In The Superior Court Of Decatur County: Fill & Download for Free

Petrifaction, is described as something, typically humans, being transformed into stone or a stone- like substance.[1] The Old Testament describes Lot's wife turning into a pillar of salt, as she fled Sodom, while Medusa turned those who gazed upon her into stone. According to Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia, the basilisk of Cyrene is a small snake, "being not more than twelve fingers in length", that is so venomous, it leaves a wide trail of deadly venom in its wake, and its gaze is as deadly as Medusa's.[2] The Apache believe that the tears of the women who witnessed their loved ones commit suicide rather than be captured by US soldiers in superior Arizona in 1870, turned to stone, the origins of Apache tears (concoidal obsidian).[3] But is there any scientific evidence of humans, alive or deceased that have actually transformed into stone?Mary Ann Boyer ~ "Madam Damnable"Let me introduce Mary Anne Boyer, more commonly as Madame Damnable, or Mother Damnable, a foul-mouthed woman of the sea. The real Mary Ann Boyer exists only in the scrawls of old census records, scattered accounts from early historians, and the reminiscences of an old admiral. Born Mary Ann Boyer in 1821 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1851, she met and perhaps married Captain David W. "Bull" Conklin.[4] Captain Conklin commanded a whaling ship in the waters of Russian America, that is, Alaska. In 1853, the couple had a falling out and the captain unceremoniously dropped Mary Ann his wife in Port Townsend, and sailed away to Alaska.[5]She moved to the tiny village of Seattle, a small timber port, a rough-and-tumble frontier "Wild West" sort of town, with a constant flow of loggers and sailors on leave. She began to manage Felker House, Seattle's first hotel, a two-story structure at Jackson Street and First Avenue South whose pieces had been carried here in the hold of a ship.[6] The house itself was transported to Seattle by Captain Leonard Felker of the brig Franklin Adams.[7] It was a pre-fabricated building, which he brought in the hold of his ship. He purchased land for $350 from David S. "Doc" Maynard (1808-1873) at 1st Avenue S and Jackson Street, known as Maynard's Point, and erected his building on that site.[8] It was a two-story frame house, "the first hard-finished construction on Elliott Bay with milled clapboard sides, an imported southern pine floor, and lath-and-plaster walls and ceilings".[9]Felker House, Pioneer Square, Seattle, WAMary Ann took good care of the place, and the hotel was known for its good food, clean rooms, and entertainment offered in the back portion of the house,, but she was a hard-nosed woman who would take no nonsense. She had acquired an expansive vocabulary during her time at sea and could swear fluently in half a dozen languages, including English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese, plus a smattering of German.[10] She carried rocks in her pockets to pelt recalcitrant guests, and she was followed around by a small pack of fierce dogs, ensuring no one would give her any grief.That's partly how she earned her nickname: Mother Damnable. In her hostessing, Mother Damnable was as fiery as she was ambitious.One year after she took over managing the Felker House (1854), the Seattle circuit Court rented Felker House for a trial. The court racked up quite a bill for use of the facilities - Mary Ann charged them $10 for the area they'd used for the court room, and $25 for the jurors' lodging (the equivalent of about $750 today).[11] When the prosecutor asked for a receipt, Mary Ann became livid. Perhaps she felt he was accusing her of dishonesty in the tally, or impugning her honor and implying she would come after him later for more money. Mary Ann hurled firewood at the prosecutor's head, shouting, "You want a receipt? Here it is!"[12] As the pioneers told it, no one ever asked her for a receipt again.The US Navy's Decatur was anchored in Elliott Bay, protecting settlers from hostile Native Americans.[13] As part of their efforts to defend the settlement, the men of the Decatur tried to clear a new road through town. But every time they passed the Felker House, trouble met them in the form of Mother Damnable. (Some say the bushes they tried to chop down were essential for protecting the privacy of her establishment.) She was reported to have defended Felker’s private garden from soldiers looking to build a road during the 1856 Battle of Seattle by freeing attack dogs land throwing rocks at the construction crew.