Episode 01: Missing Stones

In this episode, Caitlin and Francesgrace trade stories about the lives and impoverished deaths of H.P. Lovecraft, the writer, and Sissieretta Jones, the singer.

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Season 1. Episode 1: Missing Stones

Caitlin: Hello…and welcome to Grave Escapes, the podcast that helps those who have died tell their stories once again.

Intro music.

Caitlin: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Grave Escapes. It's weird to say that when you're setting up a first episode, but here we are. My name is Caitlin Howle and I am joined by my cohost. 

Frances: I'm Frances Ferland. Hi, everybody. 

Caitlin: We're definitely the kind of people who would start a podcast about graves and the fact that cemeteries are some of our favorite things, blah, blah, blah.  I want to start off just by giving all of you out there some info on who we are and kind of how this came to be and what the goal of this podcast is. I won't take too much of your time. We'll get to the dead people real quick.

So, hi, I'm Caitlin Howle. I have bachelors, masters, et cetera, too many degrees in writing. I write all the time, freelance, professionally. I'm a professor of writing. I also own a business where I get to have all kinds of fun, helping people with public relations and digital work as well. And all my life, I've had a lure / goal of heading towards the kind of melancholy and macabre of life.

And so if you almost said a few months ago, a few years ago at this point… 

Frances: Time has no meaning. 

Caitlin: No, it has no meaning whatsoever. I was introduced to this wonderful person here, uh, Francis, who are you? 

Frances: I am somebody who's been obsessed with cemeteries since I was probably five years old. Maybe if you track my photo albums back, you're going to see pictures of cemeteries since middle school. It's great. My parents were a little worried about it. Not going to lie. Also have more degrees than I need a master's degree in American history.  Also, professor of writing and in fact, I’m a realtor. Which is a great way to actually encounter creepy stories about old dead. 

Caitlin: I always forget that you're a realtor because you're like all these other things to me and then you'll be like, oh, I sold a house today. I'm just like, like for funsies? And then, oh, right. No, that's your job. You can legally do that.

Frances: It's a great way to encounter really creepy old properties where you're like, oh, so someone was murdered here in the 1780s? Cool. 

Caitlin: Well, we'll have to get into murder houses in a later episode. Cause, God there's so many of them.

Frances: Oh yeah. 

Caitlin: So with that. How did grave escapes become a thing? This summer, specifically Frances and I started working in a cemetery to tell the story of someone whose voice had been forgotten and as we're walking around the cemetery, we realized that there were thousands upon thousands of graves that we didn't know who any of the people were. And this seemed like an affront history.

Frances: Oh yeah.

Caitlin: Because I mean. As much as I love cemeteries, I'm terrified of dying.

Frances: Also true. 

Caitlin: And more than that, I'm terrified of being forgotten. So I want... we talked about this at length and we were like, well, let's get together and let's tell the stories of people who have passed. And also talk about their graves, where they are, what they…what they're looking like, weird facts about them, et cetera.

And that is how Grave Escapes was born. Cause get it everyone? Because they're escaping the grave. I'm proud of that. Thank you. Thanks for the sound like click of judgment. 

Frances: No, no! No, no. I just... you definitely came up with that name in an actual graveyard, which made it just a little better. 

Caitlin: That is fair. Sitting next to a giant statue of an elk, which I'm still not quite sure why that was there. We're going to have to figure that out. 

Frances: Oh, yeah. 

Caitlin: So with this podcast, please understand: if you were just listening, please follow our social media. We will be posting images of the graves and really trying to include you in this, this sort of multimedia storytelling event. 

Frances: If you know any really interesting stories about graves that might've been forgotten or abandoned, please send them our way.

Caitlin: We're starting today off with someone who has not been forgotten though, they were. They aren't now? Question mark? And before you all come at me, when I say this name, we are going to talk about controversy as well, but, I want to start this episode with a story, I don't think Frances knows. I was a spooky kid, but I was also a kid who desperately wanted to fit in. Right? So I... there are pictures that, that exists out there of me and like a polo shirt and khakis. 

Frances: Oh same. 

Caitlin: Mhm… I'm ashamed of that. There are all kinds of things out there where I desperately wanted to be someone that I wasn't, because I felt like  who I was...well, was the kind of person who hangs on cemeteries for funsies.

When I was in my early twenties in college, I was accepted into a study abroad program. And this was kind of the catalyst for me starting to look into weird shit. And when I got back from living in England for a summer, I had a couple of weeks before my next classes started. And I mentioned to a couple of my friends, I'd never been to new England. So I had been to old England at that point. Never new England. And I was like, let's do this to me. And three friends got into a little Kia, which another friend of mine, it was his car and he was too afraid to let anyone drive it. We drove from Arkansas to New York, upstate New York. And I had organized basically a literary road trip where we would visit literary sites, literary graves. What it ended up becoming wasn't so much literary sites, but it was like every day we were in a new cemetery. 

Frances: That sounds like a blast! 

Caitlin: It was, but I didn't realize how drawn I was to cemeteries until that moment. And so we finally…were going to cut the trip short because we were like six days in all exhausted trying to kill each other. And I was like, well, there's one more stop we have to make. It's like a total pass-over state. I've never going to go there again so let's just get it out of the way. And then they were like, sure, where is it?

And I was like Rhode Island. 

