My Documentary Sins Of Our Mothers

[Applause] [Music] mrs. Murphy when were you born how about a hundred and three years ago you figured out do you remember Emeline gurney I remember hearing about her what did you hear well she was a mystery she was a mystery nobody understood that well I was only just like you I was a witness every small town in Maine has its legends some of them true some are of heroes and heroines and can be told with pride while others like the tale of Emeline are stories of people deemed unworthy of official history but who I remembered years later by people in the town because of sins and sufferings so dreadful that they become warnings for future generations but time changes everything even a town's notions of who is a sinner and who has sinned against they used to tell it as a bad example don't be a malign don't don't ever do what she did mind your own business stay at home the whole bit about woman not doing anything but what Papa tells her to then of course now with the change in attitude towards her problems they seem to feel sorry for him more than anything else the story of Emmaline is shocking but a shocking story can give insight into the taboos and punishments of the past and into the daily lives of some of those people whose existence would never make it into the annals of history were it not for scandals such as this one which is why we owe a debt to one small-town storyteller and reporter it hurt her to reveal dark secrets about the town she loved but for her the story of Emmaline was a means of correcting old wrongs I am Nettie Mitchell I amazing nine years of age I live in the town of Fayette where I was born and afflicted practically all my lifetime and I would like to tell you one of the saddest and most heartbreaking tales that has come to my notice is a true story something that happened right here in this town then in the long ago I knew that so lady when I was a tiny child and she was very sweet and lovely she was one of a large family of children in a very impoverished home in the early eighteen hundreds at the age of 13 businesses from Lynn Massachusetts arrived at the home and seeing the poverty and deprivation there said why don't you let us take him along back with us to Lynn and she can work in the cotton mills she's old enough to work there and she can go work in the cotton mills and send you money to help with a expenses back home they thought it over and decided let her go and she went she was an efficient hard-working little girl but she was entirely among strangers in a strange land very very different than anything she had ever known for among those who were a friendly door where's most of them were not because she was entirely different was a young boss he and man and he became very friendly and she yielded to him to his persuasion and by the time she was 14 she was the mother of his child she did not dare to let her people back home know what is bickered the people while she was seeing made arrangements to sell her baby to a childless couple nearby them who would pay her expenses then pay for transportation back home if she would go as soon as she was able she returned to her home and she worked very hard in the fields and all but she didn't join very freely and they a social life of the community and she grow older her parents and others began to wonder why it was that she shunned all the young gentlemen around she was a very pretty girl and they couldn't understand it in her early thirties while she was working at home the young man came to town to build highways and he was a very personable young chap and they came to board at their home although she was so many years older than he he fell desperately in love with her and she with him and they decided to marry and have a home of their own they did build a little cottage down by the shore of mosha pond they moved in there and had been married something less than a year when his people from Massachusetts decided to come to visit them they came down into their horror they discovered that he had married his own mother of course when this was revealed they marriages and now declared broke lap and haver looked a little better goodbye it was considered a horrible scene part of head the job and she had married a legitimately and therefore she was entirely ostracized to be shunned by family and friends in a 19th century New England village was almost the equivalent of life imprisonment without trial no one went to comforter no one helped of supporter the silence of our lawyers [Music] nettie mitchell helped to break that silence because she felt that the injustice that emeline experienced was something that people today should know about she first told the story to outsiders when this footage was shot in 1970 five generations of Fayette townspeople at that time and grown up hearing strange things about my nevertheless such moral transgressions as hers were not the type of thing one discussed freely with children or strangers people's attitudes began to change only after a best-selling author from New York heard of the story and came to faith to find out more from thatI Mitchell that author was named Judith Rosner another then Nettie herself she found few people who were willing to talk about a shameful incident in their ancestors lives because of the difficulties she encountered researching a story Rosner did what any novelist would have tried to do she turned