The Search for Joseph Tully

by William H Hallahan

  “Hey,” he called after her. She stopped and turned. “Smile,” he said.

  She smiled grimly at him. “In my next reincarnation, I’m coming back as a nightclub blonde.”

  4

  Sunshine had melted much of the snow in the roadway. The Carson moving van left two tire tracks in the slush of the roadway.

  Now Clabber and Richardson were the only tenants in the building.

  5

  At dusk, Willow stcod by his apartment window and looked out at the harbor. His mind went over the Algernon Tully line. Reviewed all the documents. No slips? No little bastard carrying on the line and populating whole counties? Line extinct? Line extinct.

  He turned away from the ever-busy harbor and got a chair. He placed it before his wall chart and stood on it. With care, he reached up and drew a line in red ink through Henry Tully’s name.

  He wrote: “Line extinct.”

  Then he drew a red line through Roger Tully’s name and wrote in red ink: “Line extinct.”

  Lastly, he put a line in red through Algernon’s name. “Line extinct.”

  One left. Right here in Brooklyn. The brother, Thomas.

  He made himself a scotch on ice and saluted the air with it. “Bona fortuna” he said. “May your mission fail.”

  Tomorrow morning: Thomas. The last one.

  6

  The Reverend Dr. Aspinall wras quite precise in his manner. “Yes, Mr. Willow,” he said. “He wras most emphatically a sexton in our church. The records are quite clear. From February 1764 when he first appears on our rolls to September 1773. As you can see.” He pointed at the church register open before Willow. “The facsimile copy of the original register is rather easy to read. His wife, Alice Barton Tully, and his only child,

  Joseph, aged thirteen, died of black fever September 14 and 15, 1773‘ They are buried right outside in the churchyard where I showed you. From what you've told me, I would suppose that Thomas Tully emigrated here from Boston in that year, 1764, registered his family as members of the congregation and also became sexton. It sounds as though he arrived with the highest recommendations from Boston."

  Willow stood up and looked at the Reverend Aspinall. “You’ve been most helpful."

  “Alas, I haven’t, Mr. Willow. The Thomas Tully line of the Tully family ends in our churchyard, I’m afraid."

  “Yes. Well. Thank you." He walked on thick, richly woven carpeting toward the hand-carved door. Through the floor faintly, he felt the vibrations of the heavy tractor trucks rolling by the church on the road to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel.

  He stepped out onto the sidewalk. He strode quickly along the slushy streets, a soft glop that would freeze at sundown. He walked the narrow Brooklyn streets, passed wrought-iron fences, stone stoops, and naked buttonwood trees under pale winter sunlight.

  At a corner, he turned toward the harbor and saw a neighborhood taproom he’d noted earlier. He trod through the slush to it and entered.

  “Scotch," he said to the bartender. “With a side of water.”

  As he poured the scotch, the bartender resumed his conversation with two men.

  Willow turned away, intent on his own thoughts. He looked at the harbor at the end of the street. The evidence was explicit. The search was over. None of the four Tully sons had left an heir. All four lines had become extinct. Extinct. Four lines extinct. He was free. He could go home.

  Willow writhed with suppressed joy and stared at his scotch. He could walk back to his apartment. He could call BOAC and catch the next jet back to London. On the weekend he’d be down at the boatyard in a sun-warm shed out of the Channel wind. He’d strip the finish from his mast, back to the bare wood, and add a new finish. He’d take some of the brightwork home with him and wait out winter in his flat polishing brightwork—wait for spring, wait for that first regatta, the first crack of sail filled with wind.

  He smiled tightly and took a drop of the whiskey. No slipups. Each line definitely ended and extinct and documented. Henry: “Denied the natural issue of my body.” Algernon: bastardized grandson lives out his days a recluse bachelor with a morbid fear of women. Roger: family destroyed by fire. Thomas: wife and only child—a son—dead of black fever.

  He writhed again, the insistent image of his boat, his flat, his friends, his London haunts, his law practice all rising in his memory. Freed. Released.

