The Inventory of the Estate of Samuel Wales Late of Braintree, Taken
by the Subscribers, March the 14th, 1761.
His Purse in Cash £11-15-01
His apparrel 10-11-00
His watch 2-13-04
The Best Bed with two Coverlids, three sheets,
two underbeds, two Bolsters, two pillows,
Bedstead rope £6
One mill Blanket, two Phlanel sheets, 12 toe Sheets £3-4-8
Eleven Towels & table Cloth 0-15-0
a pair of mittens & pr. of Gloves 0-2-0
a neck Handkerchief & neckband 0-4-0
an ovel Tabel--Two other Tabels 1-12-0
A Chist with Draws 2-8-0
Another Low Chist with Draws & three other Chists 1-10-0
Six best Chears and a great chear 1-6-0
a warming pan--Two Brass Kittles 1-5-0
a Small Looking Glass, five Pewter Basons 0-7-8
fifteen other Chears 0-15-0
fire arms, Sword & bayonet 1-4-0
Six Porringers, four platters, Two Pewter Pots £1-0-4
auger Chisel, Gimlet, a Bible & other Books 0-15-4
A chese press, great spinning-wheel, & spindle 0-9-0
a smith's anvil £3-12-0
the Pillion 0-8-0
a Bleu Jacket 0-0-3
AARON WHITCOMB.
SILAS WHITE.
The foregoing is only a small portion of the original inventory of
Samuel Wales's estate. He was an exceedingly well-to-do man for these
times. He had a good many acres of rich pasture and woodland, and
considerable live stock. Then his home was larger and more comfortable
than was usual then; and his stock of household utensils plentiful.
He died three years after Ann Ginnins went to live with Grandma, when
she was about thirteen years old. Grandma spared her to Mrs. Polly for
a few weeks after the funeral; there was a great deal to be done, and
she needed some extra help. And, after all, Ann was legally bound to
her, and her lawful servant.
So the day after good Samuel Wales was laid away in the little
Braintree burying-ground, Ann returned to her old quarters for a
little while. She did not really want to go; but she did not object
to the plan at all. She was sincerely sorry for poor Mrs. Polly,
and wanted to help her, if she could. She mourned, herself, for Mr.
Samuel. He had always been very kind to her.
Mrs. Polly had for company, besides Ann, Nabby Porter, Grandma's old
hired woman whom she had made over to her, and a young man who had
been serving as apprentice to Mr. Samuel. His name was Phineas Adams.
He was very shy and silent, but a good workman.
Samuel Wales left a will bequeathing everything to his widow; that was
solemnly read in the fore-room one afternoon; then the inventory had
to be taken. That, on account of the amount of property, was quite an
undertaking; but it was carried out with the greatest formality and
precision.
For several days, Mr. Aaron Whitcomb and Mr. Silas White were stalking
majestically about the premises, with note-books and pens. Aaron
Whitcomb was a grave, portly old man, with a large head of white hair.
Silas White was little and wiry and fussy. He monopolized the greater
part of the business, although he was not half as well fitted for it
as his companion.
They pried into everything with religious exactitude. Mrs. Polly
watched them with beseeming awe and deference, but it was a great
trial to her, and she grew very nervous over it. It seemed dreadful to
have all her husband's little personal effects, down to his neckband
and mittens, handled over, and their worth in shillings and pence
calculated. She had a price fixed on them already in higher currency.
Ann found her crying one afternoon sitting on the kitchen settle, with
her apron over her head. When she saw the little girl's pitying look,
she poured out her trouble to her.
"They've just been valuing his mittens and gloves," said she, sobbing,
"at two-and-sixpence. I shall be thankful when they are through."
"Are there any more of his things?" asked Ann, her black eyes
flashing, with the tears in them.
"I think they've seen about all. There's his blue jacket he used to
milk in, a-hanging behind the shed door--I guess they haven't valued
that yet."
"I think it's a shame!" quoth Ann. "I don't believe there's any need
of so much law."
"Hush, child! You mustn't set yourself up against the judgment of your
elders. Such things have to be done."
Ann said no more, but the indignant sparkle did not fade out of her
eyes at all. She watched her opportunity, and took down Mr. Wales's
old blue jacket from its peg behind the shed door, ran with it
upstairs, and hid it in her own room behind the bed. "There," said
she, "Mrs. Wales sha'n't cry over that!"
