Episode 05: Rest In Pieces

In this episode, Caitlin and Francesgrace trade stories of the lives and deaths of Mercy Brown, Rhode Island’s most famous vampire, and Mary Greene Clapp, a woman who may or may not have been murdered.

LINK TO SHOW NOTES

Season 1. Episode 5. Rest In Pieces

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

INTRO MUSIC

Caitlin: Hey Frances. 

Frances: Hey.

Caitlin: Have you ever lost a loved one and wanted to exhume their body?

Frances: Definitely hard pass on that. No. 

Caitlin: So that's how we're getting started today. 

Frances: Nice. 

Caitlin: I'm really excited to talk to you about this one, because this is actually one of my favorite stories, deaths, grave experiences I've been to and I'm just going to stop teasing everyone. Let's talk about it. So if you ever heard the term, this is one of my favorite terms of all time: Rhode Island Vampire Panic. 

Frances: Yes, I have. 

Caitlin: So when I first moved here—again, everyone, I am a transplant. I heard this term and I thought a couple of things. One, what the hell does that mean? And two, can I start a band with that name? So I just want to go ahead and put this out there, listeners: I play no instruments. I cannot read music and I cannot sing. If you want to start a band called Rhode Island Vampire Panic, hit me up. 

Frances: I'll do it. I was once told that my singing sounds like dry, white bread.

Caitlin: This is going to be a great band. 

Frances: Let's do it.

Caitlin: Maybe podcasting was not our thing. We're actually like the next Bikini Kill. 

Frances: Haha.

Caitlin: Anyway. So let's talk about what Rhode Island Vampire Panic is. We're going to specifically be talking about the death of Mercy Brown.

Frances: Yeah!

Caitlin: Mercy Brown was known as Lena to her family, and she is actually famous for her death. And we're going to talk about that in just a moment, but I do want to give the reason that she died so we can get started because it's pretty important information. Smithsonian Magazine says “consumption had started to plague new England in the 1730s, a few decades before the first known vampire scares,” which great line. "By the 1800s, when the scares were at their height, the disease was the leading cause of mortality throughout the Northeast responsible for almost a quarter of all deaths.” 

Frances: I didn't know that.

Caitlin: Right? No, like so consumption. It's not just Moulin Rouge. Like this is…we've got to deal with this. Now you're looking at a time when we're very religious. Science. We're going to talk more about science and how this comes into play within the story. But what I want you all to take away from this consumption is not great. It is rampant and we have no way to cure it other than to pray. 

Ladies and gentlemen, the story of Mercy Brown. Mercy lived on a homestead in the Eastern part of a very, very small town in Rhode Island called Exeter.

I still cannot tell you on a map where Exeter is. I have a general idea. I feel like it's one of those towns that you just miss. 

Frances: It's where Shartner's Farm is. If you're a red Islander, shout out.

Caitlin: I don't know what that is. 

Frances: They closed. Sorry. 

Caitlin: So such a Rhode Island moment there. Oh, do you know that thing that doesn't exist anymore? Anyway, so I can't actually give our listeners a lot of backstory here. These are people who they have a homestead and they're not really known for anything…Until they get sick. The first person in the family to get sick is Mary Eliza, who was the mother. She gets sick in 1882 and lives an entire year, dying December 8th, 1883.

The Rhode Island Historical Society does have her death record and it says, “cause of death: consumption.” Now, the thing about consumption is It is a not great death. It is long, slow and incredibly painful, but after the mother dies, the next to go is Mercy’s sister, Mary Olive, who dies six months after her mother. Her obituary is out there and it is slightly heartbreaking

It reads the service, when she's going to be interred, and it finishes with “Ms. Brown was a very worthy young lady. Her mother died last autumn from the same disease.” She was only 22, by the way. 

Frances: Oh…

Caitlin: Yeah. So this is 1883 and 1884. And that's where our timeline is here. And now we're going to jump time, everyone.

It's 1889 and the son in the Brown family, Edwin, comes down with the illness. And he's immediately sent somewhere. Just, you want to guess where he sent? 

Frances: Oh…

Caitlin: He goes to Colorado to have his life transformed, 

Frances: Colorado? Isn’t…aren't you supposed to go somewhere warm and dry? 

Caitlin: No, actually. A lot of people would go to Colorado. Um, they found that the air being thinner actually the lungs. A lot of people got better when they went to Colorado.

Frances: Wow.

Caitlin: And it looks like he's going to get better. Like he's pulling through at this point. 