the legend into a popular piece of fiction Judith we've been able to find out quite a bit of information about aniline and about life in this town during her day that people apparently even a few years ago we're willing to talk about what's changed since you were working on your novel well when I went around originally I could find nobody who knew Emmaline or had anything to say about her I gather that that has changed and that there are many people who are quite convinced that they remember one part of the story or another one um eleanor knew someone who knew whatever and aside from the normal human urge to participate in an event perhaps another reason is the that the existence of the book and then of course as a great deal of television stuff conversation and so on about incest that had never been talked about very much before then has made it all somewhat less forbidden it's okay now to know something about it ostracized by the town during her own lifetime Emeline has now become Fayed's most famous citizen [Music] Emeline was a real person we've located town records that reveal that much and a great deal more her parents were Erin and Sophia bachelder and Emmaline was the fourth of their five children living on what is now known as the Chesterville Ridge Road but to really understand Emeline story why she was sent away why she was punished so severely one has to first understand the world she lived in this wilderness was first settled when soldiers in the Revolutionary War received pieces of it as payment for their efforts and brought families north from Massachusetts and New Hampshire to homestead among the rocks and mosquitoes and Frost's of the province of Maine it was beautiful countryside but to make a home here was more difficult than many had imagined them not one drawing or image of any sort exists that can show us what Emmeline and her family actually looked like the lives of struggling rural families were rarely documented except in a few melodramatic illustrations the only way to glimpse their world at all is to piece together threads of written and oral history her hometowns collective memory and our imagination [Music] people were carving out futures for themselves with every tree they filled with every pastor they cleared there was the expectancy that life would get better but when they cleared the last tree when they cleared the last pasture and moved the last rock they felt inclined to move things were about as rugged as they were when they started but they lost some of the expectancy some of the anticipation by the time Emmaline bachelder was born on January 30th in the Year 1816 many families in Maine felt that even God had turned against them 1816 and froze to death was one of the very worst years for Maine agriculturally speaking and economically there was a frost every month that year even in the summer the seed that was put in the ground froze and no crop resulted it was distressful that they they felt that it was the end of everything if Emmaline's family were on the edge of poverty the Year 1816 would plunge them really deep into poverty I don't believe that Emeline had anything when she was growing up I think that she might have had cast-off clothes from other people and her parents may have had just enough to feed her legally emmalin's life as the child of very poor people must have been a hard life [Music] I don't believe anybody knows how bad it probably was I believe that emmalin's family were hungry at times [Music] I know I thought grow up without having too much but I don't say that I went to bed hungry anytime we always had you know enough that we growed it might not be out of a store but we had potatoes and vegetables and stuff like that that was got soon to summer so we had enough to eat might been the same thing but we had an update people were pretty good about helping each other with the hard work though the difficult work if you were excluded from this cooperative effort much more threatening the world would be for you if a family was poor and they couldn't get along and there was work somewhere why a child might only be 8 or 9 years old and have to go to work and around here they were found out the farming out of child labor was not uncommon in New England childhood was a luxury most pioneers could hardly afford Emmaline's parents probably tried to avoid a trap all too common among the poorest families the trap in which children like livestock could become a tradable commodity among desperate neighbors this was something that was done and I know it's a magnet that I knew that his mother was sold for a horse or something but they just they didn't have any money and they had to have some meal or something and they just raided him up and the children were lonesome growing up they did an awful lot of taking care of themselves and going without and but they had the religious background to face it all it was the Baptist Church that gave them that background if Emmaline was like most people the commandments and beliefs of the church would have become her rules her beliefs fayette settlers had made this the first major building in town and from it emanated all values all structure all knowledge with which they understood the trials and tribulations of life when a new young member was baptized in this local pond that act represented their lifelong commitment to a path of righteousness one would make a covenant with brothers and