That night, at tea time, the work of taking the inventory was
complete. Mr. Whitcomb and Mr. White walked away with their long
lists, satisfied that they had done their duty according to the law.
Every article of Samuel Wales's property, from a warming-pan to a
chest of drawers, was set down, with the sole exception of that old
blue jacket, which Ann had hidden.
She felt complacent over it at first; then she began to be uneasy.
"Nabby," said she confidentially to the old servant woman, when they
were washing the pewter plates together after supper, "what would they
do if anybody shouldn't let them set down all the things--if they hid
some of 'em away, I mean?"
"They'd make a dretful time on't," said Nabby impressively. She was
a large, stern-looking old woman. "They air dretful perticklar 'bout
these things. They hev to be."
Ann was scared when she heard that. When the dishes were done, she sat
down on the settle and thought it over, and made up her mind what to
do.
The next morning, in the frosty dawning, before the rest of the family
were up, a slim, erect little figure could have been seen speeding
across lots toward Mr. Silas White's. She had the old blue jacket
tucked under her arm. When she reached the house, she spied Mr. White
just coming out of the back door with a milking pail. He carried a
lantern, too, for it was hardly light.
He stopped and stared when Ann ran up to him.
"Mr. White," said she, all breathless, "here's--something--I guess yer
didn't see yesterday."
Mr. White set down the milk pail, took the blue jacket which she
handed him, and scrutinized it sharply by the light of the lantern.
"I guess we didn't see it," said he finally. "I will put it down--it's
worth about three pence, I judge. Where"--
"Silas, Silas!" called a shrill voice from the house. Silas White
dropped the jacket and trotted briskly in, his lantern bobbing
agitatedly. He never delayed a moment when his wife called; important
and tyrannical as the little man was abroad, he had his own tyrant at
home.
Ann did not wait for him to return; she snatched up the blue jacket
and fled home, leaping like a little deer over the hoary fields. She
hung up the precious old jacket behind the shed door again, and no one
ever knew the whole story of its entrance in the inventory. If she had
been questioned, she would have told the truth boldly, though. But
Samuel Wales's Inventory had for its last item that blue jacket,
spelled after Silas White's own individual method, as was many another
word in the long list. Silas White consulted his own taste with
respect to capital letters too.
After a few weeks, Grandma said she must have Ann again; and back she
went. Grandma was very feeble lately, and everybody humored her. Mrs.
Polly was sorry to have the little girl leave her. She said it was
wonderful how much she had improved. But she would not have admitted
that the improvement was owing to the different influence she had been
under; she said Ann had outgrown her mischievous ways.
Grandma did not live very long after this, however. Mrs. Polly had
her bound girl at her own disposal in a year's time. Poor Ann was
sorrowful enough for a long while after Grandma's death. She wore the
beloved gold beads round her neck, and a sad ache in her heart. The
dear old woman had taken the beads off her neck with her own hands
and given them to Ann before she died, that there might be no mistake
about it.
Mrs. Polly said she was glad Ann had them. "You might jist as well
have 'em as Dorcas's girl," said she; "she set enough sight more by
you."
Ann could not help growing cheerful again, after a while. Affairs in
Mrs. Polly's house were much brighter for her, in some ways, than they
had ever been before.
Either the hot iron of affliction had smoothed some of the puckers out
of her mistress's disposition, or she was growing, naturally, less
sharp and dictatorial. Any way, she was becoming as gentle and loving
with Ann as it was in her nature to be, and Ann, following her
impulsive temper, returned all the affection with vigor, and never
bestowed a thought on past unpleasantness.
For the next two years, Ann's position in the family grew to be more
and more that of a daughter. If it had not been for the indentures,
lying serenely in that tall wooden desk, she would almost have
forgotten, herself, that she was a bound girl.
One spring afternoon, when Ann was about sixteen years old, her
mistress called her solemnly into the fore-room. "Ann," said she,
"come here, I want to speak to you."
Nabby stared wonderingly; and Ann, as she obeyed, felt awed. There was
something unusual in her mistress's tone.
Standing there in the fore-room, in the august company of the best
bed, with its high posts and flowered-chintz curtains, the best chest
of drawers, and the best chairs, Ann listened to what Mrs. Polly had
to tell her. It was a plan which almost took her breath away; for it
was this: Mrs. Polly proposed to adopt her, and change her name to
Wales. She would be no longer Ann Ginnins, and a bound girl: but Ann
Wales, and a daughter in her mother's home.
