My friend Wes Eichenwald wrote that he liked these pages, which was fun, and then sent different links. I poked around one of them and found this:
http://www.ancestry.com/facts/cragin-life-expectancy.ashx
Are Cragins longer lived than others? My grandmother Bertha "Beth" Church Cragin certainly was. She lived at North Hill in Natick from the month the cement dried until her 99th year. Always correct, always in a skirt and hose, perfectly mannered, she set a great example for me and my Cragin Cousins as someone who was tough as nails and smooth as silk. I miss her a lot and learned a lot about grace under pressure from her example. And I'm very glad I have so many cards and letters (one advantage of leaving home young). She had a great way of referring to "that darling old lady" across the elegant dining room, well into her 90s. I started seeing people 20 years younger than my grandmother as older than my grandmother and Grammiebeth was highly skilled at identifying those with more years than herself -- always in a truly warm and admiring way. I remember her at 98 talking about "that sweet old one" over there, who'd just celebrated 100 years.
Okay, my grandmother was born a Church and her mother and father were Scottish (though from Lancashire, I think they'd moved to work in the mills). So she's a Cragin because she married one, but she still counts in the longevity sweepstakes.
On the other hand, there's the example of my great-grandfather Alger Cragin, who began Cragin and Wilkins Sheet Metal in Leominster in 1901 (I think). He died young, and the story was he fell out of an apple tree and broke his neck on the stone wall below.
Another tragic story, although equally foreign to our modern sensibilities (as is the death of Alfred who spent way too much time fooling with gun powder). This may seem exotic to you because if you've gone apple picking anytime in the past 20 years you'd be hardpressed to even climb an apple tree, let alone fall out of one. Modern trees have been grafted into low gangliated fruit-bearing branches. Those old-fashioned apple ladders, that taper near the top, are truly antique. No, if Alger was picking apples today, he'd just walk around the tree.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
"Under the Snow" by Josephine Eaton Cragin
I thought about waiting until winter to run this, but decided to keep the Josephine information consistent. Here's a poem that appeared in the June Godley Cragin book.
"Under the Snow"
Over the snow fields, piled so high,
Spring-like cloudlets are drifting by;
Under the snow-fields far below,
Where the elves and the fairies come and go,
Wonderful things are being planned
None but the fairies can understand,
Far down below
Under the snow.
Slumbering, slumbering, under the snow,
tiny grass-roots are lying low
How can they tell so wrapped in death,
It is almost time for the south wind's breath?
How do they know, in the brown earth deep,
When to wake from their wintry sleep?
How do they know,
Under the snow?
Silvery, musical, mountain rill,
Once so restless, but now so still,
Bound by the ruthless Ice-kings chains,
Longing, waiting for April rains;
Crystal brook! It will wake ere long --
Wake to the thrill of the bluebird's song,
Murmuring low
Under the snow.
Hasten, sunshine, and balmiest breeze
Pity the plaint of the leafless trees;
Quicken the mystical life below,
Till leaf buds burst and maples glow,
And the willows don their drab and gray,
Mute little Quakers in sober array,
Oh, the life below,
Under the snow.
* * *
I actually liked this better once I typed this out. She's reliant on that Longfellowesque rhythm that was so popular and keeps the pace clip-clopping along. In her day, a good blizzard would definitely isolate people so her fancies (from fairies to grass roots) are definitely romantic. The poetry of James Whitcomb Riley (who lived in Westminster, the adjoining community to where she lived in Fitchburg) also had a seasonal bias.
Now I wonder if she was personally acquainted with Caroline Mason Atherton, the best known poet of Fitchburg? I know from reading back (I mean, wa-a-ay back issues of the Sentinel -- like 1864-1900 about 10 years ago) that locally-produced poetry was always part of tha publication, but was there some gathering place or occasion that the folks who wrote verse got together? I think of Emily Dickinson, hovering in her room. Though well-to-do, there was plenty of housework that fell on her shoulders and I always thought that some of the quickness of her verse had everything to do with stolen moments and frequent interruptions.
