As she would do many years later, El delighted in mixing riding instruction with other joys, including the world of nature. She took the students through blueberry and raspberry fields, a familiar feature of Maine flora. She had her students, to their delight, “dismount, eat, and mount.” That, she said, “was a great way of teaching by reward.”

  As an instructor, Eleanor was an avid and constant learner, taking in every bit of knowledge she could about horsemanship. She was assisted in the riding program by “a wonderful old horseman,” whose name, sadly, she could not recall. A pleasant man, he was then in his 70s, always neatly dressed in his work clothes. He fed the horses well and kept them in good condition. As he bridled and saddled the students’ horses, he taught El much about groundwork, gentleness, grooming, and the quirks and personalities of horses, beyond their being just horses. “He was generous with his knowledge,” El observed, but was otherwise a quiet man. He understood and respected the animals and worked to ensure the safety of both horse and rider. “He clearly loved the horses,” El said, “and was a horse whisperer long before the horse whisperers of today.”

  Until Merrymeeting, El had received only minimal riding instruction, in spite of her nearly constant contact with horses. There were no schools that taught a rider how to teach other riders. At Merrymeeting, El’s philosophy as an instructor began to take shape. The wonderful old horseman readied the horses, but El soon decided that if she were ever able to teach, she would have the students catch, lead, and groom their horses, including checking their feet for injury or damaging objects, such as stones. They would saddle and bridle them as well. “That way,” she reasoned, “they’d feel the horses more. If you just get on and ride for an hour, you don’t learn about the horse or become sensitive to him. The longer you are doing things with your horse, the more you enjoy the horse. Even smelling is important, for you and the horse!” El grew adamant in her insistence that she would teach in a ring, whether it was outside or in an indoor arena. She would not use trail rides as main venues for instruction, “where you’re riding ahead of everybody and can’t look at the riders, can’t see all the things they’re doing, how they sit, how they hold their hands. You can check, but you can’t teach. It’s just not efficient.”

  Instruction, El decided, would also extend beyond formal ring work. At the camp, the girls paid for an extra “breakfast ride.” The girls were required to do their own cooking on the trail, after tying their horses to tree limbs. El noted that “breakfast was awful-looking stuff, gray eggs and half-done bacon,” but she described the overall event as “delightful and instructional.” The girls shared with El that “everything was the most wonderful in the world. They really loved that breakfast ride.” However, it was a great deal of work, and El believed that the breakfast ride showed value in teaching the girls “about trying out and experimenting, about figuring out how to do things and what worked.” They also learned how to live with their horses, attending first to the animals’ needs ahead of their own. In addition, they learned how to live with and help each other, without any competition. Trail rides definitely had their benefits.

  The young counselors were treated and trusted like reliable adults. El had her Sundays off, as did a number of the other counselors. The counselors were loaned cars by the camp directors, with the stipulation that the girls would travel no farther than 50 miles. On frequent Sundays, El drove to a designated place to meet her parents, who then took her to Freedom for the day. That evening they returned her to the camp’s car. In the later summers, a gentleman named Robert Kingston Smith met Eleanor on those Sundays.

  When Eleanor Harmon Fracker entered Boston University, in the fall of 1944, she was, thanks to the love and trust of her parents and grandparents, entering as an independent, confident, intelligent, and creative young woman, with a dream that would not be assuaged. She was indeed entering into a world that, since the Great Puritan Migration, was dominated by the influence of her direct ancestors: scholars, enterprising merchants, craftpersons, courageous soldiers, and even those who loved horses.

