Wearing Hattie’s Wedding Shawl

I have this wedding portrait of my 2x Great-grandparents Royal Levant Eaton and Hattie Eva Smith. In it, Hattie is wearing a lace wedding shawl, a piece of our family history I have recently held in my hands. With the exception of one small spot of water damage or rust, it is in perfect condition. There is no wearing of the lace, no pulling of the design. It’s exquisite.

Items we use become imbued with our energy. It’s why antiques are such a draw for people. They’re full of history and memory. I believe our pull to certain items comes not from its aesthetic beauty, but from how it makes us feel, whether or not its energy resonates with ours.

I draped the shawl over my shoulders to better catch a photo of it. I wondered how many people had worn it. What was its history? I knew that my great-great-grandma wore it on her wedding day. Was she the only one? Was it new to her? Was it a gift passed down from another family member?

Closing my eyes, I thought back to August 5, 1903, the day she wore it one hundred and eleven years ago. My great-great grandparents married in Eagle Harbor, Orleans County, NY, a small village along the Erie Canal. How did she feel when the wedding shawl clasp closed?

Her young life was shadowed with death. Her mother died a month after she was born, from anemia, a complication due to childbirth. Hattie Eva Smith was named for her mother, Hattie Eva Dutcher. Then when she was fourteen, her father died. Hattie and her older sister Sophia (a spitting image of their mother, by the way) went to live with their grandparents Reuben Feagles Dutcher and Eliza Marsh Bird.

Hattie on the left, Sophia on the right

By all accounts, the elderly couple doted on their granddaughters. I have a letter from Reuben’s sister Elizabeth to their brother Merritt, where she talks about the girls visiting- that Sophia was a teacher two miles away and Hattie was away at school in Albion. “It seems to me there never was a more faithful man to the good of his family than Reuben has been. His children and his childrens children are so much to him. The two little grandchildren are certainly beautiful in looks and manner.”

I also knew what Hattie Eva couldn’t know that day in Eagle Harbor. I knew that five years later her beloved grandfather would die, and only twenty-three years after that, her husband would succumb to wounds he sustained in a prison riot, due to his occupation as a guard.

All of these thoughts swirled in my head as I stood in my childhood home, wearing her shawl. Whether I could feel it or not, an echo of her was attached to the lacework. I know this is true. Due to my ancestral meditations, I was able to reach back in time and share in a moment I couldn’t otherwise know.

My Great Aunts and Uncles

Libby Dutcher, the artist at work.

In my quest for uncovering as many names as I can for our family tree, I applied a focused tunnel-vision to my search. Who is my grandfather? Who were his parents, and their parents, and their parents? I mostly neglect the names of other children who were not my direct ancestors, noting (sometimes) how many children they had total, and maybe a list of names if it’s an easy copy and paste.

Recently, I had a sobering realization that, not having children, I will become that name on someone else’s family tree that I ignore. There will not be anyone who searches for me. I will forever be someone else’s Great Aunt, however many times removed.

Some of my zeal in uncovering our family history is in getting to share it with my nieces and nephew. It’s in anticipating sharing it with my great aunts and uncles as I grow older. In honor of the acknowledgement that I have dismissed some members from my family tree who may have had very fascinating lives themselves, and in gratitude to my father, who didn’t, I want to share the lives of two of my kin, my Great-Aunt Mary Elizabeth Dutcher and my Great-Uncle Frank Wicker.

Great-Aunt Libby

The cottage, prepared for Swami in 1895.

My 3x Great-Aunt Libby was sister to Reuben Feagles Dutcher, my 3x Great-Grandfather. Mary Elizabeth Dutcher, known as Libby, was a respected artist in her lifetime. I have held a couple of her small board paintings in my hands. I have had my eyes on a beautiful watercolor of the Islands themselves. As far as my research shows, she never married. She never had any children.

