JOHN OTIS WATTLES HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1807

August 25, Tuesday: Augustus Wattles was born in Lebanon, Connecticut to Erastus and Sarah Tomas Wattles. He would attend the Oneida Institute in Whitesboro (a village near Whitestown, New York), and then enroll at the Lane Theological Seminary near Cincinnati, Ohio to prepare for the Presbyterian ministry. He would venture throughout Ohio and westward establishing schools for black boys, in coordination with his younger brother John Otis Wattles.

Nicolò Paganini’s “Napoleon Sonata” to honor the birthday of Emperor of the French and King of Italy Napoléon (which had actually occurred on August 15th) was performed, by the composer, for the initial time.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 25 of 8 M / I am a poor thing & allmost dead as to religious sensibility, but notwithstanding my poverty was much favord in writing to a young female at Salem for whom my Soul hath often felt much for I was thankful to find there was yet something alive in me & readily Yealded to the impulse — Spent most of the evening at Jon a Greene’s in company with cousin Anne who has come over to attend the Moy [Monthly] Meeting - had a little opportunity with my valued friend Thos Howland whose company I love RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

THE FALLACY OF MOMENTISM: THIS STARRY UNIVERSE DOES NOT CONSIST OF A SEQUENCE OF MOMENTS. THAT IS A FIGMENT, ONE WE HAVE RECOURSE TO IN ORDER TO PRIVILEGE TIME OVER CHANGE, APRIVILEGING THAT MAKES CHANGE SEEM UNREAL, DERIVATIVE, A MERE APPEARANCE. IN FACT IT IS CHANGE AND ONLY CHANGE WHICH WE EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, TIME BEING BY WAY OF RADICAL CONTRAST UNEXPERIENCED — A MERE INTELLECTUAL CONSTRUCT. THERE EXISTS NO SUCH THING AS A MOMENT. NO “INSTANT” HAS EVER FOR AN INSTANT EXISTED. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1809

John Otis Wattles was born in Goshen, Connecticut to Erastus and Sarah Tomas Wattles. Goshen seems to have been a good town for a person who desired to accomplish something during his lifetime to be from, far from, and John would follow his elder brother Augustus Wattles to Cincinnati, Ohio to work for 2 years in his brother’s farm-labor school for mulatto boys sired by Southern slavemasters. The township of Goshen was sold at New Haven, in Dec. 1737, and its settlement commenced in one or two years afterwards. The first inhabitants were principally from New Haven, Wallingford, and Farmington. It is stated that the houses of Gideon Thompson, and John Beach, who were among the first settlers, were palisadoed in, for a defense against the Indians. Mr. Beach’s house was situated on East street, about 2½ miles from the present South Congregational church; the house of Mr. Thompson, stood on West street nearly a mile S.W. Goshen was incorporated as a town in 1749. It is bounded N. by Norfolk, E. by Torrington and Winchester, W. by Cornwall, and S. by Litchfield; it is 9 miles in length and 4½ in breadth. The central part is 6 miles from Litchfield, 32 west from Hartford, and 42 from New Haven. It is the most elevated township in the state, but not generally mountainous; the surface being undulating, affording an interesting diversity of hills and vales. The soil is a gravelly loam, deep, strong and fertile, admirably adapted for grazing. This is one of the best towns for the dairy business in the state. Large quantities of cheese are annually made, the fame of which is widely and justly celebrated, and the inhabitants are generally in prosperous circumstances. In neatness, in and about their dwellings, and in the appearance of general comfort and prosperity, they are not exceeded, if equalled, by any town in the state. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY The above is a representation of the Congregational church and some other buildings in the central part of the town. The building seen on the right with a small spire is the Academy, where the higher branches of education are taught. The common district school house is of brick, the first building seen in the engraving south of the church. The other Congregational church in the town, is four miles N.E. from this. There was formerly an Episcopal church situated about 2 miles to the north east. About the time of the American revolution, the Episcopal society, becoming very much reduced in numbers, sold their house to the north Congregational society; but while they were endeavoring to draw it towards their section of the town, it was blown down by the wind. The first meeting house in the town was built of logs; it stood about 80 rods below the church seen in the engraving. The elevated ground seen beyond the houses in the engraving, is called Ivy mountain. This is considered the most elevated point of land in the state. It affords a most extensive and interesting prospect in almost every direction; to the west is a view of the Catskill mountains for a considerable extent, their rugged features, and high and disorderly hills; and to the east is a view of the elevated country east of Connecticut river. There is this rare and peculiar circumstance, with respect to what is called the East street, in Goshen; that the rain which falls on the front of the houses, descends into the Housatonic river, and that which falls on the back side into the Waterbury river. About 1½ miles west of the central part of town is a collection of several mills and some manufacturing establishments, around which is collected a cluster of houses; this place is called Canada village.1 The Methodist church is built in this place. The stream which passes this village is fed from a large pond in the vicinity, and is admirably calculated for water works, having an adequate supply of water characterized by great uniformity, being neither affected by droughts nor heavy rains. The first minister in the town, was the Rev. Stephen Heaton. He was buried about a mile south of the Congregational church. His monument, with a few others, stands at present in an open field, near the Litchfield road; the following is the inscription. In memory of the Rev. STEPHEN HEATON, V.D.M. primus de Goshen, who was born at New Haven, 30th of Novr. 1710, ordained Nov. 1740, departed this life the 29th of Decr. 1788, Æ 79. In his character appeared Friendship, Patriotism, Sociability, Kindness and Charity, Benevolence, Virtue and Religion. Pallida Mors æquo pulsat Pede pauperum Tabernas Regumqoe Turres. This is a copy of another in the same place. In memory of MOSES LYMAN, Esq. who died 6th of Jany. 1768, in his 55th year. LYMAN so fam’d, so meek, so just, and wise; He sleeps! in hope, Then cease from tears, when Christ

1. This village is said to have derived its name in the following manner. — A man by the name of Frisbie, who was the first miller in this place, was frequently saying from year to year that he intended the next year to move to Canada, and still continued to stay where he was. The people finally agreed to bring Canada to him, by calling the place where he lived by that name. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY appears, his dust shall rise. *** This town, the smallest in the county of Hampshire, was incorporated in 1781. Rev. Samuel Whitman was installed pastor in this place in 1788, and continued such till 1818. He was succeeded, in 1821, by Rev. Joel Wright. The next minister was Rev. Henry B. Holmes, who was settled in 1830; he continued for nearly three years, and was succeeded by Rev. Stephen Mason, who was installed in 1836. This township is on elevated land. In the central part of the town there are 2 churches, 1 for Congregationalists and 1 for Baptists. In 1837, there were in the town 710 Saxony, 2,115 merino, and 223 other kinds of sheep. The value of wool produced was $4,500. The value of broom-handles manufactured was $3,000; the value of sawed lumber was $5,000. Population, 560. Distance, 12 miles from Northampton, and 105 from Boston. GOSHEN, CONN.

THE PROBLEM IS THAT THE HISTORIAN TYPICALLY SUPPOSES NOW TO BE THE WHY OF THEN. THE REALITY IS VERY MUCH TO THE CONTRARY, FOR NOW IS NOT THE WHY OF THEN: INSTEAD, THEN WAS THE HOW OF NOW. ANOTHER WAY TO SAY THIS IS THAT HISTORIANS WHO ANTICIPATE OFFEND AGAINST REALITY. A HISTORY WRITTEN IN THE LIGHT OF SUBSEQUENT EVENTS AMOUNTS TO SPURIOUS MAKE- BELIEVE. TO DO A GOOD JOB OF RECORDING HISTORY, ONE MUST BECOME IGNORANT (OR FEIGN IGNORANCE) OF EVERYTHING THAT WE NOW KNOW TO HAVE FOLLOWED.

The Wattles Family “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1810

October 10, Wednesday: Percy Bysshe Shelley began studies at University College, Oxford, where he would soon be meeting Thomas Jefferson Hogg.

Susan E. Lowe was born in Massachusetts. She would become the wife of Augustus Wattles.

Cassius M. Clay was born.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 10th M 1810// The mind in a dull lifeless state, poor & destitute of every living thing. Oh! when shall I be raised, when shall Life be more raised into dominion in my tabernacle of clay - Brother David called in the eveng — ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

TRALFAMADORIANS EXPERIENCE REALITY IN 4 DIMENSIONS RATHER THAN 3 AND HAVE SIMULTANEOUS ACCESS TO PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. THEY ARE ABLE TO SEE ALONG THE TIMELINE OF THE UNIVERSE TO THE EXACT TIME AND PLACE AT WHICH AS THE RESULT OF A TRALFAMADORIAN EXPERIMENT, THE UNIVERSE IS ANNIHILATED. BILLY PILGRIM, WHILE CAGED IN A TRALFAMADORIAN ZOO, ACQUIRES THEIR ATTITUDE TOWARD TIME, AND SO WHEN HE RETURNS TO EARTH, HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY HE BECOMES A HISTORIAN VERY LIKE ALL OUR OTHER HISTORIANS: ALTHOUGH HE CANNOT HIMSELF SEE INTO THE FUTURE THE WAY THE TRALFAMADORIANS DO, LIKE ALL OUR OTHER HUMAN HISTORIANS DO HE PRETENDS TO BE ABLE TO SEE ALL PERIODS OF OUR PAST TRAJECTORY NOT WITH THE EYES OF THE PEOPLE WHO WERE LIVING DURING THOSE PERIODS, BUT WITH THE OVERARCHING EYE OF GOD. THIS ENABLES HIM TO PRETEND TO BE VERY VERY WISE AND TO SOUND VERY VERY IMPRESSIVE!

The Wattles Family “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1819

March 27, Saturday: Ermione, an azione tragica by Gioachino Rossini to words of Tottola after Racine, was performed for the initial time, in Teatro San Carlo, Naples.

Esther Whinery was born near Salem, Ohio, a “birthright” Quaker, daughter of Friends Thomas and Lydia Whinery.

Adelaide Amelia Louisa Theresa Caroline of Saxe-Coburg Meiningen gave birth to Charlotte Augusta Louisa Hanover in The Furstenhof, Hanover, but this infant immediately died.

NEVER READ AHEAD! TO APPRECIATE MARCH 27TH, 1819 AT ALL ONE MUST APPRECIATE IT AS A TODAY (THE FOLLOWING DAY, TOMORROW, IS BUT A PORTION OF THE UNREALIZED FUTURE AND IFFY AT BEST). HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1833

Augustus Wattles moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to attend the Lane Theological Seminary, which, for many of the students had become a center of the abolitionist movement (eventually he would drop his seminary studies in order to start a school for freed and escaped slaves, while working with the Underground Railroad to move escaped slaves toward Canada).

It is said that in this year, on a visit to a plantation in Kentucky, Harriet Beecher first observed slaves at work. However, it should be noted that she had grown up in a household which had boasted black “bond servants.”2 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE UNCLE TOM’S CABIN

THE AGE OF REASON WAS A PIPE DREAM, OR AT BEST A PROJECT. ACTUALLY, HUMANS HAVE ALMOST NO CLUE WHAT THEY ARE DOING,

2. “Bond” here, of course, has the same etymology as “bound.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY WHILE CREDITING THEIR OWN LIES ABOUT WHY THEY ARE DOING IT.

The Wattles Family “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1835

Boundary disputes between Michigan and Ohio brought about a “Toledo War.”

A manual labor school for mulatto boys sired by southern white planters was founded in Mercer County in northern Ohio. The settlement would be named “Carthagena” and Augustus Wattles would be its superintendent. He would bring Susan Elvira Lowe from New York to teach there with him.

The Reverend Lyman Beecher had returned from his rabble-rousing and convent-burning in Boston to the directorship of the Lane Theological Seminary near Cincinnati, Ohio. His rabble-rousing and convent-burning Know-Nothing sermon was being published by Truman & Smith in Cincinnati and by Leavitt, Lord & Company in New-York as PLEA FOR THE WEST. There was a student revolt against his religious institution. The consequences of this revolt would be the relocation of the majority of the students to Oberlin College’s Theological Seminary, where they could continue their abolitionist activism. The leader of this revolt was Theodore Dwight Weld.

SURVEY OF AMERICAN ANTI-CATHOLICISM

CONTINGENCY ALTHOUGH VERY MANY OUTCOMES ARE OVERDETERMINED, WE TRUST THAT SOMETIMES WE ACTUALLY MAKE REAL CHOICES. “THIS IS THE ONLY WAY, WE SAY, BUT THERE ARE AS MANY WAYS AS THERE CAN BE DRAWN RADII FROM ONE CENTRE.”

The Wattles Family “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1836

June 24, Friday: Waldo Emerson completed his draft of NATURE, which he recognized to be hardly enough to offer as a decent book.

My design is to follow it by and by with another essay, “Spirit”; and the two shall make a decent volume.

Augustus Wattles got married with Susan Elvira Lowe, a teacher at his Cincinnati school for freed and escaped slaves. He would work as an agent for the American Antislavery Society, traveling great distances to raise money and speak on behalf of abolition. She would give birth to Sarah Grimké Wattles on December 7, 1837 in Ohio, Theodore Weld Wattles on May 25, 1840 in Ohio, Emma Wattles on July 15, 1842 in Ohio, and Mary Ann Wattles on October 10, 1845 in Ohio.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 24th of 6th M / This eveng between 9 & 10 OC Died Redwood Hazard. Aged 75 Years & 6 Days — he had been for many years partially deranged & taken care of by Society at the house of David Buffum in Middletown - he was mostly pleasant & was always remarkable for his retentive memory & careful attendance of Meetings when of ability to attend— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

IT IS NO COINCIDENCE THAT IT IS MORTALS WHO CONSUME OUR HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS, FOR WHAT WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO DO IS EVADE THE RESTRICTIONS OF THE HUMAN LIFESPAN. (IMMORTALS, WITH NOTHING TO LIVE FOR, TAKE NO HEED OF OUR STORIES.)

The Wattles Family “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1837

December: Sarah Grimké Wattles was born in Ohio to Susan E. Lowe Wattles and Augustus Wattles (she would get married with Lunday B. Hiatt, a licensed practitioner of Allopathic medicine and herself acquire a license to practice that sort of medicine, in Mound City, Kansas).