Frances: Go Edwin! 

Caitlin: He's also just been married. So he and his wife go out there, but of course that'll just falls apart. 

Frances: Yeah. 

Caitlin: So Mercy, which I want to remind everyone, we know her as Mercy Brown, but she was actually called Lena. Her family called her Lena. She was just a kid when her mother and her older sister die. And we're now in the year, 1891-1892. All right? And she dies of consumption. There you go. There's her life story, everyone. That's what we know. She dies of consumption. 

Frances: How old is she when she dies? 

Caitlin: She's 19. 

Frances: That's rough.

Caitlin: Yeah. There's there's speculation that she has something called galloping consumption. 

Frances: Oh! Yeah.

Caitlin: Yeah. So she probably had it and was asymptomatic her entire life. And then she wasn't and died. Fun. 

Frances: Party Hardy. 

Caitlin: So Edwin is in Colorado having his life journey, healing his lungs, but his sister dies and he's left with his dad. His dad's name, by the way, is George Thomas. So Edwin comes all the way back from Colorado with his wife and his consumption immediately gets worse. 

Frances: Of course.

Caitlin: In his last few weeks—this is according again to the Rhode Island Historical Society—he would have these like very vivid, outlandish speaking nightmares, and he would say things like: she was here and she wants me to come with her and she haunts me. Not a great look. Not a great look. 

So we've got the dad, right? We've got George Thomas Brown who has lost his wife and two daughters to consumption at this point. And his son, his eldest son looks like he's about to die too. 

Frances: Yeesh.

Caitlin: And so the towns, people of Exeter, what do you think their reaction is? 

Frances: Well, if it was reasonable, they would say: that is tragic. Your family is sick. 

Caitlin: Yeah. They started a rumor she was a vampire. 

Frances: As one does. 

Caitlin: I mean, I don't know. Maybe we can just do that. Do you want to just pick someone random and be like: *whispers* I think there are a vampire?

Frances: This is surprisingly late. 

Caitlin: Yeah. So we are going to get into that. Cause this is a very, very good point. Cause like this is the late 1890s. To orient everyone who's been listening through with us, Wall Street Journal is well taken off at this point. Technology is advancing. 

Frances: Mary Ann Lippitt has just passed away about two years before. 

Caitlin: Oh my gosh. So the townspeople rally and they're like: yo George, what if one of the women who died in your family was a vampire and he's like: that makes sense.

And also, I just have to say this: it's kind of sexist, right? Like he doesn't care that—maybe not care because I don't want to insult his grief. Cause obviously to do this, he was incredibly grief struck, but you lose three women in your family and you're not really gonna save vampire until your son's about to die. Weird flex, just going to say. 

Frances: Maybe it's cause he was getting better and then returned and got worse. 

Caitlin: That would actually make sense because, you know, I don't think they realized — Colorado. It actually helped a lot of people who had tuberculosis anyway. 

Frances: Also that area of Rhode Island is heavily swampy. So like not great for the whole lungs situation maybe.

Caitlin: Yeah. And I mean, I will say that as we're going to talk about technology and science like yes that's there. We have it, but it's not widespread and that’s a problem. 

Frances: Hm.

Caitlin: So the townspeople are like: George let's go exhume the bodies. And see if one of them is a vampire, which I really wish I could have been like in the room when this happened, because it's like…what did they think they would find, you know?

Frances: Porcelain skin and the bite marks on the neck?

Caitlin: If you're a vampire, why are you just chilling out on the ground? Like, I don't know. Go kill some shit. Anyway…

Frances: In a crypt, somewhere, fancy clothes and goblets of blood. 

Caitlin: Right? Like live it up. You're immortal. That kind of thing. Or don't, I guess…just stay in a crypt. Anyway. George is like: yeah, we need to find some way to save Edwin. Let's go ahead and exhume the bodies.

Now coming… here's where our science starts to enter in. There is a doctor who is going to be present. His name is Dr. Metcalf, and I need you to file away this name because it's important. So according to Richard Spiers, this is what the account was of the dead: Mrs. Brown—so this is another—had the head, most of the muscle tissue remaining, but no blood remained in the heart.

Again, she's been dead like 10. Mary Olive's corpse was, but a skeleton with hair. Again, it's been like 10 years. Mercy, AKA Lena's cadaver was but two months in the cold earth. The men pulled out the heart and liver for examination. The heart was dripping with blood, a sure sign that Mercy was a vampire.

Frances: Yikes. 

