Tuesday 5th. Started for Uncle Clinton Garter's, [west of Grand Rapids]. Rather a cold
day to ride, but Otis heat a brick & put to my feet & I was quite comfortable. . . . We passed through a wee village named Berlin. . . . Aunt Harriet is a lively, good little woman, the
three little ones, Thomas, George & Sarah, are full of life & mischief, & Uncle is what I call a model of a handsome man, & moreover he looks very much like Otis. Uncles folks
have a great deal of company I should think. . . . Mr. Birdsall, Mr. Perkins, who is a good singer, & Alonzo Van Gordon a brother of Aunts & who was here to supper; called. Uncle has a
fiddle & plays better than any man I have heard in this center portion of the state.
[In large script]
Down on the Mississippi floting
Long time I trabled on the way
All knight the cottonwood a toting
Sing for my trulub all the day
Nell was a lady
Last night she died
Tole the bell for lubly nel
My dark virginny bride
When I saw my nelly in the morning
Smile till she opened up her eyes
I carried like the light ob day a doning
Jis before the sun begins to rize
Now I am unhappy and am weeping
Can't tote the cotton wood no more
Last night while Nelly was a sleeping
Deth came knocking at the door
Close by de margin ob de water
Where de lone weeping willow grows
There libed Virginny's lubly daughter
There she in deth may find repose
Down in the meadow mong de clober
Walked with my Nelly by my side
Now all dem happy daze are ober
Farewell my dark Virginny bride
Henry Garter Jr.
_____
Of course we may know this song as "Nelly Was a Lady," by Stephen Foster, published in 1849. It
seems Rosette was so taken with her new Uncle Henry she assumed he'd written this very popular song.
Otis and Rosette Churchill took their wedding journey by horse-drawn sleigh, a "cutter" that the menfolk constructed the month before and had "ironed" - fitted with runners - in Portland. Others rode with them for short jaunts of several miles, so it was presumably not the smallest size. On their journey they headed west beyond Grand Rapids, then came back through the city for, among other things, the opportunity for Otis to have an "ambrotype" photograph made of Rosette.
The people they visited included Otis's aunts and uncles on his mother Betsey Garter Churchill's side - her brother Henry,
named for their father, and one of three sisters who married three brothers of the King family. Back in Orange Township, where they settled, another of these sisters - Lucinda - and her husband
Myron King became very important to the newlyweds. Details of the extended Garter family come from the journal and from the beautifully detailed work of William Robert Brittenham (deceased
2008), The
Garter Family of New York and Michigan.
Enjoy listening to this version of
"Nelly Was a Lady"
by Charles Szabo.
Imagine how captivating this tune must have been in the cordial company of a family celebrating a new marriage,
with good singers and a good fiddle to lead them all.
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