Isaac BANGS.

His mom’s name was Desire (spelled D-E-S-I-R-E) Bangs. Like, come on.

Bangs was born in Massachusetts in 1752. He was educated at Harvard College and began to study medicine after graduation. (A real underachiever.) For a short time, he practiced medicine in the town where he grew up. (He was a medical hobbyist, really.) At the onset of the war, he enlisted as Lieutenant in the Continental Army in Colonel Cary’s regiment in late January 1776. His diary begins in Massachusetts and his regiment eventually moves to New York City.

But DID Isaac Bangs BANG?

Unclear. In re-reading his journal this week, I’ve decided to pull the most fun sections and discuss them for your reading pleasure.

April 25th 1776

During the Course of the last Week I several Times visited the Holy Ground, before described. When I visited them at first, I thought nothing could exceed them for impudence and immodesty; but I found the more I was acquainted with them the more they excelled in their Brutality. To mention the Perticulars of their Behaviour would so pollute the Paper I write up on that I must excuse myself.

Whatever Bangs is witnessing is so “brutal” that he blushes merely at the thought of writing down the details. I wonder about this. Is the immodesty he experiences just sex work generally? Is is nudity out in the open that leaves him shocked? Many of these men came from small towns which they never left until war. Their exposure to the variety of life and variety of vice in a big city like New York City was shocking in and of itself. I doubt Dover, Massachusetts had a Holy Ground equivalent.

Considering the treasure trove of nudity available on HBO alone, I always wonder if we would be as scandalized in Holy Ground as Isaac Bangs apparently was. For God’s sake we have Euphoria. Anyone with an incognito tab on their laptop has seen as much as Isaac Bangs by way of sexual acts in Holy Ground. Still, seeing pornography and walking among a sex district are not the same thing, as we’ll soon read.

Societal norms would have also had an impact on the way Bangs and other men viewed the women of Holy Ground in New York City. For more specifics on that, click here.

The whole of my aim in visiting this Place at first was out of Curiosity, as was also that of the chief of the Gentlemen that accompanied; & it seems Strange that any Man can so divest himself of Manhood as to desire an intimate Connexion with these worse than brutal Creatures, yet it is not more strange than true that many of our Officers & Soldiers have been so imprudent as to follow them, notwithstanding the salutary advice of their Friends, till the Fatal Disorder seized them & convinced them of their Error.

My favorite part here is that Isaac Bangs visited Holy Ground repeatedly, but out of curiosity, not patronage. Ah, yes. This was purely academic for Isaac. A man of sociology. A patriot of inquiry. Given how obviously obscene the activities of Holy Ground apparently were, what was he not seeing the first time that led him to return more times?!

This is the second time that Isaac Bangs has used the word “brutal” in describing these women and Holy Ground. It’s an interesting choice of term, and one that I believe was used purposefully. Rather than unfortunate or sinful, “brutal” equates to a viciousness or harshness, as in women who are violent in their behavior.

There are specific instances of brutality that we’ll soon see. However, Bangs seems to describe these women’s innate state as brutal. How I wish time travel were real. Is it Bangs’ perception of these women and their behavior misaligning with his expectations that makes them brutal? Are these women truly ruthless and ferocious? It’s likely a mix. Consider the societal standards of the time that women needed to align themselves with. I cannot imagine the circumstances a woman endures that lead to her being described and seen as brutal.

I am informed that not less than 40 Men of one Reg which last Sunday set off for Quebeck were infected with that Disorder. What fine order these Men must be in charge to undergo a fatiegueing March through a cold, uninhabited Country! Unless there is some care taken of these horrid Wretches by the Gen, he will soon have his Army greatly impaired, for they not only destroy Men by Sickness, but they sometimes inhumanly Murther them; for since Monday last two Men were found inhumanly Murthered & concealed, besides one who was castrated in a barbarous Manner. This so exasperated the Men that in the face of Day they assembled and pulled down the Houses where the Men were thus treated & with great difficulty the Guards dispersed them after they had leveled them to the Ground. This, together with the common Riots incident to such Places, made our Men a little more Cautious how they ventured to prophane Holy Ground with their Presence.

The language here is absolutely fascinating. In the paragraph above, Bangs makes it clear that soldiers are aware of venereal disease and are cautioned against visiting Holy Ground. Yet, the women there are written as though they were predators. “They destroy Men by sickness.” The castration and murder are God awful. Holy Ground attracted all sorts of unsavory types. It’s interesting that the soldiers are entirely convinced that the women are responsible for murder and castration, and not one of the men loitering in the area.

April 29

An old Whore who had been so long Dead that she was rotten was this Day found concealed in an out House at the Holy Ground.

It’s odd even to me how curious I become in the fate of someone history has decided not to care about. Without any evidence, the soldiers find themselves a culprit for the murder of their fellow soldiers, but who killed this woman? Tough to say. Tougher, apparently, to bother. We’ll have to wait for the podcast that never gets made.

If I could interview anyone from the past, it would be this woman. I’m less interested in the gossip than I am in the trajectory. How she got here, what she thought this life would be, and whether there was ever a version of it that felt like hers. Because no one is born an “old whore.” That’s something history assigns at the end.

Also worth noting: when a man dies in the Holy Ground, he is murdered. When a woman is hidden away in an outhouse until she rots, she has simply been dead for a while. Time, it seems, is the only thing that happens to her.

