Lost and Found

(Note:  this article was written in December of 2023 for the winter/spring issue of Washington College Magazine.)

 

(Headline)

Lost by a teenage Sioux warrior and taken as a spoil of war, a sacred tribal object and embodiment of its famous owner finds its way home again. 

When 18-year-old Jack defied his father, Chief Red Cloud, and joined a war party in 1876, he foolishly thought he would borrow some of his father’s battle prestige, as well. What followed was a classic tale of misadventure which only concluded when the headdress made its way back to the Red Cloud family, completing a round trip of over 4,000 miles and 144 years.

Here’s the story of how the headdress was lost in the days leading up to the Battle of Little Big Horn, how it ended up at Washington College, and how it was finally restored to its family and tribe. 

(Headline)

Lost and Found: A Repatriation Journey 

In June of 1876, a teenaged Oglala Lakota Sioux warrior named Jack left his home camp with a group of friends to join in what would later be called the Great Sioux War of 1876-1877. With him he took his pony, his father’s 1866 Winchester rifle named “Yellow Boy,” and his father’s war bonnet, a magnificent headdress consisting of 81 eagle feathers, each one signifying an individual act of bravery in battle committed by its owner. This was no ordinary bonnet, because Jack’s father was no ordinary person; he was the great Chief Red Cloud.

Chief Red Cloud, or Mahpiya Luta, was named after an unusual cloud formation present at his birth in 1822 in present-day Nebraska. The son of Walks As She Thinks and Lone Man, raised by his uncle Smoke, he had no claim to hereditary chieftainship, but earned the rank based upon the force of his character and his talent for leadership. He grew to become possibly the most famous of the Great Plains chieftains, and the most photographed. 

Red Cloud’s War, from 1866-1868, is the only conflict between the Natives and the U.S. Army in which the Army was soundly defeated. The United States government wanted to build a road leading from Ft. Laramie to the Montana gold regions, but this road and its resulting traffic and settlements would have destroyed buffalo grounds along the Platte and Powder Rivers. Since the Sioux and other Great Plains tribes depended upon buffalo hunting for survival…for both food and shelter, as well as countless other tools and products, the destruction of these hunting grounds would have spelled disaster for these nomadic tribes. The subsequent treaty agreement made at Fort Laramie in present-day Wyoming on November 6, 1868 required the U.S. to abandon Forts Reno, Kearney, and Smith, defining the limits of Sioux territory. Chief Red Cloud refused to appear or to sign the treaty until all three forts were abandoned, but once the treaty was signed, he kept his word not to go to war against the U.S. again, although he resisted all attempts at “civilization”, staunchly supporting the preservation of the old ways for the rest of his life. Following the discovery of gold in the sacred Black Hills, Red Cloud, along with chiefs Spotted Tail and Lone Horn, led a delegation to Washington, D.C. in May of 1875 to meet with President Grant, Secretary of the Interior Delano, and Commissioner of Indian Affairs Smith to attempt to persuade them to honor the treaty of 1868, and to slow the flow of miners to the northern Great Plains. Congress offered the tribes a payment of $25,000 for the disputed territory, coupled with relocation to Oklahoma. The chiefs refused this offer, yet upheld their end of the 1868 Treaty, and did not join Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull in the Great Sioux War that followed. Chief Red Cloud retired from warriorship but remained a respected tribal councilor in his later years.

It was during this visit to Washington, D.C. that Chief Red Cloud was gifted the ornately engraved 1866 Winchester rifle, “Yellow Boy,” at the White House. It was just a year later that Jack Red Cloud took this rifle and his father’s war bonnet, without permission, and went with a group of friends to take part in what became known as the Battle of the Rosebud on June 17, 1876. He had joined with Sitting Bull’s group of warriors earlier in the spring, before the Sun Dance ceremony. Things did not go well for Jack...

Early in the fighting, Crow scouts allied with the U.S. Army shot Jack’s horse from underneath him. He then made the terrible mistake of not removing the bridle from his dead pony’s body, an important act expected of warriors even in the most dangerous battle situations, and fled still wearing the trailing eagle feather headdress, carrying Yellow Boy. He was a conspicuous target, especially once he was recognized as Chief Red Cloud’s son, making him particularly coup-worthy. A Crow scout named Bull Doesn’t Fall Down ran him down and beat him with his pony whip, counting coup, berating him as a coward for fleeing in panic and neglecting his pony, and finally admonishing him for wearing the feathers of a true warrior. Weeping and begging for mercy, Jack was spared his life, but the scouts confiscated the headdress and Yellow Boy. This was a humiliation almost worse than death. 

Crazy Horse and two other Sioux came to his rescue; both Jack and Chief Red Cloud, along with Crazy Horse’s close friend He Dog, belonged to the powerful Bad Face band of Oglala Sioux, a sort of warrior fraternity which was deeply committed to preserving the old ways, and held looking after its members as a critical value even in the most humiliating circumstances. Still, they too shamed him for behaving badly and crying in front of their enemies, refusing to look at him. The storied Battle of Little Big Horn occurred just 8 days later, and afterward Jack had to return home without his pony, without Yellow Boy, and worst of all, without his father’s beautiful war bonnet with its 81 golden eagle feathers representing most of a lifetime of bravery and leadership.

