DR. WALTON FELCH, GRAMMARIAN, PHRENOLOGIST NARRATIVE HISTORY AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

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1 DR., GRAMMARIAN, PHRENOLOGIST NARRATIVE HISTORY AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Walton Felch

2 DR April 21, Wednesday: Walton Felch was born. President George Washington stopped at Hempstead to feed and water his horses, probably at Simmonson s Inn, then continued on to Copaigue, stopping for dinner at the Zebulon Ketchem House. He spent the night at Squire Isaac Thompson s home (Sagtikos Manor) in West Bay Shore. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT Walton Felch Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project

3 DR At this point Isaac Wilbour was Rhode Island s Lieutenant Governor. Between this year and 1826, the new-model industrious community known as Slatersville would be being developed. SAMUEL SLATER At the original Slatersville Mill, which would be not only the very largest but also the most progressive textile mill in our nation, Walton Felch would begin his career as a master machinist. Promoted to management, Felch would incorporate his experiences as the superintendent of this mill into a didactic poem, THE MANUFACTURER S POCKET-PIECE; OR THE COTTON MILL MORALIZED. As his subtitle suggests, Superintendent Felch would come to regard his cotton mill as an allegory of the moral life. In New Lanark, Scotland the entrepreneur Robert Owen had turned his factory into a utopian community founded on socialist principles, and in New England the mill of Francis Cabot Lowell would become a symbol of efficient and benevolent industrialism. Pilgrims would come from all over to see and study such factories; one such reformer, Henry R. Colman (October 9, 1800-February 7, 1895), would report that the moral spectacle here presented is in itself beautiful and sublime. In such a cotton mill each part retains its place, performs its duty, modeling the proper function of human civilization at large. In 1976, in CIVILIZING THE MACHINE: TECHNOLOGY AND REPUBLICAN VALUES IN AMERICA, (Hill & Wang), Professor John F. Kasson of the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill would explain that the discipline of the factory, Felch suggested, might provide just the salutary influence to keep republican spirits from running to excess. He chose a cotton mill as an illustration and carefully traced the moral lessons of control taught by each of the various elements; then Felch solemnly gestured to the whole and instructed his countrymen: Remark the moral order reigning here, How every part observes its destined sphere; Or, if disorder enter the machine. A sweeping discord interrupts the scene! Learn hence, whatever line of life you trace, In pious awe your proper sphere to grace. The factory, Professor Kasson would argue, was becoming the symbol of a new kind of social order in which each citizen was to function in her appointed place in the great humming machine of the global economy. His insight would be that what Henry R. Colman and Walton Felch were describing was essentially an industrial version of the Puritan doctrine of the calling, by which each person pursued his appointed vocation in the place which God had ordained. Factory discipline would provide social discipline as well. LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? NO, THAT S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN S STORIES. LIFE ISN T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Walton Felch

4 DR Our national birthday, Monday the 4th of July: Nathaniel Hawthorne s, or Hathorne s 4th birthday. CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY In Richmond, Virginia it was resolved that only liquor that had been produced in this nation might be consumed on during this nation s birthday celebration. Walton Felch s son Hiram E. Felch of Boston would inform us of a family tradition, that at the age of 18 his father had delivered a Fourth of July Oration. Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 4 of 7 M / For what it is called Independence day we have had a very still time the least drunkeness & noise I ever recollect at a similar time RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Walton Felch

5 DR June 7, Sunday: Walton Felch was received into the 1st Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Island, Pastor Stephen Gano, by baptism. (His connection with this congregation would culminate on August 4, 1825 by erasure, which is to say, he would neither die nor transfer his membership to some other church.) The Reverend Stephen Gano (think Gano Street ) The Emperor Napoléon arrived in Danzig (Gdansk) on his way to the front and inspected the supplies stored there. Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 7 of 6 Mo// In the forenoon D Buffum was concerned in a lively testimony. In the Afternoon we were silent. After tea took a Walk around the hill & down the neck with D Rodman went to Coggeshall burying ground, where John Coggeshall the first President of Rhode Island was buried in the Year 1747, the oldest Stone I have yet met with in any of my researches. - RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. Walton Felch Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project