  It was in the 1600s that ships brought El’s ancestors, who were Congregationalists, from Southampton, England, to what is now Massachusetts. Learned and adventurous, the families came from far England and Scotland. Thomas Newhall Sr., ancestor—many generations removed—of Walter S. Fracker Jr., helped to establish one of the first permanent settlements in the town of Lynn, in the area that would become Massachusetts.14 Eleanor’s father could also trace roots in the Fracker family back to Thomas Kendall, church deacon in the mid-1600s;15 Thomas Bancroft,16 who helped to establish the first Congregational meeting house; and John Bancroft Jr., born in 1682, who, as a deacon at the church in Lynnfield, donated the “oldest book” to the church in Lynn.17

  John Harmon, ancestor to El’s paternal grandmother, Angie Harmon, arrived in the New World in 1660 as an indentured servant and soon became a freeman and a citizen, swearing, in 1677, an oath of allegiance to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.18 John W. Fracker, Eleanor’s great grandfather, was active in the governance of the Universalist Church.19

  The shots fired at Lexington and Concord and subsequent wars drew Eleanor’s ancestors into military service. Moses Harmon, also an ancestor to Angie Harmon, enlisted in the 15th Massachusetts Regiment of the Continental Army at age 18, in the winter of 1777. He is also listed in the 11th Massachusetts Regiment. He eventually settled and was buried in what would become Freedom, New Hampshire, listing as part of his 1820 property inventory “one old horse.”20 Jonathan Thompson, ancestor to El’s father, enlisted in 1775 in the Seventh Continental Infantry, and Ezra Newhall, a possible descendant of Thomas Newhall Sr., enlisted in a Massachusetts Regiment.21 Benjamin Wilson Jr., descendent from the Bancroft line, served in the War of 1812.22

  The 1800s teemed with the likes of labor union organizers, transcendentalists, and crusaders for human rights causes. Abolitionists formed their networks and platforms. Committed and enterprising citizens, including those from whom Eleanor descended, created the businesses that would form the backbone of the economic development of Boston. Thomas Fracker Sr., great-grandfather to Walter S. Fracker Sr., came to Boston from England in the mid-1700s as a shipwright.23Thomas Fracker Jr. developed his father’s business and established a shipyard in Boston, in 1783. At his death in 1780, his assets totaled $23,596.48.24 Robert Potter, descendent of the Bancroft line, established one of the first tanneries near Boston.25 In the 1800s, William McIntosh’s son, ancestor to Angie Harmon, worked as a cabinet maker.26 John McWhirk, Angie Harmon’s maternal great grandfather, was a successful farmer and owner of much farming machinery.27 Elias Harmon, paternal great grandfather to Angie Harmon, owned a farm in Freedom that was valued at $800, and in 1874, his “Boot and Shoemaker” business on Main Street, Boston, thrived.28 Shipbuilders; cordwainers; woodworkers; and industrial, seaport, and municipal workers— well educated in their arts, skills, and theology—filled Eleanor Harmon Fracker’s family tree.

  The ancestors fought as well for the Union when the fledgling country was torn asunder. George McIntosh served in Company E of the 7th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, which soon became a part of the Army of the Potomac. He survived the war, worked in Boston as a carpenter, and became Eleanor’s great-great grandfather on the Harmon side.29

  John W. Fracker, Eleanor’s great grandfather, enlisted in 1862 in Company H, 43rd Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, commanded by a series of famous generals: McClellan, Burnside, and Hooker.30 Many who formed this militia hailed from Chelsea, the eventual birthplace of El’s grandfather and father, and were some of the first to be shipped to battle via the ironclad Merrimac.31 At Camp Rogers, during Christmas of 1862, these same “educated soldiers” from Chelsea, according to the journal of Edward Rogers, Company H, set up Bible and literary societies and “volunteered to educate the African-American refugees in nearby camps.”32 Edward Rogers indicated that these Chelsea men also respected and loved their horses. Amid accounts of the raggedness of the troops and the carnage and fear to which they had been exposed, he wrote that to spare the horses during one horrific battle, the field officers dismounted and sent their horses to grooms waiting in the rear. “The horses were excessively frightened at the artillery discharges. I could see a nervous palpitation or vibration pervading their whole system at every explosion. The exquisite sensibility of the noble animals would manifest itself first at the nostrils and pass by a perceptible wave or shock along the whole body. It seemed as though they wanted to say, or to have someone say it for them, ‘What cruel wretches you are to drag us into your bloody quarrels.’”33

  John W. Fracker returned to Chelsea after the war and worked as an upholsterer. Active in the Unitarian Church and for the causes of war veterans, he also was “superintendent of street lamps.” More precisely, according to his Boston Globe obituary, in 1914, “In early days, when the street lamps were lighted by hand, he was one of the lamplighters.”34

  Equally interesting was the tale of Frank Harmon, the father of Eleanor’s grandmother, Gammy Fracker. Frank left his rural homestead in Freedom, worked for some time as a locomotive fireman, and then left the job to become a successful sausage maker. As Eleanor learned in her work with horses, “a person can be highly successful in any lifetime career, as long as they are dedicated, and have in their blood Boston ingenuity.”