There was growing dissent among Mormons over financial matters. Martin Harris, who had been one of the Three Witnesses who had testified to having seen (if not with his two natural eyes, at least with his spiritual vision) the golden-seeming plates from which Joseph Smith, Jr. had with the help of his seer-stone “translated” the BOOK OF MORMON and to have held these heavy plates on his lap –and who had underwritten the initial printing of Joseph’s “translation” at the loss of his farm– was excommunicated because in disputes over church leadership he had repeatedly sided with opponents of the prophet (he would nevertheless continue to assert that the plates had been actual physical objects that he had held on his lap and “seen”).

ONE COULD BE ELSEWHERE, AS ELSEWHERE DOES EXIST. ONE CANNOT BE ELSEWHEN SINCE ELSEWHEN DOES NOT. (TO THE WILLING MANY THINGS CAN BE EXPLAINED, THAT FOR THE UNWILLING WILL REMAIN FOREVER MYSTERIOUS.)

The Wattles Family “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1838

The American Anti-Slavery Society put out the 5th issue of its “omnibus” entitled The Anti-Slavery Examiner, containing “Power of Congress Over the District of Columbia.” TEXT (This would be followed by “Power ... Columbia. With Additions by the Author.” and by “Power ... Columbia. INDEX Fourth Edition.”)

John Otis Wattles began working as a tutor for the family of James C. Ludlow, past president of the Ohio Antislavery Society and financial backer of a prominent abolitionist journal, The Philanthropist.

YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT EITHER THE REALITY OF TIME OVER THAT OF CHANGE, OR CHANGE OVER TIME — IT’S PARMENIDES, OR HERACLITUS. I HAVE GONE WITH HERACLITUS.

Our national birthday, the 4th of July, Wednesday: This was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 34th birthday.

The Reverend Frederic Henry Hedge’s AN ORATION, PRONOUNCED BEFORE THE CITIZENS OF BANGOR: ONTHE FOURTH OF JULY, 1838. THE SIXTY-SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE (Published at the request of the city government; Bangor: Samuel S. Smith, printer). TO THE CITIZENS OF BANGOR

The orator Edward Wells made the very 1st of the phrase “Stars and Stripes,” in description of the flag of the United States of America, in a “Nation’s Birthday” address he was delivering in that great locale of our freedoms, Sing Sing, New York. Shall those stripes and stars, which now wave triumphantly in every breeze, and which are honored in every land as the representative of a free people, ever be trampled beneath the feet of a foreign foe, or torn by the violence of civil strife?

The balloon of the intrepid master Boston goldbeater and aeronaut Louis Lauriat graced the skies above historic Salem, Massachusetts, and a good time was had by all. However, as usual, because of the promise to liberate the slaves of the British West Indies beginning August 1st of this year, black American communities and those concerned for them continued to pointedly ignore the national birthday in favor of that August eventuality. In Providence (Moshasuck), Rhode Island, a procession included 29 veterans of the revolution.

The White House was closed to the public because “the President has lately lost, by death, a near relative.”

In Charlottesville, Virginia, the Declaration of Independence was read from an “original draft, in the The Wattles Family “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY handwriting of Mr. Jefferson.” THOMAS JEFFERSON

At Fort Madison, Iowa, headman Black Hawk delivered a 4th-of-July address. CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY

At the US House of Representatives, Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech on the expansive topic of Texas for a 20th day.

Sidney Rigdon preached another sermon to the Mormons of a similar nature to his “Salt Sermon,” stating “And that mob that comes on us to disturb us; it shall be between us and them a war of extermination; for we will follow them till the last drop of their blood is spilled, or else they will have to exterminate us.”

The well-known “Come-Outer” John Otis Wattles delivered an antislavery oration that concluded with the cry “Priests, Lawyers, and Doctors, the Trinity of the Devil!”

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 4th of 7th M 1838 / This has been a day of much stir in Town as it always is — My mind & feelings however has been preserved in the quiet — This morning our Friend Joseph Bowne came to town from Portsmouth where he had an appointed a Meeting yesterday — finding it not a Suitable day to appoint a Meeting here he concluded to spent the day at D Buffums in resting & writing home to his friends - to be at our Meeting tomorrow & the appointment has been forwarded accordingly. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

HISTORY’S NOT MADE OF WOULD. WHEN SOMEONE REVEALS, FOR INSTANCE, THAT A PARTICULAR INFANT WOULD INVENT THE SEWING MACHINE, S/HE DISCLOSES THAT WHAT IS BEING CRAFTED IS NOT REALITY BUT PREDESTINARIANISM. THE HISTORIAN IS SETTING CHRONOLOGY TO “SHUFFLE,” WHICH IS NOT A PERMISSIBLE OPTION BECAUSE IN THE REAL WORLD SUCH SHUFFLE IS IMPOSSIBLE. THE RULE OF REALITY IS THAT THE FUTURE HASN’T EVER HAPPENED, YET. THERE IS NO SUCH “BIRD’S EYE VIEW” AS THIS IN THE REAL WORLD, FOR IN THE REAL WORLD NO REAL BIRD HAS EVER GLIMPSED AN ACTUAL HISTORICAL SEQUENCE.

The Wattles Family “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1839

John Otis Wattles, an orthodox Congregationalist, had been planning to make of himself a missionary, but his studies at Lyman Beecher’s Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio had led instead into an affiliation with the fledgling abolitionist movement. He determined that what he would do with his life was bring the ideals of racial equity of William Lloyd Garrison to the vast territory of the Great Plains.

An escaped woman working as a servant in the Stowe home was being searched out by her owner. To defeat this man the Reverends Henry Ward Beecher and Calvin Ellis Stowe took this servant under cover of darkness to the home of a friend outside the Cincinnati city limits. RESISTING THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW

Later, evidently because of this solitary incident in which the white men involved ran no risk whatever of being either detected or, if detected, prosecuted, Harriet Beecher Stowe would assert that “the Underground Railroad ran through” her home — a fabrication quite typical of her MO (modus operandi, mode of operation). UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

(Well, OK, few such stories ever lose anything in the retelling. But, we will find this variety of self- magnification typical of this person at all phases of her life.3) HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY FIGURING OUT WHAT AMOUNTS TO A “HISTORICAL CONTEXT” IS WHAT THE CRAFT OF HISTORICIZING AMOUNTS TO, AND THIS NECESSITATES DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN THE SET OF EVENTS THAT MUST HAVE TAKEN PLACE BEFORE EVENT E COULD BECOME POSSIBLE, AND MOST CAREFULLY DISTINGUISHING THEM FROM ANOTHER SET OF EVENTS THAT COULD NOT POSSIBLY OCCUR UNTIL SUBSEQUENT TO EVENT E.

The Wattles Family “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

3. Her son, Charles Edward Stowe, would recount to a historian (who was investigating her claims of having had a role in the Underground Railroad) how his mother Harriet Beecher Stowe had been caught in one of her self-serving confabulations. She had claimed to have been present to hear one of President Lincoln’s speeches in 1862, when that couldn’t possibly have happened — the speech she was claiming to have been present to hear in 1862, actually hadn’t been delivered by him until several years later, and in a location at which she couldn’t possibly have been present. Oops, never mind. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1840

John Otis Wattles had begun to explore nonresistance and antisabbatarianism in addition to antislavery and feminism.

During this decade Henry C. Wright would be making a transition from nonresistance to Spiritualism, that is to say, to communicating with souls who had passed “beyond the veil.” He would hail Andrew Jackson Davis of Poughkeepsie, one of the more notorious of the seers or spirit-communicators, as “a Jesus of this day.” He would shill for the Canadian Fox Sisters and their toe-joint-popping antics.

SPIRITUALISTS (In all fairness to the Reverend Wright, I must add that the Reverend Adin Ballou and Friend John Greenleaf Whittier were being similarly gullible.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY “HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE” BEING A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN TIME (JUST AS THE PERSPECTIVE IN A PAINTING IS A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN SPACE), TO “LOOK AT THE COURSE OF HISTORY MORE GENERALLY” WOULD BE TO SACRIFICE PERSPECTIVE ALTOGETHER. THIS IS FANTASY-LAND, YOU’RE FOOLING YOURSELF. THERE CANNOT BE ANY SUCH THINGIE, AS SUCH A PERSPECTIVE.

At some point and in some locale, Augustus Wattles set up a “Humanity’s Barn” as an overnight shelter for the homeless, and for slaves in hiding.

The Wattles Family “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1841

Augustus Wattles and his wife Susan E. Lowe Wattles had been superintending a manual labor school for mulatto boys sired by southern white planters, “Carthagena,” in Mercer County in northern Ohio. In this year they lost control over the enterprise due to debts to Philadelphia Quakers, and although they would continue for a period as superintendents, would realize that they would need to, as they put it, “wander in sheep skins and goat skins again and seek the caverns and dens of the earth.” What remained of the school would under Quaker supervision become the Emlen Institution for the Benefit of Children of African and Indian Descent and would provide services from 1856 to 1862, while the Wattles family would have relocated to a small farm in Clermont County on the Ohio River.

BETWEEN ANY TWO MOMENTS ARE AN INFINITE NUMBER OF MOMENTS, AND BETWEEN THESE OTHER MOMENTS LIKEWISE AN INFINITE NUMBER, THERE BEING NO ATOMIC MOMENT JUST AS THERE IS NO ATOMIC POINT ALONG A LINE. MOMENTS ARE THEREFORE FIGMENTS. THE PRESENT MOMENT IS A MOMENT AND AS SUCH IS A FIGMENT, A FLIGHT OF THE IMAGINATION TO WHICH NOTHING REAL CORRESPONDS. SINCE PAST MOMENTS HAVE PASSED OUT OF EXISTENCE AND FUTURE MOMENTS HAVE YET TO ARRIVE, WE NOTE THAT THE PRESENT MOMENT IS ALL THAT EVER EXISTS — AND YET THE PRESENT MOMENT BEING A MOMENT IS A FIGMENT TO WHICH NOTHING IN REALITY CORRESPONDS.

June 1, Tuesday: Ottoman Sultan Abdul Mejid accepted the Treaty of London and named Mohammed Ali governor for life of Egypt (the title was to be hereditary).

President John Tyler to the US House of Representatives (HOUSE JOURNAL, 27th Congress, 1st session, pages 31, 184): I shall also, at the proper season, invite your attention to the statutory enactments for the suppression of the slave trade, which may require to be rendered more efficient in their provisions. There is reason to believe that the traffic is on the increase. Whether such increase is to be ascribed to the abolition of slave labor in the British possessions in our vicinity, and an attendant diminution in the supply of those articles which enter into the general consumption of the world, thereby augmenting the demand from other quarters, ... it were needless to inquire. The highest considerations of public honor, as well as the strongest promptings of humanity, require a resort to the most vigorous efforts to suppress the trade. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE The Wattles Family “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

Having met John Otis Wattles from Vermont, a man who had, as a “ragged mountain boy” 10 years of age, become a fifer in a militia company, Henry Thoreau wrote in his journal that “To have seen a man out of the east or west is sufficient to establish their reality and location. I have seen a Mr. Wattles to-day from Vermont — and now know where that is and that it is.”

June 1. To have seen a man out of the East or West is sufficient to establish their reality and locality. I have seen a Mr. Wattles to-day, from Vermont, and now know where that is and that it is; a reformer, with two soldier’s eyes and shoulders, who began to belabor the world at ten years, a ragged mountain boy, as fifer of a company, with set purpose to remould it from those first years. The great person never wants an opportunity to be great, but makes occasion for all about him.

THE FALLACY OF MOMENTISM: THIS STARRY UNIVERSE DOES NOT CONSIST OF A SEQUENCE OF MOMENTS. THAT IS A FIGMENT, ONE WE HAVE RECOURSE TO IN ORDER TO PRIVILEGE TIME OVER CHANGE, APRIVILEGING THAT MAKES CHANGE SEEM UNREAL, DERIVATIVE, A MERE APPEARANCE. IN FACT IT IS CHANGE AND ONLY CHANGE WHICH WE EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, TIME BEING BY WAY OF RADICAL CONTRAST UNEXPERIENCED — A MERE INTELLECTUAL CONSTRUCT. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY THERE EXISTS NO SUCH THING AS A MOMENT. NO “INSTANT” HAS EVER FOR AN INSTANT EXISTED.

The Wattles Family “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1842

In Clinton County, Ohio, John Otis Wattles helped form the Society for Universal Inquiry and Reform, to eradicate coercive relationships such as government and capitalism, “an alliance of Hicksite Quakers and New England Garrisonian abolitionists committed to the reconstruction of American society according to the principles of non-resistance and the Government of God.” The Universal Reformers would organize 8 independent communities: Skaneateles in New York State, Marlborough, Prairie Home, and Highland Home in Ohio, and Union Home, West Grove or Fraternal Home, Kristeen, and Grand Prairie in Indiana. Most of these would disband after perhaps 6 months, and none would endure longer than a year.The society itself would endure until 1846. The central idea of the Government of God was that by creating communities that would bring an end to government based on coercion, bring an end to religious sectarianism, bring an end to the poverty that was being spawned by competitive capitalism, bring an end to ignorance, and bring an end to the oppression of women, we could usher in the millennium. This was not about transforming individual, but about transforming communities — transform the community, and the individuals would automatically transform to correspond. After the collapse of their communities, almost all of these adherents would become Spiritualists, in the expectation that divine guidance from angels and good spirits would lead humanity into the state that God intended. Esther Wattles, John’s wife, dropped her talk about nonresistance and communities and Universal Inquiry and Reform, and began to speak instead exclusively about abolitionism.