6 DR August 13, Friday: Austrian rule was restored in Carinthia. Captain David Porter s Essex captured the British sloop Alert. Mr. Walton Felch of Rhode Island as Proprietor entered for copyright his manuscript A Dissertation on Fire, or, Inquiries and Reflections concerning the operations of the Laws of Nature By Philosophers. THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Walton Felch

7 DR June 7, Wednesday: Walton Felch got married with Lydia Inman. The couple would produce one child, Hiram E. Felch of Boston. As Austrian occupation troops departed from Rome, the temporal power of Pope Pius VII was restored. Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th M 7th 4th of the Week 1815 / Recd this morning an affectionate & very acceptable testimony of the continued rememberance & love of my friend Micajah Collins dated at NYork the 1st inst It met me at a moment when my heart was tender & ready to receive the impressions that such as communication would be likely to excite from an old & long loved friend. The NYork packet arrived this morng brought a considerable Number of friends to attend the Yearly Meeting among whom were Edw Stabler, Isaac Bonsall, Rich d Mott, John Murray Jr & wife & several Women. I feel desirous they may be instruments of good RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT Walton Felch Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project

8 DR THE RHODE-ISLAND ALMANACK FOR 1816 (Isaac Bickerstaff, Providence, Rhode Island: Brown & Wilson). THE MANUFACTURER S POCKET-PIECE, OR, THE COTTON-MILL MORALIZED: A POEM, WITH ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES / BY (Published for Samuel Allen, [Newburyport, Mass.]: select/shaw/37574).

9 DR August 4, Thursday: The name of Walton Felch was erased from the records of the 1st Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Island which is to say, he was removed from their register of members despite the fact that he had neither died nor transferred his membership to some other church. In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day Our first Meeting was large & an excellent Gospel testimony from Micajah Collins who has just returned & is on his way home from a long journey in the Western & Southern States. Huldah Hoag had short testimony but Geo: Hatton was silent in the first meeting In the last we had more buisness than usual -Hannah Dennis was liberated to accompany Sarah Tucker on a religious visit to some Quarteerly Meetings in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting & South Kingston Moy [Monthly] Meeting was united with in the Appointment of Hannah Knowles to the Station of an Elder. We dined at Aunt Thurstons & rode home RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS WHAT I M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF Walton Felch Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project

10 DR April 3, Easter Sunday: Walton Felch remarried in Hubbardston, Massachusetts with Mrs. Nancy Sullivan. Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 3 of 4 M 1831 / Took the Steam Boat President went to Newport. found all my friends & relations as comfortable as could be expected I was glad to find my dear Mothers remains look very natural & composed, & I have no doubt of her being at rest. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

11 DR George W. Boynton engraved a 5 1 / 2 inch by 5 inch map of Boston for the BOSTON ALMANAC of this year. THE RHODE-ISLAND ALMANAC FOR By Isaac Bickerstaff. Providence: Hugh H. Brown. Walton Felch s A COMPREHENSIVE GRAMMAR, PRESENTING SOME NEW VIEWS OF THE STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE: DESIGNED TO EXPLAIN ALL THE RELATIONS OF WORDS IN ENGLISH SYNTAX, AND MAKE THE STUDY OF GRAMMAR AND COMPOSITION ONE AND THE SAME PROCESS. ABRIDGED FROM A WORK PREPARING FOR PUBLICATION (Otis, Broaders and Company, 122 pages). [Volume 2832 of Harvard reading textbooks preservation microfilm project] FELCH S GRAMMAR He would republish this in 1841 (the copy behind the big button above is actually the republished version, the original version owned by Henry Thoreau not being readily available as yet in electronic text), and would argue that the prevailing system of grammar, which in substance we have received from the ancients, will be found, upon careful inspection, to be radically defective and erroneous; how defective and erroneous, no one is prepared to conceive, till he has given the subject more attention than a short essay like this article could evince. His authorial intent was to correct the absence of a progressive or ethical agenda in current grammar construction: And in the first place, the purpose of grammar is not distinctly set forth. Indeed, it is proposed as the art of speaking and writing correctly. Thus our grammarians would give us the art without the science, a heap of blind, and peradventure incongruous, rules of composition, with no principle for their basis. And it seems not to have entered their thoughts, that one may speak grammatically and yet incorrectly; that his speech may be incorrect in point of perspicuity, meaning, fact, time, place, order, taste, manners, morals, &c.

