The Events Leading Down to the Tragedy
The Events Leading Down to the Tragedy
DOCUMENT ONE
Being the First Draft of a Paper to be Read before the Tuscarora Township Historical Society by Mr. Hardeign Spoynte, B.A.
Madame President, members, guests:
It is with unabashed pride that I stand before you this evening. You will recall from your perusal of our Society’s Bulletin (Vol. XLII, No. 3, Fall, 1955, pp. 7-8) [pp. correct? check before making fair copy. HS] that I had undertaken a research into the origins of that event so fraught with consequences to the development of our township, the Wat-ling-Fraskell duel. I virtually promised that the cause of the fatal strife would be revealed by, so to speak, the spotlight of science [metaphor here suff. graceful? perh. “magic” better? HS]. I am here to carry out that promise.
Major Wading did [tell a lie] prevaricate. Colonel Fraskell rightly reproached him with mendacity. Perhaps from this day the breach between Watlingist and Fraskellite may
begin to heal, the former honestly acknowledging themselves in error and the latter magnanimous in victory.
My report reflects great credit on a certain modest resident of historic old Northumberland County who, to my regret, is evidently away on a well-earned vacation from his arduous labors [perh. cliche? No. Fine phrase. Stett HS]. Who he is you will learn in good time.
I shall begin with a survey of known facts relating to the Watling-Fraskell duel, and as we are all aware, there is for such a quest no starting point better than the monumental work of our late learned county historian, Dr. Donge. Donge states (Old Times on the Oquanantic, 2nd ed., 1873, pp. 771-2): “No less to be deplored than the routing of the West Brance Canal to bypass Eleusis was the duel in which perished miserably Major Elisha Watling and Colonel Hiram Fraskell, those two venerable pioneers of the Oquanantic Valley. Though in no way to be compared with the barbarous blood feuds of the benighted Southern States of our Union, there has persisted to our own day a certain division of loyalty among residents of Tuscarora Township and particularly the borough of Eleusis. Do we not see elm-shaded Northumberland Street adorned by two gracefully pillared bank buildings, one the stronghold of the Fraskellite and the other of the Watlingist? Is not the debating society of Eleusis Academy sundered annually by the proposition, “Resolved: that Major Elisha Watling (on alternate years, Colonel Hiram Fraskell) was no gentleman’? And did not the Watlingist propensities of the Eleusis Colonial Dames and the Fraskellite inclination of the Eleusis Daughters of the American Revolution ‘clash’ in September, 1869, at the storied Last Joint Lawn Fete during which eclairs and (some say) tea cups were hurled?” [Dear old Donge! Prose equal Dr. Johnson!]
If I may venture to follow those stately periods with my own faltering style, it is of course known to us all that the controversy has scarcely diminished to the present time. Eleu-m Academy, famed alma mater (i.e., “foster mother”) of the immortal Hovington1 is, alas, no more. It expired in flames on the tragic night of August 17, 1901, while the Watlingist
*vide Spoynte, H.: “Egney Hovington, Nineteenth-Century American Nature Poet, and his career at Eleusis Academy, October 4— October 28, 1881” (art.) in Bull of the Tuscarora Township Hut. Soc., VoL XVI, No. 4, Winter, 1929, pp. 4-18.
members of that Eleusis Hose Company Number One which was stabled in Northumberland Street battled for possession of the fire hydrant which might have saved the venerable pile against the members of the predominantly Fraskellite Eleusis Hose Company Number One which was then stabled in Oquanantic Street. (The confusion of the nomenclature is only a part of the duel’s bitter heritage.) Nevertheless, though the Academy and its Debating Society be gone, the youth of Eleusis still carries on the fray in a more modern fashion which rises each November to a truly disastrous climax during “Football Pep Week” when the “Colonels” of Central High School meet in sometimes gory combat with the “Majors” of North Side High. I am privately informed by our borough’s Supervising Principal, George Croud, Ph.B., that last November’s bill for replacement of broken window panes in both school buildings amounted to $231.47, exclusive of state sales tax; and that the two school nurses are already “stockpiling” gauze, liniment, disinfectants and splints in anticipation of the seemingly inevitable autumnal crop of abrasions, lacerations and fractures, [mem. Must ask Croud whether willing be publ. quoted or “informed source.” HS] And the adults of Eleusis no less assiduously prosecute the controversy by choice of merchants, the granting of credit, and social exclusiveness.