More on Bridget Sullivan's grave

Me connecting with Bridget

Raise your hand: how many of you visit cemeteries on your road trips?  When one of my children found out the incredible coincidence that my novel's real-life character Bridget Sullivan's grave was in the small town we'd be visiting, she said—and I quote— "Here we go again."

Anaconda, Montana, has a population of about 9,000, the same as the Vermont town I grew up in. It was founded by Copper King Marcus Daly in 1883; he tried to call it Copperopolis (which is really fun to say) but the name was already taken. Bridget Sullivan—Lizzie Borden's maid— is listed on Wikipedia as one of 25 notable people who lived there. Bridget settled here sometime after the 1892 murders in Massachusetts; intriguingly, no one knows what happened to her for an intervening period of years before she wound up in Montana. Perhaps she went back to Ireland for a bit? That's definitely a happy thing to consider.

See the preceding post for a little bit about the uncanny nature of learning I'd be visiting Anaconda.

The east-west streets in Anaconda are named for charmingly named for trees, but not alphabetized. Tucked in there between Oak and Hickory is Main Street, and at the end of it is a stunning county courthouse.

Anaconda courthouse

 
Check out that eagle of justice!

I sometimes like to think I have intuition about things and I just felt like the cemetery must be near. Sure enough, to the right of the courthouse we spied a little curving road up into the hillside. Jackpot!
We had a decision to make: choose between the upper cemetery or the lower. We chose upper, parked the car and started walking. There were four of us, and we fanned out to better seize upon Bridget.

View of Anaconda from upper cemetery

There were some incredible markers there, like this one that has tree limbs "falling off" in a beautifully stylized manner.

We quickly found some Sullivans, but not a Bridget.

Then, one of my children called excitedly from a few rows away. She had indeed found a Bridget Sullivan, but someone whose birth date was about twenty years off (even given that it's not fixed in stone—ha ha—when Bridget was born, but she claimed to be 26 years old at the time of the 1893 trial). So we kept plugging. It was a hot day. I decided it was time to call it quits, that I'd go to a local establishment where I could pick up wifi, check the website findagrave.com, and then go straight to Bridget. (My cell carrier gave zero service in Montana).

My laptop malfunctioned and I couldn't get wifi on it, but I did pick up the wifi in my phone...for all of ten minutes before it died. I had been left at the wifi place for an hour while the rest of my family went for ice cream, so I spent some time cursing my luck; I couldn't call them to return earlier! I was over-air conditioned and shivering, went outside and boiled. Am I complaining enough yet? Luckily, those ten minutes of scant wifi did let me ascertain that the whole time we'd been plugging through that cemetery near the courthouse, we were in the WRONG CEMETERY.

So much for intuition!

When the family picked me up, I directed us straight to Mount Olivet Cemetery, which was small enough that we could troll the paths in our car. Even better, I had seen a picture of the gravestone so could describe what we were looking for. We found it pretty quickly.

I loved it that Bridget was up on the hillside. Here's her view of the town (you can see that smelting chimney in the distance). I'm glad she found love, that she had a husband beside her in the ground. And I thoroughly believe she must've loved the wild landscape of Montana, its breathtaking mountains...she traded a busy river town for a remote area where you rotate 360 degrees and see nothing but mountains. Montana is gorgeous.

What Bridget "sees" from her grave. See the smelting tower at the upper right.

A writer friend Genevieve Beltran joked that I dig deep as a writer...six feet down. It's true that it was moving for me to see Bridget Sullivan's grave. Although reports from her relatives are that she was stern and had no sense of humor, I hope that she did find peace.

Rest in peace, Bridget Sullivan.

Bridget and John's grave in the foreground

If you want to know more about Bridget, my novel The Murderer's Maid tells the Lizzie Borden story from her point of view.

AMAZON
BARNES & NOBLE
POWELL’S

“Erika Mailman writes a page turner of a thriller that will fascinate as well as terrify….Don’t read this at night; it will give you nightmares.” -New York Journal of Books
“Erika Mailman’s kaleidoscopic narrative melds true crime, historical fiction, and elements of a psychological thriller, all hinging on a singular question: ‘Who isn’t a survivor from the wreckage of childhood?’” -Foreword Reviews
“A complex and riveting parallax view of domestic crimes, decades apart.” -Kirkus
“Those interested in the Lizzie Borden tale…will appreciate Mailman’s research and be rewarded with this new perspective.” -Booklist

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Bridget Sullivan's grave

My experience of the Lizzie Borden story is through a somewhat different lens than most people; I view it through the eyes of Bridget Sullivan. She was the Irish immigrant maid employed by the Borden family a few years before the murders took place. It is said she tried to quit several times, but Mrs. Borden always talked her into staying. Bridget was at the house the day that Mr. and Mrs. Borden were slain by hatchet, Aug. 4, 1892. The only other person we know was there that day was Lizzie, who underwent trial for her father and stepmother's deaths, and was acquitted. My novel The Murderer's Maid tells the story of these iconic American murders from Bridget’s point of view.