sisters to walk the Christian life on the other hand the members of that church community would likewise enter into a covenant to help keep them from all evil I remember reading the journals of the Reverend dr. Paul coffin an early missionary preacher and the most outstanding notation is there is witchcraft aplenty in Fayette milk that would curdle things that would fly through the air strange things that would happen in the community and reported to the church officials and authority was sought over those spiritual powers as instructed by Jesus church records indicate that there were women in Fayette during Emmaline's childhood who were suspected of witchcraft by the Deacons of the church everyone even in malign would have known what punishment those women faced if a person did something which the congregation felt was wrong they were censured by the congregation and they had to appear in the church and they had to confess the sin or the mistake they had made to the congregation in order to be either forgiven or accepted or ostracized from that from the church and the community one lady in the old times here found it more convenient to secrecy air on Sunday than go to church she would go 10 10 miles for soothsay ever wouldn't go a mile to church for such a thing they would be removed from the fellowship if she were a bad woman you wouldn't want your children to go anywhere near her you wouldn't want to have anything to do with her you know she might contaminate the whole of society ostracizing any bad elements in town was an isolated communities most effective means of policing itself Emeline would have been taught early that to run afoul of the congregation meant losing the benefits of the only society there was in faith this public school and others like it were built to reinforce the authority of the church children were taught how to read in order that someday they could live by the teachings of the Bible some children must have wondered how to reconcile the realities of their own lives with what they read in their schoolbooks [Music] I should not take the least comfort in the world my little daughter is mistaken said her mother poor children are just as happy as rich one except when they are suffering from cold or hunger and that very seldom happens in America our Father who lives in heaven takes care of them as well as of you often surprised me that more help was not forthcoming from the church for a family such as Emma lines that were so very poor there was no advocate for the poor nobody cared it was the custom in the towns to gather off the poor people who could not support themselves every and hold an auction throughout the northeastern United States small towns had a primitive system of caring for their poor indigent men women and children and whole families were displayed in local meeting houses and taverns so that people who are looking for cheap help or a bit of extra income could make a bid on a pauper the lowest bidder took that poker home as a worker and was paid by the town to lodge the person for one year the prices were quite interesting if a popper were old it may be bedridden unable to do any work at all and have to even have her meals carried to her you know or or if the person was mentally ill and were sold complete with their cage the town would have to pay more for their care and keeping auctioning them off it sounds like a terribly a humiliating experience to be set up and sold as is actually what it amounted to and people I they just feared poverty terribly if there are other stories about single men widowers men who would never married who bid off a popper for shall we say purposes other than cooking their meals that could have happened to her - she may not have been any better off if she had stayed in the faith Fayette as a popper then she was going to Lowell to the meals to send Emmaline away to work was the right thing to do there's absolutely no question about it because if she saved the family from being sold at popper auction much worse could have happened - Emeline that happened to her at Lowell and they were simply choosing the lesser of two evils although Nettie Mitchell said that Emmaline went to Lynne it was almost certainly Lowell Massachusetts where she would have been sent the city of Lowell had been built to produce cloth unlike other mill towns the men who owned the corporations there had planned from the beginning to employ almost exclusively young women for years wagons known as slavers traveled New Hampshire Vermont and Maine to seek out the girls who would do their work god-fearing New England parents must have thought long and hard before sending their daughters but the attractions of Lowell outweighed the negatives for many many families girls like Emmeline were sent on what amounted to an heroic three-day journey so that there would be one less mouth to feed at home and so they could send money back to the family from a world away 2,500 women between the ages of 13 and 35 were assembled along the banks of the Pawtucket Falls and put to work 12 hours a day six days a week the masterminds of loarre had utopian visions for the new city they imagined a boarding-school environment in which girls would better themselves not only financially but culturally preachers authors and politicians were brought in to enlighten the young women and fill up their few non-working moments with uplifting activities [Music] the mill owners