ON BLUEBERRY HILL, A NOVEL
The 19th-Century Boyd Vs. Bender Feud
On Blueberry Hill: The 19th-Century Boyd vs. Bender Feud
Based on the novel by Gregory J. Lalire
Copyright 2025 Gregory J. Lalire
Contact: James Clois Smith Jr., Sunstone Press (505) 998-4418
LOGLINE: The Boyds, living on the western half of Blueberry Hill, don’t want to disturb more than necessary the natural blessings of their land, while the Benders, occupying the eastern half, favor making the most of their land resources for financial gain--consequently, a feud develops that lasts more than half a century.
INTRODUCTION
Today, the Boyd and Bender families are not only co-existing peacefully on Blueberry Hill but are also running two businesses together—selling blueberries and bottled spring water. For many years in the 19th century Boyds and Benders were bitter enemies. How their feud began, developed, and finally ended is the story told here by an independent historian.
ACT I
1811. The middle-aged Handy Boyd, aided by an ancient Lenni Lenape Indian calling himself “Man,” decides the ideal place to make a home for himself and his young wife is a remote blueberry-rich hill in Sullivan County, New York. Handy wants an uncomplicated life for his growing family--living primarily on blueberries, largely isolated from the world, and without abusing the land. His dream can only be realized because of the hard work of “Man,” full name Catawissa Manayunk, who hunts, fishes, and builds a dugout for the Boyds while living in a nearby wigwam.
1825-26. Handy and Henrietta Boyd now have three children—restless Chester, rock-steady Elmer, and sickly Henry. The family still lives in the dugout because Handy is too lazy and unskilled to build anything more substantial. After venturing to Wurtsboro to sell blueberries, 14-year-old Handy witnesses groundbreaking for the Delaware & Hudson Canal and realizes there is opportunity for work and fun away from the Hill. Chester runs away from home, and on the road meets a traveling butcher named Jeremiah “Red” Bender, who is about his age and equally eager to find a new calling. The two teenagers become pals. Jeremiah lands a job working for the D&H and begins a long career with the canal. Chester doesn’t get a job and becomes Wurtsboro’s No. 1 guttersnipe—roaming the streets day and night.
1828-1840. Handy brings his son Chester home to Blueberry Hill, where son Elmer has begun building a family house made of stone—Blue Rock House. Henrietta gives birth to Aida, Blue Boy, Jacob, and Peter but in February 1840 dies when the blind, undersized and ugly but incredibly brainy Blue Belle is born. After Henrietta is buried in her old home town, Port Jervis, Chester becomes restless again on the Hill and heads back to Wurtsboro. He reunites with Jeremiah Bender (now a D&H Canal boat captain) and becomes acquainted with his old pal’s beautiful wife Anna. Chesters shows a little too much interest in Anna and a long off-and-on love-hate relationship begins.
ACT II
1847. While working in Wurtsboro at the Fulton & Holmes General Store, Chester meets the artist Nathaniel Bender, the younger brother of businessmen Jeremiah and Alexander. Much to his distress, Chester learns that the Benders have purchased the large Drake Tract, which includes forty acres on the east side of Blueberry Hill. What’s more the Benders’ relentless handyman Daniel Leach is cutting down trees on the Hill for building a massive wood house to be called “the Bend” and to be run by his soon-to-be wife, the equally hardnosed Bender sister Eunice.
1848. The family feud begins in earnest when Daniel Leach shoots a trespasser, Henry Boyd. Chester, realizing blood has been spilled and that he must help protect the Hill from the Bender invaders, comes home to Blue Rock House. Henry survives his wound, but “Man,” the old Indian who has long been a valuable friend to the Boyds, finally dies a natural death and is buried on the Hill near his beloved Handy Spring. Peter Boyd, while patrolling at the top of the Hill with brother Jabob, fires a Colt revolver at an unseen animal that turns out to be a human being. The victim, Nathaniel Bender, had innocently followed a murder of crows to the Boyd side of the Hill. The two oldest Bender brothers want to see the shooter prosecuted, but Nathaniel’s wound doesn’t prove life threatening and Peter is released. Eunice Bender meets Aida Boyd, who is now running Rock House the way her late mother once did, and tells her that whatever happens on the Hill stays on the Hill. Chester and Anna also meet again by chance and realize that despite their families being enemies, a spark exists between them. Overall tension continues, however. The two shootings—one on each side—have not been forgotten.
