After a little more research I got some basic facts about the story in the below post, which is still somewhat wild, book-worthy, but now a little clearer.
One aspect of it is that my friend, the new-age woman whose only son committed murder-suicide, was already planning to move to New Mexico when it happened. She did not, as I'd surmised, go there to get away from mean Iowans. But if she was already planning to go, and he was steadily working in a place in town (Cedar Rapids) - then it would be possible for her to blame herself partly for his demise. After all, he was losing his mother, and then his girlfriend, who had apparently rejected him. She was coming to his house to pick up furniture, and had actually brought her son, thinking she'd be safe if that son was with her. Wrong.
What made him snap, kill her, kill the dog, and kill himself? I have a hard time blaming psilicybin mushrooms, though I think they've been mentioned as part of it. Mushrooms alone wouldn't make you violent. Or maybe they would. So there's a mystery there, where did that violence in him come from? Not her, I'm sure.
The other real reason has to do with the book. The author went on to be a professional writer in the big leagues, as if having the right degrees was pushing her in that direction from the start. This was one of her early works and was personal; she'd known the guy and considered him like a father, sympathetic as I am, wanting to show that something, maybe Iowa itself, drove him to it. Well I also saw him in his better days, as a sweet innocent kid, and I can still say that whenever someone goes over the edge there's always a dozen people who can't believe such a mild-mannered gentle spirit could do such a thing. We all could do such a thing, if pushed just the right way, and who knows what else was in his life that we didn't know about? I still haven't located his father, for example, don't know a thing about him.
Back to her book. She knew him as a kind of father figure, was sympathetic, went and talked to the boy (that he had locked out of the house when he did it), and the book was panned. Some very important people thought it was garbage and said so. Now I don't even ask people like that what they think of my books, because I already know what they'll say. But to her, it was a blow. She had to do better next time. She had to even eliminate all evidence of her previous failure. That's my explanation.
There's no one deliberately hiding information about what happened; it's findable though it's not easy to find it. I don't see a coverup or suppression of news articles, just news articles that are hard to find and getting harder to find every day. And I think my conclusions are right if only in a general way about her book and why I can't just read it. As a writer I consider taking on personal situations (like this one - I met the kid) - and that's a hazard of doing it. I could write a book about a writer, I think - that might be somewhat wild - but these things have to go somewhere. If it doesn't go to a grisly murder-suicide or to the mother's sad and pitiful demise, where does it go? Make the writer fictional and let it go where I take it, I suppose. Or let her just be successful, still alive, left alone, but haunted, as the rest of us are.
Sunday, December 15, 2024
Friday, December 13, 2024
This is an absolutely true story and I hope I don't make anyone mad. It's told entirely from my own perspective. There's a rich kind of book in here.
In 1976--1977 I became close friends with a woman commonly called "the purple lady" because almost everythig she wore was a shade of purple though there was some pink in there. She was New Age before New Age became a thing, and that pretty much defined her. She gave tarot readings and often talked about our fates and destinies and such things like there was a power she was in touch with that she could so easily share.
She was of the non-violent variety, in her very nature - I never really heard her say anything bad about anyone. She didn't seem to have any enemies and most people knew her and liked her.
Around that time I met her son, who was a kid maybe ten or older, a soft-spoken kid, nice. I got a brief explanation that he didn't live with her, but presumably with his father, but they seemed to get along fine, and they were happy to see each other when he arrived. It seems I was discouraged from asking too much about his father or whatever divorce precipitated their separation. I have since concluded that maybe his father was a dark and mysterious character because the kid would have been entirely sweet if she had more to do with it. But sometimes those small towns around Iowa create very controlling families and maybe that one was unable to let go of that kid when she became new-agey and needed to drift off and find her way. That's as good an explanation as any.
I left the village for many years and heard only traces of what had happened: there was a fire, the kid was involved in a tragedy; she moved off to Taos never to return. Though I too was living in New Mexico I never looked her up. She had renounced Iowa entirely.