So I drive into Rhode Island with my friends and we're going to a cemetery called Swan Point Cemetery. And the reason we're going there is because HP Lovecraft is buried there. Get to that in just a second, but...we get to the cemetery. It's stunning, truly one of the most beautiful cemeteries I've ever seen in my life.

Frances: Yes. 

Caitlin: And we could not find the grave. We search for over an hour and a half. I was like…I don't mean to date myself and make myself too old here, but I'm like on my brand new iPhone that had literally was like iPhone One, trying to get data, to figure out where the hell I need to go for this grave. We were also- I do have to say - we didn't ask anyone who works there because we're all millennials and afraid of doing it.

So anyway, we find the grave…and it was so anticlimactic. It was... it was a worn out slab of marble. And I felt like it wasn't worth the work. I had just put into it and I left the cemetery and I thought to myself, I'm never coming back to Rhode Island again. So all of you out there, I currently live in Providence, Rhode Island, about a mile from that cemetery.

And Frances also similarly - Providence, Rhode Island, just down the street. 

So with that, I thought I would take a little stroll with you all and talk about HP Lovecraft. Obviously, this is a famous grave, but we're hitting it strong. And I am going to talk a lot about the horrible things that this man said and did as well.

Frances: I know very little about Lovecraft. So tell me all the things. 

Caitlin: Oh-ho. Mhm. Let's get this started. So first off Lovecraft. Born  August 20th, 1890. - That's why, if you guys would like a fun fact, Necronomicon, which is the Lovecraft sort of con, happens every two years in Providence and it happens in August - obviously born in Providence.

He was born in what we would consider to be like Providence proper, or  the East Side. For those of you not from here, that translates to affluent. So his father was institutionalized at Butler Hospital, which if you guys would like to know is maybe another mile away from where Lovecraft is buried, as well as his father. Because he had like this weird episode, right? So he had to be committed and, um, turns out it was probably like late stage syphilis. 

Frances: Oh, that's fun.  

Caitlin: Mhm. And Lovecraft vehemently denied that that was a thing. He was basically just like, oh, he worked too hard during his life and so he had like a breakdown.

Frances: Uhuh.

Caitlin: I mean maybe, but the doctors were like, uh, yeah, that's late stage syphilis. Lovecraft was basically like, no, no, no, no, I can't hear you. Which, I mean, like you do. His father's name was Winfield Scott Lovecraft.  And yeah, basically he was killed by syphilis, which take that as you will. His father had been the breadwinner and the money immediately started to go.

He still had his mother, whose name was Sarah Susan. And basically... she also has a not great end as well.  Funny enough, also committed.

Frances: Also syphilis?

Caitlin: It wasn't actually. Lovecraft says that it was because she was permanently stricken with grief, which like... 'Kay.  I mean, but to be fair, like I would also be pretty pissed off if my husband died of syphilis.

Frances: I feel like I would be less permanently stricken with grief and more permanently stricken with rage. 

Caitlin: Right? And like... 

Frances: And where'd you get it? 

Caitlin: Yeah. That's the other thing is like, where did you get the syphilis? And then she should probably have it, right? 

Frances: Mhm. I mean, unless they didn't have sex after he got it wherever he got it. 

Caitlin: They just like dry rubbed? 

Frances: Yeah... or didn't... were like, nah, we're good. I don't want to touch you ever again. 

Caitlin: I mean, they did have a child, so...

Frances: Did he have syphilis before the kid or after? 

Caitlin: I mean he died after so… Anyway, that's fun. Basically. Lovecraft is surrounded by tragedy as a child, especially the fact that everything in his life was just sort of not great, right?

Throughout his life, I mean, he just… it was a lonely existence. Don't feel too sad for him, ladies and gentlemen, let's keep going here. Lovecraft loses his parents. He starts telling people he can no longer live and there's no point of living anymore.

I'm trying not to like be too critical of the dead, but he was really, really emo about this whole thing. Like... I get it. I would be too, but  it's intense. 

So anyway, let's continue here. Lovecraft graduated high school and he apparently had unidentified health crises throughout his life, but the one right before his high school graduation was apparently very severe. The only direct records say that it was a nervous collapse or a sort of breakdown, which is what he said. Again, you'll see a kind of a theme between everyone in his family. He just kind of kept saying like, oh, they're having a... they're having a breakdown. Cool. Nice story, bro. Also, foreshadowing for his death, stick around for that, everyone. So ostensibly, what happened was he was going to go to Brown University, which for those of you not from Rhode Island, you're looking at like a three mile radius right now. Lovecraft has not left his home.

Frances: It's very Rhode Island. You have to be able to walk everywhere within 15 minutes or it's too far away. 

Caitlin: Right? No, seriously. It's a little ridiculous how close he stayed. He apparently kept having headaches, insomnia and then he also turned down going to Brown University because he started having ticks. So he'd be sitting in a chair and he'd like jump up. What it is... what it's being called is Sydenham Chorea. I don't know if I'm saying that right, but essentially it's uncoordinated jerking movements.  It's an auto-immune disease and it typically comes... it comes with like rheumatic fever, basically. Like it's... it happens in children.

Frances: Okay. 

Caitlin: So it's an incredibly rare thing.  And typically once you're an adult, there aren't many recurrences of the illness, but Lovecraft didn't go to college because he had these jerks. Yeah. 

