Captain Henry

William Tecumseh

Sherman McDonald

BRIGHID, DECEMBER 2005

I did it. What it is I did hasn’t come clear—yet.

I spent time in Killeen, Texas, at a hotel outside the Army post. I

took one room. Sam had a separate room on the same floor. And for

two weeks prior to her official deployment to Baghdad—alongside

19,999 other soldiers in the U.S. Army’s Fourth Infantry Division—

she shuffled between the post and the hotel. Me, I shuffled around

the hotel and the shopping mall across the street. Please don’t think

I spent my time inside the mall. No, I walked the pavement of the

parking lot. Each predawn, Sam got up to do physical training. I

walked the perimeter of the mall. We then met at the hotel for their

buffet breakfast.

One hundred percent of the people there were linked with the

Iraq deployment. The line for eggs included a dozen uniformed

personnel casually stepping forward. There were other civilians at the

hotel. Some wore their civilian-ness uncomfortably like an ill-fitting

suit, brown t-shirt over light-colored trousers that looked just like an

Army uniform but plain. Same make, same pockets, different color.

Not very civilian-y. Likely not really civilians, I came to think. They

were not the secret lovers of young soldiers. Though I was not the

only lover secreted at this off-post hotel—there was another marine

lieutenant staying there, too, a female officer with a female guest. We

made eye contact a few times.

Nobody asked. Nobody stared. Folks left us to eat our breakfast

alone. You know the mantra, “Don’t ask…blah, blah.” Silence is the

same as not asking, isn’t it?

What I did was move into Sam’s empty house in Trowbridge,

Vermont. I’d visited her there and such. In my mind’s eye, I had the

place looking like an English Victorian manse, neatly draped with

white linens over the furniture and shades drawn tightly against the

sun. When I let myself in, the truth followed. The home looked homey,

with sunshine and eclectic furniture spanning at least a century and a

half. It had been home to the same family for longer than that. There

were photos, some black-and-white with scalloped edges, some the

bright colors of the post-World War color snaps. There is one official

picture of Sam graduating from boot camp.

I am a noob.

I am the not-a-wife of an American soldier.

I am a foreigner in a tiny town in Southern Vermont that looks at

foreigners as, well, foreigners. Strangers.

I asked myself, Do I belong here? I am underemployed and clinging

to the edge of a map, living in a house that still hosts Sam’s Aunts’

stuff. They’ve been dead since our university days.

There is a long-standing argument about who qualifies as a

Vermonter. To many, being born in Vermont is not sufficient.

Moving here and living most of a lifetime doesn’t qualify, either. It

is a funny sentiment in a tiny state with a tiny, aging population.

To those people sporting the bumper sticker “Keep Vermont for

Vermonters,” you need to be squeezed out from a mommy and daddy

who has each been born in the state. According to these folks, becoming

a Vermonter requires heritage and lineage of Vermonters begetting

Vermonters.

I don’t think I am a Vermonter. My Sam is regarded as an outsider

even though her family settled here after the American Revolution

and built this house during the War of 1812, or something.

But I think those bumper stickers are the sort of nonsense that

masks bigotry of all sorts.

Time to ask the question, isn’t it? No, not that one; she does love

me. I don’t even need to pick petals from a June daisy. Check! The

question is, where are my people in this story? In my story?

Thus, I am sitting in a small wooden room in Springfield,

Massachusetts, an easy drive from Sam’s house. I am flipping

through paper index cards reporting vital statics. The name “William

Tecumseh Sherman McDonald” stands out. First, it is the longest

name that I have yet seen in the City of Springfield records. Second

who would name a child “William Tecumseh Sherman” anything?

Behind this name hides a very American story. Third, the little index

card shows that William Tecumseh Sherman McDonald lived for

four months and sixteen days. Born on the sixth of August 1892,

dead on the twenty-second of December 1892.

McDonald? You want to tell me that my name is Brighid

Doran. That’s true, it is, but only because I kept my mother’s name.

McDonald? That’s my father’s family.

The typed index cards provide me references to handwritten vital

statistics books on the shelves around me. I lift down the birth registry.

I find the baby boy on page 695.

Have you smelled old style card catalogues recently? And the smell

of old books on old shelves? The wood used is quarter-sawn oak. It is

a right and proper smell. It is the smell of research.

On Page 695, I see that the clerk wrote his entire name, “William

Tecumseh Sherman McDonald,” in the small rectangular space. His

neighbors on the page are Caroline Ryan Green and Helen Clare

Gardner. “William Tecumseh Sherman McDonald” is the longest

name on the page, thus is written in the smallest letters.

