Hello Lomond -- Lomond Ricalton Gravesite

Sunday, May 11, 2025, Plot 229, Nairobi South Cemetery, Kenya – formerly British East Africa.[i]

I left the Stanley Hotel at three o’clock this afternoon. The weather was clear, though it rained torrentially last night. Cars floated from the road.

The cemetery soil sticks to my shoes, rich and black. Fecund soil. My first full day in Kenya.

Hello Lomond. You are buried here, underneath the sedge.

Your father stayed at the Stanley in 1904, 1909, and 1914. More precisely, in 1914 James Ricalton was at the Stanley when he was not by your side at the British Hospital.

You lay feverish there for two weeks, Lomond, intestines perforated, seizing, delirious, then quiet. You died May 29, 1914. One hundred eleven years back. Since then no one from your family has visited. One hundred eleven years.

*

The Stanley Hotel is significant. Ernest Hemingway wrote three Africa books there, sitting in his suite, at the bar, and by the thorn tree – Nairobi’s first post office. Winston Churchill visited, as did Teddy and Kermit Roosevelt, Queen Elizabeth, Karen Blixen, and the other Stanley – Henry, who found David Livingstone. Writers, hunters, explorers, heads of state, past and present.

I stayed at the Stanley in 2019. Then I visited the hospital, now Kenyatta National Hospital, the largest in East Africa – larger than Ethiopia’s Black Lion, a place I also know.

Lore has it that you were taken from the hospital and buried fifteen minutes after you died – so feared was your disease – jungle fever, typhoid pneumonia.

I suspect you were interred on land aside the hospital and moved when your plot was made ready. Kenyatta Hospital is now large, over-spreading your initial, sanitary grave.

*

I brought things with me. A plastic spade, water from Loch Lomond, a stone from Loch Lomond, and an empty Viagra bottle containing ashes from my father.

My father was your sister Mary’s son, George C. Wilson. He would have been your nephew, you, his uncle.

I had a map of cemetery plots on my iPhone. An iPhone is today’s version of a portable kinetograph, the device you and your father were evaluating for Thomas Edison. Moving picture films taken by the kinetograph were shown using a kinetoscope. Today, we use something called TikTok and other platforms.[ii]

In 2018 I viewed your films at the Library of Congress. I did this with Dr. Roger Bailey from Saint Lawrence University, a Ricalton scholar. Your father attended Saint Lawrence briefly.

As a note, Viagra is a blood pressure medicine that today is used to promote male virility. It can be useful. George was most virile but, like all, he aged.

The map shows yours is plot 229. Two hundred and twenty-nine, a prime.

*

Three men searched for you, my driver, the cemetery guard, and me. Lomond – finding you was difficult. Many stones are worn blank by age; most are blackened by moss.

Some plots have no stones above the earth, just a mound and flowers or vegetation. Some are mulched with straw. That day, the mulch smelt like my sister Kathy’s farm. Kathy. Caddy.

Your grave is unmarked.

*

The driver and guard gave up after thirty minutes of hunting. They toed mulch and sedge from sunken stones. The guard, an old man, poked with his staff.

 There was a pattern on the map for your site – that is, next to you on the map is a large rectangle that is labeled “Delamere.” On the other side is “Irwin.”

At first, I wandered searching in the wrong end of the cemetery. I looked a bit in the Jewish section – many beautiful, tall and ornate stones marked by the Star of David.

I thought of my sons. They are ethnic Jews – like their mother.

Like you, Lomond, I am Presbyterian.

*

In some places the grass and growth are deep. I considered that I could be bitten by a dangerous thing. A small-toothed viper? A malarial insect? Stung by a nettle? Our first day.

Reconciling map to stones was difficult. I found myself confused. I would read one name on the map, say “Scott,” find the memorial, then lose track.

At last I found Delamere, then Irwin. Though overgrown by sedge which blossomed pale yellow, blue and purple, and not visibly marked, your grave was certain.

It is defined by a concrete kerb bounding five by ten feet. At the head is a rusted metal plate two by five feet. The rest is layered by sedge and soil, the circumstance of a nutrient cycle.

I knelt beside you and took time to prepare.

*

You were twenty-four when you died. James was sixty-five. I am sixty-five.

I used the spade to dig a hole over where I estimated that your heart had lain, before it decomposed. Your heart did not decay, your spirit lives. 

