Cold Case

My original plan for yesterday’s post (HERE) centered on Robert Frost’s poem “Blue Butterfly Day,” but I got side-tracked by Emily Dickinson’s poem “My Cocoon tightens – Colors tease,” a work which Mabel Loomis Todd entitled “From the Chrysalis” when she published it in the first posthumous edition of Dickinson’s poetry.  What veered me off track was Todd’s use of “clew” in the last line of the poem instead of “clue.”  “Clue” – as Dickinson clearly wrote – appears in all other editions of her poetry.

I wondered if Dickinson ever used the word “clew” in any poem, but no.  I ran a search on the Dickinson archive, and there was just the one poem – “My Cocoon tightens – Colors tease” – due to its use of "clew" in Todd’s volume.  I then checked on Dickinson’s use of the word “clue,” and again, just one poem popped up – the same as listed for “clew.”  However, the word “clue” did show up for one other poem, “Death's Waylaying not the sharpest” – but “clue” is NOT used in the poem itself.  No, the word "clue" appeared in the “Manuscript” notes on the archive page – and wait till you hear about this intriguing “clue.”

Turns out that in January 1874, Joseph Sweetser, husband to Catherine Dickinson Sweetser – Emily Dickinson’s  “Aunt Katie” – walked out of his New York City apartment – and disappeared!  That’s right – he never made it back home. Newspapers carried the story, but – as far as I can tell – Sweetser never made it home nor was his body ever found. Sounds like fodder for an episode of "Dateline"! Better yet – isn’t there a show called “Cold Case”?

In the following month, Dickinson sent the poem to her aunt in a letter that said, “Saying nothing, My Aunt Katie, sometimes says The Most.”  Here’s the poem:
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I searched online for information related to the disappearance of Joseph Sweetser, but I didn’t find much.  Here’s what I know:

The Incident: Joseph A. Sweetser, a resident of New York City, vanished on January 21, 1874.

Last Seen: He allegedly walked out of his apartment, and despite widespread media coverage, no clues regarding his whereabouts or ultimate fate were ever found.

Condition: Reports suggest that shortly before his disappearance, he had suffered a concussion (possibly on January 17) and was attempting to walk to church at the time he went missing.
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Unsolved: The case remained completely unsolved, and he was never heard from again.

I understand that info about Sweetser’s disappearance was reported in the January 29, 1874, issue of the "Springfield Republican," but I have been unable to find that.  However, I did find evidence of a report in the "Boston Globe" on January 26, 1874 – see below.  I could not gain access to the page, though, without a paid subscription – so this is all I got! LOL.

To this date, the disappearance of Joseph A. Sweetser remains a cold case from the 1870s.

For info on other crimes and mysteries in Amherst in the 1800s, click HERE.

UPDATE: A reader who saw this post has a subscription to the at Newspapers.com, and forwarded to me the complete article:

​Also, the “Round Table” mentioned in the article is NOT the Algonquin Round Table, the celebrated group of NYC writers, critics, and actors—nicknamed "The Vicious Circle"—who met daily for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 to 1929.
I looked up Round Table info for the 1870s and found this:
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A group known as the Round Table existed in Boston during the 1870s. It was a social reform discussion group that was active in the city, with members often including figures involved in social reform and Unitarian circles, such as Fanny Baker Ames.

Key Details regarding Boston “Round Tables” in the 19th Century:

• The 1870s Group: It was a gathering of reform-minded individuals focused on discussion.​
• Context: This was a separate entity from the later famous “Algonquin Round Table” in New York City (1920s) or the British “Round Table movement” (1909).
• Related Initiatives: While not the same group, similar intellectual gatherings of the era included the Saturday Club (1850s–1870s), and later, the New England Round Table of Children’s Librarians was founded in 1906.
• Attempts at Organizations: In 1886, a similar, distinct effort to form a “Boston authors club” was attempted by figures like Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Dean Howells, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich, which did not fully materialize at that time, according to the Boston Authors Club.