ELKANAH WATSON HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
1758
January 22, Sunday: Canal proponent and county fair founder Elkanah Watson was born in Plymouth and claimed a proud genealogy. ELKANAH WATSON
ESSENCE IS BLUR. SPECIFICITY, THE OPPOSITE OF ESSENCE, IS OF THE NATURE OF TRUTH.
Elkanah Watson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
1773
May 4, Wednesday: The good news was out, in Rhode Island, that the brothers Moses Brown and Joseph Brown were back from Massachusetts, and that somehow they had managed to bring the captured leading citizen John Brown home with them. The Reverend Ezra Stiles registered the news in his diary as “A humbling stroke for the Tories!” THE BROWN BROTHERS
(Subsequent to these events, 16-year-old Elkanah Watson would become apprenticed to John Brown.)
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).
Elkanah Watson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
1775
In Rhode Island, Elkanah Watson was kicking around as a young man. ELKANAH WATSON’S YOUTH
Nicholas Cooke was in charge of the colony. At this point in this roguish colony’s trajectory, one person of every fourteen was a slave, the highest %age in New England. Yet manumissions were occurring (here’s one from Newport for which I don’t yet have a plain-text transcription):
“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.
GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE
Elkanah Watson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON September 12, Tuesday: Late in the summer of 1775, the shortage of powder among General George Washington’s troops besieging Boston had been so severe that they had no longer been able to fire their cannon. Had the British gone on the attack, the riflemen would not have had enough powder to resist them. Therefore on this day the sloop Katy departed Narragansett Bay in an effort to assist the Continental Army by capturing some powder from the British magazine on the island of Bermuda. (By the time the ship would arrive, this powder would already have been captured and would already be enroute to Philadelphia. In November, however, John Brown would manage to bring ashore in Rhode Island a shipment of high-grade pistol powder obtained in Suriname –he would offer this to General Washington at 6 s per pound delivered to Cambridge, a rate that the general would describe as “most exorbitant” because in October the powder had been obtainable for 4 s per pound– and would dispatch Elkanah Watson with a guard of six men to convey the war material securely overland in a covered wagon.) ELKANAH WATSON
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.
GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE November: Late in the summer of 1775, the shortage of powder among General George Washington’s troops besieging Boston had been so severe that they had no longer been able to fire their cannon. Had the British gone on the attack, the riflemen would not have had enough powder to resist them. Therefore the sloop Katy had been sent off in an abortive attempt to capture some powder from a British magazine on the island of Bermuda, although by the time the ship arrived, this powder had already been captured and was already on its way to Philadelphia. In this month, however, John Brown managed to bring ashore in Rhode Island a shipment of high-grade pistol powder obtained in Suriname, and, despite the fact that in October the powder had been selling at 4s per pound, he offered it to General Washington in Cambridge at 6s per pound –a rate the general described as “most exorbitant”– and dispatched Elkanah Watson with a guard of six men to convey the war material securely overland in a covered wagon. ELKANAH WATSON
The war was still not declared, but already John had sold a ship to the new Rhode Island navy, and a cargo of gunpowder at a premium price. Practically overnight, John had become what is Elkanah Watson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON called in modern parlance a defense contractor.
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.
Elkanah Watson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
1777
September 4, Thursday: At the age of 19, Elkanah Watson was entrusted to carry more than $50,000 to John Brown and Nicholas Brown of Providence, Rhode Island’s agents in South Carolina and Georgia. With the money sewed into the linings of his garments, he would accomplish the journey of some 1,200 miles from Providence to Charleston in 70 days (along the way passing through Edenton, North Carolina on the Albemarle Sound near the Great Dismal Swamp, as well as through the state capital of New Bern).1
NEVER READ AHEAD! TO APPRECIATE SEPTEMBER 4TH, 1777 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).
November 13, Thursday: Elkanah Watson arrived in Charleston, South Carolina and delivered the funds of John Brown and Nicholas Brown of Providence, Rhode Island to their agent. Then he, with two companions, set out on a tour of exploration of other southern states (they would be dissuaded from entering Florida, which was still under British control).
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
1. $50,000 then would be roughly equivalent to $5,000,000 now. I would therefore presume that the funds were not in cash, but were instead in the form of large-denomination banknotes or letters of credit that would be rather difficult for a robber to benefit from. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
1779
Improvements were begun on the St. Lawrence River, including a number of short canals.