I poured Dad’s ashes into the hole. I placed the stone from Loch Lomond on top of Dad’s ashes.

The stone is not inconsiderable, oblong about three by two inches by one inch thick. A beautiful gray with light streaks. It felt cool, as stones in water do.

In 2017, I smuggled the stone and water from Scotland to my home where it set in a glass vessel aside my tartan. Yesterday, I flew with stone and water into Nairobi.

I poured water from the Loch over the stone and ashes. There was a brief, satisfying splish-splash to my ear, then quiet. I pressed my hands above your heart.

Lomond.

*

You were named by your father after Loch Lomond. He thought it the most beautiful body of water in the world (aside the Saint Lawrence River, where you fished and swam as a child).

I visited Loch Lomond in 2017. In Edinburg I stayed with my cousin Innes Miller. Our relationship dates from two Riccalton (as then spelled) sisters who lived about 1720.

Innes and I explored Edinburg, New Town and old; the village, farm and family church in Riccalton; and Loch Lomond at Balmaha.

From Balmaha we ferried to Inchcailloch – Scottish Gaelic for the “Isle of the Cowled Woman.” The place was established as a nunnery. Later it was a burial ground.

When we visited Inchcailloch’s graveyard, Innes and I walked through a vale thick with Scottish bluebells. You were there, you were remembered.

*

I covered the stone, water, and ash with soil. I put a little soil from your grave in a vessel to return home with me. I made photographs with my iPhone. I set on Delamere’s kerb.

*

Your neighbor was quite considerable, a British peer, one of the most influential British settlers in Kenya (then known as British East Africa).[iii] Lord Hugh Cholmondeley, 3rd Baron Delamere, moved to Kenya in 1901 and acquired vast land holdings from the British Crown. Over the years, he became the unofficial leader of the colony’s European community. Biographers note that Lord Delamere was famous for his tireless labours to establish a working agricultural economy in East Africa. He died in 1931 at his coffee farm in Loresho, not far from Karen Blixen’s 6,000-acre plantation.[iv]

*

While Lord Delamere’s plot is large, about ten by thirty feet, he is buried alone, a solitary rectangle with a tall monument at top center. I am certain he knew your father.

Lord Delamere spoke Maasai. Though, as a settler, he was hated by the tribes.

That was not the same for your father. James was loved by the Kikuyu. Decades later ethnographers would review his photographs with descendants, marking tradition and joy.[v]

*

Tears arrived.

I stood.

*

“Hello Lomond. I’m Jim. Jim Wilson. James Ricalton Wilson. I am here to thank you, to say that I and my family venerate you. You were buried on May 29, 1914. Your father was with you then, crying deeply, planting his hands on the soil above your heart. Kikuyu men who carried your litter from the veldt to Nairobi stood behind. They wept also, touching stick and spear – Muthĩgi and Itimũ – to soil.

“No person from your family has visited since you were buried, one hundred eleven years ago. One hundred eleven.

“You are the son of James Ricalton and Mary Ricalton, your father’s first wife. You are the brother of Mary Ricalton, my grandmother. You would have been the beloved uncle of my father George C. Wilson, who was born in 1927. You died at age twenty-four. Twenty-four.

“Your sister Mary told me about you; she ran her fingers through my hair as I sat at her feet, a captivated child knowing his name. Mary spoke also of your father James, how proud James was of you, your kindness and vigor. Your affection for inquiry and discourse.

“Mary wept when she spoke. She was delicate. I called her Nana. As a child, Nana was a star athlete. When I knew her, she was old and gnarled. Nana lived to age ninety-eight.

“My father George often told me your story. George was a writer and, in a way, an explorer, like your father. Like James.

*

“Thank you for the life you lived, the richness you gave your father, your mother Mary, and your stepmother.

“You are my namesake. Today I dug my fingernails in the dirt over your heart, cleaned the metal above this. Years back, I visited your cenotaph near your Waddington home, aside the Saint Lawrence.

“Lomond, I am here because I love you. I look to your inspiration. A first lost son in a long story, broadly shared. The death of a young son.

“With Love, I am James Ricalton Wilson.”

*

I returned to the Stanley Hotel. I walked the stairs up to the Exchange, the former Kenya stock exchange and had a glass, a taste of spirit. Scotch, then water.

*

Lomond, you and James steamed east from New York to Southampton then south to Cape Town, a journey of at least twenty days. With my friend and her son we flew by airplane from Washington to New York, then Nairobi. A journey of twenty hours.