[14]Felker House (Conklin, Mary Ann (1821-1873) aka Mother Damnable)According to memoirs of the crew’s captain (later Rear-Admiral) Thomas Stowell Phelps:...the moment our men appeared upon the scene, with three dogs at her heels, and an apron filled with rocks, this termagant would come tearing from the house, and the way stones, oaths, and curses flew was something fearful to contemplate, and, charging like a fury, with the dogs wild to flesh their teeth in the detested invaders, the division invariably gave way before the storm, fleeing, officers and all, as if old Satan himself was after them.[15]She became such a prominent figure in the city that Felker’s hotel came to be called the Conklin House, or Mother Damnable’s, by residents.This anecdote is one of the better pieces of evidence that Boyer was indeed a madam (she didn't exactly keep public records). Phelps compared Boyer to "a prototypical Madame Damnable, a Frenchwoman living at Callao, a seaport in Peru, who seems to have run a bordello there."[16] Historians usually say Boyer's nickname stemmed from her filthy language, and anecdotes like those described above, but the truth is more complex.The phrase "Mother Damnable" dates back at least to the mid-17th century in England; there's a ballad called "Mother Damnable's Ordinary" recorded by the London Stationers' Registry in July 1656.[17] According to the folklorist Steve Roud, a "flurry of mentions" of Mother Damnables occur around that time, and the term always refers to a madam or a witch.[18] (It's worth noting that settlers referred to Boyer as "Mother" or "Madam.") When the settlers of Seattle dubbed Mary Ann "Damnable," they probably weren't just making reference to her foul mouth, but placing her within a particular tradition of unpleasant women.Boyer remained hostess of Fekler House until her death in 1873 - the inn burned down in the Great Fire of 1889.[19] The site is now occupied by Schwabacher Hardware. Supposedly, those employed there sometimes hear whispered curse words and turn to find no one there.[20] She was buried in what is now Denny Park. But her story doesn't end there. Eleven years later, the cemetery was moved, and so the coffins were all disinterred from their graves. When they dug up Mary Ann's coffin, the men were astonished at how heavy it was. Six men could barely budge it.Denny Park (Old Seattle Cemetery) 1887 (Once a cemetery, Denny Park — Seattle’s oldest — gets a modern makeover)The tale goes back to undertaker Oliver C. Shorey, who founded what later became the funeral home Bonney-Watson, now the city's oldest continually operating business.[21] In 1884, Shorey got the contract to dig up the bodies from the old Seattle Cemetery, which was being turned into Denny Park.[22] The cemetery was known for flooding, leading the coffins to bob around in the ground and turning the bodies black.[23] A reporter of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer called upon Mr. O.C. Shorey on August 22, 1884, the contractor for removing bodies, monuments and stone work from the old city cemetery to the new burying ground, adjoining the Masonic cemetery, and asked him for anything of interest in connection therewith that has so far come under his observation. Mr. Shorey said:“Last week among the remains taken up and removed were those of Mrs. Mary Conklin, who died and was buried eleven years ago, at the age of 70 years and 10 months. During her life she was known by the old settlers as ‘Mother Damnable,’ and many will remember her by that name. We discovered that the coffin was very heavy, weighing at least 400 pounds and it took six men to lift it out of the grave. On removing the lid to the coffin we found that she had turned to stone. Her form was full sized and perfect, the ears, finger nails and hair being all intact. Her features were, however, somewhat disfigured. Covering the body was a dark dust, but after that was removed the form was as white as marble and as hard as stone.”