Lewis Perry has had the following to say in regard to the Concord, New Hampshire attitudes of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers during this period: Although Lynn nurtured some of the most anarchic elements of nonresistance and Come-Outerism, it was a minor theater of conflict with the Boston Garrisonians compared to New Hampshire. There antislavery and no-organizationism were synonymous, and Nathaniel P. Rogers, at the forefront of this anarchistic movement, rhapsodized on free meeting. Rogers was a widely respected reformer. Descended from the Smithfield martyr John Rogers and from American Puritan divines, he was the “pet and darling” of abolitionism, at one time editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard and a delegate to the world convention in London in 1840 when he was in his forty-sixth year. According to the political abolitionist William Goodell, Rogers was second only to Garrison, and perhaps surpassed him, in energy and talent. Together they might easily have dominated the antislavery societies if Rogers’ nonresistance had not been total. From opponents of nonresistance came further testimony: the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who knew about such things, recalled that Rogers’ journalism had “a spice and zest which would now command a market on merely professional grounds.” But he was a “Non-resistant of non-resistants” and “out-Garrisoned Garrison.” As editor of the Herald of Freedom, Rogers came close to making no-organizationism a coherent theory touching on every aspect of culture and society. Though his style had zest, this American romantic nonetheless did not believe in formalities of style. Nature and speech were key words he use. He was led to distinctions resembling those favored by Alcott: “Argument,” he said, meant less for reform than “STATEMENT”; or action is necessary only for unjust causes which will not bear earnest speech. Probably no other reformer has placed a higher value on free speech. Rogers literally expected to talk slavery out of existence. Although Rogers started out with faith in speech, his destination was always the HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY end of slavery. His earliest rejection of the ballot was based exclusively on the proslavery character of the available parties. In April 1839, Orange Scott still thought that Rogers might be enlisted in opposition to Garrison’s nonresistance, but Rogers explained that he respected both Scott and Garrison and did not worry about the extraneous opinions of dedicated abolitionists. As a budding no-organizationist, he denied that any leader spoke for him. As he became increasingly committed to nonresistance, he confessed that his mind had changed. He was now “convinced that all legislation was force, and that as anti- slavery, in our opinion, was a strictly moral and religious movement, a work of repentance and reformation, we could not resort to physical force.” The basis of his radical career, then, was evangelicalism. Ten months after writing Scott that nonresistance was a matter for private judgment, of little concern to antislavery, Rogers was prepared to argue that legislation could create only “free niggers,” that laws could never eradicate prejudice and racial domination. Thereafter his antislavery position was fixed: emancipation was as wrong as legislated abolition was futile, for it presumed an “act of mastery” to give up slaves, and masters must, in justice, disappear along with slaves. The real problem was to transform a national character in which men were willing to hold slaves and think of themselves as masters. That problem seemed obviously religious.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

The Wattles Family “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1844

The town of Utopia was formed, in Ohio, for Fourierists. John Otis Wattles purchased 1,400 acres in Champaign County or Logan County north of Yellow Springs to build “Prairie Home,” a community based upon cooperative labor and common property. This would fail in only 6 months since, it would be said, “the selfish element was predominant” among its 100 (+/-) members.

Brook Farm just outside Boston began an attempt to implement the social theories of Charles Fourier by converting itself into a “phalanx.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

The Wattles Family “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY May 3, Friday: Ramón María Narváez y Campos, duque de Valencia replaced Luis González-Bravo López de Arjona as Prime Minister of Spain.

Irish-Americans attacked a nativist rally in Philadelphia. The nativists retreated.

John Otis Wattles got married with Friend Esther Whinery, an elementary school teacher, daughter of Friends Thomas and Lydia Whinery. The union would produce 3 daughters Lucretia Celestia, Harmonia “Monia,” and Theano. During the initial several years of their marriage they would live in a series of failing communal settlements in Ohio and Indiana, where John would remain involved in antislavery activities including the Underground Railroad. They 1st settled with 100 others in what may well have been an Owenite or Shaker community in Clermont County, Ohio. They then relocated to another commune near Cincinnati, where John taught high-school-level subjects to colored boys in a room apparently donated for that purpose by a local preacher. From Cincinnati they would relocate to Excelsior, Ohio, then to Lake Zurich, Ohio, then to Lafayette and Grand Prairie, Indiana, then for 8 years to West Point, Indiana, and finally to Moneka, Kansas, where John would lecture on topics such as temperance, antislavery, and women’s rights. He would also help organize a local Kansas railroad.

The Concord Freeman reported that: Fire in the Woods A fire broke out in the woods near Fair Haven Pond, in this Town, about ten o’clock, last Tuesday forenoon. It extended with great rapidity, and was not subdued until late in the afternoon. The extent of ground over which the fire prevailed is variously estimated, the lowest estimate placing it at not less than 300 acres.

At the start of Volume II of his journal Henry Thoreau would include 7 leaves of miscellaneous jottings prior to the initial recorded day date (that of May 12, 1850). These miscellaneous jottings would include the following curious retrospective of the events of April 30, Tuesday, 1844:

I once set fire to the woods. Having set out, one April day, to go to the sources of Concord River in a boat with a single companion, meaning to camp on the bank at night or seek a lodging in some neighboring country inn or farmhouse, we took fishing tackle with us that we might fitly procure our food from the stream. Indian-like. At the shoemaker's near the river, we obtained a match, which we had forgotten. Though it was thus HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY early ill the spring, the river was low, for there had not been much rain, and we succeeded in catching a mess of fish sufficient for our dinner before we had left the town, and by the shores of Fair Haven Pond we proceeded to cook them. 'The earth was uncommonly dry, and our fire, kindled far from the woods in a sunny recess in the hillside on the east of the pond, suddenly caught the dry grass of the previous year which grew about the stump on which it was kindled. We sprang to extinguish it at first with our hands and feet, and then we fought it with a board obtained from the boat, but in a few minutes it was beyond our reach; being on the side of a hill, it spread rapidly upward, through the long, dry, wiry grass interspersed with bushes. “Well, where will this end?” asked my companion. I saw that it might be bounded by Well Meadow Brook on one side, but would, perchance, go to the village side of the brook. “It will go to town,” I answered. While my companion took the boat back down the river, I set out through the woods to inform the owners and to raise the town. The fire had already spread a dozen rods on every side and went leaping and crackling wildly and irreclaimably toward the wood. 'That way went the flames with wild delight, and we felt that we had no control over the demonic creature to which we had given birth. We had kindled many fires in the woods before, burning a clear space in the grass, without ever kindling such a fire as this. As I ran toward the town through the woods, I could see the smoke over the woods behind me marking the spot and the progress of the flames. The first farmer whom I met driving a team, after leaving the woods, inquired the cause of the smoke. I told him. “Well,” said he, “it is none of my stuff,” and drove along. The next I met was the owner in his field, with whom I returned at once to the woods, running all the way. I had already run two miles. When at length we got into the neighborhood of the flames, we met a carpenter who had been hewing timber, an infirm man who had been driven off by the fire, fleeing with his axe. The farmer returned to hasten more assistance. I, who was spent with running, remained. What could I do alone against a front of flame half a mile wide? I walked slowly through the wood to Fair Haven Cliff, climbed to the highest rock, and sat down upon it to observe the progress of the flames, which were rapidly approaching me, now about a mile distant from the spot where the fire was kindled. Presently I heard the sound of the distant bell giving the alarm, and I knew that the town was on its way to the scene. Hitherto I had felt like a guilty person, — nothing but shame and regret. But now I settled the matter with myself shortly. I said to myself: “Who are these men who are said to be the owners of these woods, and how am I related to them? I have set fire to the forest, but I have done no wrong therein, and now it is as if the lightning had done it. These flames are but consuming their natural food.” (It has never troubled me from that day to this more than if the lightning had done it. The trivial fishing was all that disturbed me and disturbs me still.) So shortly I settled it with myself and stood to watch the approaching flames.' It was a glorious spectacle, and I was the only one there to enjoy it. The fire now reached the base of the cliff and then rushed up its sides. The squirrels ran before it in blind haste, and three pigeons dashed into the midst of the smoke. The flames flashed up the pines to their tops, as if they were powder. When I found I was about to be surrounded by the fire, I retreated and joined the forces now arriving from the town. It took us several hours to surround the flames with our hoes and shovels and by back fires subdue them. In the midst of all I saw the farmer whom I first met, who had turned indifferently away saying it was none of his stuff, striving earnestly to save his corded wood, his stuff, which the fire had already seized and which it after all consumed. It burned over a hundred acres or more and destroyed much young wood. When I returned home late in the day, with others of my townsmen, I could not help noticing that the crowd who were so ready to condemn the individual who had kindled the fire did not sympathize with the owners of the wood, but were in fact highly elate and as it mere thankful for the opportunity which had afforded them so much sport; and it was only half a dozen owners, so called, though not all of them, who looked sour or grieved, and I felt that I had a deeper interest in the woods, knew them better and should feel their loss more, than any or all of them. The farmer whom I had first conducted to the woods was obliged to ask me the shortest way back, through his own lot. Why, then, should the half-dozen owners [and] the individuals who set the fire alone feel sorrow for the loss of the wood, while the rest of the town have their spirits raised? Some of the owners, however, bore their loss like men, but other some declared behind my back that I was a “damned rascal;” and a flibbertigibbet or two, who crowed like the old cock, shouted some reminiscences of “burnt woods” from safe recesses for some years after. I have had nothing to say to any of them. The locomotive engine has since burned over nearly all the same ground and more, and in some measure blotted out the memory of the previous fire. For a long time after I had learned this lesson I marvelled that while matches and tinder were contemporaries the world was not consumed; why the houses that have hearths were not burned before another day; if the flames were not as hungry now as when I waked them. I at once ceased to regard the owners and my own fault, — if fault there was any in the matter, — and attended to the phenomenon before me, determined to make the most of it. To be sure, I felt a little ashamed when I reflected on what a trivial occasion this had happened, that at the time I was no better employed than my townsmen. That night I watched the fire, where some stumps still flamed at midnight in the midst of the blackened waste, wandering through the woods by myself; and far in the night I threaded my way to the spot where the fire had HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY taken, and discovered the now broiled fish, — which had been dressed, — scattered over the burnt grass.

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

The Wattles Family “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1845

John Otis Wattles asked his brother Augustus Wattles to join a utopian community.

It was during this year that Minot Pratt left Brook Farm in disagreement with these Fourierist doctrines then prevalent, and went to George William Curtis’s farm in Concord. It was during this year that Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal that “Henry Thoreau said that the Fourierists had a sense of duty which led them to devote themselves to their second best.” One of the debates of the 18th Century was what human nature might be, under its crust of civilization, under the varnish of culture and manners. Jean-Jacques Rousseau had an answer. Thomas Jefferson had an answer. One of the most intriguing answers was that of Charles Fourier, who was born in Besançon two years before the Shakers arrived in New York. He grew up to write twelve sturdy volumes designing a New Harmony for mankind, an experiment in radical sociology that began to run parallel to that of the Shakers. Fourierism (Horace Greeley founded the New- York Tribune to promote Fourier’s ideas) was Shakerism for intellectuals. Brook Farm was Fourierist, and such place-names as Phalanx, New Jersey, and New Harmony, Indiana, attest to the movement’s history. Except for one detail, Fourier and Mother Ann Lee were of the same mind; they both saw that humankind must return to the tribe or extended family and that it was to exist on a farm. Everyone lived in one enormous dormitory. Everyone shared all work; everyone agreed, although with constant revisions and refinements, to a disciplined way of life that would be most harmonious for them, and lead to the greatest happiness. But when, of an evening, the Shakers danced or had “a union” (a conversational party), Fourier’s Harmonians had an orgy of eating, dancing, and sexual high jinks, all planned by a Philosopher of the Passions. There is a strange sense in which the Shakers’ total abstinence from the flesh and Fourier’s total indulgence serve the same purpose. Each creates a psychological medium in which frictionless cooperation reaches a maximum possibility. It is also wonderfully telling that the modern world has no place for either. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

WALDEN: In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial. It is not necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do.

It is not necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do.

THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO CREATE HINDSIGHT WHILE INTERCEPTING ANY ILLUSION OF FORESIGHT. NOTHING A HUMAN CAN SEE CAN EVER BE SEEN AS IF THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD. IN A BOOK THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT HISTORY, ISSUED BY RANDOM HOUSE IN 2016, I FIND THE PHRASE “LOOKED UPON FROM THE BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF HISTORY, ....” ONLY A MERE STORYTELLER, NEVER A HISTORIAN, COULD HAVE PENNED SUCH A PHRASE — BECAUSE NO BIRD HAS EVER FLOWN OVER HISTORY.

The Wattles Family “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1847

Mary Howitt’s BALLADS AND OTHER POEMS (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans).

Also, her THE CHILDREN’S YEAR.

In this year Friends Mary Howitt and William Howitt left the Religious Society of Friends (the couple would become involved instead in Spiritualism).

Spiritualists would be forming self-conscious communities in which their belief system could take tangible form. The earliest of these was on the site of the failed Clermont Phalanx in Utopia, Ohio, begun in this year through the efforts of John Otis Wattles, a Fourierist converted to spiritualism, a community which would endure, however, but 19 months. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

YOUR GARDEN-VARIETY ACADEMIC HISTORIAN INVITES YOU TO CLIMB ABOARD A HOVERING TIME MACHINE TO SKIM IN METATIME BACK ACROSS THE GEOLOGY OF OUR PAST TIMESLICES, WHILE OFFERING UP A GARDEN VARIETY OF COGENT ASSESSMENTS OF OUR PROGRESSION. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP! YOU SHOULD REFUSE THIS HELICOPTERISH OVERVIEW OF THE HISTORICAL PAST, FOR IN THE REAL WORLD THINGS HAPPEN ONLY AS THEY HAPPEN. WHAT THIS SORT WRITES AMOUNTS, LIKE MERE “SCIENCE FICTION,” MERELY TO “HISTORY FICTION”: IT’SNOT WORTH YOUR ATTENTION.

The Wattles Family “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY December 13, Monday: A 2-story brick dining hall/town hall had been dismantled brick by brick, 40 miles above Cincinnati on the Ohio River at the former “Excelsior” Phalanx in Utopia, Ohio, and re-erected incautiously upon the very bank of the Ohio River. There was an underground limestone chamber 22 feet by 44 feet, that they would use as their church. John Otis Wattles and his wife Friend Esther Whinery Wattles were at a dance party inside this partly finished building (people were making the best of the situation because their neighboring wooden homes had been flooded) when its foundation disintegrated in the floodwaters and the south wall of the structure collapsed. The mortar of the unfinished building had been too fresh to withstand this soaking. Although there were 32 in the structure and 17 of them were crushed or drowned or succumbed to hypothermia, the Wattles family was able to escape intact.

In Washington DC, the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution adopted Secretary Joseph Henry’s Programme of Organization, a plan which consisted of 14 guiding considerations including a suggestion that their Institution should only undertake programs that could not adequately be carried out by other existing United States institutions. A key feature of the Secretary’s plan would be issuance of periodical reports on scientific progress, such as Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge.

That night a US Marines patrol operating outside Mazatlan surprised and defeated a group of Mexicans at Palos Prietos.

“HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE” BEING A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY POINT IN TIME (JUST AS THE PERSPECTIVE IN A PAINTING IS A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN SPACE), TO “LOOK AT THE COURSE OF HISTORY MORE GENERALLY” WOULD BE TO SACRIFICE PERSPECTIVE ALTOGETHER. THIS IS FANTASY-LAND, YOU’RE FOOLING YOURSELF. THERE CANNOT BE ANY SUCH THINGIE, AS SUCH A PERSPECTIVE.