Ann dropped into one of the best chairs, and sat there, her little
dark face very pale. "Should I have the--papers?" she gasped at
length.
"Your papers? Yes, child, you can have them."
"I don't want them," cried Ann, "never! I want them to stay just where
they are, till my time is out. If I am adopted, I don't want the
papers!"
Mrs. Polly stared. She had never known how Ann had taken the
indentures with her on her run-away trip years ago; but now Ann
told her the whole story. In her gratitude to her mistress, and her
contrition, she had to.
It was so long ago in Ann's childhood, it did not seem so very
dreadful to Mrs. Polly, probably. But Ann insisted on the indentures
remaining in the desk, even after the papers of adoption were made
out, and she had become "Ann Wales." It seemed to go a little way
toward satisfying her conscience. This adoption meant a good deal to
Ann; for besides a legal home, and a mother, it secured to her a
right in a comfortable property in the future. Mrs. Polly Wales was
considered very well off. She was a smart business-woman, and knew how
to take care of her property too. She still hired Phineas Adams to
carry on the blacksmith's business, and kept her farm-work running
just as her husband had. Neither she nor Ann were afraid of work, and
Ann Wales used to milk the cows, and escort them to and from pasture,
as faithfully as Ann Ginnins.
It was along in springtime when Ann was adopted, and Mrs. Polly
fulfilled her part of the contract in the indentures by getting the
Sunday suit therein spoken of.
They often rode on horseback to meeting, but they usually walked on
the fine Sundays in spring. Ann had probably never been so happy in
her life as she was walking by Mrs. Polly's side to meeting that first
Sunday after her adoption. Most of the way was through the woods;
the tender light green boughs met over their heads; the violets and
anemones were springing beside their path. There were green buds and
white blossoms all around; the sky showed blue between the waving
branches, and the birds were singing.
Ann in her pretty petticoat of rose-colored stuff, stepping daintily
over the young grass and the flowers, looked and felt like a part of
it all. Her dark cheeks had a beautiful red glow on them; her black
eyes shone. She was as straight and graceful and stately as an Indian.
"She's as handsome as a picture," thought Mrs. Polly in her secret
heart. A good many people said that Ann resembled Mrs. Polly in her
youth, and that may have added force to her admiration.
Her new gown was very fine for those days; but fine as she was, and
adopted daughter though she was, Ann did not omit her thrifty ways for
once. This identical morning Mrs. Polly and she carried their best
shoes under their arms, and wore their old ones, till within a short
distance from the meeting-house. Then the old shoes were tucked away
under a stone wall for safety, and the best ones put on. Stone walls,
very likely, sheltered a good many well-worn little shoes, of a
Puritan Sabbath, that their prudent owners might appear in the House
of God trimly shod. Ah! these beautiful, new, peaked-toed, high-heeled
shoes of Ann's--what would she have said to walking in them all the
way to meeting!
If that Sunday was an eventful one to Ann Wales, so was the week
following. The next Tuesday, right after dinner, she was up in a
little unfinished chamber over the kitchen, where they did such work
when the weather permitted, carding wool. All at once, she heard
voices down below. They had a strange inflection, which gave her
warning at once. She dropped her work and listened. "What is the
matter?" thought she.
Then there was a heavy tramp on the stairs, and Captain Abraham French
stood in the door, his stern weather-beaten face white and set. Mrs.
Polly followed him, looking very pale and excited.
"When did you see anything of our Hannah?" asked Captain French,
controlling as best he could the tremor in his resolute voice.
Ann rose, gathering up her big blue apron, cards, wool and all. "Oh,"
she cried, "not since last Sabbath, at meeting! What is it?"
"She's lost," answered Captain French. "She started to go up to her
Aunt Sarah's Monday forenoon; and Enos has just been down, and they
haven't seen anything of her." Poor Captain French gave a deep groan.
Then they all went down into the kitchen together, talking and
lamenting. And then, Captain French was galloping away on his gray
horse to call assistance, and Ann was flying away over the fields,
blue apron, cards, wool and all.
"O, Ann!" Mrs. Polly cried after, "where are you going?"
