THE GRAND VISITOR

   “The town was beautifully situated, almost encircled with a cleared flat, which extended for miles, covered by the most extensive fields of corn, and every kind of vegetables that can be conceived. The whole army was immediately engaged in destroying the crops.”- Maj. General John Sullivan, Sullivan/Clinton Expedition diary excerpt, 1779 

        An early April snowstorm blanketed Goshen. The village was quiet for the first time since Christmas. The aliens went about their business in the spring snow, buying chicken feed, gunpowder, salt beef, and molasses. Late autumn’s apples were brought up from root cellars; and hot oven fires burned all over town, filling the streets with the smell of last season’s pies. The slow routine of winter melded seamlessly into the busy preparation for spring (and the hanging) as the days grew longer.

     The Jennings family had been ripped apart by those intimately connected with this crime, through blood, marriage, and circumstance. A Jennings patriarch lay in the grave, while a niece sat disgraced in jail. A nephew was condemned to hang, as scores of aunts, uncles and cousins spent day after day discussing the matter. It was a large family, and not one of them seemed willing to look after Hannah Teed, or young Charles and his sisters. The Jennings and Seward families couldn’t wait to distance themselves from the Teeds, and the disgraceful affair. The abandonment of Hannah, and the young Teed children, was another reminder of how deeply into the muck our family was still sliding. As Ted Rosenthal put it, “Power and dignity may be taller boots indeed, but they seem able to sink even deep into their own shit.”

   In a quickly worded public notice, printed in The Orange County Patriot April 3, 1819, Sheriff Moses Burnett called on “the undersheriff, deputy sheriffs and all constables within my bailiwick” to gather at the Goshen courthouse steps on the morning of April 16, 1819. There was really no need for that notice. Everybody knew right where they would be on that day. But the Sheriff couldn’t leave anything to chance when it came to his own men. It would be just his luck that Ainzi Ball’s cow would get loose, or Jack Penney would get drunk and leave a cell door open, letting the stars of the show escape out the back door.

     The echo of the gavel had barely died out, bringing the formal proceedings to a close, before unseen forces were called into play in Albany. Chances for last minute pardons or commutations (at least among the whites), were deemed slim at best. Jack Hodges was given no chance at all. Rich, and sure of himself, the odd man, David Conklin, was not without family connections, and to nobody’s surprise, favors were called in on his behalf. At the time of their sentencing, it was assumed both Conklin and Teed were Freemasons. This preconception would change as time went on. Everybody knew that Freemasonry held the real sway in Van Buren’s Albany Regency machine. Since Freemasonry was a secret society, doubt as to membership was baked into the skin of the club. When asked in an interview about Geronimo’s missing skull (grave robbed by Bush patriarch, Prescott Bush, during W.W.I) being on display in “the tomb” of Skull and Bones, Yale’s ghoulish secret society member, and then Presidential candidate, John Kerry, had only one thing to say—“It’s secret.” What an elite asshole. 

     

    “I take the Liberty of this opportunity to inform you that I am at this place and to request your interest to have me exchanged as soon as possible. You will oblige me much by informing my wife that I am here and well. I am your Excellency’s most Obedient Humble Servant, Capt. John Wood, Capt. of Orange County.”- George Clinton Papers,1780

    Belonging, or not belonging, to the Freemasons, (especially in Goshen) was an unusually scrutinized affair. This was because of Jesse Wood’s uncle, the infamous Captain John Wood; the only Goshen soldier captured alive by Joseph Brant’s warriors at the Battle of Minisink. Wood owed his life to being a cowan, a pretender to Masonic membership. After his capture, then Lt. John Wood was transported to Canada by the Mohawks, and sat out the rest of the war in a British prison. His letter to George Clinton never seemed to have been passed on to Mrs. Wood. After the American Revolution ended in victory, John Wood returned to Goshen to find his wife remarried—and pregnant. He filed for divorce and married Gideon Jennings’ wife, Sophia Carpenter’s cousin, Hannah Carpenter, wasting no time joining the Freemasons for real; never to be mistaken for a cowan again. Since Wood’s return to Goshen, it was pretty clear every white man in Orange County wanted to join the Freemasons. But not everybody got in.

       

    Years after my grandfather Wray Osterhout died, my parents gave me his Freemason ring. I don’t think he was much of a mason, but he always wore the beautiful ring. I though they’d buried him with it on his finger. I put it on, and never took it off. On that trip to Cuba, (after spotting the ring) many Cubans greeted me with the Masonic handshake of the Caballeros de Logia, (Knights of the Lodge). When I got home to New York, I decided to inquire into Freemason membership. After I gave the old guy at the door of the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons on 23rd Street in New York City a Cohiba cigar, he welcomed me in and said he’d happily sponsor me for membership. Those Cohibas were invaluable! 

      I went through the admission process at three different lodges—The George Washington Lodge: diplomats, titans of industry, and elite lawyers. Predictably, I wasn’t quite right. Another Lodge— ordinary businessmen, and scowling insurance salesmen, gave me the once over. Again, it wasn’t a good fit for a long-haired, bearded guy with tattoos and a bad attitude. The third, and final Lodge, (the name of which I can’t remember) were a skeleton crew of esoteric intellectuals—a fat, grumpy German, a flamboyant gay man in a long raincoat, and a young Chinese cat with a pink Mohawk. We met. We talked. They blackballed me—ending my quest for Masonic membership. Maybe it was the ring.  

    After the Walden Masonic Lodge #627 buried their fellow traveler, my maternal grandfather Raymond Van Vliet Jennings, at the age of fifty-two, with their lambskin aprons and much funereal ritual, they never paid my grandmother another visit. “Babe” Cole Jennings never forgot their hypocrisy and inconsiderate shunning when she was a young widow in need. My grandmother seldom had a bad word to say about anybody……except the Freemasons. That blackball was a wake up call, and the best rejection letter I have ever received. I should never have opened that door. Yale should be ashamed of itself.