A HALLOWEEN STORY of Old Franklin:`Tell Me a Tale of Tom Cook' --Part the First

By James C. Johnston Jr.

There is a part of the Town of Franklin, Mass. that is even older than the town itself. Long before Benjamin Franklin was a famed figure in Massachusetts, or in the Colonial enclave of thirteen colonies clinging for dear life to the eastern coast of North America, there was a precinct of the Town of Wrentham known as Unionville. Why that curious name for this area of what would become the first community named for Ben Franklin is lost in the mists of time. The Village of Unionville existed in Wrentham long before the American Revolution and what ultimately became known as “The Federal Union” as the United States began to be called after the passage, adoption, and recognition of the Federal Constitution as the law of the land between 1787 and 1789 when the Federal government became a reality.

In 1778, Unionville became a part of the new Town of Franklin. It was a curious place, this Unionville. Mine Brook, which got its name from old abandoned copper mines which as it turned out had very little copper in them, was a lonely tributary of the Charles River. In its time, Mine Brook would power the mill wheel of Oliver Pond’s grist mill where he occasionally ground grain for the reputed witch Moll Sheckel who lived in that vicinity. Oliver looked upon her as a harmless creature unlike his wife and his mother. They would have liked to have done her harm for the community good for they were “Good Women”, and they were fairly smug about it in their humble way. Oliver was more inclined to live-and-let-live. He knew that Moll’s life was hard enough which is why he did not charge her for the mill work he did for her nor did he bother her when she bedded down in one of his barns or out-buildings. He was really a good man, and what was even better, he was totally unaware of it.

Moll had told the Miller that she had cast a spell on his mill as an act of good will. She claimed that if the miller fell asleep, her spell would keep his grinding stones from coming into contact with each other and coming to a bad end. The Miller Pond thanked her and smiled on her hellish benediction. Oliver was not a great man for religion which set him apart from most of the community. In point of fact, Captain Pond had stopped going to the meeting house at all after the very self-righteous Dr. Emmons condemned him at the Sunday service from the high pulpit for his drinking. A minister’s calling out of sinful parishioners from the pulpit on the Lord’s Day at Devine Service was a fine old Yankee custom of the period. Oliver Pond did not appreciate it. He Arose from his seat in his pew, unlatched his door, turned to the Minister, told him to sod-off and mind his business, and left the building never to return or donate another penny of mortal cash to the church coffers again!

Anna Pond knew her husband well, aye well enough never to broach the subject of Dr. Emmons ever officiating at another family wedding or funeral, or baptism. Emmons also felt a mortal dread from that day on, and he avoided meeting the Captain whenever he could. If they were thrown together by social circumstances, local politics, or anything else, they became much like a cat and skunk, which is to say they passed each other without out taking notice of the other’s presence. What other people thought about these peculiar social circumstances they were wise enough to keep to themselves. Captain Oliver Pond was not a man to be trifled with.

The Captain was a man of great substance who suffered fools not at all. The skinny-necked-bandied-legged-spindly-little-minister of the Congregational Church bothered him not a whit. Captain Pond was a man who owned 2,200 acres of land in Unionville. Pond Street was but one of his boundary indicators. He did not care about public opinion or how the public generally regarded him or what ideas he thought. It is interesting that his closest friends were a manumitted former slave and blacksmith, Prince Baylis, the local doctor Metcalf, the political leader of the place, Jabez Fisher, his cousin who was that other Captain Oliver Pond who would become a General of some note during the Revolution that was smoldering on the horizon, a cat-whipper or mender of shoes one Solomon Hughes, and the fallen son of a well-to-do-family, Tom Cook.

These people respected him enough to tell him the truth, and they were his boon companions and the refuge of his leisure. As far as Oliver Pond was concerned, the wider public had better concern themselves about what he thought of them. I will tell you this, Oliver really didn’t waste much time thinking about the opinion of his neighbors in regards to anything he either chose to do, or more to the point, what he chose not to do. There was no doubt that in his mind he had a much higher opinion of the integrity of Moll Sheckel, whom he regarded as a good-honest-witch, as opposed to The Rev. Dr. Emmons whom he regarded as a hypocritical-posturing-jackass. Others may have agreed with him in regards to the Congregational Minister but lacked Captain Pond’s brave and forthright nature.

