DRAMATIC EXECUTIONS OF SEIZURE

“I have been greatly abused….been pulled and hauled by sheriffs, constables and collectors, and had my cattle sold for less than they were worth….The great men are going to get all we have and I think it’s time for us to rise and put a stop to it, and have no more courts, nor sheriffs, nor collectors, nor lawyers…”- Plough Jogger (Zinn)

By Jonathan Fisk:

A.O. Houghton sworn

Q. When was the property levied on?

A. At the time it was taken.

Q. When was the girl tied?

A. After we had taken the cattle away the first time, they got back somehow or other, and we went after them again. I think it was the last time we tied the girl.

Question by the court:

Q. Did you take these cattle by virtue of executions you had at the time?

A. I did.

Q. Were you threatened if you took the property?

A. I was. The women came to prevent us from taking them.

Q. Did you ever distain Richard Jennings of a house?

A. In July 1817 I went to the house near where Teed and Dunning lived. Conklin was alone. Not finding any person there we proceeded to tear down the house. While we were busy some of the family came there.

Q. Did you ever go there to take some cattle?

A. I did in 1818. I then had two or three executions against Jennings. Not finding him we took some cattle that had been levied on. 

Q. Did you tie any of the family and bring them to Goshen? 

A.The women came violently on us with weapons and we had to defend ourselves. I tied one of them until we got out of the way of the others. And then untied her and brought her to Goshen.   

    The professors, prospectors, and clergy in the family left copious paper work. The photographers left negatives and print images. But the farmers, homemakers and stockbrokers left little. It’s slim pickings; some old spoons, a hay receipt here, an arrest warrant there, a decent bank account, and a passed down Mckinstry shotgun resting in a closet. When my father died, there was so little to be divvied up that we never even sat down to do it. It was all in the bank. He never liked “stuff.” But there were a few odd items. I have a big jar of stolen plastic fob motel room keys found buried in his things—dozens of them. I have no idea of their significance. I think he just collected them as souvenirs on his travels as a mergers and acquisitions specialist for his brokerage firm. Or he had women in every town and city across the country and we just never knew about it.

      There is a diary of Estelle Osterhout that I’ve yet to set eyes on. Donna VanDerZee tells me it’s not that interesting. I doubt that. But I did buy a photo of those Osterhout ladies and men of Lenox from 1930. There’s still adhesive on the back of the print. It may have come out of an old VanDerZee family photo album.

        The object is as important to me as the image. The two women (I think they are Mattie and Estelle Osterhout.  They look like twins but aren’t) awkwardly stand next to their mother Josephine, who’s working hard, back to the camera, paying no attention to her grandson, James VanDerZee, taking the photo. “Uncle” David peering from the shadows on the back porch, while “Grandma” Josephine, shawl draped across her shoulders and bending over a wash board in the backyard is captured forever; a precious relic. Always intrigued by the artists in the family, I stumbled across Ann Edison’s sister Olga Osterhout’s 1930’s sketch book on Esty and bought it. The collection s growing.

       When his nephew James Teed’s family and the farmhand Dunnings moved into the contended little house, Dick Jennings could hear the chopping axes and smell the brush burning from his front porch, just down the road. His grazing stock remained on what had been legally his for a moment, and would be again if he had anything to say about it. Ignoring Conklin’s repeated “requests” for him to remove his livestock, Richard Jennings gritted his teeth and waited for the next Goshen circuit court to convene. While Dunning and Teed actually improved the property with their labors, Dick Jennings simmered, wincing every time he heard the chop of an ax or the squeak of the still house door. Anger burned, blurring all reason. It was, without a doubt, an existential crisis for Dick. 

    Uncle Dick didn’t want to miss anything, so while he was tending to his other vague, secretive, dealings elsewhere, he sent out his sons Ira and Coe, and daughters Sally and Mary Ann, as armed spies, patrolling the property line. If Dunning and Teed cleared a hayfield of stones or burned a poison ivy patch, the women reported back. If a tree was chopped down on a property line, Ira and Coe were there with loaded muskets. When the constables showed up, the women took the lead. The day A.O. Houghton got hired by David Conklin to tear down the little shack behind the Teed house was the day Dick had had enough. 

    Snow had caved in most of the roof the previous winter and everyone agreed it made more sense to demolish it than rebuild. That decision was not up to David Conklin and everybody knew that. Nonetheless, A.O. Houghton, a boy, wagon, and team of oxen were hired by Conklin to get the job done as fast as they could, to “distain” Dick of a house and get the hell out of there. It was no secret that to work for either Teed, Conklin or Jennings during those days was risky business. The place had fallen half-way down already. All they had to do was attach a rope to the rafters at the high point of the gable end, and pull. With any luck the place should just topple over. 

    As Houghton’s boy slowly climbed the ladder on the east end, A.O. leaned against the side wall, with the coiled rope over his shoulder. He unhitched the team, and kept the oxen clear of the wagon and the unsteady building. The whole place groaned as the boy climbed to the ridge. From his lofty perch the boy could see two figures running down the road. As they got closer A.O. recognized them as the Jennings sisters, both armed and bearing down fast. This was the “some of the family” that A.O. Houghton referred to in his testimony. Sally was waving her musket over her head, while Mary Ann hugged hers across her breast, out of breath, lagging slightly behind her sister. Right before they reached the wagon, the Jennings women stopped, spun, and both leveled their guns at the constable. Mary Ann cocked her hammer back, swung the barrel around and pointed the musket directly at the boy up on the roof. Nobody said a word. 

     A.O. Houghton assessed the situation, spit a brown stream of tobacco spittle from the corner of his mouth, casually flipped the loose rope against the oxen’s side, crooked his finger and motioned for the frightened boy to come down. One eye at all times on the armed women, he yawed the team back in place, hitched them to the wagon, tossing the rope in the back. Then he climbed up into his seat, tipped his hat and flapped the reins. A. O. slowly passed the scowling women and drove into town with the frightened boy in the back. When they turned the corner they heard the whole place come crashing down.