[24]Shorey's description makes no mention of the smile that some say beamed from Boyer's face, and which makes her preserved body seem like that of an incorruptible saint. It's also worth noting that he describes her coffin as weighing at least 400 pounds, not the 2,000 that is sometimes recorded. But the real question is, could she really have turned to stone?What might have happened to Mary Ann's body is probably what anthropologists call saponification. Saponification is a process that involves conversion of fat, oil, or lipid into soap and alcohol by the action of heat in the presence of aqueous alkali (e.g. NaOH).[25] Soaps are salts of fatty acids and fatty acids are mono that have long carbon chains (at least 10) e.g. sodium palmitate.[26] Shorey notes repeatedly the water table in the cemetery was very high and most coffins were full of water.The Soap Man at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (Soap on a Bone: How Corpse Wax Forms)Full blown saponification seems highly unlikely, given that she was underground for only 11 years. It's more probable that her body was coated with adipocere, a a waxy, soap-like substance sometimes called "grave wax" that can develop when body fat is exposed to anaerobic bacteria in a warm, damp, alkaline environment, either in soil or water.[27] Part of the saponification process,in its formation, putrefaction is replaced by a permanent firm cast of fatty tissues, internal organs, and the face.[28] Adipocere is not uncommon, and is often described as gray or white, although it's usually a bit softer than stone—more like clay, plastic, or cheese. Grave wax has a soft, greasy gray appearance when it starts to form, and as it ages the wax hardens and turns brittle. Saponification will stop the decay process in its tracks by encasing the body in this waxy material, turning it into a “soap mummy.”Soap Man, pictured above, was exhumed in downtown Philadelphia in 1875, when city improvements near a cemetery required some graves be exhumed.[29] His formed when water seeped into his casket and transforming his body fat into adipocere. X-ray images taken in 1994 of the Soap Man reveal that he was approximately 40 to 50 years old, and also buried no earlier than 1824 due to the presence of shroud pins created in that year.[30] The dating is further supported by the presence of his knee high socks- amazingly preserved, as well as his internal organs.[31] The Soap Man is stored in a controlled environment, stockings and all, at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.Shorey's description of what he saw might also have been influenced by a peculiar 19th-century craze. Reports of petrified corpses had been in the newspapers for years. Such tales may go back to an 1858 hoax in the Daily Alta California, in which a letter from a local doctor described the misadventures of a prospector named Ernest Flucterspiegel, who turned to stone after drinking the fluid inside a geode.[32] Apparently, the man's heart resembled red jasper. A rash of copycat petrified corpses followed, made of substances such as limestone, concrete, and hardened gelatin. Even Mark Twain got into the act. The October 4, 1862, issue of Nevada's Territorial Enterprise carried an article by Twain (then Samuel Clemens) "reporting" the discovery of a petrified man in the mountains south of Gravelly Ford.[33]The Cardiff Giant being exhumed in 1869. (Cardiff Giant: 'America's Biggest Hoax')The most famous case came in 1869, when two laborers discovered what appeared to be a 10-foot-tall stone giant buried on a farm in Cardiff, New York. ("I declare," one of them yelled out, "some old Indian has been buried here!").[34] The 3,000-pound "giant" was in fact a hoax perpetrated by a New York cigar maker named George Hull.[35] An avowed atheist, Hull had recently gotten into an argument with a Methodist revivalist who claimed that giants had once walked the earth. Hull had decided to create his own giant out of gypsum, telling the men who cut the stone from a quarry near Fort Dodge that it was for a memorial to Abraham Lincoln.[36] He swore everyone else involved to silence, and buried the figure on his cousin's farm.Sure enough, after the discovery, the townspeople beat a path to the farm, and Hull started charging admission. Before long, he'd sold the giant to a group of businessmen, who successfully fended off interest from P. T. Barnum.[37] When his offer was refused, Barnum made an exact copy and exhibited it in a New York museum. The new owner of the real fake giant, one David Hannum, supposedly coined the phrase "There's a sucker born every minute" in reference to those who paid to see Barnum's copy.