LAND GONE THRO' YOUR GUTS

 “The effect of these unfriendly proceedings, on the part of Jennings, was highly injurious to Teed, who was soon reduced to great perplexity in his pecuniary concerns.”- The Report of the Trials of the Murderers of Richard Jennings.

      Late nineteenth century tomahawk and gunpowder history (more agenda than fact) by Sullivan County’s James E. Quinlan, has been my go-to for much of the color and parochial context.  Stephen Crane mined and fictionalized Quinlan for Red Badge of Courage and Sullivan County Tales and Sketches. I’m doing the same. Quinlan’s tale tales were hazy, propagandistic and sensational, but fact was there, hidden deep within the musty pages and footnotes. I’ve tried to avoid the patriotic picture book style of James Fenimore Cooper, or Crane’s wordy romanticism. I didn’t want to glorify these familial accounts, turning them into a Daughters of the American Revolution pastiche, or wallow in a misplaced sense of collective white guilt. And there was plenty of that to go around. Many times these ancestors were comically responsible for their own demise, wickedness predictably uniting in folly. They were idiots and criminals, hardworking farmers, as well as community leaders and quiet, unobtrusive neighbors, just like today.

      It took me a while to get all these different individuals with their various motives, class distinctions, entitlements, privilege, disenfranchisement and marginalization straight in my head, and I’m related to most of them. To the casual reader it’s completely confusing. But, lacking the Indian and the slave, we have a pretty nice cross section of 1819 small town, rural, America. 

    First, and foremost, we have the victim, Richard Jennings: race; white, sex; male, occupation; farmer/ yeoman(kin).  I refer to the 1833 publication, “The Record of Crimes in the United States; containing a brief sketch of the prominent traits in the character and conduct of the most notorious malefactors who have been guilty of capital offences; and who have been detected and convicted,” for the victim-shaming. The biographical sketches were supposed to be devoted to the murderers, but no cold-blooded killer compares to Dick Jennings. I quote:  “Among his neighbors and acquaintances, his character was considered far from being amiable. He was of a sour and morose temper, avaricious and niggardly, generally engaged in law suits, and on the whole was extremely troublesome and vexatious to the society in which he lived. We should have spared his memory these recollections, had they not been necessary to the following narrative.” The civic moralists wanted you to know that Richard Jennings deserved everything he got for being a “vexatious” asshole, in a town of vexatious assholes.

      Alongside the victim we have the actual killers: James Teed: race; white, sex; male, occupation; distiller/yeoman? (kin), David Conklin: race; white, sex; male, occupation; farmer/yeoman (no relation), David Dunning: race; white, sex; male, occupation; tenant/farmhand (no relation), Jack Hodges: race; African American, sex; male, occupation; boatman/farmhand/boarder (no relation), and Hannah Teed: race- white, sex- female, occup.- homemaker/distiller (kin by marriage), a conspiracy of clowns. The press, the pulpit, the ex-cop Worden (and even I) will pay way more attention to the murderers than the murdered.

      Before James Teed discovered what his uncle and mother had done, he took a ride over to Sugar Loaf to take a good look at his new farmhouse. He was out of breath, the horse lathered and slippery by the time he hitched up to the porch post. Everything was perfect. The house was perfect. The land was perfect. The timing…. everything. The little place had two rooms downstairs and two smaller ones upstairs, sat on a straight, dry stone foundation, with a crawl space tall enough to stand up on one side. The roof wasn't bad, though a bit swayed, and in need of some patching. But that could wait. The walls were staggered vertical rough planks, of varying widths, clad in painted clapboard- structural and pleasing to look at. Inside peeling wallpaper covered the walls, but it wouldn’t take much to scrape the boards and spruce it up a bit. It was a pleasant, well built, rectangular box cut right down the middle. There was a plumb, stone chimney in the center, fireplaces on both sides of the thin partition wall, and windows facing the road. The place was set up for a tenant, and that's just what James had in mind.

     The Teed family could live on one side and rent out the other. James knew just the couple. The Dunnings, Dave and Margaret, were hardworking, white tenant farmers presently boarding on his brother-in-law David Conkling’s farm. Conklin would gladly release his boarders to Teed, and also had a suggestion how James could keep the property out of Richard Jennings’ hands. James believed this had already been accomplished, but he was listening and thrilled with his prospects. His giddiness would be short-lived.

       On which ever side of the revolution the Jennings had lined up, they managed to hold onto some of their property and were obviously willing to fight and die over what little was left. I have an old broken plate that was willed to my mother by some Jennings family member. In faded sepia ink on the back of the plate is written: “This plate was bought at the auction. The hangings took place in the Apple Orchard on a scaffold prepared (illegible) west of Goshen, New York in Apr 1818” [1819]. It’s unclear what particular auction and from whose property this plate came, but it was likely used by one or more of our principles. It is the one relic (property) I have that ties me to all of this.