A Blackstone Manor Timeline

The history of Blackstone Manor is, in many ways, at the very center of my book, The House on Blackstone Hill. This history is alluded to throughout the book, and a select timeline of it is given at one point in the narrative. However, that is just a thumbnail sketch kind of description, just enough for people to get the picture of what happened there without pounding the history over their head. 

So in the interest of using this blog to tell my stories as completely as possible, and sharing all the information about the Infestissuman I have, I now present you with a complete Blackstone Manor timeline.

·           Ezekiel Blackstone, the father of Uzziah, serves in Oliver Cromwell’s army during the English Civil War. He was a huge admirer of Cromwell and would often regale his son with tales of the great man and of his years of service in the war.


·       Uzziah is born on April 20, 1653, the same day Cromwell dissolves the Rump Parliament. Not long afterward, Ezekiel and his family leave England and set sail for Boston. 


·        They join family and other Puritans there, as his father is a dedicated Puritan. Uzziah’s first memory of growing up in Boston is the hanging of Mary Dyer on June 1, 1660. 


·        At age 19, in 1672, Uzziah and his long-time friend, Obadiah Hayward, leave Boston due to debt and overall failure. The original plan was to head to Deerfield, where he had a cousin living with whom they would live and help with the cousin’s farm. However, as they work their way up along the Connecticut River, Uzziah spots a large hill rising above the plain and convinces Obadiah to start their own settlement.

 
·       They build a cabin on top of the hill, expanding it as time went on. 


·       Almost as soon as they settle on the hill, Uzziah starts hearing Andromelech whispering to him and twisting his heart. In the cold winter of 1674, the demon finally breaks him, and he rapes and kills Obadiah, eating his flesh and burying him near the woods.

 
·        At the breakout of King Phillip’s War in 1675, a band of Indians unfamiliar with the hill was going to make an attack on the cabin; they were warned by the local Pocumtucs to avoid it because of the evil spirits there, but they didn’t listen. Andromelech tells Uzziah to go to the porch to see what happens to his enemies, and so he stood there as the demon and his legion literally ripped the Indians to shreds. 


·        In 1680, after having served well in the war, having earned a name for himself, and having successfully established a thriving trading post and ferry at the base of the hill, he builds himself a grand New England colonial mansion on the top of the hill. He is 27 years of age. 


·        In 1681 he marries Obadiah’s sister, Martha Hayward. 


·        March 22, 1682, Cromwell Blackstone is born. He is named after Oliver Cromwell due to the family connection to the English Civil War. 


·        January 6, 1709, the original Blackstone Manor burns to the ground, killing Uzziah and all his family members except for Cromwell. Cromwell rebuilds the mansion, expanding it over the years and essentially making it the building it is in the story. He lives in the home for his entire life. He dies at age 80 in 1762.

 
·        The house is purchased that very year by the Bates family.

 
·        1763, Catherine Bates, mother of the family, after first sending away all the servants kills her five young children, then hangs herself in the foyer. When her husband, Richard, returns from business in Boston ten days later, he is greeted by the decaying body of his dead wife and finds all his children dead. He slices open his wrists and dies in the foyer.

 
·        The house lays dormant for a time, as whispers spread about an unspeakable evil in the house.


·         In 1769, a British officer assigned to Boston buys the house, unaware of its history. 


·        In 1770, that same officer lynches his wife in the foyer, then goes up to the servants’ bedroom to slaughter them. He kills them all with his service sword. He rapes the last surviving one before throwing her out of the third story window and then jumps after her. He doesn’t die right away and instead dies slowly over the course of three very long days and nights. 


·       The house remains unoccupied until 1775, during which time the British army seizes the hill and uses the house as a small forward operating base. A temporary army fort is established there, with the officers quartered in the house. During this time there are no untoward acts of violence, though army camps always have a certain level of fights, attacks, deaths, etc. When the British abandon Boston this unit is pulled out, and a smaller American unit takes their place until the effective end of the war in 1781. 


·        In 1782 the house is bought by an army officer who spent several years stationed there. In 1793 the bachelor officer finally marries and soon has a family there. 


·        In 1804, during a particularly harsh winter, while the husband is in Europe on business for the new American government, the wife is angered by her young children and punishes them by stripping them naked and making them stand outside in a blizzard. They all die in the storm. The mother kills herself when she sees what happened. When the husband finds out what happened he remains in Europe for the rest of his life, refusing to ever step foot in the United States again after his heartbreaking loss. 


·        The heartbroken husband is eager to sell the house, so he practically gives it away. In 1805 it is sold again to a family with an older mother and father, their adult (but unmarried) daughter, an adult son, his wife, and their children. The two families lived in the two separate wings. In 1810, the adult son kills his elderly parents in their bed by beating them with a blacksmithing hammer, then goes to his sister’s room and rapes her, choking her to death as he does so. He then goes to his wing of the house, slits his wife’s throat, kills the one servant the family had, murders his children, and then finally kills himself.

 
·        From 1810 until 1851, the house is owned by a widow, who uses it as an orphanage and school for poor children. Though there are no reported deaths there during this time, there are stories told of terrible abuses and reports of kids disappearing from there, but the mistress always says that they were adopted out. Since the record-keeping at this time was far from what it is now, no one actually knows what happened to the kids. 


·        In 1853 it is purchased by one of the wealthiest residents of Cromwell’s Ferry, Thomas King, who established and runs the ironworks. He was a lifelong bachelor, but, like the schoolmistress who lived there before him, there were many stories told of the servants being abused, sometimes very horribly. There were even stories of servants “disappearing,” but given the circumstances – an extremely rich and powerful iron mill owner employing off-the-boat Irish girls as his servants, and on the eve of the Civil War no less – no one paid attention to the stories.  