May 8th

In the Afternoon I visited a very agreeable Young Ladie of this City Miss _____ ______, with whom I had before had a small acquaintance…She in Turn was not so ungratefull as to take no Notice of me, but as I accidentally passed the House for several Times, I observed that she seemed to Compliment me with more respect than is usual, or than I deserved; but as I was bashfull, I no more than returned the Compliment, & passed by till at length I made bold to enter the House with the Gentleman that was with me; but as he was in a great Hurry I could not tarry long, but was obliged to depart, bitterly against my will; however I gave her Intimation that I should again call in…”

“…I took this opportunity to spend an Afternoon with her. I found playing upon her Spinet, upon which she performed to admiration; her Musick, joined to an agreeable Person, gave me very favourable Ideas of my New Acquaintance, Reading & Chatting, &c., till about 5 o’clock, when her mother came and asked us to Tea…”

This is, apparently, Isaac Bangs flirting. Or attempting to. He circles the house “accidentally” several times like a man who has never once been casual in his life, convinces himself she’s showing him special attention, and then finally works up the courage to go inside, only to be dragged away almost immediately. Tragic.

When he does make it back, everything is very proper. She plays the spinet “to admiration,” they read, they chat, her mother appears for tea. It’s all so aggressively respectable you almost forget he’s the same man wandering the Holy Ground a few entries earlier. The rangeeeeeeee, honey!

July 1st, 1776

In the fore Noon spent some time very agreeably with some young Ladies of my acquaintance in the City.

I’m sorry, Isaac Bangs is just going to toss out “a very agreeable time with some young Ladies” and then give us nothing else? No details? No follow-up? No names? That story, tragically, has been left to the ravages of time. We’ll never know what he considered “very agreeable,” and I want to know so badly if these women would have considered their time very agreeable. I imagine giggles. I imagine tipples. I imagine the youthful fun of flirting with new friends despite the anxieties of a British invasion.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these diary excerpts as much as I have. Bangs’ journal is full of interesting entries. There’s full sections where he describes visiting a Dutch church and a Synagogue for the first time. That felt so New York City to me. This city has always been a place where people brush up against lives that aren’t their own. There’s something exciting about being dropped into someone else’s world: different customs, different rhythms, different ways of doing things, and trying to figure out how it all works. New York City, with its vast variety of life, is prime for those experiences. It was fun to see that 250 years ago, the New York City imperative of peering into a worldview different than one’s own was already alive and well.

Source:

Bangs, Isaac. Journal of Lieutenant Isaac Bangs, April 1 to July 29, 1776. Edited by Edward Bangs. Cambridge, MA: J. Wilson and Son, 1890.

Despite any argument made against New York, one must admit there is never a want for pleasure, nor a lack of establishments in which to fulfill such desires. In fact, some might contend that, whether through wealth, the arts, or the kind of indulgence better attended to after dark, New York City has long succeeded in providing an outlet for each and every one.

But in a time before Tinder, Reddit, or Yelp reviews, where might a respectable person find and procure that particular horizontal refreshment? Where might they partake of the forbidden fruit in 19th-century New York?

Enter the definitive guide: A Gentleman’s Companion: New York City (1870), a now-infamous pocket guide to New York City brothels, vice, and pleasure. Within this small but revealing volume, one could find the names and addresses of establishments across the city catering to every desire.

The authors provide a thoughtful thesis of intent: “We don’t intend to tell the reader where the Central Park is, the Croton Aqueduct, the New Court House […] but we propose to acquaint him with locations and with facts, a knowledge of which he could not procure elsewhere […] When we impart information that is not generally known, even to old denizens of the city, and give him an insight into the character and doings of people whose deeds are carefully screened from public view; when we describe their houses and give their locations, we supply the stranger with information of which he stands in need. We supply a void that otherwise must remain unfilled.”

Yes, we all know which void this refers to.

Revel in the layers of guile and snark. This book is a jewel in which those in on the bacchanalian joke find themselves before a feast of carefully scrutinized debauchery. The authors rightfully assume their reader will never desire to visit the aforementioned houses. He is, no doubt, “a member of the Bible Society” and a bright, shining light. No, the authors write from the purest commitment to warning the good reader, so that he might avoid these houses during his visit to New York.

Published in 1870, just three years prior to the Comstock Act, there exists a world in which this very text sent Anthony Comstock into a tizzy. Imagine, if you will, the balding U.S. postal inspector with characteristic verbose mutton chops, knickers in a twist, reading these very words as they arrived across his desk.

I shall now turn to the matter of the houses themselves. Broken down by neighborhood, the author provides a great many of them across 19th-century New York City. From public houses to boarding houses, this elucidative guide offers more than enough information for the curious reader to begin.

There are concert saloons, public houses, boarding houses, and private houses of assignation—each playing a role in the landscape of New York City’s vice districts. Establishments of both low and high rate are included, the latter described as appealing and “conducted in a quiet and orderly manner.”

Miss Emma Benedict’s house at 84 W. Houston Street is “arranged in the first style, while the bewitching smiles of the fairy-like creatures who devote themselves to the services of Cupid are unrivaled by any of the fine ladies who walk Broadway in silks and satins.”

But be warned of the third-rate establishments, such as the house of assignation kept by Miss Hattie Taylor of No. 111 Spring Street. “It is patronized by roughs and rowdies and gentlemen who turn their shirts wrong side out when the other side is dirty.” You would do best not to consort with people who do not do laundry. They are trouble, and likely carry many other kinds of grime beyond a few shirt stains. Still, No. 111’s colorful description will no doubt warrant clientele, as it is better to receive scathing remarks than to be utterly inconsequential, as is house No. 101, which is “of the third class and contains nothing worthy of attention.”