It turns out the kid was involved in a murder-suicide in which he killed his girlfriend and a dog. This story gets stranger now with every step. It is not clear where this happened because I simply cannot find a trace of it in any newspaper. I've got names, date (May 1993), some details, but not some important ones like where.
Stranger yet, a very good writer wrote a book about it (called An Iowa Murder), but took it off the market and it appears to be the only account of it even though it's admittedly subjective. The author, as a girl, knew him and couldn't believe he would do such a thing. That's kind of how I feel, except I have even less to go on when it comes to finding the truth.
Perhaps I have the place wrong, or one of their names; I seem to get entire dead ends when I go looking. One newspaper article mentioned it at the end, almost an afterthought, as if it was in this tiny town (Vinton), but too obscure to notice.
He could have grown up there - family there, etc., and very easily had a double life, one with his dad in a small town, one with his mom in the village with the tarot readings. One can imagine that people were cruel to her after the murder and that's what caused her to move to Taos, ok, I'll buy that. Iowa can be cruel that way although I must say, if he had a dark side it didn't come from her. In Taos she was an icon, quite famous, but had no one, and when things got bad there was no one around to look out for her, until one of my old friends' daughters came around and took are of her until her death quite recently. That's when I started looking into this murder-suicide. And this book that was written about it, apparently.
In the time I knew her she didn't want to talk about her marriage (if she had one) or her son, or the hard parts of being split up. She wasn't even that tuned in to mothering although she got along just fine with the kid and he seemed to have what he needed. After I left the village, there was a fire, in which she saved some of her fellow residents but at the expense of all her possessions including lots of purple clothes. And after that, the son moved into the village to be near her and know her better. He didn't stay, though, the murder-suicide was not in the village. Not sure where it was, but it wasn't there.
The details of the killing are horrible, of course. How could a person do that? Drugs, is one answer. and it's possible.
She died in bad shape a couple of months ago. Dementia, and not taking care of herself, and having no place to go, and apparently it was sad, though there was a very nice service for her after she died. None of the above was really her fault, in my figuring, because it seems to me she was probably forced to leave for one reason or another and not allowed to take the kid with her. That's just how I read it. The kid was never able to restore the bond that was cut when she was forced to leave him. Of course that's speculation. Why would she never tell us more?
People have these stories. You never know it by looking at their lost, confused faces later in life. But things happen, and we never forget, we just sometimes fail to record them well. There is no record, no record, of this one. Why, I have no idea.
In 1976--1977 I became close friends with a woman commonly called "the purple lady" because almost everythig she wore was a shade of purple though there was some pink in there. She was New Age before New Age became a thing, and that pretty much defined her. She gave tarot readings and often talked about our fates and destinies and such things like there was a power she was in touch with that she could so easily share.
She was of the non-violent variety, in her very nature - I never really heard her say anything bad about anyone. She didn't seem to have any enemies and most people knew her and liked her.
Around that time I met her son, who was a kid maybe ten or older, a soft-spoken kid, nice. I got a brief explanation that he didn't live with her, but presumably with his father, but they seemed to get along fine, and they were happy to see each other when he arrived. It seems I was discouraged from asking too much about his father or whatever divorce precipitated their separation. I have since concluded that maybe his father was a dark and mysterious character because the kid would have been entirely sweet if she had more to do with it. But sometimes those small towns around Iowa create very controlling families and maybe that one was unable to let go of that kid when she became new-agey and needed to drift off and find her way. That's as good an explanation as any.
I left the village for many years and heard only traces of what had happened: there was a fire, the kid was involved in a tragedy; she moved off to Taos never to return. Though I too was living in New Mexico I never looked her up. She had renounced Iowa entirely.
It turns out the kid was involved in a murder-suicide in which he killed his girlfriend and a dog. This story gets stranger now with every step. It is not clear where this happened because I simply cannot find a trace of it in any newspaper. I've got names, date (May 1993), some details, but not some important ones like where.
