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Major Appleton and the Lady of the Oven

Tom Sheehan

    One of our historical signs in Saugus, Massachusetts, this one at Appleton’s Pulpit, says: “In 1687 Major Appleton of Ipswich made a speech on this rock denouncing the tyranny of the Royal Governor, Sir Edmund Andros. A watch was stationed on the hill to give warning of any approach of the Crown officers. Massachusetts Bay Colony Tercentenary Committee 1630-1930.”
    The sign, 88 years mounted in the ground, made of heavy cast iron, black letters on a gray surface with a black border, seemingly resistant to the weather and theft so far, for a few of our historical signs have mysteriously disappeared over the years. I think some twisted historical buff has them standing against the wall in his cellar hideout.
    A second sign, a plaque mounted directly to the rock higher up, says, “In September 1687, from this rock, Tradition asserts that, resisting the tyranny of Sir Edmond Andros, Major Samuel Appleton of Ipswich, spoke to the people in behalf of those principles which later were embodied in the Declaration of Independence.”
    That’s what the signs still say all these years after they were placed into the ground at the foot of the rock and on the rock itself; now and since that time the site has been called Appleton’s Pulpit. It is three minutes’ walk from my house right beside the First Iron Works in America, fully reconstructed starting in 1948 by Dr. Roland Wells Robbins, the archeologist who found the ruins of Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond.
    A heart of history lurks about the neighborhood between Appleton’s Pulpit and the site of the First Iron Works in America. There are days that some of us can hear that heart pumping yet.
    But in truth there is not much that Roland Robbins the archeologist could unearth at Appleton’s Pulpit if he was given such a chance.
    The real story is not there. The real story is just down the street a short way, a mere hundred or so yards to where Hull Road runs off Appleton Street today here in Saugus, Massachusetts. Hull Road has only been around for a matter of 60 or so years. Historians say that Major Appleton fled from the pulpit when the lookout gave notice that a troop of Crown officers had crested the hill just a half mile from what is now Cliftondale Square, and within 10 minutes could be at the site. They were spotted on the slope of current Central Street that back then was a part of a road that became, in short order, the Newburyport Turnpike, which now is designated as Route 95, north and south. I live on Central Street in a house that was built in 1742 and once was The Oyster Inn on that early road.
    The major, upon alert from the lookout, scampered for safety.
    The first thing that came to his mind was a lady just down the road who had favored him lately with a bit of charm; she was a beautiful maiden and he was a handsome man. Her name was Olivia Harkness, living alone in a small house.
    Olivia, as some historians say, had a dubious reputation, and a few years later would possibly have been subject to a witch trial if some rumormongers had a say in the matter. As a matter of truth, to other historians of a different school, Major Appleton, English born, had heard some of the talk about Olivia but discounted it; she was a most beautiful woman and that beauty possibly surmounted or allayed any suspicions he might have had.
    But that knotty kernel remained in his mind as he scurried off the hill and fled down the path toward the old turnpike, and a sure way home to Ipswich where a suitable hiding place could be found. Doubts about that successful flight came when the major heard a bugle call. He looked for a quick place to hide; and there at the front of her small house was Olivia, motioning to him with full-bore wiles to come to her door.
    “Hurry,” Olivia said, motioning him inside. “The oven,” she said, “it’s the best place to hide, and he slid into that beehive-style oven, larger than many he had seen in local houses (even my house has two large beehive ovens.) But the knotty kernel of suspicion remained in place in his mind, refusing to budge.
    He felt the nub of the kernel again, even as Olivia added, “It’s really the sole place to hide from the Crown at this time. Be assured, my goodly man.”
    And when she began to close the iron door of the oven behind him, a serious thought of survival came upon him. In quick response, even in tight quarters, the major slid the blade of his small knife onto the latch catch to be sure he had a way of opening the door from the inside of the oven.
    Shortly there was a bang at the house door. Olivia said, “A moment, neighbor, I will be with you shortly. I am not fully clothed at the moment.”
    Appleton might at that moment have had a single and simple image of Olivia at her best.
    The voice outside yelled, “Open the door. This is a Crown officer in pursuit of a treasonous speaker, Major Appleton of Ipswich. Have you seen this man?”
    Olivia’s softest voice came back. “This minute I am not properly disposed, Captain, but I will be with you in a short manner. Please be a patient man with me.”
    She opened the door and Appleton heard her say, “Goodness, Captain, a Crown officer at my door and looking for a treasonous man, a man raising the rabble to discordant actions, I presume. Come, search my house, my handsome Captain. I am about to light a fire to bake some bread and beans with which you might fend off any hungers you have once I am finished my chores for the day.”
    Appleton could see the coquettish moves taking place in the small house, the smile so recently sent his way, the invitation as well.
    “Oh, no, Madam,” the officer said, “Not in this house. They have said that you are twined with the witches that emanate from Salem port. I tread no ground with them, Madam. I bid you goodbye, satisfied that the treasonous Appleton is not under your roof.”
    In the oven, hearing the fire start in the fireplace, the bricks of the beehive oven still warm from some earlier bake, Major Appleton made sure his knife was still in place to guarantee his escape from the chamber, even as he heard Olivia throw on a few additional logs to the kindling now at a roar in her fireplace.
    When she pushed hard at the oven door, and his knife blade was enough to curtail its shutting properly, he slammed back at the iron door with his hands and shoved it open.
    Major Appleton, saved from one danger, slipped out of the oven to a second danger, as Olivia Harkness said, with all apologies, “Oh, my goodness, Major, I forgot that you were ensconced in my oven. Oh, woe is me.”
    “Oh, woe would have been me,” Major Appleton said, as he looked into the fiery eyes of a witch and a mouth full of sharp teeth for which he would have been easy picking once he had been done to a turn.
    To this day, there are no other signs or plaques attending to Major Appleton’s escape from Crown officers and the witch-like Olivia Harkness, though history says he did frequently serve as a judge and assistant on the Essex County Quarterly Courts in the Salem witch trials. From these two historical escapes, he lived to the age of 70 years and died on May 15, 1696 and lies in the Old Burying Grounds in Ipswich, the site suitably marked, and him never quite done to a crispy end.

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