No. 40

The Elders in 1834 - Mary Ann & Narcissa

Dear Stewart,

Your grandmother knew a famous woman and watched for news about her mission work with great admiration.

One day when she was 26 years old, Mary Ann Brother, your grandmother, sat in her front room, nursing her baby, “H. H”, named after Bishop Henry Hobart.

This was in 1834, about five years before your mother was born and ten years before your uncle Charles was born.

But here she was sitting in this old chair, now familiar to all your elders who grew up in that house.

In this chair she would nurse and sit and visit.

But here, also, she watched the traffic both on the stairs to the 2nd floor and out on Morris Street in Bath.

Pulling back the curtains, lifting her rear end, Mary Ann watched as Mr. Fowler greeted Mrs. Metcalf and she returned to her breast, “What turn of events now?”

Shortly after, Mrs. Metcalf entered the Brother home with just a short-tempered knock.

“No harm in taking a turn for a good story, right Henry?”

Mrs. Metcalfe reported on the farewell party for the Narcissa Prentiss family, who were moving to Allegany County and then to Angelica.

Narcissa, also 26, was an old classmate of Mary Ann’s but not yet married.

This was because she had been trained, even pressed, to be a missionary.

Few men could tolerate the constant verbiage from the do-gooders or the thought of converting Indians.

Mary glanced down at H. H and said, “I won’t make you pivot so hard and fast like that, son… How safe you are that I’m too tired!!”

But years later, reading in the biographies about Narcissa, famous for her Rocky Mountain conversions, famous for the massacre, Mary Ann winced, unable to stop the tick-tock-nothing-you-can-do-about-time nausea called entertainment.

To learn that her friend had only met Mr. Whitman an hour before they married. Despite being a physician, her groom could not control the disease they brought to the frontier. And Narcissa could not stop their ravenousness, their ignorance, and horrible grief over losing their families and turned on their new friends who turned first against them.

One hour. She had only just met him one hour before she was to turn that direction. Time nauseated.

— Miss Minnie

2025 Copyright Christine Friesel