So the writing. Lovecraft is known for being a writer. And now I'm going to go ahead and say it: he's also known for being a racist and we're going to get to that.

Frances: That might be the only thing I know about him other than where his house was when he was born. 

Caitlin: The racism or the writing? 

Frances: Well, I knew he was a writer, but I read like one sentence of his and it was really hard to slog through, but I knew about the racism. 

Caitlin: Yeah. Lots of racism. So he... he was a very opinionated guy. He started writing for a bunch of journals, including - I really, really wanted to include this one here, but the Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy. 

Frances: I didn't know we had one of those. 

Caitlin: Uh-huh. He also started the Scientific Gazette, which dealt mostly for chemistry. Yeah. Like he was... he appeared to be an intellectual fellow with a subsequent sort of like attachment to depression  and insanity -which like same- but don't be a racist. Anyway, let's keep going here.

He was really into science. He wanted to study organic chemistry and through this, he kind of started developing his mythos, right? All the weird shit that he publishes. So he kind of becomes an amateur journalist.  He joins the United Amateur Press Association and also becomes the head editor of it. He also is appointed the chairman of the Department of Public Criticism within that. 

Frances: Ha!

Caitlin: Yeah, no, he loved his opinions. He also- and this is where the first red flag for racism should stand up for you- ladies and gentlemen, Lovecraft comes out as a vehement anti-World War I voice. All right? Why? Why would you be against the war?

What would your reasons be, Frances? 

Frances: Uh... passivism?

Caitlin: Yeah, no, no, it was, it was because he felt that Britain/ England was the home country and we shouldn't criticize them. He often in his papers would say things that he hates Americanisms and slang. And then he started saying things like how the national language of America was being changed by immigrants.

Frances: Hmmm. 

Caitlin: Hmm. Yeah. 

Frances: Sigh.  

Caitlin: In 1916, he published his first short story. It was called ‘The Alchemist.’  Not to be confused with Paulo Coelho, but there you go. He also likes to admit that he was greatly influenced by someone we will talk about in this podcast: Edgar Allen Poe. Those of you who don't know, Edgar Allen Poe did have a stint in Providence and Lovecraft, ostensibly, had hard-on for this. He was known to go to where Poe had gone, romanticized Providence substantially because of that. And they didn't miss each other by that much.  I mean, obviously Poe was long dead before Lovecraft was born, but you're thinking late 19th century into early 20th century. It's just a few decades, you know, it's not terribly long.

Frances: I find this entirely unsurprising given what I know of Poe.

Caitlin: No. So he tried to…after being critical of World War I, he actually did try to enlist. I will say that. He couldn't get in because his mom threatened him.

Frances: What? 

Caitlin: Yeah. So he passed the physical exam, which remember this is  Lovecraft's who at this point, his entire reputation is that he's frail and going to die. Right? Like his family is... his dad is dead at this point. His mom is not. His mom threatens to do something to prove that he's unfit for service, including suing them.

So then Lovecraft is like, nah, mom, I wanna, I want to keep going. So he attempts to enroll in the Rhode Island National Guard and his mom  knew a guy and prevented it.

Frances: Of course she did. It's Rhode Island. 

Caitlin: Now, during the winters of 1918, 1919. So remember your timeline here. Lovecraft is born in 1890, and we're looking at his first publications in 1916. His dad is dead - from syphilis probably though. Yeah. And it's now 1917. He's not allowed to join the Guard.  He's published substantially at this point. He has been editor of his…his journals. He's been working on chemistry.  He's doing, I mean, arguably well, like better than I was at that age, but so his mom. His mom starts exhibiting the symptoms of a nervous breakdown.

And then she is taken to Butler Hospital, which you remember, that's where his dad basically died. She was committed to Butler in 1919.  They're not sure what it was and they're having to like kind of piece together the puzzle because all of her medical records were destroyed in the fire that happened at Butler Hospital.

Basically, Lovecraft immediately writes to a friend about his mom being committed, that "existence seems of little value" and "wish that it might terminate". I want to say this. I will never make fun of those who suffer from suicidal ideation. I think space needs to be made for that. But I do want to point out the pattern that Lovecraft's grief tends to bring about suicidality or at least suicidal ideation.

Frances: He also sounds like Edgar Allen Poe when he's talking about suicide. 

Caitlin: Uh-huh. Yeah. But spoilers, he doesn't die of suicide. Let's keep going. 

Frances: All right. 

Caitlin: Basically Butler would go visit or Lovecraft would go visit his mom at Butler, and this is kind of what becomes his most influential point. So between 1919 and 1921, he starts publishing, specifically in 1920, the Cthulhu mythos.

He does prose poems. He does a story that... the mythos is basically like starting to happen. Right. And then his mom dies and it wasn't actually because of the nervous breakdown. It was because a gallbladder operation went awry. 

Frances: Oh yuck. That sucks. 

Caitlin: Yeah. He, again, expressed that he wanted to die. So then he meets his future wife.

Frances: I didn't know he was married. 

Caitlin: Oh yeah. He was.

Frances: Thought he hated women. 

Caitlin: He does. That's why it's great. 

Frances: Oh no. 

Caitlin: His wife was named Sonia Green and I really wished I could spend the rest of the podcast talking about her because she is another woman who seems to have been muted by a literary dude.

Frances: Ugh. 