  He counted the bodies. Henry and wife are buried in Goshen. Algernon, wife and daughter are buried in Camden; illegitimate issueless grandson buried in Mt. Ephraim. Roger is buried in England; wife and children in Connecticut. Thomas —wife and son buried in a Brooklyn cemetery a few blocks distant. He paused. Thomas is buried where?

  Willow took a mouthful of whiskey. Where’s Thomas? Old Thomas. Heartbroken Thomas. His wife and son dead and buried, he relinquishes his post as Sunday sexton and goes— where? To his wine warehouse at the foot of the Heights, on the harbor quayside, near the piers. Yes, that’s what he did. The year?—1773 of course. Bad year for trade. All the 1770s were bad years. The quarrels with England. The resolutions passed by the colonial assemblies. The strident voices. The balled fists, hammering the tavern tables. The stamp taxes and others. And smuggling. And finally, the dumping of tea.

  And Thomas is in trouble. Sitting in his warehouse, a lonely old widower. How old? Born 1729. Widowed in 1773. Age forty-four. Not old enough, his loins still capable of conceiving children. Where’s Thomas after 1773, and his viable loins? A lonely widower or suitor for the hand of a second wife?

  Willow hurried out of the barroom and through the streets. He reached the steps of his apartment, unlocked the front door, hurried past the large old clock up the softly carpeted stairs, unlocked his inner door and entered his apartment. He seized the telephone book and quickly thumbed the pages, then ran his finger down the column of type. He found the number and dialed it, then waited as it rang.

  “Oh. There you are, Reverend Aspinall. I’ve committed a most glaring error. I've not got any information at all on where, when and how Thomas Tully died.' He listened attentively and slowly sat down, slowly nodding.

  “And that’s the end of it, 1773? No further record of him at all? But if he removed himself from the church rolls, wouldn’t there be a record of his new affiliation? None? Hmmmm.” Willow pondered that for a moment. “Well, thank you again, Dr. Aspinall. Your patience is greatly appreciated. Yes. Goodbye.”

  He put the phone in its cradle and sat in deep thought. Was it possible that one of the brothers got away from him? 1773. No wife, no son. Soon, no wine trade. What did he do, that Thomas Tully? Where did he go? Willow had a sudden vision of himself wandering the libraries and churches and churchyards of the eastern seaboard of the United States, seeking Thomas Tully's grave. Suppose he was buried right here in Brooklyn. A recluse, a bankrupt, a widower with no church affiliation after his family dies. And then he dies alone somewhere —possibly in a fever carried by one of the waves of epidemics that seemed to come every winter and spring. One of many carted off to a common grave and buried. No record. Willow felt panic. He stood up and quickly walked up and down the room, staring at a stoneless plot of ground—a common grave unmarked and long forgotten in a backyard or garden in Brooklyn, beyond finding, unrecorded, unmarked forever.

  Did Thomas Tully leave any issue? Willow knew he had to know or spend the rest of his life wandering, seeking, tormented until the day he died.

  He poured himself a few fingers of scotch and pulled himself up. Probate records next. Tully never died in potter’s field. There would be real estate records, Revolution or no Revolution. But suppose he abandoned it all during the Revolution and returned to England.

  Easy. Easy. One step at a time. Organize, control. He glanced at his watch. Tomorrow morning. Probate and Register of Deeds. No more panic. Calm down. How about dinner with Alice Polsley? The Lady of the Legs.

  The phone rang.

  Willow put the glass down. The panic returned. A man who leaves his church leaves his community
. Willow knew that Thomas Tully must have left Brooklyn in 1773. And only God knew where he went.

  The phone rang again. And again.

  Unhappily, Willow picked it up, feeling weary, awed by the vision of the years of searching labor ahead of him.

  “Mr. Willow?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Dr. Aspinall calling. Maybe this is a straw that drowning men cling to, but I have a small clue that might help you. I have just reviewed the volume on the history of our church which was published in 1820. There is a list of all the sextons who served in the church up to that time, and I find Thomas Tully’s name listed as expected—but in the margin in faded pencil is the word Winelandia. Does that help you?”

