Anne Harmon

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Marble Springs 2.0 screenshot of Anne Harmon

What we know

née Kingston
1849 - 1904
Wife of Tim Harmon, who owned the Black Queen Mine with his Sam Harmon brother. A wagon accident took her sight as well as two of her children, Margaret and Esther, but Anne perservered to raise her three remaining children: Laura, Jordan, and Isaac.

Tim helped to run the Black Queen until the Silver Panic of'93 when he was reduced to taking a foreman’s job at the quarry.

Wildflowers

After the accident,
Doctor Hudson came out twice.
And Doc Nancy hunted out
all the squawroot in the valley.
Tim finally sought out Alvina,
whose potions only burned
Anne’s bare eyes deeper.

Salt tears flowing freely
over the cold ground
were of no more use
than the poultices and remedies.

Laura laughed, her small legs
tied with bells for Anne to hear.
And then in spring, their fingers knelt
together in mud,
drinking in the last of the snow.

Anne asked Tim to connect the kitchen
to a garden on the hillside,
the garden to the well,
the well to the barn
with a series of clotheslines.

Later, Anne gathered stalks of
her imported lavender and
lemongrass, leaving her
sage and mint1 borders
to spill over the old railroad ties,
brimming with scent.

Dried stalks of herbs hung down
the kitchen door, always open now
as she baked sweet-smelling pies
for neighbors on Sundays.

Tim made a flower-press and
carved a rude outline of a columbine
on the front. Anne kept it on the
mantelpiece for company.

She laughed when the children came
sliding in snowy spring afternoons—
swooping down from the top of the hill
right into her kitchen on soaped wood boards—

And
I have lived so much
and laughed so long

she said.

Connections

connect-harmon.jpg

Portal

Sources

Brown, Robert Leaman.An Empire of Silver. Denver, Colorado: Sundance
Publications, 1984.

Portal caption and links

A drawing of a stem of four flower blossoms.
Laura Keeperly
Billie Rose Cattering
Katy Stoner
Leah Cole
Missy Vernon
Doc Nancy
Dell Harmon
Charity Paine

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Portal for secret connections
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