Stranger yet, a very good writer wrote a book about it (called An Iowa Murder), but took it off the market and it appears to be the only account of it even though it's admittedly subjective. The author, as a girl, knew him and couldn't believe he would do such a thing. That's kind of how I feel, except I have even less to go on when it comes to finding the truth.
Perhaps I have the place wrong, or one of their names; I seem to get entire dead ends when I go looking. One newspaper article mentioned it at the end, almost an afterthought, as if it was in this tiny town (Vinton), but too obscure to notice.
He could have grown up there - family there, etc., and very easily had a double life, one with his dad in a small town, one with his mom in the village with the tarot readings. One can imagine that people were cruel to her after the murder and that's what caused her to move to Taos, ok, I'll buy that. Iowa can be cruel that way although I must say, if he had a dark side it didn't come from her. In Taos she was an icon, quite famous, but had no one, and when things got bad there was no one around to look out for her, until one of my old friends' daughters came around and took are of her until her death quite recently. That's when I started looking into this murder-suicide. And this book that was written about it, apparently.
In the time I knew her she didn't want to talk about her marriage (if she had one) or her son, or the hard parts of being split up. She wasn't even that tuned in to mothering although she got along just fine with the kid and he seemed to have what he needed. After I left the village, there was a fire, in which she saved some of her fellow residents but at the expense of all her possessions including lots of purple clothes. And after that, the son moved into the village to be near her and know her better. He didn't stay, though, the murder-suicide was not in the village. Not sure where it was, but it wasn't there.
The details of the killing are horrible, of course. How could a person do that? Drugs, is one answer. and it's possible.
She died in bad shape a couple of months ago. Dementia, and not taking care of herself, and having no place to go, and apparently it was sad, though there was a very nice service for her after she died. None of the above was really her fault, in my figuring, because it seems to me she was probably forced to leave for one reason or another and not allowed to take the kid with her. That's just how I read it. The kid was never able to restore the bond that was cut when she was forced to leave him. Of course that's speculation. Why would she never tell us more?
People have these stories. You never know it by looking at their lost, confused faces later in life. But things happen, and we never forget, we just sometimes fail to record them well. There is no record, no record, of this one. Why, I have no idea.
Monday, December 2, 2024
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Furever Friends Anthology
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Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Bezaliel
A story from my recent book Harvardinates still resonates with me and is something I'd like to explore. It's partly because the main character (1664) grew up two years younger than his older brother John Leverett (1662) who attended Harvard and went on to become its president. That is a direct similarity to my own life, but the times were entirely different.
Bezaliel was named after his mother's father, and his name was a little more common back then. He was widely thought to have died young, but I found a court entry in which he, at age 10 (in 1674) was being reprimanded by the court for stealing some ribbon from a neighbor. It's this story that I'd like to focus on as it delves us directly into the world of 1674 Boston and the possibilities of how he actually died or in fact if he could have lived.
In 1674 his grandfather was ascendant; when John the Governor was elected, annually and throughout the war, he never lost an election. But his mother Sarah was sick, and his father Hudson was beginning to lose it. In 1673 father was arrested for "dangerous" yelling and screaming in public, and was thrown in jail but later released, apparently by Governor John, who of course didn't want to be embarrassed. His older brother John stuck rigorously to his studies so that he could graduate from Boston Latin School....
It is unclear when exactly the mother died, but it's suspected that she was sick for a while before it happened, and in fact during this time 1672-1675, he was probably getting very little parenting, and his sister died, although that's unclear too. I have no idea what Hudson's dangerous yelling was about but I suspect alcohol. Hudson also was being sued for non-payment of a shipment of tobacco, as if he had gone into tobacco dealing. It's possible that his father's tobacco dealing was being done in his name, and that goes for the alcohol too: the Madiera, the rum, all kinds of things were coming in on his father's ships and Hudson was no doubt consuming quite a bit of it. Meanwhile Bezaliel, and John and Sarah for that matter, were going unattended. John was doing well in school, but was less adept at controlling his younger siblings.