1858. The Benders are more prosperous than ever with their sawmills, tanneries, and quarries, as well as Jeremiah’s well-paying job manning freight boats on the canal and Alexander’s profitable railroad interests. At the same time, the Boyds resent them more than ever, though there has been no return to bloodshed. One day the blind Blue Belle gets lost trying to visit the artist Nathaniel Bender, who is working on her portrait. After a night alone in the woods, she ends up at the Bend. Her brother Elmer finds her there and believes she has been kidnapped, fueling the tension on the Hill.
ACT III
1861-65. The American Civil War starts. Peter and Jacob both join the Union Army and Blue Belle travels to Washington D.C. to help poet-turned-nurse Walt Whitman tend to wounded Union soldiers. The Benders avoid any kind of service. In fact, because Daniel Leach and his cousin Deliah, who has married Alexander, are from Georgia, the Bender family has leanings toward the South. Daniel builds a stone wall at the top of the divided Hill, and Deliah predictably dubs the wall “Jackson.” That makes the Boyds think more than ever that the Benders are “the enemy.” Down South, Private Jacob dies and Private Peter is accidentally shot by a fellow Union soldier. The depressed Peter returns home with a wife, the nurse Ellen, but without his right arm. At Blue Rock House, Handy Boyd, the white pioneer of Blueberry Hill, dies at age one-hundred four. Blue Belle comes back north for her father’s memorial and to help her family heal from their many wounds. Mortimer Loomis, the one who shot Peter, shows up at the house on a goodwill mission but overstays his welcome because of his romantic interest in both Ellen and Aida.
1872-74. The Boyds plan to attend a huge Fourth of July celebration in Wurtsboro. While the family members are walking to town on the public road, Benders rudely pass by in three wagons without incident. But bringing up the rear of the convoy is a Bender carriage that veers off the road, overturns, and injures both Chester Boyd and the carriage driver, Nathaniel Bender. The canal is celebrated as much as the country at this Independence Day gathering, but before the fireworks start, the annual “Wurtsboro Firing of the Anvil” goes badly, resulting in one death and several minor injuries. Aida Boyd missies that action because she has gone off to the train station with none other than Mortimer Loomis. Like other members of the Boyd family, Aida, now forty-five, has been worried about how the Boyd line will continue in the future, and she figures Loomis can help her produce a baby, preferably a boy. During copulation, Loomis’ heart gives out, but Aida isn’t too upset. She has become pregnant and the fatherless child will have the last name Boyd. It turns out to be a girl, named Handa after the late Handy, but not long after, Ellen, thanks to an alternative plan to keep the Boyd name going, gives birth to a boy, Gad. It isn’t certain if Chester, Henry or Blue Boy is the actual father. It certainly isn’t Ellen’s husband, Peter, but nobody tells him that.
Last Years of the 19th Century. On a hot summer day in 1887 twelve-year-old Gad Boyd goes panther hunting with two young Bender twins, Stevie and Nickey. The big cat kills Stevie but Nickey and Gad both escape and must live with survivor guilt. Not wanting to return to the Hill after the tragedy, Gad runs away, hopping a train to the end of the line—Oswego, New York. Ellen, Peter, Aida, and Blue Belle eventually fetch Gad, which somewhat lifts the spirits of all the Boyds. On the Bender side, there is much gloom because of Stevie’s death and lingering anger from the belief that Gad was somehow to blame. Realizing that they can NOT live by blueberries (eating them and selling them) alone, the Boyds more seriously enter the business world by bottling and selling the sweet-tasting water continually produced by Handy Spring. It allows them to pay their taxes and hold their ground on the western side of Blueberry Hill. For most of the 1890s the Boyds thrive while the Benders suffer from a fire and the deaths of some family members, most notably Jeremiah during a wake in Wurtsboro for the moribund D&H Canal. Chester and Anna have been rendezvousing that decade, but Anna puts an end to their affair after her husband’s death. Chester can’t forget Anna, though, and with Gad’s help spies on her during Jeremiah’s grandiose memorial service at the Bend. Gad has another reason for being there. He has his eye on Jeremiah’s granddaughter Betty Bender.
EPILOGUE
As the 19th century draws to a close, Boyds are dying, too. Chester Boyd sees the wedding in June 1900 between Gad Boyd and Betty Bender and hangs on until after the honeymoon. He dies knowing that this particular Boyd and Bender relationship, like Romeo and Juliet but with a happy ending, has done more than anything else to finally bring the two families together.
disturbing the land as lightly as possible. Their peace and quiet is ended when the Bender family take over the east side of the hill along with much neighboring land with full intention to start up sawmills, tanneries and quarries to increase their wealth. The two families’ differences on how to live and use the land triggers a lasting feud with periodic flare-ups of violence for half a century.