"Under the Snow"
Over the snow fields, piled so high,
Spring-like cloudlets are drifting by;
Under the snow-fields far below,
Where the elves and the fairies come and go,
Wonderful things are being planned
None but the fairies can understand,
Far down below
Under the snow.
Slumbering, slumbering, under the snow,
tiny grass-roots are lying low
How can they tell so wrapped in death,
It is almost time for the south wind's breath?
How do they know, in the brown earth deep,
When to wake from their wintry sleep?
How do they know,
Under the snow?
Silvery, musical, mountain rill,
Once so restless, but now so still,
Bound by the ruthless Ice-kings chains,
Longing, waiting for April rains;
Crystal brook! It will wake ere long --
Wake to the thrill of the bluebird's song,
Murmuring low
Under the snow.
Hasten, sunshine, and balmiest breeze
Pity the plaint of the leafless trees;
Quicken the mystical life below,
Till leaf buds burst and maples glow,
And the willows don their drab and gray,
Mute little Quakers in sober array,
Oh, the life below,
Under the snow.
* * *
I actually liked this better once I typed this out. She's reliant on that Longfellowesque rhythm that was so popular and keeps the pace clip-clopping along. In her day, a good blizzard would definitely isolate people so her fancies (from fairies to grass roots) are definitely romantic. The poetry of James Whitcomb Riley (who lived in Westminster, the adjoining community to where she lived in Fitchburg) also had a seasonal bias.
Now I wonder if she was personally acquainted with Caroline Mason Atherton, the best known poet of Fitchburg? I know from reading back (I mean, wa-a-ay back issues of the Sentinel -- like 1864-1900 about 10 years ago) that locally-produced poetry was always part of tha publication, but was there some gathering place or occasion that the folks who wrote verse got together? I think of Emily Dickinson, hovering in her room. Though well-to-do, there was plenty of housework that fell on her shoulders and I always thought that some of the quickness of her verse had everything to do with stolen moments and frequent interruptions.
From the pages of the Proceedings of the Fitchburg Historical Society, "The Verse Writers of Fitchburg"
A little bit of online investigation turns up a cache of Josephine E. Cragin information. I have put my archivist partner, Mr. Liberryman onto tracking down other Josephine poems. She evidently cranked them out for The Congregationalist. And we found that in the 19th century, publications entitled "The Congregationalist" are about as common as whale-bone corsets. So it might be a while until we have more Josephine verse, although I did find another poem in the Godley Cragin compendium. This is from "Proceedings" . (read at a meeting of the Society, October 17, 1898)
Another Fitchburg writer, "who in the love of Nature holds communion with her visible forms," is Mrs. Josephine E. Cragin. The hills, the mountains, the woods, the flowers and trees, all furnish inspiring themes for her verse and song.
Mrs. Cragin, daughter of Thomas S. and Martha (Downe) Eaton, was born April 7, 1845, in West Fitch- burg, in the house where she now resides, and where she has always lived except the ten years following her marriage in 1875, during which time she resided in Royalston. Her sons are the sixth generation which has lived in the same house, now about 110 years old. From the grammar school in Fitchburg, Mrs. Cragin went to the academy in Henniker, N. H., in which place her uncle, Rev. J. M. R. Eaton, was for many years pastor.
Many of her poems have from time to time been published in the Fitchburg Sentinel, and some have been copied in other papers, notably the Congregationalist. Her salutation to Wachusett, entitled "To My Mountain," is a poem of six stanzas, three of which will show her appreciation of its never-failing inspiration:
As morn by morn, when the stars grow pale,
I turn to my window to greet the day,
I hail thee, monarch of all the vale,
Touched with the Orient's earliest ray;
Proudly uplifted, thy kingly crest,
Emblem of safety and strength and rest.
