The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell (39 page)

Lucy Ann Lobdell in braids, beads, and feathers, circa 1853.
Photo courtesy of Crawson family of Basket Creek.

“I
N THOSE DAYS, Lucy wore her dark hair in two long braids and must have resembled an Indian, tanned from exposure to sun and wind as she roamed over the forested hills and dark valleys as yet untouched by the pioneer's axe. She was an expert shot and often spent days away from her house, following old hunters’ paths made originally by the Indians, finding shelter at night under some over-hanging ledge. Deer, bear, and panthers were plentiful then, and wolf signs were not unusual.’’

—Ellie O’Meara, from
The Basket Letters

T
HIS MEMOIR IS fiction—an amalgam of real and imagined events and real and imagined characters. In most cases, where the events of Lucy’s life are reliably known, the plot and personage of the memoir conform. Where gaps occurred, I invented. Where accounts conflicted, I made a choice. The attempt was not to produce a literal history of Lucy Ann Lobdell, but rather to explore, within the framework of her story, a more shaded, uncertain, and interior landscape, terrain that could not be traveled without first being conjured. I am indebted to those who kept the historical record from which I drew—a line going back over one hundred years. Thank you Jack Niflot, Ellie O’Meara, Thomas J. Ham, Leslie LaValley, A. C. Smith, Robert Pike, William Guinnip, Frank Woodward, Gloria McCullough, Mindy Desens, Susan Crawson Shields, Bambi Lobdell, and others—people who valued Lucy’s story and passed it forward.

During the years of this book’s gestation, I benefited greatly from friends who offered insight. Many were accomplished writers, some were skilled editors, others just friends whose opinions I valued. Thank you Franca Bator, Anneke Campbell, Emily Ennis, Kate Gallagher, Karen Gormandy, Andrea Henley Heyn, Debra Howard, Liz Huntington, Martha Kaplan, David King, Margot Livesey, Karen Macbride, Bernard McElhone, Laura Moran, David Surface, Roy Tedoff, Elizabeth Tuck, and Amy Lear White.

Thank you Michael Collier and all the fine folks at Breadloaf Writer’s Conference, and Anne Greene and all the good people at the Wesleyan Writer’s Conference. Thank you friends at the Hudson Valley Writer’s Center. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Jean Macbride, for her patient and steadfast support during the many times I was away in the nineteenth century.