Thursday, May 11, 2023

HGB Ep. 486 - Tinker Swiss Cottage

Moment in Oddity - Taxidermied Birds

The Industry of aviation has made leaps and bounds since the Wright brothers conducted their first successful flight back in December of 1903. Now there are researchers from the New Mexico Institute of Mining in Technology who are utilizing taxidermied birds to create drones to advance the aviation industry. The goal is to examine birds' flying formations and flight patterns to see how birds manage their energy which can help the aviation industry save fuel. So as the taxidermied drones are able to 'fly' amongst the living species the gathered data is hoped to provide some needed assistance for this endeavor. Although there are a small number of conspiracy theorists who believe that no birds are actually real and our fine feathered friends are the government spying on us. One thing is for sure, taxidermied bird drones for aviation advancement, certainly is odd. 

This Month in History - Birth of Martha Graham

In the month of May, on the 11th, in 1894, Martha Graham was born in Allegheny county, Pennsylvania. Martha was one of three daughters, whose young family moved from the South to Santa Barbara, California, in 1909. This is where Martha found the rhythm of the ocean and discovered Asian art. This ultimately influenced her style of choreography over her lengthy career. She first began her professional career in 1916 at Denishawn, a school and dance company founded in Los Angeles. While studying, one of the company's founders discovered sources of dramatic power within her and channeled her talents into an Aztec ballet. The dance was such a success in vaudeville and concert performances that Martha became a star for Denishawn. Graham stayed with their dance company until breaking free and becoming a featured dancer in the Greenwich Village Follies revue. In 1924 she moved on to the the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, to teach and experiment with styles of performance. She went independent as an artist in 1926, and critics found her styles graceful and lyrical. However, in 1927, her newly inspired dance styles were described as ugly and obscure. These critiques went on for just over a decade. Martha's dance program titled 'Revolt' was an example of this. It is believed to have been one of the first dances of protest and social comment staged in the United States. She was ridiculed by ordinary and famous theatregoers for her performance choices during this time. Over her career, Martha Graham explored the ability of dance to convey full thoughts and emotions, not unlike spoken drama. Over the span of more than seven decades, she created more than 180 solo and large scale works, many that she herself performed in. Martha Graham was an influential dancer, teacher, and choreographer of modern dance. She gave this genre a new direction for expression of intense, forceful and primal emotions. Her dance technique is considered by many the "cornerstone" of American modern dance to this day.  

Tinker Swiss Cottage

Tinker Swiss Cottage is a unique and beautiful home that resembles a Swiss cottage. Built by the Tinker family, it would become a symbol for Rockford, Illinois and the family's contributions to Rockford would help the town grow. Most of the family members who had lived at the house, died at the house. Most of the furnishings and artifacts in the house, that is now a museum, belonged to the family. Possibly this is why there are so many claims that many of the family's spirits still reside in the home. Join us as we share the history and hauntings of the Tinker Swiss Cottage!

We just love it when one of our supposed haunted locations has a Native American mound on the property and that is the case with the Tinker Swiss Cottage. This is a conical mound that is dated to Pre-Columbian times between 1300-1000 BC. The Winnebago tribe lived in the area that will become Rockford. Rockford started as two separate settlements on both sides of the Rock River that were named Midway. Daniel Shaw Haight founded the east bank settlement and Germanicus Kent and Thatcher Blake founded the west bank settlement in 1834. Kent built a sawmill and a grist mill and in 1837 the name Midway was changed to Rockford. The city was officially incorporated in 1852. The original Kent property is now the Tinker Railroad Gardens and Prairie with the ponds here being the actual retention ponds made by Kent for running his mills. 

Robert Hall Tinker was born on December 31, 1836, in Honolulu to missionary parents. Tinker moved to Rockford in 1856 and found employment at the Manny Reaper Works as an accountant and personal secretary to the owner, Mary Dorr Manny. Mary had been born in Hoosick Falls, New York in 1829. She received her education at the Academy in the city. She married John H. Manny in 1852 and they moved to Rockford in 1853. Mary was widowed at just twenty-eight and took over the business, prospering it greatly and earning enough to own several pieces of property in town. Robert Tinker was eight years her junior and the two fell in love and married in 1870. 

A little side story about her first husband is that he invented the Reaper. The Reaper was an invention that combined all the equipment used to harvest crops into one machine, allowing farmers to double their crop size. He was sued by his competition, Cyrus McCormick for patent infringement in 1855. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court and John ultimately won with the help of his two lawyers, Edwin M. Stanton and Abraham Lincoln. He unfortunately died two weeks after the verdict from tuberculosis. Lincoln got involved because the initial trial was to be in Springfield, but then changed to Cincinnati. The lawyers there, Edwin Stanton, George Harding, and P.H. Watson, didn't want Lincoln's help. Stanton said he didn't want "such a damned, gawky, long-armed ape as that." Lincoln still showed up for the trial and Stanton described him as looking like "a long, lank creature from Illinois, wearing a dirty linen duster for a coat and the back of which perspiration had splotched wide stains that resembled a map of the continent." Despite what clearly seemed to be no love loss between the men, Lincoln would appoint Stanton as his Secretary of War when he was President.

