A Thousand Hands

“I’m nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there’s a pair of us -- don’t tell!

They’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!”

--Emily Dickinson, first published version,

Poems, Series 2, 1891

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Mysterious Gift “Unearthed” on Local Campus

Staff Writer, The Daily Hampshire Gazette

March 30, 2021

Mount Holyoke senior Paige Duncan made a lucrative discovery entirely by accident during a campus clean up effort after last week’s surprise nor’easter.

As the education major helped clear debris from a flooded area near the red maple tree behind the chapel last Thursday, she noticed something strange.

“I saw a flash out of the corner of my eye. Whatever it was, I knew it didn’t belong there.”

She called over friends from the clean up crew to help her dig up what turned out to be an unusually large, if crudely constructed strongbox.

“It looked really old. It was made of iron, I think,” observed Duncan. The amateur archaeologist and her classmates managed to pry open the cover.

“Just laying there on top was a little black notebook. It looked like something a reporter would carry around, except that it was tied with a ratty old leather cord. We thought it might have been part of that burial thing we won’t open until 2037,” said Duncan of the find.

Duncan refers to the Seven Sisters school’s centennial celebration in 1937 when esteemed alumna buried a time capsule of evidence of one hundred years of progress, intended for excavation “one hundred years hence.”

She couldn’t have been more wrong. Under the notebook, students stumbled upon a secret compartment built into the box. Stashed within the hidden chamber were dozens of leather satchels and cloth purses full of tokens, jewelry, coins, and bills.

“We felt just like Jack Sparrow [from the Disney franchise Pirates of the Caribbean]!” enthused Sharice Baker, a junior journalism major.

How much is this bounty worth? That’s hard to say. Local officials report the box and its contents have been shipped to a Boston lab for testing.

A University spokesperson commented that there was particular interest in the notebook, which may hold the key to unlocking the riddle of this unexpected sum of money, over $20,000 by some counts.

Is it a donation from an anonymous benefactor or is its discovery on campus merely a coincidence? We may never know, but one thing is certain: it was a clean up effort not soon forgotten!

New Clues Shed Light on Strongbox Discovery

Staff Writer, The Daily Hampshire Gazette

April 7, 2021

The mystery of the strongbox, the little notebook, and the cache of coins continues to intrigue the Mount Holyoke community and North Hadley residents alike.

Area historian and book shop owner Charlie Byrne believes whoever buried the strongbox was a fan of 19th century poet, Emily Dickinson.

Why? A fragment of paper was later found near the original discovery, and on it, according to Byrne, were a few lines from one of Dickinson’s most famous poems:

“I’m nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody, too?”

The newly discovered page will be sent to the Boston lab to confirm it belongs with the same notebook unearthed last month.

The poet, lifelong Amherst resident Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (1830-1886), attended Mount Holyoke for one year when it served as a seminary for females. Though she spurned some elements of her strict Calvinist upbringing, recent biographer Lyndall Gordon notes that Dickinson remained “a staunch believer of our immortal souls.”

Mount Holyoke students continue to study Miss Dickinson’s work today. Paige Duncan, the senior who found the treasure last month, commented, “I love the one she wrote about the bird. ‘Hope is a thing with feathers.’ I think that’s it. Something about it beating in her chest or being perched on her soul. That really spoke to me.”

Many literary fans today would agree, but not during the poet’s lifetime. Dickinson published only a handful of poems while alive, most anonymously and even a few without her consent. Following her death at age 55, the writer’s estate became embroiled in a bitter family feud involving her sister-in-law, her brother, and her brother’s mistress.

Dickinson’s biographer insists that rather than a shy spinster or a depressed invalid, as those family members suggested, she was, in fact, a brilliant thinker who likely suffered from epilepsy, which kept her homebound and unmarried but “no less passionate or adventurous of mind because of her misunderstood malady.”

At this point, any connection between the mysterious strongbox and the reclusive poet raises more questions than it answers.

