A Grave For Two Brothers

When I first thought about what I might write about for this graven short story, I had always assumed that I would write about a woman. I love reading about women and their stories, so I just assumed that I would be writing about them too. So I was surprised when this grave caught my attention. It's a single grave for two brothers, and the inscription says:

Erected in Memory of

CAPT.

ISAAC TOMPKINS,

aged 27 years and

DAVI

S S. TOMPKINS

aged 19 years,

sons of

Mr. Benjamin Tompkins

and Deborah his wife.

They sailed from Norfolk,

Va. Aug. 24. 1826.

in the brig MARY-ELIZA,

bound to Antigua

and have never since been

heard of.

This grave immediately seemed to me like an extremely interesting prompt for a story, because no one is really sure of how the story of these brothers ends. I think its cool how the two sailed from Norfolk on August 24, two days before my birthday which is on the 26. Because of this little coincidence, I think that I'm going to have the brothers meet misfortune on my birthday. It may be a bit morbid, but I think that would be pretty cool and personal for me, the author.

One thing I love about this grave is that it leaves numerous questions unanswered. Why were the two sailing for Antigua? Was it a business trip or something else? Did the two brothers get along? How long had Isaac been a captain? Was the Mary-Eliza an old ship? Why did Davis accompany Isaac? But most importantly, what happened to the two? As I pondered the latter, I came up with many different ideas. Maybe Isaac's crew had a mutiny? This would be fun to write about, but kind of cliche. Maybe the ship wreaked. Maybe the ship reached Antigua, but the brothers died before they could return home. Personally, my favorite idea is that one of the brothers killed the other. I'm not quite sure why I like this idea the best, but it was one of the last ones to pop in my head. I think that I'm going to have this happen at one point during the story. How this happens, however, is to later be revealed...

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The Bureau

If you walk into my bedroom, you'll see a bed, a plush purple chair, a table covered with various odds and ends, a wall plastered with musical memorabilia, a bookshelf, and a bureau

with three drawers. To tell the truth, I really don't like the bureau that much. I think that it doesn't match the mood of the room, it's too small, old, hard to keep organized, and the drawers can be a pain to open and close. The bottom drawer doesn't even have any

handles on it anymore! (The handles have managed to come unscrewed, and I haven't really bothered to take the time to fix them.)

Anyways, over the Thanksgiving break I had time to organize the wrinkled clothes that had been hastily taken in and out of those creaky old drawers over the past few weeks. As I cleaned out the top drawer, I noticed something that had been concealed by ratty t-shirts and old socks. A name was scrawled on the inside with Sharpie marker: Anna Lloyd Rohrer. I knew that Anna Lloyd was the name of my mom's mother. She passed away about a year and a half after I was born, the day before my brother was born. The only memories I have of her are from some old photographs that lay around our house. It seemed strange to me that her name was scrawled into the old bureau that I disliked so much. Had it been hers? Why did she write her name in it? It wasn't like she would carry a bureau around with her and lose it, like a book with a name in the front cover.

It turns out that my great grandmother, Louise Martin Nagel, wrote her daughter's name in the bureau in order to make sure that it stayed in the family when she died. Throughout her life, Louise had lived through as many as three house fires. Due to these fires, a bunch of the family

memorabilia was lost, and not much of the old furniture survived. When she became a mother and a grandmother, Louise wanted to make sure that all of her treasured family belongings were never sold outside of the family, so she wrote the names of her three children inside or on the back of nearly everything! Furniture, china, not even photographs were spared! Ever since then, the furniture has been passed down throughout my mom's side of the family. I was given the bureau, my bed, a mirror, and a few other pieces on my first birthday. There are so many other pieces in my house that were passed down in this way, including a rickety highchair, a baby pram, and a cradle.

This tidbit of family history has raised my respect for that old bureau in my room. Even though it may be old and brown, it manages to add a little bit of history to an otherwise teenage room.

The First Trip

This past week, our English class took little field trip to a small cemetery from the 1800s. Our teacher led us down a walking trail, and we wandered off of the main path and onto a dirt one that meandered through the adjacent woods. It smelled of trees, a little damp from the previous rain, and we travelled uphill, further away from where we came. This was no abandoned path, mind you, for the leaves under our feet were trampled and muddy from the various joggers who had been there earlier that day. However, it was quiet and secluded, which was a nice break from the hustle and bustle of the school hallways. After about ten minutes of mild hiking, we reached our destination.

It was not what I expected.

I didn't expect the graveyard to be enormous or anything, but I exp

ected it to be...well, larger that just what seemed to be two graves. We had arrived at a very small, fairly spooky looking cemetery. There was a small gate surrounding it that had been rusted with age; the tops of the gate had all been dented to the left, and a small part of the gate had been bashed down, allowing for our class to climb over the gate and int

o the graveyard. I immediately wondered why the fence had been bashed in. Obviously the perpetrator had ignored the plea to keep out that the lock on a rusty old chain hugging the main gate presented. It also struck me a curious that all of the small spires on the cemetery's gate were bent to the left. Oh well. Maybe I was in the mood for a mystery, who knows? I do that sometimes.

Our teacher told us to examine the graves. All two of them. It actually turned out that the biggest tombstone actually served as a grave for four people, a small family by the name of Scribner. There were four of them, Dr. Dana Scribner (the father), Sara Jane Ansley (the mother), and their two sons, Arthur and William. Sadly, they had both died y

oung, Arthur at 17 months and William at 19. The other grave in the cemetery was located behind a bush, and it was the grave of Mary W. Andrews. I took an immediate interest in this grave, for what was she doing with the Scribner family? It didn't seem like she was of any relation at all, but maybe she was a trusted housekeeper or something. Bu

t why wasn't she buried with her family? Our class noted that there was a small footstone with the initials M.W.A. across from Ms. Andrew's grave. I think our teacher said that that was where her baby was buried. I'm interested to find out her story.

I'm really excited to see how our class is going to develop our excursions into a historical fiction writing project! This little trip really peaked my interest, and I'm excited to find out more about the Scribner family. This is going to be a fun and interesting project!!