Before the couple married, Robert traveled throughout Europe in 1862 and fell in love with many styles of architecture he saw there in the estates and gardens, particularly those in Switzerland. He decided that when he returned to America, he would build himself a Swiss-style cottage. Tinker bought property that sat on a limestone bluff overlooking Kent Creek and built his home there in 1865. This was a two-story, 27 room home. The inside of the house was grand with high ceilings, unique designs and an angled roof. Furniture was made from wood, keeping its natural look, like chairs formed from tree branches. Tinker even made the walnut spiral staircase that is in the library from a single piece of wood. The woodwork in the house is exceptional. Rooms were designed with rounded corners. He later added a Conservatory to the house.

There was also a three-story Swiss-inspired barn on the property for housing the animals and Tinker was a master gardener, so he designed the landscaping of the 27 acres of land. There are vines, flowerbeds, gardens, winding paths and lots of trees. He also built a suspension bridge that linked this property to Mary's property where she had lived in a limestone mansion and continued the gardens over there. Eventually, when Mary's property was sold to the railroad in 1906, this garden was dubbed the Railroad Gardens. It was a nice area where passengers could stroll while waiting for their train. Mary's property was sold in 1906 and the mansion razed because she had passed away in 1901 at the age of seventy-two. She had bought the home from the Holland family in 1860. The house was gorgeous, but the train traffic caused it to crumble.

Tinker remarried in what many described as a marriage of convenience. Robert's new wife was Mary's niece Jessie Dorr Hurd. Jessie was born in 1859 and moved to Rockford when still a toddler. Jessie's mother passed in childbirth in 1863 and Jessie and her sister Marcia were raised by their aunts Mary and Hannah. So both girls spent time living at Tinker Cottage. Jessie eventually married in 1894, but her husband passed in 1897 and she moved back to the cottage. Her sister Marcia still lived there, but passed in 1904. And that's when an issue arose. During the Victorian Period, a unmarried man and unmarried woman could not live together if they were not blood relatives. So it was just easier for Robert and Jessie to marry. She would adopt a boy named Theodore in 1908. Robert died in 1924 and Jessie inherited the cottage. She was not a woman of means, so the Rockford Park District, which Robert had helped found, entered a trust with her that would give them the cottage and grounds upon her death. Jessie died from a stroke in 1942 at the age of eighty-three. Theodore, Teddy as he was called, grew up, married a woman named Gertrude and had a daughter named Rosemary. Teddy and Gertrude eventually divorced and she moved with their daughter to Arizona. Gertrude was hit and killed on a highway there. Just a year later, the couples daughter was killed in an accident on that same strip of highway. And Teddy came to his end in a car accident as well.

The Rockford Park District acquired the property and opened the home as a museum in 1943. The Tinker Family had lived here for 75 years and much of their personal effects were still in the house like clothing, furniture, artwork, diaries and household items. Over the years, the house has been restored as have the gardens. The Victorian Rose Garden was restored in 1998 to the way it looked between 1890 to 1910. There are over 25 heirloom varieties of roses in the garden. The Railroad Garden still exists and is currently under restoration following Robert's diaries. Jessie grew award winning Irises and the Tinker Iris Path is being developed to honor her with 39 varieties spanning from 1911-1942. These were the years that Jessie would have grown irises. And west of the Tinker Railroad Garden is the Tinker Illinois Prairie Meadow, which is the founding site of Rockford and had once held Germanicus Kent's home. The house offers tours, both historic and paranormal.

Diane first heard about this location at the Haunted America Conference many years ago. The museum offers ghost tours and paranormal investigations. Staff and visitors have had countless experiences of the unexplained that include hearing whistling and humming, the sounds of children playing, being touched and seeing full-bodied apparitions. Most people believe that it is former members of the Tinker family that haunt the cottage. Many died in the house. Mary's father Josephus came to live with the couple and died in the house. Mary's niece Marcia died in the house. Mary died in the house. Her funeral was conducted in the parlor. 

Tinker Swiss Cottage appeared on Ghost Hunters during Season 8 on Episode 20. The Ghost Research Society had investigated here several times and during an investigation in 2016, they managed to record EVP from twenty different voices. TnT Paranormal Investigators have also caught many EVPs while investigating. They think that the male ones they catch on the lower floor are from Robert Tinker himself since his disability forced him to live on that floor alone. They have also caught female voices warning about the railroad. The group has also seen shadow people.

Kathi Kresol wrote in her 2017 book "Haunted Rockford, Illinois" about an experience she had in the house during a public investigation, "I entered the basement from the outside door and was speaking to Sara Bowker, one of the psychics who assists with Haunted Rockford Events. She was explaining to me that there was a ghostly servant girl that was rushing up and down the stairs, apparently trying to serve dinner. As she said this, I was standing at the bottom of the stairs that went between the basement and the upstairs kitchen, and I saw movement from the corner of my eye. I turned to look up the stairs and saw the back portion of a lady in a long blue-patterned dress. I was quite startled and turned to look at Sara. She asked, 'Did you see her?' I was astonished and must have shown it because my expression made Sara laugh."

