It was Concord, at age 18, who founded the first Falls Public Lending Library for Ladies. She furnished it with her cast-off novels. (She is said to have read two a day since age 10. Her father saw this as proof of her refinement, and incidentally his own.) When Concord finally wed at the age of 31, she chose a future Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court. By her day’s standards, Concord Coker was already middle-aged. This last-minute reprieve from spinsterhood and a threatened end to the Coker line further piqued her father’s extravagance. It had already been expressed, perhaps too malely, in this house that, for all its feminizing frontal gingery lace, remains blessed with a Grover Cleveland girth of solemnity, not to mix metaphors or, worse, periods. Elkton Green’s builder swore it must now fulfill its destiny, must now become the stage for what Caleb Coker announced, in print alas, would be “the wedding of the century.”

The bride’s proud poppa, nine-term mayor of Falls, imported a 60-piece string orchestra from (not Richmond but) Philadelphia. Through his naval connections, he chartered one of the last for-lease four-masted schooners, the Reliance. It brought all instruments, the three requested extra harps, and distinguished Yankee visitors south to Wilmington’s harbor.

But Mr. Coker was too ambitious and too rich to stop there. He soon stage-managed a single decorative touch that even now gives him an ongoing life in local Falls legend. (Who could ask for anything more?) With help from a railroad-owning friend and later business partner of the Barnum and Bailey Circus—Caleb Coker imported spiders, yes, specialty spiders, from South America. I don’t pretend to understand all this, but the eight news clippings here—long since turned brown as cigars—all vouch for the insects’ unlikely presence. The exact species has been lost to us, despite our tireless research. It grieves us, this lapse; my fondest hope was to offer the species’ exact Latin name. I fear there’s no time left before our present Issue # 14 must be “put to bed.” However, I have discovered that these creatures were brought to Falls by rail.