Record Details
A Political Explanation
From sad experience I now have been unlawfully confined and otherwise barbacued by the Government going on twenty-three years while I am yet uncondemned by any witness of either friend or foe.…I was once taken before the Court without any warrant and sent to the House of Correction for the space of nine months without any trial.…Now the Seven Evil Confronting Spirits are…Knavery, and Slavery, and Pledged Secretiveness and Know Nothing Hypocrisy that forms the Grabbgame theology and the Ku Klux of Hell. Now these are the first four Inferior Evil Spirits and then to keep them in vogue it takes Wrath and Strife and bloodshed in War. —Franklin Wilder
These two drawings are signed by Franklin Wilder, a descendant of English dissenters who arrived in the American colonies in the seventeenth century seeking religious freedom. The copious texts that indicate a schooled intelligence are framed in fervent religious terms and constitute an impassioned indictment of government, judicial courts, bloody wars, the Know Nothings, and the Ku Klux Klan that together comprise the secret societies that control the lives of individuals powerless in their grip. Although the texts speak to a troubled mind and life, there is a foundation of truth to the conspiratorial tone.
The Wilder family was among the founders of Lancaster, Massachusetts, now forming parts of Clinton and Sterling. They participated in Queen Anne’s War and the French and Indian War, yet responded to the patriot cause during the Revolutionary War, bridling under British economic oppression. The Wilders were one of four families that established large homesteads and farms on the east side of the Nashua River. Following the death of Revolutionary soldier Stephen Wilder, his three hundred acres were divided among his sons. It is this inheritance that descended to Franklin Wilder in 1834. Wilder was married the following year and soon had three children to support. As a yeoman farmer with few labor resources outside his own family, he struggled to manage the large farm and make ends meet. In 1842, the farm burned, and two years later Wilder’s property and that of neighboring farmers were appropriated by the Lancaster Mills, a powerful textile corporation that effectively destroyed the agrarian way of life that had persisted in this small corner of the state. In September 1855, Franklin Wilder was jailed over a dispute involving property rights. His incarceration, the loss of his family legacy, and other calamitous events proved too much. That same year, he suffered "delusions and insanity" and was committed to the Massachusetts State Hospital.
In 1859, Wilder was transferred to the new Northampton Lunatic Hospital facility, where he would live for the next thirty-three years until his death in 1892. Although the hospital was designed to hold 200 patients, it had 233 occupants by the time Wilder arrived. The early years were modeled on guidelines of moral treatment and the benefits of physical labor. Working on the hospital’s farm provided activity, fresh air, engagement, and encouraged a sense of accomplishment and normalcy. Not coincidentally, the farm production also contributed to the institution’s financial welfare. For a time, Wilder drove an oxteam and did some farming, but he gave this up when he became very religious, spending his time instead reading the Bible, interpreting the Scriptures, and writing.
Stacy C. Hollander, "The Messiah’s Crown, 1878–1882, A Political Explanation, 1878–1882" exhibition copy for American Perspectives: Stories from the American Folk Art Museum Collection. Stacy C. Hollander, curator. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2020.
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