In the Old Burial Ground is an odd grave maker. It reads, “In memory of Elizabeth, who Should have been the Wife of Mr. Simeon Palmer… died Augst 14th 1776 in the 64th year of her age.” A clue to the meaning of this inscription may lie in a 1901 account by a Little Compton resident of an eccentric belief held by local minister Richard Billings, who “firmly believed in cats as an article of diet, and fatted them for the purpose.”
Little Compton’s original proprietors set aside the land for the Burial Ground in 1678, and the oldest marker belongs to Mary Rouse Price, who died in 1698. Other stones mark the graves of children who died with alarming frequency in the early years of the town, victims of epidemics, and many of Little Compton’s most notable residents including Primus Collins and Betty Alden, whose stories are also available on Rhode Tour.
The story of Simeon and Elizabeth Palmer might be the Burial Ground’s most unusual. Lying next to the woman who “should have been the wife of Simeon Palmer” is the grave of Lidia Palmer, identified as the “Wife of Simeon Palmer.” According to one local legend, Simeon Palmer jilted Elizabeth during their courtship and married Lidia instead. In fact, Elizabeth actually was the wife of Simeon for 21 years. They married in 1755, after Simeon’s first wife, Lidia, died.
In 1901, Little Compton resident M.L.T. Alden offered another explanation for the perplexing stone. If his account is true, it is even more fascinating than the legend.
According to Alden, whose source was “the antiquarian of the village,” Simeon Palmer adopted Reverend Billings’ habit of including cat meat as part of his regular diet, perhaps because an attack of heat stroke left him “mildly insane.” Simeon attempted to force his wife and baby daughter to partake in his cat meat diet, but Elizabeth would not have it. She took their daughter and moved into her parents’ home.
Simeon and Elizabeth continued to maintain a semblance of a marriage. Simeon visited his wife and daughter on Sundays, and Elizabeth took care of her husband’s laundry and mending. But Simeon remained bitter about this arrangement, and when Elizabeth died he ordered her gravestone engraved with the unusual epitaph. The “should have been” referred to Elizabeth’s refusal to perform her duties as a wife by living with her husband.
Church records indicate that Simeon married a third time and moved to New York State. Whether he continued to eat cats is unknown.
]]>It was March 28, 1676, and Zoeth Howland was riding through the deep woods of Tiverton. According to the story that has been told for more than 300 years, Howland never made it to his destination. Later that day, town residents discovered his tortured and mutilated body, a casualty of the bloodiest war in American history.
Relations between native people and New England settlers had been tense since the Pilgrims arrived in 1620. Colonists encroached on local lands, and natives retaliated by raiding settlers’ homes and property. By the 1670s, the English colonists had abandoned diplomacy and resorted almost exclusively to force in their dealings with local tribes. Wampanoag leader Metacom—known by the English as King Philip—struck back. An alliance of Wampanoag, Narragansett, and Nipmuck people led by Metacom embarked on a guerilla campaign that, over the course of fourteen months, left an indelible mark on the landscape and history of New England.
The English colonists responded to the “many notorious and execrable murders, killings, and outrages” committed by Metacom’s men with extreme violence of their own. Three months before Howland’s murder, English soldiers shot and burned alive up to 600 Narragansett men, women, and children in what the victors named the “Great Swamp Fight.” Tribes that remained neutral early in the war sided with Metacom as the war spread across New England, devolving into a racial struggle.
On that day in March 1676, Howland’s journey from his home in Dartmouth to worship in Newport with fellow Quakers should have been an easy one. Howland had moved to Dartmouth in 1657 from Plymouth, where his religious beliefs led to persecution from Puritan clergy, including time spent in the stocks. As Howland rode alongside a small brook, six Native Americans suddenly beset him. Seemingly attacked without provocation, he was tortured until he died, his mutilated body thrown into the brook.