In July of 2020, at a small college located in a small town on the East Coast, enveloped in a nest of acid-free tissue in a sturdy archival storage box, a magnificent eagle feather war bonnet lay at rest. Made of tanned hide, ermine, horsehair, glass beads, red woolen cloth and copper alloy bells, the war bonnet had spent 144 years far away from the culture, people, and family who had created and cherished it. It had been through a lot, but its journey wasn’t quite over.

The war bonnet had been part of a collection of books and objects that were donated to Washington College beginning in 1930 by an alumna, Fredericka Strong Albee, a native of Kent County, Maryland. She was the second wife of Lieutenant George Emerson Albee, a veteran of the Civil War and the Indian Wars that followed, and a Medal of Honor recipient for actions during the latter. In an article published in the Washington Elm on November 1, 1930, it was reported that “the head-dress of Red Cloud was one of Captain Albee’s most prized possessions.” Documentation in the college Archives states that the headdress had been given to Albee by his close lifelong friend, Captain Henry Ware Lawton, with whom he had served in the 41st Infantry in the years following the Civil War.

It was sixty years later, shortly following Congress’ enactment of NAGPRA (the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) that officials at the college began talking about returning the war bonnet to Red Cloud’s people. But time continued to pass, with little movement on the front of taking concrete action to return Red Cloud’s property to his descendants. Finally, in June of 2014, President Reiss received a very kind and eloquent letter from Chief Red Cloud’s fifth-generation direct descendant, Henry Red Cloud of Pine Ridge, South Dakota. In the letter, Red Cloud recognized and commended the college’s desire to repatriate the bonnet, while emphasizing its importance to the Oglala Lakota people and urging its voluntary return as soon as possible. He expressed his willingness to assist in the planning and execution of the repatriation and extended an invitation to President Reiss to visit Pine Ridge for the honoring ceremony that would take place afterward.

Still, following several high-level leadership changes at the college, five more years passed before the effort was kicked into high gear. Mary Alice Ball was hired as the Dean of the Library and Academic Technology in early 2019, when the bonnet was being cared for in the college Archives, part of the Library and Academic Technology department. Members of Dean Ball’s new staff, knowing about her previous work with tribal communities in various parts of the country, seized the opportunity to alert her to the bonnet’s low-key presence in secure storage down in the Archives. Less than two months after her arrival at the college, Ball had begun her research into the matter and contacted Provost DiQuinzio with a detailed recommendation for return of the bonnet to the Lakota Sioux, stressing the necessity of working closely with the tribe and allowing the tribe to guide decisions about the logistics, events, and especially the publicity surrounding the repatriation.

She opened discussions with the Red Cloud family and tribal representatives, which continued for many months throughout 2019. It was ultimately decided that the process would begin with the college awarding an Honorary Doctorate of Public Service to Henry Red Cloud at the February 2020 Washington’s Birthday Convocation.

Henry Red Cloud was well-qualified for this special honor. Like his famous ancestor, Henry has used his creativity, skills, and leadership abilities to help guide his tribe and other Native communities through the modern crises of climate change and the scarcity and expense of natural resources. Born on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, Henry spent years away from the reservation, working as a steelworker in different parts of the country. When he returned to Pine Ridge in the 1990s, he volunteered his time and energy to the development of solar energy, wind turbine, and sustainable housing projects. He began Lakota Solar Enterprises, a 100% Native-owned and operated renewable energy company that established family-scale solar heating systems on reservations. From this company grew the Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center, an educational facility where tribal leaders from across the continent come to learn skills and solutions that they can bring back to their communities. During the past 15 years, Henry’s accomplishments have earned him national and international recognition, most notably a Solve fellowship from MIT and recognition by President Obama’s White House as a Champion of Change. Henry has worked hard to empower Native communities in a way that enhances cultural pride and enriches the spirit of these communities; he reminds them that a return to a traditional relationship with Mother Earth, which had always been respectful and sustainable, can be useful in surmounting modern challenges. His famous grandfather would no doubt agree and be proud that his family was carrying on his most cherished values and honoring the Old Ways.

In February 2020, Henry Red Cloud traveled to Washington College accompanied by his wife Gloria; his cousin Lula Red Cloud, Matriarch and oldest member of the Red Cloud family, and the great-great granddaughter of Chief Red Cloud; his friend and colleague Richard Fox; and friend and videographer Jason Mackie to participate in Convocation exercises and events, and to receive his Honorary Doctorate of Public Service. Conversations, camaraderie, and shared meals enhanced the time leading up to the ceremony, as plans were made for an honoring ceremony and transfer of the headdress to occur in April. At that time a larger delegation would come to the college, following the same route that Chief Red Cloud’s delegation had taken in 1875. It would include Lakota religious leaders, dignitaries, and a group of drummers to participate in the ceremonies and a public celebration. For the Convocation on February 21, Henry and Lula dressed in tribal regalia, with Lula offering the invocation to start the ceremony and Henry giving the keynote speech discussing his work and the importance of clean energy. The ceremony happened to coincide with a student demonstration protesting the college’s response to incidents of racial bias on campus; not surprisingly, Henry and his wife Gloria took time to speak with the students about their concerns.