Caitlin: So what do you think they did with this information? 

Frances: Oh, I know what they did. 

Caitlin: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know really how to introduce this. So I'm just going to go ahead and say it. They incinerated the organs, the liver and the heart, and turned it into a powder, which they made into a tonic and gave to Edward to save his life. 

Frances: To ingest.

Caitlin: Yeah. 

Frances: Like he had to drink it. 

Caitlin: He had to drink it. And I mean, I imagine he's very sick at this point. Can you imagine having to be like: Hey, just drink this medicine. What is it? It's just your sister's heart. Just go to sleep. 

Frances: That is so nauseating on so many levels. 

Caitlin: So this is March, 1892, two months later, Edwin is dead. Of course. Yeah, no shit. Like, I don't think, I really don't think feeding someone or maybe forcing someone to drink the ashes of their dead sister's organs is can I help? 

Frances: Honestly 

Together: probably hurt.

Frances: Yeah. Ew. So gross. 

Caitlin: Let's go back to the doctor. Dr. Harold Metcalf was one of those one was the doctor with the villagers.

And for me mentally, he's like…the villagers are like the mob from the beauty and the beast. Or like the mob from Monte Python when they're like: she's a witch burn her. How do you know she's a witch? She turned me into a newt. I got better. That kind of thing. But what I want to share here is that there's actually a Providence Journal article written about this event.

Frances: Oh, wow. 

Caitlin: So the headline is “Exhume The Bodies: Testing a horrible superstition in the town of Exeter” with a subhead: Bodies of relatives taken from the graves. 

Frances: Oh my God. 

Caitlin: This is a fascinating article. It's not very long, but I don't want to take all of our listeners time to read. So we will link to it in our show notes. But I want to…I do want to share this one part after “Examination of the body of M. Lena, who was buried nine weeks ago, Dr. Metcalf reports the body in a state of natural decomposition with nothing exceptional exists. When the doctor removed the heart and liver from the body, a quantity of blood dripped there from, but this, he said, was just what might be expected from a similar examination of almost any person at the same length of time of decease.

The heart and liver were cremated by the attendants. Mr. Brown has the sympathy of the community.” 

Frances: Oh, what? 

Caitlin: That I feel like…I feel like that's a huge statement by the Providence Journal. They're basically just like, this was insane. We get your grief struck. K… 

Frances: But also they left out the part where they force-fed potentially the brother to drink the cremation?

Caitlin: Yeah…

Frances: Interesting.

Caitlin: Maybe they just didn't mention it. I don't know. But also Dr. Metcalf has come, been on record, saying he looked at Mercy’s iorgans. It's not just her heart and her liver, but he looked at her lungs and he was like: whoa, that's tuberculosis. That's really bad consumption. Like, Oohk, that. And they were just like: oh, so you can confirm she's a vampire? And I just imagine Dr. Metcalf was just like: what the fuck? No. Stop.

So you've got this weird combination of things happening. Remember I said about science, not reaching rural communities? So you have like the citizens of Providence who were writing about this in the Providence Journal—The Projo—who are horrified, but you're in Exeter, which is, I mean, by car now, 30 minutes from Providence. So imagine this being in the late 1800s. They didn't have access to the same kind of technology. They didn't have access to a lot of physicians, even though one tried to be like, guys, legit, trust me on this one. Don't eat this chick's heart. 

Moving on. What do you think happens next? We've got—Edwin has died. Mercy Brown's body has been mutilated. She's buried again. 

Frances: Did they just move on from it like: oh, well that's a thing that happened. 

Caitlin: Kinda?

Frances: Oh. 

Caitlin: But so here's where I have some things for you, dear listeners. So first I want to talk about her grave. 

Frances: Yeah! 

Caitlin: This was also one of the weirdest experiences I've ever had it at a grave. It's not for the reason you think. This isn't spooky at all. It's just ridiculous. So I had realized by the time I went to go see this grave—it was just a couple of years ago—and I had realized I was super, super interested in cemeteries at this point. And I'd never been to Exeter. Again, I lived in Rhode Island for like five years at that point. It shows you how often people go to Exeter. There's great beer there though. 

Frances: Yeah. 

Caitlin: This is no disrespect to Evan whatsoever. Frances, were you alone? 

Frances: No, no, no, no. I was not. 

Caitlin: Okay. Stay sexy. Don't get murdered. 

Frances: Yes. 

Caitlin: Anyway, there's two more things I need to mention about Mercy Brown. This isn't the only Rhode Island Vampire. 

