue to document and study cases of somnambulistic assaults and even alleged homicides.⁷ 

After their probable nocturnal encounter in April 1873, the lives of Wilfred Fitts, and his friend and victim, John Emerson, could not have been more dissimilar. Emerson fully recuperated and lived with one of his older sisters in Somersworth before returning to public school, and in January 1874, James Shapleigh became John’s legal guardian and was able to obtain a cash settlement of $750 from the Fitts family.⁸ Meanwhile, Wilfred was first sent to the New Hampshire State Asylum in Concord, but by the end of June the superintendent of the institution requested that he be released back to his parent’s custody because he had never been observed to sleepwalk there. For the rest of that summer, Wilfred lived with his parents in Lowell, but his mental state apparently deteriorated. On September 30, 1873, the Boston Daily Advertiser reported that he “ran out of his father’s house Saturday last, without hat or shoes, under an aberration of mind. It was feared that he injured himself, but after along search was found in his father’s barn.” A few days later, the “boy somnambulist...who is seventeen years of age, yet weighs but seventy-five pounds” was accompanied by his father to the Worcester State Asylum, where it was hoped his health would improve.

But about a year later, Wilfred Fitts was involved in a tragic demise that was no less bizarre than the strange crime he had allegedly committed. On February 8, 1875, the Boston Daily Advertiser informed its readers that when he had been left unsupervised for a few moments, the teenager “filled a bath-tub with scalding water then jumped into it, suffering injuries from which he died in twenty-four hours.”The circumstances of his death were so alarming that in "A Report of the Commissioners of Lunacy to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts", which investigated the incident, reported that during his final excruciating hours, Wilfred claimed it was not suicide but an accident. But in the Massachusetts vital records, Wilfred’s death was listed as “injury (self-inflicted).” His father Isaac Fitts must have mourned the loss of his son on the verge of manhood until his own death on August 23, 1890 in Lowell at the age of eighty-one. We don't know the last time Wilfred and John spoke to each other, but when John heard of this news, it must have been shocking.

But the rest of John Emerson’s life couldn’t have been more different from the sad fate of his childhood friend. It’s interesting to ponder the impact the ax attack had on young John, and though the historian of Candia said Emerson would “always bear the marks of the ugly wounds he received on that terrible night”, it seems to have had a completely unexpected psychological effect on him.⁹ In fact, it may not be coincidence that after nearly having his life taken by a childhood friend, John Emerson became a highly respected teacher.  By December 1879, at age twenty, John was educating the youth of Candia at the local high school, where the Independent Statesman noted “the success which has hitherto attended Mr. Emerson in his teaching, and the character of the scholars in attendance, a pleasant and profitable term is anticipated.”

Over the next decade, Emerson moved on to teach in different communities in suburban Boston and built himself quite a resume. In Quincy, John fell in love with another teacher, twenty-eight year old Charlotte Poison, and the Massachusetts vital records show they were married on April 3, 1890 in Malden, “a union which...contributed greatly to Mr. Emerson’s success.” Four years later, Emerson became principal of the Knapp School in Somerville, where he would remain for many years. 

In 1897, a book about Somerville discussed the history of the schools in great detail, and  described John Emerson“to have been born for the work of teaching, and his success commenced with his first experience...and yet he is most unassuming.” The photo of him in that book below remarkably shows that any scars of the attack which nearly killed him as a teenager had virtunally disappeared when he was in his late thirties. Ten years later, in 1907, Emerson authored an essay titled “The teaching of local history in the public schools” which would still make interesting reading today.¹⁰ 

The 1910 census documents that middle-aged John and Charlotte Emerson were still married and teaching in Somerville as the first decade of the twentieth century ended.  John Emerson’s narrow escape from death in Candia, New Hampshire and subsequent success as an educator is indeed a remarkable life worthy of remembrance.

 

Endnotes

1. Gary W. Gallagher, ed., The Spotsylvania Campaign (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998) 155, 168; National Park Service Civil War Soldiers & Sailors System, http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/soldiers.cfm, accessed on July 24, 2011.

2. Edward Samuels and Henry Kimball, eds., Somerville, Past and Present: An Illustrated Historical Souvenir (Boston: 1897) 660.

3. Independent Statesman, April 17, 24, 1873.

4. Independent Statesman, April 17, 24, 1873; “Somnambulism”, National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine website, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001811/, accessed August 14, 2011.

5. Independent Statesman, May 1, 1873; Martin Reite, Michael P. Weissburg, John Ruddy, Clinical Manual for Evaluation and Treatment of Sleep Disorders (Arlington, Virginia: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2009) 152.

6. New Hampshire Sentinel, October 1, 1836, April 1, 1846.

7. Michael J. Thorpy, Giuseppe Plazzi, The Parasomnias and Other Sleep-Related Movement Disorders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 8.

8. Independent Statesman, January 29, 1874.

9. J. Bailey Moore, History of the Town of Candia, Rockingham County, N.H. (Manchester: George Brown, 1893) 318.

10. Samuels and Kimball, Somerville, Past and Present, 660; Annual Report of the American Historical Association, Volume 2 (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1907) 576.

Granite Gallows Book Published!

I'm thrilled to announce the arrival of my book, Granite Gallows: True Tales of the Death Penalty & More from New Hampshire's History. It weaves together stories similar to those that have appeared in my blog, but on a far greater scope and length.

This process has been nearly ten years in the making, but it has been worth the journey!

To get a preview and purchase your copy through Amazon, please click here  http://www.amazon.com/Granite-Gallows-Tales-Penalty-Hampshires/dp/1499282621/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400088084&sr=8-1&keywords=granite+gallows