Mary Elizabeth Sawyer

the Redstone School incident (1815)

I am writing this so that their story may be told . . .

Me and my father were working on our family farm in Sterling, Massachusetts, 1815. I was only 9 years old at the time. I navigate my way to the sheep pen after feeding the horses this particular morning to find my father kneeled over a newborn lamb. This one had been abandoned by the mother. Sheep were notorious for abandoning their young, especially if the ewe had given birth to twins. This seemed to be the circumstance we encountered.

Father told me straight away there was no hope for the poor creature. There wasn’t much life left in the little lamb. She was nearly starved and had almost frozen in the cold March night air. I immediately began to cry and prayed out loud over the lamb as follows:

“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:

He leadeth me beside still waters.

He restoreth my soul:”

But before I could finish the prayer, I began to plead with father through my tears. Why this little lamb? I do not know. This was not the first time such an event had happened on our farm but perhaps it was because I was a little older than before.

“But father, please, she is only a baby. She is still alive,” I pleaded strongly.

“It’s not possible to save her, Mary. She is too young and frail,” he told me.

I only paused for a moment and looked down at the little lamb. I continued to pray through the sobs putting my hands and face on her cold skin and her little nose.

“He leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul.

He leadeth me in the path of righteousness for His name’s sake,” I sobbed with a broken voice over the little lamb. Quietly, I heard my father help me finish the prayer.

“Yea, oh, Lord, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.

Thy rod and thy staff comfort me.”

Through the early chill of the morning, I carried God’s little creature back to our house across the pasture. Father said all creatures belong to the Lord. Sally, our sheep herding dog, was in tow.

“Mother! Mother!” I shouted at our house loudly. Realizing suddenly that the lamb was getting heavy I began to search for strength in the Lord’s prayer once more.

“What is it dear?!” my mother shouted as she walked onto the front porch.

“I have a lamb! I have a lamb!” I told her while running as fast as I could with new-fangled energy made possible by my mother’s voice. “Father said I can keep it!” I presented the seemingly lifeless little thing to her with my arms held out before me. It was stained with dirt and blood having just been born that night, and yet it barely moved. I couldn’t but help to notice how pink its tiny ears were. I started sobbing uncontrollably as I fell down before my mother with the lamb at her feet.

“It’s not going to live! It’s going to die, isn’t it?!” I shouted through my tears. My throat felt tight and swollen as if it had been occupied by a handful of hot rocks. I couldn’t even keep my eyes open I was crying so hard.

“Dear, wait a minute before you go on like that,” my mother whispered as she knelt down over me and the baby lamb. “She is in a pretty bad way, sweetheart. She needs to get warm. Let’s take her inside.” And with that, having won the sympathies of both my parents, my mother and I carried the lamb in together and placed her on one of father’s long sleeve shirts near the fireplace. My mother stoked the fire, and I began to settle in for a long vigil over my lamb, my choirs having been abandoned.

I was fortunate not to have school the next day also, so that night I stayed on the floor with my little lamb. Occasionally, I tried to give her some goat milk from a tin pan by using the tip of my finger, but she wasn’t interested. Eventually, I fell asleep.

The morning came with the Lord’s blessing and my mother feeding the chickens. She would place the feed on the floor and sweep the feed across the open spaces between the old floor planks. The chickens would peck it off the ground while they were still under the house. Next, we would all take turns using the outhouse. When the bucket was full, we would take it to a pre-dug hole far away from the house and bury the contents.

“How’s your lamb this morning?” mother asked rather pleasantly. I rolled over the other way to face the lamb and to my surprise she was still alive and seemed a little more brilliant than the day before, but who wouldn’t?

“She is looking at me,” I whispered. “I wonder if she is hungry?”

“Well, you will have to feed her. I am sure her mother has abandoned her for good by now,” my mother said while still in progress of her morning rituals. “Come here and fill this calf bottle with goat milk. But don’t think you are going to lie around with her all day while I do your chores again,” she warned.

“No mother, I plan on getting started right away,” I said hurriedly. With that, I jumped from the floor and began to heat up some goat milk which I poured into the bottle. It didn’t take long before the little lamb was nursing away. Occasionally, she would give the bottle a great tug which I thought provided even more proof that she was going to survive.

She was extremely dirty. I knew I had to contend with my chores before I could bathe her. She was so weak she couldn’t stand on her own for very long. My mother wrapped her front legs with some bandages so as to strengthen them and help her to be able to stand. But she wouldn’t stand for about another day still. It would be a full week before she could walk at least a little, albeit rather clumsily.

