Ever wonder how Halloween got started…Ghost, Goblins, Devils, Witches, Spirits…Me too so I googled it and the History Channel came back with a pretty interesting article on it.

Halloween is thought to have originated with the ancient Celtic (pagan) festival of Samhain, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to disguise themselves and ward off spirits of the dead or ghosts. In Celtic tradition, this day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter.  Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. It was on the night that they celebrated Samhain, that the Celts believed that ghosts of the dead returned to earth.

Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.

To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.

By 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory.  In the course of the four hundred years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.

The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of “bobbing” for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

ALL SAINTS DAY

On May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1 around 1000 AD.  It’s widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related church-sanctioned holiday, All Saints Day.  In England, All Souls Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, the last day of October, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils.

The All Saints Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion and All Souls Day in England, began to be called All-Hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.

HALLOWEEN COMES TO AMERICA

Celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies.

As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups as well as the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The first celebrations included “play parties,” public events held to celebrate the harvest, where neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other’s fortunes, dance and sing.

Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the nineteenth century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country. In the second half of the nineteenth century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally.

TRICK-OR-TREAT

The American Halloween tradition of “trick-or-treating” probably dates back to the early All Souls’ Day parades in England. During the festivities, poor citizens would beg for food and families would give them pastries called “soul cakes” in return for their promise to pray for the family’s dead relatives.

The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits. The practice, which was referred to as “going a-souling” was eventually taken up by children who would visit the houses in their neighborhood and be given ale, food and money.

The tradition of dressing in costume for Halloween has both European and Celtic roots. Hundreds of years ago, winter was an uncertain and frightening time. Food supplies often ran low and, for the many people afraid of the dark, the short days of winter were full of constant worry.

On Halloween, when it was believed that ghosts came back to the earthly world, people thought that they would encounter ghosts if they left their homes. To avoid being recognized by these ghosts, people would wear masks when they left their homes after dark so that the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits. In an effort to keep ghosts away from their houses, the English people would place bowls of food outside their homes to appease the ghosts and prevent them from attempting to enter.

Borrowing from Irish and English traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today’s “trick-or-treat” tradition.

In the late 1800s, there was a move in America to mold Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighborly get-togethers than about ghosts, pranks and witchcraft. At the turn of the century, Halloween parties for both children and adults became the most common way to celebrate the day. Parties focused on games, foods of the season and festive costumes.

Parents were encouraged by newspapers and community leaders to take anything “frightening” or “grotesque” out of Halloween celebrations. Because of these efforts, Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones by the beginning of the twentieth century.

HALLOWEEN PARTIES

By the 1920’s and 1930’s, Halloween had become a secular, but community-centered holiday, with parades and town-wide Halloween parties as the featured entertainment. Despite the best efforts of many schools and communities, vandalism once again began to plague some celebrations in many communities during this time.

By the 1950s, town leaders had successfully limited vandalism and Halloween had evolved into a holiday directed mainly at the young children. Due to the high numbers of young children during the fifties baby boom, parties moved from town civic centers into the classroom or home, where they could be more easily accommodated.

And in the 1940’s and 1950’s, the centuries-old practice of trick-or-treating was also revived. Trick-or-treating was a relatively inexpensive way for an entire community to share the Halloween celebration. In theory, families could also prevent tricks being played on them by providing the neighborhood children with small treats.

BLACK CATS

Today’s Halloween ghosts are often depicted as more fearsome and malevolent, and our customs and superstitions are scarier too. We avoid crossing paths with black cats, afraid that they might bring us bad luck. This idea has its roots in the Middle Ages, when many people believed that witches avoided detection by turning themselves into black cats.

We try not to walk under ladders for the same reason. This superstition may have come from the ancient Egyptians, who believed that triangles were sacred (it also may have something to do with the fact that walking under a leaning ladder tends to be fairly unsafe). And around Halloween, especially, we try to avoid breaking mirrors, stepping on cracks in the road or spilling salt.