When summer twilight shadows throng,
And the pines loom dark on the eastern hill;
In the lingering daylight the sparrows' song
Gives place to the call of the whip-poor-will;
Then I almost fancy I hear the breeze
That circles among thy swaying trees.
And when sometimes the mists hang low,
And thy faintest outline I cannot trace,
Thou wert never nearer than now, I know;
Steadfast and sure thine abiding place,
A lesson of trust thou teachest me;—
I believe, though I may not always see.
Other poems, severally entitled "The Birches," "The Golden Rod," "To a Willow," "My Riches," "Under"the Snow," "Yellow Foxglove," and "My Pines," all are rhythmical and show a keen appreciation of the beautiful in nature.
* * *
Alfred would have died three years before this was published, but it's good to know Josephine had the solace of faith. Will continue this soon...
Another Fitchburg writer, "who in the love of Nature holds communion with her visible forms," is Mrs. Josephine E. Cragin. The hills, the mountains, the woods, the flowers and trees, all furnish inspiring themes for her verse and song.
Mrs. Cragin, daughter of Thomas S. and Martha (Downe) Eaton, was born April 7, 1845, in West Fitch- burg, in the house where she now resides, and where she has always lived except the ten years following her marriage in 1875, during which time she resided in Royalston. Her sons are the sixth generation which has lived in the same house, now about 110 years old. From the grammar school in Fitchburg, Mrs. Cragin went to the academy in Henniker, N. H., in which place her uncle, Rev. J. M. R. Eaton, was for many years pastor.
Many of her poems have from time to time been published in the Fitchburg Sentinel, and some have been copied in other papers, notably the Congregationalist. Her salutation to Wachusett, entitled "To My Mountain," is a poem of six stanzas, three of which will show her appreciation of its never-failing inspiration:
As morn by morn, when the stars grow pale,
I turn to my window to greet the day,
I hail thee, monarch of all the vale,
Touched with the Orient's earliest ray;
Proudly uplifted, thy kingly crest,
Emblem of safety and strength and rest.
When summer twilight shadows throng,
And the pines loom dark on the eastern hill;
In the lingering daylight the sparrows' song
Gives place to the call of the whip-poor-will;
Then I almost fancy I hear the breeze
That circles among thy swaying trees.
And when sometimes the mists hang low,
And thy faintest outline I cannot trace,
Thou wert never nearer than now, I know;
Steadfast and sure thine abiding place,
A lesson of trust thou teachest me;—
I believe, though I may not always see.
Other poems, severally entitled "The Birches," "The Golden Rod," "To a Willow," "My Riches," "Under"the Snow," "Yellow Foxglove," and "My Pines," all are rhythmical and show a keen appreciation of the beautiful in nature.
* * *
Alfred would have died three years before this was published, but it's good to know Josephine had the solace of faith. Will continue this soon...
Friday, August 14, 2009
Alfred Cragin, Killed by the Explosion of a Cannon
Every fourth of July, I think about Cragin Cousin Alfred. I found news of his death on a July, 1895 front page of the (Fitchburg, Mass.) Sentinel years ago when researching Eleanor Norcross. My copy is totally gray, so here's a transcription (by the way, this gets quite graphic and gory):
"Alfred, the 13-years-old son of Mr. and Mrs. C.W. Cragin, met with a frightful death at his home on Franklin road, West Fitchburg, Thursday afternoon, by the explosion of a cannon. All the morning the young fellow had been celebrating with the cannon which was simply an axle box from an old wagon wheel, with one end plugged up."
Okay, me again. You have to applaud the lad for having that Cragin farmer-mechanic ability to adapt a tool. But celebrating all morning? Let's continue...
