After my father died in 2009, I returned to Middlebury to help my mother tie up loose ends. In my father’s cluttered office, I found genealogical information downloaded from the Internet regarding our ancestors Louisa Hawthorne and John Dike. Apparently, Louisa and John had taken a stagecoach trip together to Saratoga Springs but made the tragic decision to travel home on the Henry Clay steamship. The steamship exploded mid-voyage. Louisa plunged into the Hudson and drowned, but John stayed aboard and walked off the ship when it ran aground. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Clay_(steamboat)
My father had flagged this information as simply interesting family history, but as a fan of historical romance, I had questions: Why was this mismatched couple traveling alone? John’s wife Priscilla was inexplicably absent on the trip. Louisa was a spinster, and yet unchaperoned. True, John was twenty-five years Louisa’s senior, and therefore presumed to be her elderly charge. However, this was an unremarkable age difference at a time when many women died in childbirth and second wives were often significantly younger than their husbands. And finally, why did Louisa plunge into the Hudson and drown, while John survived by staying on board the ship?
08/08/2021