Caitlin: So they marry. He is her second husband, which whoo! And all of his family leftover, so his aunt's, disapproved of her, but they actually married 1924 and she took him out of Providence and moved him to Brooklyn. His whole life has kind of turned upside down. And ostensibly, what happens is she supports him until she loses all of her money. Then he has to start trying to find real jobs. I'm a writer, no disrespect to that, but jobs that pay the bills. It's just not the greatest time for him. He gains a ton of weight, which he blames his wife for. He then loses all of that weight and leaves. It doesn't seem like they had had a good relationship, but he leaves for Providence.

So he had moved to Brooklyn in 1924. He returns to Providence in 1926. 

Frances: Alone? Presumably. 

Caitlin: Yeah, no, I mean, I don't know. I've got to do more research into it, but I really hoped that she was like, no, get out, but I doubt that. 

Frances: That would have been awesome. 

Caitlin: So collaborators, we see more of his work get published after he returns to Providence, including the Call of Cthulhu, the Case of Charles Dexter Ward. This is a huge time for him really, really impressive time for him. A few years after he moved to Providence,  his ex moves to California and does take a third husband. 

Frances: Good for her!

Caitlin: He works. He works, he works. And then he hits a depression. He has a lot of major collaborators during this time, including being a ghost writer for Harry Houdini. 

Frances: What!? I didn't know that.

Caitlin: Right? I didn't either. You know, like it makes sense though. Houdini did spend a lot of time in New England. Through all of this and as someone else who deeply lives with anxiety, you might've noticed that Lovecraft has some interesting neuroses, right? One of them was  he's afraid of doctors.

Frances: That seems fair. 

Caitlin: Yeah. I mean, same, but he started to get really sick. Like really sick tragedy kept happening to him and he basically just gave up writing. He no longer could carry on by the early mid, 1930s. However, due to his fear of doctors, he didn't actually go to a doctor until it was too late, where he found out that he had cancer and he died a month later.

Frances: Oh, yikes. 

Caitlin: So born in 1890, died 1937. 

Frances: Oh.

Caitlin: Not a long life. 

Frances: Nope. 

Caitlin: In accordance, with kind of all of this, he didn't actually like have a burial. He was poor. He was obscure by this point. He died in obscurity. Ostensibly, he had no monument. And so at Swan Point Cemetery in Providence, Rhode Island by 1977, fans collected money and erected a headstone where they inscribed his name along with the phrase "I am Providence." And that is taken from a letter where he wrote, "I am Providence and Providence is myself," which became sort of his love letter to the city. And one of the reasons that we were inspired to keep him as our first person, but I really, really, really want everyone to know that there was a lot of problematic things with Lovecraft. Lovecraft was known for using the N word profusely, including calling his cat by that.

He also has caused a lot of controversy in the academic community, right? It's cause a lot of people are like 'it was a sign of the times'... it's a little worse, you know, racism has…is always rampant. It's continuously rampant throughout this country. However, if you're racist, you're racist, let's end it there.

He wrote multiple stories about mixed race beings who are mongering. 

Frances: Yeah, gross. 

Caitlin: And basically if you were not a white dude, he was afraid of you and also going to write about what a terrible person you are. He wrote scientific observations that involved the N word as well. 

Frances: I feel like there's like the base level racism of the past. And then there's people who were racist for their time. And I feel like Lovecraft is one of the people who people at the time were like, yo dude, you’re kind of racist. 

Caitlin: Yeah. And I mean, I know that there are a lot of people who want to argue that he is not -good luck- but the thing is, you know, like, oh, well he created so many great things that added to horror.

Sure. But he was also racist. You can be more than one thing. 

Frances: Yep. 

Caitlin: And I do just want to give a shout out that Lovecraft Country was an amazing series that's been out that actually approaches that looks at the fact that Lovecraft is this sort of father of science fiction, but... 

Frances: Mmmm…

Caitlin: Just totally against that?

Frances: Margaret Cavendish is the mother of science fiction. 

Caitlin: There you go. So Lovecraft was one of the white dudes of science fiction. 

Frances: Yeah. 

Caitlin: And. Yeah, sure. He was also racist and didn't treat women. Right. And maybe had a weird... I shouldn't say it, but I'm going to weird, like attachment his mom. Maybe. 

Frances: It seems like he had a whole plethora of psychological snares.

Caitlin: Again, same, but....uuph.... 

Frances: Don't be racist.

Caitlin: Don't be racist. So for those of you, who'd like to know about the grave. The grave is very nondescript. It is very easy to walk by. It is a whitish marble-ish color, and it looks washed out. It is hard to see that it is Lovecraft. He is buried in Swan Point Cemetery. He is one of their most notable interments. Swan Point is, I think how we call it is, a Victorian picnicking cemetery. Like it is a garden. Just that it happens to have bodies as well. It's stunning. It's truly one of the beautiful places I've ever been. It was established in 1846. Literally... I think I misspoke or like maybe half a mile from Butler where his mom and his father died.

It's interesting that he never really left Providence. So yes. Is he Providence? Yes, but also being someone from Providence and someone who loves this town deeply, I don't think we'd embrace a lot of his ideology. 

Frances: Yeah, no. 

Caitlin: So Lovecraft science-fiction, racism, really, really, really, really needed someone to talk to him.

Frances: Yeah. Also, for people who are visiting Providence, his house doesn't exist anymore. And the house he lived in when he was an adult also doesn't exist anymore. You can't find it. They are gone. 