The Wattles Family “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1849

February 11, First Day: Friend Lucretia Mott addressed medical students at the Cherry Street Meeting House in Philadelphia:

I must confess to you, my friends, that I am a worshiper after the way called heresy, a believer after the manner that many deem infidel.... God is the teacher of his people himself.

AN 1884 BIOGRAPHY In Grand Prairie, Indiana, John Otis Wattles and Friend Esther Whinery Wattles produced a daughter Lucretia Celestia Wattles.

ESSENCES ARE FUZZY, GENERIC, CONCEPTUAL; ARISTOTLE WAS RIGHT WHEN HE INSISTED THAT ALL TRUTH IS SPECIFIC AND PARTICULAR (AND WRONG WHEN HE CHARACTERIZED TRUTH AS A GENERALIZATION).

The Wattles Family “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1851

February 10, Monday: Giuseppe Garibaldi wrote to Specchi in Havana, complaining of the cold and of hunting restrictions that were in effect on Staten Island.

In Williamsport, Indiana, John Otis Wattles and Friend Esther Whinery Wattles produced a daughter Harmonia “Monia” Wattles.

Henry Thoreau wrote to the university librarian, Dr. Thaddeus William Harris, who had taught him Entomology and Botany during his senior year at Harvard College, at Harvard Library, to check out “Alfred ‘Hawkins’ PICTURE OF QUEBEC’ and ‘Silliman’s TOUR TO QUEBEC’” (contrary to what had been thought by some Thoreau scholars, he requested neither Hawkins’s THIS PLAN OF THE CITY OF QUEBEC, of 1835, nor HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY Hawkins’s THE ENVIRONS OF QUEBEC, of 1844).

This would have amounted to, specifically, Alfred Hawkins’s HAWKINS’S PICTURE OF QUÉBEC, WITH HISTORICAL RECOLLECTIONS (1834), and Benjamin Silliman, Sr.’s REMARKS MADE, ON A SHORT TOUR, BETWEEN HARTFORD AND QUEBEC IN THE AUTUMN OF 1819 (1824, 2d edition). QUÉBEC Concord Feb 10th 1851 Dear Sir, I return by the bearer De Laet’s “Norvus Orbis” &c Will you please send me Alfred “Hawkins’ Picture of Quebec” and “Silliman’s Tour to Quebec”? If these are not in — then Wytfliet’s “Descriptionis Ptolemaicae Argumentum &c” and Lescarbot’s “Les Muses de la Nouvelle France.” Yrs respecty Henry D. Thoreau CORNELIUS WYTFLIET HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY (It may well be that on this day he also returned to Harvard Library the checked out Volume 1 of François André Michaux’s THE NORTH AMERICAN SYLVA, OR A DESCRIPTION OF THE FOREST TREES, OF THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND NOVA SCOTIA..., 1817-18-19.

ESSENCE IS BLUR. SPECIFICITY, THE OPPOSITE OF ESSENCE, IS OF THE NATURE OF TRUTH.

The Wattles Family “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1853

February 4, Friday: In West Point, Indiana, John Otis Wattles and Friend Esther Whinery Wattles produced a daughter Theano Wattles (she would become Mrs. Franklin Everett Case). HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1855

Charles Wesley Moffet or Moffett traveled west to Springdale, Iowa.

Thaddeus Hyatt received Patent No. 12,595 for “Illuminating Vault-Covers” (this would help him pay for his antislavery activities in the Kansas Territory).

In response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act which allowed territorial settlers to elect legislatures that would determine whether the territory would enter the Union as a free or slave state, early in this year members of the Wattles family, among them Augustus Wattles and Susan Lowe Wattles, settled in the Kansas Territory. The family wanted to help sway these referendums toward the Free-State cause. Within a few months Augustus would run twice for a seat in the legislature and receive a certificate of election from Governor Andrew Reeder, although when he would arrive at the 1st territorial capitol near Fort Riley, the proslavery “Bogus Legislature” would refuse to allow him to take his seat.

He would also be elected as a delegate to the antislavery Topeka Constitutional Convention. The family helped found the town of Moneka and would edit an antislavery newspaper connected with the radical abolitionist John Brown, that would advocate with some degree of success for women’s suffrage. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

James Redpath moved to the Kansas/Missouri border and reported for a Free Soil newspaper, the Missouri Democrat, on the dispute over slavery in Kansas Territory. For the following 3 years he would be engaging in politics there, writing dispatches, securing support in New England for Free Soil setters, and, allegedly, offering some poetry about Kansas.

The New-York law clerk John E. Cook became a member of Charles Lenhart’s guerrilla force operated out of Lawrence in the Kansas Territory. He would make himself into an excellent shot. He would be dispatched by John Brown to Harpers Ferry more than a year before the raid to work out the details on the ground, and would secure employment in the area as a lock tender on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, as a schoolteacher, and as a bookseller.

THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

Oliver Brown went with his father John Brown to the Kansas Territory, meeting there 4 other of Brown’s sons who had already arrived, and settled at Osawatomie. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

(Oliver would return to North Elba in October 1856, where he would marry with Martha Evelyn Brewster (Martha Brewster Brown) in 1858. She would be sent back north just before the raid on Harpers Ferry.)

A man who was converted to a life of violence by the violence of the Thomas Simms (Sims) case was the Reverend Daniel Foster, the Concord minister who had attracted notice by praying on the dock in 1851 as Simms was being extradited from Boston to Savannah, Georgia. Leaving the Concord church, Foster would become Chaplain of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1857 and would be in attendance when John Brown spoke before a committee of the House and Senate about the Kansas troubles. Almost immediately afterward Foster would quit his Chaplaincy, “convinced that our cause must receive a baptism of blood before it can be victorious,” and move to Kansas.

I expect to serve in Capt. John Brown’s company in the next Kansas war, which I hope is inevitable & near at hand. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1857

Augustus Wattles, Susan Lowe Wattles, and their 4 children had staked out a farm in Douglas County in the Kansas Territory, while he wrote articles for the Herald of Freedom newspaper that was published in the Free- State town of Lawrence. He had eventually made himself George W. Brown’s assistant editor for the paper. When a proslavery posse imprisoned Brown during the sacking of Lawrence for his strong advocacy of Free- State objectives, Wattles became the de facto editor. Throughout most of this year he wrote a series of weekly articles for the paper under the headline “Complete History of Kansas.” These articles challenged the notion of “squatter sovereignty” by which “a few settlers who might first inhabit a territory, could establish its present and future domestic and political institutions.” He pointed out that these men from Missouri who considered themselves as “border ruffians” had traveled into the Kansas Territory during June 1854 to hold a squatter meeting and pass resolutions — but had then turned around and gone back home. He wrote, “Every fair arrangement for a free government was rejected, and all was left in the hands of those who expected to make [the Kansas Territory] a slave state.”

When John Otis Wattles followed his brother Augustus into the Kansas Territory, he chose not to settle with him in Douglas County, instead settling in Linn County, where Augustus would follow just over a year later and the brothers would lay out Moneka. John would construct a large building for his academy, and over the following couple of years would put a great deal of effort into establishing a local railroad between Emporia and Jefferson City, Missouri (not coincidentally, running through Moneka). He would successfully lobby the Congress for the land grant and right of way (his sudden death on September 20, 1859, and the abrupt loss of the railroad’s chief proponent, would cause the project to falter and fail).

During this year and the following one Thaddeus Hyatt would become so interested in the possibilities of human flight that he would offer “a reward of $1,000 to any inventor able to produce an actual flying machine.”

The US federal government and the Seneca Indian tribe signed a treaty at Tonawanda, New York by which the tribe repurchased local reservation lands using funds from the exchange and sale of its reservation lands in Kansas. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

The Lecompton Constitution was written by a pro-slave convention in the Kansas Territory. A free-state- dominated territorial legislature would be chosen in the fall elections. Emporia and Abilene were founded. THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION

Christian Sharps finally began to manufacture the breech-loading rifle in quantity, which he had invented back in 1848.

After they would take Captain John Brown’s Sharps rifle away from him at Harpers Ferry, they would allow this little Southern boy to pose with it. — Grow up, son, and be a Christian like us: kill people, own slaves.

The National Kansas Committee would meet with John Brown early in this year and indirectly provide him with 200 of these Sharps rifles, which he would take to Harpers Ferry (but the Committee would then run out of money and largely renege on its promise of $5,000). HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY Here is how Harpers Ferry was being depicted, in this year, in Edward Beyer’s ALBUM ON VIRGINIA: HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY February: The Town Company of Hyatt in the Kansas Territory was created, with W.F.M. Arny as its 1st President and C.J. Farley as its 1st Secretary. A plat of this townsite was filed in the district land office at Lecompton, and in the office of the Probate Judge of Anderson County. THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION

August Bondi laid out the town of Greeley in the Kansas Territory. He would be appointed postmaster in the same year, and would hold this office for one year. From that point until the civil war he would be the conductor of the underground railway station at Greeley.

“WE MUST REMEMBER THAT 4 WE WERE ONCE SLAVES IN EGYPT.”

Augustus Wattles became one of the founders of Moneka in the Kansas Territory, to the northwest of present- day Mound City in the central-eastern part of the state.

The project to create a University of Kansas atop Mount Oread in Lawrence was getting exactly nowhere. Amos Adams Lawrence therefore reallocated his offer of at least $10,000 in the direction of a system of common schools for Kansas, that would be more realistic “at this early day.” Lawrence transferred the notes in question to Charles Robinson and Samuel C. Pomeroy as trustees, at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, and rolled in an additional $1,000 in the stock of the New England Emigrant Aid Company, the whole sum coming at this point to $12,696.14. This was endowment money: only the interest earned annually by this sum could be spent. Half of the annual interest income would go toward the support of common schools in Kansas settlements, while the other half would go toward the support of Sunday schools and toward supplying them with books. Only if Lawrence were to die without giving further orders could the money go to the college, and even then, only after Kansas entered the federal Union as a free state. If Kansas were to enter as a slave state, the trustees Robinson and Pomeroy would be obligated to return the principal and all accumulated interest to Lawrence or his heirs.

John Moule patented what he termed “photogen,” also to be known as “Bengal fire,” a compound of saltpetre, sulphur, and antimony sulphide that burned with a brilliant blue-white light useful for photography. In fact said compound had been in use since 1843, in the Blue John caverns of England, to light the caverns briefly in order to impress visitors with their hidden wonders, but Moule was the first to sense its commercial importance for the art of photography. Winter: Professor Henry Youle Hind taught at Trinity College, served as curator of the Canadian Institute, and wrote up a report on that summer’s expedition.

Luke Fisher Parsons spent the winter with John Brown and a band of 10 men whom Brown selected at Springdale, Iowa, training in military drill and tactics.

Augustus Wattles, one of the founders of Moneka, Kansas Territory, to the northwest of present-day Mound City in the central-eastern part of the state, moved to that locale, taking with him his younger brother John Otis Wattles.

4. From the Passover service. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1858

February 2, Tuesday: The Moneka, Kansas Territory Women’s Rights Association was formed during a meeting held after one of John Otis Wattles’s lectures on women’s rights, when “a proposition was made to organize a Women’s Rights Society.” This society would include men as well as women as members.

John Brown wrote to the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson: Rochester NJ 2d Feby 1858. Rev. T.W. Higginson Worcester Messrs. My Dear Sir I am here concealing my whereabouts for good reasons (as I think) not however from any anxiety about my personal safety. I have been told that you are both a true man & a true abolitionist “& I partly believe” the whole story. Last Fall I undertook to rais from $500 to $1000 for secret service & succeeded in getting $500. I now want to get for the perfecting of by far the most important undertaking of my whole life; $500 to $800, within the next sixty days. I have written Rev Theodore Parker, from George L Stearns & F B Sanborn Esqr, on the subject; but do not know if they are abolitionists. I suppose they are. Can you be induced to operate at Worcester & elsewhere during that time to raise from Antislavery men & women (or any other parties) some part of that amount? I wish to keep it entirely still about where I am; & will be greatly obliged if you will consider this communication strictly confidential; unless it may be such as you are sure will feel & act & keep very still. Please be so kind as to write N Hawkins on the subject Care of Wm L. Watkins, Esq. Rochester New York. Should be most happy to meet you again; & talk matters more freely. Hope this is my last effort in the begging line. very Respectfully Your Friend John Brown HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY February 13, Saturday: According to the Secretary’s Book for the Moneka, Kansas Territory Women’s Rights Association, John Otis Wattles’s wife Friend Esther Wattles was elected as vice president, and Susan E. Lowe Wattles’s and Augustus Wattles’s daughter Sarah Grimké Wattles was elected as secretary.

The case of the fugitive California slave “Archy”:

February 14, Sunday: HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY July 20, Tuesday: The Emperor Napoléon III and Count Cavour met at Plombières to prepare the unification of Italy. They agreed that a war against Austria would be necessary.