In Port Elizabeth, South Africa, you and James launched on a whaling ship to test and demonstrate Mr. Edison’s device, the portable kinetograph.[vi] It worked magnificently. From Cape Town, you trekked north along the route that entranced Cecil Rhodes.[vii]

In the veldt you viewed – and sparingly hunted – uncountable animals. Cape buffalo, antelope, hippopotamus, leopard, rhinoceros, baboon, crocodile, giraffe, lion, zebra, cheetah, wildebeest, and elephant.

My friends and I saw these beautiful creatures, too, when on safari in Maasai Mara and a slip of the Serengeti. We reached with binoculars and only shot with cameras. Our safari vehicle was rugged and comparatively effortless.

Though supported by Kikuyu porters, your trek was hard. In the Lake Victoria region, you were bitten by a long-legged mosquito which had drawn blood from an infected monkey. Your fluids mixed and your fate was sealed.

In the Rift Valley between Victoria and Nairobi, your fever rose, and a bloody cough erupted. Kikuyu men bore your litter and made the difficult climb from the veldt to the plateau, thence the hospital. I traveled this path.

*

As George recounts, when James returned to Waddington, your step mother Barbara Campbell refused to speak to him, such was the depth of her sadness and anger. (Barbara had argued against your joining the expedition that your father and Mr. Edison proposed.) The world’s greatest traveler, James Ricalton never journeyed abroad again. He walked miles aside the Saint Lawrence. At times, from Waddington to Ogdensburg and back, a stretch of fifty miles in one day. James’ pace was furious, but only a soft echo of his desolation. He struck the soil with a walking stick, his Muthĩgi carved by the Kikuyu.

*

A father who experienced a son’s trauma afflicted by exceeding urgency, sadness, and guilt – and intolerable loneliness. A lost son, an injured son.

The injured father.

###

---

[i]      Nairobi South Cemetery.  www.eamemorials.co.uk/EAMemorials/KENYA/Nairobi%20South%20Cemetery/NairobiSouth.htm.

[ii]     “History of Edison Motion Pictures.” The Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/collections/edison-company-motion-pictures-and-sound-recordings/articles-and-essays/history-of-edison-motion-pictures.

[iii]    Wikipedia contributors. “East Africa Protectorate.” Wikipedia, 16 Jan. 2025,  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Africa_Protectorate.

[iv]    ---. “Hugh Cholmondeley, 3rd Baron Delamere.” Wikipedia, 25 Feb. 2025,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Cholmondeley,_3rd_Baron_Delamere.

[v]     Sobania, Neal; interview with the author. Also, Sobania, N. W. Culture and Customs of Kenya. Greenwood, 2003.

[vi]    “History of Edison Motion Pictures.” The Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/collections/edison-company-motion-pictures-and-sound-recordings/articles-and-essays/history-of-edison-motion-pictures.

[vii]   Wikipedia contributors. “Cape to Cairo Railway.” Wikipedia, 16 May 2025, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_to_Cairo_Railway.

James Ricalton Research -- 2.2025

In April 2018 I posted a note on research collaboration about my great grandfather James Ricalton. This led to the excellent monograph by Dr. Roger Bailey and Dr. Rita Goldberg, "James Ricalton: His Work was his Life," published by the Saint Lawrence County Historical Association (SLCHA, Vol. LXVIII, No. 4, 2020). I continue to be fascinated by James, particularly his journeys in Africa, where I variously traveled and worked in maternal and child healthcare (2007-2019).

James' materials are spread far and wide. In January 2025, I met with the curator of photography at the Library of Congress to discuss developing a bibliography and artifact reference. My thought is that this would be helpful for further research and publication.

I've viewed movies James made in about 1900 at the Library; met with curators at the Smithsonian Museum of American History; visited the special collection at Saint Lawrence University; visited James' home in Waddington; viewed material at the SLCHA; and visited the Maplewood Historical Society and Maplewood's Ricalton Square. This year, I aim to visit Ricalton materials and curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, UC/Riverside (Keystone-Mast Collection), Getty Museum, and a visit with the photography collector George Rinhart. In time, I'll visit the Edison museum, Rutgers, Albany, and additional sources.