PROLOGUE
1939. Eighty-something retired newspaperman William Tweed Bonnifield, aka Willie the Kid, travels from Silver City, New Mexico, to Hico, Texas, to confront Brushy Bill Roberts, an old man claiming to be Billy the Kid, though the real Billy is known to have died fifty-eight years earlier. At first, Willie implies that he himself is Billy but then reveals that he was actually the best pal of the other Kid when they were growing up together in Indianapolis, Wichita, Denver, Santa Fe, and Silver City. Willie calls Brushy Bill a “not-so-great pretender” and leaves Hico to tell the world the true story of pals Willie and Billy.
ACT I
May 1, 1859. In a New York City tenement apartment, unwed eighteen-year-old Charlotte Bonnifield gives birth to a laughing, drooling baby whose “demonic” appearance causes midwife Freya O’Neal to faint. Charlotte names her baby after onetime lover William “Boss” Tweed but soon decides that calling him “Willie the Kid” is more fitting. Willie has a habit of sticking his tongue out at the two women in his world but at first feels more comfortable with old Freya, who stays with him all day while his mother labors as a seamstress in a sweatshop. Freya tells Willie that his mother’s world is infested by bad men.
Summer 1864. Charlotte quits her job and, despite the protests of Freya, takes five-year-old Willie out of New York’s Lower East Side to Binghamton, New York, where she cooks and cleans for widower Prosper Davis. Her employer is nice enough, but she feels like an indentured servant. What’s more, Prosper’s thirty-year-old son, Elroy is a letch and a drunk. Charlotte fights off Elroy’s advances, and Proper sends his son to the New York State Inebriate Asylum in Binghamton.
March 1865. Elroy Davis escapes from the asylum with another patient, Levi Finch, and when the two men run off to Levi’s hometown of Indianapolis, Charlotte and Willie come along. She has taken a shine to Levi, though she warns him she will never marry again and lies that her husband died during the Civil War. Willie must come, too, she says, as he is part of the deal.
In Indianapolis, Willie and his mother live for a while at the Finch family home and she becomes intimate with Levi. Soon after, however, Levi and young Willie come down with the “bloody flux.” Levi dies from severe dehydration, but Willie recovers. The presence of Elroy Davis in the household makes Willie’s “Mum” take a position across town as housekeeper for future mayor of Indianapolis John Caven. Of course, she brings along Willie, who finds Mr. Caven to be a fatherly figure. Attending school for the first time, Willie occasionally misbehaves but makes a new friend when he doesn’t tattle on a new boy who says his name is William Henry McCarty.
Willie is jealous when he sees new friend Billy (not yet called the Kid) doing an impromptu dance on the street with pigtailed Laura Blakney. But Willie still admires Billy, who talks him into joining his secretive kids’ club, the Free and Accepted Woodworkers of Indianapolis. Billy won’t let younger brother Joe (called Josie by Billy) join, but the club ends anyway due to accidents with knives. For pushing Joe into the White River, Billy gets a paddling from his mother, Catherine Bonnifield, that sends him tumbling. Billy treats his punishment as a joke, calling it the “Great Somersault Affair.”
Charlotte Bonnifield and Catherine McCarty strike up a friendship after they find out they are both from New York City, both have sons the same age, and both like to pass themselves off as widows. Catherine, though, wants to leave Indianapolis for Wichita, Kansas, because doctors have told her that she has consumption (also known as tuberculosis) and that a more favorable climate would help. Billy is eager to go out to the real West to play cowboys and Indians. Willie, on the other hand, is upset that his best pal is leaving and that he might be stuck in Indianapolis the rest of his life. Catherine does indeed go west with her two sons and accompanying them is a Civil War veteran she has recently met, William “Bill” Antrim.
ACT II
1871. Willie feels alone in Indianapolis without his best pal, especially after failing to make any headway with Laura Blakney, who still misses Billy. The mothers of Willie and Billy have been corresponding, however, and eventually even Billy writes, saying he is having fun out West and is now being called Henry because having two Bills around is confusing. Catherine asks Charlotte to come to Wichita to help her run a laundry business and make fruit pies, assuring her that she is still single, her own boss, and in full control of her “young man companion.” Charlotte finally agrees to move with Willie to Wichita in the covered wagon of Bill Antrim’s carpenter friend, Frederick Schellschmidt. Willie has not taken to Fred but he sure wants to see Billy again.
