I Did Not Expect To Be In Awe Of Someone Called “Chicken Lady.”
But omg, I am. People can break your heart and put it back together the right way all at the same time.
“All things have their end. And they, and I do meet in Heaven” — Nancy Luce
She was laying in front of the fireplace at 2 in the morning, thin cotton skirt splayed across the wooden floor.
It was eerily silent. January 18, 1859 and there’d been a storm. So much snow the trees were weighed down so bad they couldn’t even rustle in the wind. There was not a sound but her own soft crooning.
Here, in this little house so you know where she was… but imagine it buried under feet of snow. Without electricity. In 1859.
She was laying beside a box she’d set by the fireplace.
Inside the box was a little hen, wrapped in two wool blankets with only her tiny face peeking out.
That tiny face looked like a little songbird peeking out, she would say much later. But in that moment, she just crooned to her softly until the tiny hen put her head down and took her last breath.
That’s when Nancy Luce put her head on the bare floor and cried.
Sometimes, life and circumstance take a toll…
Nancy Luce was born wealthy enough for 1814. Her parents owned a farm that did well. Enough to buy her pretty dresses and her own horse. But that tiny pocket of good fortune didn’t last.
Her parents got sick when she was a teenager so she had to run the farm herself. Milk the cow, care for the chickens, collect the eggs and sell them. Who else would? People in town whispered about her.
“Strange girl,” they said. Running a farm, when she ought to be looking for a husband. Strangely independent for a girl. It’s unnatural, they said.
Then Nancy got sick, too.
Terribly, horribly sick and no one knew what was wrong. Today, we know it was very likely Lyme Disease, but back then they had no idea.
Life wasn’t done beating up Nancy Luce. When Nancy was 27, her mama died. Not 3 years later she buried her father, too.
There she was, sick and alone on that farm. A 30 year old spinster. Not like she was marriageable. No one wanted to marry a woman who was sick and no one even knew what’s wrong with her.
They wanted her land, not her hand…
In the 1800s, men didn’t much like women owning property. So a bunch of neighbors got together and petitioned to take her farm.
She wasn’t having it. Nope. Sorry. Prepared her own case, went to court and fought back. She won. That’s your farm, the judge said.
That’s when the bullying started.
Her “sickness” caused extreme fatigue and made her sensitive to loud noises. That’s why neighbors started banging pots and pans outside her door. Thought maybe they’d drive her out.
When it didn’t work, a couple of men broke in and locked her in a closet. That didn’t work either. She didn’t give up and go away.
Know what she did? She made art.
Some people might think it’s crazy to make art when your life has gone straight to hell. But art is what saved her. Lucky for Nancy, the family farm was in Martha’s Vineyard. A tourist attraction.
Ever heard of chapbooks?
They’re tiny books. More like the chapter of a book, that’s why they called them chapbooks. She started making them. By hand, at first. Decorated them all fancy like the old illuminated manuscripts.
The first ones were about being kind to each other.
She wrote a book about how to care for hens…
There weren’t animal cruelty laws back then and many farmers were cruel to farm animals. So she wrote a book about caring for hens. If you care well for them, she said, they’ll give you more eggs.
You must not give your hens any castor oil, nor rhubarb, it is poison for them…”
— Hens-Diseases and Cures- by Nancy Luce (1871)
Every once in a while, people would bring sick hens to her. Not the people who tried to take her farm, of course. But other farmers. She almost always cured them. So more and more people bought her book.
Every once in a while a sick hen is brought to me, to the point of death, been sick a great while, I receive them into my care, I doctor them, and take care of them, I raise them up to health “— Hens-Diseases and Cures- by Nancy Luce (1871)
They started calling her “chicken lady” so she hired a photographer…
In the 1860s. In small-town USA. She paid a photographer to take photos of her with her chickens. She sold them along with her writing.
She set up a tiny little shop right on the farm where she sold everything she could. Eggs, candles, books, art and photos. She even traded knitting and hen-healing for tobacco and sold that in her store, too.
Have tender feelings for the poor harmless dumb creatures
And not abuse them, and not let them suffer,
And not be cruel them in no way, they can’t help themselves,
Consider how you would feel, if you could not help yourselves,
And folks crueld you,
— Nancy Luce
And her books sold! Between the book about hen care, chapbooks, photos, eggs and people bringing ailing hens, she made a living for herself.
“…her little books did sell. So did her eggs and the photographs she had taken of herself posing with her chickens” — curator, Martha’s Vineyard Museum
I am left broken hearted…
If you’ve ever lived on a farm, you know animals have personalities. Some of her hens became beloved pets. People made fun of the names she gave them. Ada Queenie. Tweedle Dedel Bebby Pinkie.
Crazy woman, they said.
Who names chickens crazy names like that? They laughed at her.
I suspect she laughed, too. All the way to the bank. She built a giant brick chicken coop. With windows. And a graveyard out back for the beloved chickens when they departed and left her behind.
People flocked to see it. Haha. Flocked. Pun intended. lol.
Those gravestones cost $50 each in the 1800s. That’s about the equivalent of $1200 today. It was Beauty Linna that died in front of the fireplace that cold January day at the ripe old age of twelve.
Then one day, she fell…
No one found her for days. It makes me sad. Her chickens waiting to be fed. People knocking at her little shop door, getting no answer.
All the while, she was laying on the floor, hurt but alive. I hope she wasn’t conscious, but I don’t know. When someone finally broke in, they rushed her to the hospital. It was too late and she slipped away. She was 79.
She had no family so the town buried her. A simple gravestone with her name and date of death and an obituary in the paper.
People can break your heart and put it back together right all at the same time…
After she died, chickens started appearing on her grave. All kinds. Big and small, stone and plastic.
One day, a giant bantam hen appeared. It tugs my heart that someone had it made and affixed to her gravestone from the goodness of their heart. To this day, no one knows who put that chicken there.
Her grave is never the same two years in a row…
Chickens appear and disappear all the time. Some get taken for good luck, but others always appear to replace them.
They’re still doing it. There’s photos on Flickr and all over the internet.
And she died 132 years ago, in 1890.
“I don’t understand the chickens, but I see them each year. Each year they come but nobody really knows who is bringing them… Maybe so she’ll feel less alone.” — John Alley, West Tisdale Cemetery
References & More Reading
— In Search of Nancy Luce
— Island Eccentric Clucked to Her Own Beat
— Nancy Luce
— The Chicken Lady of Martha’s Vineyard
— Nancy Luce, The Chicken Lady
— A Woman Of 1000 Oddities
— The Story of Nancy Luce
I read this one when it was on Medium, and it really moved me. The cruelty of people is astounding, and this lady deserved so much more than she got. And by the way, your work here is worthy of a paid subscription. I'm ready, hint, hint.