Shortly after 2 o'clock in the afternoon, the boy took the cannon just across the road from the house and placed it, loaded, on a stone. In lighting the fuse a spark dropped in the powder and a frightful explosion followed. His two brothers were witnesses of the scene from the doorway of the house, and running over found him lying with his forehead crushed in and his brains oozing out of the wound. It was a terrible sight and the effects on the young lad's mother, who rushed to the spot immediately can well be imagined. Dr. Pierson was summoned at once and found a gash three and one half inches long and over an inch wide on the left side of the forehead. The lower jaw was broken and the mouth and tongue were badly cut by the flying pieces. It was apparent at once that death was only a matter of a few hours and he was unconscious til he died at 6:30 pm. The mother is nearly heart-broken over the blow and has the sympathy of the entire community. Alfred was one of the brightest pupils in the eighth grade of the Ashburnham Street school, and was universally loved by teachers and pupils."
This totally kills me ever ytime. Aside from the part about Alfred playing with gunpowder, I wonder what his brothers were thinking? Ralph would have been 20 and Ray 17. Where were they when he was fooling around? I'm assuming they lived on a farm (Franklin Road still is quite rural, despite recent construction of gigantic condovillages). So the boys would have been out in the fields? Or, because it was the 4th, perhaps they were all taking the day off.
I looked up Alfred in the genealogy, and I'll look at a city directory to see where on Franklin Road the house can be found (we live not far from this neighborhood, oddly enough). The brothers who survived were Ralph and Ray. Ralph became a chef and Ray became a railroad postal clerk, running from Syracuse to New York. But Alfred's mother was an interesting character and my next entry will probably be about Mary Josephine Eaton Cragin who, it turns out, was a poet! But my heart goes out to her still, to have lost two children (another son died in infancy).
"Alfred, the 13-years-old son of Mr. and Mrs. C.W. Cragin, met with a frightful death at his home on Franklin road, West Fitchburg, Thursday afternoon, by the explosion of a cannon. All the morning the young fellow had been celebrating with the cannon which was simply an axle box from an old wagon wheel, with one end plugged up."
Okay, me again. You have to applaud the lad for having that Cragin farmer-mechanic ability to adapt a tool. But celebrating all morning? Let's continue...
Shortly after 2 o'clock in the afternoon, the boy took the cannon just across the road from the house and placed it, loaded, on a stone. In lighting the fuse a spark dropped in the powder and a frightful explosion followed. His two brothers were witnesses of the scene from the doorway of the house, and running over found him lying with his forehead crushed in and his brains oozing out of the wound. It was a terrible sight and the effects on the young lad's mother, who rushed to the spot immediately can well be imagined. Dr. Pierson was summoned at once and found a gash three and one half inches long and over an inch wide on the left side of the forehead. The lower jaw was broken and the mouth and tongue were badly cut by the flying pieces. It was apparent at once that death was only a matter of a few hours and he was unconscious til he died at 6:30 pm. The mother is nearly heart-broken over the blow and has the sympathy of the entire community. Alfred was one of the brightest pupils in the eighth grade of the Ashburnham Street school, and was universally loved by teachers and pupils."
This totally kills me ever ytime. Aside from the part about Alfred playing with gunpowder, I wonder what his brothers were thinking? Ralph would have been 20 and Ray 17. Where were they when he was fooling around? I'm assuming they lived on a farm (Franklin Road still is quite rural, despite recent construction of gigantic condovillages). So the boys would have been out in the fields? Or, because it was the 4th, perhaps they were all taking the day off.
I looked up Alfred in the genealogy, and I'll look at a city directory to see where on Franklin Road the house can be found (we live not far from this neighborhood, oddly enough). The brothers who survived were Ralph and Ray. Ralph became a chef and Ray became a railroad postal clerk, running from Syracuse to New York. But Alfred's mother was an interesting character and my next entry will probably be about Mary Josephine Eaton Cragin who, it turns out, was a poet! But my heart goes out to her still, to have lost two children (another son died in infancy).
