The Headless Chancellor

By Sylvia Stone Trefry

This is a modern fairy tale taking place in a historical setting before the widespread use of cell phones. The North Shore of Boston, Massachusetts, is an area unique in all the country, where countless changes have taken place over the centuries and where great philosophical, social, and economic contrasts exist side by side.

Long ago, naive Yankees sold their pristine farms and woodlands to captains of industry and politically well-connected families who, from approximately 1844 to 1929, built magnificent mansions next to the modest, seventeenth-century saltboxes and cottages of farmers and fishermen.

Here also, the past is deeply woven into the present. Ancient superstitions still hold sway in many descendants of the early settlers. "Old Yankees" are half-modern sophisticates and half-believers in the old ways, ways which break through to layers of other dimensions, to the unseen realities of the spirit world, be it for good or evil. Some swear that spirits still haunt the neighborhood's ancient forest called the Witch Woods for the poor souls who took refuge there during the Salem witch trials of 1692. Still believing in signs and omens, some parents warn their children that upon venturing into these woods, they must turn their jackets inside out for fear of fairies, gnomes, and elves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886548709

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The Headless Chancellor

Sylvia Stone Trefry

Copyright © 2022 Sylvia Stone Trefry

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be constructed as real. Any resemblance to actual events (with the exception of historical references and notations) or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 979-8-88654-863-1 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88654-870-9 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

This book is dedicated to Luke Trefry for his computer expertise.

And

Hope Trefry-Rawding

And

Deana Trefry

Preface

To better understand the North Shore of Boston, where this story takes place, and its Yankee character, it is important to become acquainted with the history of Salem, Massachusetts,1 and how the colorful past of this fascinating city helped shape the present.

Salem went from being a provincial fishing village in 1626 to the Golden Age of Sail taking place between the American Revolution and the War of 1812. During its heyday, the harbor was filled with ketches and sloops2 hoisting sail for Stellwagen Bank, bringing back a bountiful catch of haddock, mackerel, halibut, and the sacred cod.3 Two-masted, fore-and-aft, rigged schooners carried salt cod, beef, butter, spermaceti candles, tar, wooden shingles, barrel staves, and timber to the West Indies, returning with that sweet gold of the islands—sugar—as well as cotton, indigo,4 and tobacco.

The old adage, fortune favors the brave, proved true, and the daring crews of three-masted, square-rigged vessels called Indiamen brought back cargos from ports of the Mediterranean, Europe, Africa, India, the East Indies, and the Far East. Salem's overflowing wharves were piled high with stacks of lumber, hogsheads of molasses, bales of cotton, casks of Jamaican rum and Madeira wine, bundles of hides and tobacco, barrels of fruit, sugar and salt, sacks of cocoa and coffee beans, rice, corn and wheat, sacks of intricately carved ivory, and Spanish pieces of eight.

Salem, Mass, is a remarkable place.

This city of peace will be better known, hereafter, for its commerce than for its witch tragedy. It has a population of fourteen thousand and more wealth in proportion to its population than perhaps any town in the world. These enterprising merchants speak of Fayal and the Azores as if they were close at hand. The fruits of the Mediterranean are on every table.

They have a large acquaintance at Cairo. They know Napoleon's grave at St. Helena, and have wild tales to tell of Mozambique and Madagascar, and stores of ivory to show from there. They often slip up the western coast of their two continents, bringing furs from the back regions of their own wide land, glance up at the Andes on their return; double Cape Horn, touch at the ports of Brazil and Guiana, look about them in the West Indies, feeling almost at home there, and some fair morning in Salem, walk home as if they had done nothing remarkable.

The Headless Chancellor

Sylvia Stone Trefry

Scampering nimbly from blue shadows of moss grown and ferny trees,

Where fireflies from the meadows weave nightly tapestries,

A pixie droll with cap o'red peered in a forest pool.

Then with a twist of his knobby head,

Hopped on a golden toad stool.

—Beatrice (MacFarland) Stone, A Tale from the Bass River Syde

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Bibliography

About the Author

Chapter 1 1

Chapter 2 5

Chapter 3 8

Chapter 4 11

Chapter 5 16

Chapter 6 22

Chapter 7 27

Chapter 8 33

Chapter 9 37

Chapter 10 41

Chapter 11 47

Chapter 12 51

Chapter 13 54

Chapter 14 58

Chapter 15 61

Chapter 16 64

Chapter 17 68

Chapter 18 71

Chapter 19 74

Chapter 20 77

Chapter 21 80

Chapter 22 83

Chapter 23 86

Chapter 24 90

Chapter 25 94

Chapter 26 97

Chapter 27 101

Chapter 28 105

Chapter 29 107

This book is dedicated to Luke Trefry for his computer expertise.