  7

  The first ray of light came at eight o’clock that night from Kenneth Smith. It was a sixty-four-page brochure found in the vertical file of the public library titled A History of American Wine Grapes.

  Willow pushed away the several piles of volumes he’d conned during the afternoon and evening and sat back with Air. Smith’s chatty history in his lap....

  America had always been a legendary land of fabulous wine grapes. Leif Ericson named the part of North America he visited Wineland because of the abundance of delicious wild grapes. Authorities do not agree where Wineland is. Some say it’s all fable. Some place it in Providence, Rhode Island. Others at the mouth of the Hudson River.

  When the first colonists arrived, they brought grape slips with them from European vines. Spanish missionaries brought Spanish slips. None survived. Blights and fungi not known in Europe attacked the grapes, while the New World plant louse Phylloxera attacked and destroyed the roots.

  Colonists then turned to native grapes growing in the wild. These grapes were immune to Phylloxera and fairly resistant to fungi and molds. Under cultivation, they created new varieties. Most of these experiments were attempts to find a New World wine grape. Soon there was an active two-way traffic between America and Europe as varieties were swapped and studied on both sides of the Atlantic. The inevitable happened —in 1863 Phylloxera got into Europe, and in an incredibly short time millions of acres of Europe's best vineyards were destroyed.

  Just in time, the roots of American vines were shipped to Europe, and on those American roots traditional European vines were grafted. The European grape in all its celebrated varieties was saved. Today, almost all European grape arbors are growing on American roots.

  A curious sidelight to this story of the American grape took place at about the time of the American Revolution. Because of the various acts of the English Parliament, the colonist found that his wine, like his tea, was a political and fiscal toy. A group of men decided to make a concerted effort to develop and grow an untaxable American grape that would provide a good-tasting ordinary table wine. A number of sites were selected for experimentation. Favorite targets were the mountain slopes of northern New Jersey, southern New York, and Pennsylvania.

  Lack of experience, coupled with an inadequate knowledge of the environmental needs of the grape, plagued the developers. The outbreak of the Revolution spurred on their efforts, however, when the inflow of wine ceased entirely.

  The winters were too severe for the then-known grape species, the summers much too humid and wet; the excessive rain in poorly selected sites encouraged the growth of fungi and molds, and at first the whole adventure suffered defeat. Brave new communities like Winelandia disappeared.

  Winelandia where? Where, oh where, Mr. Smith? Willow flipped the remaining pages of the brochure—the spread of cultivated grape growing, the new varieties of grapes, the era of Prohibition and the virtual disappearance of American wine-grape cultivation. But no further reference to Winelandia.

  No index.

  No bibliography.

  No footnotes.

  Willow slumped in his chair and frowned thoughtfully. Winelandia is a place. Or it was. It was a domestic place, reachable by American colonists and protectable from English taxes. Winters were too severe—so that wiped out the southern states. Smith specifically mentions New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

  Willow’s weary reddened eyes roved over the banks of library books. Thomas lost his wife and son and probably his wineimporting business.

  Then, as now, people start anew by wiping the slate—finding a new location, a new activity. Thomas chose Winelandia. Winelandia where?

  In the reference section, he found the atlases and gazetteers.

  He sat down with New Jersey and went through Windsor, Winfield, and Winslow Township. No Winelandia. New York had no Winelandia, nor did Pennsylvania. Smith had stated that Winelandia had disappeared, and it had.

  Because New York State was a major grape-growing area, Willow got down a pile of books on New York’s history: histories of counties, chronicles of agricultural development, the building of the Erie Canal, the Spirit Way west, transplanted New Englanders, a history of the immigrants. No Winelandia. He turned to New Jersey.

  He found a history of the Pine Barrens; a history of the secret building of warships in Lake Alloway during the Revolution; Indian tribes of the seacoast; history of glass manufacturing; a four-volume study of Trenton’s history; New Jersey biographies; mining, fishing, industry; and then—a curious volume. Old Jersey Towns: Lost, Strayed or Annexed. The contents included Towns That Died, Towns That Changed Their Names, Towns That Were Absorbed, Ghost Towns. In the index he found it. Winelandia, page 208.

