The Entailed Hat

The Entailed Hat, by George
Alfred Townsend

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Title: The Entailed Hat Or, Patty Cannon's Times
Author: George Alfred Townsend
Release Date: August 30, 2006 [EBook #19146]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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ENTAILED HAT ***

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THE ENTAILED HAT
OR

PATTY CANNON'S TIMES
A Romance
BY GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND
"GATH"
[Illustration]
NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1884
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
All rights reserved.
TO
JUDGE GEORGE P. FISHER
OF DELAWARE
AND
HON. JOHN A. J. CRESWELL
OF MARYLAND
LOVERS OF OLD TIMES
WELCOMERS OF THE NEW ERA
"Friends! trust not the heart of that man for whom Old Clothes are not
venerable."--CARLYLE: Sartor Resartus

INTRODUCTION.
Once the author awoke to a painful reflection that he knew no place
well, though his occupation had taken him to many, and that, after
twenty-five years of describing localities and society, he would be
identified with none.
"Where shall I begin to rove within confines?" he asked, feeling the
vacant spaces in his nature: the want of all those birds, forest trees,
household habits, weeds, instincts of the brooks, and tints and tones of
the local species which lie in some neighborhood's compass, and
complete the pastoral mind.
Numerous districts rose up and contended together, each attractive
from some striking scene, or bold contrast, or lovely face; and wiser
policy might have led his inclinations to one of these, redundant,
perhaps, in wealth or literary appreciation; yet the heart began to turn,
as in first love, or vagrancy almost as sweet, to the little, lowly region
where his short childhood was lived, and where the unknown
generations of his people darkened the sand--the peninsula between the
Chesapeake and the Delaware.
Far down this peninsula lies the old town of Snow Hill, on the border
of Virginia; there the pilgrim entered the court-house, and asked to see
an early book of wills, and in it he turned to the name of a maternal
ancestor, of whom grand tales had been told him by an aged relative.
His breath was almost taken by finding the following provisions, dated
February 12, 1800:
"I give and bequeath to my son, Ralph Milbourn, MY BEST HAT, TO
HIM AND HIS ASSIGNEES FOREVER, and no more of my estate.
"I give to Thomas Milbourn my small iron kettle, my brandy still, all
my hand-irons, my pot-rack, and fifteen pounds bond that he gave to
my daughter, Grace Milbourn."
The next day a doctor took the author on his rounds through "the
Forest," as a neighboring tract was almost too invidiously called, and

through a deserted iron-furnace; village almost of the date of these
wills.
Everywhere he went the Entailed Hat seemed, to the stranger in the
land of his forefathers, to appear in the vistas, as if some odd, reverend,
avoided being was wearing it down the defiles of time. Now like Hester
Prynne wearing her Scarlet Letter, and now like Gaston in his Iron
Mask, this being took both sexes and different characters, as the author
weighed the probabilities of its existence. At last he began to know it,
and started to portray it in a little tale.
The story broke from its confines as his own family generation had
broken from that forest, and sought a larger hemisphere; yet, wherever
the mystic Hat proceeded, his truant fancy had also been led by his
mother's hand.
Often had she told him of old Patty Cannon and her kidnapper's den,
and her death in the jail of his native town. He found the legend of that
dreaded woman had strengthened instead of having faded with time,
and her haunts preserved, and eye-witnesses of her deeds to be still
living.
Hence, this romance has much local truth in it, and is not only the
narration of an episode, but the story of a large region comprehending
three state jurisdictions, and also of that period when modern life arose
upon the ruins of old colonial caste.

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. TWO HAT WEARERS 1 II. JUDGE AND DAUGHTER 6 III. THE
FORESTERS 15 IV. DISCOVERY OF THE HEIRLOOM 19 V. THE
BOG-ORE TRACT 25 VI. THE CUSTISES RUINED 32 VII.
JACK-O'-LANTERN IRON 40 VIII. THE HAT FINDS A