Frances: That I did not know. 

Caitlin: I want to talk about this. We don't have time for me to turn this into this other person's life story, but there was another vampire. Her name was Sarah Tillinghast. 

Frances: Oh! 

Caitlin: Yeah. 

Frances: Oh, oh, oh, that name. Put a pin in that last name.

Caitlin: And the similarities in her story and mercies are…they’re not…they’re frightening. So Sarah gets consumption about a century before Mercy. 

Frances: Okay.

Caitlin: She dies at age 19. The same age Mercy was. Guess what her family did to try to save the rest of the members from.

Frances: Oh, no. 

Caitlin: Yeah. Same exact thing. If, but now it's rumored that Sarah and Mercy were actually the inspiration for a book. 

Frances: Really? 

Caitlin: Yeah. Do you, do you want to take a guess what book it was? 

Frances: No idea. 

Caitlin: Dracula. 

Frances: Oooh! For real? 

Caitlin: Yeah. It seems like the news actually made it to Bram Stoker. There you go. 

Frances: Mind blown! I love that.

Caitlin: Oh, and one other thing. Mercy was probably inspiration for Lovecraft too. 

Frances: Oh. Urrrgh, it all comes full circle! 

Caitlin: I'm like, is everything connected? I'm so… 

Frances: This is Rhode Island. You know, the whole like six degrees of Kevin Bacon thing? 

Caitlin: It's just like 6 degrees of a vampire?

Frances: It’s six degrees of Rhode Island. Literally, every person in Rhode Island is six degrees from everybody else.

Caitlin: I guess. But like also there's some weird connections here. We're getting…we’re throwing back to Colorado again and major literary people. I don't know. I just…The world feels very small at this moment.

Frances: Yeah. We're circling back. There's another connection between the two people for this episode. 

Caitlin: Oh my God. Okay. Let me finish my update on George Brown. Cause like I'm desperate to know. So I actually can't find what happened to George Brown. I'm sorry, listeners. I'm on it. I'm actually going to go back to the grave and see if I can find his, uh, their family's grave plot and see if I can find his stone and find out when he did die, but I want to mention this. Edwin is not the last child to die of tuberculosis. 

Frances: Oh no. 

Caitlin: Yeah. They end up losing Annie at age 25, a few months later, Jenny at age 18 and then Myra in 1899, dies at 18 years old. 

Frances: Oh, that’s awful.

Caitlin: There was one child who didn't die of consumption. 

Frances: Okay. 

Caitlin: Hattie May Brown. And she lived until age 79 and died in 1954.

Frances: Oh my God. 

Caitlin: Yeah. 

Frances: Also, she is probably the vampire, right? 

Caitlin: Oh, I absolutely assumed. So they were just wrong the whole time. 

Frances: It's like, no, it's this one, the one who's still alive. 

Caitlin: Oh, I do…so I've been thinking a lot about this and I want to share this with you. I actually got an email from a listener recently. Shout out to Sammy if you're listening and they brought up a point that I've really really been kind of obsessing over and that's when you die, if you want to be remembered…you know, that's the goal for most people. What if you don't want to be remembered? Then what? And so throughout all of this research and throughout looking back at Mercy Brown, which I do come back to every year, because I think the story is fascinating and tragic. What happens if you die and then your life is taken from you? You know, this person…we're not talking about the story that was forgotten. We're not talking about a life that was forgotten. We're talking about someone whose life was stolen from them. T ragically by an illness. And then she was forced into legend and folklore because of superstition. I dunno. Is that a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Is she getting to live on? Is this good? 

Is she actually a vampire? Like, wouldn't that be great if she was just actually a vampire, which is like…

Frances: This whole heart thing? You did it wrong. 

Caitlin: Yeah. 

Frances: She's like, no stakes here. 

Caitlin: It's actually the pancreas…I don't even know, but I've been thinking about that. You know, we want to help tell the stories of people who have been silenced by death. But I think this is a weird one for us, because she was silenced by terrible disease. It's very painful. And the reason that she is not getting to rest is because of her family.

Frances: Yeah. And what happened after. 

Caitlin: And assholes like us, I guess. 

Frances: You know what though? I feel like. As much as she has been turned into a folklore story. It's important to remember that there's a 19 year old girl behind this folklore and it's fun to talk about vampires and think about crazy superstitions from 120 years ago. But her story is the tragic tale of a 19 year old girl who died of a disease.