The New-York All-Stars baseball team beat Brooklyn, in the 1st (ever) paid-admission game. SPORTS

Captain John Brown wrote to Franklin Benjamin Sanborn and friends at Boston and Worcester, from the Kansas Territory side of the Missouri line. Enclosed in the envelope, which was directed via Augustus Wattles of Moneka in the Kansas Territory, were instructions that something was to be directed to “S. Morgan.” I am here with about ten of my men, located on the same quarter section where the terrible murders of the 19th May were committed, called the Hamilton or Trading Post murders. Deserted farms and dwellings lie in all directions for some miles along the line, and the remaining inhabitants watch every appearance of persons moving about, with anxious jealousy and vigilance. Four of the persons wounded or attacked on that occasion are staying with me. The blacksmith Snyder, who fought the murderers, with his brother and son, are of the number. Old Mr. Hargrove, who was terribly wounded at the same time, is another. The blacksmith returned here with me, and intends to bring back his family on to his claim, within two or three days. A constant fear of new troubles seems to prevail on both sides the line, and on both sides are companies of armed men. Any little affair may open the quarrel afresh. Two murders and cases of robbery are reported of late. I have also a man with me who fled from his family and farm in Missouri but a day or two since, his life being threatened on account of being accused of informing Kansas men of the whereabouts of one of the murderers, who was lately taken and brought to this side. I have concealed the fact of my presence, pretty much, lest it should tend to create excitement; but it is getting leaked out, and will soon be known to all. As I am not here to seek or secure revenge, I do not mean to be the first to reopen the quarrel. How soon it may be raised against me I cannot say, nor am I over-anxious. A portion of my men are in other neighborhoods. We shall soon be in great want of a small amount in a draft or drafts on New York, to feed us. We cannot work for wages, and provisions are not easily obtained on the frontier. I cannot refrain from quoting, or rather referring to a notice of the terrible affair before alluded to, in an account found in the New York Tribune of May 31st, dated at Westport, May 21st. The writer says: “From one of the prisoners it was ascertained that a number of persons were stationed at Snyder’s, a short distance from the post, a house built in the gorge of two mounds, and flanked by rock walls, a fit place for robbers and murderers.” At a spring in a rocky ravine stands a very small open blacksmith’s shop, made of thin slabs from a saw-mill. This is the only building that has ever been known to stand there, and in that article is called a “fortification.” It is to-day just as it was the 19th May, — a little pent-up shop, containing Snyder’s tools (what have not been carried off), all covered with rust, — and had never been thought of as a “fortification” before the poor man attempted in it his own and his brother’s and son’s defense. I give this as an illustration of the truthfulness of that whole account. It should be left to stand while it may last, and should be known hereafter as Fort Snyder. I may continue here for some time. Mr. Russell and other friends HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY at New Haven assured me before I left that, if the Lecompton abomination should pass through Congress, something could be done there to relieve me from a difficulty I am in, and which they understand. Will not some of my Boston friends “stir up their minds” in the matter? I do believe they would be listened to. You may use this as you think best. Please let friends in New York and at North Elba hear from me. I am not very stout, have much to think of and to do, and have but little time or chance for writing. The weather of late has been very hot. I will write you all when I can. I believe all honest, sensible Free State men in Kansas consider George Washington Brown’s Herald of Freedom one of the most mischievous, traitorous publications in the whole country. July 23d. Since the previous date, another Free State Missourian has been over to see us, who reports great excitement on the other side of the line, and that the house of Mr. Bishop (the man who fled to us) was beset during the night after he left; but, on finding he was not there, they left. Yesterday a pro- slavery man from West Point (Missouri) came over, professing that he wanted to buy Bishop’s farm. I think he was a spy. He reported all quiet on the other side. At present, along this part of the line the Free State men may be said in some sense to “possess the field,” but we deem it wise to “be on the alert.” Whether Missouri people are more excited through fear than otherwise I am not yet prepared to judge. The blacksmith (Snyder) has got his family back; also some others have returned, and a few new settlers are coming in. Those who fled or were driven off will pretty much lose the season. Since we came here, about twenty-five to thirty of Governor Denver’s men have moved a little nearer to the line, I believe. August 6th. Have been down with the ague since last date, and had no safe way of getting off my letter. I had lain every night without shelter, suffering from cold rains and heavy dews, together with the oppressive beat of the days. A few days since, Governor Denver’s officer then in command bravely moved his men on to the line, and on to the next adjoining claim with us. Several of them immediately sought opportunity to tender their service to me secretly. I, however, advised them to remain where they were. Soon after I came on to the line, my right name was reported, but the majority did not credit the report. I am getting better. You will know the true result of the election of the 2d inst. I am getting better. You will know the true result of the election of the 2d inst. much sooner than I shall, probably. I am in no place for correct general information. May God bless you all. Your friend, John Brown. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY September 15, Wednesday: Soon the underground railroad worker Richard Winsor would be conveying John Price, escaped 19-year-old slave of John Bacon who had been recaptured in Oberlin, Ohio, from the attic of a hotel in nearby Wellington, Ohio, where he had been sequestered by bounty hunters acting as federal marshals under the federal Fugitive Slave Law in order to put him on a train and return him to his owner in Maysville, Kentucky, to his safety in Canada, land of the free.

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn had written to Captain John Brown on July 11th, and when that letter reached him in Moneka in the Kansas Territory convalescing with the family of Augustus Wattles he had written as follows, in letters that would be posted on this day: — OSAWATOMIE, KANSAS, 10th September, 1858. Dear Friend, and other friends, — Your kind and very welcome letter of the 11th July was received a long time since, but I was sick at the time, and have been ever since until now; so that I did not even answer the letters of my own family, or any one else, before yesterday, when I began to try. I am very weak yet, but gaining well. All seems quiet now. I have been down about six weeks. As things now look I would say that, if you have not already sent forward those little articles, do not do it. Before I was taken sick there seemed to be every prospect of some business very soon; and there is some now that requires doing; but, under all the circumstances, I think not best to send them. I have heard nothing direct from Forbes for months, but expect to when I get to Lawrence. I have but fourteen regularly employed hands, the most of whom are now at common work, and some are sick. Much sickness prevails. How we travel may not be best to write. I have often met the “notorious” Montgomery, and think very favorably of him. It now looks as though but little business can be accomplished until we get our mill in operation. I am most anxious about that, and want you to name the earliest date possible, as near as you can learn, when you can have your matters gathered up. Do let me hear from you on this point (as soon as consistent), so that I may have some idea how to arrange my business. Dear friends, do be in earnest; the harvest we shall reap, if we are only up and doing.

September 10: Tower-mustard in bloom again. A musquash-house begun.

13th September, 1858. Yours of the 25th August, containing draft of Mr. S. for fifty dollars is received. I am most grateful for it, and to you for your kind letter. This would have been sooner mailed but for want of stamps and envelopes. I am gaining slowly, but hope to be on my legs soon. Have no further news. Mailed, September 15th. Still weak. Your friend.

September 15. I have not seen nor heard a bobolink for some days at least, numerous as they were three weeks ago, and even fifteen days. They depart early. I hear a nuthatch occasionally, but it reminds me of winter.

P.M.– To Walden. I paddle about the pond, for a rarity. The eriocaulon, still in bloom there, standing thinly about the edge, where it is stillest and shallowest, in the color of its stem and radical leaves is quite in harmony with the glaucous water. Its radical leaves and fine root-fibres form a peculiar loose but thick and continuous carpet or rug on the sandy HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY bottom, which you can lift up in great flakes, exposing the fine white beaded root-fibres. This evidently affords retreats for the fishes, musquash, etc., etc., and you can see where it has been lifted up into galleries by them. I see one or two pickerel poised over it. They, too, are singularly greenish and transparent, so as not to be easily detected, only a little more yellowish than the water and the eriocaulon; ethereal fishes, not far from the general color of heart-leaf and target-weed, unlike the same fish out of water. I notice, as I push round the pond close to the shore, with a stick, that the weeds are eriocaulon, two or three kinds of potamogeton, – one with a leaf an inch or two long, one with a very small, floating leaf, a third all immersed, four or five inches high and yellowish-green (this (vide press) is apparently an immersed form of P. hybridus), – target-weed, heart-leaf, and a little callitriche. There is but little of any of them, however, in the pond itself. It is truly an ascetic pond, and lives very sparingly on vegetables at any rate. I gather quite a lot of perfectly fresh high blueberries overhanging the south side, and there are many green ones among them still. They are all shrivelled now in swamps commonly. The target-weed still blooms a little in the Pout’s Nest, though half the leaves have turned a reddish orange, are sadly eaten, and have lost nearly all their gelatinous coating. But perfect fresh green leaves have expanded and are still expanding in their midst. The whole pool is covered, as it were, with one vast shield of reddish and green scales. As these leaves change and decay, the firmer parts along the veins retain their life and color longest, as with the heart-leaf. The leaves are eaten in winding lines about a tenth of an inch wide, scoring them all over in a curious manner, and also in spots. These look dark or black because they rest on the dark water. Looking closely, I am surprised to find how many frogs, mostly small, are resting amid these target leaves, with their green noses out. Their backs and noses are exactly the color of this weed. They retreat, when disturbed, under this close shield. It is a frog’s paradise. I see, in the paths, pitch pine twigs gnawed off, where no cones are left on the ground. Are they gnawed off in order to come at the cones better? I find, just rising above the target-weed at Pout’s Nest, Scirpus subterminalis, apparently recently out of bloom. The culms two to three feet along, appearing to rise half an inch above the spikes. The long, linear immersed leaves coming off and left below At entrance of the path (on Brister’s Path) near Staples and Jarvis bound, apparently the true Danthonia spicata, still green. It is generally long out of bloom and turned straw-color. I will call the other (which I had so named), of Hosmer’s meadow, for the present, meadow oat grass, as, indeed, I did at first. A hummingbird in the garden. There is a southeast wind, with clouds, and I suspect a storm brewing. It is very rare that the wind blows from this quarter.

November 5, Friday: Bronson Alcott commented that Henry Thoreau was

better poised and more nearly self-sufficient than other men.

Thoreau was being written to by John Otos Wattles from Moneka in the Kansas Territory, asking for a fresh copy of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS.

Moneka Kansas—Nov. 5/58 Friend Thoreau— When I was east I obtained your book relating to your residence at Walden Pond[.] Friend Greeley & I s[a]t up nearly all one night to read it but did n’t finish it, he gave it to me to finish on my way in the cars — I had it reading it, & some one, perhaps perceiv[ing] the book was interesting took good care to change it from my possession to his, I hope he has enjoyed as much as I did in reading it— But I want another — I want you to send me a copy, & I will remit the price in the “needful stamps” &c— Do it up carefully & send by mail— HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY Direct to me as follows, Moneka, [Linn] Co, Kansas— As Ever For God & Humanity John O. Wattles

Page 2 I shall direct to you & to friend Emerson— Not having heard of your whereabout since I left your house two or three years ago, I do not know that this will reach you—

Page 3 Address: Henry D. Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson Concord Mass Return address: Moneka Ks. Nov 10

November 5: Humphrey Buttrick says that he finds old and young of both kinds of small rails, and that they breed here, though he never saw their nests. P.M. – Up Assabet. The river has risen somewhat, on account of rain yesterday and the ~0th. So it was lowest the 30th. That great fleet of leaves of the 21st October is now sunk to the bottom, near the shore, and are [~w] flatted out there, paving it thickly, and but few recently fallen are to be seen on the water; and in the woods the leaves do not lie up so crisp since the rain. Saw Stewart shoot a Carolina rail, which was standing on the side of a musquash-cabin off Prichard’s, within two rods of him. This has no black throat and is probably the female. The large shallow cups of the red oak acorns look like some buttons I have seen which had lost their core. The Cornuorida on the Island is still full-leafed, and is now completely scarlet, though it was partly green on the 28th. It is apparently in the height of its color there now, or, if more exposed, perhaps it would have been on the 1st of November. This makes it the latest tree to change. The leaves are drooping, like the C. sericea, while those of some sprouts at its base are horizontal. Some incline to crimson. A few white maples are not yet bare, but thinly clothed with dull-yellow leaves which still have life in them. Judging from the two aspens, this tree, and the willows, one would say that the earliest trees to leaf were, perhaps, the last to lose their leaves. Little dippers were seen yesterday. The few remaining topmost leaves of the Salicericea, which were the last to change, are now yellow like those of the birch. Water milkweed [Asclepias incarnata, the swamp milkweed] has been discounting some days, with its small upright pods. I hear one cricket this louring day. Since but one is heard, it is the more distinct and therefore seems louder and more musical. It is a clearer note, less creaking than before. A few Populus grandidentata leaves are still left on. The common smooth rose leaves are pretty conspicuously yellow yet along the river, and some dull-reddish high blackberry is seen by the roads. Also meadowsweet is observed yet with the rose. It is quite still; no wind, no insect hum, and no note of birds, but one hairy woodpecker. That lake grass, Glyceria fluitans, is, methinks, more noticeable now than in summer on the surface of the fuller stream, green and purple. Meadowsweet is a prominent yellow yet. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY December: This issue of The Atlantic Monthly magazine had an interesting article on birdsong. The Reverend Samuel Joseph May, accompanied by the abolitionist Sarah Parker Remond of Salem, Massachusetts and the Reverend William Henry Channing of Boston, embarked upon the Arabia for a tour of England and Europe: I’ve seen the Pope!!!

The radical abolitionist John Brown was a friend of John Otis Wattles, and especially of Augustus Wattles. The brothers agreed with Brown’s purposes but not with his violent means. When Brown needed sanctuary after a Missouri slaveholder was killed during his raid into Missouri to free 11 slaves, Augustus took him into his home in Moneka, Kansas even though the Missouri governor, Robert M. Stewart, was insisting that both Brown and the slaves be returned to Missouri. During his stay, Brown wrote to the Lawrence Republican, comparing his raid into Missouri with the massacre at Marais des Cygnes near a settlement named Trading Post, in which a raiding party from Missouri had crossed into Kansas Territory and killed 5 men suspected of being against human slavery, and badly injuring 5 others. Wanting to protect the Wattles family from any retribution that would have followed had the proslavery element known that Augustus Wattles was giving him sanctuary, Brown pretended that he was sending the letter from Trading Post.

Hinton Rowan Helper replied to Lysander Spooner: My dear Sir, Above, in brief, is my candid criticism of the circular in regard to which you have done me the honor to request my opinion. It is possible that I may be mistaken, but I feel as well assured as I can of anything not absolutely certain, that the result of the Lopez expedition to ___, some years since, was a brilliant triumph, compared with the result that would inevitably follow the attempt to carry out your present plan of operations in the faith. The circular in its present form can never be more serviceable in accomplishing the great obeject you have in view, Here at the south it will effect no good – it might do harm, at the South it would certainly strengthen the chains of slavery. I sincerely trust that you will not distribute it, or, to say the least, that you will withhold it from the public until the next presidential campaign. For several months past I have had it in contemplation to issue a circular especially designed to reach the South in the right way; and if I am not failed or prejudiced in my aims and efforts, I think I shall, in connection with other southerners, who are willing and anxious to cooperate with me, be successful in accomplishing more in the direction within the next two or three years than has been accomplished within the last fifteen. My friend, Prof. Fredrick, has seen your circular, and fully concurs in the opinion which I have expressed in reference to the same. Neither the Professor nor myself, however, desire to be taken as criticisms to go by. Probably, it would be well for you to consult others. Yours very truly, H.R. Helper Box 1077 New York, Dec. 1858 HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1859

September 20, Tuesday: The electric stove was patented by George B. Simpson of Washington DC.