[38]Madame Damnable Single Malt Whiskey Ratings and Tasting Notes - The Seattle Spirits SocietyLocal legend says that PT Barnum offered to buy her body so he could exhibit the stone woman, but the town of Seattle refused.[39] Boyer's unpleasantness, of course, is part of why everyone loves the story of her turning to stone. It seems like divine retribution, proof that God has a sense of humor. And yet the transformation also seems to prove that her stubbornness, her hard-as-nails attitude, carried on past the grave. While the rest of the city's pioneer dead fell victim to worms, she grew ever more impenetrable.Today, there is a brand of whiskey named after her. Distilled by Sounds Spirits in Seattle, WA this American Single Malt Whiskey is named after a Mary Ann Boyle.[40] Perhaps Madame Damnable would be pleased.Footnotes[1] Definition of petrify | Dictionary.com[2] The Natural History[3] An Apache Legend[4] Conklin, Mary Ann (1821-1873) aka Mother Damnable[5] Good Time Girls of the Pacific Northwest[6] Seattle Historical Sites[7] Felker House, Pioneer Square, Seattle, WA[8] Felker House, Pioneer Square, Seattle, WA[9] Seattle Now & Then: The Emma Haywood[10] A Red Light History of Seattle[11] The Damnable Dames Who Helped Shape Seattle’s Character[12] A Red Light History of Seattle[13] Battle of Seattle (1856)[14] Mother Damnable - Wikipedia[15] http://T. S. Phelps: Reminiscences of Seattle: Washington Territory and the U. S. Sloop-of-War Decatur During the Indian War of 1855-56. Originally published by The Alice Harriman Company, Seattle, 1908.[16] Seattle Now and Then – Page 50 – DorpatSherrardLomont[17] London Lore[18] Tulalip News - Page 645 of 704 - syəcəb[19] 130 years ago: Seattle's Great Fire sets city ablaze[20] Schwabacher Family photograph collection, approximately 1899-1950[21] Our History | BONNEY WATSON[22] Seattle establishes its first public park, Denny Park, on site of the city[23] Seattle Cemetery[24] Mary Ann Boyer ~ "Madam Damnable"[25] Know the Definition of Saponification[26] http:// https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saponification#:~:text=Saponification%20is%20a%20process%20that,least%2010)%20e.g.%20sodium%20palmitate.[27] Adipocere—The Fat of Graveyards : The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology[28] Soap on a Bone: How Corpse Wax Forms[29] Soap on a Bone: How Corpse Wax Forms[30] Soap on a Bone: How Corpse Wax Forms[31] The Soap Man and Lady Revisited[32] The human petrifaction of Ernest Flucterspiegel[33] The Fluid Identity of "Petrified Man"[34] Cardiff Giant: 'America's Biggest Hoax'[35] The Cardiff Giant Was Just a Big Hoax[36] Cardiff Giant: 'America's Biggest Hoax'[37] The Cardiff Giant: A 150-Year-Old Hoax Orchestrated By Binghamton Businessman[38] The REAL Story Behind the Quote “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute”[39] On Day of the Dead, visit local grave sites of the famous and infamous[40] Madame Damnable Single Malt Whiskey Ratings and Tasting Notes - The Seattle Spirits Society

Most accounts indicate he was a laborer and carpenter.Between September 1786 and 1788 Bathsheba, Thomas Lincoln’s mother, moved the family to Beech Fork in Nelson County, Kentucky, now Washington County, (near Springfield).A replica of the cabin is located at the Lincoln Homestead State Park.As the oldest son, and in accordance with Virginian law at the time, Mordecai inherited his father's estate and of the three boys seems to have inherited more than his share of talent and wit.Josiah and Thomas were forced to make their own way. "The tragedy," wrote historian David Herbert Donald, "abruptly ended his prospects of being an heir of a well-to-do Kentucky planter; he had to earn his board and keep.From 1795 to 1802, Thomas Lincoln held a variety of ill-paying jobs in several locations.Cabin which formerly stood on Race Street, North of the bridge over Valley Creek, Elizabethtown. Drawn by George L. Frankenstein from nature, in 1865, when tradition said it was the dwelling of Thomas Lincoln after his first marriage.He served in the state militia at the age of 19 and became a Cumberland County constable at 24.He moved to Hardin County, Kentucky in 1802 and bought a 238-acre (1.0 km) farm the following year for £118; It was located seven miles north of Elizabethtown, Kentucky on Mill Creek.When he lived in Hardin County, he was a jury member, a petitioner for a road, and a guard for county prisoners. Lincoln was also active in community