There are several houses best avoided due to the disposition of their occupants.

Laura Howard’s parlor at No. 16 East Thirteenth Street has six lady boarders, “but no interest whatever attaches to this house. Some of its visitors have asserted that its inmates are of a snobbish disposition.” Birtie White at No. 140 West Sixteenth Street has a sulky temper, and Miss Fanny Phippany’s landlady is “of a very selfish disposition, and the servants are very disagreeable.”

But, dearest reader, for those with tastes for finery, be gladdened, for there are many such options within New York City’s more refined brothels. Venture to West Twenty-Fifth Street, to house No. 105, kept by Mrs. Kate Woods of the Hotel de Wood. This brownstone is “furnished throughout with the most costly and newest improvements.” She boasts oil paintings that cost $10,000, rosewood furniture, Parisian figures, and massive mirrors. The overall furnishing cost $70,000, and her ladies are of rare and personal attractions. The merry laughs of the fun-loving ladies at No. 129 West 26th Street resound throughout the entire first-rate and magnificent palace.

Those more inclined toward the strange and exhilarating might benefit from a visit to No. 127 West 26th Street. Rumor has it that a bear is kept in the cellar, though there is little else attractive about the place.

And finally, for those with safety top of mind, one might consider attending Mrs. Lizzie Goodrich’s house at No. 128 West 27th Street. Not only is Mrs. Lizzie a dashing brunette, with lady boarders “whose cheerful disposition tends to drive away the blues,” but there is also “a regular physician attached to this house, and every attention is shown to its visitors.”

A jovial and revealing read, I highly recommend A Gentleman’s Companion: New York City (1870) as a rare window into New York City’s history of vice, sex work, and hidden social worlds. It survived Comstock’s obsession with rooting out vice and breathes life into a time when the options for the fairer sex were limited. Preserved in these scant pages are the names of a few entrepreneurial women who made the best of a system determined to extort and control them.

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/etas/91/ A Gentleman’s Companion: New York City

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/26/nyregion/gentleman.html - dens of Iniquity

The name itself was a joke. New York’s penchant for sarcasm is also historical, apparently. Holy Ground was a cluster of streets in lower Manhattan, near what we now call City Hall Park. The land belonged to Trinity Church. The buildings were leased to prostitutes, but the rent was collected on time.

During the American Revolution, prostitution didn’t hide in shadows in New York City. Honey, it thrived in plain sight, framed simultaneously as temptation and terror. Luckily for us, some soldiers wrote about Holy Ground, describing this Revolutionary-era red-light district as filthy, dangerous, and morally corrupt, while returning night after night.

This contradiction is the story of Holy Ground. I spent quite a bit of time researching Holy Ground for my grad school program. Here’s what I found…

A Night Out in the Revolutionary Era New York

For young soldiers stationed in New York, the evening followed a familiar rhythm. First came the tavern: low ceilings, smoke hanging thick in the air, candlelight flickering. Ale flowed freely. So did bravado.

After days spent drilling for the military under the threat of humiliation and punishment, we could safely say that boozing wasn’t just these young men’s way of indulging. It was an early form of anesthesia. A way to forget the pain of military discipline. Order was paramount in the British military, and it was achieved by any means necessary. Those means were violent and mortifying. The cat-o’-nine-tails was used with regularity. Nine pieces of raw hide or thick hemp which made knotted cords were attached to a handle. Superiors would whip soldiers with it and the tails would tear the skin open. [Inserts paid partnership ad for BDSM toy.] The public shame of being made to “ride the wooden horse” could break a man completely.

I mean, I’d be running for the bar for a drink too.

Later in the evening, by the time the taverns emptied, groups of men spilled into the street, flushed and unsteady, daring one another toward the same destination everyone pretended not to know too well.

Holy Ground.

Candles burned in windows like flickering invitations toward pleasure. Women stood in doorways, skirts loose, hair unpinned, watching men approach. There was no coy seduction here. There was money to be made. And the women were good at it. But nobody likes a girl boss in the 18th century, guys.

The Women Men Couldn’t Stop Writing About

Soldiers’ diaries recount with enthusiasm on the women of Holy Ground, New York. Not just their sexual availability, but their brash manner. Their refusal to be polite. And the sheer volume of prostitutes in the area.

Many women worked and lived together, in pairs or small groups, often under the guidance of an older madam who understood how to keep things running smoothly in this Revolutionary-era sex trade. This would have been an unusual sight for these soldiers, especially those from small towns. Women were meant to live under the watchful eyes of their fathers and later their husbands. It was a man’s responsibility to keep women safe and away from trouble. Popular thinking of the time dictated that without the discipline and watchful eye of a man at home, women were naturally apt to find and make trouble. If boozy brunch had been invented in the 1770’s, women would have turned this nation on its damn head.

For men accustomed to rigid hierarchies, women being in charge at Holy Ground was destabilizing. Soldiers lived under constant discipline, trained to obey orders enforced through pain. In Holy Ground, that hierarchy collapsed. Here, women exercised authority. They dictated terms. This reversal was equal parts thrilling and terrifying.

Furthermore, Holy Ground swelled with danger. Fights broke out regularly among soldiers, sailors, students from nearby King’s College, drunkards, and criminals. A man might leave lighter in coin, bloodied, or infected with venereal disease. In fact, entire units of soldiers were decimated because of sexually transmitted diseases. I read many reports of men who thought they’d die on some battlefield in glory only to die in some dirty hospital of syphilis. Some men never left Holy Ground at all.

