Julia Kinney Scott (1809-1842), a member of the Sheshequin Universalist Society, was well-known during her lifetime, and for decades after her death, as a poet. An extensive biography and collection of her poems, compiled by her friend Mrs. Caroline (Fisher) Sawyer, was published in 1853, eleven years after Julia’s untimely death. While the book contains many interesting stories about Julia’s youth – provided by her parents – one story in particular seems to have stood out in the minds of some of its readers.
Julia Kinney was born and raised on the family farm in Sheshequin, about ¼ mile south of the Universalist meeting house. The following incident, as recorded by Mrs. Sawyer, occurred on a dark and stormy night about 1825, when Julia was sixteen years old:
“… a barn, filled with new hay, at a distance of two or three miles up the valley, was struck with lightning, and instantly in flames. Julia saw the reflection, and, supposing it to be a dwelling, was in an agony of apprehension for the unfortunate inmates. She entreated that some one would go to their relief. But the rain was pouring a flood, and the more experienced father [George Kinney] deciding, from the appearance of the fire, that it was some building more combustible than a dwelling-house, no one could be found disposed to buffet such a storm and venture out.”
Unconvinced, Julia quietly slipped out of the house and walked up the road to the church, which was still under construction. Using a ladder that workers had left leaning against the outside of the building, she carefully climbed up to the roof. A rope, also left by the workmen, enabled her to climb up the roof toward the peak. From that high vantage point, she eventually concluded that the burning building was, in fact, a barn.
While climbing up to the roof in the dark and rain had been nerve-wracking, getting down off the roof was even more so. She managed to safely reach the ground, where she promptly fainted. There her family, who had finally noticed her absence and sent out a search party, found her and brought her home.
UUCAS’s copy of Mrs. Sawyer’s memoir of Julia Kinney Scott originally belonged to Theresa Shaw Gore. Theresa remembered stories from the book when she was in her eighties. Theresa Shaw was born in 1848 in Sheshequin. She spent most of her life there and was a member of the Universalist church. Toward the end of her life, she lived with her daughter in Massachusetts.
In 1935, Theresa’s son M. L. Gore, a renowned local artist, sent her an article from the Sayre Evening Times about the history of the Sheshequin meeting house. Theresa wrote back to her son, disputing several of the statements in the article. Regarding the date of construction, she wrote:
“And as to building of Church, he has it 1827, it may be possible it was not completed entirely until then, but… Julia Kinney Scotts book says she was on the roof of Church to see where a fire was & it was 1823 or 4 when she was about 15 years old. She was born Nov. 4 1809.”
The barn fire story was remembered somewhat less accurately by Mary Nichols Rockwell of Towanda. In a letter to the Mansfield Advertiser about the death of Sybil Park Culver in 1875, Mary wrote:
“You have long since heard of the death of the beloved poetess, Mrs. Culver, called so suddenly from her home and little ones… One fitful windy morning… her mortal remains [were] … laid in her beloved Sheshequin valley in the shadow of the quaint old church, upon whose then newly erected timbers that other valley poetess, Mrs. Scott, climbed in her childhood ‘midst night and darkness in a fit of somnambulism.”
Climbing up a ladder and rope on a church roof in a thunderstorm was a difficult enough feat for a person who was fully awake. It would have been quite remarkable had Julia accomplished that feat while she was sleep-walking!
Mary Rockwell was herself a writer who had been published in Godey’s Lady’s Book. She was apparently not a Universalist, however; she was a member of the Episcopal Church in Towanda at the time of her death in 1879.