John Otis Wattles died suddenly in Kansas Territory, leaving Friend Esther Whinery Wattles to support their 10-year-old Lucretia Celestia, 8-year-old Harmonia “Monia,” and 6-year-old Theano. After the Civil War this family would return to Ohio along with a niece Mary Ann Wattles, who would become Mrs. Sylvanus Carroll Faunce, and Friend Esther would keep a boardinghouse while her 3 daughters were attending Oberlin College. Lucretia Celestia would become a professor of music at Oberlin College. Harmonia “Monia” would become dean of women at Oberlin College.

September 20. P.M.– To White Pond. The button-bushes by the river are generally overrun with the mikania. This is married to the button-bush as much as the vine to the elm, and more. I suspect that the button-bushes and black willows have been as ripe as ever they get to be. I get quite near to a blackbird on an apple tree, singing with the grackle note very earnestly and not minding me. He is all alone. Has a (rustyish) brown head and shoulders and the rest black. I think it is a grackle. Where are HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY the red-wings now? I have not seen nor heard one for a long time. Is this a grackle come from its northern breeding-place?

December 1, Thursday: Bronson Alcott wrote in his journal that he had again seen Henry Thoreau and Waldo Emerson, in regard to the “Brown Services” being arranged for the day of the hanging of John Brown: It is arranged that I am to read the Martyr Service, Thoreau selections from the poets, and Emerson from Brown’s words.

During the final days before his execution in Virginia, perhaps because he knew his wife Mrs. Mary Day Brown had been involved in planning with the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson of the Secret “Six” conspiracy to convince him that martyrdom was not his lot and to effect his escape, Captain Brown had been refusing to allow her to visit him in his cell. In one of his final letters to her before this day, during which he relented and she was able to be with him for several hours, he had referred to the extended Wattles family of the Kansas Territory as: most beloved and never to be forgotten by me. Many and many a time has she [Sarah Grimké Wattles], her father [Augustus Wattles], mother [Susan E. Lowe Wattles], brothers, sisters, uncle and aunt [John Otis Wattles and Esther Whinery Wattles], (like angels of mercy) ministered to the wants of myself and of my poor sons, both in sickness and in health.

On this bitterly cold morning Presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln continued on from Elwood, Kansas to Troy, speaking there for nearly 2 hours in the early afternoon, and then continued some 10 miles to Doniphan where he delivered another speech and would spend the night. THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION

November 30, December 1 and 2 were remarkably warm and springlike days,–a moist warmth. The crowing of cocks and other sounds remind you of spring, such is the state of the air. I wear only one coat. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1860

February 17, Friday: Bronson Alcott came home from Boston with a copy of the March issue of Atlantic Monthly, containing Louisa May Alcott’s article “Love and Self-Love.”

“Escenas campestres,” a 1-act opera by Louis Moreau Gottschalk to anonymous words, was performed for the initial time, in the Teatro di Tacón of Havana. Also premiered were two orchestral works by Gottschalk: “Marcha Triunfal y Final de Opera” and “La nuit des tropiques.”

Professor William Henry Harvey read a “serio-comic squib” on Darwinism, before the Dublin University Zoological and Botanical Association. This would subsequently be printed for private circulation as A GUESS AS TO THE PROBABLE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN ANIMAL CONSIDERED BY THE LIGHT OF MR DARWIN’S THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION, AND IN OPPOSITION TO LAMARCK’S NOTION OF A MONKEY PARENTAGE. Charles Darwin, who had a great admiration for Harvey’s work, would display a remarkable forbearance: I am not sorry for a natural opportunity of writing to Harvey, just to show that I was not piqued at his turning me and my book into ridicule, not that I think it was a proceeding that I deserved, or worthy of him.

Feb. 17. P. M.—Cold and northwest wind, drifting the snow. 3 P. M., thermometer 14°. A perfectly clear sky except one or two little cloud-flecks in the southwest, which, when I look again after walking forty rods, have entirely dissolved. When the sun is setting the light reflected from the snow-covered roofs is quite a clear pink, and even from white board fences. Grows colder yet at evening, and frost forms on the windows. I hear that some say they saw a bluebird and heard it sing last week!! It was probably a shrike. Minott says that he hears that Heard’s testimony in regard to Concord River in the meadow case was that “it is dammed at both ends and cursed in the middle,” i. e. on account of the damage to the grass there. GEORGE MINOTT We cannot spare the very lively and lifelike descriptions of some of the old naturalists. They sympathize with the creatures which they describe. Edward Topsell in his translation of Conrad Gesner, in 1607, called “The CONRAD GESNER History of Four-footed Beasts,” says of the antelopes that “they are bred in India and Syria, near the river Euphrates,” and then—which enables you to realize the living creature and its habitat—he adds, “and delight EDWARD TOPSELL much to drink of the cold water thereof.” The beasts which most modern naturalists describe do not delight in anything, and their water is neither hot nor cold. Reading the above makes you want to go and drink of the Euphrates yourself, if it is warm weather. I do not know how much of his spirit he owes to Gesner, but he proceeds in his translation to say that “they have horns growing forth of the crown of their head, which are very long and sharp; so that Alexander affirmed they pierced through the shields of his soldiers, and fought with them very irefully: at which time his company slew as he travelled to India, eight thousand five hundred and fifty, which great slaughter may be the occasion why they are so rare and seldom seen to this day.” Now here something is described at any rate; it is a real account, whether of a real animal or not. You can plainly see the horns which “grew forth” from their crowns, and how well that word “irefully” describes a beast’s fighting! And then for the number which Alexander’s men slew “as he travelled to India,” — and what a travelling was that, my hearers! — eight thousand five hundred and fifty, just the number you would have guessed after the thousands were given, and [AN] easy one to remember too. He goes on to say that “their horns are great and made like a saw, and they with them can cut asunder the branches of osier or small trees, whereby it cometh to pass that many times their necks are taken in the twists of the falling boughs, whereat the beast with repining cry, bewrayeth himself to the hunters, and so is taken.” The artist too has done his part equally well, for you are presented with a drawing of the beast with serrated horns, the tail of a lion, a cheek tooth (canine?) as big as a boar’s, a stout front, and an exceedingly “ireful” look, as if he were facing all Alexander’s army. Though some beasts are described in this book which have no existence as I can learn but in the imagination of the writers, they really have an existence there, which is saying not a little, for most of our modern authors have not imagined the actual beasts which they presume to describe. The very frontispiece is a figure of “the gorgon,” which looks sufficiently like a hungry beast covered with scales, which you may have dreamed of, apparently just fallen on the track of you, the reader, and snuffing the odor with greediness. These men had an adequate idea of a beast, or what a beast should be, a very bellua (the translator makes the CAT word bestia to be “a vastando”); and they will describe and will draw you a cat with four strokes, more beastly or beast-like to look at than Mr. Ruskin’s favorite artist draws a tiger. They had an adequate idea of the wildness HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY of beasts and of men, and in their descriptions and drawings they did not always fail when they surpassed nature. Gesner says of apes that “they are held for a subtil, ironical, ridiculous and unprofitable beast, whose flesh is not good for meat as a sheep, neither his back for burthen as an asses, nor yet commodious to keep a house like a dog, but of the Grecians termed gelotopoios, made for laughter.” As an evidence of an ape’s want of “discretion,” he says: “A certain ape after a shipwreck, swimming to land, was seen by a countryman, who thinking him to be a man in the water gave him his hand to save him, yet in the mean time asked him what countryman he was, to which he answered that he was an Athenian: Well, said the man, dost thou know Piraeus (a port in Athens)? Very well, said the ape, and his wife, friends and children. Whereat the man being moved, did what he could to drown him.” “They are best contented to sit aloft although tied with chains.... They bring forth young ones for the most part by twins, whereof they love the one and hate the other; that which they love they bear on their arms, the other hangeth at the dam’s back, and for the most part she killeth that which she loveth, by pressing it too hard: afterward, she setteth her whole delight upon the other.”

The Senate Select Committee on the Harper’s Ferry Invasion had subpoenaed Augustus Wattles to travel from Moneka in the Kansas Territory to Washington DC to answer questions regarding any prior awareness he had had about the raid on the Harpers Ferry federal arsenal. On this day he denied having had any such prior knowledge of John Brown’s plans. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY Augustus Wattles sworn and examined.