Caitlin: And it really…Isn’t that just a huge, huge talk about feminism there—who wasn't allowed to rest because she was probably killing a man. 

Frances: Yeah. 

Caitlin: I don't want to like get up on that soapbox, but I love Mercy’s story. I think it's interesting to see how people react. It reminds me like very much of the Twilight zone, The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street type of thing?

Frances: Yeah. 

Caitlin: Who is the monster? But like you said, this is a 19 year old girl who just wasn't left alone. 

Frances: Honestly, I feel like the monster in this story is the dad. 

Caitlin: Absolutely fuck that guy. 

Frances: Which…imagine how overcome and overwhelmed by grief he must have been and how terrified he must've been for his son to be willing to dig up all three of your dead relatives. And it's not like it was like auntie Mabel who was a hundred when she died. It was his wife and daughters…

Caitlin: Yeah.

Frances: And desecrate their corpses. 

Caitlin: No. It…

Frances: Like that’s…Wow. 

Caitlin: I think it's says a lot of the power of emotion, a lot of the power of grief, a lot of the power of what happens to our imaginations when we're kind of left to wonder.

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: So I started this conversation feeling pumped, and now I'm super depressed. Sorry about that, everyone. Frances, where we goin’? We goin’ happy with yours or are we going back to Dep—Okay. We're going back to depression. 

Frances: Yeah. Not…not with the happy. 

Caitlin: All right. So who are you introducing us to today?

Frances: All right. So I'm going to be talking about a woman that no one has heard of. This is truly a story, where we are reclaiming this from obscurity. She is not famous. She did not do anything famous. Her name is Mary Greene Clapp. 

Caitlin: I can confirm, I have never heard of her before. 

Frances: Mary Greene Clapp was born April 10th, 1723. We're back in Ye Olde Colonial period. 

Caitlin: Where are we? Where are we at? 

Frances: We are in…at the time it was Warwick. It is currently West Warwick, Rhode Island. 

Caitlin: Sorry. I have a weird thing about Warwick and West Warwick. Like there's going to be a war between those two cities, like a civil war and I totally get it. But anyway… 

Frances: So they used to be one town. When she was born, they were one town. Yeah. So we're done in West Warwick, which is actually near to Exeter,  same area of the state, I guess. So her birthday is actually about five days after when this podcast episode is going to air. So happy birthday, Mary. 

Her parents were Mary Greene and John Greene. They were cousins. It's the colonial period. That was a thing. 

Caitlin: Okay. I’m not even going to…

Frances: I am unable to—There are so many people with the last name Greene, and John Greene in particular, I am unable to confirm if they were first, second or third cousins. 

Caitlin: That's what I was going to ask. Are they the kind of cousins that you need to worry about or the kind of cousins where the genetics are probably spaced out enough?
Frances: Mmm. I’m leaning towards not the second one. I'm leaning towards the too close for comfort cousins here. 

Caitlin: Wooouck.

Frances: Her mother Mary had some type of mental illness. We don't know what it was. It was referred to in her father's will as her mother's “unhappy condition.” 

Caitlin: Oh, please, please call my depression, my unhappy condition from now on. If someone just please, if you're seeing me, you want to say hi to me, just be like, how is your unhappy condition? 

Frances: It was also referred to in legal documents as her mother's insanity. So her mother has a mental illness of some sort. I don't know what the symptoms were and I don't know how it affected her health or her behavior, but it was enough that her father was worried about her mother's being taken care of.

Caitlin: Okay. 

Frances: So Mary grows up taking care of her mother. She's born at the family homestead in West Warwick. Well, it's in West Warwick now. Her father had just built it about three years before she was born. So it was a new, relatively new house at the time. They were pretty well off. It was large, a large property. It was on 250 acres of land. So they were relatively wealthy. They had a lot of farm land. Her father owned some type of, I think fact—not a factory because it was too early for that, but some type of like business where they processed things somehow…I'm not sure if it was fabrics, textiles, or something else, but he was in business.

She had three siblings: Anne, Christopher, and Phoebe, and she was described as being a “dutiful daughter with a loving disposition and a uniform devotion to her parents.” But she was also described as having a delicate condition. 

Caitlin: Like the same kind of conditioner mom had? 

Frances: We don't know. 

Caitlin: Oh no. Okay. I hear, you're not setting this up to make me feel great.

Frances: Yeah. It's not gonna go. 

Caitlin: Great. 