Elkanah Watson traveled to Europe for 5 years, during which time he would study its canals. ELKANAH WATSON
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
Elkanah Watson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
1782
December 5, Thursday: In Kinderhook, New York, the 1st US President to be “born in the USA” was born: Martin Van Buren, who would become our 8th President (1837-1841), was born to Abraham and Maria Hoes Van Buren.
King George III formally acknowledged the independence of the former North American colonies. Having won a lottery in Europe Elkanah Watson commissioned John Singleton Copley to paint his portrait, and we can see in the background of this painting that a sailing vessel is displaying the US flag of the period, honoring the original thirteen colonies and their alliance with France. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
Elkanah Watson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
1785
Returning to the US, Elkanah Watson met with George Washington to discuss a Potomac/Ohio River Canal. Washington was elected president of the Patowmack Canal Company. ELKANAH WATSON
Silas Deane drummed up support for a Lake Champlain/St. Lawrence Canal.
NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE
John Jay and Alexander Hamilton organized the New-York Manumission Society.
Jean-Antoine Houdon, commissioned by the legislature to execute a statue of George Washington, arrived at Mount Vernon; he made a life mask and painstaking measurements of Washington.
As you inspect the above piece of plaster, bear in mind please that it was probably in about this year that the mulatto slave West Ford was being born in Westmoreland County, Virginia. Some speculate that he was the son of Washington with Venus, a daughter of a slave who had been one of George’s childhood playmates. The story is that during a visit by Washington to the plantation on which Venus was a slave during the previous year, this girl had been asked to serve as his bed companion.
Late in this year, Elkanah Watson purchasing a plantation in Edenton, North Carolina and four slaves, and engaged for a 2d time in a commercial enterprise with a merchant of Nantes, François Cossoul, who resided on the island of Haiti.
Elkanah Watson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
1787
Elkanah Watson’s partner in Haiti, François Cossoul, died.
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
Elkanah Watson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
1789
On the trail between the Genesee Valley and Fort Niagara in upstate New York, Gilbert R. Berry opened an inn at what was then called Hartford and is now called Avon.
By this point the Nicholites near Deep River, North Carolina had erected a meetinghouse of their own and no longer needed to utilize the local meetinghouse of the Quakers.
Closing out his affairs in North Carolina (presumably this would have meant, in part, the selling off of his slaves), Elkanah Watson relocated to Albany, New York. There he would become a successful businessman, found the Bank of Albany, and become the chief promoter for an Erie Canal.
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
Elkanah Watson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
1791
December: Following a conference at Newtown earlier in the year, a delegation of Seneca headmen visited President George Washington at Philadelphia. News of the November defeat of St. Clair in Ohio arrived during the visit.
Elkanah Watson proposed to the state legislature that natural waterways could be used to create a shipping canal across upstate New York. ERIE CANAL
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.
Elkanah Watson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
1792
The Western Inland Lock Navigation Company was formed by General Philip Schuyler, to dig a 3-mile Little Falls, New York canal, and another linking the Mohawk River with Wood Creek. Elkanah Watson was named to the commission. ELKANAH WATSON
The small canal that had been being dug in the Bath area of the district of Maine was in this year completed.
A Unitarian congregation was formed at Portland in the district of Maine by an Episcopalian minister and friend of the Reverend James Freeman, Thomas Oxnard, to whom the reverend had given books by the Reverends Lindsey and Priestley.
The Reverend Freeman began to serve on the Boston School Committee (he would serve for many years).
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
Elkanah Watson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
1807
In his later life Elkanah Watson had purchased a farm in the eastern Albany suburb of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. This year, on the village green, to the great interest of all, he displayed the very latest thing in American animal husbandry, a pair of merino sheep.
Well, but this wasn’t the only fascinating thingie — according to Joseph Felt’s ANNALS OF SALEM, in this year an exhibition of phantasmagoria apparatus was touring Massachusetts.
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
Elkanah Watson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
1810
An aristocratic New York politician, DeWitte Clinton, became a booster of the proposal for a humongous Erie Canal engineering project. (How do you know when you’ve won? –When some almighty dude like DeWitte Clinton takes your idea away from you.)
At Pittsfield, Massachusetts, one of the farsighted guys who had been an early daddy of the idea of a humongous Erie Canal engineering project in upstate New York, Elkanah Watson, organized the initial county fair in these United States of America (he’s now credited as “The Father of America’s County and State Fairs”).
Daddy
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.