In Wichita, Willie, Billy, and Joe are home-schooled by Catherine, who is living with Bill Antrim out of wedlock. Billy enjoys telling Willie tales of badmen and shooting affairs, none of which Willie witnesses. After learning furniture-making Fred Schellschmidt has put Catherine in the family way, Willie admits that if he had a pistol, he might just shoot the man. That becomes a moot point when the baby dies in the womb. Meanwhile, Willie joins Billy in begging for candy, bumping into ladies, faking war-related limps, and creating other mischief on the streets of Wichita but doing nothing serious enough to cause a lawman to lock them up. When doctors confirm the consumption diagnosis, Catherine decides to move again, this time to a higher drier climate. Once again, Willie becomes separated from his pal Billy McCarty.
Catherine McCarty now lives in Denver with her two sons and Bill Antrim, who has taken to prospecting for gold. She and Charlotte Bonnifield again write each other letters, and Willie eventually hears from Billy again. Now thirteen and attending a school he doesn’t like, Willie checks out a map and considers running away from his Wichita home to join Billy in the capital of Colorado Territory. He doesn’t act on his wish, though, and believes himself to be a slug doomed to spend the rest of his days in Wichita. But then he gets good news. Fred Schellschmidt decides he wants to head out to Denver to invest in a silver mine with Bill Antrim. Charlotte is reluctant until Catherine invites her to run a pie business and assures her that the air in Denver is clear and dry and that Willie will be able to attend the Arapahoe School with Billy and Joe.
When Fred, Charlotte, and Willie step off the train in Denver, they are greeted by Bill Antrim, Catherine McCarty and Joe McCarty. Billy is not there and nobody is talking about it. Finally, Willie learns that his pal is in the city jail for allegedly abusing the two daughters of Mr. Antrim’s mining boss, Walter Rittenhouse. Willie slips away to the jailhouse to have his reunion with Billy, who claims he took thirteen-year-old Sally and twelve-year-old Rachel down to Cherry Creek but only danced with them. The girls eventually admit that Billy is “innocent,” but the incident costs Bill Antrim’s job and Fred’s hopes of the riches a silver mine could bring. Complaining that Denver is getting old and that the police don’t like him, Billy suggests they move south instead of west this time and see what Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory, has to offer. Willie as usual wants to go wherever Billy is going, and the four adults decide to move after Fred says the people living down there in adobes must need chairs and tables like the rest of us.
On March 1, 1873, Catherine, whose health is getting worse, finally marries Bill Antrim at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Fe with Billy, Joe, and Willie among the witnesses. Charlotte, who is in good health and helping her friend run a boarding house, continues to hold out against marrying Fred Schellschmidt. Billy takes a part-time job doing dishes at the Exchange Hotel but prefers spending time in the Santa Fe Plaza dancing and conversing with the señoritas or just sitting in front of the Palace of the Governors with pal Willie. They meet an elderly one-legged Mexican named Maximiliano, who tells them stories of past gunfights in the city. Billy and Willie, however, see no gunfights. When Bill Antrim insists on moving to Silver City, New Mexico Territory, in pursuit of silver, Billy doesn’t object because he anticipates greater adventures in a rough and ready place where unruly men are ready to shoot and fierce Apaches are eager to scalp. The four Antrims and two Bonnifields take wagons south, and Willie likes the idea because he’ll still be with Billy and, what’s more, Fred Schellschmidt has elected to stay behind in Santa Fe to make his furniture.
Act III
In Silver City, the Antrims and Bonnifields move into a log cabin, though many residents still live in tents. Charlotte and Catherine start the C&C Bakery while Bill Antrim takes to gambling and, after a short turn as a part-time butcher, begins taking long prospecting trips. Billy and Willie hang out with some mischievous boys who are labeled the “Village Arabs.” Among them are Harry and Wayne Whitehill, sons of coroner and future sheriff Harvey Whitehill. The boys encounter a gun-wielding drunk outside the Orleans Club, and later Billy and Willie witness a stabbing. But they only hear about the more than one dozen shootings that take place that summer in Silver City,
In the fall, Willie gets some bad news. Bill Antrim has taken up carpentry because he says it is too cold to go prospecting. But Willie learns that the reason Mr. Antrim has gone into that line of work is because his friend Fred Schellschmidt has opened a carpentry shop in Silver City. Fred is making a fancy pie safe that he plans to give Charlotte as a surprise gift. She, not woodworking and friendship, is the main reason he has relocated from Santa Fe. It all works out for him, as Charlotte at last agrees to wed this good provider who promises to be a good father to Willie. In early January 1874, a riding circuit preacher marries Charlotte and Fred. While his mother becomes Mrs. Schellschmidt, he is allowed to keep the last name Bonnifield as long as he behaves, treats his new father with respect, detaches himself from the worst of the Village Arabs, and never misses a day of school.
