I’m a long-time subscriber of Miami Judge Milton Hirsch’s thoughtfully written “Constitutional Calendar” email list. (Email him at milton.hirsch@gmail.com if you want to subscribe, which I highly recommend). Judge Hirsch recently wrote about The Difficulty of Crossing a Field, a short story by Civil War vet Ambrose Bierce about a plantation owner in 1854 walking across a field and simply vanishing into thin air. It was first published in 1900. The probate court in the story was tasked with adjudicating the missing man’s death in the absence of “competent” witness testimony (which Judge Hirsch links to an interesting 14th Amendment reference involving the witness testimony of enslaved Americans).
In today’s world it’s harder to just vanish — but it does still happen. And when it does, as a probate practitioner you’ll want to be familiar with F.S. 731.103(3), which authorizes the legal establishment of a missing person’s death by direct or circumstantial evidence (then allowing the estate to be administered).
Now back to Judge Hirsch’s commentary. He starts by introducing Bierce’s short story as follows:
American journalist and author Ambrose Bierce wrote, among a great many other things, an exceedingly short short story entitled, “The Difficulty of Crossing a Field.”
Judge Hirsch then shares the story in its entirety as follows:
One morning in July, 1854, a planter named Williamson, living six miles from Selma, Alabama, was sitting with his wife and a child on the veranda of his dwelling. Immediately in front of the house was a lawn, perhaps fifty yards in extent between the house and public road, or, as it was called, the “pike.” Beyond this road lay a close-cropped pasture of some ten acres, level and without a tree, rock, or any natural or artificial object on its surface. At the time there was not even a domestic animal in the field. In another field, beyond the pasture, a dozen slaves were at work under an overseer.
Throwing away the stump of a cigar, the planter rose, saying: “I forgot to tell Andrew about those horses.” Andrew was the overseer.
Williamson strolled leisurely down the gravel walk, plucking a flower as he went, passed across the road and into the pasture, pausing a moment as he closed the gate leading into it, to greet a passing neighbor, Armour Wren, who lived on an adjoining plantation. Mr. Wren was in an open carriage with his son James, a lad of thirteen. When he had driven some two hundred yards from the point of meeting, Mr. Wren said to his son: “I forgot to tell Mr. Williamson about those horses.”
Mr. Wren had sold to Mr. Williamson some horses, which were to have been sent for that day, but for some reason not now remembered it would be inconvenient to deliver them until the morrow. The coachman was directed to drive back, and as the vehicle turned Williamson was seen by all three, walking leisurely across the pasture. At that moment one of the coach horses stumbled and came near falling. It had no more than fairly recovered itself when James Wren cried: “Why, father, what has become of Mr. Williamson?”
It is not the purpose of this narrative to answer that question.
Mr. Wren’s strange account of the matter, given under oath in the course of legal proceedings relating to the Williamson estate, here follows:
“My son’s exclamation caused me to look toward the spot where I had seen the deceased [sic] an instant before, but he was not there, nor was he anywhere visible. I cannot say that at the moment I was greatly startled, or realized the gravity of the occurrence, though I thought it singular. My son, however, was greatly astonished and kept repeating his question in different forms until we arrived at the gate. My black boy Sam was similarly affected, even in a greater degree, but I reckon more by my son’s manner than by anything he had himself observed. [This sentence in the testimony was stricken out.] As we got out of the carriage at the gate of the field, and while Sam was hanging [sic] the team to the fence, Mrs. Williamson, with her child in her arms and followed by several servants, came running down the walk in great excitement, crying: ‘He is gone, he is gone! O God! what an awful thing!’ and many other such exclamations, which I do not distinctly recollect. I got from them the impression that they related to something more – than the mere disappearance of her husband, even if that had occurred before her eyes. Her manner was wild, but not more so, I think, than was natural under the circumstances. I have no reason to think she had at that time lost her mind. I have never since seen nor heard of Mr. Williamson.”
This testimony, as might have been expected, was corroborated in almost every particular by the only other eye-witness (if that is a proper term) – the lad James. Mrs. Williamson had lost her reason and the servants [meaning enslaved persons] were, of course, not competent to testify. The boy James Wren had declared at first that he saw the disappearance, but there is nothing of this in his testimony given in court. None of the field hands working in the field to which Williamson was going had seen him at all, and the most rigorous search of the entire plantation and adjoining country failed to supply a clew. The most monstrous and grotesque fictions, originating with the blacks, were current in that part of the State for many years, and probably are to this day; but what has been here related is all that is certainly known of the matter. The courts decided that Williamson was dead, and his estate was distributed according to law.
What’s the takeaway?
Judge Hirsch then shared the following parting thoughts, which are especially interesting coming from a working state court judge who served for some time in Miami’s probate division:
How Bierce’s fictional probate court “decided that Williamson was dead” in the absence of witnesses is unnecessary to relate. But Mrs. Williamson would have been incompetent to testify because she had lost her mind; and the “servants” (meaning slaves) would have been incompetent to testify by reason of their status: Black people were, as a matter of law, incompetent to testify in 1854 Alabama, and in a great many other places. That was rectified – well, it was intended to be rectified – by the 14th Amendment.
In October of 1913 Bierce, then age 71, went to Mexico to report on, or get involved in, the Mexican Revolution. He was traveling with Pancho Villa’s army on December 27, 1913, when he wrote a letter to an old friend, Blanche Partington. The letter concluded, “As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination.”
He was never seen or heard from again. Like the fictional Mr. Williamson, he vanished without a trace.