The fictional part is that Rosemary was not there as much as she claims. The passage is dramatically written but the timeline isn't intact....unless she went to breakfast for a couple of hours...and that's possible. She could have been there at 6:30, or whatever, but she wasn't there at 9:00 and didn't show up until just before 10:00AM with Randy.
I was there when the backhoe had just stopped digging, and that was about 9:00 AM. There were very few people there at the time. Seems like Heather might have been there earlier based on the copyright pictures in Rosemary's blog.......but Rosemary and Randy were not there. The grave digger, his assistance and the sexton were present....and that was about all. So.....while it's possible that Rosemary was at the cemetery earlier it's factual that she was not there at 9:00.
When I arrived the access to the cordoned off area was limited since the grave digger didn't know if the dirt would have to be dumped from the truck and the digging, with the back hoe, would continue.
Still no Rosemary and Randy at this point.
I watched the grave digger poke around at a few items in the dirt and he showed me some coffin parts and a couple of bones. He thought one was the elbow bone. The hole was 34" at this point and that's where the hand digging began. As I've stated previously; it would be impossible to know how deep the grave was originally because the coffin parts and bones were all crushed together into a 3 foot by 3 foot area in the northeast corner of the hole. Obviously everything had moved over time from unknown natural forces..........trees roots, ground water, frost (eventually) or a host of other factors.
When Rosemary writes "We had ladders and ropes............." and passages like this I would like to know who "we" are....there wasn't any "we" that included Rosemary even though she writes like she had direct involvement. Guess she brought all this stuff on the plane from Norfolk.
All the business about weak legs and Randy holding up Rosemary sounds like it came directly from a "grocery store novel" except the scenes depicted in those books generally dealt with passion of the moment. Still, the phrasing, etc. are reminiscient of the material one might find at the checkout counter of a supermarket.
I'll deal with the burial permit issue when I take the 11 sign posts blog apart at a later time.
Also will deal with the ficiton of the falsified death certificate at the same time.
Peterson and Anapol showed up about 10:00 AM as scheduled....they were a few minutes late. McBride showed up shortly after that and povided a service........not sure why that was needed....must have been for the weak kneed. All recovery was completed by noon.
Rosemary reports that McBride showed up and the service occurred at 7:30 AM. Maybe, but he also showed up at 10:00 for the service as described.
In summary, there may actually be some truth imbedded in this dramatic rendition of the exhumation of Addie but there is also lots of "not quite so factual" information in Rosemary's personal account of the events
The grave digger is showing me some of the first artifacts. These are hardware parts from the coffin.
Just a couple of additional observations and a comment. In the picture of Martha's grave in the Addie Hoyte Fargo blog there are shadows. This picture was not taken on 11/3. Possible the day before. Readers might think this was taken early in the morning on 11/3.....didn't happen that way. Under the picture of E J Fargo the caption reads that he married his third wife only 7 months after the second wife died. At the time E J was caught between two possible scandalous events.....either marry Martha or let the towns people continue to gossip about having a single woman living in his home. E J married Martha since she had no other place to live. Neither the marriage to Addie or Martha had anything to do with lust and more to do with convenience.....there were no children from either marriage.
ReplyDeleteRosemary Thornton has been so wrong about so much where do you start. Mourning in the United States changed drastically with the advent of the Civil War. With both sides having so many dead, virtually everyone was in mourning. This, of course, was terribly depressing so mourning, if observed at all, was simply suspended, never again regaining the rigidity dictated by Victorian tradition. The Victorian Era ended in 1901 with the death of Queen Elizabeth. Mourning was different for men than for women. Women were expected to dress in mourning when she left her home for a period of a year. Men chose when and how long to mourn wearing an arm band or a black feather in his hat band. Exigencies of home and work dictating when to remarry rather than romance.
ReplyDeleteYou see, EJ Fargo did exactly what would be expected of him for the time. Martha Hoyt was brought into the home as a companion and helper for Addie. After all she WAS accepted as a cousin, something that wasn't and still isn't at all unusual in the middle west. After Addie's death, Martha continued on at the Fargo home taking care of the children and over-seeing the servants. After seven months EJ made Martha his wife and heir partly for helping him through the horrible loss of his young wife. A wife, as illustrated by Rosemary Thornton's photo album, he lavished with a mansion, buggies, sleighs, trips to Chicago for the latest in fashions, sports dress, even a horse and buggy complete with doily, gourmet foods; Addie had it all and tragically, died young. With absolutely no evidence at all, Rosemary maintins that Addie was a robust and healthy young woman when in reality, Martha was brought into the home because she was sickly and needed help. This is the tragedy, EJ took in and gave his name to a woman who had lost her mother and father and other relatives in a short period of time, employed her brother Eugene, gave her everything a woman could wish for and now, is being accused of horrific crimes.
According to Rosemary Thornton Julia Hawley Hoyt(1844-1880) Addie's mother died at age 36. I wonder who killed her?
DeleteI must apologize, Julia Hawley Hoyt (1844-1895) lived much longer as Rosemary's story unfolds. Her blogs are replete with these changes, depending on which direction the wind was blowing on what day. She also doesn't know the difference between a shovel used for digging a grave and one use for gardening. You see, she saw a garden shovel at the exhumation and thought that was the type of shovel used by a grave digger. Anyone with a lick of common sense would know the difference.
DeleteAnother observation I've made previously but want to reiterate here. In spite of Rosemary's dramatic rendition of the exhumation events her companion was cracking one line jokes with the some of the others on the forensic team - probably inappropriate considering the circumstances. The point I want to make is that this behavior didn't seem to bother Rosemary at the time..............in spite of confessed emotional strain. I read the desperate housewives of Norfolk were sympathetic...........as expected.
ReplyDelete