Candles, Corsets, and Castration

In April of 1776, two soldiers were found dead near one of the bawdy houses in Holy Ground.

One of them had been castrated. (Yoiiiiiink!)

The horror wasn’t just the violence, it was the symbolism. Something essential had been taken. Something that was never supposed to be touched. A man’s manhood.

The response was immediate. Soldiers didn’t wait for investigation. They knew who was responsible. Obviously, the prostitutes. Certainly not any of the criminally violent men in the area. Employing the norms of the time, it wasn’t cool to touch a dude’s penis, let alone play around with it by way of castration. Still…

Brothels were smashed. Doors ripped from hinges. Buildings torn down under the righteous banner of restoring order. Holy Ground, the red-light district, was punished collectively. The idea (even if it had no evidence to support) of a woman defiling a man in such a way was unbearable. While violence against marginalized women was just maintenance in the 18th century, female violence against soldiers was a crisis. What would the world look like if women enacted violence towards men?

Shortly afterward, the body of a woman, a prostitute. was found murdered nearby, discarded in an outhouse.

In researching Holy Ground for a few months, it’s been frustrating how little evidence actually exists. The timing of the killing concerning the above woman might suggest some sort of retribution, but we’ll never know for sure. We do know that George Washington spoke out against the destruction during the Holy Ground riots in one of his General’s orders. From April 27, 1776:

The riotous Behaviour of some Soldiers of the Continental Army, yesterday, and the Evening before, has filled the General with much regret, and concern; and lays him under the disagreeable necessity of declaring, that if the like behaviour should be practiced again, the Authors will be brought to the severest punishment if taken, or treated as a common Enemy, if they dare to resist—Men are not to carve out Remedies for themselves—If they are injured in any respect, there are legal Modes to obtain relief; and just Complaints will always be attended to, and redressed. It should be the pride of a Soldier, to conduct himself in such a manner, as to obtain the Applause, and not the reproach of a people, he is sent to defend; and it should be the business, as it is the duty of an Officer to inculcate and enforce this doctrine.1

Saints by Day, Sinners by Candlelight

The church had an explanation for all of this: WOMEN.

Women, according to long-standing religious doctrine, were daughters of Eve: vain, emotional, and inherently dangerous through their talent for manipulation. Even men who considered themselves enlightened (looking at you, Ben Franklin) insisted women lacked moral constancy. A woman who lived outside male authority was not merely immoral; she was apocalyptic.

Prostitutes were framed as corrupting forces who made men sin. This belief did remarkable work. It allowed soldiers to purchase sex while believing themselves victims of it. It allowed the church to profit from brothel rents while condemning the women who paid them.

Most importantly, it erased the real reason women ended up in Holy Ground at all. I didn’t expect for this to be the crux of my work on my research of Holy Ground, but it revealed itself time and time again. See below.

Poverty Was the Real Sin

Women did not arrive in Holy Ground because of some collective moral failing. They arrived because they were poor. (Surprise!)

The American Revolutionary War intensified existing vulnerabilities. Men died. Men abandoned families. Men left for war. Rents skyrocketed. Women were paid poorly for nearly all available labor. Sewing required training many women never received. Domestic work barely covered food, let alone shelter.

Prostitution paid, and it paid well I might add. It kept women fed and often gave them a place to live.

The Revolutionary War worsened everything. Soldiers commandeered housing. Women took in boarders to survive. Others turned to sex work because it was the only reliable means of securing food and shelter in a city on edge.

There was nobody (at least publicly) at the time who thought that poverty might be connected to societal circumstance, and that those circumstances could be fixed or changed. Poverty was kind of like height. There was nothing to be done about it. Society accepted poverty as inevitable, God’s will, even. Charity was performative and scanty. Alms Houses gave some relief. But, there was no economic or public safety net. And there wouldn’t be. Structural change was unthinkable. As long as poverty remained contained, out of parlors and into districts like Holy Ground, it was tolerable. Those living in poverty were viewed as mosquitoes in the summer time. A naturally occurring, public nuisance that people wanted away from them at all costs.

Whenever the US wants to enact a “socialist” program, people say that “we’ve seen where that leads.” I’d argue that we’ve also seen where no social safety net leads as well, and it’s not good.

When Violence Didn’t Count

The same beliefs that justified exploiting poor women’s bodies also ensured they would never receive justice.

Rape was notoriously difficult to prosecute in eighteenth-century New York. Women were expected to prove they had resisted with everything they had. False accusations were considered worse than guilty men going free. A soldier was unlikely to stand trial at all, certainly not on the word of a woman from Holy Ground.

Poor women were already considered morally compromised. Their bodies were seen as available. Their suffering was legally meaningless.

Prostitution Was a Tool

Here is the most uncomfortable truth of Holy Ground: prostitution was useful.

Soldiers were angry, frightened, traumatized. There was no language for what we would now recognize as PTSD. No mental health care. No sanctioned outlet for fear or rage. In the United States, that really didn’t exist until after the Vietnam War.

Better, in the eyes of military leadership, for soldiers to discharge those emotions onto women with no social protection than to risk insubordination or collapse within the ranks. Prostitutes absorbed the psychological and physical costs of war so the army didn’t have to.

At one point, thousands of women were deliberately sent from Britain to New York to serve soldiers.

The Real Scandal of Holy Ground

Soldiers condemned Holy Ground by day and sought it out by night. They needed it. Many have tried to paint Holy Ground as wanton chaos, but it was actually a vital part of a system that hinged on order. Wild how it always seems to work that way, huh?

