Читать книгу John E. Parsons - Paul DeForest Hicks - Страница 6

Keeping to its schedule, the packet ship Pennsylvania sailed down the Mersey River from Liverpool on Christmas Day of 1838, bound for New York. Advertised as a “fast vessel with commodious and elegantly outfitted cabins,” the ship was carrying five passengers and a crew of thirty-five in addition to royal mail and a cargo of fine goods. Among its passengers was a merchant, Edward Lamb Parsons, who had written to his wife Matilda shortly before his departure:

My Loving Wife,

As the Royal William sails the day after tomorrow, I write thee perhaps for the last time till I see thee for I have taken my passage on the ship Pennsylvania which is to sail the 25th—a large and most beautiful ship, well-commanded and which will, I trust, have its usual good fortune in getting home … I pray God who rules the elements to bring me safe again to those shores, thy arms and embraces from the little ones …

Yr Devoted Husband

Wreck of the packet ship Pennsylvania (courtesy of David Parsons)

Calm weather required the Pennsylvania to remain for more than a week at the mouth of the Mersey River, waiting for a favorable wind. A contemporary account described what happened soon after the wind finally shifted and the ship sailed into the Irish Sea on that fateful voyage:

On the 12th day of Christmas (January 6, 1839), the day was fine; a fair wind blew for outward-bound ships. Many of them left the Mersey under sail, among them the St. Andrew, the Lockwood and the Pennsylvania, first-class packet ships, loaded with valuable cargoes and emigrants, together with a few saloon passengers for New York. On the morning of the 7th, the barometer fell to a very low point. The vessels had almost reached Holyhead [an island off the coast of Wales] when suddenly the wind changed to the north-west and blew a hurricane.

According to another report:

As the storm continued unabated for two days, the ship turned back toward Liverpool, plotting a course for the Mersey lightship. Unknown to the Pennsylvania, however, the floating light had parted from its mooring the previous day. Before an anchor could be dropped the vessel swung around, drifted, and struck the Hoyle Bank. The force of the gale rammed her into the bank eight or nine times, and she started to take on water rapidly … two other packet ships, the St. Andrew and the Lockwood also struck the Bank, not more than half a mile apart.

In an attempt to reach the shore, the Pennsylvania’s jolly boat was launched into the gale … Only one of its occupants survived. Meanwhile back on the wreck of the Pennsylvania, the long boat, the only other prospect of escape, was lost in heavy waves, which also swept the Captain overboard … The remaining crew climbed desperately into the rigging where they were to cling for dear life for nineteen hours. It was not until ten am the next day that the steam tug Victoria took them off, except that is, three of the crew who had literally been starved to death of cold and hunger in the rigging during the night. Twenty-one were saved from the wreck, nineteen drowned.

A Liverpool newspaper, describing the scene of devastation after the wreck of all three packets, reported that the beach was covered with wreckage and dead bodies. It identified one of the victims as “Mr. Edward Lamb Parsons, a merchant of New York, tall, slender make and fashionably dressed,” adding that he had “a considerable amount of property on him.” After the inquest, his body was taken by some of his business friends and buried in his native city of Manchester.

Born in 1805, Edward Parsons left England in his late teens to join the New York sales office of his family’s cotton thread manufacturing firm. After his father’s death in 1823, he became the principal representative of the family’s interests in America and prospered from the growing imports of cotton thread. The business required him to make a number of visits to England and Scotland to satisfy the demand for thread in America, especially from makers of women’s fashions.

In 1827, at the age of twenty-two, he married Matilda Clark, a daughter of Ebenezer and Anna Marselis Clark, at her family’s church in Rye, New York. Like most business and professional New Yorkers of the period, Edward and his young family first lived in lower Manhattan near his firm’s office. He was naturalized as an American citizen in 1830, and by 1831, he had accumulated enough capital to buy a summer home with nearly forty acres of farmland in Rye, New York, paying $5,500. The property had been advertised for sale in the New York Evening Post a few years earlier as a:

Farm or Country Seat adjoining the estate of Peter Jay, Esq., situated on Rye Neck, West Chester County, twenty-four miles from the city of New York, it contains about thirty seven acres, six or seven of which are woodland, several are salt meadow and sedge, and the residue excellent meadow and plough land. The buildings, consisting of a mansion, farm and carriage house, barn, granary, crib, milk house, etc. are substantially built and nearly new; the fences are of stone, and for strength and appearance are probably not surpassed, and perhaps not equaled by those on any other farm of equal size in this state …