Caitlin: There is a Lovecraft square where the house used to be. 

Frances: The streets where both houses were is where I used to work in Providence on the east side and the store I worked in…We would get tourists coming in and being like where's Lovecraft's house? ‘Oh, well, you’re…if you walk about 10 feet, that way you're standing in the middle of it.’ 

Caitlin: Right? So it’s…it's no longer a thing, but you can visit his grave. I have to make it: should we put that one to rest? 

Frances: Oh, yes. 

Caitlin: Right. So I started the podcast off with a racist white man. Where’re we going? Where are we going with yours? 

Frances: I'm going to finish the podcast off with a kickass black woman who was the victim of racism. 

Caitlin: Of course.

Frances: I'm not going to lie, the first time someone mentioned this woman's name to me, I was like, yeah, yeah!… I have no idea who that is. I should know who she is though, because she's awesome.

So Matilda Sissieretta Jones is who I'm going to be talking about today. 

Caitlin: I feel like I know…I know who she is, but I don't know who she is.

Frances: Yeah. I had no idea who she was at all. Upfront, I know almost nothing about opera. 

Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: And she was a classically trained soprano. 

Caitlin: Is that like…do we know what soprano means?

Frances: It's a vocal range. 

Caitlin: Is a high? Low? 

Frances: So she could sing... her range was two and a half octaves. So she could sing from a low C to a high E. 

Caitlin: Oh wow. Okay. So better than me. 

Frances: Wacko. Yeah, apparently the reason she was classically trained was because as a child,  someone was listening to her sing and went to her mother and said, your child just sang a high C naturally. You should get her some training. 

Caitlin: Huh. Nice. 

Frances: And the mom went ‘okay.’ 

Caitlin: Sure enough. 

Frances: Yeah. So she was really cool. She is also buried in Providence. She also died a pauper like Lovecraft did without a gravestone, but....

Caitlin: So now I'm inventing a new fear. 

Frances: Don't worry about it though. In 2018, her biographer raised money and they put up a Memorial. So she has a headstone now. 

Caitlin: Where is it? In Providence?

Frances: It is in Providence at Grace Church Cemetery. 

Caitlin: Oh, okay. Yeah, that's nice. 

Frances: It's a cool gravestone too. It's got a little picture of her on it in color. It's pretty cool. Okay. So Sissieretta Jones. She was born Matilda Sissieretta Joyner, January 5th, 1868 or 69. We're not really sure.  Maureen Lee, her biographer, says 68, but some people say 69. There's no really documentation for it. She was born in Portsmouth, Virginia. 

Caitlin: Oh, wow. Okay.. 

Frances: Yeah, to Jeremiah Malachi Joyner, who was a preacher. 

Caitlin: I was about to say, they're very Christian. 

Frances: Very Christian. He was a preacher and he'd been born into slavery in the 1830s and was freed after the civil war.

He became a preacher after the war. Methodist and his...Sissieretta's  mother's name was Henrietta Joyner. She was a washer woman in North Carolina, but we don't really know too-too much about her  earlier years, presumably because of the post-war climate in the south, in North Carolina, in Virginia. They move north.

Caitlin: Yeah. 

Frances: Jeremiah was offered a preaching job in Providence, which apparently had a thriving black community up here. It was actually... Rhode Island had one of the largest black populations at the time in the 1880s, 1870s-80s. So, yeah, so they move up here. When she's eight years old in 1876, her dad starts preaching, but within two years her parents had separated, legally. 

Her mother moved out, into an apartment or a duplex, a tenement, something like that. And she took Sissieretta with her. During this time, during this whole time, Sissieretta is singing in the choir at church and basically singing wherever she could manage. Her mother puts her in the Providence Academy of Music.

She gets a little bit of local training during that time. Her early timeline's a little... a little fishy, just like her later timeline's a little bit unstable, but we do know that at some point during this period, before she turns 17, she went up and did some operatic training at the New England Conservatory. 

Caitlin: Is it in Boston?

Frances: It is in Boston and other notable alumni include Rose Kennedy. 

Caitlin: Oh wow. Okay. 

Frances: Coretta Scott King. 

Caitlin: Oh, wow! Okay. 

Frances: So, right. So she gets some training up there. We don't really know how much. But at least some classical operatic training. And then in 1883, she marries David Richard Jones. She is 15 years old.

Caitlin: Oh! 

Frances: They lied to the justice of the peace. He was in his twenties. 

Caitlin: Okay. Like, not…like 20? 

Frances: 23, I think. Okay. So low twenties, but not..

Caitlin: Still enough for like, would make me feel skeevy. 

Frances: They move in with her mom.

Caitlin: Okay. That's not terrible. 

Frances: So they get married, they move in with her mom. They were living with her mom for a while. She gets pregnant and she has a baby daughter named Mabel, who dies within two years. 

Caitlin: Great. 

Frances: That is the only child she will ever have. 

Caitlin: Aw. 

Frances: Her husband seems like he might've been not the greatest person. 

Caitlin: Shock. 

Frances: He... I don't know. He's complicated and there's no real consensus about him. He and her both go to New York.

He's a bellman. He's from Baltimore. He's a bellman at a hotel in Providence and he has lots of ambition, which he plays out vicariously through her over the course of his life. 

Caitlin: So that seems really healthy. 