Eugene Napoleon Boueguet earned second place for both length of

name and historical gravitas. Placing Napoleon in a name implies expectations

that no infant should really face and a character no child should

try to embody as they grow through the American school system.

Adelaide Louise Whitehouse and Maria Anna La DeForge came

close in length.

One “Prince” had been born in Springfield on the twenty- seventh

of August; little Howard Prince Grover.

The fifth column of the register reads: sex & condition. Number

909 and number 910 in the book are recorded as “M Twin” and “F

Twin.”

Number 924 had no last name. The clerk left a careful space on

the left of “Daniele,” as in “Daniele no-last-name.” Then under sex

and condition, it read: “F Illegitimate.”

Page 695 of the registry of births, which started with 901 and ended

with 945, recorded three illegitimate births and one pair of twins.

The death registry for that same year recorded William on page

633. He sat on the top line of the page. He was the 1,924th person

to die in the year 1892 in Springfield, Massachusetts. Date of death

read as “Dec. 22.” In the column titled “Name and Surname of

Deceased,” the clerk wrote an abbreviated form of the infant’s name

with “William T. S. McDonald.” He died of “respiratory paralysis.”

There is so much for the modern eye to see about our culture a

century ago. In the name column, it reads: “In case of wife or widow,

maiden name and name and surname of husband.” In these records,

women belonged to fathers (if legitimate), then to husbands.

If born out of wedlock, her papers are stamped “illegitimate.” In the

next column, the title is: sex. Then, in parentheses, the instructions

read: “and color if other than white.” William T. S. McDonald had

been recorded as male, single, and aged four months and sixteen days.

Furthermore, there was no tick mark in the column labeled “and color

if other than white.” He was born in Springfield to Henry McDonald

and Catherine A. Burke, his mother’s maiden name catalogued as per

the registry’s instructions. Henry had been born in New York City

and Catherine in Enfield, Connecticut.

Catherine. Who was she? What did Henry call her when they

stood together in the kitchen? Cathy? Katie?

Imagine the pain of losing a child at the age of four months. Born

after nine months of hope, of anticipation, another four months of

care, then gut-screaming heartache for Henry and Catherine as they

watched their baby boy slip away from them. She carried him. He

named him. A young woman, from an Irish family, would have stuck

with the favorites of the day: Daniel, Patrick, Francis, or John. Maybe

she asked for her boy to be named Francis Xavier McDonald. Little

Frank, loved by his mother, baptized by the parish priest. Instead,

her baby boy was named William Tecumseh Sherman McDonald.

In my imagination, Katie called her son Billy. Katie held Billy as he

struggled through his last breaths. Maybe she tried to help with steam

and mint. Maybe Henry McDonald ran down a Springfield street for

a doctor to save his boy. Maybe the boy had been sick for days, or

weeks, or maybe he had troubles since birth? Details without data.

Billy’s biography exists only on typed index cards and on two pages of

a municipal registry of vital statistics.

Of course, his name, once lost, has been rediscovered by me.

Who names their baby William Tecumseh Sherman McDonald?

In August of 1892, Henry McDonald made that decision.

The original William Tecumseh Sherman laid a path of scorched

earth as an Army general during the American Civil War. He captured

Atlanta, then burned his way through Georgia and the Carolinas.

He set plantations ablaze and destroyed food, barns, warehouses, wagons,

and train depots. He destroyed the support that the Confederate

States required to continue fighting their war against the national

government and the northern states. After the war, William Tecumseh

Sherman served as the commanding general of the United States

Army.

He died in February of 1891. In 1892, Henry McDonald memorialized

and honored the controversial general with the birth of a son.

Henry’s hand gently supported Katie’s shoulders while both parents

adored their new son, swaddled in soft cloth and warm wool. You,

my child, shall be named for an Indian Chief and a Civil War General

by my great-great-grandfather.

“And a son shall be delivered unto them, and he shall be named…”

William Tecumseh Sherman represents only part of Henry and

Catherine’s decision, given their son was also named after Tecumseh.

Shawnee Chief Tecumseh campaigned against the United States

Government. He promoted unification of the native peoples in

North America. Chief Tecumseh died during the War of 1812, allied

with our enemies, the United Kingdom, in a brief war against the

United States.

Eight years after Chief Tecumseh’s death, Mister and Mrs.

Sherman of Lancaster, Ohio named their infant boy Tecumseh

Sherman. The local priest nixed the idea of baptizing a child with

such an unholy and pagan name. Instead, the boy got slapped with a

new first name, William. Why William? It was Saint William’s day

that day, and the boy needed a proper Christian name.