The war broke out suddenly in 1675. It didn't affect downtown Boston proper, i.e. the villages were attacked, the city was not, but effects were felt far and wide almost immediately. Money dried up. People went to fight. Everyone panicked. Things looked bad for the settlers for about a year.
It's very possible that it was then that Bezaliel disappeared, or died. He would have been eleven at the outbreak of the war. I can't imagine his being an actual soldier, being the grandson of the governor, but he could have been kidnapped, or simply run away; he also could have been sent back to England for his own safety, and died in passage or afterward. He was never heard from again. If he lived, it would have been with another name.
A book would explore the possibilities. I can't imagine the conclusion; it would have to write itself, and we'd have to see how it turned out.
Bezaliel was named after his mother's father, and his name was a little more common back then. He was widely thought to have died young, but I found a court entry in which he, at age 10 (in 1674) was being reprimanded by the court for stealing some ribbon from a neighbor. It's this story that I'd like to focus on as it delves us directly into the world of 1674 Boston and the possibilities of how he actually died or in fact if he could have lived.
In 1674 his grandfather was ascendant; when John the Governor was elected, annually and throughout the war, he never lost an election. But his mother Sarah was sick, and his father Hudson was beginning to lose it. In 1673 father was arrested for "dangerous" yelling and screaming in public, and was thrown in jail but later released, apparently by Governor John, who of course didn't want to be embarrassed. His older brother John stuck rigorously to his studies so that he could graduate from Boston Latin School....
It is unclear when exactly the mother died, but it's suspected that she was sick for a while before it happened, and in fact during this time 1672-1675, he was probably getting very little parenting, and his sister died, although that's unclear too. I have no idea what Hudson's dangerous yelling was about but I suspect alcohol. Hudson also was being sued for non-payment of a shipment of tobacco, as if he had gone into tobacco dealing. It's possible that his father's tobacco dealing was being done in his name, and that goes for the alcohol too: the Madiera, the rum, all kinds of things were coming in on his father's ships and Hudson was no doubt consuming quite a bit of it. Meanwhile Bezaliel, and John and Sarah for that matter, were going unattended. John was doing well in school, but was less adept at controlling his younger siblings.
The war broke out suddenly in 1675. It didn't affect downtown Boston proper, i.e. the villages were attacked, the city was not, but effects were felt far and wide almost immediately. Money dried up. People went to fight. Everyone panicked. Things looked bad for the settlers for about a year.
It's very possible that it was then that Bezaliel disappeared, or died. He would have been eleven at the outbreak of the war. I can't imagine his being an actual soldier, being the grandson of the governor, but he could have been kidnapped, or simply run away; he also could have been sent back to England for his own safety, and died in passage or afterward. He was never heard from again. If he lived, it would have been with another name.
A book would explore the possibilities. I can't imagine the conclusion; it would have to write itself, and we'd have to see how it turned out.
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
I recently read some poetry that was very disturbing, more for what it did to me than for what it was itself.
A poet's mother died. She wrote a whole book describing a kind of esoteric connection they had, with unspoken bonds of love, whispers of grief, a surreal kind of connection that made me suspect that it was all in her head, and she was in a way making up for what she didn't have on the more real planes. Maybe mom wasn't there for her in some ways, or was unable to help her in her journey toward physical and emotional womanhood, but she made up for it by doing what she did best: explore the mystical, romantic ethereal world of things we can't see.
What bothered me was its opposition to my own experience. My mother was there for me in almost every way, dressing me, feeding me, taking complete care of me well into adulthood. But toward the end she lost it, and didn't even know who I was. One night I went into her hospice and, night times being bad and disturbing in general, it really upset her and even though I showed her my driver's license, still it didn't make any sense to her that I was her son, not only her son but one who was very close to her for many years. It upset me to feel like I'd lost her, but it upset my dad even more; after all, they'd been married for over fifty years, and now she didn't know who he was either. She talked about a car being right outside, waiting for her, and she had to get dressed and go out and join them in that car; we knew that there was no car, and that she wasn't going anywhere.