Frances: I suspect that she had some, that she had a form of whatever her mother had. She had…there was some mental health issues in the family potentially because her parents were cousins. But in 1752 on April 19th, she marries a man named Silas clap. I don't know all that much else about her childhood or in early adulthood, she is 29 years old when she married.

Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: Yep. The average age of…marriage age for a woman in New England at the time was 22. So she's a little bit older than that. She's almost 30. She met Silas when he was visiting Rhode Island. He visited Block Island and Warwick for some length of time around the early 1750s. He was originally from New York. I don't know why—the trip was supposedly some sort of business. I'm not sure what kind and I don't know how long it lasted. I don't know how long they knew each other. I don't know how long they courted for. 

Caitlin: So this is all weird. 

Frances: I mean, it's spotty records because she's not famous. Neither is he. 

Caitlin: Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. I mean, same with Mercy. Like the only reason she's famous is for being of vampire. 

Frances: Yeah. And by the time Mercy came around, we had things like the Projo that kept records of that kind. But any newspapers that were around in the 1750. If they mentioned anything about the Clapp family, we don't have them anymore. They gone. So they get that… 

We actually do know who performed the marriage though. It was a man named John Hamot. He was the elder in their church. I'm not sure there was a quite thriving Quaker community in the area at the time. I'm not sure if the Greenes were Quaker or not, they could have been another, another denomination of protestant. 

Silas is described as having a cool and calm temperament.

Caitlin: Hmm.

Frances: Which judging by what I know of him now, I take to mean he was a block of ice. Very, very cool and potentially calculating. They get married. They have three children spaced out over the course of roughly three years…four years. John, Phebe, and David. All three live to adulthood.

Caitlin: Okay. 

Frances: Roll forward a little bit. It's now 1758 and her father dies. She gets appointed executrix of his will, which is not uncommon. 

Caitlin: That's such a cool name.

Frances: Right? It was not an uncommon thing, although it was unusual because she had living brothers. 

Caitlin: Oh, okay. 

Frances: But she still gets appointed executor of the will. Her husband actually inherited some money from her father. He left Silas a sum of money. He left his sons land and also money, but the family homestead the farm, the 250 acre farm that Mary had grown up in and that her mother…where she and her husband lived with her mother was left to Mary explicitly. Not her husband.

Caitlin: I’m guessing the brothers didn’t love that.

Frances: Actually I don't think they cared at this point. They had already established homes, built homes elsewhere and had their own land. There were a lot of Greenes in Rhode Island at the time. So she inherits the homestead, not her husband. Let me say that again. It was not her husband who inherited the farm. It was Mary. 

Caitlin: All right. 

Frances: This is 1758. She is supposedly overcome by grief and on July 8th, 1760, she died. 

Caitlin: Okay. Couple of questions. Okay. Are we overcome by grief in an HP Lovecraft type of way, or we overcome by grief in a ‘I killed myself’ kind of way. 

Frances: That's an excellent question. 

Caitlin: So she's dead and we don't know why is what I'm getting.

Frances: So. Remember that pin that I stuck in the other vampire’s last name?

Caitlin: Yeah, Tillinghast. 

Frances: I'm pulling that pin right now. Samuel Tillinghast, who is a friend of the family from Warwick, probably related to Sarah Tillinghast, a famous founding family in Rhode Island and the Newport and Warwick areas 

Caitlin: Yeah. They’re vampires. Everyone knows. *snickers*

Frances: They actually were huge in shipping in the 1600s in Newport. I don't know if there’s— 

Caitlin: Like an, a slavery kind of way, or in a commerce kind of way?
Frances: No. In a commerce kind of way, bringing in cloth and stuff from overseas. 

Caitlin: Looking at you, Linden Place. 

Frances: Yeah. Bristol. Samuel Tillinghast actually wrote a diary entry about Mary's death. It says, and I quote, “This morning, Mary Greene Clapp, wife of Silas Clapp, was found dead with her garters about her neck. Had been long in a disconsolate way. It seems she took that woeful method to put an end to her life.” 

Caitlin: Okay. 

Frances: Sam thinks she killed herself. 

Caitlin: Yeah. 

Frances: Here's my question. Why would you do it with garters? It's 1760. Your house is full of poison. You live on a farm full of sharp farming equipment and you live very close to some swampy ponds, but you're going to strangle yourself with your own garter. As an aside. 

Caitlin: I mean, I get it 

Frances: As an aside though, history of fashion, garters at this point were thin strips of linen or ribbon.

Caitlin: I was actually going to be a question of mine. Like, would it have supported a woman's body? 