General Sherman’s legacy remains contradictory. Following the

Civil War, the general waged war against the descendants of Tecumseh

and nearly all other native peoples. General Sherman occasionally

sympathized with southern white racial opinions, yet was seen as a

liberator and as second Moses for enslaved peoples. General Sherman

conquered lands and people. Hated by millions; revered by millions.

A year after General Sherman’s death, and eighty years after Chief

Tecumseh’s death, an infant boy lived for a few months carrying the

names of two warriors: a Native American warrior and a U.S. Army

warrior. A child born in the final decade of the 19th century had been

expected to carry, in his name, his father’s expectations. The name

exemplifies the U.S. government’s contradictory history with—and

belligerence toward—the native peoples of North America.

One long, four-barreled name echoes four centuries of colonization,

exploitation, and warfare in North America. A heavy burden for

a baby struggling to breathe.

Like looking through a glass-bottomed boat over a reef or through

the Hubble telescope into deep space—I may have just discovered the

other reason I moved to New England. I sit with stacks of municipal

records informing me that for four and one-half months, I had a

great-uncle named William Tecumseh Sherman McDonald. He

lived here in Springfield, Massachusetts. Springfield is ninety minutes

from both sides of my unsettled life. It is ninety minutes from a

several hundred-acre estate in Trowbridge, Vermont. It is also ninety

minutes from a tiny, dark apartment near a sprawling set of business

campuses dedicated to the computer and internet industry. Both of

those locations remain empty until I walk through the door. Then I

am alone.

Is this my relative? The last name and the city match. Who is my

Henry?

Why do I feel homeless? I am at home surrounded by these oak

bookshelves and oak paneling. I am at home on this stout oak chair at

this firm oak table. I found something on these shelves that may be a

part of me. I breathe in the air, feeling at home in these stacks, looking

at ancestors.

Sarah Ann Musgrave, my Sam, dropped out of school after her

first year enlisted in the U.S. Army. She finished boot camp weeks

before the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. We met at

university when I stepped into the road in front of her bicycle. I

said, “Hello, my name is Brighid.” Sam wore a helmet and a tweed

blazer with suede patches on the elbows and classic Levi’s. I never

once thought of a woman in that sort of way, but I could not keep my

eyes off Sam. I had to know who and what she was. We’re all given

such freedoms during university days. I smile, thinking, Yes, I dated a

woman at school. That was supposed to have ended. She went to the

Army. I continued with courses until graduating in 2002.

In 2005, as Sam prepared for a one-year tour to Iraq as a lieutenant

in a military intelligence unit, I was in New England living in a crappy

apartment near a crappy job. When she gave me keys to her house, I

looked down at them and said, “Yes.” Now I have no idea what I said

yes to. I said yes because I hated San José and the job there. I said yes

because I like Sam.

“Do you mind looking after my place while I’m gone?” she asked

me, sitting in the Plaza Hotel in Killeen, Texas. I lived in California.

Her place was in southern Vermont. We formed a very large triangle

over the United States.

Do you mind looking after my place while I am gone? The sentence

played over and over in my head. Sometimes, I wonder if she

meant: Do you mind looking after my place when I am gone? What

goes through a soldier’s mind when preparing for an extended combat

tour? Am I supposed to live in this house, stuck on a hilltop in a

remote mountain town? Or am I supposed to check it monthly? Do I

mow the lawn weekly? I failed to ask any follow-up questions.

So I moved. I trimmed a leg from the distance triangle, except Sam

deployed to Iraq.

Now I sat in the Springfield City Hall researching paper documents

related to the McDonald family. I have a hunch that this

bunch of McDonalds are my McDonalds. If they are not, I should

lay claim to them if no one else has. I think Henry and Catherine

are amazing. I don’t find many others of that name here. Today, one

can find a McDonalds at millions of street corners where billions of

hamburgers have been served. Those are not my McDonalds; that

business was kicked into life by a fellow named Ray Kroc. To listen to

my mother, our McDonalds were of the old clan days, running around

in woolen plaid getting the snot kicked out of them by the English

and other Scottish clans. My mother would say, “The McDonalds

have lost more battles and been kicked out of more countries than

most people, except the Jews.”

Here in this city hall, I use paper and pen to take notes, unusual

for me given I spend fifty plus hours a week on computers. The city

provides scraps of recycled paper for notes by cutting copier paper

into rough quarters. I write with my awkward loopy letters, “Records

to Print,” followed

with instructions: “Births, Irving T. McDonald,

14 April 1894, page 103; William T. S. McDonald, 1892, page 49;

Marriage, Henry McDonald, Katie A. Burke, August 27, 1884, page

74; Death, Katherine B. McDonald, December 7 1922, page 119;

Henry McDonald, May 25, 1900, page 29.”