In such a hospice space, we could look around and see others who were in close to the same condition. The workers liked her and thought she was sweet; they would come in and do necessary tasks like make sure she could pee and give her a bath, but they totally didn't expect her to have any clue where she was or who they were, and they knew she wasn't coming back; it was all about making her happy and peaceful in her remaining days. They'd simply agree with her about the car but say that she couldn't get dressed right now and would just have to wait and they'd still be there; that was as close to true as you could get and I took their cue to say pretty much the same thing. Perhaps there was a group of people out there waiting for her, ancestors from the other side, old friends, old pets who had crossed over, and she would be welcomed and would know exactly who they were when she got there. But in this world, she was terribly confused, and upset, and just wanted out of that bed.
It gets worse. Before it was over she'd accused me of putting her "in the worst position a woman can be in," and I thought, are you serious? All those years putting a car in front of me on the kitchen floor so I'd be occupied and happy, a young lad growing up at her knee, while she'd have her coffee with the neighbors and do other things to keep from going out of her mind from the drudgery of child-raising. Well, once the children are gone, I guess it catches up to you, but here she was, in front of me, very upset, and probably I was better off just walking off and saying this could all be marked onto an old account. I could surely take it. And, in many ways, I'd already lost her, weeks or months ago, when we suspected her mind was slipping, and she kept asking us the time. Things had gotten mixed up up there. Her fears were mixing in with her realities and just about the only thing that was still even remotely accurate was her distant memories of her own childhood, which were still quite clear and unblemished by the messiness of the world whe was living in.
A poet's mother died. She wrote a whole book describing a kind of esoteric connection they had, with unspoken bonds of love, whispers of grief, a surreal kind of connection that made me suspect that it was all in her head, and she was in a way making up for what she didn't have on the more real planes. Maybe mom wasn't there for her in some ways, or was unable to help her in her journey toward physical and emotional womanhood, but she made up for it by doing what she did best: explore the mystical, romantic ethereal world of things we can't see.
What bothered me was its opposition to my own experience. My mother was there for me in almost every way, dressing me, feeding me, taking complete care of me well into adulthood. But toward the end she lost it, and didn't even know who I was. One night I went into her hospice and, night times being bad and disturbing in general, it really upset her and even though I showed her my driver's license, still it didn't make any sense to her that I was her son, not only her son but one who was very close to her for many years. It upset me to feel like I'd lost her, but it upset my dad even more; after all, they'd been married for over fifty years, and now she didn't know who he was either. She talked about a car being right outside, waiting for her, and she had to get dressed and go out and join them in that car; we knew that there was no car, and that she wasn't going anywhere.
In such a hospice space, we could look around and see others who were in close to the same condition. The workers liked her and thought she was sweet; they would come in and do necessary tasks like make sure she could pee and give her a bath, but they totally didn't expect her to have any clue where she was or who they were, and they knew she wasn't coming back; it was all about making her happy and peaceful in her remaining days. They'd simply agree with her about the car but say that she couldn't get dressed right now and would just have to wait and they'd still be there; that was as close to true as you could get and I took their cue to say pretty much the same thing. Perhaps there was a group of people out there waiting for her, ancestors from the other side, old friends, old pets who had crossed over, and she would be welcomed and would know exactly who they were when she got there. But in this world, she was terribly confused, and upset, and just wanted out of that bed.
