Chapter 29
The lights flicker as I enter the historical society, which resides inside an old colonial-style home on Main Street. Outside, an early September storm is in full swing, dumping rain and filling the sky with loud claps of thunder. I shake off my umbrella and lean it in a corner.
“Looks a lot different from today, right?” I turn around and a stooped lady is standing in front of me.
Her white hair is cut into a neat bob and is held back with an old ribbon functioning as a headband, and she wears a pale blue sweater.
Her eyes are bright, and I can tell that age has not slowed down her faculties at all.
“I’m Jean. You must be Elinor?”
“Yes. And thank you so much for coming out to meet me today; I know the weather is awful.”
“Not a problem. And my goodness, you are expecting! You didn’t tell me that.”
I stand stupidly for a moment, for some reason unsure if she’s referring to the baby. Recently, I haven’t encountered too many new people. Her eyes flick down to my belly, so I instinctively put a hand on my small bump and smile. “Yes. Yes, I am. It’s our first. Very exciting.”
“Wonderful. Just wonderful. Patty will join us in a bit. Let me give you a quick tour of the place.”
She leads me around the room, rattling off names and places as she waves at various photos and artifacts.
Frederick Barstow atop a mountain of hay.
Voters lined up in front of town hall. There are also glass display cases in the middle of the room, showing relics from Newfield’s agrarian tradition.
An antique apple picker, an old hoe, a pair of giant metal shears.
Also displayed in the center of the room is a plow from the 1800s.
It’s a rusted contraption of metal wheels and spirals and looks like it’s crawling with tetanus.
A clap of thunder seems to hammer the room, and the lights flicker again, casting shadows on the walls.
My eye catches on a framed hand-drawn map of Newfield Village.
It is instantly recognizable, with the small river that runs behind Wildwood, eventually leading out into the Connecticut.
A huge swath of land is marked with just one name.
Bishop. On the other side of the road, an even larger swath is labeled Brook.
“Wow.”
“The property was a lot bigger back then. I think it says twelve hundred acres. Your family operated a mill on the Connecticut at one point. Did you know that?”
I nod.
“Brought a lot of prosperity to the area. But over the years, they sold off a lot of the land.”
“When is this map from?” I ask.
Jean squints at the image. “It’s dated 1870.
That’s right. That’s when Newfield Village joined with Newfield.
The residents would have filed deeds in town to formalize their property boundaries.
” She smiles. “Do you know that back in the day, to mark the lines, they’d simply go around with an axe and hack a chunk out of various trees? Easy as that. Well, come on.”
I follow Jean up a flight of stairs, and we emerge into a large, window-filled event room, which looks to span the entire top floor of the colonial.
Heavy chandeliers dripping with crystal hang from the ceilings and the walls are covered with pastoral paintings sitting in thick, expensive gold frames.
“They are all from local artists or artists from the surrounding area.” Jean gestures to the walls, as she ambles toward a long wooden table in the middle of the room.
There’s an impressive technology set up toward the front.
“We host events up here, fundraisers, or educational talks, stuff like that.”
We sit down and another woman joins us. She has short cropped gray hair and is dressed in sensible clothes that look like they are from L.L.Bean. “Hi. I’m Patty.” Patty nods her head up and down as she sits. She has a skittishness about her.
“Well, what can we tell you, Elinor?” Jean is clearly the one in charge.
In the emails we’d exchanged, I told them I wanted to learn more about Newfield Village and my family but had kept my specific questions vague.
“Well, I know a bit about the history from Madeline Brook—”
“Oh, isn’t she lovely?” Jean asks rhetorically.
“Yes. She’s wonderful.” I smile agreeably.
“I also did some of my own research and my understanding is that the Brooks and Bishops settled Newfield Village in 1771. The Brooks became wealthy raising sheep for Merino wool, and the Bishops were into lumber. They also had sizable apple orchards where they produced cider, which was then sold to distilleries—”
“Until Prohibition,” Jean interjects.
“Yes, until Prohibition. And I know that the Bishops had one of the largest dairy farms in the area and made a small fortune selling milk, cheese, and butter. The business was eventually sold but is still in production today, headquartered elsewhere.” I pause to take a breath.