Dwelling on land owned by Captain Pond was a charming scoundrel, and near-do-well, named Tom Cook. Now Tom had what you might call a casual approach to life and depended on Captain Pond’s kindness and sufferance for his dwelling space. Now Captain Pond was a hard working father of a large family. He was hard-working as a farmer, Miller, and tavern-keeper, but it seemed to amuse him to befriend people totally unlike himself. In this regard, Captain Pond was a serious man that liked to be amused by the “Characters” that populated a part of his rather large world. In addition to the catalog of friends that I have already listed, were his wife and mother. Rest assured that his mother, Mrs. Captain Robert Pond, was a very serious woman. The Captain loved the Old Lady dearly. After all, he had invited her to live with him and his family after his father’s death. He and his wife Anna loved to see the Old Lady bustle about with her broom and her domestic duties as if she were commanding a militia force instead of a household. Most of all, Old Mrs. Capt. Pond hated Moll Sheckel, and she took great pleasure in chasing her from the door with her formidable broom! Although Oliver was sympathetic to poor Moll, he did get amusement when he saw how her blandishments met with such poor results when she tried to wheedle some favor from his mother.

Moll’s story has been told many times, and there is no doubt that I shall tell it again, but now I wish to relate another tale of All Hallow’s Eve from that long ago time when George III sat on the throne of England and would reign as our king for eight more years before the Revolution. Yes indeed! Tom Cook was a caution from the day he was born, and there was no doubt in anybody’s mind about the truth of that. He was the author of most of the mischief in the neighborhood from the swiping of pies from the window sills of the villagers’ cottages, where they had been placed to cool, to the taking of chickens from their coops and yards. From the time Tom could walk, things tended to disappear from wherever he might be, yet nobody ever caught him at it. Tom had made thieving a fine art. Alas, Tom Cook was a frequent suspect, but in actual point of fact, he was never actually caught in the act of taking anything from his neighbors.

There were those Tom would never think of robbing. Hard-scrabble farmers eking out a living from the rocky soil were never his victims, nor were poor widows, orphans, or widows in general unless they had been left very rich widows by their dear and departed husbands. But then comely widows were drawn to the handsome young bachelor who would take the lonely women for walks along The Charles River by moonlight to help comfort them in their grief and loss. Strangely, this was a trait he shared with Washington who also was a famous comforter of widows. It is noted in the chronicles of The Revolutionary War that Martha Washington only left Mt. Vernon twice. In both cases it was because a Philadelphia Beauty by the name of Peggy Shippen had pursued Washington from Philadelphia to New Jersey!

When Martha arrived at Washington’s headquarters, Peggy hit the road to Philadelphia where she might actually be safer. After Martha’s second trip to break up the romantic trysts, Peggy decided to chase, catch, and capture the Military Governor of Philadelphia, General Benedict Arnold. I think that you can guess the rest of that story. In the meantime, Young and Handsome Tom Cook’s finer sensibilities were often remarked on in those far-away days along with his compassion, his devilish good looks, and the admiration he drew from the younger women of the village. Again, Tom was suspected of everything, but there was never any proof of his rumored bad behavior to be had. The young females of the village protested that Tom was a much maligned and misunderstood young man of unimpeachable virtue. About that, I am sure that the young women found that Tom had virtues they would rather not share knowledge of with their mothers. What their mothers might have wanted to share is a story for another day.

It was about this time that it was speculated that Tom had sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for the gift of being able to break into any house or barn he wished to rob totally undetected. It was true that every week or two that the lad would disappear for a few days along with a horse that he would borrow from the Miller Oliver Pond. Tom would ride off and then would reappear a few days later. Sometimes, he would be wearing a new pair of shoes, or sporting new breeches or a waistcoat, or maybe a hat. Tom was never flashy like some storied Macaroni that one could only see in Boston Town or New York with a feather in his hat!.

When asked about his new apparel, Tom would merely say that an uncle or cousin in Watertown or Boston Town had seen fit to bestow a small gift on him as a sign of favor. On the summer afternoons about the hour of four, Tom would join the gathering at Prince Baylie’s Forge on Forge Hill with the Miller, The Blacksmith, perhaps Dr. Metcalf if he happened by as he often did because it put off the pleasure of joining Mrs. Metcalf for tea, Solomon Hughes, the Cat Whipper or shoe-repairman, and any worthy yeomen who might be in the habit of passing by at that time.

The Miller was known to bring a jug of good hard cider by during these afternoon sessions at the forge to pass the time, and sometimes when he had come back from Boston Town, Tom Cook himself might bring back a very rare treat in the form of two quart bottles of Port Wine to share with his friends which might even include the one woman who from time to time be included in these social gatherings. Moll Sheckel was not unwelcomed by the men. Such times were the only time she was known to sometimes smile No woman of standing would give Old Moll the right time of day unless they wanted to buy one of her potions on the sly. The men winked at their wives hypocrisy and yet got a kick out of Old Moll who by now must have been an old woman of forty!

