Henry E. Plumb (1824-1906) was a citizen of Monroe Connecticut and inventor of a new hay elevator and carrier. This isn't surprising since the 1880 census records his occupation as "Farmer". The witness to his patent, David Wells, is buried in the same cemetery (East Village Cemetery). There is an interesting significance here to be teased out since the businessman who endowed the local library was named David Wells Plumb (1808-1892). David Wells Plumb's mother was Urania Wells (1784-1862). Given the location and the names, there must be some connection between Henry E. Plumb the farmer who ended up wealthy enough to afford a set of rather elaborate tombstones for himself and his second wife (his first wife, Catherine Elijah d. 1854 aged 29 years, is also buried elsewhere in the cemetery) and David Wells Plumb. the businessman whose dream it was for Shelton to have its own public library. I haven't been able to find it so far, but if you discover it, please let me know.
I needed a break from A Treasury of Modern Fantasy (too many authors and too many styles coming in too fast) so I decided to turn back to an author whose work I've enjoyed exploring: Robert E. Howard. This time, however, I decided to skip over Howard's famous Conan yarns and instead take a look at one of his earlier creations, Solomon Kane. The idea of a puritan occult detective was too intriguing to pass up. I have the whole collection of Kane's tales and I do intend to blog them all. Right now, my little literary detour has only encompassed the first two short stories so I'm going to record my thoughts on them right away and get back to the rest as I have time. Skulls in the Stars Solomon Kane makes his debut with this classic bit of English Gothic including a haunted moor, a vengeful ghost, and a solitary miser. Howard's Kane fits the portrait of the archetypal puritan: grim, principled, metaphysical, with an iron sense of right and wrong. I h...
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