  The author substantiated Smith’s account. Winelandia survived for sixteen years. It was such a small settlement it hardly qualified as an independent community. It died in 1794 when promising developments in grape culture in New York State lured most of the residents up into Sullivan County. A few years later, Winelandia was a ghost town up in the old mountains of northwest New Jersey.

  Willow sighed. Another car ride.

  8

  “It was,” said the curator, “an unbelievably hard life.” His quick hands put the key in the lock and opened it. He lifted the hasp on the door. It opened slowly. “Now, as I explained to you, Mr. Willow, this is really a replica of the typical frontier cabin in what were the wilds of New Jersey in colonial days.” He led Willow inside.

  “Those people who came up here were not city types—Tully notwithstanding. The first thing they did when they settled on the frontier was build a cabin just like this. After a few years of unremitting exhausting labor, they’d build a new and more elaborate house, like the one next door, which I’ll show you in a moment. But this is the key structure. In order to get into the relative opulence of that house next door, you had to go through this. Now this cabin and the hard times that went with it soon found out the weaklings and—simply, it killed them. Well, you can see. It’s a one-story hut, all logs with two rooms— a kitchen and a sleeping room. It usually faced south and was built near a spring or a creek. A stone chimney and fireplace was imperative. Life could not have survived without it. For windows, they sawed through the logs. They covered the window with paper that was weatherproofed with lard. Let in light, kept out the cold—some of it, at least. That fireplace gave off some heat, but a bucket of water three feet from it would freeze solid. The floor was dirt, packed down with many feet, the roof a clapboard affair. The wind blew through the cracks in the winter, and in summer, life was a screaming hell of insects and sweat-soaked bedding. In fact, it got so cold in here in winter that a man went to bed simply by taking off his shoes. In he got, wearing his home-knitted socks and shirt, his leather pants and fur-lined coat and knitted hat. If he was lucky, he’d have a few comforters—big thick things stuffed with duck down. Nobody washed above the wrist or below the collar until spring came.”

  He led Willow outside. “I slept in that cabin one night with a roaring fire in the fireplace. Temperature was down around twelve degrees. I had a modern camper’s sleeping bag with me, and I tell you it was cold. Now down here next to the house was the root cellar, and this decided whether he and his family would make it through the winter or
starve to death.” Willow ducked his head as he entered it.

  “In late autumn, the head of the family would come down here with his wife, and they’d take stock and count mouths. To make it through the winter, he had to have this place stuffed to the walls with all kinds of food. Flour, lots of it. Smoked hams, bacon, cheese, eggs, pickles, sauerkraut in barrels, piles and piles of potatoes, butter, a small mountain of turnips and parsnips, vinegar, rum and ale and cider, barrels of them. If he figured correctly—and if weather didn’t delay spring planting, if the rats and other burrowing animals didn’t get in, if the family remained healthy through the winter—well, then the following summer he got the chance to try to grow enough to last through another winter. Maybe.

  “Or if he guessed wrong, the snows soon came and buried him and his family until spring. If the food ran out, they just starved to death waiting for things to melt.

  “Keep in mind that while the whole family was involved in this scratching with bare hands to get enough to eat, and cutting enough wood to keep from freezing to death and to cook the food, and praying to the Lord that the fire didn’t go out during the night—worrying about the horse getting sick or the cow drying up or the chickens dying with a pox... during all that, these people were trying to establish a grape-growing industry, a subject about which they knew precious little.”

  The curator looked with an ironic smile at Willow. “It was, as I said, an indescribably lousy life.”

  Willow looked with awe at the crude cabin and the root cellar. “How did a man who’d led the life of a comfortable gentleman ever adjust to this?”

  “Many a so-called gentleman did—trying to recoup his fortune lost in the world market. Oh, this was the great leveler. You either coped and conquered or you died, no matter how elegant your previous life was.”

  “It must have been doubly hard on a bachelor.”

  “Bachelor! Mr. Willow, no bachelors lived here. The three most important animals a man had were a horse, a cow, and a wife—a fertile wife at that.”