Creative History

  It began on May 23, 1901 when the Paris Attorney General received an anonymous letter.  To this day, though there has been much speculation over the past 12o years, no one knows for certain who wrote that letter. The note stated: “Monsieur Attorney General I have the honor to inform you of an exceptionally serious occurrence.  I speak of a spinster who is locked up in Madame Monnier’s house, half-starved and lying on a putrid litter for the last twenty-five years--in a word--in her own filth.” The letter spoke of a once beautiful and captivating young woman, a socialite who had stolen the hearts of many a potential young suitor named Blanche Monnier from the central French city of Poitiers. Blanche, born on March 1, 1849 was the daughter of strict Catholic bourgeois parents Charles and Louise Monnier.  Her family name in central France was one of long-standing nobility and she was by birth a member of the French aristocracy. As a young woman Blanche was renowne...

  A maul is a war hammer.  It is traditionally thought of, in reference to European history anyway, as a medieval weapon.  However, well into the 18th century many of the indigenous peoples of North America used stone war hammers, mauls, to protect their homeland from white settlers and to terrorize their enemies.   In the unassuming suburban town of Wyoming, Pennsylvania in Luzerne County which sits along the banks of the Susquehanna River about five miles north of Wilkes-Barre is a large boulder known to posterity as “Queen Esther’s Rock” often simply called by locals “The Bloody Rock”. During the 1960’a monument with a plaque was erected on this site in the middle of town by local historians to commemorate the supposed massacre of fourteen Continental soldiers during the American Revolution that took place on or near that site by a vengeful maul-wielding Iroquois woman who sought retribution for what she perceived as the unjust murder of her son. The mo...