Delania Knight popped into my head yesterday afternoon as I sat in the shade peeling garlic. She’d been doing that lately, sneaking in and around the edges of my thoughts, but yesterday, with nothing to occupy my mind but a wheelbarrowful of garlic bulbs fresh out of the ground, she moved right in.

Now cleaning garlic is one of those tedious tasks that begs us to slow down, sit down and just do it. The garden harvest doesn’t wait; the peas better be picked at their peak, the nice, firm broccoli heads will turn into a mass of yellow blossoms if they aren’t cut, and the slender, crisp green beans turn knobby and tough if you don’t grab them in time. I could go on and on, but the point is, the garden rules.

Whether you’ve got a basket or a wheelbarrow brim full of some succulent vegetable, each one has to be picked up, peeled or snapped or shucked, one at a time till they’re done. You can listen to music or a book or a podcast, do it in front of TV, or, as I choose, under a tree with the help of a trio of grandkids, to the sound of birds, the roar of passing motorcycles, or the whirl of Conrad, the upstairs dog, racing by. What I don’t have is the comfortable conversation with Wally, who loved shucking and peeling and snapping.

I know why this woman who was born 200 years ago, and who died in 1910, when my own parents were just toddlers, won’t leave me alone. We share a certain circumstance common to women: our husbands died first. We were/are both widows.

Delania Bartlett was 24 when she married Rufus Knight in 1843, he 13 years her senior. As the grandson of Nathan Knight, Lincolnville’s official “first permanent settler”, Rufus lived on the land where Nathan and his wife, Lydia, built their log cabin, on the edge of the meadow, in the heart of our town, the wet, open land bounded by routes 173, 52 and Slab City Road. They chose it, the story goes, because they could cut the meadow hay for their stock that first year, 1770, before clearing land.

Take a look at our town on Google maps. When you click on the satellite image, zoom in and get close look at our topography. Coleman Pond is in the middle of this still basically unsettled area. The house where Rufus Knight brought his wife, Delania Bartlett, still sits on a hill looking out over the meadow at 2078 Belfast Road.

Delania bore ten children; four died in childhood. Three girls and three boys survived into adulthood. Delania is more than a name we find on Ancestry.com because her second oldest son, Arno, kept a journal. And just as importantly, Arno’s great-grandson, Bradford Knight, saved it.

Actually, Brad saved all of Arno’s journals, one a year from 1871 to 1940, the year he died. Arno apparently wrote every single day of all those years, recording his day’s work: “hauled hay”, “worked three hours on the highway”, “took Olive for a drive”, “squally, cold, snowy”. That kind of thing. And at least during his single years, agonized over his relationships with the various young women he courted. Especially Olive Drinkwater.

Brad has loaned the journals to the Historical Society; I’ve been scanning them since last spring, since Covid shut us all inside. So far I’ve scanned 13 of them, each one resulting in over 200 separate scans. Most mornings it’s the first thing I do after showering and making coffee, often at 4:30 or 5, scanning a month or two of whatever year I’m in.

The next step is to transcribe each year, laboriously reading each handwritten entry and then typing (or speaking with the right software) the words into a form more readable. By the way, volunteers are needed! Contact ragrugs@midcoast.com me if you’re interested.

Karin Womer has finished transcribing 1871, I’ve been doing 1872, while Deanna Hartel is busy with 1874. Tracee and I have begun 1875, me reading while she types. I won’t identify the 1873 volunteer transcriber as she is a self-described slacker, yet to begin. (You know who you are!)

Somewhere in my mind it’s now 1884. Arno is no longer a young man, flirting (his word) with every young thing in town. He’s traveled out west twice, both times hoping to strike it rich, to make something of himself (his words) mining for silver, first in Nevada, then a few years later in Colorado. He’s been blown up (as he said) in a mine accident, and come home to stay (my assumption).

His mother, Delania, has been a widow for three years, ever since Rufus fell off the barn roof the winter of 1881.

Arno and Olive Drinkwater have finally married, and he’s brought her to live in his house, the house he’s inherited, the farm that’s now his. They married on Thanksgiving day, 1883, and in the next few weeks Arno’s entries are all about the house. New clapboards, new doors. He dismantles the “old brick hearth” in the kitchen and lays a new floor. Olive sends him off to Mrs. Morton’s with “carpet rags”, and has her brother bring over her bedroom furniture. Olive paints the parlor.