12 DR. It was in this year that Concord would be erecting a Battle Monument at the Old North Bridge, commemorating the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, and marking the graves of the fallen British soldiers. This would lead the above grammarian, moralist, and phrenologist Walton Felch, sometime between 1838 and 1844, to commit his act of authorized grave robbing (authorized, indeed, formally, by the Concord Board of Selectmen!). With full permission he recovered the skulls of two of the British soldiers, one of them with a most picturesque bullethole. The soldiers skulls would become exhibits for his phrenological lectures, for both of them displayed, he asserted, the same over-developed bump over the brain area of combativeness and the same deficient hollow over the brain area of merriment soldiery, he would point out, had for such persons been a natural fit. Theirs but to do or die.

13 DR At some point between this year and the year 1844, one or another of the burial sites for the fallen redcoats in Concord or Lexington was disturbed by Doctor Walton Felch, a phrenologist who had obtained the prior permission of Town selectmen. He would later be using the two skulls he obtained in his lectures and exhibitions. DIGGING UP THE DEAD After his death one of these skulls would disappear but one, with a bullet hole, would be recovered by the Concord Antiquarian Society. In darkness and secrecy on the night of December 5, 1891, Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar and a helper would reinter that skull, and would choose to do so at the Old North Bridge gravesite in Concord. It is not known for sure, however, from which burial locale this skull had originally been removed.

14 DR John Brown allowed himself to be persuaded by his son John Brown, Jr., in training as a phrenologist, to have his skull examined by the world-class phrenologist Orson Fowler, and found that he had a pretty good opinion of yourself and that he would rather lead than be led (things which presumably he already knew). You might be persuaded but to drive you would be impossible. You like your own way, and to think and act for yourself are quite independent and dignified, open and plain, say just what you think, and most heartily despise hypocrisy and artificiality. What a marvelous thing was phrenology, in the way of the granting of permission for one s chosen viciousnesses!

15 DR. Walton Felch had been lecturing throughout New England, using as exhibits the two skulls he had recovered from the battlefield grave in Concord. He had also been lecturing on mesmerism, hydropathy, geology, and astronomy. A typical review of one of his performance had been that we were instructed and well entertained by the Lecturer [and] we hope to be able to hear the gentleman further on this subject at future meetings. However, such a trajectory was not without its controversies, and in consequence a friend of his, James H. Desper, felt obliged to proclaim for the benefit of the readers of the Barre Gazette of Philadelphia, the following: Veto! Veto!! Veto!!!! I, James H. Desper of Barre, having lately heard a variety of Reports apparently designed to raise a public prejudice against Dr. W. Felch, and thereby hinder him from giving proofs of the healing power of Mesmerism and Pure Water as applied by himself; 1st, that he was turned out of my house; 2nd, that he injured the health of my wife and others while boarding here; 3rd, that he has been suspected of breaking open our store, &c. &c. I hereby give notice, and my wife sets her signature with mine, that all these reports are most villainous falsehoods.