Sections of a beautiful early morning pink sky were beginning to show through the black clouds of the night which still drifted overhead. The dark clouds went all the way out to the silver horizon. It was a cool morning, and the horses were fed and let out of their stalls in a timely fashion. I still had to hay them when I began to hear the bleating of the baby lamb from inside the house. It made me pause at first then it made me smile. It was long, constant, and extremely funny at first, but then I realized my mother was not going to have her day full of bleating noises from the tiny lamb and I began to get nervous.

I left the horses in the field with their hay, and I immediately ran over to the pigs and began to slop them as fast as I could. I was becoming anxious that mother was going to yell for me at any moment. I worked swiftly and efficiently. I was sure that some of my chores could be put on hold, but the animals had to be fed at all costs.

Once all the animals were fed and let out of their stalls, I began the arduous task of mucking. It was getting warm and I could still hear the onslaught of bleating from my little lamb echoing throughout the house. I began to think that maybe mother didn’t mind so much when, suddenly, the stern calling of my name from the house told me otherwise.

“Mary! Come get this lamb!” exclaimed my mother’s voice. I threw down my rake and ran for the house faster than I have ever previously run in my life. I only stopped to close a couple of gates as I went about, and I darted toward the sound of my mother’s yelling and the bleating of my precious baby lamb.

“Mother, what is it?” I asked as I entered the house nearly out of breath.

“I think it’s time to start keeping this lamb outside somewhere. Maybe in an empty stall,” she informed me.

“What’s wrong?” I said softly as I moved toward the lamb who was calling out non stop at this point.

“That awful noise! And she won’t keep silent for five minutes. I can’t take it anymore. It echoes in the house and I am going blind with a headache. She is not my responsibility,” mother said. Give her credit, she had put up with it for a full week at this point.

I took the calf bottle and poured a hefty portion of the goat milk that was still left in it from the previous night onto my shirt tail. I took the shirt tail and gave it to the lamb who began to chew on it and follow me around immediately. I guess she was just hungry and needed attention. And from that moment forward she was the quietest creature on the farm. We also began to form a bond that was only to grow with each day. It was the kind of bond that even other people would respect.

She followed me everywhere I went, and she seemed to be in much better spirits. As the day progressed my little lamb and I played together as often as my chores would allow the freedom. It appeared that she had no intention of leaving my side. I couldn’t help but to wonder if she thought I was her new mother.

After about two weeks she was doing very well and was obviously going to survive, the Lord still willing. She was vibrant and happy and, to me, she never seemed to miss the other lambs or her mother. In fact, the lamb loved the cows and heifers, but wouldn’t have anything to do with the sheep. The little lamb was content to follow me around the farm chewing on my shirt tail that usually was soaked in goat milk.

Naturally, she wasn’t happy about me leaving for school over the next two weeks. Personally, I couldn’t concentrate on my assignments and, after arriving home from school, I generally ran through my chores as fast as I could. All that occupied my thoughts was spending time with the little lamb.

Sometimes she would watch me with her pink ears pointed out to the side of her head and tiny little black eyes that were surrounded by a coat of white fleece that was beginning to grow. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen when she was standing directly in the sun. Her white fleece radiated in the sunlight, and it was an amazing spectacle to behold. Her ears seemed bright and pink as well. Sometimes, in the sunlight, I could see right through her ears!

After a few more days my mother began to complain about the lamb. She wasn’t happy that she had become like a babysitter for the lamb while I was away at school. Apparently, the lamb was noisy and extremely anxious until I returned. Even though I had been locking her in one of the horse stalls, her bleating was loud and carried across the whole farm. My father would let her out of the stall at times, but she would just run inside and pester mother. Occasionally, she would get into the garden if mother and father were to be located there. Either Way, the lamb absolutely hated to be separated from me and there was no replacement as far as she was concerned.

The next morning my brother, Nat, said that we should take the lamb to school with us. I agreed wholeheartedly. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Perhaps it was because I was the good little girl who was used to playing by the rules? Yes, to take a lamb to school was against the rules, I thought.

I took my blanket and a breadbasket with me and when we got to the gate at the schoolyard, I simply took the tiny lamb and wrapped her in my blanket and placed her in the breadbasket. I carried her all the way to my desk without incident. She couldn’t have weighed 15 pounds at this point. No one seemed to notice, and the little lamb was very quiet and still the entire time. So it was in this manner that my brother and I sat in class with the little lamb under my desk wrapped in the cozy blanket. It was all going very well.

“Nat, perhaps you can come to the board and work out this multiplication table for the class?” asked the teacher, Mrs. Kimball. The multiplication table was 8X8= ?