Frances: You know, I can't tell when it soured, but they seem to really love each other at the beginning. They do get divorced later on, but it's hard to tell when sort of things took a nosedive.

Caitlin: I feel like I wasn't aware of how many people get divorced in like the 1800.

Frances: Yeah, same.  They were divorced somewhere between 1893 and 1896. We don't really know. 

Caitlin: And where are they? They're there in Providence at this point?

Frances: They're in Providence for the first few years of their marriage. And then she starts performing. So she starts performing at local concert halls at church functions. 

Caitlin: That's... that's so weird, that like she was an adult and performing when Lovecraft born. 

Frances: Yeah. Yeah. She was born. Lovecraft was born the same year as Rose Kennedy, so she was born about 22 years earlier. 

Caitlin: Jeez. 

Frances: In 1880 in the summer, 1888, rather in the summer July, she moved to New York with her husband. So they go to New York.

Caitlin: Very Rhode Island as well. I mean look at Lovecraft. You got to take a break and go to New York or Florida, ladies and gentlemen. 

Frances: Right? Unlike Lovecraft though, she is like, get me up outta here, I will go everywhere. 

Caitlin: Yeah. 

Frances: Which is really cool. And must've taken a lot of effort because travel in the 1890s? Yikes. 

Caitlin: Yeah. 

Frances: So she moved to New York and she starts performing at a theater on Broadway as the first black singer to perform. It was Wallack's theater, I believe, and somewhere around this time, we're not really sure...it might've been the her performances at this theater. It might've been a show somewhere else in the city... she earns the nickname Black Patti. 

Caitlin: Okay. 

Frances: Adelina Patti was the Prima Donna of the world, pretty much, at this point. She was a famous soprano. She was an Italian American and internationally, spectacularly famous soprano who made so much money. She retired to a castle in Wales.

Caitlin: Well, that's the dream. 

Frances: Yup. She performed five decades on the stage and then moved to a castle. So she was humongously famous. 

Caitlin: It was like Enya. Remember Enya? 

Frances: I do remember Enya. 

Caitlin: She just has a Scottish castle with like a bunch of cats and doesn't talk to people.  Just sits there with her money. Yeah. Like, that's the goal. 

Frances: I feel like Adelina Patti might've done something similar, cause she definitely just like peaced out. She was like, okay, let me go on a goodbye tour, then actually say goodbye. Bye... but she was like the gold standard. She was the platinum standard of Sopranos and of opera singers. At the time everyone was like, oh, this girl sings like Adelina Patti, we must go see her. And they flock to her in droves. 

Caitlin: So comparison to a white woman made her popular?

Frances: Hmm, that's the thing. Sissieretta did not enjoy being called Black Patti. 

Caitlin: Yeah. That's not great. 

Frances: Yeah. So it was very much... it was half contrived, half the press. So I think the press said it first and then her manager was like, oh yeah, that, and then started billing her as the Black Patti.

Caitlin: Awesome. 

Frances: She did sort of claim it for herself later on, but we'll circle back to that. So she's singing in New York. She's starting to get a little bit of a claim.  Her manager sets up or gets her a spot on a south American tour. So at the time there were troupes of  African-American singers touring the United States and also the Caribbean and northern South America. 

Caitlin: Okay.  

Frances: And performing. The most famous one at the time was Fisk Jubilee Singers, which were from a historically black college named Fisk University. They set up a tour similar to that and bill it as, as something similar. So she goes to the Caribbean in the late 1880s, 1890. 

Caitlin: Okay. Wow. 

Frances: Yeah, kind of cool. So she's going all over the place. She's in Jamaica. She's in Haiti. She's in.... I think Costa Rica. They made several stops in several different countries. They performed to mixed audiences for the first time. And by all accounts, she was a rip-roaring success. Everybody loved her. That was the first time, I believe this tour was the first time she was described as the best singer of her race.

Caitlin: Oh...okay. 

Frances: She actually performed for the King at the time of Haiti. He gave her a medal. She was given diamonds and rubies and gold and flowers. They loved her all over the place where she was traveling on this tour. So much so that when she got back home to New York, she picks up a new manager or possibly her husband took over managing her at this point, but they set up a second tour of the Caribbean. 

Caitlin: Wow. 

Frances: Fun fact, the person who sets up this tour is Florence Williams. A black journalist for a black newspaper. 

Caitlin: Wow. Okay, great. 

Frances: Yeah. So this woman - also pretty kickass and I'd like to do some more research into her cause she seems pretty cool- sets up this tour all over South America, again, to sort of capitalize on Sissieretta's success the first time. The second tour is just as popular.  She's a hit for a good chunk of it. And the second tour made her famous back home because it's great to have a journalist as the person running your tour because she sent dispatches back to her newspaper. 

Caitlin: Uh, yeah, marketing is the best. 

Frances: Oh yeah. This was like all sorts of integrated marketing.  She worked at the New York Age, which was a black newspaper at the time and she wrote article upon article about how everybody loves Sissieretta Jones. She's the coolest, and she's got the most beautiful voice and people love her and they shower her with gifts.

And by the time they get home, Sissieretta's famous, sorta. They get back home in 1892, roughly the end of 1891, 1892. And her husband  at this point is definitely working as her manager and he gets her a spot singing at the Jubilee Celebration at Madison Square Gardens. 