and church affairs in Hardin Counties.The following year his sister Nancy Brumfield, brother-in-law William Brumfield and his mother Bathsheba moved from Washington County to Mill Creek and lived with Lincoln.In 1805, Lincoln constructed most of the woodwork, including mantels and stairways, for the Hardin house, now restored and called the Lincoln Heritage House at Freeman Lake Park in Elizabethtown.In 1806, he ferried merchandise on a flatboat to New Orleans down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers for the Bleakley & Montgomery store in Elizabethtown.Marriage and familyKentuckyMarriage bond between Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, dated 10 June 1806. Original is in the courthouse in Springfield, Kentucky.On June 12, 1806, Lincoln married Nancy Hanks at Beechland in Washington County, Kentucky.Nancy Hanks, born in what was Hampshire County, Virginia, was the daughter of Lucy Hanks and a man who Abraham believed to be "a well-bred Virginia farmer or planter." She was also called Nancy Sparrow and adopted daughter of Elizabeth and Thomas SparrowDennis Hanks, Abraham's friend and second cousin, reported that Nancy Hanks Lincoln had remarkable perception. Nathaniel Grisby, a friend and neighbor, said that she was "superior" to her husband. Nancy taught young Abraham to read using the Bible, and modeled "sweetness and benevolence". Abraham said of her, "All that I am or hope ever to be I get from my mother".Lincoln developed a modicum of talent as a carpenter and although called "an uneducated man, a plain unpretending plodding man", he was respected for his civil service, storytelling ability and good-nature. He was also known as a "wandering" laborer, shiftless and uneducated. A rover and drifter, he kept floating about from one place to another, taking any kind of job he could get when hunger drove him to it. Aside from making cabinets and other carpentry work, Lincoln also worked as a manual laborer.Replica of Thomas and Nancy Lincoln's cabin and Abraham Lincoln's birthplace at HodgenvilleTheir first child, a daughter named Sarah Lincoln, was born on February 10, 1807 near Elizabethtown, Kentucky at Mill Creek.By early 1809, Lincoln bought another farm, 300-acre (1.2 km), near Hodgenville at Nolin Creek, located 14 miles southeast of Elizabethtown and near the home of Betsy (Elizabeth) and Thomas Sparrow.Although their cabin was a standard dirt floor, one room log cabin, their property was named Sinking Spring Farm for the "magnificent spring that bubbled from the bottom of a deep cave."It was also noteworthy as the birthplace of Abraham, who was born on February 12, 1809. Seeking more fertile property, in 1811, Lincoln and his family moved to Knob Creek Farm, about 10 miles northeast of the Sinking Spring Farm on Nolin Creek. The Knob Creek Farm was situated just off the Louisville and Nashville Turnpike. It was at Knob Hill that Abraham had some of his first memories. For instance, he remembered the death of his parents' third child, his brother Thomas, Jr. a few days after his birth in 1812. He also remembered the cultivation of corn and pumpkins and sometimes attending a limited, "A.B.C." school with his sister within a couple of miles of the family's cabin. It was while living at Knob Creek that Lincoln was made annual road surveyor and became 15th wealthiest of 98 property owners by 1814.Lincoln lost farms three times after boundary disputes due to defective titles and Kentucky's chaotic land laws, complicated by the absence of United States land surveys and the use of subjective or arbitrary landmarks to determine land boundaries. He did not have the money to pay for the attorney's fees to resolve all of the title disputes, such as liens against previous owners and survey errors. In addition, as a farmer, Lincoln was unable to compete with those who had slaves to work their fields.Reluctant to discuss the extreme poverty of his youth, Abraham quoted Gray's Elegy in 1860, saying his life could be summed up as "The short and simple annals of the poor." Without the food and clothing that they needed, they were considered among the "very poorest people" while in Kentucky. Abraham recounted years later, in a discussion with homeless boys in New York, that he had been poor and could remember "when my toes stuck out through my broken shoes in the winter; when my arms were out at the elbows; when I shivered with the cold.Lincoln moved