Marlpit Hall and Garage Man Continued

So the big news is that on Tuesday I hired a babysitter for my two-year old and went to the library. Of course this was only after I had spent almost an hour at Toys R Us picking out the numerous birthday gifts for kids. God, that place is horrible. Anyway, I perused the New Jersey and specifically Monmouth County history sections for loan and in the reference section for the remaining hour of my babysitter time. I only discovered the small special access New Jersey history section right before I left. It's a room with special older texts that you have to give your ID to get into. Ten minutes before I left!

The best thing in that room, which I could spend hours and hours reading, and may yet, is the First Town Book in Middletown. It is an itemization of all the official town events - anything that came up in town meetings - from about 1667 to 1695. I found a copy of it online- transcribed as a chapter of John Stillwell's second volume of Historical and Genealogical Miscellany. I need to go back and read the Second Book. I saw it in the reading room and just about had a heart attack. So, many many hours need to be spent on this, obviously. The Second Book covers the 18th century - 1699 to 1800. Her whole lifetime plus a few years. I'm curious as to when they moved.

After all my reading and re-reading the other day, I thought I had a handle on the fact that John Esquire and Phebe built Marlpit Hall in 1756. Or most of it. It was not finished (which is supported by recent dating of the house) completely by them, but was sold as some sort of debt release. The house was referred to as the "Grandfather Homestead" next to the bigger house built in the 1800s which is now the Taylor-Butler House. It was bought by Barnabus Rider of Long Island who finished it, with an inferior carpenter, and who lived in it until 1771. At that time it was bought by John's brother Edward and then it was kept in the family for generations. So I read that a few different places and came to believe it was true. This is from Asher Taylor's comprehensive family history.

What's interesting about his family history is that, as it's published by H.A. Deats in the Jerseyman, it's in non-sequential chapters that overlap. So a history of a person is told sometimes two or three times. And, oddly, each version is slightly different, it seems.

And I don't have a printer. Or one that works correctly. I'm working on it. And gdamn if that isn't frustrating. I only have an hour or two to myself here and there and I have very little paper in the house and yet I have to mess around (cleaning up the language a bit, as I was just talking about Asher, who most definitely would not approve) with a cheap printer and trying to get it to function even minimally. So I need more time.

To top it off, a fifth volume of Stillwell's Historical and Genealogical Miscellany is also online and also transcribes Asher's work and throws yet another wrench into things. I'll quote from his passage on John Taylor, Esquire: "He owned a farm of some two hundred acres, which he sold before the Revolutionary War, reserving about a dozen acres, upon which, in 1752, he erected a large, handsome house, at the head of Main Street in Middletown, at the commencement of the Deep Cut, which was denominated by his neighbors as "Taylor's Folly."

In 1782, this house was bought by George Crawford, Esq., from whom it passed to the Beekmans, and recently, December 1891, was destroyed by fire."

So there's that confusing thing. Also confusing is that at another point, Asher says that John flees to New York, as a Loyalist during the War and I know two of his sons ended up there. As did his daughter, Mary too. I believe that he was arrested in 1777 for his role as Sheriff in Monmouth County. Confusing. All from one person's work, too. But a different version has the whole Taylor's Folly thing. Confusing!

I need a gd printer and I need to highlight and record what Asher says in which version to try to cobble together at least a consistent picture from his point of view. I'm old fashioned. I can't just skip around web pages doing it. I need a hard copy.

I also need to focus on primary sources as much as I can. This is why I want to spend days and days with the Second Book. I believe that they built Marlpit Hall, though. Maybe I just want to believe. They being John Esquire and Phebe.

The other news is that I just found "Garage Man" again and ended up finishing it. And the thing is that it's only about 1500 words. And it's a character sketch, more or less, not much happens. Or anything that happens isn't really developed because it's so short. Once I got past the coke whore thing it wasn't too bad, just really really incomplete. A brief sketch. To me not even worth submitting in a creative writing class, but what do I know.

Must run, more on that later. Made me want to finish my romance novel, though. To spend more time on it and actually make it something. I would not have guessed that that would be what I took away from Garage Man, but so it was. I think my dad went for the initial shock. Draw the reader in, kind of a thing. Just words, after all.

And maybe he should've written more of them. If he'd have put his mind to it, it could've become something. That's sort of it with him. He was good with us, but up to a point. If we argued with him or challenged him in any way, it was done. That happened to me twice, and yes, it was done. Painfully so. He wasn't too good with criticism and with working on things. One of his many character flaws, I suppose.