By the Chairman: Question. Will you please to state where you reside? Answer. I reside in Moneka, Linn county, in the southern part of Kansas Territory. Question. How long have you resided in Kansas? Answer. About five years. Question. Were you acquainted with John Brown, who was recently put to death in Virginia, under the laws there? Answer. Yes, sir. Question. When did your acquaintance with him commence? Answer. I had a knowledge of him in Ohio, several years ago, but I was not intimate with him until 1855, in Kansas. I saw him first in Kansas in the fall of 1855. Question. Did your acquaintance continue with him in Kansas from that time until he left Kansas? Answer. Yes, sir. Question. When did you last see him in Kansas? Answer. I do not recollect the month, but it was in the winter of 1858-59. Question. Where did you see him then? Answer. I saw him at my house. Question. Who was with him? Answer. There was nobody with him at the time I allude to. I was confined to my bed by sickness, and he came in to bid me good- bye as he was leaving. He had been into Missouri and taken those slaves, and was going out of the Territory. Question. Had he the slaves with him at the time? Answer. I suppose they were under his charge at the time. I do not know particularly whether he had them with him or not. He had not them in my house with him. Question. That was in the fall of 1858? Answer. The fall or winter, I do not recollect the month. Question. How long did he remain at your house at that time? Answer. I suppose half an hour. Question. Had he been a previous visitor at your house? Answer. Yes, sir. Question. Did he ever remain with you for any long time? Answer. He frequently remained a considerable length of time. Question. Were there other men with him at those times that he was your guest? Answer. In the fall of 1856, when he was driven from the Territory by the United States troops, he came to my house to HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY stop, and his sons and sons’ wives. They were at my house some time; I cannot tell how long; I should suppose more than a week. Question. How do you mean driven from the Territory; for that was in the Territory? Answer. The troops were attempting to arrest him, and he came to stop with me on his way from Ossawatomie to Nebraska. He was attempting to collect his cattle together, and what property he had in Ossawatomie, and sell it; and he had the women there to take them down the river; and he had his sons there, and their wagons, to go back to Ohio. Question. That was in 1856? Answer. Yes, sir; that was in 1856. Question. Did you see him there in 1857? Answer. No, sir. I do not think I did. I have no recollection that he was in the Territory in 1857. Question. Do you know a man named Kagi? Answer. Very well, sir. Question. Did you know Realf? Answer. I knew him when I saw him. I was not intimate with him. I was not very intimate with Kagi; but Kagi was connected with the press, and used to be in the office very frequently. Question. What office? Answer. The printing office where I was. Question. What press was that? Answer. The “Herald of Freedom,” published in Lawrence. Question. Were you one of the editors? Answer. Yes, sir. Question. Was your residence in the town of Lawrence? Answer. I lived about seven miles from Lawrence. I used to stay in Lawrence a good deal. My family lived out of the town at that time. Question. What did you say was Kagi’s connection with the press? Answer. He was a correspondent of some paper here in Washington, and he used to be passing in and out to get newspapers to read. Question. Was Kagi, as far as you know, connected with Brown in any of their fights or battles in Kansas? Answer. Yes, sir; I think he was with Brown all the time, or at least connected with him; not personally with him all the time, but he always knew where he was, so that he could go to him. I understood it so generally. Question. Did Brown ever, in conversation with you or otherwise, develop to you what his plans were in reference to the abolition of slavery either in Kansas or outside of Kansas? Answer. No, sir; I never heard him speak on the general question in the manner in which you are presenting the subject. I have only heard him speak in reference to our plans there, as far as his action was concerned, which was simply defensive; but in discussing the principles of abolition, I have heard him give sentiments like these; in conversing with him on the subject once, he said: “I have been at your abolition meetings, mentioning in Massachusetts and Ohio, and your scheme is perfectly futile; you would not release five slaves in a century; peaceful emancipation is impossible; the thing has gone beyond that point.” I recollect this distinctly from the ridicule which he attached to a remark I made. I said that a forcible emancipation was worse than slavery. He said that his plan was to put arms in the hands of the slaves; give them their choice, stand behind them so as to protect them in a free choice; HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY give them a free choice, and if they chose to go into slavery, let them stay in it; but if they chose to go out, sustain them in it. I said it was an impossibility to give them arms, referring to the expense and difficulty of furnishing them. He said he had a plan for an arm for them better than a musket -- a long pike. What he said as to emancipation in that way, I supposed was a mere matter of opinion, which I had no idea had anything practical connected with it. Question. Did he tell you whether, and how, he proposed to carry out plans of that kind, of putting arms in the hands of slaves? Answer. No, sir; I had no idea that he had any plan of the kind; never heard him allude to anything further than conversation which men frequently have. Question. Were you at Fort Scott, or in the neighborhood of Fort Scott, at the time of the troubles or difficulties there? Answer. No, sir; I was at home; that was at the time I speak of when I was sick. He went near to Fort Scott, and was remaining there while Kagi and others went to Fort Scott and released a prisoner who was a member of their company. Question. Who was he? Answer. They call him Ben Rice. I do not know whether his name is Benjamin Rice or Ben Rice. It is the familiar name he goes by. Question. Do you know that that is his true name? Answer. I presume it is; I have no means of knowing that it was not. Question. He remained where, when Kagi went to Fort Scott? Answer. I understood -- this is conversation I had with them, I was not there -- he remained on the Little Osage, at a fort that he had built. Question. What is the distance of your residence from Fort Scott? Answer. Twenty-five miles. Question. Do you know whether General Lane was down there at the same time? Answer. No, sir, not at this time. The time that I am speaking of is the last week that Brown remained in Kansas before he left; General Lane was there before, in the winter of 1857. The Chairman. I do not remember what year it was, but a party with which I understood Brown was associated, made an attack on the village at Fort Scott, and took possession of it. When was that, or when did Lane do it? Answer. Neither of them. Question. Who were the party that did that? Answer. I am not sure whether Captain Montgomery or Kagi commanded. I think they were both considered rather leaders of small parties that did it. Question. Was neither Lane nor Brown present? Answer. Neither of them. Lane was never at Fort Scott at any of those difficulties. Question. Was there no further hostility or violence there except in liberating this prisoner. Answer. At Fort Scott? The Chairman. Yes, sir. The Witness. There was nothing only what grew out of that. Mr. Little was killed, and his store was robbed. By Mr. Collamer: Question. When was that? Answer. That was in the winter of 1858-59, I do not recollect HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY the month. Question. It was just before Brown left the territory with those slaves? Answer. Yes, sir. While they were doing that, Brown remained sick at his fort on the Little Osage, twelve miles north of Fort Scott. While he was remaining there, a negro man came up from Missouri, wandering along by chance, and fell in with Brown. He told Brown that he was looking for some man to help him to run away from Missouri; that his master was dead; that he owed no service to anybody in particular except heirs; that he did not know when he was to be sold with his family, and he wanted help to bring them away into Kansas, and Brown made arrangements with him to go down after him the next day. He went down. The story which is reported in the newspapers about that is correct, I suppose, substantially. At the time, I saw it in the newspapers, and I heard it conversed about also. The Chairman. I do not know that that is important. I only wanted to get at Brown’s connection, if there was any, with that attack on Fort Scott. The Witness. I suppose Brown was advisory to it. I knew nothing about it until it was over. Question. Did you get that information from Brown himself that he counseled it? Answer. No sir; I did not. I wish to say here while on this subject that when Brown came to the Territory in the spring or summer [page 217] of 1858, he came to my house to know if he could be of any use in defending the frontier. Hamilton and others had come in and had killed -- Mr. Collamer. From Missouri? Answer. They were not Missourians; they were people that had been driven out of Kansas. There were three brothers Hamilton. They were Georgians. Most of these people, I suppose, had been driven out of Kansas in the fights on the border. They assembled in a company and came in from Missouri and took a number of prisoners, who were men at work on their farms and travelers on the road, and shot them; and it was a great shock to the community. They gave out word that they were going to take all the settlers in Linn county and shoot them in the same way. We all assembled; some 200 men, more or less, more I think, assembled on the line and detailed a company to stand guard all the time; to ride up and down the line and keep watch of this body of men and see that they did not break in. It happened in May, just at the time people should be plowing and planting, and it took citizens away from their work. Brown came in at this time and wanted to know if he could be of any service in guarding the line. I told him that he could, and we should be very glad to have him. We had sent to Governor Denver for arms, and to come down there; and the governor had promised to assist us. At my suggestion, a paper was drawn up, which Brown signed, and all the men who went into his company to guard the line signed, stipulating that he should not go into Missouri on any provocation whatever, and that no man in Kansas should be disturbed for his political opinions. I signed that also, and all the citizens to whom it was presented, who lived along the border, signed it. I do not know how many. I did not see it after there were eight or ten names to it. Brown went on to the claim where these murders had been committed -- the Marais des Cygnes murders -- bought the claim, and fortified it, and gave out word HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY that he was there either to fight or be peaceable, as they might choose; that he was Old Brown; and that they could make as good a neighbor of him as they wanted, or as bad a one. He remained there a month or two, more or less, and these men passed out of the State of Missouri. Mr. Hamilton and Titus and others passed away, and the troubles ceased -- that is, all danger from them disappeared. Brown went then away about his business. He was taken sick and came to my house and stayed, perhaps, two weeks. By the Chairman: Question. Was that in the month of May? Answer. I think the murders were committed in May. Brown went there in June, and perhaps in August he came to my house to be nursed, while he was too sick to lay there. Question. What year was that? Answer. 1858. Question. Did you hear him speak of any plan that he had of putting a number of young men to a military school or military training during that winter? Answer. No, sir; I never heard him speak of it. I heard some young man in Lawrence -- I do not know who it was; whether it was Realf or some other one -- say that they were going to take military lessons of an English officer. I am not positive who told me. It was a matter that I heard in conversation. Question. Was the object of the training expressed? Answer. No; I had no idea that it was anything more than is common all over the free States, where the young men drill and learn military tactics. Question. Will you look at this paper and see if it is your handwriting, and, if it is, say to whom it was addressed? [Exhibiting to the witness the following letter: “Moneka, K.T., March 29, 1859. “Dear Friend: Your favor of the 10th instant was received last evening. We were gratified to hear from you and of your success. We had followed you with anxious hearts from point to point on your perilous journey. Be pleased to let us hear from you from time to time, as you have opportunity. We are all well, and have been neither frightened nor hurt, though in constant peril of assassination or arrest. The pro-slavery party has defeated itself, more by their own stupidity than by our smartness. We vote on the county-seat in June. Send all the abolitionists here you can. “Please continue that writing which you begun at my house. I am a member of the historical society of Kansas, and am appointed on the department of biography. Please make a note of this, and act accordingly. “Yours truly. “Dr Weaver killed himself, I presume you have heard, while bringing in guns from Missouri to murder his neighbors with. It was a providential interference for our protection, I have no doubt.”] Answer. That is addressed to John Brown, in answer to a letter that he wrote to me. It is my handwriting. The Chairman. It is not signed. Answer. It was published with my name on it. How did they know that? The Chairman. That is a different matter. Why did not you sign your name to it? Answer. I do not know now. I supposed it was signed. When I saw HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY it in the newspapers, I supposed it was signed. I cannot give any reason why it was not signed, unless it was that I supposed my letters might be opened. It was a common thing for letters passing in and out, to and from Kansas, to be opened and read, to the disadvantage of the writer. Question. Opened where, and by whom? Answer. We supposed they were government officials, and that they were placed somewhere as spies, either at the distributing office or some other post office. That was the supposition. The Chairman. The way it was known to be your letter, I suppose, was the fact that it is indorsed here, in Brown’s handwriting, “A. Wattles’s letter; answered May 18th.” The Witness. I have Brown’s letters in my pocket, that he has written to me. According to your orders, I brought them all along that I could find. Question. What “success” was that you referred to in this note? Answer. In getting away from the enemies that were following him up through Kansas. I understood the United States troops were up after him, through the northern part of the Territory, and companies of men went from Atchison and elsewhere to arrest him. By Mr. Collamer: Question. Was that when he carried those slaves away? Answer. Yes, sir. By the Chairman: Question. Why did you fear assassination or arrest? Answer. That has no connection particularly with this. There was a posse got up there -- The Chairman. I do not put the question in reference to anything connected with your troubles and difficulties in Kansas, but only to ascertain if it was in anything connected with Brown and his fortunes. Answer. No, sir; not at all. There was a posse got up there to drive the free-State settlers out of Linn county, certain obnoxious ones, Republicans or abolitionists, or whatever they were called, headed by Marshal Russell, a man who was sent for that purpose, I supposed, from the south part of the country. We supposed he came from Arkansas, and I was told by a man in the secrets of the lodge -- it was a secret oath-bound society -- a man who was in there, and told me, he said, at the peril of his life -- The Chairman. Unless that refers to your connection with Brown, it is not necessary to state it. The Witness. I tell that in explanation of what follows there in that letter. The Chairman. Well, go on. The Witness. He said this man had come in there to take charge of the posse which was raised to arrest certain men in the county, or to kill them or drive them out, and that my name was on the list, perhaps the first on the list; and other prominent men, old settlers there, were on the same list; and this man who told me advised me to leave the county, as they were every day threatening to come over and kill me. I thought a good deal as John Brown thought about one thing, that I was worth as much to be shot there as any place, and I would let them act out their own plans; I took no measures against them but to go up and see Governor Medary. He said this posse was got without his consent, that Marshal Russell was acting without his orders, and he would put a stop to it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY The Chairman. That is in explanation of the part of your letter in which you speak of the threats of assassination? Answer. Yes, sir; that is the whole of it. The posse at Paris were threatening to kill me every day, I was told. By Mr. Collamer: Question. And you say the governor stopped it? Answer. Governor Medary stopped it. By the Chairman: Question. Have you the papers which the summons required you to bring? Answer. I have brought all my papers connected with my operations in Kansas. The Chairman. We only want those papers that would throw light on John Brown’s ulterior plans after he left Kansas -- anything of that kind. Answer. I was speaking about John Brown being at my house when he was sick. When he left my house, after he got well, he went out, took some claims for his sons that he expected would move back to Kansas, and went to work on them. He mowed some hay on the government land and put it up, and afterwards sold it. He bought a cow of neighbor of mine. Question. What has all that to do with the question? We only want to know if you have any papers or documents of any kind that will throw any light on his ulterior purposes? The witness exhibited certain letters, among them the following in the handwriting of John Brown: Boston, Massachusetts, April 8, 1857. My Dear Sir: Your favor of the 15th March, and that of friend H. of the 16th, I have just received. I cannot express my gratitude for them both. They give me just that kind of news I was most of all things anxious to hear. I bless God that he has not left the free-State men of Kansas to pollute themselves by the foul and loathesome embrace of the old rotten whore. I have been trembling all along lest they might back down from the high and holy ground they had taken. I say, in view of the wisdom, firmness, and patience of my friends and fellow-sufferers, (in the cause of humanity,) let God’s name be eternally praised! I would most gladly give my hand to all whose “garments are not defiled;” and I humbly trust that I shall soon again have opportunity to rejoice (or suffer further if need be) with you, in the strife between Heaven and Hell. I wish to send my most cordial and earnest salutation to every one of the chosen. My efforts this way have not been altogether fruitless. I wish you and friend H. both to accept this for the moment; may write soon again, and hope to hear from you both at Tabor, Fremont county, Iowa -- care of Jonas Jones, Esq. Your sincere friend, Nelson Hawkins. Augustus Wattles, Esq., Lawrence, Kansas Territory Question. What did you understand by his saying that he had been trembling all along in reference to his friends, lest they might back down from the high and holy ground they had taken? Answer. Yes, sir; he was afraid that they would yield to the bogus laws -- pay obedience to the bogus laws -- which the government and Missouri were trying to enforce in Kansas. Question. He says, also, “my efforts this way have not been altogether fruitless.” What does he refer to there as his HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY efforts in Boston and New England? Answer. I do not know, positively; but my suspicion is that he meant that he was raising funds for the purpose of coming out to Kansas. Question. The fighting was over in Kansas, in 1857, I suppose. What object could he have had in raising funds? Answer. I suppose that he was collecting funds to sustain the free-State party in their political position in resistance to the bogus laws. Question. Why did you suppose he had reference to that? Answer. That letter, I presume, follows the other; and it was all we were engaged in, politically. Question. Did you know of his intended visit to New England? The Witness. When he went? The Chairman. Yes, sir. Answer. No, sir. Question. Had you any information that he went to Boston before that letter? Answer. No, sir; I only replied to his letters. [The following letter was next exhibited in John Brown’s handwriting: Hudson, Ohio, June 3, 1857. My Dear Sir: I write to say that I started for Kansas some three weeks or more since, but have been obliged to stop for the fever and ague. I am now righting up, and expect to be on my way again soon. Free-State men need have no fear of my desertion. There are some half dozen men I want a visit from at Tabor, Iowa, to come off in the most Quiet Way, viz. Daniel Foster, late of Boston, Massachusetts; Holmes, Frazee, a Mr. Hill and William David, on Little Ottawa creek; a Mr. Cochran, on the Pottawatomie creek; or I would like equally well to see Dr. Updegraff and S.H. Wright, of Ossawatomie; or William Phillips, or Conway, or your honor. I have some very important matters to confer with some of you about. Let there be no words about it. Should any of you come out to see me wait at Tabor if you get there first. Mr. Adair, at Ossawatomie, may supply ($50,) fifty dollars, (if need be,) for expenses on my account on presentation of this. Write me at Tabor, Iowa, Fremont county. Very respectfully, yours, Jas. Smith. A. Wattles, Esq., Lawrence, Kansas Territory.] Question. Do you know the object Brown had in collecting these men at Tabor? Answer. I did not know at the time. I took the letter to Mr. Phillips as he requested, and asked Phillips if he knew what the old man wanted. He said, no; he suspected it was some scheme or other he had, but he had not time to attend to it. I know more now about it, but I am speaking of what I knew at the time. Question. Did you attend? Answer. No, sir. Question. Did you inform him you could not attend? Answer. No, sir. Question. How did you derive the information you now have? Answer. From common fame. The Chairman. That will not do. Did you derive it from Brown? Answer. No, sir. Question. Did any meeting take place there? HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY Answer. I do not know that it took place there. According to the testimony which I have seen in the papers, he collected a number of men there. That is all I know about it. That was the first information I had about his meeting. Cook’s confession, I think, says these young men met there for the purpose of drilling or making arrangements to go into Canada to form some combination. My knowledge about the meaning of that has come to me since this thing has broken out at Harpers Ferry. Question. You had no knowledge of it at the time? Answer. No; I took the letter to Colonel Phillips and Captain Holmes, and they both said they did not know anything about it. Question. Who is Daniel Foster, late of Boston, that he speaks of? Answer. Daniel Foster was a man who lived in Bourbon county, in Kansas, and I think he was a preacher. Question. Who is Holmes? Answer. Holmes was the son of a New York broker, a young man about seventeen or eighteen years old, his lieutenant at one time, and afterwards captain of his company. Question. Whose company? Answer. Captain Brown’s in the southern part of Kansas. Question. Who is Frazee? Answer. I never saw Frazee but once. He was old Brown’s teamster. When he went out of Kansas, in 1856, he drove his four-horse team. Question. The letter also mentions a Mr. Hill and Mr. David? Answer. I did not see them. Question. Did you know them? Answer. Not particularly. I would know them if I saw them at that time, but I never spoke with them. Question. Cochran, on Pottawatomie creek? Answer. I never saw him. I think I heard his name. Question. Dr. Updegraff? Answer. Dr. Updegraff was one of Brown’s company at the battle of Ossawatomie, and I think he is now president of the council in Kansas. Question. Who was Mr. Adair, of Ossawatomie, referred to here? Answer. He was a Presbyterian preacher. Brown was a half brother of his wife. Question. Do you know from what funds that fifty dollars was to be supplied? Answer. No, sir; only from inference. Jason Brown sold property there when he left, and left the notes with Adair to collect. I infer that was it. Question. This letter concluded with a request that you would write to him at Tabor? Did you do so? Answer. I do not think I did; I do not recollect; but if I did write, I presume the letter is with his papers. I do not recollect writing to him. Question. This letter was written the 3d of June, 1857. You saw him afterwards in 1858? Answer. The next time I saw him was in June, 1858. Question. Had he any reference, in his conversation then, to the meeting which he had called through this letter. Answer. No, sir. Question. Here is a letter dated “Boston, May 18, 1859." What “inclosures” does he refer to in it as having been received from you? HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY Answer. He sent to me to send all the letters which had come to the office for him. I sent them, and put in at the same time the little note you showed me first. Question. He speaks of kindness to him and his men. Did he mean his sons? Answer. No. He refers there to Tidd and Gill, I think. They had the fever and ague when they were on the line, and they were brought to my house to be taken care of. That was in July or August, 1858. By Mr. Collamer: Question. You mean belonging to his company on the border? Answer. Yes, sir. They were sick, and I took care of them as long as they chose to stay. The only allusion that Brown ever made to going to Harpers Ferry, in my presence, was the last conversation he had with me, and at the time I put no construction upon it, did not think anything about it until after I saw that announcement in the newspapers. He called in to see me, as I was telling you, in going out of the Territory, and I censured him for going into Missouri, contrary to our agreement, and getting those slaves. He said, “I considered the matter well; you will have no more attacks from Missouri; I shall now leave Kansas; probably you will never see me again; I consider it my duty to draw the scene of the excitement to some other part of the country.” Said he: “Farewell, God bless you.” He took hold of my hand, give me a shake of the hand, and left me. I was lying on the bed, sick. I did not know particularly what he meant. I did not attach any definiteness to it. As soon as I heard of the Harpers Ferry attack, I remembered what he had said to me, and supposed he had had allusion to it. In one of his letters to me, he made an allusion which I did not understand at the time; but in reading it over now, I have supposed he might have alluded to that. He acted as much like a settler as any man in Kansas. He worked claims and lived on them, built houses, and nobody would suppose he had any other idea than settling his sons in Kansas, with their cattle and other property gathered around them. By the Chairman: Question. Why were these letters of his signed with fictitious names? Answer. Because, as I have already said, we were afraid of our letters being opened. Question. He speaks in this last letter about a writing which he had commenced at your house, and you in your letter speak of a writing. What was that? Answer. The writing he mentions there was an autobiography which I requested him to write. We were conversing on the subject of the stories we heard about things in Kansas, as his murders, and things that I knew not to be true. There was another letter which I had, which I was anxious to bring here, but I could not find it. I put no particular value on the letters. They were not laid away for the purpose of saving them. The Chairman. Does that refer to any of his ulterior plans? Answer. No, sir; not at all. it just refers to clearing me of the suspicion that I knew of his invasion of Missouri from that letter. The letter was concerning some imported stock that I had bought of him, and others had bought, and I wanted a pedigree. He had two Morgan horses that he brought from Vermont. He agreed to send me the pedigree of his stock, and I wrote about it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY Question. Were you the agent or in any way connected with any of the societies that were got up in New England or elsewhere for contributing money to the people of Kansas? Answer. Yes, sir. Question. Which of them were you connected with? Answer. I was the agent for the Female Kansas Aid Society of Wisconsin, of which Mrs. Hinton, of Waukesha, was secretary. Question. What was the object of that society? Answer. To feed and clothe destitute people in Kansas, people who had been robbed by the invaders there in 1856. Question. Were any arms furnished by that society? Answer. No, sir, not the first one. Question. Were you connected with or agent for any other society? Answer. Professor Daniels, of Wisconsin, the State geologist, made me his agent to distribute clothing, and I distributed some for Mr. Arny. Question. Were you agent for or connected in any way with any society that did furnish arms? Answer. No, sir; not any that I know of. I never handled any, never kept any, and I do not think that I ever carried any in Kansas for more than two days. The Chairman. I speak of arms being furnished abroad for other persons, not for you. Had you any knowledge of the arms, Sharps rifles and pistols, that Brown brought with him to Harpers Ferry? Answer. No, sir; I had not. Question. Do you know how he got possession of them? Answer. I do not. I tried to get a Sharps rifle in Kansas, out of some that I heard had been sent there, but I could not; and I did not know who had care of them. I suspect now, from what has been developed, that he had them somewhere where they could not be got at. I heard of their being sent, but never knew of their arrival. By Mr. Collamer: Question. At any time, from anything Brown said or wrote, did you learn from him, in an way, or have any knowledge of Brown’s designs to make an attack or create any disturbance, in relation to slavery, anywhere else than in Kansas? Answer. I never had. I never saw so secretive a man as Brown. I never heard of his telling his plans to anybody. I have not the least idea that he disclosed them to any person, unless it was Kagi -- The Chairman. That is your inference? The Witness. Yes, sir. Mr. Collamer. I merely wished to know whether you knew of his plans, or of its having been known in Kansas that he intended any such project as creating an insurrection or disturbance in the slave States. Answer. I never heard of it. I think he alludes to it in one letter to me, and in a remark that he made in a blind way, that his duty called him somewhere else. Mr. Collamer. You say your impression of what he meant by that he only been entertained since the invasion of Harpers Ferry. Answer. Yes, sir; I had no idea before of what he meant. Augustus Wattles. Note. I desire to add that Captain Brown and his two oldest sons came to Kansas in the fall of 1854, selected claims, and HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY commenced improvements. They spent the winter in Missouri, and in the following spring they returned to Kansas, with their wives and cattle and horses, with the intention of making it a permanent home. Jason Brown had a nursery and horses, and John Brown, jr., some blooded cattle and other stock. Captain Brown told me that he had no idea of fighting until he heard the Missourians, during the winter he was there, make arrangements to come over into the Territory to vote. He said to me that he had not come to Kansas to settle himself, having left his family at North Elba, but he had come to assist his sons in their settlement, and to defend them, if necessary, in a peaceable exercise of their political rights. A. Wattles. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1861