Frances: So they didn't say he didn't say she hung herself. He said she was found with her garters wrapped around her neck. 

Caitlin: She was strangled. 

Frances: Yeah. So here's my question. At what point does self strangulation…like you pass out, right? If you're trying to strangle yourself with a length of linen, your hands would release. 

Caitlin: Oh my God. What? So it wasn't like in a noose. 

Frances: No, he didn't say she hung herself. He said she strangled herself. He said she was found with her garters about her neck. 

Caitlin: You would pass out. 

Frances: Yep. And you'd release it.

Caitlin: That's right. That's the whole problem with like death by hanging. Is it… you have to be able to actually die, not get it off your neck. 

Frances: Yep. And as another aside, I have been in this homestead farm. 

Caitlin: Okay. Why? 

Frances: I'm a realtor. I sold it on behalf of the previous owner. 

Caitlin: Are they going to be pissed at you?

Frances: Oh, no, he is very much looking forward to this episode. I don't know about the new owners. 

Caitlin: Hey everyone. I hope you enjoy that. By the way, suicide!

Frances: So, because it happened so long ago, it's not really relevant, and they were particularly interested in a historic home 

Caitlin: That’s who your ghost is, new owners. 

Frances: Heh. So I've actually been in this house, the doorways are small, but they're not particularly tall. I would put them somewhere in the seven foot range, maybe six, six and a half feet. Okay. The ceilings are tall enough to indicate wealth, but on the second floor, short enough that it would be difficult to strangle yourself by hanging from the upstairs room.

Caitlin: Did anyone benefit from her death? 

Frances: Guess who inherited the house? 

Caitlin: Mercy Brown. 

Frances: I wish. I'm looking at you, Silas.

Caitlin: Are you serious? 

Frances: Her husband inherits the property. 

Caitlin: Do we know at like grief struck, anything like that? Like any like, oh my wife! That kind of thing happened?

Frances: She dies in 1760 by the following year. He's become a Justice of the Peace. Two years after that he marries her, Elizabeth Greene. 

Caitlin: They really got a cousin thing going on. Huh? 

Frances: Oh, so many cousins. So yeah, so he marries her cousin. She was not a first cousin. Was a relatively distant cousin. Her…Elisabeth's father was James Greene and her mother was Hannah, his second wife. 

So within a three-year span, Mary dies. He inherits the house, becomes justice of the peace for the town and marries her cousin 

Caitlin: Frances, I get the feeling you're proposing something? 

Frances: I am in fact suggesting, and I cannot prove this because it was 200 and change years ago, but I am suggesting that Silas killed his wife

Caitlin: But she was sad? She did have depression? She did…She was dealing with grief. So why is she…? 

Frances: I mean, yes? According to Samuel Tillinghast, friend of Silas, she was. 

Caitlin: But there's no other accounts? 

Frances: Nope. I have not found a single reference to her in any other private journals or papers anywhere in the state. It's just Samuel Tillinghast who was friends with her husband, who wrote about it in his diary.

Caitlin: Do we know where she's buried? 

Frances: Yes, I've been to the grave. So she was actually buried on the property. Which is why I think they're Quaker. 

Caitlin: Like with her garters?

Frances: There was a small family plot. Her father is back there. Her, I think her mother is also back there and some other relatives, one of the maids that worked for the family is back there. And her husband is buried next to her. He died in like 1780-something, 85? I don't know. It was the 1780s. So he lived a good 20 years after she did. 

Caitlin: Huh.

Frances: She was 38 when she died. 

Caitlin: How long, remind me, how long had it been since her dad died? 

Frances: Two years. 

Caitlin: Okay. That does seem like a little longer of a timeline. Okay. I was thinking like two months. 

Frances: Nope. He was 58. She didn't die until 60 and it was like a full two years or almost a full. I think he died in August and she supposedly, allegedly killed herself in July. 

Caitlin: What gave you the impression thus could be murder? 

Frances: When I was speaking to the original owners of the house who are not part of the Greene family—it did pass out of the, sorry, the Clapp family. It did pass out of the Clapp family in the 1880s, when the last of his grandchildren died.

Caitlin: When the vampires started, yeah.

Frances: She mentioned that there is a legend attached to the house that there is a woman who appears in widows weeds, in black, in the upstairs bedroom. 

Caitlin: I called it ghosts! Ghosts! 