Bibliography:

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Bangs, Isaac. Journal of Lieutenant Isaac Bangs, April 1 to July 29, 1776. Edited by Edward Bangs. Cambridge: J. Wilson and Son, 1890.

Block, Sharon. Rape and Sexual Power in Early America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

Brumwell, Stephen. Redcoats: The British Soldier and War in the Americas, 1755–1763. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

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The house reminded me of a neighbor I had who dressed in velvet gowns and styled her hair in a way that hadn’t been in fashion since the 1930’s. Rather than appearing as an enthusiast of a bygone era or an elderly eccentric, there was something about her insistence on this manner of dress that reminded me of death.

The Tredwell Family and Their Merchant’s House Legacy

Seabury and Eliza Tredwell bought their home—then located in what was a quiet, tranquil suburb of the city—in 1835. If the name Seabury makes your ears perk up in a Manchurian Candidate-style flash because you’ve watched Hamilton one too many times, you’re correct in your intuition. Seabury’s mother was half-siblings with that Samuel Seabury—the first Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America.

The Tredwell family was wealthy, Seabury having built his fortune in the hardware business. The world they inhabited was one of gentility and status. One gets the sense that Gertrude Tredwell may have been a “whoops” baby. Fifteen years into their marriage, Seabury and Eliza had already produced seven children. It wasn’t until Seabury retired, in his mid-fifties, that Gertrude was born. I don’t know many people who take that road purposefully after retirement—and at that age.

Gertrude Tredwell: The So-Called “Ghost Bride” of the Merchant’s House

Beyond being the youngest Tredwell, I knew everything I needed to know about society at that time when I first heard someone refer to her as the “ghost bride.” I conjured up some romantic, tragic image à la Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. But the nickname had nothing to do with Gothic romance. It simply meant that Gertrude had never married—so, naturally, the story goes, she just paced around her house until death, depressed because she’d never found a husband.

I don’t know how she truly felt about never marrying, though I’ll touch on that later. I couldn’t find a lot of information on how she was as a young woman. I did find some information related to her schooling. Being a teacher myself, I loved getting a glimpse into her life as a student.

Of the six Tredwell sisters, all received a private-school education befitting their class. You know how it went—women of the time were taught how not to be pushy, opinionated nuisances, and instead how to be marketable as marriage material. Social graces, I believe it’s called. The Tredwell sisters would have learned some rudimentary academics—geography, literature, the classics—but the greater goal was refinement. They were…good girls. But not in the way that the rest of us ovulating folks are.

Education at Mrs. Okill’s School for Young Ladies

There were a number of respectable schools where wealthy families could send their daughters before they became baby factories. The Tredwells chose Mrs. Okill’s School, which operated as both a boarding and day school. Her school boasted an impressive roster of pupils, including Elizabeth Hamilton Schuyler, granddaughter of Alexander Hamilton. For the record, 19th-century New York apparently only had ten families and they keep resurfacing in every story I read and plan on writing. Nobody except them lived in New York.

While Mrs. Okill may have taught her students the proper comportment of society women, she herself had a rather improper beginning: she was—gasp—illegitimate. But her father happened to be the man who invented the invisible ink used by George Washington and his spy ring during the Revolutionary War, which is pretty cool. [See? Everybody is connected to everybody!]

As for the relationship between Mrs. Okill and young Gertrude? If we go by one surviving comment from the teacher, it might not have been a warm one:

“Dear Gertrude,” it begins, “I regret to say that your writing is carelessly done.”

At eighteen, Gertrude left Mrs. Okill’s dusty ass school and began studying under a Mrs. Gibbons instead. I’m not saying it was because of that nasty comment, but… it’s fun to draw conclusions sometimes. Her sisters, meanwhile, finished their education at Mrs. Okill’s.

A Forbidden Love: Gertrude Tredwell and Dr. Luis Walton

It’s not as if Gertrude never had prospects. There was Luis Walton, a doctor—though not a wealthy one. His name appears in several spellings, but the Merchant’s House Museum archives spell it L-U-I-S, so I’ll do the same.

Still, he seems to have been a kind and compassionate man. His friend and colleague Edward Livingston Trudeau wrote that Walton was a great comfort to him during his battle with tuberculosis, often helping to care for Trudeau’s wife and children while he recovered in the Adirondacks. Walton also served as an attending physician at hospitals for the poor.

But… fuck him, said Gertrude’s father. Because worst of all—he was Catholic. Yuck. What would the respectable Episcopalian Tredwells have in common with this Irish Catholic man and his family? Nothing! After all, the Tredwells believed God died on the cross—and the Catholics, apparently, believed He died on a dirtier, worse cross. Seabury forbade the marriage.

Legend says Gertrude never loved anyone again after Luis. And honestly, that doesn’t seem like such a bold claim. She never married, nor—so far as I can tell—did she ever date again.

This is where my mind starts asking questions and inventing stories about their relationship. How did they spend their time? Did they have inside jokes? Did Luis finger Gertrude under her 50 layers of skirts? Was it ardent love on both sides? Was she infatuated, and he was more casual?

Apparently, he was the only man who took any interest in her. Owing to her reclusive nature in her later years, is this because she was a peculiar person?

The Merchant’s House Freezes in Time

As the decades passed, New York City moved uptown, and the once-elegant Bond Street neighborhood turned industrial. There’s something unbearably sad about the world changing around the remaining Tredwell sisters while they stayed frozen in time, shuttered inside their home like relics themselves. The Merchant’s House Museum—filled with dance cards, gowns, and fine furnishings—became a mausoleum of memory.