~

On the last day of their visit, the Red Cloud family gathered in an office in Miller Library to finally reunite with the spirit of their renowned ancestor, embodied in his long-lost war bonnet. The family spent some time alone with the headdress, and during that time, they counted the feathers. There were 81, just as family and tribal history said there should be.

It was on this special occasion that Lula Red Cloud shared the family story of the bonnet’s loss that was handed down to her. She was the first person who shared with us the story of Jack Red Cloud and the Crow scouts (“the Crow betrayed us,” she said,) and Jack’s humiliation at the Rosebud fight leading up to the battle of the Greasy Grass (the Lakota name for the Battle of Little Big Horn.) The family was eager to know the story of the bonnet’s journey since that day, and attempting to piece together that history has been difficult, and the details elusive. The story centers upon a group of soldiers: Captain Henry Ware Lawton, Lieutenant George Emerson Albee, Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie, and General George Crook.

One morning in the fall of 1876, in the wake of Little Big Horn and the U.S. outrage at its results, Chief Red Cloud’s encampment was surrounded, disarmed, and brought to Fort Robinson by Colonel Ranald Mackenzie’s 4th Cavalry. In 1877, the group was removed to Pine Ridge, where Red Cloud spent the last 30 years of his life. In the meantime, his war bonnet changed hands, from the Crow scouts to the U.S. Army, and came into the possession of Captain Henry Ware Lawton. Lawton later became famous for leading the expedition that captured Geronimo in Arizona, but was known as one of the more compassionate officers, earning the respect of men such as Cheyenne warrior Wooden Leg, whose people Lawton was tasked with removing to a southern reservation.

In 1876, Lawton was in the middle of a distinguished military career, having served throughout the Civil War from the age of 17, afterward joining the 41st Infantry Regiment under the command of Colonel Mackenzie. Lawton and Mackenzie grew to have a great respect and admiration for each other, Lawton becoming a close confidant of the Colonel while serving as a trusted and competent Quartermaster. Immediately following the battles of the Rosebud and Little Big Horn, Colonel Mackenzie and six companies of the 4th Cavalry Regiment under his command were ordered to the Red Cloud Agency and nearby Camp Robinson, Nebraska to subdue the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne still resisting being confined to reservations.

Mackenzie was given command of the Black Hills District, which encompassed Robinson and both the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail agencies, under the command of General George Crook. General Crook had been the commanding officer at the Rosebud engagement, and in charge of those Crow scouts who confronted Jack Red Cloud on that day. Henry Lawton had just been in Washington, D.C., applying for a promotion to the rank of Captain and Assistant Quartermaster. He received the recommendation of General Sherman, and a particularly glowing statement of approval from Colonel Mackenzie, recognizing his thorough competence and spotless integrity and calling him as an officer “by far the ablest who has ever served” under his command. Upon hearing of Custer’s disastrous defeat on June 25 and Mackenzie’s orders, Lawton immediately asked for permission to rejoin his regiment, boarding a train to Wyoming to join up with Mackenzie’s 4th Cavalry Regiment.

It must have been sometime after this, when Lawton had rejoined Mackenzie as commander of B Troop of the 4th Cavalry in the southwest and in the plains, that the headdress came into his possession. Mackenzie was known to gift ‘relics’ of war to others, and the gift could have come from him; he could have received it from the Crow scouts, through trade, or acquired it under circumstances which we can only imagine. But the men were all connected: General Crook had commanded the Crow as well as Colonel Mackenzie, and both had been at the conflicts in June 1876. Henry Ware Lawton later gifted it to his comrade and greatest friend, Albee, the future husband of our donor…and we know the story from there. 

~ 

Along came the Covid-19 pandemic, and everyday life as we all knew it changed dramatically. Plans for the April 2020 ceremonies were cancelled, and most of the work of the college moved to home offices and online communication and teaching. At Pine Ridge, the Oglala Sioux Tribe passed a resolution to quarantine the reservation in an effort to protect the tribal population from the Covid-19 virus. They were met with a demand from South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to open their borders or face legal repercussions. The tribe pushed back, citing the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 and emphasizing its promise of tribal sovereignty. 

Deflated, the team here at the college began to work on Plan B to finally get the headdress to its home in South Dakota. Finally, in July of 2020, Dr. Ball loaded the box into her car and drove it up to New Haven, Connecticut, where it would be transferred to Henry’s friend, Jason Mackie, who would then drive it out to Illinois, where he would meet Henry and Gloria Red Cloud, who would at long last carry it back to Pine Ridge. 

On September 20, 2020, at a ceremony organized by Lula Red Cloud and other Red Cloud family members, more than 100 people gathered at Bear Butte, a sacred vision quest location of the Lakota people. They had gathered to honor Henry Red Cloud at his Making of a Chief Ceremony. Leonard Crow Dog, spiritual leader of the Lakota, led the ceremony. Ivan Looking Horse served as Eyapaha (master of ceremonies) and Chief John Spotted Tail, Chief of the Sicangu Lakota and direct descendant of Chief Spotted Tail, placed Henry’s own ceremonial bonnet on his head. The bonnet had been made by Tamra Stands and Looks Back Spotted Tail. 

