The Will-A Poem

Posted On June 11, 2022

Loyal followers of my blogs have discovered a translation of a will signed in 1745 on Olde Cape Codd.  (If you missed it, please take a look  in the list of Blogs for “Where There’s a Will There’s a Way”).  The below poem was inspired by my image of the testator (for non-lawyers, that is how we say “the guy who wrote the will”).  Let me know what you think.

The Will

(The will of Nathanell House of Yarmouth in the Province of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, a yeoman so self-declared, grants his daughters sums of money, and  leaves his dwelling, meadows, cedar swamps and buildings and remaining assets  to his two sons, provided they grant to his wife a life estate in the Great Room of his dwelling, and annually “bushells” of grain, good Indian corn, rye, wheat, a good cow, firewood and a “good hogg well fatted.”  A man of seeming means, he signs his will with “his mark,”– illiterate.  His soul is given to Jesus in expectation of a pardon of all sins.  His body is given to his executors.)

 

The Will

I am a yeoman of perfect memory, praised be God

and I leave my estates to my dearly beloved wife Esther

and my five children in rightful proportion,

as such proportion is judged this tenth day of June of 1745, and so:

my daughters are given money of the old tender, much more to the one unmarried,

and my wife receives from my sons an annual supply of food and lumber

and the use of the Great Room of my dwelling

and all else of course to my sons who are men

and bibles to my two grandsons, lest they not forget who they are

and who made them.

I leave no record of granddaughters for they are beneath my beneficence

and no doubt will marry stalwart yeoman all.

my bibles given are to be new; I am godly and own a bible but

it eludes mention and disposition;

perhaps it is so clearly the purview of my dearly beloved wife

that to even mention it is unneeded and perhaps unwise.

would that I could write to inscribe in its pages the name of my sons and grandsons…

 

The Dying

I miss today, nearing heaven,

standing in my “meddows”

reaping rye and wheat from the fields

sloshing my cedar swamps

harvesting firewood from my “wood lotts”

for I am a farmer indeed,  proud

although I can neither read nor write.  No matter

for I am of the land and of my God,

blessed with heirs and daughters

and many men to tend my lands

–what more can be asked of my only savior and redeemer?

I need make no mention of the stirrings of men

and talk of war.

Cape Codd and my family are blessed today,

my sun shines this glorious day when I praise my God

admire my estates

enfeoff my sons

provide for my wife

yes— proud in my province

my lawyer cataloging my wealth and moveable estates

as I inscribe my circular mark in bold flourish

as befits a yeoman and a Christian.

 

 

The Memory

 

Did he die in the Revolution

did his sons and grandsons

the husbands of his daughters

his grandsons in a different war?

does the Great Room still stand

and appear on tours by the Historical Society of Olde Yarmouth?

if I were to roam graveyards would I find their stones?

if I were to roam graveyards would I find their memories?

even of Nathanell testator, he of “Perfect Memory and Remembrance”?

do his children’s children’s grand-children walk the summer streets of Yarmouth

sail small skiffs in the harbor

crunch their teeth into sugar cones stuffed with melting ice cream from the shoppe

look through sun-proofed glass at yellowed drawings of the ancestral home,

even perchance dwell in that dwelling, walking the worn boards of the Great Room

reading the family history in the old bible, notations in the hand of Esther the younger

or Esther the older although not likely—

are we allowed to  hope and dream

even if all are dead

erased by war and plague and time

diluted by the seed and memory of others

a stain on the ambition of Nathanell

a loss of hubris echoing two and a half centuries

murmuring in the wood lotts

sloshing in the cedar swamps

swaying in the wild rye remaining in the meddow

without pedigree or memory?

 

Would Nathanell wish to return

if I asked permission of  He of “Meritorious Death and Passion”

to create a miracle so that yeoman true

might learn if his stolid anticipation of forever has been fulfilled

or

is that risk too great, to ask both a presumption and unkind?

is his body best left in the ground of Christian burial

and his soul at the right hand?

perhaps we who make wills to ordain the future

are blessed, most times,

to be absent when the future weaves the world from shards of history….

 

(Next time I am on the Cape of Codd I shall stop in Yarmouth and

armed with map and Waze seek out the old Christian burial ground

and tempt history out of its warrens.)