 
·        In 1861, King paid to have a regiment raised, as by this time he was too old to serve himself. While watching a review on a very hot July day, with no shade, he dies of heat exhaustion.


·         Upon his death, his entire estate gets tied up in probate as various family members fight for what they believe is their cut. The case isn’t really a priority given the war, and since the ironworks is still making cannon for the cause, there was no real rush to see the case resolved. 


·        The estate is finally settled in 1866, but the successful litigant – Samuel King, Thomas' younger brother – doesn’t go to live there right away, having just served in the war. He takes his family on a several-year grand tour of Europe, since in addition to the house the ironwork is all his now, too. 

 
·         He finally moves his wife and their one daughter into the house in 1870. 


·        In 1875, he takes an ax to his wife, then rapes his teenage daughter, Elizabeth, and then when he’s done takes the ax to her as well. 


·        From 1876 to 1891, the house is again owned by a widow who runs it as an orphanage and school for the kids of the iron and other industrial workers of Cromwell’s Ferry. Similar stories as the ones earlier in the century are now told about what is happening there, but now the state has more involvement in such things, and the place is shut down. Turns out the mistress was physically abusing the kids in horrible ways, sexually abusing some of them. 


·        The house is bought in 1891, but almost immediately the father of the family who bought it, for no apparent reason, kills his wife and their eight children, then goes out to the woods on the hillside to shoot himself. 


·        The house lay dormant until 1901, when it is again purchased and refurbished, this time by a wealthy merchant from Cromwell's Ferry named Mortimer St. Germaine. His children are all adults and grown now, so it is just him and his wife, Evelyn, plus their servants. One night, in 1912, Evelyn catches him having sex with a new servant named Carmella. Enraged, she stabs him to death, but then makes Carmella decide whether she wants to be sliced by her or take her chances jumping out the window. Carmella claims she was being raped, but Evelyn won’t hear of it and makes her choose. She chooses the window. Carmella lands with a thud, but she doesn’t die right away. Instead, Evelyn makes her way down to her, then calmly slices Carmella’s immobile body while she taunts the younger woman, and then stabs her over 50 times in a final frenzied attack. Pleased with that she has done, Evelyn finally turns the knife on herself, slitting her throat. 

   
·        That year the army leases the site from the surviving family members that still own the house, putting an experimental radio antenna there to communicate with ships at sea beyond Boston. The army continues to lease it until 1920. 


·        That same year it is purchased by a Boston man who has made a killing in the stock market, and who is now serving in Congress. He updates and refurbishes it, modernizing it in many ways. He has a grand swimming pool put in and generally makes the grounds look as lovely as the house itself. He and his beautiful young wife have many grand and elegant parties there, the only sadness in their lives being they could never have children. They live there happily for the rest of their lives until they die, sick and aged, in 1959 in Boston within a few days of each other. (Turns out both were dedicated Satanists and members of the Coven Universal. Though nothing was every publicly reported and nothing is documented, I know that they used their positions in the Coven, in Boston, and in Washington to traffic many young girls, sexually abusing hundreds of them over the years at their home. Most of these “elegant parties” were orgies where the rich would bid on and then rape the young girls, before taking them home to do whatever they wanted. Any girls who might accidentally die through the abuse during these partied were just buried in the woods and totally forgotten about.) 


·        The house is put on the market in 1960 and bought by a wealthy young couple with several children. While hunting small game on the hillside in 1965 their 12-year-old son is “accidentally” shot by this father. The father comes back to the house, shoots his wife and their remaining children. He then slowly and methodically wraps himself and many pounds of chains and then jumps in the swimming pool to drown himself. 


·        The house is unlived in until 1970, when it is purchased by a family with nine children and who, for religious reasons, plan on having as many as they can. One day, in 1971, while pregnant with baby ten and alone in the house with all nine, the mother takes the kids out to the pool one at a time and drowns each one in turn. Then, floating peacefully in the pool, she opens her wrists, dying surrounded by the nine bodies of her children. Upon returning home and seeing his entire family dead in the pool, the man goes instantly insane and is still being cared for at a nearby state hospital. He is now 79 years old. 


·        From 1973 until 1986, the house is owned by the US Government, who uses it as a rehab center for injured and drug-addicted soldiers who served in Vietnam. During that time there were no murders, but there was a well above average number of suicides there. 


·        In 1988 the house was bought by an artist, who wanted a place where he could write, paint, and commune with his creative muse alone. He did so there, barely being heard from until 1997, when he was found, running around the now largely abandoned ruin of Cromwell's Ferry, naked, with long white, dirty hair, his eyes bulging, his mouth twisted into an overly large smile. He ran about ranting about having seen him, having heard his word, about the coming end of the world. When police and other authorities arrived to try to take him to the nearby mental hospital he ran around, escaping them, until he finally arrived at one of the flaming crevasses. Then, turning to address the police, he said he must go now, calming walking into the inferno even as the flames utterly consumed him. When authorities arrived at the home to see what they could learn, they found boxes and boxes of composition notebooks filled with his insane and inane ramblings about demons, evil ghosts, watching eyes, burnt men, whispers in the night, axes in heads, and many crudely drawn sketches. These were not kept only to the journals and had spilled over onto the walls and floors of the home. His paintings were even more bizarre, disturbing, and violent. 

 
·        The home remained in the possession of his estate, who paid to have it refurbished and repaired, and used it to store much of his art, but they did nothing else with it. Not, that is, until 2016, when the lawyer who oversaw his estate retired and it was decided enough time had passed that it was safe to put the house on the market. The estate wanted to get rid of this house and so was willing to part with it for pennies on the dollar. 


·        In 2019 the house was purchased by Adam Long.
 

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