Henry continues his work with Red Cloud Renewable, and was recently featured on the PBS Series, “Native America.” Lula Red Cloud-Burk passed away on October 23, 2022. 

To learn more about Chief Henry Red Cloud and his work, please visit his website: 

https://www.redcloudrenewable.org/

Jennifer E. Nesbitt

MR. WALSH

When I was very young, my interest in family history encompassed people I knew who were still alive; I wondered what they were like as children, teenagers, young married people. My sisters, cousins, and I would sit on the green tweed sofa in my grandfather’s den, looking through the albums of oddly tinted black-and-white and sepia-colored photos by the yellow glow of the floor lamp. It was an evening ritual any time we gathered at the house on the lower Eastern Shore. There weren’t any pictures of William Walsh, my grandfather’s maternal grandfather, only a vague impression of his place in the family tree and the knowledge that he was our most recent immigrant from across the ocean. This made him, to me, the most mysterious and fascinating of our known ancestors. The shades and atmospheres conjured up by my childish imagination gathered around a few details, only half-remembered by those who shared them with me, which I hoarded like shards of blue beach glass. I heard as a child that William, born in 1840, left England as a teenager, and that he had served in the British Navy. That he had “jumped ship” in Virginia. I imagined a skinny kid with light brown hair, looking vaguely like me, literally leaping from the deck of a wooden ship into the salty waves far below. He wasn’t dressed in a naval uniform, but more in the manner of a pirate’s apprentice, in tattered homespun, without shoes, of course. He looked like he belonged among my grandmother’s “rogue’s gallery,” her collection of Royal Doulton toby jugs depicting salty sea characters such as “The Falconer”, “Captain Hook”, and “The Poacher.” I imagined that he had bravely fled an oppressive existence in a crowded and dirty city somewhere, that maybe he was an orphan or even a criminal who had happened to fall from the deck of a ship like a ripe banana onto the remote beach where he would meet my great-greatgrandmother as she sat mending fishing nets, or waded with her skirts hiked up, raking for clams in the shallows.

 Decades later, when I was in my mid-thirties, I became seriously interested in delving into the real history of my family. The story I pieced together from the documents of the time told a much different story of William’s arrival in the United States. In 1858, when he was eighteen and a new resident of New York City, he declared his intention to become a U.S. Citizen. Before doing so, however, he needed to establish himself well enough to find a person to attest to his good character. In the meantime, he spent at least part of his time earning a living with the British Merchant Marines. He did indeed “jump ship” in 1864, but in New York, at the height of the Civil War, after the deadly 1863 draft riots but shortly before the Copperheads’ attempt to burn the city to the ground in November of ’64.

When I was a teenager, my father started doing genealogical research, visiting courthouses and local libraries in the small rural places where my grandparents, and their parents, grew up. There was one document he was never able to find: a record of the marriage of William Walsh and my great-great-grandmother, Maggie Ewell. There were rumors of “another family” in New York. These questions were left hanging in the air. It was said that he had a large personality, and was a drinker; that often when he came home in an inebriated state, his wife would yell for their daughters (“the girls”) to all go out in the back yard to be out of the way. These rumors of a double life took root in my imagination. I imagined Maggie, my greatgreat-grandmother, waiting by her kitchen window in Seaside Virginia, wondering when William would be back from his latest jaunt to New York. I imagined her wondering what he was doing, perhaps seething silently about her secret status as the “other woman” while posing as the respectable wife of a hard-working man who occasionally “went to sea,” but was in reality a mysterious foreigner who lied and had shady dealings with mysterious parties far away. I imagined children springing into being in separate families in separate states, with “wives” quietly hating each other across the miles, never guessing that the New York wife had probably died, along with the infant Willie, leaving William to start over as a widower with two young children in the nation’s largest city. 

I don’t know what rumor of opportunity, or lucky acquaintanceship formed at the docks or in a neighborhood pub led William to leave New York for Accomack County and the tiny town of Modest Town, and I probably never will. One of his neighbors in the North Moore Street tenement where he lived with Mary was a man from Virginia whose wife had been born in England. Maybe the two men struck up a friendship. I am in awe of the millions of invisible chances and choices, breaths of air on invisible spider’s webs, hormonal fluctuations, desperate situations, and quirks of time and timing which result in each one of us being born.

 'Hey! --- Do you have a pic somewhere of our ancestor Walsh the sea captain with the parrot??? '

-email from my cousin 

 It’s funny, but not difficult to understand, how in the space of four generations, a person within the range of “ordinary” during his or her time and place could accumulate the status of a folk hero. Four generations of imaginative children, listening to snippets of adult conversations after dinner or while half-asleep in their grandparents’ laps, combining them with favorite storybooks, the simplified history learned in school, and artifacts looking down from shelves in their grandfathers’ studies, can give the images that form in their minds a life of their own. He may not have been a sea captain, but there was a parrot. What my cousin knew, he heard from his mother. She had inherited his parrot, which he had stuffed after it died. My cousin’s father, her former husband, had thrown it away without telling her. My cousin had been told that William was on a ship that sailed out of Liverpool, that he made a small fortune seafaring, and that he used that fortune to launch his businesses in the U.S. He retired, or possibly ran from, sea life fairly early. My cousin admitted that it could all have been fabrication, although it now seems like an exaggeration based on truth.