  The women must be mentioned here. Decades-removed records usually listed the women as working at home or without any occupation. A name, sometimes partial or incorrect, was included, as was, for those more prominent or recent, the birth and death dates. The early history of the founding and maintenance of this country by El’s ancestors indicates, if only vaguely, that its women were dedicated, intelligent, determined, and ingenious. Interestingly, a significant number of them could claim longevity as well. Many lived into their 90s.

  A Freedom Feeling

  Chapter 4

  ELEANOR HARMON FRACKER ENTERED BOSTON UNIVERSITY AS AN undergraduate in the fall of 1944 with the same singleness of purpose that had governed her life to this point: to continue to learn everything that she could about horses and horsemanship. The College of Liberal Arts, where El enrolled as a candidate for an AB degree in Fine Arts, sat conveniently behind the Boston Public Library, where she read every book on horses that she could find, including the few she could find on training. She took thorough notes, finding it frustrating that most of the information was on “almost finished” horses and not on what she thought of as real training: from the ground up. She also frequented the nearby bookstores on Huntington Avenue. She loved those old stores and took advantage of every one of them, scouring the shelves for fiction and nonfiction alike—anything that related, she said, “to four hooves, a mane, and a tail.”

  As if the library stacks and bookstore shelves weren’t enough, El discovered that conveniently nearby was the massive brick building that housed Boston Police Department’s Station 16. Adjacent to the building were the brick stables that housed the horses of Station 16’s mounted unit. The stables abutted the backs of tall brick city dwellings and businesses, all embellished with the scaffolding of iron fire escapes. Established in 1873, the mounted police unit, the oldest in U.S. history, boasted an equine staff of about 100 horses and remained in existence until it fell victim to budget cuts in 2009. Station 16 served as a training facility for the large and muscled horses, similar to Morgans, that were sold or donated to the patrol. On duty, the horses and their riders exhibited with precision their training in cavalry maneuvers. The horses proudly wore thick blue blankets decorated with the city crest and the words “Boston Police, Mounted Patrol, Nation’s First.”35 Impeccably groomed and attentive, they were magnificent yet friendly ambassadors to the citizens of Boston.

  The mounted unit was nothing less than a treasure for El, who made it a point to detour toward Station 16 as often as she could. She was impressed by the obvious care and training given to the horses, and particularly remembered that when it was time to ready the horses, the animals were groomed and brought into their stalls, and the large saddles, on pulley systems above each stall, were lowered onto their backs. With every visit, El assiduously observed how the police officers conveyed respect, concern, calm, and love toward their tall, strong, proud, and trustworthy mounts. She was drawn to Station 16 almost daily, sometimes linking her equine-related detour to a shard of a memory of a relative whose livelihood was dependent on the reliability of horses. In the spring of her 97th year, El would learn that her great-grandfather on her mother’s side, George Griffith (1832–1873), had been a “teamster,”36 hauling critical goods via a wagon with a team of well-cared-for and trustworthy horses.

  El soon realized that reading and observing weren’t enough to satisfy her craving for equine education. She sought and found a riding facility in Conway, New Hampshire, where she could work intermittently, during and between semesters, as a counselor, specifically in riding education. “At Bald Hill Lodge, we weren’t counselors like those at a camp. People who used the lodge’s stable were not allowed to ride out alone, so we gave instruction in the morning and then took them out on trail rides in the afternoon.”

