Mutti's Ghost Story

August 1968, Maine, Ellsworth on the coast

I remember the night clearly, we were visiting my grandparents at their cabin in Maine, which was actually called a cottage: mountains = cabin; ocean = cottage. Our summer friends and family were finishing the nightly baseball game and we kids (I should say children here, in deference to Mutti; baby goats are kids) decided to visit the graveyard and tell ghost stories. My summer friends had been coming to this part of Maine’s coast for over 5 generations. They claim to be among the first settlers of Massachusetts and I believe them. Maine was their summer camp with cabins that had no running water but did have electricity. Funny the priorities. The graveyard was old and unkempt but their ancestors were evident – Martha Hayes 1644-1679 – such short lives. Imagine childbirth in a day without our medical advances and only midwives and prayer. When my turn came, I said, “My grandmother has the best ghost story because it is true. Its about her mother.” Of course we decided to go ask her to tell it right then and there.
All of us gathered in my grandparents’ small cottage (which did have running water and looked over the bay) filling the parlor. “Mutti,” I asked, “Please tell us the ghost story about your mother.” With a sharp look, she imperiously replied, “That is a story only for the family.” My mother, watching and amused, was silent. “Please” begged John Madore (very cute – I had a crush on him every summer). And so she told the story. This is in her words and as I have told it to my children in the boat, on the lake at our cabin under the stars.

Cincinnati 1842.

“My mother was Otilli, called Tilly, by her family.” Mutti began (Me: Tilly was my great grandmother and so your great great grandmother. Mutti was Jesse Mueller Toboldt, formally baptized Josephine Ellen). “My mother’s mother was a widow and owed a notions store, which fed her family and provided a home. The notions store was cluttered with large spools of thread, cards of buttons, hooks and needles. Otilli worked there everyday helping customers and working the old cash register with her mother. She was one of 6 children, who all helped in the store as soon as they were old enough. School was optional. Indeed I,” Mutti explained, “dropped out of school in 7th grade to join the theatre.

“On this particular day, a very rich woman entered the store. Tilly was waiting on her and the woman was so taken with her that she offered Tilly a position as a friend to her daughter, who was recovering from a serious illness. ‘Would you care to come live with us?’ she asked. Tilly's mother started to say no but Tilly, irrepressible as always interrupted saying, ‘Yes!’ Her mother, however, was not so sure and was, indeed, a bit miffed that Tilly had said yes so quickly.

To be continued...