It gets worse. Before it was over she'd accused me of putting her "in the worst position a woman can be in," and I thought, are you serious? All those years putting a car in front of me on the kitchen floor so I'd be occupied and happy, a young lad growing up at her knee, while she'd have her coffee with the neighbors and do other things to keep from going out of her mind from the drudgery of child-raising. Well, once the children are gone, I guess it catches up to you, but here she was, in front of me, very upset, and probably I was better off just walking off and saying this could all be marked onto an old account. I could surely take it. And, in many ways, I'd already lost her, weeks or months ago, when we suspected her mind was slipping, and she kept asking us the time. Things had gotten mixed up up there. Her fears were mixing in with her realities and just about the only thing that was still even remotely accurate was her distant memories of her own childhood, which were still quite clear and unblemished by the messiness of the world whe was living in.
Monday, September 2, 2024
The essence of this story is true although the particulars may not be. We have in our family a famous geologist, Frank Leverett, who was about 80 in the 1940s. He had spent his life walking the midwest, over 100,000 miles, determining the effects of the receding of the glaciers and making conclusions about what happened in the Ice Age, 12,000 years ago. Toward the end of his life he became obsessed with genealogy: who were his relatives, what happened to them, and in particular how long they lived. He knew the end was near and he wanted some statistical framework to put his longevity in.
But in the interests of determining who our ancestors were (we were pretty sure of our relation to Frank, who would be my great-grandfather's cousin), he had gone back east, almost on behalf of the western Leveretts who, he soon found out, had incorrect ideas about their ancestry. There were some Leveretts in Boston and he was able to track them down. He spent some time at Harvard doing research on John Leverett, President of Harvard in the early 1700s. While there he made some academic contacts, one of whom gave him an edited copy of his chapter in a book called The Great Leverett. The question though was how we were related to this Leverett or his grandfather, Governor of the Colony in the 1600s.
At one point he visited Ellen Chase, a known relative in Boston who lived in the shadow of the Trinity Episcopal Church downtown; she was an author but was toward the end of her years. She told him everything she knew but ultimately it made the situation more confusing. Yes, on the Boston family's side, the legend had lived on that we were descended from the Governor, but not the President of Harvard, who would be a relative but not ancestor.
Frank put all his facts together at his house in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Another western Leverett, Fred, had moved to Ann Arbor with his large brood of children and they were known to have large reunions which we, Leverett cousins, were always invited to; I went to maybe one in 1994. But in the 1940s Frank was interested in gathering information and gathering everyone's stories. Ultimately two of Fred's descendants took Frank's "data" and compiled what we know today of the descendants of William and Joseph Leverett, two of the Leveretts from the 1700s and 1800s. Joseph was the one who, raised in Maine, brought his family out west and basically separated us from that Boston branch who remained and withered away though they had access to the old Leverett house, I think.
At one of these reunions he was approached by Carrie, who was my great grandfather Will's sister (Fred was his older brother; all were cousins to Frank). She proudly gave him her account of her life which he had most certainly encouraged her to write. She was kind of a world traveler; her husband was in mining engineering and went to places like Mexico and she had lots to tell.
But one of the things she had to tell was about when she went back to New England looking for the Leverett heritage and what was left of the old family. Frank had given her Ellen's name and she called on Ellen. She found a fine old apartment with lots of ancient, beautiful furniture but Ellen herself was difficult. She made a comment about putting the furniture in a museum and Ellen got mad at her. But you can't take it with you when you go, was her comment; her main impression was that this was mighty fine furniture to just let slip into the estate-auction universe. But what to do? She came back and told Frank and Will the story; I ended up with it, since her written account is among my genealogical material.
Frank himself died sometime in the forties, and Will and Carrie sometime after that, so what remains basically is the work that they did to pull together accounts. Frank had no children, but he wasn't in the business of collecting fine old furniture and wasn't especially attached to even his house in Ann Arbor, though maybe his wife was; I can't even remember if she outlived him. The mystery of how we are related to John the Governor remains unsolved; several good theories abound. Frank is still probably the most famous of the modern Leveretts, having been in the Who's Who for all of its first twenty years or so, but he's most famous in our family for pulling together the information we now use to know our relatives.