I’m a writer whose had a significant amount of uncanny things happen through her writing. One was writing a novel about witchcraft and then learning my ancestor had undergone witchcraft trials several times. More recently, after my book about Bridget Sullivan came out, my husband’s brother invited us to visit him at his cabin in Montana. What town in Montana?

Oh, it just happens to be the same small town in Montana that Bridget Sullivan settled in, after a hiatus of years in which her trail went temporarily cold. The town is Anaconda.

I had a rare chance last week to visit the grave of my character. She is buried next to her husband John Sullivan (he already had that very common Irish last name, so she didn’t need to change hers, although I guess she could’ve called herself Bridget Sullivan Sullivan). Her side of the shared grave is higher than his, and I fancifully imagined it was her bulky shirts and petticoats causing the difference. Someone had left bouquets of colorful fake flowers on both their graves.

Bridget is on a hill overlooking the town of Anaconda, with a lovely view. She can also see the tower which I think is a smelting tower where her husband would’ve worked. I ran out of time to do that research on this trip, but I hope to return. I’d also really love to connect with Bridget’s great-niece who lives in a nearby town.

So here, a few days before the 126^th anniversary of the murders, is a photo of Bridget Sullivan's grave at the Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Anaconda, Montana. Next post: more about the search for Bridget's grave (hint: it wasn't easy, although it should've been).

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AMAZON
BARNES & NOBLE
POWELL’S

Mark Twain's cabin on Jackass Hill

It requires a little uphill drive from Angels Camp on a dirt road to find this cabin. You pass some donkeys who give their name to this place, Jackass Hill. You think you're the only history-minded person trying to find it, and you arrive, park, poke around... and then five other cars come and you exult that other people care!

It may seem at first flush that the cabin looks too fresh, too new to have been a place where Mark crashed in 1864.

Yeah, it's made of wood, but it doesn't look OLD somehow

 But you still walk around and marvel.

At least the fireplace looks old, right?

So, if you read the plaque at the site, you learn that this is not the original cabin. It was rebuilt 2002-2005 by the Rotarians. However, not even the original cabin was original! It was built in 1922 to commemorate Mark Twain's stay approximately 60 years earlier. Now who feels like a jackass??

Turns out the cabin is an imposter

This is a nice old plaque. Let's focus on that instead.

1929 plaque also deemed "not old enough"

Am I the only one who wants to put a "C" in the word plaque? I always type "placque" and then fix it.

Sometimes it can be hard to chase down history. If Twain wanted the cabin where he stayed to remain into perpetuity, he should've asked for brick.

It's interesting to contemplate that Twain wrote "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" here, as the placque suggests. Especially since the other plaque suggests the cabin is situated in Tuolumne County. #Hm.


. . . . .

Angels Camp

Mural in town, showing Twain holding a frog

This small Gold Rush town in northern California is also known as Frogtown, because Mark Twain based his short story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," on a story heard here in 1865. The hotel where he heard it still stands. PETA members, please don't read this story.

Each May, Angels Camp hosts a jumping frog contest, and a plaque gets laid in the sidewalk for each year's winner.

I think this is the biggest jump I saw, at 19'11"

This one is a wink-wink, based on the story

The town is sweet to wander through and straddles a beautiful creek.

It has an arts center.

And of course it has to have a saloon.

And not too far away, a Barrel of Monkeys, described as "If you were given $5,000 and told to open your own version of John's Incredible Pizza":

Built on a hill, Angels Camp has many staircases that link parallel streets:

And statues throughout town celebrate the froglike history.

It's worth a visit! The jumping frog jubilee is always the third weekend in May; here's a link. The Mark Twain story is also reprinted in its entirety at that site.

Fun fact: the town isn't angelic; it's named for early founder Henry Angell (no one could spell in the 1800s).
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Last post about the Klimt exhibit

(although it has nothing to do with Klimt)

In the permanent collection, my husband pointed out a plaque that made us laugh. I had assumed "The Candelight Master" was the name of the painting. But it was the name of the artist.

Forgive me if this is a big thing I missed out on. I never took Art History.

So then of course, anyone who loves Prince as much as he does has to joke, that when his town got electricity, he was "the artist formerly known as the candlelight master and now known as the fluorescent blurb master."