But she did own a Victorian cottage on the St. Lawrence River, in the 1,000 Islands. The Thousand Island Park was 20 years old when she lived there, built as a place to encourage the exchange of ideas in an atmosphere of relaxation and meditation, attracting speakers like Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglas. There were 600 cottages in the community on June 18, 1895, when Swami Vivekananda arrived at the Park.

In 1893, he traveled from India to the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, uninvited, encouraged by his fellow monks to represent Hinduism at the event. A Harvard professor asked him to address the crowd and he opened with this prayer: "As different streams, having their sources in different places, all mingle their water in the sea; so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee."

His address is credited with changing the tone of the gathering itself. After the Parliament, he traveled for two years on a strenuous lecture tour. What does Swami Vivekananda have to do with my Great-Aunt? During this tour, my Great-Aunt Libby attended his spiritual classes in New York City and invited him to retreat at her cottage in the Islands.

Libby at the cottage.

In preparation for his arrival, she added a wing to her cottage for his initial seven-week stay, coming at the end of a strenuous to years of lecturing. This wing was actually a three-story addition, comprised of a guest room, a classroom, and a private room for Swami, a monk and follower of Sri Ramakrishna. He was 32 years old.

While visiting Libby’s cottage, Swami taught his followers and began compiling his writings. He eventually returned to India. Swami died at the age of 39 but his work served as inspiration for Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Ravi Shankar, and, decades later, George Harrison.

The cottage today.

Today, Libby Dutcher’s cottage still stands, bearing the name of Swami Vivekananda. It is a sanctuary and place of pilgrimage for his followers. The cottage itself, beautifully restored, is open to the public for tours during the summer months. Dirt from holy places in India was buried on the land. Water from the Ganges was poured into the St. Lawrence. The room that Libby built as Swami’s living space is a chapel now.

I love knowing that the place where she built her home, where she created an environment of art and thoughtful expression, is now a sacred site. I may not know a lot about her, but being able to learn about someone who inspired her so deeply, allows me to build a connection to her ghost.

Great Uncle Frank

Frank (L), William, and Hiram (R).

My 2x Great-Uncle Frank Newell Wicker was one of three brothers to my 2x Great-Grandfather Hiram King Wicker. The Wickers moved to Lockport, NY in about 1845, but once the Civil War started, Frank’s career kept him in perpetual motion. He enlisted in the 28^th Regiment of N.Y. Volunteers in 1861.

His previous position with the Lockport Home Guards earned him a promotion to lieutenant. During his service, he earned a reputation for daring, courage, and a cool head in battle. At some point, a Confederate Force was tasked to capture him, but all their attempts failed. He was promoted to the Signal Corps where he served as an officer for the remainder of the war, seeing battle at Antietam and Georgetown.

Frank was discharged in 1865, but stayed in government service for the rest of his life. In August that year he was second in command of 1,000 men for the Russian-American Telegraph Expedition. He kept a diary of the three months it took to reach their destination (which I am currently transcribing). The men were tasked with laying telegraph line through British Columbia and Alaska, and laying cable across the Bering Straits, through Siberia (eventually scrapped by the construction of the transatlantic cable).

While in Alaska, Frank acted as a surveyor and wrote many documents for the U.S. government about the wealth of the land he saw, including reports on the Alaska seal fisheries. It was my Uncle Frank’s final recommendation that convinced the United States to buy Alaska. In 1869, Frank was assigned there as Special Agent of the Treasury.

Wicker’s next job was as collector of customs at Key West, Florida. He was appointed by President Grant in 1873. Due to a Cuban civil war against Spain, Key West was full of refugees. In 1884, he was dismissed from his position without notice.

Uncle Frank's handwriting.

According to a Cuban newspaper from 1912: “A monster meeting was held at San Carlos hall, patriotic speeches were made, and the audience requested to subscribe funds to aid [Cuban patriot] Aguerro to fit out another expedition. The first to respond was Colonel Frank N. Wicker, the collector of customs at this port; he contributed one hundred dollars. The Spanish consul telegraphed this to Washington and Colonel Wicker was removed from office. Colonel Wicker was probably actuated by a desire to serve his political party. He was the leader of the Republicans in Key West, and knew that this act of friendship to the Cuban cause would be remembered by the impulsive patriotic Cubans, and that they would help his party when he should call on them for support. His name should go down in history as the first American martyr to the cause of Cuban liberty, as well as a martyr to his party.”