What did they do with all that time? How did they feel watching the world modernize around them? Occasionally, the sisters were seen taking carriage rides. Mostly, they stayed indoors. One by one, they died off, until in 1909, at the age of sixty-nine, Gertrude Tredwell was the last one left.

She kept the house exactly as it had always been, refusing to part with the memories. Gertrude was born in a four-poster bed surrounded by a large, bustling family—and in 1933, she died in that same bed, surrounded by none of them.

The True Haunting of the Merchant’s House Museum

What’s most haunting about her story isn’t that people occasionally claim to see Gertrude Tredwell’s ghost at the Merchant’s House Museum. It’s that she spent so many years living like one—alone in a house filled with the ghosts of her past.

When she finally passed, an old playbill from the late 19th century was found in the pocket of a coat—apparently never removed since the night its wearer returned home.

In a boarding house such as the one the Rings owned, it wasn’t unusual for two boarders to stand closely together to exchange whispers somewhere free from the ears of others. If the relationship between Levi Weeks and Elma Sands, both young and unmarried boarders at the Ring house, had been exclusive to a few stolen moments at the end of a hallway, then none would have had much to say. The end of a hallway, top of a stairwell, or corner of a common room would make for a fine place to chatter in hushed whispers. In the midst of boarders rushing to and from their daily tasks — and the creaking floorboards they walked over — there was always plenty to discuss and gossip about.

But according to fellow boarders, and one in particular, named Mr. Croucher, the flirtation wasn’t exclusive to the odd, less trafficked corner of the house. It didn’t stop at hurried, low-toned flirtations, either. Mr. Croucher offered that he “saw them [Levi and Elma] in a very intimate situation.” Despite the tryst, other boarders swore Elma Sands wasn’t the only one to whom Levi Weeks paid special attention. Apparently, he paid very special attention to her cousin, Hope, too. But Levi’s split interest almost feels fair once you hear that Elma was apparently having an affair with the boarding house owner, Elias Ring.

This last detail is made even more salacious when one learns that Elias Ring was married to Catherine Ring — Elma’s own cousin.

If such things were to be believed, or even speculated, then it may have come as a welcome relief to Catherine Ring that her cousin, Elma, left parentless and now living in her boarding house, was engaged to Levi Weeks.

On December 22, 1799, Elma and Levi were to be married in secret. At least that’s what Elma told her cousin, Hope, the day before. Hope then relayed the information to Catherine. It wasn’t a bad match, really. Elma was a twenty-two-year-old young woman who worked in the store the Rings operated near the boarding house. Levi Weeks was a carpenter who, by almost all accounts, was a good and kind man. I picture him as having a bowl cut and wearing a straw hat, but that’s probably because his name is Levi. For the purposes of this article, let’s picture them as both young and hot — physically in their prime.

That December evening was brutally frigid, with plenty of snow on the ground. The sharp lashing of the wind numbed the face and stung the ears. Both the East River and the Hudson had begun to freeze over. I wouldn’t have left my home to get life-saving medication in that weather, let alone marry a guy named Levi. But I digress.

Elma decided to wear a shawl — Canada Goose hadn’t been invented yet — and borrowed a muff from a neighbor. Catherine Ring had never seen Elma happier than on that evening of December 22nd. Cold snap be damned, she was lively and in high spirits. Around eight o’clock, Catherine bid her goodnight and went upstairs to sleep. Perhaps as she lay down for bed, a warm smile spread across her face. Or perhaps her heart raced just a bit, nervous for her cousin’s impending secret ceremony. The next time she would see Elma, she would be married to Levi Weeks.

But December 22nd was the last time anybody saw Elma Sands alive.

Eleven Tense Days

It’s uncertain if Levi and Elma left the Ring boarding house together that night. But later in the evening on December 22nd, Levi returned home. Elma did not. Upon his return — and even into the next morning — Levi appeared as he usually did: unconcerned. There was nothing to worry about.

Worry and tension began to grow throughout the day among Elma’s family. For certain, they grew disgusted and frustrated at Levi’s nonchalance. Didn’t he care where his supposed wife was? As the hours passed, Levi had to have heard the growing concern among the family. At some point he decided to leave the Ring house. Catherine stopped him. Wasn’t he worried that his alleged wife, or at least fiancée, was missing going on twenty-four hours now?

Evidently, that was the first time Levi Weeks had been informed that he was supposed to have married Elma. Looking around at the faces of Hope, Elias, and Catherine, he made a gut-punch realization: they all believed he had proposed marriage to Elma, and that the two were to have been married the prior evening. Levi had to have realized this didn’t look good. At that moment, “...he turned pale; trembled to a great degree; was much agitated, and began to cry, clapping his hands together, cried out I’m ruined – I’m ruined – I’m undone forever, unless she appears to clear me…”

Who would believe him? Levi expressed that he had not asked Elma to marry him. He would never have done so without his brother Ezra’s approval.

Elias Ring straight up told Levi that he believed he was guilty. Levi “...appeared as white as ashes, and trembled all over like a leaf.”

The days crawled by, and Elma Sands still did not return home. Catherine Ring was distraught. Being disturbed by her grief, Levi offered some chilling words on December 26th: he said he strongly felt Elma was dead and in heaven, and that Catherine’s mourning would not bring her back. When Catherine asked why Levi would say such a thing, he stated that he heard Elma say she wished she had never existed.

Elma’s Body Is Discovered

On January 2nd, 1800, the body of Elma Sands was finally found.