Of course because I feel an obligation to the paltry few of you who actually read this blog (and because it's so miserably short today), I took a moment to google this artist. 

Proving you really do have to have money to have a gallery named after you

He had the very worrisome name of Trophime Bigot (but don't worry, he was French so you'd pronounce it Bee-joe...or wait, maybe a hard G? Bee-go? I'll have to consult on this one and return)

He lived 1579-1650, was born in Arles (bullfight place I've visited and sobbed about, poor bulls), and was actively painting in Rome and Provence. He's buried in Avignon, where the popes used to live (I visited but didn't cry).

There's some controversy that he was thought to be a father and son, but historians determined that he was the same guy painting in two very different styles, depending on what his patrons wanted.

And, and, and...he did one of the Judith & Holofernes beheading paintings that I was just sharing with a class a month ago. Wow. Small world.

A lot can happen by candlelight.

Hm...murder assisted by a maid...where I have heard that before?

. . . . .

Klimt & Rodin exhibit, Legion of Honor

Man with Portrait of Johanna Staude, unfinished thanks to the flu

AKA Klimt, part 2, far more cheerful!

Klimt is amazing. This exhibit is incredible. 

 

The colors and depth were so spectacular that when we moved from the Klimt exhibit into the older paintings in the permanent collection, I literally felt a let-down. The paintings there seemed flat. I still love them...but damn, Klimt does everything I want an artist to do!

(and Rodin's pretty cool too. But I have a grudge against him because it was at his museum in Paris that I hemorrhaged and had to go to the ER—my little French/English dictionary had the word for "miscarriage"—and thought I'd lost a baby yet again. But! she's here, thank God).

I like to say Legion of Honor. It sounds like you're not just looking at art, but doing something noble.

It's a glorious museum with a Rodin "The Thinker" out front and even a miniature pyramide de verre like the Louvre.

Anyway, I love Klimt and we drove six hours round-trip to see this exhibit (actually shouldn't have taken that long, but see previous post). Plus, wanted a date day in the big city.

It's a small exhibit with five rooms, but there is a wealth there that could take up hours if you weren't being jostled for space by lots of other viewers. Hint to Legion of Honor: please make description plaques twice as large (and maybe even duplicate them to place on either side of wider pieces)—sometimes you'd have to move through a sea of 20 people to read the plaque and then you don't get to look at the painting again with the newfound information. I heard several other people complain about the small print. 

This exhibit space is gorgeous: look at the ceilings! The black and white photograph you see on the back wall is a reproduction of Klimt's "Medicine." See a few paragraphs below for an explanation.

This is Klimt himself, coolest of the cool. Sadly he died of pneumonia complicating his 1918 flu (which I blogged about here) or we'd have so much more art to delight our eyes.

Loving the vibe

One of the many things that makes him great:

He tried three times to get into the prestigious Ecole des Beaux Arts, failed and then went on to be one of the most well-known artists of all time.

Another thing that makes him great: he fathered 14 kids. And you can tell by this picture why and how:

Section of a much larger frieze

Another thing: there is an early painting of his (a seashore landscape that I'm mad at myself for not photographing so I could show you) that is fully representational to the degree it's nearly photographic. He was so damn talented, but decided that was boring, and so moved on to create his own style. Here's a few details of his explosive use of color and built-up texture:

detail of painting I failed to write down the name of

Detail of Klimt's other painting I didn't write down the name of
Hey, this isn't investigative journalism!

Another bit of admirable coolness: He was commissioned by the University of Vienna to create three huge paintings, allegorical representations of Medicine, Philosophy and Jurisprudence. He created the first, Philosophy, and it was thought to be pornographic and there was public outcry. He withdrew it and entered it in the 1900 World's Fair competition and won the Grand Prix! Eff you, establishment! All three were destroyed by a fire in the Austrian castle where they were stored during WWII, and all that exists are black and white photographs of these lost pieces.

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, this exhibit closes Jan. 28 so get thyself hence post-hastily!

. . . . 

Klimt, collapses and car crashes

 

See how the tire is revealed by the entire bumper being demolished?
It almost took off his axle.

The other day I was hanging out with a friend and describing how someone had rung our doorbell around midnight and I looked out from the balcony and saw how one person had hidden himself behind our Spanish arch while the other was at the door and called out frantically to my husband, "Don't open the door! It's bad guys! One's hiding" ...

and how my husband called 911 before we understood they were the law (it was two sheriffs on a very strange mission that I still don't fully understand, and I guess one had hidden himself in case my husband opened the door and shot his colleague), ...

and in the same conversation we talked about how I'd forgotten my purse at a teachers' meeting and how the (very nice!) person who took it for me since campus was closing happened to live an hour away, and just a few other things, and she said, "You have the most drama in your life of anyone I know."

