Thank you Old Stone House Museum for pictures and information. This portrait was painted of Theda Grout Wellman who lived from 1798-1839, and painted by Walter Ingalls. Theda was the wife of a well known minister, Reverend Jubilee Wellman. Jubilee was the first minister in Lowell, Vermont. Lowell, Vermont is located about 20 miles West of Brownington, Vermont, where Alexander Twilight lived at the time. There is some evidence that suggests that the Wellmans had a daughter named Theodocia. Theda had a portrait painted of her and a baby, who we suspect was Theodocia. At some point the baby was painted out of the portrait. If you look at it from the right angle you can see the shadow of the “ghost baby”. Nobody knows why the baby was painted out but we have many theories. There are some records of Theda having a baby, though we don’t know if this was Theodocia who died at 24. Maybe Theda was so sad about Theodocia that she couldn't bare to have to look at a portrait of her and her deceased baby that she hired someone to paint her out. Another theory is that it was a pre-used canvas- many canvases back then had something already painted on it, since they were hard to acquire, so the artist might have painted over someone else's prior painting. This simply could have been an accident, but this does not explain the fact that Theda certainly seems to be holding the baby. Photos and info courtesy of the Old Stone House Museum In 1827, a woman named Lydia Baxter’s husband William died. She was left widowed at the age of 48 and attempted to commit suicide when the life without her dear husband became too much to bear. Due to that failed attempt, she was not allowed to attend her public church anymore. Lydia’s public church happened to be run by Alexander Twilight at the time. Twilight agreed that suicide was not an acceptable concept at that time and signed the meeting minutes that declared Lydia to be ex-communicated. After being thrown out of her own community, she went to live with one of her children and she, eventually, passed away. To this day forward, she comes to Athenian Hall, Alexander Twilight’s dormitory* for the students at his school, and haunts the upper floors, where her husband’s painting is hung. *We will talk about this in future blog posts Subscribe to our newsletter! Happy Halloween! Esme and Gabby
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Hello Readers!
We welcome you to our third blog post this year! We decided to base this post off a comment that one of our readers asked us.* Jen Manwell was wondering if we could tell our readers a little bit about Twilight’s parents, Ichabod and Mary, and if there was any evidence of their activity in Corinth/Bradford. There is little we know about Mary because there was nothing recorded on her, since she was a woman in the 1700s and only showed up in census records. We don’t even know her maiden name. We do know a little about Ichabod, though, due to an article called The Life of Ichabod Twilight and the Early Life of Alexander Twilight 1765-1821, by John M. Lovejoy. It gave us great insight and depth on Ichabod and allowed us to get a better idea on how Alexander was raised. Ichabod was born in July, 1765 in Boston, Massachusetts. In Hebrew, ‘Ichabod’ meant “the glory has departed”. He was given the last name Twilight, as we mentioned before, by his friends because his skin was between light and dark. When he was older he joined the army, and soon after got married to a woman named Mary. In 1791, the first child, Aaron Twilight was born. In 1793, the second child, Thomas Twilight was born and shortly after, the family moved to Bradford/Corinth, Vermont, where they quickly got themselves involved in the town’s community. In 1795 Alexander Twilight was born. When Alexander was eight years old, Ichabod went missing and left him to care for the household. Nobody knows what happened to Ichabod. *Again, please feel free to reach out and ask us any questions at [email protected], or in the comments below. Resources:
Alexander Twilight was born September 23, 1795 in East Corinth, Vermont to Ichabod and Mary Twilight, both African American. When he was younger, there was no record that Ichabod had a last name or a family, so Ichabod's friends called him Ichabod Twilight. Our reasoning for that last name was because his skin color was between black and white. When he was older, Alexander, too, was described as “bronzed" or "swarthy”, which was not how you usually described a white man.
Alexander went to school when he was younger but dropped out because he was old enough to work. At age eight he was indentured to his neighbor, William Bowen, due to his family's financial situation and the fact that his father, Ichabod, had recently gone missing. The census records listed them as “Other” which meant they were not white. Soon after Ichabod left, censuses started listing Alexander and his family as white which, when we dug deeper, led us to believe that Alexander wanted to hide his African American ethnicity to chase his dream job as an educator. |
AuthorsGabrielle and Esme have been researching Twilight thoroughly for three years. They started off working on their Vermont History presentation and eventually ended up, more recently, presenting at Boston History Camp in Boston, Mass. Archives
December 2019
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