16 DR May 31, Friday: In processing a journal entry he had made on this date into his WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS manuscript, Henry Thoreau would be creating an enduring confusion between, on the one hand, Sippio Brister of Lincoln who had been a slave of the Hoar family and who had died in 1822 at the age of 78, and, on the other, Brister Freeman who had been the slave of Dr. John Cuming of Concord and who had died in 1820 at the age of 64, his wife Fenda Freeman, and the three Freeman children of Brister s Hill in Concord. 1 TIMELINE OF WALDEN May 31, 1850: Close by stood a stone with this inscription In memory of Sippio Brister a man of Colour who died Nov AEt Thoreau s Former Inhabitants chapter includes some thumbnail characterizations of erstwhile neighbors, with which Thoreau repeopled the woods and lulled myself asleep. Thoreau has attired these Concord folk in classic robes: In his imagination Brister Freeman has become the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Major ( BCE) of the Punic Wars who defeated Hannibal at Zama, Wyman the younger is said to have been read about in Scripture, the Hugh Quoil who thought of himself as a veteran of foreign war is made to hang a fresh woodchuck pelt on his house to be a trophy of his last Waterloo. Refer to WALDEN, page 257 of the Princeton edition, material added to Version E in late 1852 and in 1853 and further revised in There were precisely two books published during this period which dealt in such considerate terms with the lives of ordinary persons of color, WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS and the initial 1854 version of NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS AN AMERICAN SLAVE. WRITTEN BY HIMSELF which is ordinarily attributed to the authorship of Frederick Douglass. We may note that at the time of the writing of WALDEN there were at least two black families in Concord, and Thoreau carefully refrains from calling attention to these families. We may presume that an adequate reason for such silence was that such literary attentions would not only have been as unwelcome to them as to Concord whites, but could not have done them any good and might very well have done them harm.

17 DR. Brister s Spring on Brister s Hill in Walden Woods pertained to Brister Freeman of Concord and not to Sippio Brister of Lincoln

18 DR. Thoreau also recorded that according to William Wheeler of Lincoln, a few years ago one Felch a Phrenologist by leave of the select men dug up and took away two skulls from the remains of the five grenadiers killed on April 19th near the Ephraim Hartwell Tavern during the retreat to Boston, that had there been interred. To-day May 31st a red and white cow being uneasy broke out of the steam mill pasture & crossed the bridge & broke into Elija Woods grounds When he endeavored to drive her out by the bars she boldly took to the water wading first through the meadows full of ditches & swam across the river about forty rods wide at this time & landed in her own pasture again She was a buffaloe crossing her Mississippi This exploit conferred some dignity on the herd in my eyes already dignified & reflectedly on the river which I looked on as a kind of Bosphorus. I love to see the domestic animals reassert their native right s any evidence that they have not lost their original wild habits & vigor. There is a sweet wild world which lies along the strain of the wood thrush [Wood Thrush Catharus mustelina] the rich intervales which border the stream of its song more thoroughly genial to my nature than any other. The blossoms of the tough & vivacious shruboak are very handsome. I visited a retired now almost unused graveyard in Lincoln to-day where (5) British soldiers lie buried who fell on the 19th April 75. Edmund Wheeler grandfather of William who lived in the old house now pulled down near the present went over the next day & carted them to this ground A few years ago one Felch a Phrenologist by leave of the select men dug up and took away two skulls The skeletons were very large probably those of grenadiers. Wm Wheeler who was present told me this He said that he had heard old Mr. Child, who lived opposite say that when one soldier was shot he leaped right up his full length out of the ranks & fell dead. & he Wm Wheeler saw a bullet hole through & through one of the skulls. The water was over the Turnpike below Master Cheney s when I returned. May 31: {One-third page missing} main there is a correspondence that the fences to a considerable extent will be found to mark natural divisions Mowing (upland & meadow) pasture woodland & the different kinds of tillage There will be found in the farmers motive for setting a fence here or there some conformity to natural limits These artificial divisions no doubt have the effect of increasing the area & variety to the traveller These various fields taken together seem more extensive than a single prairie of the same size would. The farmer puts his wall along the edge of his cornfield Unless the land is very minutely divided the divisions will correspond to nature. If the divisions corresponded to natural ones, I think that {One-third page missing}