also understood that New Englanders of Puritan stock would never have sent their daughters anywhere no matter how attractive the wages being offered if even a question of ethical impropriety existed thus Lowell was designed as a temporary extension of the New England villages from whence the girls came rules and regulations were enforced of which a strict father would approve regulations against failing to go to church missing curfews drinking seeing men but the female factory operatives as they were called were not as docile as the planners of the great experiment had hoped the dormitory environment provided the girls a perfect forum for late night discussions on politics society economics women's rights young women from the frontier were exposed to urban ideas and industrial time clocks for the first time and during my lines des rose up in some of the first labor strikes in America and despite all of the efforts to control the minds and desires of their employees close and constant supervision of the female operatives by male overseers undoubtedly led to predictable problems it seems inevitable that there would be girls like Emily who fell through the cracks of the elaborate system what happened to her was exactly what every well-meaning parent feared most I think it was more his fault because he was old enough to know matter and she certainly wasn't I think it just happened I wouldn't blame her I wouldn't do you mean a young girl does not grow up on a farm in the early 1800s without being aware of sex yes they were brought up being taught thou shalt not but sometimes we tend to forget what what we were taught when something more important presents itself most young people who live may live in Maine and in rural countries in both now and much more than what to trust and they were very innocent in a great many ways and I think that Emily was just too crusted and perhaps she did have this child but I think it was I had she been a child of the city or a busy environment she probably wouldn't have fallen into such a situation unfortunately there is no way to prove for certain whether Emmaline actually had a child in Massachusetts once again her experiences simply may not have been considered worth noting officially employment records for most of the mill girls were thrown out long ago single women without property were not usually listed in town directories and it would have been in no one's interest to make a written record of an illegitimate birth despite the lack of evidence the details of Emma line's personal tragedy remain vivid in the minds of Fayette citizens she was desperate because she knew the attitude of her people back home and the lady where she was saying said write and tell your folks that you were sick and you're coming home as soon as you're able very wealthy person and who lived near was childless and they brought the baby and they paid her board bail and their transportation home for the price they think an innocent child like her good except for all those years because is that one mistake by all accounts Emeline bachelder told no one in her hometown what happened and it was the holding of that secret a failure to confess and repent that the town seems to resent it more than anything else she did later Nettie talked to me some about the difficulty of communicating sexual fears difficulties problems in an era when even a permissible sex was not discussed I suppose that what's true is that everyone's guilty feelings were in some way reinforced by the secretiveness and what she essentially said to me was that in the old days if one had such a secret it was perfectly understandable that she would not go to someone who's gonna have a child out of wedlock she wouldn't be considered too much back em days but perhaps had she told it when she first came home they might have ostracized her for a while and then gradually gotten over it where as it was she was treated well until she was old enough so she needed the friendship and the help and this is when she didn't get it the years after Emmaline's returned to fayette from the mid-1830s on saw the beginnings of great change more roads more mills more machinery to do some of the tasks that used to be done by hand rural Maine was being slowly but totally transformed [Music] with the advance of civilization King the advance of domestic city more and more a woman's place of toil was inside the home rather than outdoors next to her husband as a single girl just home from the mills and maligne should have gone immediately into some man's home because it was considered every woman's ultimate destiny and responsibility to be a service to her own husband in matrimony a man at that time owned his wife his wife was his chattel you didn't know that I thought you must have heard that many times yes the wife was their chattel just about anything they wanted to if they wanted to take him out and chained him up and beat him up why nobody interfered as a rule unless so the woman's parents heard about it maybe and got mad about it a father I don't like nobody would pay any attention that was his wife he had right do with her when he wanted to if anyone had known that Emmaline gave birth in Lowell she almost certainly would have been considered unfit for marriage perhaps as people say and maligne blamed herself or feared that marriage might reveal her dark secret so she waited until she was almost 28 before she got married