Ellen was an author who wrote several things, some of which can be found but some which are very difficult to find. One, Tenants of Old Deptford, deals with her experiences in London. There are only two copies of this to be found in libraries, both back east, and I've never seen it but would like to. Her name is very easily confused with that of Mary Ellen Chase, a more famous author, but she is drifting into obscurity, the way I see it. I can't vouch for the quality of her writing; it's probably just like mine, so-so, but what the heck, I feel like should do something for her. I think of her every so often, in that fine old house full of antiques. Frank found her, and for that, I'm grateful.
But in the interests of determining who our ancestors were (we were pretty sure of our relation to Frank, who would be my great-grandfather's cousin), he had gone back east, almost on behalf of the western Leveretts who, he soon found out, had incorrect ideas about their ancestry. There were some Leveretts in Boston and he was able to track them down. He spent some time at Harvard doing research on John Leverett, President of Harvard in the early 1700s. While there he made some academic contacts, one of whom gave him an edited copy of his chapter in a book called The Great Leverett. The question though was how we were related to this Leverett or his grandfather, Governor of the Colony in the 1600s.
At one point he visited Ellen Chase, a known relative in Boston who lived in the shadow of the Trinity Episcopal Church downtown; she was an author but was toward the end of her years. She told him everything she knew but ultimately it made the situation more confusing. Yes, on the Boston family's side, the legend had lived on that we were descended from the Governor, but not the President of Harvard, who would be a relative but not ancestor.
Frank put all his facts together at his house in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Another western Leverett, Fred, had moved to Ann Arbor with his large brood of children and they were known to have large reunions which we, Leverett cousins, were always invited to; I went to maybe one in 1994. But in the 1940s Frank was interested in gathering information and gathering everyone's stories. Ultimately two of Fred's descendants took Frank's "data" and compiled what we know today of the descendants of William and Joseph Leverett, two of the Leveretts from the 1700s and 1800s. Joseph was the one who, raised in Maine, brought his family out west and basically separated us from that Boston branch who remained and withered away though they had access to the old Leverett house, I think.
At one of these reunions he was approached by Carrie, who was my great grandfather Will's sister (Fred was his older brother; all were cousins to Frank). She proudly gave him her account of her life which he had most certainly encouraged her to write. She was kind of a world traveler; her husband was in mining engineering and went to places like Mexico and she had lots to tell.
But one of the things she had to tell was about when she went back to New England looking for the Leverett heritage and what was left of the old family. Frank had given her Ellen's name and she called on Ellen. She found a fine old apartment with lots of ancient, beautiful furniture but Ellen herself was difficult. She made a comment about putting the furniture in a museum and Ellen got mad at her. But you can't take it with you when you go, was her comment; her main impression was that this was mighty fine furniture to just let slip into the estate-auction universe. But what to do? She came back and told Frank and Will the story; I ended up with it, since her written account is among my genealogical material.
Frank himself died sometime in the forties, and Will and Carrie sometime after that, so what remains basically is the work that they did to pull together accounts. Frank had no children, but he wasn't in the business of collecting fine old furniture and wasn't especially attached to even his house in Ann Arbor, though maybe his wife was; I can't even remember if she outlived him. The mystery of how we are related to John the Governor remains unsolved; several good theories abound. Frank is still probably the most famous of the modern Leveretts, having been in the Who's Who for all of its first twenty years or so, but he's most famous in our family for pulling together the information we now use to know our relatives.
Ellen was an author who wrote several things, some of which can be found but some which are very difficult to find. One, Tenants of Old Deptford, deals with her experiences in London. There are only two copies of this to be found in libraries, both back east, and I've never seen it but would like to. Her name is very easily confused with that of Mary Ellen Chase, a more famous author, but she is drifting into obscurity, the way I see it. I can't vouch for the quality of her writing; it's probably just like mine, so-so, but what the heck, I feel like should do something for her. I think of her every so often, in that fine old house full of antiques. Frank found her, and for that, I'm grateful.
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