December: Sarah Grimké Wattles led her younger sisters Emma Wattles and Mary Ann Wattles and Amelia Botkin Crocker and her two sisters, an army of 6 in all, invading the Bradley & Hildreth tavern in Mound City in the Kansas Territory bearing hatchets and axes many decades before the famous Carrie Nation began such “Hatchetations.” To make a clear swing, Sarah climbed up onto the bar. The young ladies would report that they had become almost drunk from the whiskey vapors they were releasing into the air. The driver of a fresh load of whiskey whipped his team so hard in getting away from the girls, who were yanking open the spigots of his barrels, that one of his horses dropped dead.

Abolitionist lecturers began at this point to dominate the annual lecture course of the Smithsonian Institution sponsored by the Washington Lecture Association, which was the leading lectern in Washington DC, paving the way for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and pushing the US President toward issuance of an Emancipation Proclamation. What had happened was that the head of the Institution, Henry, had become so suspected of sympathy to the Southern cause, that he had become unable to resist the pressure to allow the lectures. Pierpont had eased Henry’s concerns by limiting the course to twelve lectures and by inviting scholars such as Edward Everett, a former Whig politician and ex-president of Harvard College; Orestes A. Brownson; Oliver Wendell Holmes; James Russell Lowell; Ralph Waldo Emerson; and Cornelius C. Felton, president of Harvard College, to counterbalance abolitionists such as Horace Greeley, editor of the New-York Tribune; Henry Ward Beecher, minister at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York; Galusha Anderson, pastor at the Second Baptist Church of St. Louis; Wendell Phillips, an immediate abolitionist from Boston; and the Reverend George Barrell Cheever (1807-1890), a Congregational minister from New-York. To keep out troublemakers, high ticket prices were set and tickets could only be purchased several hours in advance of the lecture. A ticket for a single lecture cost twenty-five cents. A ticket for the entire course of lectures cost three dollars for a lady and a gentleman, two dollars for a gentleman, and a dollar and a half for a lady. The organization, however, had not been able to secure many of the lecturers Pierpont had promised Henry and invited Radical replacements for them. Moreover, it doubled the course from twelve to twenty-four lectures to accommodate the great interest in abolition circles to speak in Washington. Of those with a literary reputation, only Brownson and Emerson accepted Pierpont’s invitation, and they were instructed to lecture on politics rather than literature. The association had hoped to have Everett, the leading American orator, open the course, but he was unavailable. The lectures offered by Horace Greeley, Wendell Phillips, the Reverend George B. Cheever, and other abolitionists from this point until April 1862 offer a case study of radical antislavery Christian political activity and its clash with American science. The lectures aroused among these establishment scientists great fears of mob violence and roiled their Institution in popular disputes. Joseph Henry, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, believing that black people could live with white people only in a state of servitude, would close the course in April 1862 by forbidding further lectures on partisan topics.

At some point during this month the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson had a last conversation with his failing friend Henry Thoreau: [H]e mentioned most remarkable facts [about the local distribution of bird species], which had fallen under his unerring eyes. • The Hawk most common in Concord, the Red-Tailed species [Red-tailed Hawk Buteo jamaicensis], is not known near the sea-shore, twenty miles off, — or at Boston or Plymouth. • The White-Breasted Sparrow is rare in Concord [does the Rev. intend the White-throated Sparrow Zonotrichia albicollis?]: but the Ashburnham woods, thirty miles away, are full of it. • The Scarlet Tanager’s [Scarlet Tanager Piranga olivacea’s] is the commonest note in Concord, except the Red-Eyed HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY Flychatcher’s [is the Rev. referring to the Olive-sided Flycatcher Contopus borealis that Thoreau called the “Pe- pe”?]; yet one of the best field-ornithologists in Boston had never heard it. • The Rose-Breasted Grosbeak [Rose-breasted Grosbeak Pheucticus ludovicianus] is seen not infrequently at Concord, though its nest is rarely found; but in Minnesota Thoreau found it more abundant than any other bird, far more so than the Robin [American Robin Turdus migratorius].

• But his most interesting statement, to my fancy, was, that, during a stay of ten weeks on Mount Monadnock, he found that

the Snow-Bird [Dark-eyed Junco Junco hyemalis] built its nest on the top of the mountain, and probably never came down through the season. That was its Arctic; and it would probably yet be found, he predicted, on Wachusett and other Massachusetts peaks.

(We don’t know of an occasion on which Thoreau lived atop Monadnock for ten weeks. His longest stay of which we now have record would have been the summer of 1844, when he also hiked in the Catskills, and that entire summer itinerary could not possibly have begun before May 1st and could not possibly have continued past August 14th, for a total “window of opportunity” of some 15 weeks. That was before our guy had become greatly preoccupied with birdwatching. Any remarks that Thoreau made about birds and this mountain would likely have been based on observations made during his four-day-and-five-night trip there in August 1860, by which point he had learned the difference between a hawk and a handsaw. However, had the Rev. learned something through direct conversation, about the trip Thoreau had made as a youth in 1844, that would indicate an extended mountain camping experience of which we do not now have record?) HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1863

June 1, Monday: An ordinance issued by Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck greatly reduced freedom of the press.

Sarah Grimké Wattles got married with Dr. Lundy Hiatt. The bride would learn holistic medicine from her husband and the pair would set up a joint practice in Texas.

Lieutenant-Colonel James Duncan Graham was promoted to Colonel in the Corps of Engineers.

On that evening a small naval flotilla set off on a clandestine mission along the banks of the Combahee River near Beaufort, South Carolina, with their mission being to destroy Confederate supplies and munitions and disable riverbed mines. The area of the raid had been scouted in advance by Harriet Tubman, who accompanied the Union boats that night, guiding the white and black soldiers along the mine-filled waters and then herself coming ashore to assist in the evacuation of more than 700 slave laborers from nearby plantations. The Union raiders would be subjected not only to rifle fire but also to artillery as they evacuated the scene. US CIVIL WAR

Thomas Cholmondeley had been the 1stborn son, and therefore the heir, in a family with claims to aristocracy. To inherit the Condover Park estate near Shrewsbury, at this point he was granted a Royal License that enabled him to change his name to Thomas Owen and assume that family’s arms of heraldry. Per A GENERAL AND HERALDIC DICTIONARY OF THE PEERAGE AND BARONETAGE OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE, TOGETHER WITH MEMOIRS OF THE PRIVY COUNCILLORS AND KNIGHTS: EXHIBITING, UNDER STRICT ALPHABETICAL ARRANGEMENT, THE PRESENT STATE OF THESE EXALTED RANKS, WITH THEIR ARMORIAL BEARINGS, MOTTOES, &C. AND DEDUCING THE GENEALOGICAL LINE OF EACH HOUSE FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD; WITH AN APPENDIX, COMPRISING THE PRELATES, SURNAMES OF PEERS, TITLES BY COURTESY OF THEIR ELDEST SONS, NAMES OF HEIRS PRESUMPTIVE, &C. &C. by Sir Bernard Burke, C.B., LL.D., Ulster King of Arms. London: Harrison and Sons, 59, Pall Mall; Booksellers to The Queen, and H.R.H. The Prince of Wales, 47th Edition, 1885: Thomas, of Overleigh, co[unty] Chester, who s[ucceeded] to the Condover estate, and changed his name to Owen; he was b[orn] 21 Nov[ember] 1823; and m[arried] 1864, Victoria-Alexandrina, dau[ghter] of John Cotes, Esq., of Woodcote, Salop, by his wife, Lady Louisa, dau[ghter] of Charles, last Earl of Liverpool: he d[ied] the same year, shortly after his marriage. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1876

December 19, Tuesday: After the Emancipation Proclamation Augustus Wattles had focused on assisting newly freed slaves in accomplishing the difficult transition from slave to citizen. On this day he died at the age of 69 in Mound City, Kansas. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1881

Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s COMMON SENSE ABOUT WOMEN, made up primarily of pieces he had placed in the Woman’s Journal. COMMON SENSE ... WOMEN

Harriet Hanson Robinson’s MASSACHUSETTS IN THE WOMAN SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT. She publicly affiliated with Susan B. Anthony’s National Woman’s Suffrage Association. MASS. WOMAN SUFFRAGE

Susan E. Lowe Wattles wrote to Susan B. Anthony that there had been a definite connection between the racism struggle and the sexism struggle: “the first in the woman suffrage cause [in Kansas Territory] were those who had been the most earnest workers for freedom. They had come to Kansas to prevent its being made a slave State.” The Wattles family had been prominent in the foundation of the Moneka Women’s Rights Association.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary also became an active member of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association.

FEMINISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1892

Sarah Grimké Wattles Hiatt’s husband Dr. Lundy Hiatt died. She would split her time between Texas and Kansas, continuing her work for women’s rights until her death in 1910. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1897

January 9, Saturday: Augustus Wattles’s widow Susan E. Lowe Wattles had remained in Mound City, Kansas, continuing her correspondence on behalf of the rights of women and witnessing many great events in the struggle for women’s equality. On this day she died. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1908

April 12, Sunday: In her later years Friend Esther Whinery Wattles had moved to Coconut Grove, Florida, to be with her daughter Harmonia “Monia” Wattles Woodford (Mrs. Marshall Woodford). On this day she died. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY

1910

Sarah Grimké Wattles Hiatt died.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2017. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: April 11, 2017 HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button.

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOHN OTIS WATTLES THE WATTLES FAMILY the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.