 The most compelling story of Mr. Walsh that I’ve seen to date is one that I haven’t yet finished compiling, and it consists of pages of snippets from the ‘News from the Towns’ section of the Peninsula Enterprise newspaper, between the years 1883 and 1915, the year of William’s death. It tells of a busy and enterprising man who operated a store and drinking establishment; raised nine children (two from his previous marriage) with his wife; bought and sold real estate, and generally had his finger in many pots; entertained eccentric visitors from New York and England; invented a hog cholera remedy and a life-saving device for rescuing shipwreck survivors; had many friends and some enemies; traveled frequently with his wife, friends, and children; and once caught a 10-foot shark with a sea turtle in its belly. I do have a photo of him now, taken on one of his trips to England after the death of his wife. It depicts a healthy, well-dressed older man, and carries his signature on the mat---- the same signature that appears on his citizenship papers. 

1753

Presley Carter Balderson

I wrote earlier about my great-great grandfather Presley Balderson and his 3 brothers who were all members of the 40th VA Infantry regiment during the Civil War (The AWOL Season, 5/12/16.)

As a recap, Presley, the youngest of the 4,  enlisted in Warsaw, VA on June 4, 1861 along with his older brother William, into Company D.  Charles and James had enlisted 10 days earlier into Company B; they were both musicians, and both were shoe/bootmakers.  Presley was first sent to Chimborazo Hospital beginning a month after the death of William (wounded fatally at Gaines' Mill on June 27, 1862) and Charles' illness and discharge (in mid-late July 1862.) This was immediately following the regiment's engagement at Cedar Mountain, and he may have been the one casualty listed on the muster list.  The reason for his hospitalization was "debilitas," in other words, weakness or feebleness: exhaustion.  He remained in the hospital until October 23-- a period of over 2 months, after which he was furloughed and instructed to report back for duty on December 1.  He was absent without leave for the month of December, but returned in January, along with his brother James.   Presley was readmitted to Chimborazo in May of 1863 after receiving a gunshot wound through the left shoulder at Chancellorsville. This wound is renowned in family lore because of the harrowing treatment it received from the surgeon:  a red hot poker was driven through it. It's moments like this that can change the trajectory of the future.  The furlough that followed meant that Presley missed the events in Gettysburg, which proved close to disastrous for his regiment.   

Earlier this week, I was poking around at some research and found two wonderful things:  First, a labeled copy of an unlabeled photograph that I have at home.  I love the photo; it's more casual and candid than the posed formal photos you usually see from this era.  The man in the photo has always reminded me of my dad, Carson...just something about his height, build, and kind face.  I knew that he must be a Balderson, but I didn't know which one, or even from what decade the photo might be.  The labeled photo confirmed that it is none other than Presley Carter Balderson and his wife Mary Ann Coates Balderson.  This dates the photo to sometime before 1904, when Mary died while sweeping the floor at home.  

On the same day, I found the obituary shown below, which is lovingly written and detailed, AND adds important information about Presley's service during the war as well as his character.  I didn't know about his participation at the Bloody Angle (the Muleshoe) during the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, although I had heard a snippet about him supposedly rescuing the colors at some battle; I figured it was at Chancellorsville.  So it was great to read his story as he told it just before he died.  ---Yet another instance where fate intervened, the universe watched over him, and he summoned the courage to do his best for his regiment ("team.") And he was rewarded with survival, and a long life.  He outlived Mary Ann by 21 years, and lived to the ripe age of 88.  He met his death with courage and a peaceful heart, it seems.

IV. Beneath the Surface

I. 

 

September 19, 2013 was a slow day at work.  I had been doing some research on the first people to live in my current house back in the 1930s, and decided to look up a Kent County News story of an incident concerning the builder’s father.  I was following a trail whose steps I no longer remember, gathering facts that seem trivial now, which gave my mind some mild entertainment in the form of eavesdropping on the past.  I found the article I was looking for, detailing an incident of the builder’s father as a teenager, getting into a fistfight with a former teacher on the street, back in the spring of 1883.  Typical Kent County stuff, maybe.  I dropped a dime into the machine and printed out the page, as my eyes scanned the other headlines on the page, headed with the date of publication May 17, 1883.  “The strawberry season is not far off.”  “The Sale of Bellevue.”  And then:  

  

A MADMAN’S TRAGIC ACT. 

KILLING HIS INTIMATE FRIEND. 

REVOLVER AND KNIFE BOTH EMPLOYED. 

Charles R. White Shot Down by Charles E. Hanson while the Former was Making a Call on the Latter at His Home. 

[Reported for the Baltimore Sun.] 

 

Interesting.  I read on:  “Mr. Charles R. White, of Howard Co., was shot and instantly killed on Wednesday by Mr. Charles Edward Hanson, an intimate friend and neighbor.”  Howard County, my home county on the western shore.  Wait.  I know these people! 

 

 

II. 