He was next, quickly, given an assignment as appraiser at the Port of New Orleans, where he was at the time of his death, in February 1903, of heart disease. He was a member of eight different secret orders during his lifetime, including the Knights Templar and the Mystic Shrine, something his and his siblings had in common. His brother, my 2x Great-Grandpa Hiram, was a Past Eminent Commander of the Masons of New York.

It's about connection. It's about growth. It's about how we are all relations. It's about living. And it's about love. In the words of the spiritual teacher of my 3x Great-Aunt Libby:

On the Beach in Olcott

Hattie Eva Dutcher, married Smith, 1857-1882

Last year, my father showed me two recent family acquisitions, paintings on wood done by my Great-Great-Grandma Hattie Eva Dutcher, born in 1857. She later lived in Olcott NY, a small hamlet on the shore of Lake Ontario, where my Great-Grandma was born. The small wood board paintings were both of the shoreline at Olcott.

Between 1870 and 1877, two piers, extending out into the water 1800 feet, were built at Olcott, with a small lighthouse going up on the West pier. This village harbor held the deepest point of entry for boats. My 2x Great-Grandma would have watched the small town grow, poised for boom. At this time, before the 1900s, getting to Olcott, a popular vacation retreat, meant taking a horse and buggy.

I’ve learned that Hattie Dutcher’s aunt, Miss Mary Elizabeth ‘Libby’ Dutcher, was a well-known and respected artist, who lived in the 1000 Islands. It’s not surprising that her niece would try her hand at the craft. The paintings I held, in my childhood home, were beautiful, full of color and wonder. I shouldn’t have been surprised- artistic talent, whether singing, painting, or carpentry, has been a through-line in uncovering my family genealogy.

My 2x Great-Grandma Hattie died when she was 25, a month after giving birth to my Great-Grandma, her daughter and namesake. She died of anemia, complications from childbirth.

I wasn’t aware in my childhood, when we spent our summers in Olcott, that my family had so much history there. I wasn’t aware that multiple members of my family, on both sides, had lived and summered there. For me, it was a place to play and swim, to walk out on the broken concrete piers with my hand carefully tucked into my mom or dad’s hand.

There was always plenty of green grass to play in. The air was full of the sound of surf and gulls. My lungs were filled with the smells of sand and seaweed. And oh, the glorious sunsets at dusk!

I sat at the water’s edge on a recent trip, meditating to the sound of the waves, slowing my breath to match their rhythm. I drifted backwards into my bloodstream, feeling the effects of time on the landscape around me. I thought backwards to those who had walked the sands beneath me…

My father and I talking on the porch of his one-room cottage, before sunset.

The photo I have of my Grandpa Mark (in the dark suit on the right) standing in front of his family cottage on the bluff, with his parents Royal Eaton and Hattie Eva Smith.

The photo of my Grandma Ruth (right) and my Great-Grandma Hattie Eva (back to the camera) laughing on the beach with my Great-Aunt Dorothy (far left).

The paintings my Great-Great-Grandma Hattie captured of the lake. I wonder if she ever sat where I sat. I wonder what the beaches looked like at the close of the civil war, when she might have sat with her small wooden boards and her paints and brushes.

It amazed me to hold something that she held, to see the beach through her eyes, through the way her hand skillfully translated the view she beheld. I wonder how old she was when she painted it. I wonder how young.

Where I sat on the beach, I imagined myself sitting with her, her long skirts tucked in around her legs. Did she dig her toes into the sand like I do? Did she collect rocks, too? Did she immerse herself in nature like me?

We gazed at the sunset together, a girl and a ghost, a granddaughter and a grandmother. A daughter and a mother. As the sun set, the water turned white and the clouds turned blue, and the echoes and ripples of our family danced out with the tide.