the family to Indiana in December 1816, and purchased land in accordance with the land ordinance of 1785, partly because slavery had been excluded in Indiana by the Northwest Ordinance. Abraham Lincoln claimed many years later that his father's move from Kentucky to Indiana was "partly on account of slavery, but chiefly on account of the difficulty of land titles in Kentucky."IndianaLincoln Boyhood National Memorial, Indiana. Abraham Lincoln lived on this southern Indiana farm from 1816 to 1830. During that time, he grew from a 7-year-old boy to a 21-year-old man. His mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, is buried here.Lincoln Boyhood National MemorialFoundation of the Lincoln home in the Little Pigeon Creek CommunityIn December 1816, the Lincolns settled in the Little Pigeon Creek Community in what was then Perry County and is now Spencer County, Indiana. There Thomas and Abraham set to work carving a home from the Indiana wilderness. Father and son worked side by side to clear the land, plant the crops and build a home. Thomas also found that his skills as a carpenter were in demand as the community grew.Nancy's aunt Elisabeth Sparrow, uncle Thomas Sparrow, and cousin Dennis Hanks settled at Little Pigeon Creek the following fall. While Abraham was ten years younger than his second cousin Dennis, the boys were good friends.In October 1818, Nancy Hanks Lincoln contracted milk sickness by drinking milk of a cow that had eaten the white snakeroot plant. There was no cure for the poison and on October 5, 1818, Nancy died.Lincoln, his children, Sophie Hanks, and Dennis Hanks lived alone for six months when he went back to Kentucky to seek a bride and courted Sarah Bush Johnston, a widow from Elizabethtown, Kentucky.On December 2, 1819 he married her and she brought her three children, Elizabeth, Matilda, and John, to join Abe, Sarah, and Dennis Hanks to make a new family of eight.Lincoln assisted in building the Little Pigeon Baptist Church, became a member of the church, and served as church trustee. By 1827, Lincoln had become the proud owner of 100 acres of Indiana land.The family continued to live in extreme poverty in Indiana, according to family members, neighbors, and friends. There were times that the only food in the house was potatoes, and the children did not have sufficient clothes to wear. Abraham was not invited to a wedding because he did not have appropriate clothes to wear. Sarah was taken in by a local family and earned her room and board by performing housekeeping chores. Abraham's life was considered "one of hard labor and great privation."David Herbert Donald, noting that Thomas Lincoln's eyesight began to fail in the 1820s, described his struggle to support his family:In the early 1820s, Lincoln was under considerable financial pressure after his second marriage as he had to support a household of eight people. For a time he could rely on Dennis Hanks to help provide for his large family, but in 1826 Dennis married Elizabeth Johnston, Sarah Bush Lincoln's daughter, and moved to his own homestead. As Abraham became an adolescent, his father grew more and more to depend on him for the "farming, grubbing, hoeing, making fences" necessary to keep the family afloat. He also regularly hired his son out to work for other farmers in the vicinity, and by law he was entitled to everything the boy earned until he came of age.IllinoisLincoln had a restless nature, and when John Hanks, a cousin who had once lived with the Lincolns, moved to Illinois and sent back glowing reports of fertile prairie that didn't need the backbreaking work of clearing forest before crops could be planted, he sold his Indiana land early in 1830and moved first to Macon County, Illinois, west of Decatur and eventually to Coles County in 1831. The homestead site on Goosenest Prairie, about 10 miles (16 km) south of Charleston, Illinois, is preserved as the Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site, although his original saddlebag log cabin was lost after being disassembled and shipped to Chicago for display at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Lincoln, already in his fifties, remained a resident of the county for the rest of his life. In 1851, at the age of 73, Lincoln died and was buried at nearby Shiloh Cemetery, which was 3 miles from his home. Sarah, his widow, remained at their home until her death in 1869.'Thomas Lincoln - Wikipedia