Caitlin: Oh, wow. 

Frances: Yeah, she actually beats out Flora Batson, who is a very famous operatic singer at the time as well.

Again, I know almost nothing about opera, so I didn't know this person, but I guess she was super famous at the time. And they're playing to a mixed audience in the United States. She gets write-ups in a bunch of white newspapers as well for the first time in the United States. And she claimed that she performed at the garden and woke up famous the next day and didn’t know it. 

Caitlin: That's so... I love that. 

Frances: Yeah. And she…we have some photographs of her at the time. She was beautiful. She was statuesque. She had a beautiful figure. Everybody thought she was great. They... the newspapers were absolutely gushing about her looks and her voice and her stage presence. She wore these long flowing gowns of satin and silk, and she put all the medals that she had been gifted in the Caribbean tours all over the front, all over her chest. So she had like a dozen medals sort of like shining from her dove gray gown. And she wore these long opera gloves, so. 

Caitlin: I want... I want to do that. 

Frances: Like, she was pretty cool. 

Caitlin: Yeah. She hits fame that you said she died in obscurity. So I'm guessing this is not a great trajectory we're heading on now. 

Frances: Well, we're not quite to the... to the drop-off yet. 

Caitlin: All right, good. 

Frances: Before then she performs her four different presidents at the White House.

Caitlin: What!? Who?

Frances: She started with Benjamin Harrison. 

Caitlin: Okay. 

Frances: Teddy Roosevelt was one of them. 

Caitlin: Wow. Okay. 

Frances: Yeah. And I guess Benjamin Harrison's wife thought she was awesome too. And they had a private tea, I think, together or dinner. 

Caitlin: Okay. 

Frances: And she presented Sissieretta with a bouquet of…a giant bouquet of flowers. 

Caitlin: All right. 

Frances: She did some pretty cool stuff. She was also invited to sing at the at Carnegie Hall. I believe she was the first black woman to headline Carnegie Hall. 

Caitlin: That's amazing. 

Frances: Yeah, she's real cool. There's a couple of rumors that she was offered a spot at the Metropolitan Opera, but turned it down or it fell through somehow. There's a rumor that she was offered a spot at the Damrosch Opera Company, which was a touring opera that rivaled  the Met, but that she turned that one down for some reason. We're not really sure. 

So she would have been the first black woman to sing at the Met. She would have been the first black woman to sing at the Damrosch Opera Company, as far as I know, but for whatever reason, she turned the parts down. She kept touring. At this point, she was making $6,600 a year, which is six times what a federal employee would've made at the time, so she was making bank.

Caitlin: Nice! Also she has got all those gems and stuff as well. 

Frances: Oh, yeah, but let's, let's circle back to her hubby dear here. Apparently he had a gambling problem. 

Caitlin: Well, of course he did. 

Frances: Yeah. He really liked the racetrack. So he was managing her money and he was managing her touring at the time. She actually gets a white manager at this point and hubby dear fades into the background. And then at some point they divorce. We don't know if it's because he was running through her money or for some other reason, but it's not a bad guess. 

Caitlin: Don't love that…really don't.

Frances: I didn't either. She's still extremely wealthy, but right around here, we get Plessy vs Ferguson. 

Caitlin: Okay. 

Frances: And the federal codification of the Jim Crow laws. 

Caitlin: Mhm. 

Frances: Which makes it harder for her to perform to white audiences. And then we got completely segregated audiences. Apparently she was on tour somewhere in... think it was the south, or it could have been the Midwest. And she walks out onto the stage and the balcony is full. The two balconies are full and the orchestra area of the theater is empty. No white person bought a ticket to the concert and they would not allow people of color to sit in the seats. 

Caitlin: Oh my God, that's painful. 

Frances: She was real pissed about it. Did not enjoy this at all and was vocally outspoken about how much she did not enjoy this. Yeah. The press was a little... it was weird because at some points they thought she was the greatest thing of all time. And at some points they very much did not. She was asked once why she didn't make her face paler and bleach out her hair.

Caitlin: What the hell? 

Frances: To be invited to more places to perform. And she said: I wouldn't pretend for one day that I'm anything, but what I am, I'm proud to be what I am. 

Caitlin: Good.  

Frances: And I was like, rock on!

Caitlin: Seriously though. I can’t...What the hell? I like…I'm just irate. 

Frances: Why would you ask someone like...what? uh, people! It's a whole thing. It's a whole thing. So  she goes to Europe at this point too. And does a European tour. She's performing in Germany and Paris and London. She fell in love with Paris. She was interviewed in the Era. Which is a London newspaper at the time. And she's reported, as having said "in the south, the colored people are rigorously divided from the white folk in places of entertainment."

It says, “but Ms. Jones is overjoyed to think that her tour may have done something to soften racial prejudice” because she was so popular among white people as well. It was, it was a whole, it was a whole thing. 

Caitlin: So this does this have a happy ending? Cause I don't think it does. 

Frances: It doesn’t. The not happy ending is a little bit postpone though.

So she's performing in vaudeville shows. She's performing in concerts and I guess her cache is starting to wane a little bit. So she founds her own troupe. 

Caitlin: Oh, wow. Okay. That's ballsie. 

Frances: Yeah. She founds a troupe of... it's basically a vaudeville troop. So it's got actors and performers, acrobats, singers and musicians. They are all people of color. So it's called Black Patti's Troubadours. 