One must remember that consorting with a witch back in 1770 could result in social ostracism, but alas, no witch any longer suffered by way of a hanging-death in The Commonwealth of Massachusetts since the Witchcraft Delusion of 1692 and 1693 in Salem Village when hundreds had been imprisoned, nineteen individuals hanged, and one Giles Corey pressed to death between two wide boards with a ton of stone for failing to answer to the charge of witchcraft thus saving himself from conviction and his heirs from losing his estate by confiscation because of a conviction for the crime of being in league with the Devil! Massachusetts had never burned a witch to death. After all; this wasn’t Spain the land of “The auto de fe!” or Old England for that matter where burning witches had been the practice in some areas. Now that Massachusetts was a royal colony, and no longer ruled under the provisions of its old charter, his majesty’s subjects could not be hanged as witches here in The Commonwealth! Oh Happy Day!

For years, there were always speculations about Tom Cook and his mysterious ways. Indeed, Tom never seemed to have employment, but he was never seen to be out of funds. It was well known that his father had disowned him, his brothers and sisters had dropped him and did not want to know him either, and that he had no occupation to support him. His mother, who had notoriously spoiled him, alas was dead.

Tom’s handsome face and smile had opened many amorous opportunities for him far from Wrentham Town, Unionville, and generally the area that would become Franklin in March of 1778. Tom may have flirted in his own community, but he was very careful of arousing his friends who were also fathers against him by being amorous among their charming and I am afraid to say, susceptible daughters. There was a very strange thing that occurred about this time. A great storm came out of nowhere one autumn morning after the harvest at the cold wet end of October. Nobody alive could remember a storm of such intensity. Trees were torn from the ground, and roofs were ripped from sheds and even a few barns.

Some villagers swore that the sky had cracked and that a huge orange ball of flame was seen in the North East Precinct of the Village of Unionville that threatened to burn that vicinity to a cinder. After that awful time, Tom Cook changed in a very profound way, and there could be no accounting for it, and nobody knew why until the revelation of certain facts were uncovered in the Rockwood Family Papers by yours truly in 1974. There the story had been hidden away for more than two centuries until I unfolded the sturdy pages of rag-wove-laid paper and read the words recorded on them by the anonymous hand of one who must have been a member of the Rockwood Family.

It was at this time that I was writing my book Odyssey in the Wilderness. Now this historic work was a history of the Town of Franklin and the first history of any importance written since 1928. That 1928 writing by Eugene Sullivan had been undertaken for the sesquicentennial celebration of the Town of Franklin’s founding, and it was a very good up-dating of the history written by Mortimer Blake in 1878. Now I am fairly sure that you all know that a sesquicentennial celebration represents a celebration of a 150th
anniversary of an historic event. My, it is so great knowing that I live in a community where everybody is just so smart!

Now these papers were provided to me by Mrs. Grace Buchanan, who had been born Grace Chilson. Her mother was Mrs. Austin B. Chilson who I knew only slightly, and that was because we shared an interest in early glass. Mrs. Chilson was rather famous in the American Glass Community which was very large and important at that time. She was one of the great collectors of the period, and the “Chilson Goblet”, a Sandwich Glass pattern of great rarity, was named for her by the greatest of all glass authorities, Ruth Webb Lee. Mrs. Chilson had discovered this rare pattern and actually owed three of the goblets. I know of only one person who owns more of these rare vessels, and that is my Cousin Bryan Bauer.

Grace Buchanan and I became great friends through collecting, the Mrs. And Mr. Club sponsored dancing school of the 1950’s, our mutual love of local history, and dealing in rare glass, as well as Staffordshire and other antiques. Grace also had a rather large archive of historic papers which she loaned me for my research on my book in the 1970’s. Now, Grace had also had befriended the Ray Family, most especially Mrs. Joseph Gordon Ray, as she was known to my mother, Emily Rockwood Ray. The Rockwoods were a great old Unionville Family and Emily had married Joseph Gordon Ray, after The Civil War, and they had two daughters, Annie Ray who married an Adalbert Thayer, and Lydia Ray who became Mrs. Arthur Winslow Pierce when she married the man who would be President of what is now Dean College. Annie and Lydia would donate several buildings to the Town of Franklin: The Town, or Joseph Gordon Ray Memorial Library, The Ray School, The Joseph Gordon Ray Fire Station, and Ray House on Dean Campus until it was burned down as a result of an electrical fire. The Thayer House, was donated by Annie Ray Thayer and her husband Adalbert as a dormitory on Dean Campus, which unfortunately shared the same fiery fate as Ray House.

