The Most Unusual Sad Story I Ever Recorded & It's True!

hello subscribers and others it's David Hoffman filmmaker here with another story that I hope you'll enjoy I thank you for watching my gym key and bill key horse story and enjoying it so much here's another one this one involves a film I made about a woman who tells the story that's really hard to believe but it's true I'm gonna prove it's true after you watch this clip her name is Nettie Mitchell the time is the 1970s she's nearly 90 and she's a reporter in the small little town of Maine Fayette Maine and she tells kind of gossip and stuff like that and I'm doing a series for television of people who I call independent Americans people who do things their own way who don't listen to the government particularly and don't listen to their neighbors particularly and tell stories and Nettie Mitchell is one of the people I've chosen and I go to Maine and I'm filming the story which is a story of Nettie reporting on local events a baby contest and she's just great great old woman beautiful personality comes the last day in the last moment and we take a photograph of the crew that with Nettie and I'm gonna leave and then he says David I have a story to tell you and she kisses me on the lips and I was shocked pay attention David I have a story so I left my cameraman set up a beautiful scene she was sitting in her kitchen and I said Neddy you tell the story to Francis and she tells the story you are about to see it's one of the most shocking stories I have ever heard hard to believe it's true but it is before I run the clip let me just tell you just a bit about New England at that time I think it's important this is Puritan New England there's cruelty and this kindness there's properness and there's things you're not supposed to do like dance like have fun I remember somebody telling me that in Maine in the parents and times you took a moment off from your work from the chores you had to do when you were sick and dying that's the only time you took there wasn't a lot of joy I think it was 1816 and 1821 it froze every single day nothing grew I mean people were starving these were extremely poor farmers in extremely rough condition in an extremely cold time and around about 1840 there were these mills down in Massachusetts the Lowell Massachusetts woolen mills thread mills and they were extraordinary because they were hiring girls and young women to come off the farms come down stay in these dormitories which were safe they said and worked for a couple of years the women would keep a portion of the money and the portion of the money would go back to the farm he was the first time women had an opportunity like this to make money like this and Emmaline the story that you're going to hear she went down to one of these mills as a girl of about 14 I'll let Nettie tell the rest of the story and then I'll tell you after what happened as a result of this recording I am Nellie Mitchell I am 89 years of age I live in the town of Fayette where I was born and flipped 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 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 thirteen businesses from lynn massachusetts arrived at the home and seeing the poverty and deprivation there said why don't you let us take my line back with us to win and she can work in the cotton mills she's old enough to work there and she can go work in the cotton 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 if she was entirely among strangers in a stranger man very very different than anything she had ever known before among those who were a friendly tour 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 a mother of his child she did not dare to other people back home know what is bickered the people while she was saying made arrangements to sell her baby to a childless couple nearby them who would pay her expenses then pay for transportation back home 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 in the social life of the community as she grew older her parents and others began to wonder why it was that she shunned all the young gentlemen wrong she was a very pretty girl and they couldn't understand it when she was 21 they began to worry because that you she's past the first mark and she's going to be an old maid and they wanted very much were to marry and have a home Barone a time went on and in spite of all the urging of those about it she kept reticent and when she was about 30 they began to wonder why it was that she didn't respond to anyone and she was really an old maid 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 Mosher 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 old mother of course when this was revealed their marriages and now declared broken up and Hebert luck totally better goodbye and went back with his foster parents to Massachusetts or Maine for the rest of his life the indignation of her parents and of the community at the fact that she had had an illegitimate child she had to conceal that fact from the marled these years it was considered a horrible sin for love Heather child and she had married a legitimately and therefore she was entirely ostracized although her home was almost in sight almost across the highway from that of her mother and her brothers and sisters who still live there she was forbidden to enter that home to go near it at all none of them ever went to our spoke to her and nobody spoke to her no one when Tara except once in a while a kindly friend a kindly person who would bring her a bit of tea or some little thing the years went by she ate our living by our own efforts made out gardens and spaded the mother Spader itself and made the Marais sir food as much as possible and knit and did very various things and very small stipend but it was became necessary for to become a papa which was another disgrace and she had