MADAM MARY MOODY EMERSON OF MALDEN

Transcription

1 MADAM MARY MOODY EMERSON OF MALDEN WALDO S RELATIVES This file is about Waldo Emerson s great-grandmother Madam Mary Moody Emerson ( ) of Malden, rather than about his aunt Mary Moody Emerson ( ). NARRATIVE HISTORY AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Madam Mary Moody Emerson

2 1702 Mary Moody was born in York, Maine, daughter of the Reverend Samuel Moody with Hannah Sewall Moody. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Madam Mary Moody Emerson

3 1738 Fall: When the Reverend Joseph Moody appeared before his congregation at York s 2nd Parish Church, he was seen to have draped a white handkerchief over his countenance. The 15-year-old Joseph Emerson, Jr. of Pepperell would write in his diary that his mother Madam Mary Moody Emerson and father the Reverend Joseph Emerson of Malden) went to York at this point to see her brother his uncle, finding him very Malancholy. The Reverend George Whitefield would record of the Reverend Moody that He has an inexpressible gloominess upon his soul, and cannot apply any of the Promises to himself. Nathaniel Hawthorne would footnote this case in his story The Minister s Black Veil. Never again would the Reverend Moody be able to address any person, unless he had this handkerchief over his face or was positioned with his face directly away from them or otherwise not visible to them. Feeling that he had lost the ability to preach directly, having become nothing but a shadow, he was able to pray in public only as a mouth for his friends to express their desires through to God, and he was able to preach only by beginning with some remark such as If [the Reverend so-and-so] were present, he would preach [thus and so]. Another clergyman in New England, Mr. Joseph Moody, of York, Maine, who died about eighty years since, made himself remarkable by the same eccentricity that is here related of the Reverend Mr. Hooper. In his case, however, the symbol had a different import. In early life he had accidentally killed a beloved friend; and from that day till the hour of his own death, he hid his face from men. 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 Madam Mary Moody Emerson

4 1743 May 21, Saturday or 31, Tuesday (Old Style): William Emerson was born, the son of the Reverend Joseph Emerson of Malden with Madam Mary Moody Emerson the daughter of the Reverend Samuel Moody of York (in what would become Maine). 1 THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT 1. Some sources, such as Dr. Lemuel Shattuck s 1835 History of Concord, say May 21st, but John Farmer s Genealogical register, page 96, Frederick Lewis Weis s Colonial Clergy, page 80, and Waldo Lincoln s Waldo family stipulate it at May 31st.

5 1774 The legend began to become popular that the 10-ton glacial boulder, behind which the Old Comers (as they knew themselves, although we have come to term them Pilgrim Fathers ) decided to settle on the beach at Plymouth in December 1620, was the rock upon which these intrusives had stepped ashore from the boat of the Mayflower nine days previously. This 10-ton erratic began to be known as the Plymouth Rock, and the landing day began to be known as Forefathers Day. This is despite the fact that they could find no mention of such a rock, in the manuscript of William Bradford s HISTORY OF PLYMOUTH PLANTATION which is now at the Massachusetts State House. The Sons of Liberty organization of tax resisters decided to use this rock as a symbol of separatism from the mother country, despite the fact that in their day it lay underneath a wharf. In 1774 a group of Liberty Boys led by the militia Colonel Theophilus Cotton attempted to pry up this granite slab, in order to move it away from the tides, but it broke in half. They rolled the top half to the town square and used it as the end of a retaining wall propping up an embankment near an elm tree, but the rock rapidly diminished in size as eggsized chunks were sold to raise funds at $1. 50 each.

6 In this year Charles Blascowitch recorded the configuration of the Plymouth coastline: The heads of the Emerson families in the various towns of Massachusetts having all declared firmly against the giving of aid and comfort to the enemy through the drinking of English tea, it was an occasion of great shock when the Reverend Joseph Emerson of Pepperell came to Malden unexpectedly one day, and caught his 72-year-old mother, Madam Mary Moody Emerson, in the act of brewing herself a pot of tea: He was much displeased. His Mother was hurt. She never got over it that he wasn t willing that his Mother should take tea when she needed it. DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Madam Mary Moody Emerson

7 1779 March 15, Monday: In the outbreak of the small pox that had begun in the previous year, a total of eight persons died including on this day Madam Mary Moody Emerson, 77-year-old wife of the Malden minister. Dr. Samuel Johnson s THE LIVES OF THE MOST EMINENT ENGLISH POETS; WITH CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS ON THEIR WORKS. Henry Thoreau would access, in this, Dr. Johnson s comments about John Milton. EMINENT ENGLISH POETS MAGISTERIAL HISTORY IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Madam Mary Moody Emerson

8 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 5, 2014

9 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.

10 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.