I don't want to be like him, in that sense, but I suppose I already conquered that demon by going to chemistry grad school and having to write and rewrite papers forty times with my very frustrating professor. I also don't want to be like him in that I didn't finish something clearly important to me. So I've decided to be sure to finish my little romance short story. I want to keep doing it. Plus I'm going to keep up with this project and with this blog. I'm having a great time.

More later. I'm still a bit in shock about how not a big deal Garage Man turned out to be. Weird. And I'm still a bit angry with Asher. Confusing!

Materials found at the Middletown Library today! I got out of the house! Yay!

Past and promise: lives of New Jersey Women

New Jersey Women's History

The Tavern at the Ferry by Edwin Tunis (I love the name Edwin, btw)

Monmouth County, a Pictoral History by Robert F. Van Benthuysen

Middletown, Monmouth County, New Jersey by Randall Gabrielan

I really need to break out the Styles Manual to remind myself how to reference books.

But that's probably all changed due to these interwebs, yes?

Adding it to the list of things to do.

Garage Man

I need to write about writing. And of course it's complicated. Like everything else in my life. Do I make things complicated? Probably. OK, then. Anyway.

So I've had a phobia about writing since I was in elementary school. Not sure what the exact assignment was or what happened, but somewhere along the way in my childhood, I came to believe that nothing I said or wrote was valid. Hmmm. That adjective was hard. Valid isn't right. Put it this way, making a declarative sentence back then was hard for me. Still is sometimes. I'm deathly afraid of being judged. And again, I blame my mom. Ha ha. Not really.

Maybe it was because I'd make observations to my mom, about all our lives, or about the lives of our relatives. Simple things, really. Like, "Cousin Patrick is drunk." "No he's not," she'd reply. "Cousin Delonde is a lesbian." "No she's not. Say hi to Samantha. She's Delonde's special friend." I guess it really peaked when we would go to Mississippi to see cousins, in retrospect.

Oh, here are some more good ones. "I don't like pink for my room." "Yes you do. I'm doing pink floral for your room." "I don't think Bethany likes me anymore." "What did you do?" "I want to break up with Jared." "You will do no such thing. He just took you to a dance. Call him back and make up with him."

It continues to this day. My aunt was telling my mom how my cousin Mary collects antique quilts and isn't that just wonderful? "Well, Penelope does too! That IS wonderful!" Needless to say, I don't collect antique quilts. I have two crappy old quilts that are falling apart, but I don't think anyone, ever, would say they're valuable.

My dad doesn't come out of this innocently either. He was a doctor and his things were mostly medical. "I broke my arm skateboarding." "No you didn't. If you want, you can go down to the ER, but you didn't." "I need stitches." Same answer.

The most scarring thing, though, which somehow while writing this I didn't think of til now was their response to my complaints about my sister. I think I've repressed it lately because my sister and I are getting along. Holy crap, this is pretty much just it. The whole thing. How stupid of me not to see it. "Mary scares me." "Don't tattle." "Mary hurts me when she babysits us. I get scared." "No she doesn't."

My sister was five years older than me and she fucking hated me. Hated. I can't say I blame her, she was a child herself, after all. The response from my parents is what shocks me now. Nothing. Periodically there would be a lecture to her, but she scared the crap out of them too. She was so angry. I quickly learned that telling on her only made her more angry, so I stopped. I became voiceless. Powerless. This went on for fucking years and years. Until she went away to college when I was 13. I used to have nightmares where I was being attacked and I would open my mouth to scream and no noise came out.

OK, then. Whew. Sorry to unload, had to be done, I guess. So just keeping a web log is extremely therapeutic for me. I do have a voice, goddamnit. I do have things to say. Smart things, too. Sometimes funny things.

OK, now we come to the second part of my writing phobia. Complicated, again. Involving my parents, again. But not my sister. We're great now, actually. It's kind of surprising, really. Has to do with my mom and dad.

So my dad is a severe alcoholic now. With dementia now. He's not that old, all things considered (72), but he pretty much is non-functioning. He used to be so wonderful, too - notwithstanding the ER things. I loved him with my whole heart. Worshipped him. He was smart. So was I! He loved science, so did I! He was sensitive, so was I! He was constantly berated by my mom, so was I! He wasn't a great dresser on his own (she picked out all his suits), neither was I! He was kind and loving, so was I! He had lots and lots of extra-marital affairs! So did, um, wait. He had a raging drug problem and a serious secret life! Yea, um, well. A very very flawed man. But I loved him. All of us kids did. When he was there for us, it was great.