It was discovered at the bottom of a well in Greenwich Village — at the time a semi-rural area called Lispenard Meadow. On the evening Elma somehow wound up at the well, there would have been scattered houses and snow-covered roads. It would have been starkly quiet, given the rural surroundings and excruciatingly cold weather. Some claimed to have heard a woman screaming for “mercy” and shouts of “murder” near the well that night.

Elma’s body was bruised on her neck and shoulders. She looked severely beaten. Her hair hung loose, her face discolored and swollen. To most, the markings were definitive proof she’d been murdered before being thrown into the well. Still, forensic science didn’t exist in 1800 — and some reports suggest those marks could have been caused by the rope used to pull her from the well. Eleven days in a well would do heinous things to anyone’s body.

The Ring family belonged to the Quaker community. Quakers are pretty anti-performance. Laying out a body for public viewing isn’t done. But Catherine and Elias made the decision to put Elma’s body on display. Her corpse — smelling, deteriorating, and brutalized — was put outside the home for public viewing in an open casket for three days. Crowds swelled.

According to the family, Levi was the last person to see Elma alive. Needing someone to identify her body, and given the accusation from the Ring family, authorities called upon Levi Weeks. Allegedly, Levi asked if Elma’s body had been found in the well in Lispenard’s Meadow — and was arrested shortly after. After all, how would he have known she was killed and dumped into that well?

America’s first recorded murder trial was underway three months later.

The Trial

The courthouse was packed and spectators stood around the courthouse when they couldn’t get inside. Levi Weeks didn’t just face a trial of jury by his peers, he stood up against a city of people who already strongly felt that he was guilty and wanted to see him hanged.

The prosecution team — Cadwallader D. Colden and DeWitt Clinton (yes, both future NYC mayors) — was dull compared to the defense. They tried to prove something about Ezra Weeks’s sleigh: that it was one of the only sleighs in town with a jingle bell, and that witnesses who heard a sleigh near the well that night heard its distinctive bell. But none of it mattered. Nothing could be proven, only speculated. The whole Frosty the Snowman of forensic evidence.

Were Elma and Levi an item at the time of her murder? Despite what Levi said, everyone seemed to think so. Mr. Croucher offered his piece with the following testimony:

“...in private frequently and all times of the night, I knew him [Levi] to pass two whole nights in her bedroom…I saw the prisoner at the bar [Levi] come out of her room, and pass the door in his shirt only, to his own room.”

Croucher was a weirdo and gave everyone in the house bad vibes. Allegedly, he left New York after the trial and pursued a life of crime in Virginia and England. There’s an allegation of child rape against him too, but no official records exist. Croucher and Levi had words once on the staircase of the Ring house. Evidently, there was a time when Croucher passed Elma on the stairs and she “cried ah and fainted away.”

Levi comes out from his room and says something to the effect of this “not being the first time you insulted Elma.” After a few exchanges, the matter was dropped. Croucher maintains that despite the hiccup, he wished Levi no ill will.

Hope Sands straight up threw the pair under the horse and carriage. During the trial, she had been asked if she observed any acts of intimacy between Levi and Elma. From the transcript:

“I then found Levi and Elma together in her bed-room...I left my shoes at the bottom of [the stairs], and went softly up to listen...I heard whispering and staid at the door a long time, more than an hour.”

Hope then ran downstairs when she heard someone coming. It was the doctor who had come to attend to Elma. Elma Sands had suffered from “cramps of the stomach” for about a year. There’s a novel that recently fictionalized this story and posits the stomach cramps as a miscarriage — interesting, saucy perspective, but with little to no merit.

This same episode was confirmed by another witness, Margaret Clark.

But there’s another matter the two didn’t see eye to eye on: there was speculation that Levi and Hope had a situationship.

Hope testified that Levi wasn’t particular to her as he was to Elma — they’d gone to church together and once stopped at Ezra’s house. That was it. Margaret Clark testified that, though often absent from the house, she believed Levi paid more attention to Hope than to Elma.

Was Levi Weeks really just a fuck boy?

Some witnesses reportedly saw Levi probing the well days before the murder to see how deep it was — though there’s no definitive proof.

Here’s a detail with a lot of speculation: during Catherine Ring’s testimony, her husband Elias was asked to leave. Halfway through, he apparently decided, who the hell were these people to keep him from hearing his wife? He came back in, stood behind Catherine, but was reprimanded and ushered out.

I haven’t found a definitive reason for Elias’s initial removal from the courtroom, but the testimony from another boarder, Joseph Watkins, is interesting. Watkins said that when Catherine left the city to escape yellow fever, things got rowdy. One night, he heard noise and the bed shaking in Elma’s room, which was above his. He heard a man and woman’s voices — and it wasn’t Levi’s. He knew it wasn’t, because Levi’s was low and soft. In fact, he knew it was Elias Ring’s because it was high and loud. Watkins told his wife that Elma would be ruined. Asked how many times he heard such noises in Catherine’s absence, he said between eight and fourteen times.

When cross-examined and asked if Hope had reason to believe Elma had been intimate with anyone besides Levi, Hope answered, “Never.”

Elias said nothing on that matter but countered with this:

“At this time, when my wife was gone into the country, Levi and Elma were constantly together in private. I was alone and very lonesome, and was induced to believe from their conduct that they were shortly to be married.”

Around midnight, he said, “I heard a talking and noise in his room. In the morning, I went up into the room and found the bed tumbled, and Elma’s clothes, which she wore in the afternoon, lying on the bed.” When pressed further — did Elma leave his room naked? — Elias clarified that she’d left only part of her clothes behind.