Students, faculty, literary lovers, and interested community members eagerly await news from Boston. A spokesperson for the lab estimates their findings will be disclosed early next week.

Researchers, Scholars Stumped in Case of Mystery Strongbox

Staff Writer, The Daily Hampshire Gazette

April 15, 2021

The origin of the strongbox discovered on Mount Holyoke’s campus last month remains unclear. Officials confirmed that a piece of paper with copied lines from an Emily Dickinson poem did match with some pages from the leather-bound notebook.

It was also revealed, however, that other pages within the book were composed of entirely different material altogether. At least two dozen pieces of paper tied up with the bundle were made from a combination of plants and rags.

“You would expect to see paper made from wood pulp, and indeed some pages we found are made like the paper of today. However, some of what was found predates the availability of paper mills, which did not appear in the area until the early 1700s,” according to a consultant with the University.

Moreover, some of the plants used to make the pages cannot be found in Western Massachusetts at all.

“Although it is hard to say exactly, some of the plants detected in the analysis grow in wetter climates, something more akin to our coastline.”

Does this mean the surprise sum isn’t directly associated with local poet Emily Dickinson at all? Researchers can’t say for sure, but they know that it certainly did not originate with her.

“We found a stamp known as a ‘maker’s mark’ inside the object,” according to a lab official. “The cast iron maker was from Essex County, approximately 120 miles east of North Hadley. Soil samples further suggest that the box had been buried in that area for at least two centuries.”

This hypothesis was corroborated by initial results of a radiocarbon dating process Boston scientists conducted on the strongbox:

“Only an iron object made before 1700 would contain charcoal in the molten ore,” according to one researcher, “and it is that organic material within the iron that allows us to date it this way.”

While scholars speculate about the discovery’s origins, researchers have identified a few facts about the journal entries that may illuminate the notebook’s purpose.

The entries are brief; they include a single name, word, or symbol. They appear to correlate with various amounts of currency or valuable items contained--at least temporarily--within the box. While some entries appear to tally to deposits while others link to withdrawals, there is no evidence of a standardized accounting system across the document.

The currency itself ranges from wooden tokens with no value today to an impressive collection of U.S. minted 1921 Morgan silver dollar coins worth far more than their original face value. This indicates some deposits were made as early as 1690 while others were not added until the early-to-mid 20th century.

To complicate matters, handwriting analysis of the journal points to numerous distinct contributors; at least one thousand individuals wrote in the little black book over its lifetime.

Renowned forensic historian Dr. Joan Mitchell noted another peculiarity:

“The order and placement of the entries are so haphazard as to suggest deliberate obfuscation. The writing often starts in the corners, filling the margins in a spiral formation rather than using typical conventions of left to right and top to bottom page orientation.”

Evidently, those who donated and borrowed from the fund required the utmost secrecy, inspiring local academics.

“This could turn out to be the most exciting historical find in my lifetime,” observed Mitchell.

“How did the lenders and borrowers communicate with one another? Did they use a secret code like the architects of the Underground Railroad? Who moved the strongbox? Why did they stop using it? Are other boxes like this one buried elsewhere?”

Perhaps more of this mystery will unfold in time, but for now scholars are stumped by what may be the biggest question of all: who were these contributors, represented by a thousand hands?

“We are especially confounded,” said Mitchell, “by the names next to each entry, which recur with remarkable frequency. Given the sheer number of people who took a turn writing in this notebook, you would expect a far more diverse range of names to appear.”

According to Dr. Mitchell, the names in the journal include 32 Marthas, 28 Elizabeths, 26 Harriets, 24 Rebeccas, 16 Rosas, 14 Sarahs, 13 Mayas, 8 Leahs, and, notably, over 40 instances of the letter “X,” historically used to mark the signature of someone unable to write.

Curiously, however, the most common name that appears in the little black notebook is not a name at all, but rather a single word: nobody.