Fortunately the Rockwood Family Papers were safe in Grace’s hands, and a wild story they did tell about many things historic including the story of Moll Schekel, but more importantly, those hand-written papers told the rest of the story of Tom Pond. It seems that Tom had entered into a compact with The Devil about the time he had turned twenty-one years of age. One chilly fall night, as Tom sat by the fire that he had built in the fireplace of the little shack that he had rented from Oliver Pond, a knock came to his door.

Tom got up from his chair and swung open the door to behold a swarthy tall handsome man dressed in well-cut black broadcloth, tall boots, silver spurs, and stiff white linen. Indeed, he was appareled in the best of recent fashion. “Mr. Cook, that is, Tom Cook? Do I have the distinct honor to be addressing that distinguished party?” asked the tall man as he bowed.

“Yes Sir. You have that pleasure, and I guess that I have the honor,” replied Tom. Tom could not help but see a Huge Black Berlin Coach and eight jette-black horses standing in his lane. Tom knew that no other such coach could be anywhere in the Colonies at that time. Slowly the whole scene began to make sense to him along with the identity of his visitor.

“Well said sir,” replied the dark man with a polite grin. “May I take a seat sir and state my business here? I can assure you that it is to our mutual benefit.”

“Please sit sir. I am open to conversation having no better employment at the moment,” replied Tom.

“I do not wish to alarm you Mr. Cook. I am a man who can make all sorts of possibilities a reality for ambitious men much like you.”

“I am not any kind of man of ambition, and I would have no man think me so. I am a gentleman of absolutely no ambition what-so-ever. You see sir, I am a Gentleman born to be privileged and also be bone-idle. I should be wealthy, but alas, I am disinherited. I should have been born a son of an Earl or at least a Vis-count, or even a Baron, or even a Baronet, but that was not my fate. I think that I may have some cider in that jug over on the dresser. May I pour you a noggin my Lord?”

“I care for nothing at the moment. Pray pour something for yourself Tom. May I call you Tom?” asked the Stranger.

“Please do sir. I am glad to find a drop of something here for suddenly I do have a thirst which I find to be quite unaccountable.”

Tom filled his cow-horn beaker and lifted it to his lips for a deep swallow. Something like total delight filled him, and he sank into his chair almost in ecstasy. “What has happened? Why, my cider has turned to Port! It is the best Port I have ever had this side of Boston Town. Have you a hand in this transformation sir? I do suspect that you may have done me a good turn here, but I know not how. You do have something to tell me sir. I know that you do. Let us have it then.”

“Tom, you are a very honest and direct fellow for a scoundrel and a blackguard! How very refreshing you are. I shall enjoy your company bye and bye, but let me tell you something I think will be of great interest to you Young Tom. How would you like the power to rob anyone at will and never be caught? How would you like to be invisible whenever you wished, and how would you like to be able to take whatever you want with total impunity and without the slightest degree of danger or chance of being detected whenever and wherever you like? Well Sir. I don’t think that I decisive fellow like yourself. You are not the sort that needs be worried about convention. What do you say Sir?”

“I say that It sounds damned interesting, but I suppose that there is a cost. Such gifts can hardly be given free of charge even by such a broadminded and generous personage such as your most gracious self, Dear Sir!”

“I think that you mock me, but I really have no care of it. You are a very astute fellow Tom. Do you want to know the terms to complete our contract?”

“Tell me please. I think that I might be able to guess.”

“You are right Young Tom. I want your soul, and in exchange for it, I will give you the gifts I have outlined and all the finest Port you could want. These gifts will be yours for a full lustrum, for five years.”

“I will agree to your provisions, but my tenure shall be seven years, not five. A lustrum is hardly long enough.”

“Well played Young Tom! Seven years it is. You have made a longer bargain with me than any fellow ever has. I hope that you are pleased with yourself.”

“Of course I am well pleased. You have given me fine recreation for seven mortal years for something that you were most likely to end up getting anyway. I bid you good night Sir. I can see that you are a Gentleman of your word and must have a great deal of business to be about.”

The dark man smiled, bowed with stately grace, entered the huge Berlin coach and evaporated into the grey dawn that descended around the house.  

Here endeth Part the First of our story. To be continued tomorrow...

James C. Johnston Jr. is a former Franklin selectman, Franklin High School history teacher, and author of "The African Son," a novel , as well as "The Yankee Fleet" and "Odyssey in the Wilderness," (a history of Franklin, Massachusetts). Article copyright James C. Johnston, Jr. 2023, used with permission.