Catherine added:

“After my return I paid strict attention to their conduct, and saw an appearance of mutual attachment, but nothing improper…”

According to nearly everyone, Levi and Elma were definitely entangled. It only gets crazier.

Levi later asked Hope to vouch for him — to go to the Alderman’s office and sign a paper stating he’d paid no more attention to Elma than any other woman in the house. Hope said she couldn’t sign it because it would have been “positive lies.”

Not looking good for Levi. But good thing he had the most insane defense team ever.

Ezra Weeks managed to secure quite the dream team: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and Henry Brock Livingston. Hamilton owed Ezra money for building The Grange; Burr joined to protect the reputation of his Manhattan Company — the very one that dug the well where Elma’s body was found. Why were the Founding Fathers always involved in like 700 things? Founding ADHD?

One of the defense’s major arguments was that Elma had been prescribed laudanum and allegedly threatened to drink enough to kill herself. Depending on the source, this story changes — in some, Levi heard her say it; in others, a friend did. The testimony suggests Elma said it at the dinner table. Still, the defense used it to sow doubt in jurors’ minds: perhaps Elma’s death was suicide, not murder.

As for Levi’s comment about the well — he’d heard neighbors discussing that Elma’s shawl (borrowed from a neighbor) was found near it. When he heard her body had been found, he asked if it was that well.

There’s plenty of salacious testimony, but none of it definitively proved Levi Weeks murdered Elma Sands. The prosecution lacked motive, and the evidence was circumstantial. A medical exam revealed Elma wasn’t pregnant.

Levi Weeks was found not guilty. Absolutely nobody in New York was happy to see him walk free. He left the Empire State, moved around several times, and eventually settled in Mississippi. More so than the ghost of Elma who might haunt lower Manhattan, the specter of that trial haunted Levi Weeks the rest of his days.

The so-called “Murder Well” still exists — buried somewhere beneath Manhattan’s cobblestones, another ghost under a city built on gossip, tragedy, and too many people living under one roof.

Bibliography

Colden, Cadwallader D., DeWitt Clinton, Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and Henry Brockholst Livingston. The Trial of Levi Weeks for the Murder of Gulielma Sands. New York: John Furman, 1800. Digitized transcript available via the Library of Congress.

Not too long ago, my colleagues and I were talking about most apt stereotypes for teachers of each subject. “Math?” asked someone. “Come on,” said another. “Obviously socially awkward.” Right. “English?” someone asked. “Bitches. Every class tangent is about themselves.” Damn it if it wasn’t true. “History?” Everyone mulled that one over. “They love to argue,” said a history teacher. “They think they know everything.”

Ding ding ding!

My budding career as a historian, or at the very least, history enthusiast has been all of two months so far. I can already tell you…no lies detected.

Let me be clear. I’m interested in history, and I’m interested in sex. I decided to blend the two together in what would be a slightly academic, but more importantly, entertaining account. I’m here to have fun and so are you. If not, may I direct you to the nearest Puritan diary collection.

Last week some guy popped into my Substack comments to debate Hamilton’s central banking plan. As if this is where we break down 18th-century monetary policy. Bro, I write about colonial sex toys. Wrong classroom.

The second was to refer to Hamilton as, “a seditious slave trader.” Here is where there’s room for a discussion, if only the guy who commented didn’t creep me out. If you are someone who feels that you cannot see humanity in a man who treated others as less than human, respect. That is a completely valid perspective, full stop. I’m not asking you to do so. I don’t expect you to do so. You are right.

I personally don’t like moral absolutism nor oversimplification. The academic in me tells me that both of those things are a dangerous, slippery slope. I am usually going to examine historical figures within the social and historical context of when they existed. That includes reckoning with enslavement. To ignore it would be dishonest; to reduce people only to it risks losing sight of how power, intimacy, and contradictions actually worked.

This guy then went on to essentially praise Jefferson for his agrarian ideals and desire for more state concentrated power. There’s a lot to be said there. Especially, again, considering the historical context. Too much for me to debate over with some weirdo on the internet.

I wanted to study history because I find it to be interesting. Facts and figures don’t do a whole lot for me personally, but the stories of people do. Here’s what I’m quickly learning that I hate about history.

There’s always going to be someone with deeply nuanced understanding of an area of history who’s going to catch an attitude. This is because you (obviously purposefully and totally full of ill intent) didn’t realize that The Starfish People of 1618 relied on a diet of pooka shells and shish kebabs not because of their hereditary low iron, but because their palates had evolved to only be able to digest meat after first crushing something hard between their teeth.

I’d argue, who’s the bigger loser here? Me for not knowing that nuanced fact? Or experts for spending money and time over the course of a decade to study something that nobody…really gives a shit about. (Spoiler - the experts) Oh good, someone dedicated their life to this. Civilization is saved.

It just never feels like history is much of a settled matter. Maybe this will make more sense in my historical research class in the fall. But, for every historian or historical resource that says with absolute certainty that things happened this way, there’s always an equally credible historian or historical resource that says it happened that way. And if you cite historian “B” over historian “A?” Congratulations, you’ve just signed your own execution order. Blindfold optional.

I’m here for stories, especially about sex, relationships, and women’s lives in early America. I’ll bring as much fidelity as possible, and I welcome (respectful) debate. Even better? Share resources, share weird facts, share the things that make history human. That’s the kind of conversation I want here. If you came for dry timelines and tax ledgers, I hear Jefferson’s ghost runs office hours down the hall.