He stopped drinking, because of an ultimatum from my mom, when I was 5 years old. For various reasons, he picked it up again when I was 21. In the interim he smoked a lot of pot. Good stuff. My sister and brother knew about this, but I probably just put my head in the sand. I don't honestly remember.

When I was about 30 he semi-retired. He also bought a house in Oxford, Mississippi, where he had gone to college. He spent about half the year up there. He went to so far as to take a couple of classes at Ole Miss then. One of the classes he took was Creative Writing. Oh, and he loved Larry Brown, the alcoholic writer who I think had a position at Ole Miss. And he loved Hunter S. Thompson and Hemingway. You get the idea. Not my favorite type of writing, let's say. But hey, what do I know?

So, since that time, he's been carrying around (literally) a story he wrote from that class called, "Garage Man". OK. Recently he came to visit. I had heard lots about this about 5 page story for a while. For years. I'd never read it, though. This last visit, he gave it to me to read, but then because he's so non-functioning, he forgot it. I still have it. I've read two paragraphs. It's a first-person story. About a man who talks about doing coke and about what a coke whore (is that one word?) will do to get coke. Involves blow-jobs (hyphen there?). That's when I stopped reading. That's when I became scarred for life.

Yea, it's fiction. Yea, people are allowed to write about coke whores. I get that. Not my dad. Or who I thought he was. Or who I wanted him to be.

What's also good are a few other things. First of all, apparently he's submitted this little story to serious literary magazines. New Yorker. Rolling Stone (I think because of Hunter S. Thompson he thought it'd be more up their alley). Second of all, there's a critique of it, handwritten on the back two pages of the copy I got. The original, I mean. Some girl named Renee, I think. She wrote, and I quote directly (I may have gotten her name wrong, btw, I really don't want to dig this thing out for this posting that's how strongly I feel about it), "You impressed the shit out of me with this story. Give me a call sometime this summer and we can get together." I think she drew a heart somewhere.

Something else I should say is that last summer, my mom wanted me to help her sort through all her photographs. When going through the photos from the sixties, from before I was born, I found some photos that I hid from her. It's not that big of a deal (don't get scared!), but it would be to her. They were on a ski trip in the Alps (my dad was drafted and was stationed in Europe) and I have no idea where my sister was, but I know it was the trip where mom was just pregnant with me. She had told me how miserable she was from morning sickness. Anyway, there was a picture of my sweaty, clearly drunk dad dancing very close with some woman with this look on his face. It was probably one of their friends. That was his m.o. I can imagine what he was saying, and no I'm not making this up. For a person with a pretty active double life, his face has always been remarkably easy to read. In this case that was helped a great deal by the alcohol obviously in his system. I truly truly truly will never understand my mother. Never. Turns out she was voiceless too. But by choice. I don't know, maybe she felt she had no choice. I can't know. That's complicated too.

So, once past my initial instinctive, self-protective voicelessness, now I have another problem with writing. I've begun a bad romance novel. Or romance short story, really. It's Twilight fan fiction, which means that I use the character names, and maybe the general character sketches, but I can do anything I want. Vampires, not vampires. Teenagers, not teenagers. Present, in the past. The Twilight stories are just a jumping off point, something my husband completely doesn't get. I asked him to read the first few pages and he said, "I don't want to read about vampires. When was this set? Who's this? I'm confused. Gah, I just want to go to sleep." And btw, it's loosely based on Phebe's story (I've given her an Edward! She would be horrified!), so I feel it's ok to unload all this crap here. Again, sorry.

Does this make me like him? Will I carry this story around for years, thrusting it on unsuspecting family members? Horrifying them? It's a very tame romance. Very tame. More melodrama than anything else. And I'm enjoying writing it, but I can't help feeling very very self-conscious. My mom will never know, I think. Still, it's in the back of my mind always. Like my childhood voicelessness, contributing to my generalized writing anxiety.

Forge ahead, though. I want to forge ahead. Maybe get past all that. Maybe when it's done I'll link to here. Probably not. Thanks for listening. Until next time, then.

Fighting Invisibility

My daughter painted this of me and her and her brother. The first time anyone has ever painted me. I'm including this here on this blog because I really hope, somehow, that I can find a painting of Phebe. Not going to happen, though. Somehow the two things relate and, even though I'm really quite tired and I can't elaborate on it, I wanted to put it up here.