 

Elkridge, Maryland is my hometown.  Twenty or more years ago, you may never have heard of it, but that has changed as its popularity has risen as a convenient commuter town.  Located directly on the US Route 1 corridor between Baltimore and Washington, DC, the face it shows to most people is one composed of strip shopping centers, convenience stores, car dealerships, and the occasional vintage motel with antique signage.  On the southeastern side of this main artery are undulating streets lined with homes built during the last one hundred years or so, leading down to some of the oldest established railroad line in the country, and the Patapsco River.  On the west, another winding road leads up into what used to be farmland, later became  threaded with neighborhoods tucked off into the woods and hills, from which other, newer branches now extend with smaller, more expensive, densely-packed, tree-deprived properties. 

 

Growing up, I lived in one of the older of these wooded neighborhoods.  At my high school, Elkridge was falsely stereotyped as the domain of rednecks and working-class families, typified by the auto-shop boys with Confederate flag stickers adorning their muscle cars, its string of Route 1 motels and trailer parks, and the only outdoor motorcycle bar in the state.  It was, in fact, a regular small town filled with all kinds of people and families, many of whom had roots in the town going back for generations. 

 

Although the Elkridge of my youth was an unpretentious place, looking on the surface like a thousand other pass-through towns in the crowded mid-Atlantic, it is in fact the oldest settlement in what is now Howard County, dating to about 1700.  Once part of Anne Arundel County, which at that time extended from the Chesapeake Bay to the fall line, Elkridge was once an international port, with ocean-going vessels docking regularly just below the spot where US Route 1 crosses the Patapsco into Baltimore County.  Its main exports were tobacco and iron, the latter from a series of mines, forges, and furnaces established in the area by the Dorsey family, the first family to settle and spread their properties out upon the Ridge between the Patapsco and Patuxent Rivers. 

 

Those of us who grew up in Elkridge, especially thirty or more years ago when it was a much smaller and more intimate community, were taught the details of its history before we left elementary school.  We also knew about the secret treasures hidden away in the woods and lanes of the area:  the Thomas Viaduct, the oldest and largest curved multi-arched railroad bridge in the country, still in use; the Russian cemetery; the ruins of one of the Dorsey furnaces in Patapsco State Park; and the isolated foundations of the home of Colonel Charles Marshall, Robert E. Lee’s traveling secretary throughout the Civil War.  This last landmark was far up in the woods behind my house, and a favorite destination of my sisters and me, where we collected evergreens at Christmastime and daffodils in the spring, in the buried remnants of the old formal gardens, nearly a mile from the nearest house but close to the noise of traffic from Interstate 95.  And then, there was the most special place of all.  Belmont, the hidden heart of the community, in the most isolated spot of all, tucked away in the green jewel box of its 80 acres, nestled far from the nearest road, in the protective arms of the State Park.  Belmont had been the home of the Dorsey family, the massive landholders and proprietors of the iron furnaces and forges, first founders of this community on the Ridge, and later, the Hanson family, of which Charles Edward “Ned” Hanson, who murdered his intimate friend and neighbor on May 16, 1883, was a member. 

 

Belmont was built in the 1730s, and was owned and lived in by Dorseys and their descendants, including the Hansons, for more than two hundred years.  In 1965, it ended its days as a privately-owned estate, and began a new life as a small, exclusive conference center.  Whole families of high school-aged sisters and brothers in Elkridge, including mine, became part of the Belmont family, securing coveted jobs as waitresses and house boys.  I spent nearly ten years working there, from high school until several years after college, in food service, housekeeping, and finally in the offices, sharing the position of Marketing Coordinator with a childhood friend and wife of Belmont’s former executive chef.  People outside of our community knew little to nothing of the existence of this place, with the exception of the lucky groups who came to stay, a large proportion of them connected with Federal and local governments, including foreign dignitaries and even sometimes people important enough to require Secret Service detail.  Belmont’s isolation was one of its chief marketing points. 

 

When you first came to work at Belmont, you were scrupulously trained by the senior generation of staff members in how to deliver the highest quality of service.  These were the motherly women from town who cooked breakfast and lunch every day; the executive chefs, always from “elsewhere,” who had special and entertaining personalities; the gruff, businesslike housekeepers, tending to be past middle age and firmly entrenched in the community; and the grounds and maintenance men who seemed to know everything about the place…and did, since they lived in houses right on the property.  Precision, perfection, discretion, and courtesy, doing things “the Belmont way” were required in all aspects of food and beverage service and housekeeping. 

 

Fortunately, it was not only an interesting place to work, but a companionable place, with coworkers feeling like family members and, after a while, the house feeling like home.  Very soon after you completed your first shift, as you relaxed in the staff room after dinner with your coworkers, you began to hear the stories, legends, and rumors about the house, and the people who had lived and visited there. 

 

As new employees in the 1980s, my friends and I all heard about the Dorseys during those staff room storytelling sessions.  Caleb Dorsey, the builder, met his wife Priscilla while fox hunting in the area, and their initials are still carved in stone beside the front door.  Another Priscilla Dorsey, their granddaughter, eloped with Alexander Contee Hanson, a congressman and later a senator who was nearly killed in a Baltimore riot at the beginning of the war of 1812.  Guests to the home during this time included Henry Clay, statesman and Speaker of the House, who had a favorite chair beside the fireplace in the drawing room.  It was after Alexander Hanson’s untimely death from his lasting injuries in 1819 that the estate fell upon hard times. 