And what of Delania? What was she thinking as her new daughter-in-law was arranging for carpets to be woven for her floors, painting her walls? What went through her head as her kitchen hearth went out the door, brick by brick? The fireplace that had been the heart of that old place since before she came.

This is a man’s journal, and it’s all about him. When a woman keeps a journal, naturally it’s all about her. Arno rarely speaks of rooms, and then only of the repairs he’s making. He never tells us what they eat, only what he grows (bushels of beans, apples, wheat, barley, corn, turnips) and buys (barrel of flour, figs, sugar, raisins, molasses). He’s made absolutely no reference to what his mother does, yet we know perfectly well she must have been cooking his meals, washing his clothes, probably making butter and cheese, milking the cow, tending the chickens, feeding the pigs.

He hardly ever mentions Delania. His sisters, Nellie and Fannie, appear frequently, but “Mother”? Hardly at all. Once she sat up with him until a late hour discussing his future, telling him how she had faith in his abilities. Of her reaction, of her grief at the loss of her husband? Not a word.

Every few months “Mother” visits at the home of one of her other children. A common solution to taking care of an elderly parent, most likely the mother, was to spend a few months each year with the various adult offspring.

A woman was defined by her relationship, or lack of one, to a man. The one time in her life when she seemed to be valued for herself was as a girl, in demand actually. Twenty-year-old Arno always had a girl on his arm, it seems, escorting them to dances, carrying them home, playing cards, and endlessly, visiting. Back and forth, nearly every day, “played euchre at Stetsons”, “went to Corner”, “stopped in at Aunt Ruth’s”.

Once the woman married, she became “wife”. Olive, once Goldenhead or Goldie or even Queen Mab in Arno’s journal, is only “wife” or maybe “Olive”. Delania, a wife for 38 years and mother to ten, albeit losing four of those babies, is now, in my 1884 mindset, a widow. In other words, she’s superfluous, useless, not seen.

Of course, throughout history there have been women with no reference to a man, and they were likely called old maids, spinsters, and those who were particularly outspoken in some way, witches, crones. But that’s for another day.

Sitting under my tree, Conrad for once, lying quietly at my feet, I thought about my own status, a widow in 2020. The house is mine. Wally’s pension is mine, as well as my own Social Security. But yes, I do live under the same roof with my son and his wife.

The difference, Delania, between you and me, is choice. Choice and some very good laws and protected rights and programs, such as inheritance and Medicare and Social Security, that enabled me to make the decision to sell half of my house to Ed and Tracee.

Multi-generational living can be a nightmare or a dream come true. Happily, for now and as far ahead as I can see, ours is the latter.

Blueberry Swing Ding

Come down to the Beach this coming Saturday, Aug. 8 between 8 a.m. and noon for some delicious blueberry baked goods. The Lincolnville Improvement Association may not be able to hold their popular blueberry pancake breakfast this year, but the group is still dedicated to raising money for scholarships for Lincolnville students as they’ve done for the past twenty years. Come support them, say hi to your neighbors (funny how we can still recognize each other just by our eyes, peering out over our masks!) and help out a good cause – our young people and their future!

Saving the Beach Schoolhouse

Saturday’s outdoor meeting at Breezemere brought out some sixty people, all sitting appropriately apart, all apparently intent on hearing some solution to the problem of 33 Beach Road. As a result of that meeting forty people signed up to be part of the effort of rehabbing the building, including fund-raising and grant writing. A clerk of the works has already stepped up. Three main issues need to be addressed: the roof, the foundation and the second-floor support. Andy Young is figuring out the scope of the work, and will be looking for estimates in the next month or so.

If you missed the meeting but want to be part of the effort, send me email. We’ll be sending out regular updates on our progress.

School

The School Committee meets tonight, August 3, at 6 p.m. via Zoom. School re-opening plans will be on the agenda. Click on the zoom link to join the meeting; the meeting ID: 946 3727 1232 and the
passcode: mGeJF3.