Charity’s Column: Telling Stories

When I saw “Hamilton” performed on stage, I sat next to a person whose life work is editing books about American history. 

At some point, while enjoying this witty and moving show, I noticed that he wasn’t having as much fun as the rest of us. He came because he loved “In the Heights,” Lin Manuel Miranda’s first musical, which tells the story of a Dominican neighborhood in New York. But this story, about the well-documented antics of the Founding Fathers, was based on history he knew too well to enjoy seeing anyone taking liberties with it.

Writing an historical musical comedy is not for the faint of heart, and I would argue that the less known about actual lives of the characters, the more likely we are to enjoy the fictional version.

Lisa Shaw, Shelter Island’s resident bard and impresario, has dared to do it again and do it well. Three years ago, she gave us a story from the 1950s about our first and only Lima Bean Cooperative, which managed to be hilarious, while telling a story of hardship and failure. She followed that with pre-Depression tales of bootlegging and The Prospect, a grand Shelter Island hotel.

This year she reached even further back in our history (just after the Revolution) to tell the story of the Lords, a strange shipbuilding family that bought the Menantic peninsula for its legendary stand of oaks, and turned them into ships, one of which they sailed through the French blockade of Britain in 1804.

Shaw’s musicals are based on actual events, but they are funny, melodious stories of people — not political events or boats. Her favorite characters are often people who had less agency than the wealthier members of the society they depict.

These are the hardest stories to tell because there is so little documentation of these lives, especially people who were born and died in the 18th and early 19th centuries, when “Lords of Menantic” is set.

We know something about the male members of the Lord family because we have records of the property they owned and the voyages they took on the ships that they built. We also have the written accounts of their family, based on their memories and the family stories that were handed down 

But most of what we know about their female relations comes in the context of the men’s lives, not the women’s. We know even less about their servants.

The characters whose stories stand out from the rest in Shaw’s telling are the three women whose lives are depicted in Lords of Menantic — Hannah and Polly Lord and a woman of color called Hagar.

Until recently most of what we knew about Hagar were recollections of Daniel Lord from his childhood that described Hagar as an elderly woman of color who lived alone on the shores of West Neck Creek in a shack.

Thanks to research by Donnamarie Barnes, archivist at Sylvester Manor, we know that Hagar was the daughter of Matilda and Caesar, enslaved people left behind to take care of Sylvester Manor when British troops invaded and occupied Shelter Island, and the Dering family fled to Connecticut.

We also know that Hagar gave birth to a daughter named Jane on Shelter Island in July 1808, and is likely buried at Sylvester Manor. 

We know nothing of what she thought of the Lord family.

Just as mysterious is what Hannah and Polly thought of their lot. As part owners of the Menantic property, they had wealth, but little power. They were almost certainly under the thumbs of their brothers, and may have been discouraged from marrying, which would have put their husbands in charge of their shares of the property.

Since they didn’t tell us what they thought of this arrangement, Shaw imagines it, and thereby weaves a story of resilience and heartbreak, with the songs and laughter you need to get through both conditions.

Telling these Shelter Island stories means creating fiction grounded in historical facts that are still being uncovered. “Lords of Menantic” describes people who really lived and gives voice to their stories; a kind of storytelling that is true to human nature, even if it’s not always factual.

Just like “Hamilton,” and the stories your grandparents told you, and the ones you will tell your own grandchildren.