Modern Day Halloween

Fifteen years ago, Greg and I began taking our popup camper to Door County, Wisconsin for Columbus Holiday Weekend (first Weekend in October) to go camping for our final trip of the season. We went there annually for about ten years, Egg Harbor had a large pumpkin festival and the local campground took advantage of the weekend by having it’s own Halloween festival. They had hayrides, pumpkin carving events, campsite decorating contests and Trick or Treating! We would haul our Halloween decorations and fix the campsite into a Haunted cemetery. It was so fun. We looked forward to our last camping event. It was often really cold and sometimes we even had flurries! It was probably the only time we ever used the heater in the camper.

We did not camp for a few years in the fall until we moved to Harbor Beach and decided to camp at our local campground and invite the Grandsons to come join in on the fun. We start our Halloween season this year the last weekend of September. Christa and the boys came up to camp with us. It is fun to build special memories with the boys that revolve around Halloween and camping!

My husband goes to great lengths to decorate for Halloween at our home too. Most of his decorations are of the blow up balloon variety…with the exception of a few other props that we have collected through the years. My brother-in-law is very creative and he makes very real looking witches and scary figure. He made one for me and she sits proudly on my porch guarding the house.

My husband found the witch from the Wizard of Oz or Wicked online so he added her to our collection….so she stands guard too.

It is fun to see the reaction of all the kids as they come up on the porch in search of a treat. We are lucky to be living in a small town where kids can still safely go from house to house. We added black cat eyes to honor our black cats, “Midnight and Shadow” who used to love their own special holiday!

I hope that you have enjoyed this blog about Halloween. I learned quite a lot about the holiday and since we have Irish roots, I think it is appropriate that we are carrying on old traditions!

Happy Halloween!

Jan

 

Recently while writing a blog for Tombstone Tuesday, I stumbled unto a family story that I thought I just had to investigate further…It is the tragic story of a doctor in Kansas who committed suicide. His name was Dr. John Mason Carpenter. I had to ask myself “WHY”? Of all people, a doctor, a person who preserves life, not takes it. This is the obituary on Findagrave.com.

“Death of Dr. John M. Carpenter – The entire county was pained at the startling intelligence Wednesday morning of the death of Dr. J. M. Carpenter. The Doctor had been in ill health for some time, brought on by over-work in attempting to attend to the duties devolving upon him from his immense practice, and had sought rest and recreation by travel and sojourn in the East, North and Northwest. He returned about six weeks ago from a long stay in Minnesota and Dakota, where he had been seeking to recuperate his worn and overstrained physique. He appeared much better than when he went away, and his friends and family fondly hoped he would soon be as stout and hearty as ever, but in a week or two he seemed to relapse into his condition before going away, and became sad and melancholy. The day before his death he was missed about the home some time, and the family, becoming uneasy, instituted a search and found him lying in the barn apparently helpless. They had him taken to the house and sent for Drs. Haldeman and Hoover, who found him melancholy and unwilling to talk, but beyond this could find nothing unusual about him. Dr. Haldeman thought he had rather a strange expression about his eyes, but beyond this noted nothing unusual except melancholy and sadness. About 11 o’clock Tuesday night Dr. Carpenter raised up in bed and started to get out. His wife caught hold of him and he turned and slapped her, from which she fainted. He then ran out of the house. Mrs. Carpenter called for help as soon as she became conscious, and friends and neighbors came in. They immediately searched for the Doctor, and after some time found him lying in a field adjacent to the house with his throat cut from ear to ear, and grasping in his hand a razor. The Doctor’s brother-in-law wrenched the razor from his hand, where the grasp was so strong that it was necessary to break the handle off the razor in order to extricate it. He could not speak, and by the time they conveyed him to the house he was dead. Thus died one of the ablest, best and most influential citizens of Miami-co., and of him it may be said: “A truer, trustier, nobler heart – more loving or more loyal, never beat within a human breast.” “

John Mason took his own life on August 8, 1882. One of the first things that I found was that in June of 1879, he was the attending physician to his father-in-law when he died of chronic nephritis. His father-in-law was Sardis M. Lewis.  After reading through his probate papers and his will, I discovered that his wife Mary Adeline Lewis Carpenter died in October of 1882. Before her husband’s estate was settled. I have not been able to find a cause of death or an obituary for Mary A. Carpenter. Five children have become orphaned in the space of a few months.

