In the spirit of the season, let’s take a closer look at another local strange tale. As in some past posts—like those on Mother Crewe, Vikings in Plymouth, and others—I aim to explore the story behind the story. How did these tales originate, and to what extent is there real history behind these often-repeated folktales? This time, let’s delve into the story of ‘Aunt Rachel’s Curse.'”

Aunt Rachel was an outcast—a widow living on the shore of the bay on the outskirts of Plymouth, Massachusetts, in the early 19th century. The townsfolk generally avoided her, thinking her mad. And yet she was also known as a ‘seer’ who could foretell the future. Those bold enough to visit her and offer a coin were rewarded with her supernatural counsel. In some versions of the story, she read palms; in others, she interpreted tea leaves or even the weather. She was feared but, in a way, respected.

However, this was not the case for a group of gruff mariners who came to visit shortly after their brig came to anchor in Plymouth harbor. These strangers had heard about “Aunt Rachel” and her fortune telling and decided they would come find out if their voyage was to be a profitable one. There was one among them, a local boy recently gone to sea, who Aunt Rachel recognized, and she pointed a finger at him, chastising him for keeping company with ruffians. “Moon cursers!” she called them, “You have set false beacons and wrecked ships for plunder. It was your fathers and mothers who decoyed a brig to these sands and left me childless and a widow. He who rides a pale horse be your guide…”[1]

Of course, here she is referring to the very real “mooncussers” or coastal pirates who operated along the shorelines. They would set up false lights along the coast, tricking ships into running aground on rocks or shallow waters. Once the ships were wrecked, the mooncussers would loot the cargo. They were so called because a bright moonlight night interfered with their nefarious work, and then tended to “cuss” the moon.

One of these rough men threatened to “put a stopper in her gab,” and off they went. That night, Aunt Rachel’s hovel burned to the ground, forcing her to flee into the woods. But the next morning, she reappeared at the Plymouth wharves, where a crowd had gathered to see the brig and its crew off. She warned the vessel’s proud owner that his brig now carried a curse: “She cannot swim long.” Beginning in a mumble, she recited an incantation, her voice rising until she was shrieking, then falling silent as she raised a hand, motioning for all to watch. Just then, the brig, halfway across the bay, suddenly shuddered and halted, having struck a rock that had never been charted there before. As the brig sank, the crew escaped—except for one: the mariner who had threatened Aunt Rachel and burned her home. And Aunt Rachel, to the crowd’s shock, had collapsed there on the wharf, dead. She was buried where her house had stood. And the mysterious rock in the harbor was thereafter known as “Rachel’s Curse.”

Or so the story goes. I don’t really believe there’s a kernel of truth here—not exactly. But I am curious about who first crafted this tale and how old it might be. The quotations above come from Charles M. Skinner’s Myths and Legends of Our Own Land, published in 1896. Skinner, an American playwright, journalist, and folklorist, was known for his dedication to documenting folktales from across the United States. Collecting regional folklore is noble work, though slightly risky, as old tales are easily embellished. I had always assumed—mistakenly, I now realize—that this story originated with Skinner’s book, thinking it was simply something he’d heard and reimagined. But it goes back further…

A fuller version of this story appears in The Shores of Vespucci, or Romance without Fiction by M. Tufts, published in 1833. In the remarkable introduction to his collection of stories, the author claimed that no book of this sort had even been published. This was Romance not through fiction, but told through “the truth of history.” The collection was, he asserted, utterly “authentic; not a single fictitious sentence is knowingly allowed in it.”[2] The key elements of Tufts’s version are fundamentally the same as above, though there is more detail. Rachel’s divination is limited to predicting the weather (not one’s future or a voyage’s prosperity), yet this was valuable information in a seafaring town, where even the local minister reportedly timed his travels based on Rachel’s forecasts. The burning of her home and her ominous conversation with the brig’s owner are described with heightened drama. Intriguingly, Tufts’s version provides a name for the local seaman whom Rachel warned against bad company—Jack Burgess. More on that shortly.

Looking a bit further back, it seems the story of “Aunt Rachel” originated with a series of stories published in the Philadelphia Union called “New-England Superstitions.” Rachel’s curse is No. 3 in the series and appeared early in 1822. The series was republished in papers across the country for years. The earliest version I can find was printed in the Rhode Island American and General Advertiser on April 26, 1822. It was reprinted in Plymouth’s local paper, the Old Colony Memorial, in July 1824 without any commentary. It is quite clear that Tufts, for his 1833 book, simply lifted the Philadelphia Union story, trimming it a bit and rewording here and there.

The author of the original? Unknown. Not given in any of the reprintings I’ve looked at. Though intriguingly, he lapses into the first person at one point when describing the town’s public figures who outwardly derided but secretly heeded Rachel’s advice. “I myself recollect when a certain Ordination lacked one of its counsel by the officious boldness of this prophetess of the storms.”[3] Just an affectation for the purpose of the story? Or was our author a Plymouth native? It is also noteworthy that he describes certain features of the harbor accurately (Brown’s Bank and Long Beach).

And then there is the matter of the young seaman, named by Tufts as “Jack Burgess” and by the original Philadelphia Union version as “John Burgis.” A nod to a real Plymouth figure? There was a successful local merchant mariner, Capt. John Burgess, Jr. (1785-1850) who is mentioned several times in William T. Davis’s Ancient Landmarks of Plymouth as owning substantial property in Plymouth village. His gravestone stands on Burial Hill in the center of town, bearing the image of an anchor and an epitaph, “The anchor’s dropt—the sails are furled! Life’s voyage now is o’er; By faith’s bright chart he has gained that world where storms are felt no more.” Did the author simply borrow his name? Or was he having a bit of fun writing about a young Jack Burgess, perhaps a person known to the author, falling in with a bad lot? Or is it all coincidence? It seems to me that there is more than a slight possibility that the original author was in fact from Plymouth.

And as for Aunt Rachel herself, it’s impossible to say where that inspiration came from. But in the end, her tale isn’t just a spooky yarn. It speaks to a clash of worlds—a story of an uncanny holdover of the pre-industrial world in a time of swift industrial change, when the logic of commerce collided with the mystery of the unknown. Perhaps that’s the heart of her curse: even in a new world driven by progress, some forces remain untamed.

[1] Charles Montgomery Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (Philadelphia: Lippincott & Co., 1896), v. 1, 306.

[2] M. Tufts, The Shores of Vespucci, or Romance without Fiction (Lexington, MA: M. Tufts, 1833), 3.

[3] Rhode Island American and General Advertiser on April 26, 1822, 1.