But this sells this particular case short. Nell’s story, in fact, is the mold out of which all the following instances were cast. It is an archetypal American story, set in a time when the mass media were assuming their modern forms, and when millions of young people were first tasting the freedom of industrial life. It is not without significance that Nell disappeared on the eve of a trip from North Carolina to Brooklyn; to elders unused to such casual mobility, to daughters no longer confined to home and local community, the freedom offered by trains and steamships had to be unsettling. In some corner of the American psyche, the fear grew that the family itself was under threat. Indeed, their worst fears have largely been proven justified today, with families atomized and local communities ‘disrupted’ by economic and technological forces far beyond their control.
This book is a work of fiction. I don’t purport to know what actually happened to Nell on the night of November 20, 1901. The story presented here, however, is based on extensive research on the case, and represents one plausible solution.
For instance, that Nell’s body could have been in the Pasquotank River for thirty-seven days, yet emerge in almost pristine condition, has long been a point of contention. On one hand, bodies were known to remain submerged in that river for as long as a month, until the accumulation of decay gases in the corpses made them sufficiently buoyant to surface. Deputy Charles Reid was quoted in the Elizabeth City North Carolinian as early as November 28—a full month before Nell was found— that “he had known bodies to remain in the river for thirty to sixty days before coming to the surface.” According to forensic taphonomist Dr. Thomas Evans—who was gracious enough to review the facts of the case with me—factors like Nell’s water-logged clothing, water temperature, tidal currents and salinity all may have contributed to keeping her down for weeks. As the river was an industrial area at the time, it is possible that her body was snagged on a piling or other piece of debris.
On the other hand, she was not wearing quite so many clothes as might be supposed for a woman of the time—just her underthings, skirt, top, stockings, and one rubber slipper. Moreover, her body had not putrified enough to emit the decay gases that might have brought her up. One of the most notable aspects of her autopsy was that her body (with the exception of her brain) did not smell of decay at all.
The experts in 1901 speculated that the cold water of the Pasquotank contributed to Nell’s preservation. And yet—and notwithstanding the testimony of several witnesses at the Wilcox trial—it was not particularly cold in Elizabeth City in November-December, 1901. Department of Commerce weather records indicate that the average high temperature in December was a balmy 53.5 degrees F; the average low was above freezing. It was warmer still in November, with an average high of 54.6 degrees.
Most puzzling is that her body was utterly untouched by scavengers. The water of the Pasquotank River was rich in tannins, and it was heavily used by industry, but it was not dead. Oyster harvesting was a leading industry in the region. For a body to be submerged for more than a month, and suffer not so much as a nibble from a fish, with not so much as a snail found in Nell’s hair or in her clothes, seems to suggest she could not have been down very long. That she surfaced almost exactly in front of her house on Riverside Avenue also seems strange, given that the tides should have washed her in and out dozens of times.
That she was immobilized on some submerged object could resolve some of these questions—but it doesn’t explain the lack of scavenging. Moreover, the coroner noted no evidence that her body was hooked, snagged, lodged, or otherwise detained underwater. There was no damage to her clothing, no abrasions on her skin, other than the contusion noted by the barber Ferebee on her left temple.
If Nell wasn’t in the river for thirty-seven days, where was she? Even at the time, townspeople speculated about lights burning in the turret of the Cropsey home, and extra heavy deliveries of ice in the weeks following Nell’s disappearance. On December 5, the Charlotte Morning Post alluded to an odd passivity on the part of the family, noting “the Cropseys are not taking as much interest in the matter [that is, the search] as some other citizens…” This was followed a week later by the family’s announcement that they believed Nell was dead—an announcement made a full two weeks before her body was discovered. Their resignation seems surprising, given that most families in their position would hold out hope for their daughter’s safe return until the very last glimmer of hope was exhausted. This leads to the question of whether someone in the family knew more about her fate than publicly acknowledged.
As to Jim Wilcox’s guilt, this writer is not alone in having his doubts. At the very least, his initial conviction and death sentence probably would never have happened in a modern context. That the state militia was called out to protect him from a lynch mob is all the proof necessary that he could never, ever have gotten a fair trial in Elizabeth City.
How Nell Cropsey died is unknown to this day. The responsibility for Jim Wilcox’s death, however, is crystal clear: he may have died by his own hand, but he was killed years earlier. It was not his conviction or incarceration that ended his life, it was what happened after, in the town in which he was born, and to which he unaccountably returned after his pardon. Why Jim insisted on returning to the community that rejected him is as big a mystery as any in this story.
If Nell is an emblem of the future of social mobility in America, tied to no particular place, following opportunity wherever it leads, Jim epitomizes the opposite. His insistence on staying put is powerful testimony to the opposite current—to identify strongly with a place, to a locality to which one belongs. As noted in the work of geographer John Cromartie, this split has broken today firmly in favor of the former. Yet it continues to define the politics of rural vs. city, middle America vs. the coasts, well into our century.
In addition to Dr. Evans, the author also thanks Frank and Robin Caruso, the current owners of the Cropsey home on Riverside Avenue, for their hospitality and advice. The Carusos have been conscientious in their preservation of their historic home, using period records and photographs to restore it to a condition Nell Cropsey herself would have recognized. Thanks to them, I had an opportunity—both thrilling and eerie—to stand on the very porch from which Nell disappeared, and to visit the attic where Mary Cropsey kept her vigil. The inscription in the chapter “The Bedroom” appears courtesy of the Carusos.
Thanks also to Dave Elligers, historian of the New Utrecht Reformed Church in Brooklyn, for hosting me on a tour of the cemetery (currently closed to the public) where Nell is buried. Dave also helped me confirm that—contrary to almost all the newspaper accounts of the time—Nell was not nineteen years old when she disappeared, but twenty. Why the Cropseys allowed the fiction to propagate that she died at nineteen is puzzling. While a certain casualness with respect to birth dates was not unknown at the time, one wonders whether they believed portraying Nell as a teenager somehow played better to the public.
Archivist Paul Schlotthauer helped debunk another bit of mythology about Nell: that she was a college student at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. While her cousin Carrie was indeed registered at Pratt, contrary to some reports in the New York City press, there is no record of Nell ever having officially studied at that institution.
Thanks also to Sarah and Gabriel Chrisman for their insights into everyday life during this period, and to the Registrar’s Office at Pratt. I’m fortunate to have such perceptive and constructive readers as Selka Kind and Pete Reichert to help me shape the initial drafts of this book. Any mistakes are due not to the people cited here, but are entirely the fault of the author.
About the Author
Nicholas Nicastro has taught history, anthropology and psychology at Cornell University, Hobart-William Smith and Pima Community Colleges. He has published eight novels as well as short fiction, travel, and science articles for The New York Times, The New York Observer, Film Comment, The International Herald Tribune, and Archaeology, among other publication
s. His books have been translated into seven languages. He lives in northern Virginia.
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