  El’s experiences at Bald Hill Lodge were new and valuable. Throughout El’s earlier camp experiences, she had never met a problem student. At the lodge, she met “the guy who made it clear that he knew everything about riding horses.” She put up with “this miserable person’s bragging and condescension” for only so long and then matched him up with a horse that would buck if the rider did anything wrong. The inevitable happened, and El, noting the rider’s crestfallen demeanor and silent obedience, was satisfied that “the guy was humbled, and only his ego certainly bruised.”

  It was also at the lodge that El had one of her first intimate experiences with horses. An old gentleman horse trader received a contract to supply horses to the lodge. The only way to move the horses from the supplier to Bald Hill Lodge was to ride them. El volunteered for the seven-hour journey. Her assigned mount was a little mare. In just a short time, El grew concerned about the mare’s obvious discomfort. Clearly, she was having abdominal pains. Fearing the girth was too tight, El dismounted, loosened it, and then led the mare rather than ride her. “I was so worried about her. I didn’t want her to be sick. She was such a sweet little thing.” A grateful El and a tired mare took it slowly, and El discovered that walking, all the while murmuring encouragement, is sometimes the best remedy for equine indigestion. The little mare recuperated, and, urged on by mutual trust, they finished the journey.

  At the lodge, El’s room with a bunk was separated from the barn where the horses were stabled by only a thin partition. She didn’t recollect having any trouble falling asleep despite the slow and cadenced clicking of the horses’ hooves and their soft, muffled nickering. “It was a normal, natural thing, those horses moving around, those horses I loved. After a while, I got used to their peaceful noises, and they lulled me to sleep.”

  El appreciated the knowledge she gained from the Boston Public Library, Station 16, Bald Hill Lodge, and her camp counseling experiences. She wisely committed to successfully completing her degree program at BU, driven by her constant hunger for new knowledge to study all that was available. Each semester, she took full loads. She completed two years of Spanish and an early semester class of Advanced French, where she mastered reading the language. She fulfilled her academic requirements in the sciences, English comp, history, education, and physical education. Her inner artist must have been frustrated, however, for although she completed four semesters in art history, she could only sign up for two semesters of Theory, Practical Drawing, and Painting. Perhaps the only discipline she avoided was mathematics. “I hated it unless it was the sensible, practical type of math, like banking. It was my mom who taught me practical math, and I knew how to be wary and careful with finances. I felt she had taught me all I needed to know to get started in the practical world.”

  El believed she succeeded in her college classes because of the high quality of education she had received in both elementary and high school. In those earlier years, most of her grades were A’s and B’s, and she didn’t recall having any trouble as a student. Her parents and grandparents had instilled in her the respect for and love of learning that would make her a good scholar, always attentive and eager to discover new worlds and concepts. There was one lapse, however, and luckily it occurred early enough in El’s life to make an impression but not to embed any negative attitudes about education.

  From 1932 to 1933, El, just a wee tot, was enrolled in Miss Lowdon’s Private School in Melrose. Her final report card indicated that she scored high grades in Reading, Spelling, Arithmetic, Attendance, Punctuality, Conduct, Politeness, and Order. However, El remembered in vivid detail Miss Lowdon’s policy for naughty children. “You were sent to the attic. It was hot and dark, and you had to sit on a board on the floor, with the door closed shut. You had to wait until a teacher came for you. You were allowed out only when it was decided you were ready.” Only those who had been to the attic knew the attic, and El knew the awful attic.

  The little spark of misbehavior—what might also be construed as curiosity and an impatience and exuberance for adventure—might again have surfaced in Winthrop Elementary School, when, in both Miss Nickerson’s fourth grade class and Mrs. Linekin’s sixth grade class, El earned only an “average” in “Self Control” amongst all her A’s and B’s.

  That same impatience and exuberance caused El, as a college student in her final semester, to rue that she hadn’t had the foresight to enroll in college courses that would better prepare her to work with horses. “Why I took the classes I did, I have no idea. So many of them were of no value to me. I did well in my sophomore geography class, but I spent most of the class time filling a whole notebook with little drawings of horses. I didn’t want to hear about the places in lecture. I wanted to go to those places. Why did I take Old English and philosophy? Why didn’t I take more zoology?”