The Dance of the White Deer was loosely inspired by the 1832 murder of Frances Maria Buell, a 16-year-old “brunette beauty” from Gustavus, Ohio. Those who are familiar with her story know that Maria (pronounced Mariah) was murdered by her stepfather, Ira West Gardner, after resisting his sexual advances.
What isn’t as well-known is that Maria had a beau at the time of her death, most likely a young man named Tunis Spears.
In testimony from the murder trial, a witness said: “Sunday before the day of the murder, [I] held a conversation with [Ira Gardner] respecting one Tunis Spears keeping company with [Maria]. [Ira Gardner] said she should not go away from them (meaning leave home), if she did [then] she should go [as] a corpse.”
This testimony makes it sound as if Maria was perhaps planning a future with Tunis Spears, and Ira Gardner was enraged at the possibility of Maria marrying and vacating his household.
Notes from the trial indicate that prior to the killing, Ira Gardner had been trying to persuade Maria to “elope” with him instead.
Another witness at the murder trial said Ira Gardner had tried to blame Tunis Spears for the difficulty between himself and Maria. However, Maria’s mother, Anna Logan Gardner, had replied to Ira: “No, [Tunis Spears] is not the cause. You know the cause, and I know it, but I would never have told what the real cause was, had not this taken place.”
So who was Tunis Spears?
Tunis Spears was born May 1, 1812 in Kinsman, Ohio, a son of Henry and Elizabeth Maybee Spears. (Tunis’s parents were both born in New York State and had been early residents of Trumbull County. Some records indicate that Tunis had also been born in New York State, so it’s unclear whether New York or Ohio is the correct location of his birth.)
Tunis was 20 years old at the time of Maria’s murder.
Newspaper accounts say Maria’s “lover” planted an oak sapling near Maria’s grave as her coffin was being lowered into the ground. The tree grew to gigantic proportions and sheltered the grave for about 120 years before being cut down. Another legend claims Maria’s lover placed an acorn in her apron pocket before she was buried, and the tree sprouted from that acorn (which, of course, doesn’t seem very plausible).
It is unknown whether or not Tunis Spears planted the tree. What is known, however, is that after Maria’s death, Tunis went on to marry someone else, a young woman named Mary Jewell Scoville.
The marriage took place October 18, 1834, in Vernon, Ohio, when Mary was just 14 and Tunis was 22. The couple’s first child was born in 1835 when Mary was 15. Nine more children followed, with the last child being born when Mary was 31. (Can you imagine being pregnant almost constantly from the age of 15 to the age of 31?? Women really had a different lot in life back then!)
In March 1837, Tunis Spears purchased 80 acres of land in Brushie Prairie, LaGrange County, Indiana, and he and his wife and first child left Trumbull County and relocated there. Brushie Prairie is located in the Northeastern Corner of Indiana not far from the Ohio and Michigan borders. Tunis is listed in census records as being a farmer.
On January 12, 1851, when Tunis was just 39 years old, he died in Springfield, LaGrange County, Indiana. At the time of his death his youngest child was only 1 and his wife was just 31 years of age. (One can only imagine the hardships she must have faced being a widow with 10 children! In 1835 Mary married again and had two more children by her second husband before dying at age 52.)
When I was writing The Dance of the White Deer I knew I wanted to create a male leading character to serve as the love interest of Limery Clark. But I had very little factual information to go on if I wanted to fashion him after Tunis Spears. Thus, the character of Aaron Harper was born entirely of my imagination.
The fact that Maria had a love interest was very intriguing to me. What did her boyfriend know about her relationship with her stepfather? Was he someone she could confide in, or did she keep her troubles a secret from him? Since Maria was an illegitimate child, how would this have affected her potential for attracting a decent husband? Would her illegitimacy cause her to be viewed unfavorably?
Perhaps it was this last question that inspired me to create a contrast in class between Limery and Aaron. Aaron would be the “good guy” from a fine, upstanding family, and Limery, although also of good character, would be the girl “from the wrong side of the tracks.”
There are typically undercurrents of deep dysfunction and secrecy in any household where sexual molestation flourishes. Therefore, I decided to contrast Limery’s existence on the suffocating and dangerous edge of a desperate situation from which she must extract herself with Aaron’s wholesome upbringing and respectable family.
They would be a study in contrasts, these two. He, aching to love and protect her, vying for her affections, and she, hesitating just beyond his reach, battling with inner demons born of a hardscrabble upbringing and a heavy load of shame and secrecy.
Whether or not this is anywhere near the truth of the real-life situation I will never know, but it is how the story came alive in my mind.
Pictured below is a photo of Tunis Spears’s grave marker. He is buried in Springfield, LaGrange County, Indiana. (Photo courtesy of Find A Grave web site)
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