I had to laugh, but it kind of hurt. In fact, after the sheriffs departed, I had asked myself, "Why does all the weird stuff happen to us?"

So that was Jan. 11.

On Jan. 23, we were part of two more 911 calls in the space of 40 minutes. We went to San Francisco for the Klimt and Rodin exhibit which closes Jan. 28–if you live in the area, you have four more days to see an absolutely incredible exhibit. It was fabulous. We loved touring the exhibit and then the permanent galleries of the Legion of Honor.

We looked at the time and realized our hope of getting a fun lunch in San Francisco had evaporated time-wise. So we headed down to the basement cafe of the Legion to grab something quick and head home. At the bottom of the stairs was a woman on the floor surrounded by a small group of people, having CPR administered.

My husband works in the ER, so he went over to check in. Things were already underway, but we were part of that drama for about 20 minutes. I stood there, tears prickling in my eyes, thinking, "Is this how this woman dies? On the floor of the museum?" and thankfully, she opened her eyes eventually and was able to speak to the caregivers.

Someone had called 911, and soon enough the paramedics were there to take over.

Kind of a sacred moment as a life was saved.

So incredible.

And then, as one does, we resumed the concerns of the living: food. But there was a long line to get into the cafe. We resolved we would get on the road and see how traffic treated us; maybe we could get something fast on the way.

This is how quickly that long line of cars forms after an accident.
I wonder how long traffic was affected.
There was a ton of debris in the road, glass and metal, so cars had to slow
to get past the accident site. To make things better, that meadow on the left was filled with cows.

About 20 minutes into our drive, something happened in front of us. I can't even say what it was (I'd make a terrible eyewitness), but there were cars in front of us colliding, and it was only due to my husband's excellent defensive driving that we were not involved. He braked hard and swerved, and we missed the car in front of us by mere feet.

It was a three-car crash and we were almost the fourth. 

We pulled over to be witnesses (my husband had paid attention and knew who was at fault) and give our number to the other drivers. Both our phones had died (despite being charged all night the previous night and my not running any draining program: more drama) but luckily his had been charged just long enough in our 20 minute drive for me to call 911.

After a long time, the police officer arrived and we took off. We knew we were never going to get home in time, so we changed to charging my phone just enough to call the wonderful person we were going to be late for.

Traffic sucked and because we were on the road an extra hour because of it, we had to stop for gas. More drama.

So, we were part of three 911 calls in a week.

Let's hope things slow down for a little.

I guess the one thing I can say is, the Klimt exhibit was still worth it. And tomorrow I'll post photos. Undramatic photos.

Best defensive driver and CPR overseer ever.

Me, art lover. Our parking spot just happened to have a spectacular view of that
Golden Gate Bridge (I'm so used to typing Bridget, my character in The Murderer's Maid
that I literally just wrote, Golden Gate Bridget)

(And that's what I love about San Francisco. You just, you know, pull over on your way to the museum and there's a world-class view people get in an airplane for.)

. . . .

Sacramento's historic cemetery

This post is for Loren, in my heart today. I took these pictures in February 2017, and can't wait to return to do an official tour with you someday soon.

Loren's the author of 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die. 

Grave of Mark Hopkins, one of the "Big Four" who brought the transcontinental
railroad to California

pockmarked cherub

Blog visitors, let me know in the comments if you have a favorite cemetery (photos uploads would be great too!)



. . . . . 

San Francisco's Musee Mecanique

Laughing Sal: terrifying children for decades

I've never seen anything like the Musee Mecanique, a museum of machines from the turn of the century. Insert a quarter and watch a small scene play out. You can tell it once amazed people as the epitome of what technology was capable of. 

The mechanical museum used to be out at San Francisco's Ocean Beach, near the camera obscura behind the Cliff House. And that's probably a big part of why Laughing Sal is there; she was once installed at Playland at the Beach. She positively crackles and quivers as she laughs, the stuff of nightmares.

In a smart move, the museum is now at Pier 45, much easier for Pier 39 tourists to get to. No need to bring a roll of quarters; there are change machines inside.

My favorite one.

Closeup of the opium den: a crazy dragon comes out of the table
to illustrate the hallucinations the smokers face

Love the bright colors

Browsing for antiques

This one is part of a huge carnival where all the rides move. This is probably 1/4th of what is visible.

Sigh.

For those of you less charmed by such an old-world penny arcade (but...who would that be?), there's also an area in the back with more recent games. State of the art games. Pong, for instance.

What's your favorite tourist destination in San Francisco? Would love to see comments!

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