CRADLED IN IGNORANCE

“You have seen the manner in which she [Margaret Dunning] testified, you saw the hysteric laugh which distorted her countenance……and the trouble and anxiety she has experienced has affected her reason and destroyed her memory.”- Martin Van Buren to the court.

    The phrenological chart of Belleville, Texas Judge John Patterson Osterhout, drawn up by Prof. Sylvanius Stokes for a charge of $2 says it all. This study of the shape and size of the skull notes (on a scale of 7): Brain size- 3, Activity- 5, Philoprogenitiveness- Parental love, Filial love, and love of pets in general- 6 minus. Perception and memory of colors- 4

Never trust a man who only has half a brain—and doesn’t love pets.

    Back streets, small underwater towns, skinny waterfalls, beat-down mountain tops, butcher shops, paper mills, lumber companies and rare loco-weeds would be named for both Osterhouts and Jennings. A local Sullivan County visionary named Asa K. Osterhout’s paper mill in Hortonville was known for recycling department store waste paper into soft, pliable toilet paper at reasonable prices. In 1879, a fire consumed the mill, burning it to the ground, leaving Asa, and the delicate assholes of Sullivan County in much distress. 

    Martin Scorsese’s second unit cameraman David Osterhout is credited with shooting Robert De Niro’s first scene in Mean Streets. Also an actor and director, David O. was featured in Boxcar Bertha and directed 1971’s Women in Cages - white skin on the black market. Okay, it’s not exactly A-list. Even Hollywood is not safe from a family member chewing at its cashmere sweaters—and movie contracts.

    My favorite intra-historic female is Mildred Osterhout. Her biography written by Nancy Knickerbocker, No Plaster Saint, is a good read, even you aren’t related. Mildred’s New York bloodline left the state for Canada with Butler’s Rangers in 1780. These would be the Tories at the family reunion. Mildred was educated and refined, had a Methodist minister for a father and a famous missionary for an uncle. Her social conscience was forged early and developed into world-class activism. As they like to say in liberal circles, “she walked with Gandhi.” She also got put down by Gandhi, who dismissed her guru devotion as insufficient, while complimenting her punctuality in serving his meager meals and being “a good little dishwasher.” Bapu could be a real asshole.

    

     Referred to by the prosecution as “that deplorable woman,” Margaret Dunning remains safely in the background during all this. It’s obvious that the prosecution was frustrated by her “inability” to recall events, but they had plenty of evidence already. She could not be forced to testify against her husband, and the district attorneys didn’t press her. As little that is known of David, we know even less of Margaret Dunning. Like her husband, Margaret was put in proximity to the action by chance, and reveled in her inside track. If Jack actually threatened to kill Hannah Teed, Margaret would have been privy to the lethal warning. She’d been watching Jack come and go to the Teed house for months and said nothing. Why would anybody expect her to talk now?

     

Margaret Dunning sworn

By Martin Van Buren:

Q. Did Jack drink much liquor on Monday morning?

A. He was put pretty groggy. He got whiskey in Mrs. Teed’s room. I knew there was always a jug standing in her room.

Q. Has your memory been affected? 

A. Since my husband has been confined I have been so I cannot recollect anything from one hour to another, and when I was taken before the coroner’s jury, I was so disordered that I do not know what answers I made.