THE VIRGIN AND THE COMET – PART II (CODA)
In the June Halley’s Comet Watch
NEWSLETTER (Vol. 4, No. 3, pp 4-5) a comparison was made of the several
often contradictory accounts of the story that an Oklahoma virgin was almost
sacrificed to Halley’s Comet to save the world when the earth passed through
the Comet’s tail in May, 1910. The
editor of the Cherokee REPUBLICAN, Walter Ferguson, when he ran the
story, said not a word of it was true and he attributed the tale to one Ed
Marchant.
Additional
investigation provides interesting data:
In
summary, there was never a Henry Heinman, nor a “victim” Jane Warfield, nor a
“Sheriff Hughes,” so far as extant records go.
It
is difficult to prove that something DID NOT happen, but when ALL of the existing
evidence is negative, we can be fairly positive that it did not. That is the case here.
To
understand why the story was used in various newspapers of the day one has only
to read those newspapers; they were daily recording events of hysteria, suicides,
heart attacks and incidents of madness, all attributed to the Comet. The WASHINGTON STAR put the matter in
perspective when it ran the story about the near “virgin sacrifice” as part of
a long story headlined “Earth Dwellers Hunt Caves/Pray and Try to Evade
Comet. Negroes Abandon Work and Keep to
Churches’ Miners Stay Underground; Blood Sacrifice of Girl Averted; Joker Makes
Shooting Star” (STAR, May 19, p.4).
Two
recent books – Jerred Metz’s HALLEY’S COMET, 1910:FIRE IN THE SKY and
the NEW YORK TIMES GUIDE TO THE RETURN OF HALLEY’S COMET – share with
1985 readers some of the excitement, dread and helplessness inspired by the
Comet at its last appearance. Metz
vividly recreates this in the “Events” section of his book.
Edgar
Benton Merchant (1885-1919) was a successful lawyer, newspaper publisher and
editor of the ALINE CHRONOSCOPE from 1901 until his death; he and his
wife were appointed official hosts at the Oklahoma Building for the St. Louis
World’s Fair in 1904; and he was a representative to the Oklahoma
Constitutional Convention that helped make Oklahoma the 46th State
in the U.S. in 1907. An indication of
his tongue-in-the-cheek sense of humor may be gleaned from the entry concerning
him in the 1910 Oklahoma Census wherein his occupation is given as “Laborer,
gen.” That is, general laborer. One who knew him as an elderly man recalls
that he had a sense of humor and that he was inventive and imaginative,
publishing several stories about a wooded park near Aline and that often the
stories involved Indians – one such tale concerning a Peace Treaty of Indian
Tribes signed under a huge cottonwood tree in the park (no doubt the “Big tree”
referred to by Walter Ferguson). In all
probability he invented the yarn about the virgin and the Comet as an amusement
and afterwards forgot it. His wife,
Ellen, used to hand-set type and was a reporter in her own right, but she was
more formal, reserved than the genial Ed.
Perhaps she censored the yarn from their own paper, the CHRONOSCOPE
– but that is pure speculation.
This
piece could not have been written without the generous cooperation of several
people. First of all was Mrs. Rosalie
Hasty, life-long resident of Aline, who was familiar with the tale when I
approached her. She had heard it at
some social function she had attended and had taken it to an uncle who was a
young boy in 1910 and who did in fact recall the story, but he did not know if
it was fact or fiction.
Mrs.
Hasty put me in touch with a remarkable lady, Mrs. H. L. Elliott, 75, also a
life-long resident of Aline who knew Mr. Marchant and who lived with Mrs.
Marchant while going to High School.
(Mrs. Marchant died in August, 1967, just one week short of her 101st
birthday.) Mrs. Elliott is a member of
the County, State and National Historical Societies. In good part through her efforts Aline can claim the only
original, preserved so house in the West – all others are imitations or
restorations – built by her father, Marshal McCully, in 1894. She is the source of my information (all too
briefly summarized here) concerning the Marchants.
A
thorough researcher, Mrs. Elliott points out that the alleged site of the
sacrifice in the Glass Mountains would not be under the jurisdiction of either
the sheriff of Alfalfa or Dewey County but of the sheriff of Major County. George Hughey is also aware of this and both
are continuing to dig into the records from this angle. If anything is brought to light the readers
of this NEWSLETTER will be informed of it.
Mr.
Steve Brooker, present editor of the Cherokee REPUBLICAN, ran my “Letter to the Editor” requesting
assistance in contacting any surviving relative of either Marchant or
Ferguson. That was the link that
brought a response from Mr. Marc Kliewer of La Jolla, CA, who put me in touch
with Walter Ferguson’s son, Dr. Thomas B. Ferguson of St. Louis’ Chest Service,
Inc.
Dr.
Thomas Ferguson responded as reported above and kindly referred my
correspondence concerning the virgin and the Comet on to George Hughey, whose
comments also appear above.
I
am indebted, too, to Leonard Downie, Jr., Managing Editor of the WASHINGTON
POST, who referred my inquiry concerning the virgin and the Comet to an
assistant librarian, Ms. Kim Klein, who reported as quoted above.
Mr.
B. Basore, Library Assistant, Oklahoma Historical Society, was helpful on two
occasions and generous in the expenditure of his time.
Ruth
Freitag of the Library of Congress was, as always, an invaluable source for any
aspect of the Halley’s Comet story.
Finally,
I would like to thank Joseph Laufer of this NEWSLETTER for encouraging
the research needed to prove (as conclusively as possible, 75 years late) that
this aspect of Halleyana is a clever hoax.
Editor's Note: This article was followed by one more in the series, which can be found in the December, 1985 issue.