Frances: I've never seen this woman, but supposedly she will appear occasionally in an upstairs bedroom doorway. She wears black. She wears a full length, black dress, veil, the whole shebang. And I thought that was interesting because usually—I don't know, I don't know that much about ghosts, cause I don't know that I believe in them, but I don't know that I don't believe in them either. 

Caitlin: I feel the same about ghosts, but like now I'm curious.

Frances: So my thought was usually go stories get applied to violent deaths, right? To…

Caitlin: I mean, some of them are also…I don't know, I am not like the commissioner of ghostdom, but from what I understand, it's just if you have unfinished business or even that…I've spoken with a few of the ghost hunters because I find it fascinating. Part of the idea is maybe we are just all energy and so we all exist on different planes. And so some people come back because they just are energy being sort of thought about. The other idea—I really never thought I would talk about this in my lifetime—anyway, the other idea is that there is something called a residual haunting. So that's energy. That's actually not alive. It's just replaying like a moment in time. 

Frances: Yeah. I've heard of that. 

Caitlin: You have to have the decision between like an intelligent haunting versus like a residual haunting. 

Frances: I'm not sure which this is meant to be. I mean, a woman who dies at 38, her children are six, four and three when she dies, which also might explain why her husband remarries, to help raise the children. That seems like she definitely had some unfinished business. 

Caitlin: How do we find out? 

Frances: You know, I don't think we can. 

Caitlin: No, I'm not willing to accept that. 

Frances: So in my, in my course of my research, shout out to the Rhode Island Historical Society for being absolutely awesome, all of the time. 

Caitlin: They've saved this episode.

Frances: I sorted through some old records, I've looked at…I looked at her father's will. I've looked at her husband's will. He was extremely wealthy when he passed. The contents of the house was like two of…two or three of everything, which is a lot for the 1780s. Like they had six platters and like 12 candle sticks and stuff. Like they had a lot of stuff, which means they had a lot of money, when he died and at least a portion of that was her father's. 

Caitlin: Well, alright.

Frances: So I've been to the grave. Thank you to the man who let me walk through his backyard to get there. It's in someone's backyard because the property was broken up over the years and sold off, the 250 acres are now 250 houses or whatever. The graveyard, the cemetery that belongs to the house is chopped off from the house by several streets and a lot of residential property. 

Caitlin: Oof, that’s painful. 

Frances: So I actually had to leave the house drive three cross section streets away, park, and then knock on someone's door and ask if I could cut through their backyard to get to the cemetery. The guy was very nice and he let me. He let me use his backyard. And he actually told me where she was in the cemetery because I was climbing over a Stonewall to get into it. Cause there's no gate or the gates on like someone else's property and I couldn't go over there and it's overrun with brambles. I don't know if Mary was a little upset about me coming in there and talking about her, but I got a lot of cuts from a lot of thorns. 

Caitlin: What does it with us getting injuries in graveyards? 

Frances: Right? But yeah, she's buried right next to her husband. She has her grave is…is lovely. I don't know. At some point, maybe I'll go knock on that guy's door again and see if I can clean up the little grave plot. There's only about 12 graves in there and it's walled off. 

So. Potential murder. 

Caitlin: I mean, either way when it comes down to, is this whole idea of people not getting a say in how they're portrayed after they die. 

Frances:  Yeah, absolutely. 

Caitlin: I really wish I could find like a happy note to end this one on, but I think let's just leave it at this. One of the reasons we started this podcast was to tell the stories of the dead and…We're going to continue to do that. We're continuing to research people. We've already talked about, have updates coming for you, of Charles Dow already, but what it comes down to is that no matter who it is or how they died, just giving them a few minutes of your day or like almost an hour—Thank you, everyone—Just listen here. Allows someone to be alive again for just a little bit. 

Frances: Yeah. 

Caitlin: And with that, we will see you all next time and until then stay in the cemetery

OUTRO MUSIC

Caitlin: Grave Escapes is hosted, written and produced by Caitlin Howle and Francesgrace Ferland and is produced and edited by Jesse D. Crichton. The music is melancholy after sound by Kai Engel. Follow us on social media to see images of today's graves and more about us. Our social handle is Grave Escapes. For a transcript, show notes, and land acknowledgement, visit us online at www.graveescapes.com We'll see you in the cemetery.

Frances: We’d like to acknowledge that Edward Jones is buried on the traditional lands of the Nipmuc peoples and that Charles Dow is buried on the traditional lands of the Wampanoag, Pokanoket, and Narragansett peoples, which is also where we recorded this podcast. 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 a link 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 North American Indian Center of Boston and Native Land Conservancy.