old enough to have been considered a spinster as many unmarried former mill girls were known but this marriage to a neighbor named George Chamberlain was actually Emmaline's first of two marriages although Nettie and others were unaware of this first one until we discovered it in some records that were thought to have been lost Emeline and George Chamberlain lived together for almost 20 years sharing Emmaline's parents home it's impossible to find photographs of women like Emmeline photographers were only hired to make portraits of rich people an artist suffered a seem to have been more interested in romantic subjects than sad ones it's harder still to know what their thoughts consisted of except perhaps by interpreting the private notes that a few of them left behind there was a one woman who wrote in her diary perhaps this will give you an idea how they felt she said it was in April 1863 she said a lovely morning but dreadful old peat has died roof was found him in his stall this morning the next line says the president died - kind of gives you an idea which was most important in her life she did go on to say that mr. Seward had been wounded and they were aware of the news and then she said sometimes I wonder why I've been put here am I just to bear children if so I've been successful six times and failed twice Emeline had two children one illegitimate in law the other named Gustavus Chamberlain in 1844 her husband George stops appearing in records after 1850 apparently leaving Emmaline alone with their son a women didn't have any way to support themselves in those days if their husband died or simply dropped out and let me tell you dropping I was a common thing in those days people when life got too much for them or when they wanted to leave and go west or go somewhere else they just dropped out disappeared from sight and nobody had any fingerprints in those days and nobody was looking forward to getting Social Security so there was nothing to keep them from dropping out Emeline and Gustavus begin to show up now in the town papa records the overseers of the poor in Fayette gave Gustavus a pair of shoes and maligne got sick and needed attention for which a neighbor requested payment from the town Gustavus eventually moved out got married and like his father disappeared [Music] if it weren't for what happened in 1878 when Emmaline was already 62 years old no one would remember her today their chance meeting was one in a million as if lightning had struck twice in the same place but it is possible that a man might be attracted to a woman old enough to be the mother he never knew or perhaps for her he was a reminder of something she'd lost so many years earlier whatever their reasons or their relationship Emeline Bachelder chamberlain married leonard gurney on April 16th the day that ultimately made her a legend in the eyes of her home town records show only that he came originally from Massachusetts and left town a few years after the marriage his people from Massachusetts decided to come to visit them they came down under their horror they discovered that he had married his own mother of course when this was revealed their marriages and now declared broken up and haver looked ugly better goodbye and went back with this foster parents Massachusetts Ermine's the rest of his life but just one right good blood daddy Mel's today you don't mix em up my way get males and females from some other size you just don't mix him up that way not just never was considered right just imagine having bombshell like that dropped and that was I mean it was a tripleheader there was the baby there was the lie to cover up and there was the marriage people in town are still debating what Emeline sin really was she didn't knowingly do anything wrong did she she didn't know it was a son when she married him if yeah that would have been terrible but she didn't know any way I understand it she didn't know where he was I think we'll see her parents admitted blame I haven't send a young girl away into the world and probably unprepared to end marriage help support their yeah but if a girl of that age it had a child the girl would have been blamed because she brought disgrace on our family yeah premarital sex lying incest there was no doubt Emeline had strayed from the Christian path to protect their own reputation her people disassociated themselves from her disgrace although her home was almost in sight almost of course the highway from that of her mother and her brothers and sisters none of them ever went to our spoke to her and nobody spoke to her no one went nearer and therefore she was entirely ostracized I think it's a a horrible punishment to be cast out of the community for the reason that no one goes it alone in this world it's so difficult to be alone to be lonely to be without friends I think as human beings we're not made to go it alone in life we need the support the companionship the love of other people and today we would say that this needs to be found within the community of the church which unfortunately perhaps it was not found back in the 1840s 1850s 1860s this part of the legend that Nettie told the treatment of Emmaline by family neighbors and the church is the most troublesome for current residents to deal with if you love God and and understand his forgiveness you wouldn't ostracize anyone you'd be forgiving that's a hundred percent turnaround from the way it was before