Faithful Unto Death

Afterword

Afterword as most american children enter their teens, a typical rite of passage is marked by their elders’ deeming they are old enough to know “the facts of life.” It was the same in our family. One day in our teens we heard the timeworn phrase “I think you’re old enough to hear . . .” followed by “. . . the story of your great-grandmother’s murder.” Some of my best memories of my father’s family center around the lively debates at the dining room table at the farm.The dining table debates among my father, Thomas, my uncles Gale and Francis, and my aunt Charlotte (named after Lottie, Ralph’s sister), with occasional corrections from my grandfather Ralph and his sister Aunt Jo (“Josie” from the story) concerned the murder (or could it have been suicide?) of our ancestor Anna. On the surface, the facts are these: Anna Spencer, her sister, Charlotte, and her brother, David Brainard, were the children of missionary parents. In their early childhood their mother, Cornelia, was shot by an unknown person, probably an Indian, while sitting up with young Charlotte, who was ailing. David Spencer Sr. remarried soon after, and the family moved to Benzonia, the site of a Congregationalist college. Years later, William Henry Thacker, a young student at the college, boarded with the Spencers. Eventually he married the older, less attractive of the Spencer girls. Anna died, in 1894, of a mysterious ailment. Her sister, Charlotte, became suspicious and demanded an autopsy.The body was dug up, and arsenic was found in the tissues in such an amount as to have been the probable cause of her death. Henry was accused of her murder primarily because he’d been “carrying on” with the young and pretty housekeeper, Orah. He was convicted and served two years in prison before a suicide note was found under mysterious circumstances. This prompted a retrial, resulting in a different verdict. 271 As soon as he was released, he immediately married Orah. In a ‹t of righteous indignation the townspeople of Benzonia drove the family out. Sister Charlotte removed herself to Eastern Turkey and died ten years later, shortly before the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks began. Henry and Orah eventually sold their farm at the start of the Depression and moved to Detroit, where Henry worked as a road mender until he died of a stroke. Orah supported herself by keeping a boardinghouse after that. Ralph married Harriet Madole, and they raised four children, all of whom lived long and well. Their second son, Francis, still lives on the farm Ralph and Harriet purchased. In the year 2005, the family farm became a Centennial Farm. Interestingly, among all of Ralph and Harriet’s married descendents there is only one divorce, even to the present day. To this day, questions abound. Was Henry, known by most of the town of Benzonia (and by his own children and grandchildren) to be the most gentle and amiable of men, capable of murdering, with malice aforethought, his wife, the mother of his ‹ve children? Could Orah, who also had motive, have been the perpetrator? Or was someone else guilty? Or did Anna, pious daughter and sister of missionaries, indeed commit suicide? If not, who did write the conveniently discovered suicide note? Charlotte Spencer remains an enigma. Why did Henry marry the older, plainer Anna instead of prettier Charlotte? Did Charlotte become a missionary to nurse a broken heart or from religious fervor, or for some other reason? Why, then, had Charlotte returned from Turkey? Her nieces and nephews remember her as a tedious and fretful invalid , constantly demanding attention, while the missionaries with whom she served apparently admired her greatly, describing her as devout and almost saintly. Her testimony, taken directly from the trial transcripts, was rambling, broken, and ‹lled with non sequiturs, sometimes almost incoherent. Why was she living with Anna and Henry? Was she actually the invalid she seemed to be, and if so, how did she ‹nd the strength to undertake the rigors of a trip back to Turkey in the 1890s, only to die within the decade at a relatively young age? Who placed the stone on Anna’s grave that proclaimed, somewhat 272 gratuitously, “Faithful Unto Death”? Not the least strange, to my mind, is: what was a common Michigan farming family doing with a housekeeper anyway? My search for some of the answers...