Today I went to Marlpit Hall, too. I went with my two children (my daughter is 4 and my son is 2) and was kind of kicked out. Understandable. My son had to touch everything and visibly stressed out the older gentleman docent. The house belonged to Phebe's brother-in-law Edward and passed down through his family. I think the house may have belonged to Phebe's husband Squire John at some point, though. May have even been built by him. It's unclear.

The woodwork in the house was incredible. They were very wealthy, the Taylors. Apparently, Edward Taylor was kept in Marlpit Hall under house arrest during the Revolution because he was a Loyalist. Squire John had to flee to New York, according to one record. Where did this leave Phebe? Did she go with John?

I'll write more about Marlpit Hall after I've really had a chance to visit without children (it really was kind of funny, getting kicked out). There was a portrait of Phebe's nephew in the house. I was hoping for Phebe. Maybe I can squirrel it out somewhere. I'm pretty good at that kind of thing. I was, anyway, in graduate school.

Until next time...

Lone Wolf

I realized last night that Phebe is like an imaginary friend for me. I think about her a lot. I imagine what she was like, what her life was like. And I don't even have that many facts, so it's almost completely speculation.

I think about the Crucible a lot, although she would've lived slightly later than that was set, it's what I picture. It's probably more like the Madness of King George (good gah, Mr. Pitt in that was to die for, no?) but less less less wealthy and in America. Hmmm. Maybe the John Adams series. Yea, probably something between John Adams and the Crucible. Man, it's lame that I need movies so much to visualize historical periods. Typically American and lame. But I'm working on correcting that.

As to Phebe, what were her clothes like? What was her relationship with her husband like? Was she bossy? Or demure? Or both, depending on her mood? Pretty or homely? Or just average? Did she take care with her appearance? Was she religious? Did she like celebrations or find them too much work to really relax? Could she read? And of that whole list of questions, only her clothes could ever possibly be answered.

I think about her walking along King's Highway from her house to the graveyard to visit her children there. It's about a mile. I see her walking it, though. And my heart aches for her. Three children, ages 4 years old, 1 year old and not even one day old died in 1745 and 1746. I want to learn everything I can about Monmouth County and the events of those two years.

Maybe she never went. Maybe she couldn't. Maybe she just went once a year, or only on holidays or the sad anniversaries. Maybe she went every day.

The title of today's post refers to the movie the Hangover. Zac Galifanakis plays the brother of the bride Alan. He gives a speech on the roof of their hotel to the guys while at a bachelor party. He talks about how he's always considered himself a "lone wolf." I loved it. I love anyone brave enough to portray social awkwardness truthfully. (There's a special place in my heart for Michael Cera too.)

In any case, I realize since I've moved to this particular town in New Jersey, eight months ago, that I've become a true lone wolf. Maybe I was always like this. I know I was as a child and my mother fought and fought and fought against it. She just doesn't know what to do with introverts. It's mystifying to her. And shameful. I fought it for years and years too and now, I'm trying to accept it. It's ok. If I don't stress out about how it appears to other people, it's not a big deal, really. I like reading. I have my kids. I like working on my house.

And Jesus, I'm depressing myself again. Ahhhh, it's good to get this out, though, right? Right now I can just remember that really no one is noticing me and my lone-wolf status. Next I really need to work on not caring what people think at all, should they stop to think about my life. That's one advantage of being new in a place that's pretty unfriendly - anonymity. Won't last forever. Eventually I'll have to do PTA type stuff. And a big sigh on that.

There are a few people I'm starting to become friends with here. And I have some friends from high school and college I'm still in touch with. One friend from college I correspond with every day, nearly (hey C!) and she's the one who inspired me to start this whole blog in the first place. And maybe I'm not giving the people around me enough of a chance. It has been only 8 months. (Another big sigh)

Oh, and don't forget about my imaginary friend, Phebe. It's always in the back of my mind that I'll find out something that will somehow change how I feel about her, and that's worrying. But I should get over it and forge ahead. I just want to know as much as I can. And I'm choosing to make her someone strong and beautiful and kind. She's my imaginary friend, after all. That's my right. What was I saying the other day about Julie Crazy-Pants? Penelope Crazy-Pants, more like.

S'OK. Lone wolf.