The situation of this farm and its vicinity are peculiarly healthy, and the dwelling house occupying the highest ground on Rye Neck, commands a view of forty or fifty miles of Long Island Sound. The farm is bounded in front by the mail road leading from New York to Boston, and extends to the salt water. Shell and scale fish of all or most of the varieties usually taken in the Sound, abound in the neighborhood, and several birds may be caught in great plenty in the waters immediately adjoining the farm. Marine wild fowl are also abundant in their season, and other feathered game sufficient to attract the attention of those who are partial to the amusement of fowling. This farm is calculated to suit those who would wish to enjoy the pleasures of a country life without the cares incident to a large farm …

As his wealth grew, Edward decided to enlarge the home on their country estate, which was completed shortly before he left for England in October of 1838. Designed in the Greek revival style with fluted Ionic columns on its main façade, the three-story residence became an attractive landmark for those traveling on the Post Road between New York and Boston. Because it incorporated part of the farm house that had been on the property since colonial times, Edward named the residence “Lounsberry” (sometimes spelled “Lounsbury”) after the family who were early owners of the property.

It is likely that Edward and Matilda chose an architectural design for their new home that would be compatible with the handsome new home, built the prior year by the parents of Matilda about a mile to the north.

It also harmonized with the next-door mansion of Peter Clarkson Jay, called “Alansten,” which was also designed in the Greek revival style and replaced a much simpler house that had been the childhood home of Peter’s father, Chief Justice John Jay. The Parsons and Jay properties are now part of a National Historic Landmark District.

According to Suzanne Clary, head of the Jay Heritage Center: “Long before he inherited the property outright, John Jay treated it like his own, maintaining gardens, planting trees, and establishing, in 1807, a tranquil cemetery lined with cypresses for himself, his siblings, and descendants. Together with his son Peter Augustus Jay, he over-saw the installation of gardens and elm tree plantings in Rye.

“He guided his son’s introduction of stone ha-ha walls in 1822 as a means to frame not only the landscape, but specifically the wide open meadow that stretched to the water. The ha-ha walls served many functional as well as aesthetic purposes including an uninterrupted view of the water from the mansion [and] a formalized Palladian vista of the estate from the Sound …”

Edward could feel comfortable leaving his family at Lounsberry, knowing they were well settled in their new home and that they would be looked after by family and friends. During his absence, Matilda remained in Rye with their two youngest children (Mary was not yet two and Arthur was still an infant). The three older ones (Anna, John and William, ages ten, nine and seven) went to stay in Connecticut with Matilda’s sister and her husband, who took charge of their schooling.

News of the terrible shipwrecks and loss of life in the hurricane of January 6 and 7, 1839, did not reach New York until February 12, when the packet ship Cambridge arrived from Liverpool. The February 16 issue of Niles’ Weekly Register, a widely read national news magazine, carried a detailed and gruesome account of the disaster. Although it reported that “twenty-six persons had been rescued from the Pennsylvania,” none of the names were listed and the number of survivors differed from other reports.

When the Royal William reached New York in mid-January with Edward’s letter, Matilda would have learned of his plans to sail for New York on Christmas Day aboard the Pennsylvania. However, it is not known how long she had to wait until she learned of his fate. Since the Cambridge left Liverpool on January 10, it is possible that Edward’s business friends or family in England had time to send her a letter by that packet, telling her of his death and burial.

Even though news of Edward’s death was devastating for Matilda, she had received a premonition in January while a friend was visiting her at Lounsberry. As confirmed by that friend to her son John many years later, Matilda was very much disturbed one evening by the noise of a bird in a tree at the front of the house, so the friend went outside to investigate, taking a fowling piece with him. He shortly returned with a white dove he had shot, which must have escaped from the family’s dovecote. When he told her that she would not be troubled by the noise any more, she said she feared it was an ill omen.

The death of Edward in the prime of his life thrust adult responsibilities on his eldest son, John, at an early age and had a profound effect throughout his life. It was not until 1901, more than sixty years after the shipwreck, that John was able to remove his father’s remains from the cemetery in Manchester for reburial in a family vault at Rye. That final reuniting of the family helped him bring closure to a painful and enduring experience.