No. 37

The Elders in 1828 Franklin Academy

Dear Stewart,

Your uncle Valentine “Val” Brother, the first child of Mary Ann Pratt and Henry Brother, was born in October 1827. This happened to be the same year that the Franklin Academy in Prattsburgh opened its school to girls. Because the Brothers were instrumental in establishing the school, Val’s parents were pleased to have a place for their four daughters soon to come.

They called their first boy “Val” and expected great things of him, even if he was, what they deemed at the time, “a quiet leader,” unlike the girls that followed— that is, quiet.

Years later, his sister Cornelia would attend the academy surrounded by even more girls, who loved story and even more so, theater, and animated the frills in and around the curriculum.

But as time went by, the Brother boys that followed Val, however, were held back, kept close to home to help with the mills and the stores and instead went to the Bath Classical School, taught by Mr. Ralph Knickerbocker Finch, a Dartmouth man. Finch married the best friend of Mary Ann Pratt. He frequently tried to coach Val on his Latin, Greek, and Shakespeare.

Val preferred business of the mills, as it afforded time with his father. He was so attached to accounting and cleaning the equipment, in fact, that it concerned his mother, who asked her husband Henry to straighten the boy out to enjoy life, to stop with the grist inspections, or at least to pretend to be more animated during the performances when he was around her friends.

As Henry heard yet another request on this topic in their bed, he rolled over and covered his head with the pillow. The head of the household mumbled something, but Mary Ann could not make it out. As she reached over to rub into him more forcefully her opinion, a child cried out and she left their room.

Upon her exit, Henry Brother opened his eyes. He looked at the doorway and saw something: that faint, black spirit coming towards him down the hall. It drowned out the sound of his wife as she comforted one of their youngest.

His own father, Valentine Brother, died at the age of 47 like his father before him. Henry didn't want to tell his wife that he was, in fact, pressing Val hard so that Val could learn the grind and leave her comforting. He didn't want to alarm his wife, but God was in control, and the sooner she comes out as a genuine believer, the better it would be for her and her showy friends, and for Val. No—Val would keep doing the tour of the mills and minding the books with him. In the morning, after his temper cooled, Henry would make his wife understand: No more dramatic exercises for Val. His acting career, his youth, her kind of schooling, was over.

— Miss Minnie

2025 Copyright Christine Friesel