So I'm having a problem figuring out who all the Edwards and Johns and Georges are. Getting them straight. There are several in every generation. It's crazy. There's a great geneology written by a descendent only a couple of generations away from the Taylors I'm interested in and I need to really delve into it and make some sort of a chart for my time period. The descendent was Asher Taylor and his geneological record, researched and written over a span of forty years, was published in Hiram Deats' The Jerseyman. Ahhh, the internet. Here's the link:

http://www.archive.org/stream/jerseyman19031905deat#page/n11/mode/2up

I'm specifically trying to figure out who the John and Edward Taylor were who lived in Marlpit Hall. They were brothers and this Edward died in 1783. Pretty sure it wasn't Squire John Taylor who was in the house, or else that would be mentioned, right?

All this is a stark contrast to what my husband and I did regarding our son's name. We purposefully chose a name that had no relation to either family. No one else has had our son's name. Fresh start. That was the main reason. The other was that we knew he was going to be our last child (I'm frickin exhausted) and we didn't want to choose one side over the other. So two new names - first and middle. I'm guessing this wasn't even an option back then.

Frequently, I wonder who's better off. My husband and I have no family within thousands of miles (with the exception of my sister who is sort of temporarily in New York City), which we did partly on purpose. This was the most logical place for us to come for his job and it was close to NYC, which I was excited about. The added bonus that we were thousands of miles from family was huge, I have to admit. I've been exhausted by family things for decades, and not in the good exhausted kind of a way brought about by taking care of babies. Just exhausted and emotionally spent and, really, angry.

Yea, angry is the predominant emotion for me regarding family drama recently. And, as an angry person, I'm very afraid that I will say something cruel after having been pushed too far. So to combat this, I limit how long I'm around some family members to hours. Per year. And I guess it works.

But I see people around me who are life-long New Jerseyans. Or their husbands are. And their children are growing up among cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents. The mothers have more help, in that sense, although that never works out very well, I've noticed. But they're amongst family. And they seem happy. Happy and very self-contained. They're full.

And as an outsider, looking in, that's difficult to see for several reasons. A big thing is just jealousy on my part. I wish my children had that. Another big thing is that, because they're full, there is no room for us to squeeze in there. And I'm ok with it for myself (I'd have a hard time fitting in with the average NJ housewife regardless and that's fine), but I get upset for my children. My four year-old daughter wasn't invited to a single birthday party for six months after we moved here. Her classmates had birthday celebrations in class and then nothing. That was hard to watch. She didn't notice, thankfully. Oh, youth.

Anyway, this was recently brought to the forefront of my brain because my daughter's birthday is in a month and we're sending out invitations today. Sixteen of them. And I'm actually curious as to both how many people come and how many actual RSVP's we get. In general, my main problem with the people around me, in this town anyway, is that I'm pretty much invisible. So will they even acknowledge the invitation? The ones who have never even acknowledged my existence? This is for my daughter, after all. She's at school with their children and she likes them. I'm just praying that they remember that it's for children and are feeling generous.

Last thing, before I go dive into Archer's treatise - I'm also extremely worried because everyone seems to spend every weekend at their shore houses. Will they come back? Will they skip one day? I have no idea. Really. I tried calling two neighbors and asking them and the conversations didn't go as I had hoped. My questions weren't specifically answered, but they said their girls could most likely come. They just had to check their calendars. So that was nice, I guess. I tried calling more but haven't got a call back. Maybe they're on vacation.

Jesus, I'm depressing myself with this. And on a Monday morning. I need to focus on Phebe and her tough life. Cause hers was tougher than mine, I know that for certain and it helps me get some sort of perspective. Plus she's interesting. Plus I love researching things. Plus she lived where I ended up, kind of randomly. Where was she from? Not from here, I think. If she really is General Nathaniel Heard's sister, then she's from Woodbridge, New Jersey (more on that later, I think). But still, this wasn't her first home. I do want to know more.

OK, back to the geneology, then to do the dishes and get the day started by getting dressed, for a start. I'm planning on going to Marlpit Hall on Thursday afternoon. I'm really excited. Maybe as excited about that as I am about seeing Eclipse. And that's something!

Marlpit Hall is down the street from me!

So, I'm kind of an idiot. There's a house owned by her husband's cousins or maybe even brother right down the street from me. It was built in 1756 and was restored in 2001 at the cost of about $800,000. This is fantastic news. The house is only open for visitors from 1 to 4 pm on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays during the summer.

I've lived here for eight months and have driven past that house hundreds of times, walked past it tens (yea, I'm lazy) and only now I think to look into it. She was inside that house. They were family. They had slaves. There's so much to learn.

Must run, but had to post this!

independent.gmnews.com/news/2001-07-17/Front_Page/021.html

photo from http://www.state.nj.us/dca/njht/funded/sitedetails/taylorbutlerhousemarlpithall.html