"I'm going--to find--Hannah!" Ann shouted back, in a shrill, desperate
voice, and kept on.
She had no definite notion as to where she was going; she had only one
thought--Hannah French, her darling, tender, little Hannah French, her
friend whom she loved better than a sister, was lost.
A good three miles from the Wales home was a large tract of rough
land, half-swamp, known as "Bear Swamp." There was an opinion, more or
less correct, that bears might be found there. Some had been shot in
that vicinity. Why Ann turned her footsteps in that direction,
she could not have told herself. Possibly the vague impression of
conversations she and Hannah had had, lingering in her mind, had
something to do with it. Many a time the two little girls had remarked
to each other with a shudder, "How awful it would be to get lost in
Bear Swamp."
Any way, Ann went straight there, through pasture and woodland, over
ditches and stone walls. She knew every step of the way for a long
distance. When she gradually got into the unfamiliar wilderness of the
swamp, a thought struck her--suppose she got lost too! It would
be easy enough--the unbroken forest stretched for miles in some
directions. She would not find a living thing but Indians, and, maybe,
wild beasts, the whole distance.
If she should get lost she would not find Hannah, and the people would
have to hunt for her too. But Ann had quick wits for an emergency. She
had actually carried those cards, with a big wad of wool between them
all the time, in her gathered-up apron. Now she began picking off
little bits of wool and marking her way with them, sticking them on
the trees and bushes. Every few feet a fluffy scrap of wool showed the
road Ann had gone.
But poor Ann went on, farther and farther--and no sign of Hannah. She
kept calling her from time to time, hallooing at the top of her shrill
sweet voice: "Hannah! Hannah! Hannah Fre-nch!"
But never a response got the dauntless little girl, slipping almost up
to her knees sometimes, in black swamp-mud; and sometimes stumbling
painfully over tree-stumps, and through tangled undergrowth.
"I'll go till my wool gives out," said Ann Wales; then she used it
more sparingly.
But it was almost gone before she thought she heard in the distance a
faint little cry in response to her call: "Hannah! Hannah Fre-nch!"
She called again and listened. Yes; she certainly did hear a little
cry off toward the west. Calling from time to time, she went as nearly
as she could in that direction. The pitiful answering cry grew louder
and nearer; finally Ann could distinguish Hannah's voice.
Wild with joy, she came, at last, upon her sitting on a fallen
hemlock-tree, her pretty face pale, and her sweet blue eyes strained
with terror.
"O, Hannah!" "O, Ann!"
"How did you ever get here, Hannah?"
"I--started for aunt Sarah's--that morning," explained Hannah, between
sobs. "And--I got frightened in the woods, about a mile from father's.
I saw something ahead I thought was a bear. A great black thing! Then
I ran--and, somehow, the first thing I knew, I was lost. I walked and
walked, and it seems to me I kept coming right back to the same place.
Finally I sat down here, and staid; I thought it was all the way for
me to be found."
"O, Hannah! what did you do last night?"
"I staid somewhere, under some pine-trees," replied Hannah, with a
shudder; "and I kept hearing things--O, Ann!"
Ann hugged her sympathizingly. "I guess I wouldn't have slept much if
I had known," said she. "O, Hannah, you haven't had anything to eat!
ain't you starved?"
Hannah laughed faintly. "I ate up two whole pumpkin pies I was
carrying to aunt Sarah," said she. "Oh! how lucky it was you had
them." "Yes; mother called me back to get them, after I started. They
were some new ones, made with cream, and she thought aunt Sarah would
like them."
Pretty soon they started. It was hard work, for the way was very
rough, and poor Hannah weak. But Ann had a good deal of strength in
her lithe young frame, and she half-carried Hannah over the worst
places. Still both of the girls were pretty well spent when they came
to the last of the bits of wool on the border of Bear Swamp. However,
they kept on a little farther; then they had to stop and rest. "I know
where I am now," said Hannah, with a sigh of delight; "but I don't
think I can walk another step." She was, in fact, almost exhausted.
Ann looked at her thoughtfully. She hardly knew what to do. She could
not carry Hannah herself--indeed, her own strength began to fail; and
she did not want to leave her to go for assistance.
All of a sudden, she jumped up. "You stay just where you are a few
minutes, Hannah," said she. "I'm going somewhere. I'll be back soon."
Ann was laughing.