And

Hope Trefry-Rawding

And

Deana Trefry

Elf by Beatrice (MacFarland) Stone

Photo by Sylvia Stone

Preface

Codfish Aristocracy to Cobbler's Cottage

To better understand the North Shore of Boston, where this story takes place, and its Yankee character, it is important to become acquainted with the history of Salem, Massachusetts,¹ and how the colorful past of this fascinating city helped shape the present.

Salem went from being a provincial fishing village in 1626 to the Golden Age of Sail taking place between the American Revolution and the War of 1812. During its heyday, the harbor was filled with ketches and sloops² hoisting sail for Stellwagen Bank, bringing back a bountiful catch of haddock, mackerel, halibut, and the sacred cod.³ Two-masted, fore-and-aft, rigged schooners carried salt cod, beef, butter, spermaceti candles, tar, wooden shingles, barrel staves, and timber to the West Indies, returning with that sweet gold of the islands—sugar—as well as cotton, indigo,⁴ and tobacco.

The old adage, fortune favors the brave, proved true, and the daring crews of three-masted, square-rigged vessels called Indiamen brought back cargos from ports of the Mediterranean, Europe, Africa, India, the East Indies, and the Far East. Salem's overflowing wharves were piled high with stacks of lumber, hogsheads of molasses, bales of cotton, casks of Jamaican rum and Madeira wine, bundles of hides and tobacco, barrels of fruit, sugar and salt, sacks of cocoa and coffee beans, rice, corn and wheat, sacks of intricately carved ivory, and Spanish pieces of eight.

Mixed with the sea-weedy smell of clamflats at low tide were strange, indescribable aromas of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, and black pepper,⁵ that rare and costly spice which grew wild in the mountains of Sumatra.

From the lucrative South Pacific trade, bold mariners returned with birds in all colors of the rainbow, prized sandalwood, bêche-de-mer (an edible form of sea slug), tortoise shell, fabulous pearls, and strange native artifacts, along with exquisite silks, porcelain, and teas from the Orient adding to Salem's store of luxury goods, making it by 1800 the nation's richest city per capita.

So familiar were Salem's vessels in the East Indies that some traders regarded Salem as a sovereign nation along with Great Britain and the Netherlands.

And the Yankee Spirit was as unique as its bustling commerce.

As a British consul noted in 1789, The inhabitants of New England may be said to be a peculiar people. They have more public spirit, more enterprise, energy and activity of mind and body than their neighbors.

One observer characterized the Yankee traders as distinguished by a lively imagination—their enterprises are sudden, bold and sometimes rash. A general spirit of adventure prevails here.

English author Harriet Martineau, visiting in 1834, was impressed by Salem's sophistication:

Salem, Mass, is a remarkable place.

This city of peace will be better known, hereafter, for its commerce than for its witch tragedy. It has a population of fourteen thousand and more wealth in proportion to its population than perhaps any town in the world. These enterprising merchants speak of Fayal and the Azores as if they were close at hand. The fruits of the Mediterranean are on every table.

They have a large acquaintance at Cairo. They know Napoleon's grave at St. Helena, and have wild tales to tell of Mozambique and Madagascar, and stores of ivory to show from there. They often slip up the western coast of their two continents, bringing furs from the back regions of their own wide land, glance up at the Andes on their return; double Cape Horn, touch at the ports of Brazil and Guiana, look about them in the West Indies, feeling almost at home there, and some fair morning in Salem, walk home as if they had done nothing remarkable.

However, within a few years Salem's bold navigators and their proud vessels were overtaken by the fickle forces of fate. The turning point came in 1807 with Thomas Jefferson's Embargo Act, forbidding US ships to dock at foreign ports. Meant to force England and France to recognize the rights of neutral traders, it resulted in undermining and crippling Salem's economy The final blow came in 1812 when President James Madison's declaration of war with Britain, regarding free trade and sailor's rights, was disastrous for foreign commerce bringing it almost to a standstill.

The vicissitudes of fortune took the wind out of the sails of the busy and enterprising port of Salem despite its glorious past. The embargos of 1807 and 1812, as well as the harbor being too shallow for the larger clipper ships in the late nineteenth century, turned the tide for Salem's fleet, which began to serve the emerging textile industries.

Prosperous maritime merchants turned from the wharf to the waterfall powered mills of Lawrence and Lowell, also investing locally in Salem's new Naumkeag Steam Cotton Company, Whipple's