Elkanah Watson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
1811
Fall: Elkanah Watson’s display of his pair of merino sheep on the green of his village in 1807 had by this point evolved into the Berkshire County Fair, a major production, featuring a procession of “three or four thousand animals,” a band, displays of local industries, and artisans. Watson was taking careful steps to attract women by offering premiums on domestic products and by holding an annual ball. Agricultural societies would eagerly adopt Watson’s model for agricultural fairs but would often face funding difficulties.
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.
Elkanah Watson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
1819
As part of a general depression, the aggregate value of real estate and personal property in the state of New York dropped from $315,000,000 in the previous year to $256,000,000.
Jethro Wood patented a metal plow that could be manufactured in pieces so individual parts might be replaced as they wore out. Many farmers would refuse to abandon their wooden plows, suspecting that cast-iron poisons the soil.
In Steuben County, Erastus Shepard began publishing the Western Republican.
At the urging of Albany merchant Elkanah Watson, the Steuben County Agricultural Society was founded.
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.
Elkanah Watson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
1820
HISTORY OF THE RISE, PROGRESS, AND EXISTING CONDITION OF THE WESTERN CANALS IN THE STATE OF NEW-YORK: FROM SEPTEMBER 1788, TO THE COMPLETION OF THE MIDDLE SECTION OF THE GRAND CANAL, IN 1819, TOGETHER WITH THE RISE, PROGRESS, AND EXISTING STATE OF MODERN AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES, ON THE BERKSHIRE SYSTEM, FROM 1807, TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE IN THE STATE OF NEW-YORK, JANUARY 10, 1820. BY ELKANAH WATSON (Albany: Published by D. Steele, No. 472 S. Market-street. Packard & Van Benthuysen, Printers. 1820).
During the construction of the Erie Canal, in this year, a process of natural cementing was discovered and was patented in the US by Canvass White.2 In the 1820s and 1830s, a great religious revival would sweep over western New York State as if the waters of that new waterway, which would cement the Great Lakes to the Atlantic beginning in 1825, had created a sort of “psychic highway” along which could travel water-insoluble preachments of the Shaker persuasion –and Mormon –and Adventist –and Utopian socialist –and Millerite persuasions. Well, another explanation of this curious phenomenon, slightly more plausible than hearts of cast stone, would be that the people of this region had brought themselves to abandon some of the more offensive aspects of their Calvinist intellectual heritage, without having been able to abandon their need to make some people Right by making other people Wrong. They had yet to be able to dispense with the extreme expressions of moral fervor and maliciousness to which they had for so long been accustomed. Their new non-Calvinist world would have been insufficiently mysterious and insufficiently dangerous, without some set of beliefs or other to which they could continue to sacrifice themselves and others. So there was a market there, and the need was filled.
The Little Falls Canal of the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company was bought out by New York State and merged into the Erie Canal. While it has often been dismissed as a mere marginal precursor of the grander Erie Canal project, this network of artificial works and natural waterway improvements connecting the Mohawk River port at Schenectady with the Great Lakes harbor at Oswego had already been, in its own right, a dramatic and significant American transportation development.
During the 1820s and 1830s the local agricultural exhibitions that had been initiated by Elkanah Watson in 1810 were still being supported by private donations, and chronically were short of funds for premiums, fair grounds, judges, transportation, publicity, and entertainment.
2. Although this new construction material was a considerable improvement over the traditional Roman cement, the “Portland” cement with which we are now familiar would not come along until much later. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
1840
By this year state legislatures had formed agricultural boards and allocated funds to agricultural societies — which in turn would allow for larger, more regular fall exhibitions.
Henry Root Colman made his 3d annual report in regard to agriculture in Massachusetts.
WALDEN: Fellow-travellers as they rattled by compared it aloud PEOPLE OF with the fields which they had passed, so that I came to know how WALDEN I stood in the agricultural world. This was one field not in Mr. Colman’s report. And, by the way, who estimates the value of the crop which Nature yields in the still wilder fields unimproved by man? The crop of English hay is carefully weighed, the moisture calculated, the silicates and the potash; but in all dells and pond holes in the woods and pastures and swamps grows a rich and various crop only unreaped by man. Mine was, as it were, the connecting link between wild and cultivated fields; as some states are civilized, and others half-civilized, and others savage or barbarous, so my field was, though not in a bad sense, a half-cultivated field. They were beans cheerfully returning to their wild and primitive state that I cultivated, and my hoe played the Ranz des Vaches for them.
