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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