Kathi shared other experiences that have occurred during tours. They once caught a clear EVP of a male saying, "Get out" that seemed to be directed at one male investigator in particular. It was assumed that Mr. Tinker didn't like this guy and his techniques. Another time, the lights went completely out in the whole house - something that had never happened during a tour. While one of the guides went to check the breaker, Kathi stayed with the tour guests and tried to keep everyone calm. Suddenly a woman screamed. Kathi turned on her flashlight and saw that this woman was standing away from the group in a corner. The woman said she had just been touched and was clearly freaked. Kathi could see that no one was near her, so it couldn't have been another guest playing tricks. The lights then turned on and the group used some equipment in the corner to see if they could get readings. An EMF detector pinged to red and stayed there. The young woman who had been touched left the tour immediately.

The family spirits love their home and don't like to be provoked. One young man told his team he wanted to investigate the house alone. He conducted an experiment with some pennies, putting them on different surfaces. There wasn't much interaction, so he started making some unkind comments about the family and the house. A very heavy and dark feeling started to fill the room, so he decided to take a break. As he approached the door, a penny flew at his head and hit the wall just above it. Then he couldn't get the door to open and the heavy feeling increased. He felt very unsettled when he finally got the door open and went outside. Provocation is no longer allowed because the general manager got tired of the after effects. Doors would get slammed in his face and the alarms would go off in the middle of the night, so that he would have to meet the police out at the property.

Kathi wrote of another experience she had in 2021 while investigating with a group named Ghost Head Soup, "I have been hosting these Paranormal Events in the Rockford area for 17 years now.  We offer these Ghost Investigations so folks can join in with an actual Investigation team.  They can use the equipment and see what a real investigation feels like. We split the participants into three groups so that there are smaller groups.  Samantha, Sara and I usually sit in on the sessions in different areas.  For this particular event, I was stationed in the barn with Dean. Dean begins the session by explaining  the equipment that we will be using for that session.  Then we turn out the lights. I need to make something very clear before I go on with this story.  I have worked with Sara Bowker for 15 years now.  She is the psychic one and I rely heavily on her impressions.  I sometimes get feelings but rarely do I get details.  I was just settling into my chair when I got the coldest feeling on my back.  And when I closed my eyes- I saw one of the scariest things I had experienced in a long time.  I could clearly picture a young lady -possibly a teenager or a little older.  She wore a long white gown that appeared to be wet.  She had dark, long hair but had her head down and I couldn’t see her face.  She looked for lack of a better description- like the little girl from the movie, 'The Ring'."

She continued, "I [ran] to get Sara.  I just knew that she usually could tell me what was happening.  Only this time, she couldn’t.  Sara could sense the girl but this spirit did not want to communicate- AT ALL!  This made it so much scarier to me.  Sara can usually figure out what the spirit wants to say and helps them by communicating.  But this girl just lingered there." Dean Thompson with Ghost head Soup had been doing research the day before and based on information they got using dowsing rods, the group concluded that this was not a Tinker, but a young woman named Alma Johnson who was killed in 1909 when she was swept under a train headed into Rockford. It was a very gruesome accident. Interestingly, this young woman had a foot severed just above the ankle and Robert Tinker had lost a foot when he was caught under a train and dragged. Kathi wasn't so sure this was Alma and thinks that maybe it was a young woman that had thrown herself into the Rock River.

Haunted Rockford shared on their website, "The first time we ever visited the cottage on one of the Haunted Rockford bus tours, we were joined by a paranormal investigation team. We split the guests up into small groups, and different guides led them through the cottage. As we were loading the bus to head to the next stop, one of the ladies approached me. She told me she had really enjoyed the tour. She loved that we used psychics, that we shared the history of the house, that we had the team along, and that we had the lady dressed in clothes from the time period of the Tinkers. This last piece caught my attention, and I asked her what she meant. She explained that when her group was going out on the suspension bridge, they passed a woman with her dark hair in a bun and all dressed in white. By now, we had been joined by others on the tour, and there was a surprised gasp from several of the members when I explained that we had no one dressed up in a white dress. I wasn’t sure who the lady saw, but this mystery woman was not part of the tour. I can’t adequately describe the look on the woman’s face, but I can tell you that it was priceless!"

And there was this experience also, "One other time when we were there with a group, we were upstairs in the “red room” telling about Josephus Dorr, when all of a sudden we heard a woman’s voice from downstairs calling “Hello?” I turned to Steve and asked if he had locked the doors behind us and he stated that he had. I told him he better go make sure because we were all upstairs and someone must have come in. Steve had a very funny look on his face when he joined us a few minutes later. He had checked the doors and they were locked. He had also checked the entire downstairs, and there was no one else in the building with us. Everyone who was there that night confirmed that they heard the voice."

The Tinker family's spirits seem to be quite active in the afterlife. Sometimes they are welcoming and sometimes they seem perturbed to have people in their home. But are they really there? Is Tinker Swiss Cottage haunted? That is for you to decide!

*Thomas Campbell wrote a poem called Hallowed Ground. A line from that is on Mary's tombstone and we love it. "To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die."*

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