HENRY ROOT COLMAN THE BEANFIELD
REPORT OF THE AGRICULTURAL MEETING, HELD IN BOSTON, JANUARY 18, 1840, CONTAINING THE REMARKS ON THAT OCCASION OF THE HON. DANIEL WEBSTER, OF THE U.S. SENATE, AND OF PROFESSOR SILLIMAN, M.D., L.L.D., OF YALE COLLEGE, CONN. / WITH NOTES BY HENRY COLMAN, COMMISSIONER FOR THE AGRICULTURAL SURVEY OF THE STATE (Salem: Printed at the Gazette Office. Salem Power Press). BOSTON, JANUARY 18, 1840
Henry Root Colman. AGRICULTURAL ADDRESSES DELIVERED AT NEW HAVEN , NORWICH AND HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT, AT THE COUNTY CATTLE SHOWS IN THE YEAR 1840. Boston: Dutton and Wentworth.
(The Reverend also issued a REPORT ON SILK CULTURE.)
Following a short stay in Genoa Nicolò Paganini relocated to Nice, but there he completely lost his voice, having for some time suffered from “laryngeal consumption of syphilitic origin.” He became able to HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON communicated with his son only by way of notes. Finally he died.
WALDEN: Near at hand, upon the topmost spray of a birch, sings PEOPLE OF the brown-thrasher –or red mavis, as some love to call him– all WALDEN the morning, glad of your society, that would find out another farmer’s field if yours were not here. While you are planting the seed, he cries, –“Drop it, drop it, –cover it up, cover it up, – pull it up, pull it up, pull it up.” But this was not corn, and so it was safe from such enemies as he. You may wonder what his rigmarole, his amateur Paganini performances on one string or on twenty, have to do with your planting, and yet prefer it to leached ashes or plaster. It was a cheap sort of top dressing in which I had entire faith.
NICOLÒ PAGANINI THE BEANFIELD
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.
Elkanah Watson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
1841
The New York State Fair was held for the 1st time, at Syracuse. (Sponsored by the New York Agricultural Society, the 3-day event attracted more than 15,000 people. This fair was the 1st in the tradition of US state fairs with agricultural and domestic themes.)
Henry Root Colman made his 4th and final annual agricultural survey of Massachusetts. REPORT ON AGRICULTURE PEOPLE OF WALDEN WALDEN: A very agricola laboriosus was I to travellers bound westward through Lincoln and Wayland to nobody knows where; they sitting at their ease in gigs, with elbows on knees, and reins loosely hanging in festoons; I the home-staying, laborious native of the soil. But soon my homestead was out of their sight and thought. It was the only open and cultivated field for a great distance on either side of the road; so they made the most of it; and sometimes the man in the field heard more of travellers’ gossip and comment than was meant for his ear: “Beans so late! peas so late!” –for I continued to plant when others had begun to hoe,– the ministerial husbandman had not suspected it.
HENRY ROOT COLMAN THE BEANFIELD As you can see, the reason why Henry Thoreau’s bean crop was not in these annual reports of the ministerial husbandman was not that Thoreau was an inconsiderable farmer, but instead that — such reports had already been discontinued while the beanfield in question had been still full of stumps and brush!
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
Elkanah Watson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
1842
December 5, Monday: Opening of the 3d (lame duck) session of the 27th federal Congress. The Whigs were still in control but knew that as the result of the recent election, in the next federal Congress they would not be in control. Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts gave notice that he would move to rescind Rule 21, the gag rule which had for many years been preventing any consideration of any proposal to eliminate the practice of human enslavement in the United States of America.
Joshua Reed Giddings had been re-elected from Ohio as a Whig to the 28th through 30th Congresses to fill the vacancy caused by his own resignation. He would be re-elected as a Free-Soil candidate to the 31st through 33rd Congresses, and then re-elected as a Republican to the 34th and 35th Congresses, and would serve until March 3, 1859.
Elkanah Watson died at Port Kent, New York.
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.)
Elkanah Watson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
1850
Summer: There was continued doubt as to John Brown of North Elba, New York’s financial solidity: A failed surveyor, farmer, speculator, schoolteacher, tanner, and cattleman, he showed up as a wool dealer in an 1848 credit report: “his condition is questionable.” Winter 1849: “may or may not be good.” Summer 1850: “his means are equally obscure.” Still in his forties, he looked sixty to credit reporters. The agency lost him when he switched lines of work yet again, only to fail yet again. Like many another misfit who pushed a doomed venture too far, he quit when he had no other choice. Having grown whiskers for the first time, his craggy face looked still more ancient. Everyone had an opinion of this broken man. “Served him right.” Overhearing such comments, Thoreau said he felt proud even to know him and questioned why people “talk as if a man’s death were a failure, and his continued life, be it of whatever character, were a success.” The bankrupt court had restored this loser’s freedom in 1842. Now it was 1859, and no earthly court could save John Brown after his failure at Harpers Ferry.