 

If you were to consult local history sources or books containing descriptions of colonial homes in the region, you might notice that in most histories of Belmont, the years between 1819 and 1913 are barely mentioned, or condensed into one or two lines:  “Hanson’s son Grosvenor enjoyed gambling, and the estate was nearly lost.  In 1913, two of Grosvenor’s nine children, now both old ladies, resided at the decrepit mansion on the hill,” or something along those lines.  Yet, every member of the Hanson family--- Priscilla and the Senator, their son Grosvenor and his wife Annie Maria, the latters’ nine children who had lived to adulthood, as well as four more children who died in infancy, or young--- is buried in the old cemetery at the edge of the woods beyond the formal gardens, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. 

 

The tales and rumors told in the staff room of this part of the house’s history were darker, and began to intersect with the countless stories of employees and guests who claim to have experienced strange events and even seen uncanny things while staying or working at the house.  It was rumored that one of the families who lived in the house had a son who was either crazy, monstrous, or had severe developmental disabilities, and he was often locked in the room in the cellar where the extra chairs are kept.  This is the same room in the basement where two employees from the phone company were servicing the telephone connections in the early 1990s, when they suddenly left without completing the job, telling the manager on duty that they wouldn’t be returning.  There was something very wrong down there, they said, and it didn’t involve the phone lines.  None of Belmont’s employees liked going into the basement, which was built of local stone and multichambered, running the length of the five sections of the house. 

 

We were told that somebody was once shot on the front porch because he had borrowed his cousin’s horse without permission.  This is the same area of the house that is featured in Belmont’s “official” ghost story, published in several places, of a phantom coach which drives up the circular drive and stops at the front door, horses stamping, while an invisible person stomps up the porch steps, enters the house, and marches toward the kitchen wing.  I’ve never met a person who has experienced this official phenomenon, although a friend of a friend’s mother heard it one night many decades ago.  Instead, kitchen employees were plagued with trays of glasses that smashed while safely stored in glass-fronted cupboards, carefully counted silverware and plates which disappear and reappear in a few minutes’ time, mysteriously exploding wine containers, a strange ‘mist’ which hovers about the dining room chandelier after the lights are extinguished, and other frustrating events which seem to escalate when especially important guests are in residence.  Objects have even been seen flying across the dining room by employees working alone (me,) with both doors to the room closed.   

 

A woman wearing white has often been seen, usually appearing as a real, solid woman clad in Victorian clothing, in a particular bedroom by more than one guest, or setting quietly in the corner of an adjoining bedroom by an employee who was checking the rooms one evening before the arrival of an important group.  She may be the same person whose misty, white-clad form was seen on several occasions standing at a small bridge over a stream in the early morning hours. 

 

 

III. 

 

September 26, 2013, a week after my discovery in the Kent County News, I took the time to contact several of my fellow former Belmont friends, with whom I’ve never lost touch.  I couldn’t wait to tell them that by pure chance, I had stumbled upon an incredible story that filled in many of the lost details of the scraps of history we had heard about the troubled years of our former workplace.  After finding the article about the May 1883 murder in the Kent County News, I consulted the Baltimore Sun from the same time period, where I found a series of articles describing, in true Victorian fashion, full details of the murder, inquest, funeral of the deceased, testimonies of both families, and Ned Hanson’s trial.  Along with census records of the decades leading up to and following the murder, these articles helped me piece together a strange, sad story of this family who had lived at the heart of our community a hundred years before any of us had been born, in the very house that, in retrospect, had played a huge part in our coming of age, early adulthoods, and for some of us, even in the formation of our own families.  What’s more, the story oddly lined up in certain places with some of the strange, unexplained phenomena for which the house had become known. 

 

The murder was not the result of an argument about a horse, as we had always been told.  The truth was much less comfortable. 

 

At the time of the murder, several Hanson siblings, all adults, were living at Belmont.  Mrs. Hanson had died ten years earlier.  Her husband, in the years following her death, had allowed the property to fall into disrepair.  What’s more, he had altogether ceased maintaining the family cemetery, superstitiously believing that doing so would hasten his own death.  This seemed to work for him for a few years only; he had passed away three years earlier.  Living at the house in 1883 were Priscilla Hanson, age 37; Charles Edward “Ned” Hanson, age 35; Grosvenor Hanson, age 27; Annie “Nannie” Hanson, age 25; and Florence Hanson, age 23.  Three other brothers lived and did business in Baltimore.  

 

According to Ned Hanson’s own testimony at court proceedings, the spirit of his sister Mary, who had died when he was fifteen years old, had appeared to him.  She warned him to be on his guard against Charles Ridgely White, who was prepared, she said, to shoot him on sight.  Furthermore, he testified that ten years earlier, he had received similar instructions from his mother at her death, although she had revealed that Mr. White was responsible for the death of this same sister, and she instructed him to take revenge.  Oddly, though, Ned had not even been present at his mother’s deathbed.  It seems that 20th century employees were not the first to be treated to ghostly visitations at Belmont. 