a call on the town for things for existence they came a very severe widow and it was a long time of course in those days there was no means of letting anyone know what you needed to really think there was no telephone there were no Arif T's there was no way of communication and as she was ostracized and left by herself no communication was possible for her early in the springtime the mud was very very deep one of the silic men who lived in another section of the town it was obliged to go to Chesterville on this way up he called the house thought he would see how a Moorhen was doing hadn't heard from him all window here yeah knocked on the door no response the door was fastened he thought he heard a moaning sound inside and desperately he managed to burst the durian and as he came inside he saw this form lying on the floor with faint moans throughout all these years she had suffered so terribly seeing the mother's casket carried to the cemetery and without being able to even keep it inside it and all these terrible things have been happening and now here she lay at death's door he picked her up carefully and laid her on her bed and when out turned his horse about and started full of more Falls to get a doctor on the way he stopped at one house accepted Edwards house and asked mrs. Edwards to go over and she said I can't possibly for will it's gone to the horse and I have no way to get there he went on up to the deck home and made the same request and there they meant more away with the horses my mother was there and she said I will go home and harness Orson go over and she did and she found her in this terrible condition with nothing to be found in the house signal 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 corn meal in the corners of a box and nothing else was there the poor old lady had stuff to death she as she perished before the doctor right the 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 a few days later her funeral was held at Musel church she was placed in a wooden box and for a casket and a simple ceremony was held and some several who would not have spoken to her during their lifetime and Esther says that completely were there the last at the close of the ceremony her sister went to the casket and placing her hand upon it and are they hand high in the air she said at last she has paid for him that was there was the tragedy of the whole Lake climax of the tragedy and my mother came home so upset and so angry and really my mother although she was a very mild person said I think her sister said more than she she said this terrible neglect of her through all these years do you think the sweet sweet little old lady it would would be so it's so grateful with even a childhood come and speak to her ladies just the silence of all those years as a child a child of 13 away from home in a strange city it was surrounding she had never seen and only one person being really friendly to her and she probably had no conception of what the consequences of that association would become I cannot see that it was truly a seeing first of all I want to thank Nettie Mitchell for telling that story and for being so kind to this woman at a time when people were terrible it's a terrible story this issue of shunning is really important typing to the story I lived in Maine for 25 years small-town and I saw people shun people and I was shunned shunning look at you they don't talk to you they make it like you don't exist it's less violence certainly than violence but it's pretty powerful when the whole town shunned Emeline I made a documentary for television called sins of our mothers there was also a book written called Emmeline by Judith Rossiter whom I made a deal with so she could write the book an interview Nettie and give Nettie some money that he survived the rest of her life got heating for her house and stuff like that on the book rights and what happened to that book there was an opera written called Emmaline pretty interesting opera and I have presented clips from this film on my youtube channel before but I wanted to tell you how I knew it was true first of all my colleagues and I did a huge amount of research in the libraries and the archives in Fayette and we found there was indeed an Emmaline who lived on Moser pond you could see her name in these Diaries and so the person did exist but we had to find somebody who knew somebody who knew online and sure enough we find this 97 year old lady in an old-age home who says yes I knew Emeline some people have asked did I ever find Emeline sons family I didn't I don't know that name I couldn't find that name so we never did find out what happened to the boy young man when he was yanked out of Emmaline's home I yanked out of the marriage yanked out of Maine and never heard from again I love stories like this that have power and emotion and tragedy and comedy and beauty and kindness and cruelty I want to thank those of you who have been sharing your stories with me as comments and as emails I don't answer phone calls and I wish I could record every one of the good ones because they're spectacular but I know ordinary people are extraordinary and have extraordinary stories to tell although Emmaline holy moly what a story in any case thank you for watching David Hoffman filmmaker bye-bye

Channel: David Hoffman

Views: 2,752,922

Rating: 4.8802004 out of 5

Keywords: David Hoffman, David Hoffman filmmaker, maine documentary, Emmeline, sins, sins of our mothers, Oedipus complex, Oedipus, Judith Rossner, looking for Mr. Goodbar, true stories, American experience, amazing documentary, rural Maine, Maine history, 1800s, American history, Christian story, shunned, shunning, Jesus, sad, sad story, EBay, eBay collectible, eBay photo, eBay 1800s, bad story

Id: 1CVcZ_8HPuY

Length: 17min 32sec (1052 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 03 2019