19 DR April 12, Friday: Walton Felch died in Boxboro, Massachusetts, leaving in the possession of his widow Lydia Inman Felch more than several hundred poems. A delegation from the Worcester Historical Society would knock on the widow Mrs. Nancy Sullivan Felch s door to discuss with her the deceased s phrenological exhibits because of the Society s members, George Frisbie Hoar, had a childhood recollection that this phrenologist had used as a teaching aid what he had alleged to be the skull of a soldier killed in the Concord fight. Hey, dibs on said soldierly skull, Mrs. Nancy Sullivan Felch! Could you use a small sum of money, old widow a widow s mite, perhaps? Here s a representative sample of the more than several hundred poems that had been left behind: Upon an old grave-stone inclined, At Weston, when near age four-score, Questions and answers passed my mind as here rehearsed, and many more What is this man of dust to Thee, One of the same surname, or rather What was he once to thine and Thee? Grand-father of my father s father. If loved, or feared, by fellow-men Why was no epitaph applied? He lived near four-score years and ten, At seventeen-forty-six he died. This pedigree and grave-stone show What facts concerning him we gather; And hardly more of him we know, Grand-father of my father s father. The man of dust, below the sod. Has know no purpose, right or wrong; But souls below the throne of God

20 DR. Perhaps may listen to my song. At leisure hours I think upon Some by-gone friend, or ancient father Good Nathan, Sam, or Sam, or John Grand-father of my father s father. 2 (It would turn out that the old lady had but one of the two soldierly skulls still in her possession the one exhibiting the picturesque bullet hole, the other having been presented by Felch to the doctor who had attended him on his deathbed, Joseph N. Bates, and that other one would never be recovered.) 2. So that we know what s going on here: Felch s great-great-great-great-grandfather had been named Nathan Felch and his greatgreat-great-grandfather and his great-great-grandfather had been named Samuel Felch. His great-grandfather John Felch, Grandfather of my father s father, had died at the age of 86, near age four-score, on April 9, 1746, seventeen-forty-six, at Weston, Massachusetts.

21 DR December 5, Saturday night: In darkness and secrecy Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar and a helper reinterred one of the two Revolutionary-War British skulls which with the consent of local selectmen had been dug up during the late 1830s or early 1840s by the phrenologist Doctor Walton Felch. He chose to re-inter this skull at the Old North Bridge gravesite. In all likelihood he was guessing, as is not known for sure from which burial locale this skull had originally been removed but it seems likely that it had been taken from the burial site in Lincoln.

22 DR A LITERARY INTRODUCTION TO EMERSON S NATURE / by Earlene Margaret Regan. (Hartford, Connecticut; Box A, Station A, Hartford 06126: Transcendental Books). During this year Roland Wells Robbins was serving as a Lecturer-in-Residence at Juniata State College. He concluded that when in 1891 in darkness and secrecy, Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar had reinterred at the Old North Bridge a Revolutionary-War skull (it had been taken by Doctor Walton Felch, he had chosen the wrong gravesite, in that the skull should instead have been returned to a Revolutionary-War gravesite in Lincoln. Does the Concord gravesite now contain one, two, or three skulls, and does the Lincoln gravesite now contain three or five skulls? Although it is unlikely that either burial is now going to be opened in order to clear this up, there do exist techniques by which such sites can be explored without appreciable digging. MAGISTERIAL HISTORY IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Walton Felch

23 DR. COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this read-only computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace resulting in navigation problems allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC Please contact the project at <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. It s all now you see. Yesterday won t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago. Remark by character Garin Stevens in William Faulkner s INTRUDER IN THE DUST Prepared: October 20, 2014

24 DR. ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT GENERATION HOTLINE This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot Laura (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button.

25 DR. Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary writerly process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world. First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. Arrgh.