At school, Dr. Webster instructs in English only, but Billy picks up Spanish from his Mexican friends Although by no means the worst of the Village Arabs, he is not above a little thievery. He, with his accomplice Willie, steals soda crackers from a store, and later they are falsely accused of taking $35 from the money drawer of Richard Knight’s butcher shop. In early March 1874, Billy, without Willie’s involvement, plans to steal jewelry with two other boys but the plot never fully hatches. Still, his mother warns him that if he takes up a life of crime, he will die before he is twenty-one. Billy isn’t scared straight, but he does start to behave, including becoming the lead actor in a number of plays and minstrel shows organized to keep the Village Arabs off the streets.
Catherine Antrim takes a turn for the worse in the summer of 1874. Though hopelessly sick and pale and frail enough to look like a ghost, she banishes her inattentive husband from the house and gets Charlotte and Clara Truesdale to manage things and look after her boys. Her sons Billy and Joe, along with Willie, are at Catherine’s bedside when consumption takes her life on September 16, 1874. Her last words are “Be good, Billy, goodbye.” Bill Antrim is off somewhere prospecting.
Widower Bill Antrim farms out his two stepsons to be raised by others in Silver City, Billy by the Truesdale family, Joe by the Dyer family. Willie wants Billy to come live with him when Fred Schellschmidt builds a house for his wife, but Fred says no way. Billy behaves reasonably well for a while, though he is present when Village Arabs throw a rock that kills a Chinese man. Joe, previously seen as the good son, gets into bad habits, including visiting an opium den. Billy is influenced and invigorated by their teacher, Miss Mary Phillips Richards, who considers him one of her prize pupils. But when Billy becomes involved in a clothing heist with a petty criminal named Sombrero Jack, Sheriff Whitehill arrests him and intends to hold him in jail to teach him a lesson.
On September 25, 1875, two days after his arrest, Billy escapes the Silver City jail by climbing out the chimney. Billy shows up at the house Schellschmidt built and recruits Willie to go with him to Arizona Territory to be free as a bird. Willie reluctantly agrees. His mother thinks they are going to school. Instead, the two boys, take a stagecoach as far west as it goes—to Clifton, Arizona Territory. They go with the blessing of Mrs. Clara Truesdale, who says she has a cousin living there.
In Clifton the two friends learn from laundress Dona Juanita that Bill Antrim is prospecting in the area. They look him up. Billy’s stepfather does not welcome them. He says he has no money to give them and tells them to go back to Silver City. He lets them sleep one night in his tent, and in the morning, Billy steals some of his stepfather’s clothes and his Colt six-shooter. They find Mrs.Truesdale’s relative, Red Longfellow, but he thinks they want to rob him and chases them away. Back at Dona Juanita’s laundry they meet up with a man on the run named Bill Blood. Mr. Blood takes the willing Billy and the somewhat reluctant Willie under his wing and has the boys, now both sixteen years old, dig up some stolen money he has hidden away.
At Charles Lesinsky’s general store in Clifton, Blood buys two horses, a Colt revolver, and enough food to last him and his two prospective partners up to a week on the trail. Willie is worried because Blood is armed and dangerous and if not a killer like John Wesley Hardin than certainly a robber like Jesse James. That would make Billy and Willie his “gang.” Before the trio can ride off, a stagecoach arrives from the east, causing the swayback horse the two kids are riding to rear up and spill Willie to the ground. Fred Schellschmidt is in the stage, having been sent by Willie’s mother to bring her boy home. Willie realizes his heart is NOT into a life of adventure with the likes of Blood, so he agrees to return to Silver City with Fred. Billy goes off with Blood, so the two kids are separated once more. Willie the Kid tells Billy the Kid he will see him later.
EPILOGUE
Willie and Billy see each other only once more and only briefly. In the Mesilla, New Mexico Territory, courtroom on April 13, 1881, Willie the Kid shows up in time to hear Judge Warren Bristol sentence Billy to hang for the 1878 murder of Lincoln County Sheriff William Brady. This is their long-awaited reunion, and as Billy is being led away, Willie calls out Te Quiero, which means “I love you.” Billy tells his old friend to find a señorita and tell it to her. They would never see each other again. Billy escapes the noose only to be fatally shot by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner on July 14, 1881. Willie becomes a newspaperman and in 1921 weds the much, much younger Sabrina, who he first met the year before while visiting Billy’s final resting place in Fort Sumner. When Willie turns 86, he learns that Sabrina, only slightly more than half his age, is expecting.
END