Milton poet lives on through museum

In 1987 Rafuse was approached by Harley Walker who asked if she knew of an author by the name of Harriet Cole.

Walker lived in Milton and had a passion for its history and descendants of the Mayflower, she said.

The woman he inquired about was a “Milton girl.”

The search was complicated for Rafuse as Harriet Cole was a pen name. It wasn’t until 1992 that Rafuse discovered the author’s real name was Harriet Nickerson.

“It was just like the light turned on and I said oh my God it’s her. It was just the most exciting day,” she declared, “that several years later, it was just an exciting time that she had finally been found.”

Harriet Cole was born in 1841. She was the daughter of James and Ruth Nickerson of Milton.

Her mother’s maiden name was Cole and she had a sister named Hannah, who died in 1926.

Cole suffered from entire nervous prostration in the late 1800s.

Nervous prostration as defined today is an emotional disorder leaving a person unable to work due to exhaustion.

“She wrote most of her poetry just laying on her sofa looking out the window,” said Rafuse.

“Songs from the Valley,” printed in 1878, contained Cole’s poetry. The author dictated it to her sister.

“I was just taken with it,” Rafuse said about the poetry. “She just seemed to write this at a young age but she seemed to have a body full of compassion.”

After Rafuse knew of the Nickerson family, she was telling Harriet’s story to Queens County Museum board member Walter McLeod who said the name sounded familiar.

“He went home and about an hour later or so he came into the museum with this snuff box that had - when you opened it up - little heart candy and this letter in it,” explained Rafuse.

Addressed to his grandmother Bertha Cole, the letter was from Hannah Nickerson.

“That just blew us away,” she stated, “that here this whole time we actually had a hand written letter by Harriet’s sister Hannah who had taken all her sister’s dictation for her poetry.

“She also had one of her poems published into a hymn,” noted Rafuse.

“The End of the Way” was the poem.

“I think that’s something for one of our local people,” she stated.

Cole died from her disease in 1883 at the age of 42.

Rafuse found Hannah Nickerson’s gravestone in the Milton Community Cemetery.

“What the mystery was we could never find her (Harriet Cole’s) grave,” she declared. “One thing I always read in here (referring to Cole’s book) she always talked about her favourite flower, the violet and she just loved violets and she said something about putting them on a resting place which was really special to her.”

Rafuse thought if she ever found Cole’s grave she would place violets on top, but she never found it.

She suspects Cole is either in the Milton Community Cemetery or in the original cemetery on top of Milford Street.

From reading Cole’s poetry Rafuse concludes that her poetry reveals the kind of person that she was, one who was full of compassion for life and freely accepted the illness she had.