On my own full-sized sheet of paper, I construct a diagram

of this

family. Henry and Katie lost two children in infancy. In the year before

young Billie—William T.S.—Alice was born. She lived for one

year, one month, and twelve days, dying of “membranous croup,” another

dreadful respiratory disease. Katie and Henry would have been

helpless whilst listening to the last wheezing, labored breaths of Alice.

Harry C. was born the year before Alice in 1889. Edna Rose two

years prior. Charles B. was born in 1886, Irving T. in 1894. Katie and

Henry had six children in nine years, and two died as infants.

Tragedy and mystery are different. Tragedy involves watching

children die for the want of air. My family, every family, faced tragedy

every generation: children lost too young, separation, forced migration,

violence, and war. In exploring the mystery, I ask why.

Reading the death entry, then holding a new reprint of Henry’s

death certificate, I read that Henry had been a white male who died at

the age of forty-five years and five days of an “atomic condition of the

central nervous system superinducing cardiac paralysis.” Henry served

as the city marshal for Springfield. His father, Charles P. McDonald,

and his mother, Sarah Madden, were born in Ireland.

My great-great-something was a city marshal in this same city

where I found his records.

I open my laptop and search for Henry McDonald of Springfield,

Massachusetts. Instead, I find a McDonalds restaurant on Main St.

and a living Henry McDonald in Springfield, Ohio. I have to buy a

subscription to a newspaper archive service to discover my Henry’s

obituary, published in The Springfield Weekly Republican on Friday,

June 1, 1900.

MARSHAL M’DONALD FALLS DEAD
COMPLETE NERVOUS COLLAPSE
His active and Valuable Life in Military and Civic Duties
Major Henry McDonald, city marshal, died suddenly
at
7:10 Friday morning at his home on Park Avenue, as a result
of a complete nervous collapse. He had arisen at 6:45 and was
apparently in his usual health. He stepped into the bathroom
and returning a moment later was preparing to dress himself,
when he fell to the floor. His wife and children were attracted
by a groan, and rushing to his side found him lying on his face,
apparently unconscious. He was turned over, but showed no
signs of consciousness except in opening his eyes in response
to an entreaty from Mrs. McDonald, and died three minutes
after the arrival of Dr. E. C. Collins, who had been hastily summoned.
An autopsy held in the afternoon showed that death
was due to a complete nervous collapse, as every organ of the
body was perfectly sound.
The death of Marshal McDonald removes from the midst
of the city’s activity a man who had long been identified with
its interests, particularly in civic and military lines. As deputy
sheriff for 10 years, and city marshal for over three years, he
came in contact with the people in every walk of life and was
called upon to exercise judgment and tact to an extent required
only of servants and guardians of the public. He was a man
of sterling character, tireless in his efforts to do his duty, and

ambitious to make the police department of this city the
cleanest and most efficient possible. That he had been successful
is the testimony of everyone familiar with affairs as they
exist today. From the time Major McDonald became marshal,
January 1, 1897, until his death, he worked early and late to
improve the facilities for preventing and discovering crime and
to make the appearance of the force a credit to any city. His
interest in his official duties is shown in the fact that although
he was entitled to a vacation of two weeks with regular pay each
year, he never took advantage of the privilege, and only left his
post to join in the Cuban campaign with his company in the 2d
Regiment. The marshal had a rather brusque manner, and his
inclination to be uncommunicative with strangers kept many
people from knowing him intimately, but to gain his confidence
meant a pleasant surprise. It was then found that he was
a man of entertaining ways, sympathetic and cordial in act and
word, and unchanging in his views of honesty and sobriety.
He did much to lighten the burdens of those employed under
his supervision, and the same sympathy was quickly shown to
those who came to him in trouble.
Major McDonald’s methods have borne fruit in many improvements
that have been introduced in the police department.
Being a military man, he natural sought to inspire something
of that spirit in his officers. They have been required to march
properly, to be punctual and courteous in the performance of
duty, and orderly and neat in appearance. Rules have been laid
down covering service when on duty and the method of ringing
in reports from different points of the beats has been changed
and improved. The marshal was not slow in accepting the opportunity
to give the officers gymnastic training at the Young
Men’s Christian Association building, and the regular work now
done there is keeping the men in excellent training. It is scarcely
realized by those who see the results of these improvements, that
such matters have been the subject of continual consideration by
the marshal.