Caitlin: Oh so she did claim that name. Okay.

Frances: Absolutely. They tour the country, starting in 1896 after she kicked her hubby to the curb and they tour most of the year, they performed 42 to 45 weeks of the year. It starts out a little rocky.

They are turned away at hotels that are segregated in the south, and eventually she buys her own train car. 

Caitlin: Oh, okay. Wow. 

Frances: To house the troupe and they sleep on the train car or presumably, some of them sleep in hotels. I don't think the train car is big enough to house all of them, but… 

Caitlin: Damn. 

Frances: Yeah, so she is she's rocking it around the country, performing vaudeville asks shows. So that would have been eight acts, including some comedy stuff, some acrobatic stuff, singing, musical performances, all sorts. But unlike previous variety shows and stuff, these were clean. So they were family events. So you could bring your kids to them for the first, which was pretty good. So she did this for quite some time, several decades. In 1915, she retires her mother is sick. I don't know her father is dead by then. I don't... He drops off the face of the world. But her mother is ailing at this point. So she moves back to Providence to take care of her mom. And over the course of the next roughly 15 years, she runs through all of her savings.

She never goes back to performing. And on June 24th, 1933, she dies and she's buried in a pauper's grave. There's no headstone until 2018 and her biographer, Maureen Lee starts like a GoFundMe and raises the money to put up a headstone. She is inducted into the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame.

Caitlin: I rent a space where that is. 

Frances: Cool. I didn't know that. 

Caitlin: I could go find her real easy. 

Frances: That organization was pretty new at that point.  So she was inducted in the first few years of the organization, which is pretty cool. Also, apparently there's been some interest in her life and her story recently. And if you're familiar with... I think it's pronounced Tyehimba Jess, the Pulitzer Prize winning poet. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. There's a poem in Oleo called "My Name Is Sissieretta Jones." 

Caitlin: Well, that's amazing. 

Frances: And it's about her being like, I'm not Black Patti. I'm not Adelina Patti. I am me. 

Caitlin: I love that. 

Frances: It's really cool. It's a good poem. 

Caitlin: I'm really glad that she has a tombstone, or headstone, but it also kind of bums me out that late 2018. Not that long ago. 

Frances: True fact. There's not a whole lot of primary sources from her. We don't have any letters. We don't have any diaries. We do have the scrapbook that she created of press clippings.

Caitlin: Oh, that's cool. 

Frances: So we know the things that she saved and when she passed, she still had two of her medals. 

Caitlin: Okay. 

Frances: She had sold all the rest of them. She'd sold the diamonds and all of the jewels. But she kept two of the medals. So I believe they still have them. The scrapbook is kept at Howard University's archives.

I'm not sure where her medals are and just to cap off the crap pie that is the last few years of her life, we don't have any recordings. 

Caitlin: Wow. 

Frances: We don't know what she sounded like. We have descriptions… extensive descriptions of her voice, but we don't know what it sounded. 

Caitlin: I hope that they're out there somewhere, just waiting to be discovered. 

Frances: There is an archivist at Carnegie hall, Gino Francesconi... 

Caitlin: Okay. 

Frances: Who is actively searching all of the time. 

Caitlin: Good. 

Frances: So hopefully, hopefully they pull up some recordings. That would be awesome. 
Caitlin: Wow. Yeah, it's weird. Cause it's like, we've got two people in this episode who essentially died with nothing and you would have... I don't know if fan is the right word, but like the people behind their lives who have found them after their death who have wanted to like memorialize them in some way.

Frances: Yeah. 

Caitlin: Lovecraft. It's a lot of the art from the artist type of thing. As a writer, very divisive. As a human, very divisive. As a racist, very divisive, but he's still has people who follow him, who created his tombstone and Sissieretta honestly, I'm just like gut wrenched by the idea that we don't have her recordings. But..

Frances: Yeah. 

Caitlin: She has a headstone now.

Frances: She does it was erected on the 150th anniversary of her birth. 

Caitlin: I will say the one thing that makes me mad, though, is that Lovecraft got his headstone in 1977.

Frances: Yeah. That's really upsetting, especially because without we wouldn't have had Marian Anderson. We wouldn't have had the way the Met looks right now wouldn't be because she was the unapologetic pioneer that paved the way for everybody who came after. So. 

Caitlin: More stories to bring up from the graves.

Frances: Absolutely. 

Caitlin: All right. There's our first two. There's the idea that even once you've died, even if you've died, sick penniless, your legacy can kind of still live on.  

End Music.

Caitlin: Grave Escapes is hosted, written, and produced by Caitlin Howle and Francesgrace Ferland. It’s produced and edited by Jesse D. Crichton. The music is ‘Melancholy Aftersounds’ by Kai Engle. Follow us on social media to see images of today’s graves and more about us. We’ll see you in the cemetery. 

Frances: We’d like to acknowledge that both HP Lovecraft and Sissieretta Jones are both buried on and we recorded this podcast on the traditional lands of the Wampanoag, Pokanoket, and Narragansett peoples. Here in the Northeast and all across the country, native peoples are still here and thriving. For more information about indigenous history, we’ve added links in the show notes to An Indigenous People’s History of the United States as a place to begin. For ways to support native leaders and communities, we’ve added links to both the Native Governance Center and IllumiNative. Thanks for listening!

End.