He brought his Devon cattle to the Agricultural Fair of Essex County: The appearance upon the grounds of a number of very choice and beautiful Devons, from the herd of Mr. John Brown, residing in one of our most remote and secluded towns, attracted great attention, and added much to the interest of the Fair. The interest and admiration they excited have attracted public attention to the subject, and has already resulted in the introduction of several choice animals into this region. We have no doubt but that this influence upon the character of the stock HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON of our county will be permanent and decisive.
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.)
Elkanah Watson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
1856
MEN AND TIMES OF THE REVOLUTION; OR, MEMOIRS OF ELKANAH WATSON, INCLUDING HIS JOURNALS OF TRAVELS IN EUROPE AND AMERICA, FROM THE YEAR 1777 TO 1842, AND HIS CORRESPONDENCE WITH PUBLIC MEN, AND REMINISCENCES AND INCIDENTS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. EDITED BY HIS SON, WINSLOW C. WATSON (New-York: Dana and Company, Publishers, 381 Broadway. 1856). At the age of fifteen, in Sept., 1773, Elkanah Watson left Plymouth for Providence, to become an apprentice with John Brown, a benefactor of Brown University, and then one of the most enterprising merchants in our country. In that year the tea was destroyed at Boston, and the difficulties with England were assuming a very serious aspect. The young men of Providence formed themselves into military associations, and often met to drill. He enrolled himself in the Cadet company.... The mind of young Watson was fixed upon entering the army, but application to his father and to Mr. Brown, to be released from his indentures, were in vain. Mr. Brown, finding the army almost destitute of every munition of war, particularly of powder, directed the captains of his vessels on their return voyages, to freight with that article, and when the army at Boston had not four rounds to a man, most fortunately, one of Mr. Brown’s ships brought in a ton and a half of powder, and it was immediately forwarded under the charge of young Watson to Cambridge, attended by six or eight recruits to guard it. Mr. Watson says: “I delivered my letter to Gen. Washington in person, and was deeply impressed with an emotion I cannot describe in contemplating that great man, his majestic mien, his dignified and commanding deportment.” Soon after this, Mr. Brown having contracted to supply the army of Washington with flour, sailed for Providence with a cargo from Newport. This vessel was seized, and Mr. Brown was himself made a prisoner and was sent to Boston in irons, charged with heading a party, in 1772, which burned his majesty’s schooner Gaspé, in Providence river. The whole community was indignant and exasperated at his seizure. A consultation was held immediately and it was decided to send an express to Plymouth in order to fit out two armed schooners to intercept, if possible, the captured flour vessel, in her passage round Cape Cod, and release Mr. Brown. Watson was entrusted with that important mission, and with his musket at his back, on a fleet horse, be arrived at Plymouth at two o’clock in the morning, alarmed the town with the cry of fire, and aroused up the committee of safety. At sunrise he was awakened by the beat of the drum to muster volunteers for the enterprise. By two o’clock the same day, he with sixty to eighty others embarked on board two dilapidated fishing schooners equipped with two old cannon each, and with powder loose in barrels. They sailed reckless of consequences, determined to secure Mr. Brown. They had no commission, and had they been captured, would probably have been hung as pirates with little formality. They cruised ten days east of Cape Cod without success, and being pressed by a twenty gun ship, finally escaped into Plymouth. Thus young Watson sailed at the age of seventeen from the place of his nativity, in probably the first vessel that opposed the HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON British flag, and but a few rods from the rock upon which our forefathers landed, one hundred and fifty-five years before, in the assertion of that liberty which was then bravely defended by their descendants. Mr. Brown was soon after released through the interposition of his brother, Moses Brown, the conspicuous and eminent Quaker of Providence. The commerce of Providence was prostrated by the war, and in August, 1777, Mr. Brown and his brother Nicholas proposed to Mr. Watson to take cargo of about fifty thousand dollars to carry on horseback to South Carolina, and deposit in the hands of agents for investment in cargoes for European markets....
CONTINGENCY ALTHOUGH VERY MANY OUTCOMES ARE OVERDETERMINED, WE TRUST THAT SOMETIMES WE ACTUALLY MAKE REAL CHOICES.
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 2016. 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
Elkanah Watson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON
Prepared: April 16, 2016 HDT WHAT? INDEX
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON 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
ELKANAH WATSON ELKANAH WATSON 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