 

Reports of the court proceedings state that at a little before noon on May 16, 1883, Charles Ridgely White drove to Belmont to see Ned in order to get some seed corn.  With him in his carriage were one of his daughters and a female cousin who was visiting from Washington.  White was then living on one of his properties, Tutbury, adjacent to the Belmont property and only a mile distant.  Their families had been great friends for a long time and were, in fact, related.  When Mr. White arrived at Belmont on May 16, only Priscilla and Annie were at home.  Shortly thereafter, Ned Hanson entered the house from another entrance, and learned that Mr. White had come to call.  He then walked into the dining room and picked up a bread knife which was lying on the sideboard.  He crossed the room and walked out onto the front porch, stepping down to where Mr. White stood talking to his sisters.  As he did so, he pulled out a pistol and fired three shots at Mr. White, all of which found their mark.  He then rushed at the body, cutting a 4-inch gash in the throat with the bread knife, partially severing the windpipe.  He then walked calmly back into the house, through the dining room and into the kitchen, where he washed the blood from the knife, returning it to its place on the sideboard.  He then retired to his room, and waited for his brothers John and Grosvenor to return from Baltimore. 

 

Mr. White’s body was carried into the house.  A jury of local lawyers and physicians was assembled, and an inquest and post-mortem examination were held at the house that evening. 

 

Ned’s family had been uneasy about his mental state ever since he had returned from California in the 1870s.  After a subsequent attack of sunstroke, he had suffered occasional hallucinations and paranoid delusions that he was being followed by a party of men determined to kill him.  Testimony given at the courthouse said that he was generally an intelligent person, friendly and personable, fond of a joke and a great storyteller.  Prior to this incident, he had never been violent, although he had been known to have explosive fits of temper during discussions of politics.  It was also noted during the investigation that Ned’s sister Priscilla, a little over a year older than him and one of the witnesses of the murder, had long suffered from periods of “madness.”  Because his behavior at the time of the murder was uncharacteristic, and because of the lack of a solid, earthly motive for the deed, it was determined at the inquest and at the formal trial in Ellicott City that although Ned had killed Charles R. White, he was not responsible by reason of insanity. 

 

Charles Edward “Ned” Hanson, in June, 1883, was committed to the Maryland Hospital for the Insane, now Spring Grove, in Catonsville.  He remained there until his death in 1931 at the age of 83. 

 

A few years later, sometime prior to 1900, his sister Priscilla was also committed to the Maryland Hospital for the Insane.  As noted earlier, Ned and Priscilla, along with their parents, grandparents, and ten brothers and sisters, are now laid to rest in the Hanson family burial ground at Belmont.  Every last one of the siblings had died unmarried, with no descendants to mourn them. 

 

 

IV.  

 

When I think of Ned’s reported movements on the afternoon of May 16, 1883, I can’t help but notice that his footsteps crossed and recrossed the dining room and kitchen, as he retrieved, washed, and replaced the bread knife he employed as one of his murder weapons.  This is the same area of the house prone to unexplainable disturbances involving glasses, dishes, and silverware.  Could Ned be the disturbed person who had spent so much time in that basement room, and still made everyone who visited the cellar uncomfortable?  I can’t help but wonder, if there is such a thing as a spiritual manifestation, whether the woman in white who was sometimes seen and felt on the upper floor is Mary Hanson, Ned’s sister.  Or perhaps she is their mother, Annie Maria, the mother of a dozen children who either died young, died insane, or merely witnessed the downfall of their family’s fortune as they grew old.   

 

And I can’t help but wonder if there is some kind of link between insanity and paranormal phenomena, whether a fragile psyche is more permeable to other layers of time, more susceptible to glimpses of what has gone on before, or is just less guarded against these perceptions.  I wonder, then, what it means when some of us are witnesses to what appear to be attempts by deceased people to communicate.  I wonder if some locations are inherently more ‘thin’ than others, existing independent of linear time, with layers of time blending and intersecting in a way that sometimes becomes perceptible to those who visit.  My Belmont friends wonder, too. 

 

 

 

V. 

 

Belmont is now owned by the County, and after a thorough restoration effort, has once again opened its doors to the public as a nature preserve and conference center, hosting parties and weddings in its graciously appointed rooms and formal gardens.  There are more places like Belmont that haven’t yet been paved over, where the layers of time and history are sometimes made visible to those who visit.  Their histories are still known by those acquainted with old Elkridge, who grow older and fewer as time passes and more houses and roads are built, and more and more new people move in.  Beneath the surface, the old Elkridge is still there.  Underneath the known histories, beyond the bits of “official” lore, are the remains of flesh-and-blood people whose real stories have been all but forgotten.  The layers of time are just waiting to be peeled back, their secrets to reveal, for those willing to stop and look, before all traces are gone. 

Author's note:  This piece was written for a writing class I took in the summer of 2015, based on a project I had been working on for a couple of years.  For me, this is still an "open case...", an unfinished story of events not entirely known or understood.  "The Howard County Tragedy," also in this blog, is a later version of this piece.  I think I prefer this one.

In 2020, I shared this piece, its postscript, and some photos and research notes with someone working on a book of Howard County ghost stories, published in the summer of 2022.  She used it as a source and this blog is noted in her bibliography. (Shelley Davies Wygant.)