Pere
Marquette Park was the final stop for Voces de la Frontera’s annual May Day march.
Father Jacques Marquette, S.J. (1637 – 1675) camped in what is now Milwaukee
in 1674. Marquette was a French Jesuit
missionary whose travels in the U.S. Midwest established boundaries for the
lucrative French fur trade.
The father of international law, Dominican
Friar Francisco de Vitoria, O.P. (1483-1546) gave his opinion in Salamanca, Spain
that evangelists had a legal right under natural law to preach the gospel in
the New World. Pere Marquette was well
received by the Native Americans. As
impossible as it is to imagine, what if a “Sitting Jim Sensenbrenner” were
chief of the Midwest tribes? It would
have been a different story.
TRICIA
FIELDEN KNOWLES: LOCAL ARTIST & FIELDEN FAMILY MEMBER (A continuing story – scroll down for previous postings)
TRICIA’S
TALE
It took us about a half-hour to walk to our
hotel. After talking to Jeremy, we
already knew quite a bit about the Fieldens and the town of Todmorden but we
had just begun.
Our hotel, Scaitcliffe Hall, dated back to
the Middle Ages; a perfect base for our research. Wall hangings remind guests of the history of
the Scaitcliffe Hall and the area around Todmorden of the Brontes, Emily and Charlotte. They lived in the area, and the hills and
moors above Todmorden are the setting for their novels.
After checking in I called Tricia Fielden
Knowles whom I had contacted before from London. Tricia met us at the hotel and we talked
about Sam Fielden, the Haymarket and the Fielden family. She knew some of Sam’s story, but she didn’t
know about Sam’s death row autobiography.
Tricia told us that she knew Scaitcliffe
Hall well, because she and a classmate, who was the Vicar’s daughter, were
invited to use the tennis court by Miss Sutcliff who lived there with her
elderly mother before they sold it.
Tricia remembered the old lady sitting in a high backed chair by the big
fireplace in what is now the reception area. Before we left Todmorden we purchased one of
Trisha’s paintings. She is a well known
artist. The painting we bought was of an
abandoned canal lock in Todmorden.
England’s industrial revolution was facilitated by a canal system that
moved raw materials and products throughout the country. Cotton from the U.S. Southern States was
shipped inland to Todmorden through the canal system.
Tricia showed us a photo of Sam Fielden and
his two children. The photo was taken
after Sam’s pardon by Illinois Governor Altgeld in 1893. It was sent to Tricia by Keith Fielden who
lives in Richmond, VA. The photo shows
Sam with his children, Alice noted as born in 1884 and Samuel Henry noted only
as born in Chicago. Alice was probably
named after Alice Jackson, Sam’s mother.
I asked how Sam of the Chicago Haymarket and
his family could have been forced to work in a mill under horrible conditions
yet were members of the Fielden family.
Sam, in describing his work in the mill as a child wrote,
I think that if the devil had a particular
enemy whom he
wished to unmercifully torture the best thing
for him to
do would be to put his soul into the body of
a Lancashire
factory child and keep him as a child in the
factory the
rest of his life.(The Autobiographies of
the Haymarket Martyrs, op.cite. p. 137)
After
a moment of thought Tricia responded that it wasn’t
unusual
at all; everyone worked at the mill. Her
father who retired as “Works Manager” had also labored as a weaver in the mill. However there was tension. The wealthy Fieldens were called “Castle
Fieldens” and have since left Todmorden.
Looking at Tricia’s photo of Sam and his
children made me think of Sam’s comments about his children in his death row
autobiography. Sam records that he went
back to England, “to fulfill a matrimonial engagement which I had entered into
eleven years before. … The fruit of my marriage has been two children, one a
girl of 2 ½ years of age, the other a boy who has been born since my
imprisonment.”(ibid. p. 154) The size of
the children indicates that this photo would have been taken after his pardon,
around 1900 at their farm in Colorado.
Samuel Fielden was a devoted family
man. An account referenced in the
Chicago Historical Society website describes Sam and his Todmorden wife meeting
during a brief security lapse when Sam was being transferred to another section
of the jail. Sam’s wife,
“Holding her new born babe to her breast
threw the other
arm around his neck and showered kisses upon
his homely
face and shaggy, unkempt beard, weeping
convulsively all the
while.”
SAM’S
BOYHOOD HOME
Tricia offered to take us up to the house
where Sam lived as a boy. She had
checked the 1851 census and found the location where the family lived. The town of Todmorden is located in a valley
of the Pennine hills which are called the backbone of England. Our trip to visit Sam’s home took us up the
rather steep hillsides on a narrow winding road. The vista was a spiritual treat. The shining emerald landscape and the neat
stone hedges reminded me of Ireland. Sam
wrote,
“It (Todmorden) lies in a beautiful valley,
and on the hillsides
are small farms; back about a mile are the
moorlands, which
could be made into fine farms, as the
topography of the
moors is more level generally than the
inclosed land. But
though thousands of starving Englishmen
would be very glad
to work them, they must be kept for grouse
and the games
keeper and the gentry.”(ibid. 131)
We reached the house, parked in front of the
gate and got out of the car to look around.
The scenery of the hills and moors was breathtaking. Sam’s house and the area had obviously been
gentrified. There was a cement driveway leading to a two car garage. The
complex included a neat farm house and farm buildings for tools and
animals. We talked to the owner who told
us that he worked in a nearby town. He
and his wife also owned two horses and some sheep which were out in the
pasture. It was hard to imagine this as
Sam’s home. It was a moving experience to see the place, but I felt unsettled. I doubt that the ghosts of Sam and his family
find refuge in their old homestead.
I could see how life in these hills and
moors in the 19th century would make travel by foot difficult. The cottage industry that supplemented
subsistence farming had been replaced by the machine operated mills. The trip
up and down the hillside to the cotton mill everyday would have been a
challenge. Sam wrote about his mother
Alice walking barefoot in the snow.
In his autobiography Sam describes the area. “The house that we occupied stood in the
midst of some meadows that were owned by two wealthy brothers, who were engaged
in flour milling.”(ibid. 136)
The haymakers were migrant workers from
Ireland. Sam wrote:
“These
men are compelled to harvest crops in England for
the privilege of living in their own
country; for the money
they earn in the English harvest the English
landlord
compels them to give up again, and his
lordship brings
It back again to England, until Pat comes
again and harvests
his crops for him.”(ibid.137)
Tricia
said she was amazed at the prices for the properties in the area. She showed us a two story sand stone building,
darkened with soot that was going for over 300,000 pounds.
DOBROYD
CASTLE
Our next stop was the Dobroyd Castle. The
Castle sits high in the hills and can be easily seen from Todmorden located in
the valley. We stopped and walked around,
awe-inspired by the magnificent building and the surrounding scenery. Perhaps the Castle could be called a symbol of
the love John Fielden felt for his wife and the Todmorden community. The structure was built while the cotton
mills were shut down by the American Civil War and provided work for the laid-off
mill workers. Then again, could it have been
an opportunity to hire, for low pay, workers desperate for jobs? If so, it would have been a symbol of
capitalist exploitation for imagined personal immortality. The building is now a Buddhist monastery and
could be called a symbol for peace along with the Stoodley Pike. Both of these structures are conflicted
anchors of Todmorden identity.
Tricia took us back to our hotel and agreed
to meet us for lunch the next day.
To read more about
current May Day marches including the Milwaukee rally and march, check out “MAY
DAY RALLIES UNITE WORKERS ACROSS THE GLOBE,” (Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel, May 2, 2013)
A continuing story - next posting, Tuesday, May
14th…
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