“Yes, Mrs. Kimball,” Nat grumbled. When he got to the board he picked up the chalk and wrote 6… then hesitated. Slowly and very carefully he wrote a 9 beside the 6. His answer was 69. He turned around to catch Mrs. Kimball with a sour look on her face.

“Now Nat, how many times have we been over this? Are you not doing your homework assignments? Class, lets help Nat with this multiplication table. Mary, perhaps you would like to come to the board at this time and provide us with the correct answer.” Nat left as quickly as he could to return to the safety of his desk.

I took the breadbasket underneath my desk and pushed it back a little further with my feet so I could stand up. I could feel the lamb beginning to shuffle inside the basket. No one questioned me at this point, but as I took a few steps away from the blanket, the little lamb must have heard me getting up for she came stumbling out and bleating immediately. Total chaos then followed.

“Mary, for heaven’s sake! Please take this lamb home immediately,” Mrs. Kimball cried out. The children were all laughing and making a fuss. The lamb could not have been more delighted as her little tail wagged with an overabundance of happiness. She went down the row and all the children were reaching out to pet her. She was immensely cute.

“Quiet students. The lamb must go,” Mrs. Kimball began. Even though she did seemed amused by the incident, she began to shoo the lamb out of the school door.

“What makes the lamb love Mary, so?,” asked one of the girls.

“Mary must love the little lamb, that is why. Kindness to animals will gain their loyalty,” Mrs. Kimball explained.

“Mrs. Kimball, can the lamb stay? It must have followed Mary here this morning,” examined Thomas.

“No, it is a disruption to the learning process. Mary you are excused for the day, but you be sure this doesn’t happen again. Take the lamb back home, please,” Mrs. Kimball insisted.

“Yes, Mrs. Kimball,” I replied looking down at the floor as me and my little lamb left from the schoolyard together. It was bright and beautiful outside, but I had no idea what I was going to do with my lamb. She couldn’t be separated from me, and neither could I be separated from her. I could still here the children laughing and saying Mrs. Kimball’s name as we left.

Johnny Roulstone was a young boy who was working on his uncle’s farm, the well-respected Reverend Lemuel Capen. Students who were planning to go to the university after graduating school often prepared for college life with a minister of the faith during the summers.

Johnny was at school that particular day having a visit. He must have heard of the incident after I left with my lamb. Having been told so, he was extremely delighted. The next day while at school Johnny handed me a piece of paper.

“What is it?” I asked him.

“Just read it,” he said, pushing his oversized thick glasses up his face with his middle finger. I opened the piece of paper which read:

Mary had a little lamb,

Its fleece was white as snow…

I stood motionless. Did Johnny really notice just how beautiful my little lamb’s fleece was?

“You don’t like it?” Johnny asked.

“I’m not finished,” I whispered softly.

“You sure take a long time,” he concluded.

“Just wait,” I said rather pointedly.

I continued reading where I left off:

And everywhere that Mary went,

the lamb was sure to go.

It followed her to school one day,

that was against the rule.

It made the children laugh and play,

to see a lamb at school.

Four years had passed since that day at Redstone school. The lamb was now a beloved family pet who hung around the farm all day and eagerly awaited my arrival home from school. She was the most delightful thing in my life. There wasn’t anything that could come between us.

It was now July 1819. I was 13 years of age and the little lamb wasn’t so little as she once was. She was, at times, a huge mass of the most beautiful white fleece anyone had ever seen. Even my mother and father agreed to this. Even Johnny would stop by in the summers to visit and he couldn’t believe how much she had grown up.

On this hot July day however, the dairy bull, Casper, had been turned out to pasture with the cows and heifers. He was an enormous bull of 2,000 pounds. He was constantly shaking his head and blowing and snorting this time of year. He was an extremely aggressive bull both in and out of mating season.

I had just crossed the pasture coming home from school and closed the gate behind me. As always, I called to my little lamb when suddenly I heard her franticly bleating out to me. She must have heard the gate squeak or perhaps even my voice. To my surprise, she was in the cow pasture staring me down as I came up the driveway. I could tell by the way she was standing she was stressed and upset. I immediately ran toward the gate to get her to come to me, but there was nothing that could be done.

Casper was standing behind my little lamb. He charged after her so quickly that it all seemed to happen in a single moment. I called to the lamb and tried to coax her to start running in my direction. I ran as fast as I could for the pasture gate. But she just stood there bleating loudly.

Obviously she was afraid of the bull. She must not have known that he was in the pasture that day until she found her way in. It was one of those things where she was able to get into the pasture to be with the cows that she enjoyed, but she was never able to get out on her own. I would usually let her out on my way up to the house and we would make our way home together.