By late summer of 1676, King Philip’s War was nearly over. Metacom had been shot and killed in August, and the English commander ordered his body cut into pieces. The Pocasset Indian who killed him received one of Metacom’s hands as a reward. His head was carried back to Plymouth and mounted on a palisade of the town’s fort, along with the proudly exhibited dismembered heads of other “heathen malefactors.” Metacom’s head remained on display for twenty years, a clear message that the colonists had staked their claim on this land.
Only one of the men involved in Howland’s murder was ever identified in court records. “Manasses,” alternatively written as “Molasses,” was turned over to colonial authorities and sold as a slave.
Many Natives Americans who survived the war were sold into slavery. Colonial authorities shipped more than 1,000 Natives to labor on Caribbean sugar plantations. Of a total Native population of about 20,000, at least 2,000 had died as a result of battle, another 3,000 died of sickness and starvation, and thousands fled the region. The total Native population declined by 60 to 80 percent as a result of the war. Plymouth Colony lost about 8 percent of its men, compared to losses of 4 to 5 percent of American men during the Civil War.
The unnamed brook where Howland’s body was found became known as “Sinning Flesh Brook.” Did this refer to the sinful killing of a pious Englishman? Or did some people consider Howland a sinful man for going against Puritanical teachings? Perhaps you can ask Zoeth Howland yourself. Some say his spirit still flits along the hiking trails that crisscross what is now called “Sin and Flesh Brook.”
(Sin & Flesh Brook runs southwesterly from the area around Fish Road near Route 24 and empties into Nanaquaket Pond. The best place to see it on foot is by hiking on the trails in Fort Barton Woods.)
]]>Sam Patch swung his hat and leapt off the cliff, cutting through the mist towards the seething whirlpool below. A roar rose up from the massive crowd of over 8,000 people. The outcome of this feat – at High Falls in upstate New York – would send reverberations across the nation.
Sam Patch's jumping career began several decades earlier at Slater Mill in Pawtucket. From the age of seven, Patch worked in the mill, scuttling between looms, clearing bobbins of cotton, and replacing them with empty ones. Eventually, he was promoted to a coveted weaving position. He toiled for fourteen hours a day, six days a week, starting at five in the morning. In the summer the mill was hot and humid, and during lunch breaks Patch would join other boys in jumping off the mill dam or nearby bridges into the cool tidal pool at the foot of the Pawtucket Falls. Soon this leisurely activity turned into a competition, with each boy jumping from higher and higher-still factory windows.
In 1824, mill owners demanded that workers accept steep wage cuts and a shortened lunch break. Patch, along with his fellow workers, protested against these unfair practices. Continuing conflict with mill management may have been one factor that precipitated Patch's subsequent move to Paterson, New Jersey, where he found work at another mill. Upon hearing that a bridge was to be built over the Passaic Falls, Patch declared that – once built – he would jump from it. On September 30, 1827, he jumped as promised from Clinton Bridge, drawing a large, incredulous crowd. The press went wild, dubbing him the “New Jersey Jumper” and launching his career as a daredevil stuntman.
Patch's career hit a high point in October of 1829, when, as part of his east coast “Jumping Tour” he became the first person to survive a trip over Niagara Falls. Waving to crowds assembled on both the American and Canadian sides of the Niagara River, he kissed the American flag before hurling himself one hundred and thirty feet down into the churning river.
One month later, Patch found himself poised above High Falls in upstate New York. However, this leap went terribly wrong.
Patch's body dropped like an arrow, when suddenly his legs separated and set his body spinning. As he struck the water, a terrible thwack echoed through the air. Audience members held their breath – one minute – two minutes – three minutes – but there was no sign of the daredevil. Rumors rippled through the crowd: could he be hiding in a cave at the base of the falls, poised for a triumphant reappearance? It took four months to find his corpse, frozen in a block of ice six miles downstream.
Sam Patch lived on in the American imagination as hero to a budding proletariat culture: democratic, hard-drinking, sports-obsessed, and loving of melodrama. Amidst a rapidly changing social structure, Patch's trademark phrase – "Some things can be done as well as others” – hinted at what we now call the American dream: a belief that human ingenuity can generate endless, perhaps even extravagant, possibilities.
]]>