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Cragin Cousins
Growing up in North Worcester County, I remember my father, Donald H. Cragin was passionately interested in anyone named Cragin, and scoured the archives of various newspapers he wrote for. I have a heap of the old xerographic copies of pages from the Boston Herald Traveler and other defunct newspapers describing Cragins who were cops and criminals, politicos and poets, even the third person in the triangle that sparked the free-love Oneida community back in the 1840s.
I think his interest was ignited by his own father's late-in-life fascination with Cragin antecedents. Howard A. Cragin compiled some genealogical information from Scotland but I don't think he lived long enough to read June Godley Cragin's enormous and encompassing Cragin tome that arrived at our house sometimes in the 60s.
The Cragins were originally from Scotland, a place called Craggan, which means "rock." (Still trying to figure out how this may have encouraged my decision to major in geology). The original Cragin, John was captured as (in all likelihood) a teenage soldier fighting for the Royalist side. He was packed on a boat, the John and Sarah, shipped to the new world around 1680. The drama of his story is that he was ailing while on board -- and not just seasickness: small pox. "In those days, the cure for that was getting shipped -- overboard," my father gleefully explained, adding that family legend had it that Sarah Dawes (an ancestor of Richard Dawes, who was one of Paul Revere's colleagues, and the one who actually made it to Lexington) nursed him to health, and saved him from a watery grave. John the first worked off his indenture at the Saugus Iron Works, had one son, and promptly died.
There are many, many other Cragins, and I'm sending a link to all people named Cragin so that they can post or read as desired. I'm looking forward to writing about:
19th century entomologist Isabelle Sophronia Cragin
19th century Wheaton Female Seminary Instructress Mary Jane Cragin (who got a dorm named after her)
20th century bassplayer Hal Cragin (my brother)
Daniel Cragin, manufacturer of perfectly-shaped wooden boxes (the factory's still cranking out these "peck measures" in Southern NH)
Plus the Cragin who was presented a shotgun by, I believe, the government of Paraguay. This hangs over a window here, and is aimed towards Boston. Nothing against Boston, mind you.
I changed the address of this because I have found that my branch of the family is connected to so many others that we are constantly saying, "is this first cousin twice removed? Second cousin? Or are we third cousins yet... "
I think his interest was ignited by his own father's late-in-life fascination with Cragin antecedents. Howard A. Cragin compiled some genealogical information from Scotland but I don't think he lived long enough to read June Godley Cragin's enormous and encompassing Cragin tome that arrived at our house sometimes in the 60s.
The Cragins were originally from Scotland, a place called Craggan, which means "rock." (Still trying to figure out how this may have encouraged my decision to major in geology). The original Cragin, John was captured as (in all likelihood) a teenage soldier fighting for the Royalist side. He was packed on a boat, the John and Sarah, shipped to the new world around 1680. The drama of his story is that he was ailing while on board -- and not just seasickness: small pox. "In those days, the cure for that was getting shipped -- overboard," my father gleefully explained, adding that family legend had it that Sarah Dawes (an ancestor of Richard Dawes, who was one of Paul Revere's colleagues, and the one who actually made it to Lexington) nursed him to health, and saved him from a watery grave. John the first worked off his indenture at the Saugus Iron Works, had one son, and promptly died.
There are many, many other Cragins, and I'm sending a link to all people named Cragin so that they can post or read as desired. I'm looking forward to writing about:
19th century entomologist Isabelle Sophronia Cragin
19th century Wheaton Female Seminary Instructress Mary Jane Cragin (who got a dorm named after her)
20th century bassplayer Hal Cragin (my brother)
Daniel Cragin, manufacturer of perfectly-shaped wooden boxes (the factory's still cranking out these "peck measures" in Southern NH)
Plus the Cragin who was presented a shotgun by, I believe, the government of Paraguay. This hangs over a window here, and is aimed towards Boston. Nothing against Boston, mind you.
I changed the address of this because I have found that my branch of the family is connected to so many others that we are constantly saying, "is this first cousin twice removed? Second cousin? Or are we third cousins yet... "
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