“And both families literally struck gold in the river.”
“Wow, are you trying to put us out of a job here?” Jean cackles.
“I don’t know what else we can tell you, but we can show you some old pictures if you like.” Patty pulls open a MacBook, which I’m guessing projects on the screen at the front of the room.
“Actually,” I say, “what I’m really curious about is what was going on in Newfield Village in the mid-1700s.”
“What do you mean?” Jean is smiling but it looks stilted. Though she is hunched over her laptop, I feel Patty’s eyes pass from Jean to me and back to Jean again.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this before, perhaps from my uncle, Ezra Bishop, but there is a small cemetery on my property at Wildwood.
The graves look really old, older than those in the Methodist cemetery.
And what’s strange is that a number of them are unmarked.
They look different than the others. I’ve been wondering if you were aware of any settlers there prior to 1771. ”
“Oh, well, records were not great back in those days, so the earliest documentation we have is from 1771.”
“Well, the population of Vermont really began to increase after the French and Indian War ended in 1763, right?” I’d been doing my homework. “Isn’t it possible that Newfield Village was settled earlier?”
Jean waves away this notion. “No, the most sought-after land was here in Newfield. It was flatter, closer to the main roads and to the lower New England cities.”
I stare at her a moment, trying to decide how much I should push her.
Am I crazy or shouldn’t academic people be more open-minded?
Isn’t this what the historical society does?
Collect lost information to try and continuously piece together the history of the town?
But still, I’m the newcomer. I don’t want to be known as the flatlander who arrives and thinks she knows everything.
“Okay. That makes sense. Just curious, does the historical society do field research? I would really love it if someone could come out and take a look at the gravestones I found and do some form of dating on them. Wouldn’t this be a valuable thing to explore?
Especially if it could prove that Newfield Village was settled earlier than thought? ”
Jean laughs again. “We don’t have capabilities for something like that! We are a small-town historical society, not some fancy research lab. We do things like collect photos and stories, do barn surveys, protect architecture, that sort of thing.”
I force a smile onto my face and laugh agreeably. I can’t help but cast my eyes around the room. It certainly does not look like the historical society is lacking funds, what with the array of original artwork, chandeliers, and technology system.
I look over at Patty, but she keeps her eyes glued to the computer.
“Look, I think that’s about all I have time for,” Jean says suddenly, standing up. “I’ve got a busy day ahead. Patty can show you out. Thanks for coming by, Elinor.”
“Um, okay. That’s too bad. Thank you for your time.” I stand up and shake Jean’s hand before she scuttles out of the room.
“I’m sorry we can’t be of more help. Did you want to see the photos?” Patty asks.
“Oh! Yes, definitely.” I’m desperate for any information.
Anything that can tell me what the hell is going on in my house.
I haven’t had one of the vision nightmares since the one when I awoke paralyzed, the serpent coiling and uncoiling in the shadowy corner.
I think I’ve felt too spooked to let my body fall fully asleep.
Last night, I had tossed and turned, in a perpetual state of waking dreams, which did nothing to calm my nerves.
I would find myself in a forest of trees, wandering through air that felt heavy with moss and bark, the limbs coming alive and reaching toward me as I pass.
I would be sitting with Uncle Ezra in the parlor.
He is about to tell me what happened here and what happened with Mathilde, but when he opens his mouth to speak, branches sprout from his mouth, slowly turning the parlor into thick woods.
I would jolt myself awake each time, sweat dampening my nightgown.
Terrified I wouldn’t be able to move. Hugo woke when I did but would only let out a low whine of solidarity. Even he is getting tired of me.
These waking dreams were somehow even more terrifying than the visions.
When I staggered out of bed this morning, Wildwood felt alive.
The creaking of the floor felt more like the creaking of branches in the wind.
When I heard water running through the pipes after I started a load of laundry, I was convinced I was hearing the river.
Patty’s good-natured laugh snaps me back to the present.
“Here you go. I just love this one! Men in suits on top of a steam engine.”