John’s father was Joseph Carpenter and his mother was Cynthia Rogers. They came from Lancaster, Erie County, New York through Michigan and on to Kansas sometime between the 1850 and 1860 Federal Census according to the 1865 Kansas State Census. John’s parents were married on July 4, 1837 in New York.

John’s wife, Mary Adeline Lewis and her family came to Kansas in the same time period. Mary’s Grandmother Mary is found living with the Carpenters at the age of eighty Nine years in the 1875 Kansas Census. Information in the Kansas Census states that the Lewis family came to Kansas from Ohio.

Reading thru the will and probate papers for Dr. John Carpenter reveals that he was a very successful physician and farmer. Ten thousand dollars was given to Mary Adeline soon after her husband’s death. Ten Thousand dollars in 1882 is the equivalent to Two Hundred Twenty thousand dollars today.  The inventory of goods sold by the estate of Mary after her death was several thousand dollars also.

Guardians were appointed for each underage child by 1883. George Lewis was appointed as the guardian for Cynthia Belle Carpenter.  D. B. (could not determine the given name) and Harriet (Lewis) Cooper were appointed guardian of Frank C. Carpenter. Columbus C. Proctor was the guardian for Albert.   S. R. Smith was the guardian for Carrie Carpenter. Geo B. Hanna was appointed guardian for John B Carpenter.

Arthur C. Carpenter was of age when his parents died. He is living with James Requa for a time after his parents died . The James Requa family lived close to and seemed to know the Lewis family and most likely the Carpenters. James Requa was referred to in the probate and guardian papers. In 1888, Arthur married Lucy Nunnlly in Fontana, Miami County, Kansas. In 1891, Arthur marries a second time, this time to Ettie F. Tracy. I find Arthur and his wife Ettie in Federal Census records in later years

In the 1885 Kansas State Census, John and Mary’s fifteen year old daughter Belle, is living with her Uncle and Aunt, George Lewis and his wife, Mary. Belle marries Thomas Crites in 1891.

Frank C Carpenter is seventeen in the 1885 Kansas State Census and he is found with the D. B. Cooper family in Osage, Kansas. Harriet Lewis Cooper is a half sister to Mary and Aunt to Frank C. Frank C Carpenter died in 1888 at the age of 20 years old. His occupation was listed as Farmer. I can not determine the cause of death at this time. He is buried with his parents and his estate papers helped me to verify who the guardians of each of the Carpenter children were since the court was distributing his share of his inheritance from his parents.

Carrie Carpenter’s guardian was S.R. Smith. On November 17. 1896, Carrie Carpenter married Charles T. Wheeler on May 31, 1894 in Miami Kansas. They lived in Pueblo, Colorado at the time of the 1900 Federal Census but returned to Paola, Kansas to raise their family by the 1905 Kansas State Census.

John B. Carpenter’s guardian was Geo B. Hanna. In 1901, John enlisted into the Army where he served for two years. He was discharged on March 3, 1903 at Fort Logan, Colorado. In the 1915 Kansas Census, I am able to find John B Carpenter with his wife Clara and a daughter Ruth.

Albert C Carpenter lived with the Columbus C. Proctor family. Columbus Proctor became his guardian in February, 1883. Columbus Proctor died on February 20, 1894 and his wife Nancy was appointed guardian Albert in April of 1894.

I did discover that all of the guardian of the Carpenter Children who were not family members were veteran of the Civil War. I can not help but wonder if they served with John Mason Carpenter or Sardis Lewis.

I wish I knew how Mary died such a short time after her husband. And I also wish I could find out about Frank. It is a sad story about a family which was torn apart over the course of a few months.

Happy Hunting,

Jan