because it sounds like the religious people who were shining her before I don't think that the religious people were shunning her I think it was people that didn't have any of that background that would be the gospel kind of people I know my grandmother would never have ostracized she would have forgiven her for everything and yet everyone agrees that people did ostracize and mine the final lonely years of her life are the most affiliate in Fayed's collective memory many people in town have relatives who are alive when she was old attitudes and jokes about that strange lady who lived all alone and moshe pond were passed on from parent to child [Music] probably stupid emmalin's house was located on a loom part of cleared land jutting out into a bog builded when I saw it was in pretty bad repair probably more no more than 12 foot square and not very well made walls were boarded instead of plastering on the inside I believe my father said she had chickens that she had there and probably a little when she was able she probably had a little garden because the was room enough for a you know kitchen garden even with people who grew up hearing about Emeline to help us reconstruct we can still only try and imagine what her life was like and each night when it come back she would hustle chickens into the house with it and we just think that was kind of funny to take the chickens to bed with her and my brother teased my sisters about family you're just like Emily talking to the chickens and I suppose that other people did the same way she was different than the rest now that I am older and I realized the facility she lived that swamp and back of where she lived is full of muskrats and weasels and everything else and if she hadn't taken the chickens in the house they probably wouldn't have been there as one and when she got out so that wasn't really so strange since it seemed when I was a child grandfather wouldn't let mother go down there because she was afraid Emeline would contaminate her no decent woman would go but a child was safe so he sent her with food and to make sure Emmaline was all right my father was of a kind of nature and he knew the story and he pitted the poor soul and he used to send me down with a piece of salt pork she was a frail little old lady banana wa snow is white hair bent and tottering someone but always glad to see you and she would tell about the birds how they made their nests and all kinds of things that interested child I think she's one of the most kindly people I ever knew even as a tiny child as since the tragedy in hers sadly smiling Bella they evidently didn't go for a few days when they did they found her dead probably was not eating the right foods and everything she eventually got sick and I know nothing to be found in the house it was of any possible value for diet or anything else there were a few drops of molasses clinging to the bottom of a jug and a few grains of the cornmeal in the corners of a box and nothing else was there the poor old lady had stabbed to death she as she perished before the doctor arrived there's sadness of the whole thing I had been down there was a child sent many times with a bit of tea and some little things and I love that he rolled so when my mother came home and told us what had happened I began to cry few days later her funeral was held at Musel Church she was placed in a wooden box and therefore a casket and a simple ceremony was held and some several would not have spoken to her in their lifetime and ouster says that completely were there at the last at the close of the ceremony her sister went to the casket and placing her hand upon it and other hand high in the air she said at last she has paid for sin [Music] [Music] and no one really knows for sure where she was buried the story has always been that she was buried outside of her own home there in one of the fields in an unmarked grave it was a story that there was a bad person got buried across the street from the Moose Hill Church and they wanted her walled off from the sacred ground so they built the wall between her grave and if this is true her grave is probably just about under where the road is now but no one knows for sure [Music] like sands through the hourglass so are the days of our life I still say them jobs are taken right from life you know I must read what's gonna happen on it my sings it's happened right in my life [Music] all my life has been one thing that is still doubt in my mind it is a true story that's the beauty of it it's a true story [Music] it's true that Emmaline gurney was shunned by the town for something but whether she actually married her own son as Nettie said we're the people in town only believed she did wear them lying was shunned simply because she was poor or stupid we may never know someone who's put flowers on my grave though I'm not there but this this is the spot two days before her 95th birthday Nettie Mitchell passed away the story she told of Emmaline gurney lives on and because of it I'm aligned today is more a part of her hometown than when she was alive

Channel: David Hoffman

Views: 46,660

Keywords: David Hoffman filmmaker, Oedipus, Nettie Mitchell, Emmeline, Massachusetts mills, maine history, married her own son, 19 century story, maine stories, amazing stories, sad stories, tragic stories

Id: IRN91TeXAYE

Length: 50min 30sec (3030 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 21 2020