Looking back, I suppose she managed to evade him for most of the day, but distracted by me, she had no idea that he was charging her again. All her attention was focused on me, and I am sure she was begging me to save her, but I could not.

He hit her with such an impact that I cried out as if I had been hit myself. I felt all of my very own life immediately sucked out of me. She must have been thrown ten feet into the air. I could see pieces of her going in different directions. When she landed, at which point I knew she was already dead, Casper gorged her again and again. She never moved. He continued to throw her lifeless body into the air and gorge and trample her till there was nothing left. Finally, Casper just stood on her snorting and shaking his head as he looked around. He was flopping his ears vigorously as his tail moved in a vicious manner as well. I cried out as loudly as I could as I ran toward the gate to get him off of her.

“No! Mary, stop! Stop!” shouted my father as he ran after me to cut me off at the gate. My mother wasn’t far behind.

“Don’t do it, Mary!” she could be heard shouting along with my father. After a couple of moments having almost reached the gate, screaming and shouting for my little lamb, father tackled me, and we both landed on the ground. I continued screaming and thrashing about as both my mother and father tried saying something to me, but I couldn’t understand their words. I just lost my entire reason for living, so it felt.

We are taught that life is one of suffering. It is in the teachings of Christ that we will suffer, especially those who follow Him. These trying times in life are supposed to strengthen our walk with Him, but I never understood why it was necessary. I already followed as closely as I could so why did I have to lose my little lamb?

Three years later, 1822. Reverend Capen came to the house on horseback. His face had aged more than it should have since I last saw him. A once pleasant face now looked as if it was melting away from his bones.

“Greetings, reverend,” my father said as he laid some chopped firewood down by the front door. “How are you on this blessed day?” he asked, reverently slapping his dirty hands on the side of his breeches.

“Hello, Mr. Sawyer. I hope you and the wife are well. How are the children?” he asked softly, forcing a smile.

“We are well indeed sir. Blessed beyond what we deserve,” my father chuckled. “What brings you ‘bout this way?” father asked.

“Honestly, I have come to see Mary. Is she about?” Reverend Capen inquired.

“Certainly,” my father said without the slightest hesitation. “Mary, can you come here. The reverend wishes to speak to you.” Reverend Capen came down from his horse and held the reins in both hands. He seemed nervous and agitated, but mostly in spirit, as my mother would say. He could always force a smile, or “force a face,” was my father’s way of putting it.

“Hello, Reverend Capen, how are you today?” I asked, eager to hear of his message, which I was sure was another letter from Johnny whom my heart was getting fonder of each summer. I eagerly anticipated him coming to visit and bring me his poems which he loved to write for me.

“Well, Mary,” he started. He twisted the reins so tightly in his hands that the sound of hard, dry leather was obvious. “Mary how are you today?” he asked.

“I am doing well enough, reverend. Doing my chores and such,” I informed him. Something told me that he was not doing well himself.

“Mary, I will get on with it. I know you and Johnny were good friends…”

“What do you mean were good friends?” I asked quickly. I felt my knees beginning to shake. I thought he might have been ending our friendship.

“Mary, dear child, he always spoke so fondly of you. As you already know, he left and went to Harvard earlier this year,” he reminded me.

“Yes, I am aware,” I acknowledged.

“Indeed,” the reverend said looking down with a frown at the ground. “Mary, my heart is just full of sorrow. You know I love you and your family very much. I hate to tell you, but Johnny died about a week ago,” he said and then handed me a piece of paper from a director of some kind at Harvard University which read:

TRIBUTE OF AFFECTION

to

Johnny Roulstone, JR

a

MEMBER OF THE FRESHMAN CLASS

in

Harvard University;

WHO DIED

FEBRUARY 20, 1822

Printed By John Cotton, JR

Though in this year of 1889, I am now 83 years old, I can still hear the little lamb and Johnny Roulstone, both of whom I never got to say goodbye to properly; my memories of them both are a strong as the present-day wind. I can still here Johnny telling me, “You sure read slow!” after he handed me a short poem he had written about a 9-year-old little girl back in 1815 who had a little lamb…

“it’s fleece was white as snow.”

kind regards,

Mary

the end

P.s.

Mary Elizabeth Sawyer died Dec 11th, 1889. The Redstone school that was built in 1798 was later purchased by Henry Ford and relocated to a church property in Sudbury, Massachusetts. There is now a two-foot-tall statue and historical marker where the school was once located. Mary Sawyer’s house in Sterling, Massachusetts was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the year 2000. Sadly, on August 12th, 2007, it was destroyed by arsonists.