In May 2025, I travel to Kenya to visit the grave of James's son, Lomond, who died at the British Hospital in Nairobi in 1914 at the age of 24. (I visited the hospital in 2019.) Lomond died from jungle fever -- typhoid pneumonia -- during an expedition with his father that was commissioned by Thomas Edison. I may bring to Lomond's gravesite water and a stone I collected from Loch Lomond, the place for which my great uncle was named. (James named his son after what he termed "the most beautiful body of water" in the world.) Friends from Africa have provided me with detailed information about Lomond's gravesite in the Nairobi South Cemetery, along with visiting advice.

James shows-up in aphorisms across my 320+ pp. manuscript, and I have been encouraged to write a separate book about James. I am transcribing James' 1909 diary from his Africa journey -- New York to South Hampton, to Cape Town, and a walk from there to Cairo, mostly following Cecil Rhodes' route.

Fascinating fellow, much to consider.

-- Jim

James Ricalton Wilson

Washington, DC

February 2025

PS -- I am aware of links between Teddy Roosevelt and James; I recently found a tie between James and Mark Twain. Also Henry Morton Stanley. I welcome further insights and advice.

Sailing

My family kept a place on the water, 101 Edgehill overlooking the Severn’s Round Bay. Dad taught me to sail. Kathy and I learned to swim expertly, doing flip turns against algae’d planks fastened to river piers. We became good fishers and crabbers, too.

Our cottage sat rickety atop a cliff overlooking the main pier, a sand beach, and a petite harbor aside Brewer Pond. My parents bought the place when Kathy and I were in third or fourth grade and sold it when it came time to pay our college tuitions. As kids, we also spent time at Boundary Point, our maternal grandparent’s place on Maryland’s eastern shore on the Tred Avon, which flows into the Choptank thence the Chesapeake Bay. Boundary Point had a dock, a narrow sand beach, and a saltwater swimming pool. The five-acre parcel was carved out of soybean and corn fields, dotted with loblolly pine, grapevine, willow, and cattail. Whitetail deer filtered in to browse grasses and lick a salt block set between the vines. Zinnia, marigold, mint, and pyracantha circled the home. After dinner — often striped bass stuffed with backfin, local corn, tomato, and cantaloupe — Mom Gibbons, my grandmother, and I would walk to the swale and toss food scraps to ducks and crabs. “Here ducky, ducky, ducky, quack-quack,” she’d call.

Mom’s heavy arms and my skinny sticks lobbed melon, corn and meat onto still water. Mallards and mergansers glided in, bills dabbling soft bits, web feet churning mud. We’d linger and watch crabs scuttle to grab remains. Minnows, grass shrimp, and water scorpion scavenged motes. Dinner was complete.

Mom and I held hands and we walked back to the house, sometimes alarming a cottontail. My grandfather kept a fisherman’s workboat with an inboard motor, gray deck and floorboards, and white hull, cuddy cabin, and roof. A captain’s chair swiveled atop a metal post amidst a cluster of throttle and gear levers, gauges, buttons, compass, and horn. Red and green lights showed port and starboard; a white running light rose on a short mast amidships. We chuffed downriver, docked, and ate at a crab shack on the Oxford pier. Sometimes we’d pass fare more elegant at the Robert Morris. It was a lovely, watery-warm, and gentle life.

Later, after Kathy and I finished college, my parents had a five-acre plot on Cod Creek, a body that branches into the Potomac at its mouth with the western Chesapeake. The house was a three-bedroom rambler with a screen porch that overlooked water, dock, sand beach, and marsh. Dad built a tractor shed at the edge of the woods, which he later took as his writing den. Bald eagles, turkey, osprey, coons, deer and turtles habited Cod Creek — as did many thousand creatures neath water. Over the years, my family covered both sides of the Bay and many tributaries and refuges. These were fingers into adventures, real and imagined, times and dreams.

Soot’s Pond itself is a first trickle of Goose Creek, which wanders east to the Potomac, thence to the Chesapeake and Atlantic. As a teenager, I paddled lower Goose Creek, fished, and camped on the river.

*

Mom and Dad loved the water. They grew up on the Jersey Shore. When he worked for the Newark News, Dad and his buddies owned a powerboat named the “Alibi,” which says much, as in — “The boat broke down and I’ll be home late” or “We caught more fish than expected” or “I’m sleeping in the cuddy tonight.” Mom’s family had a cottage on the Metedeconk, aside Barnegat Bay in Ocean County. Mom, her mother and sister would summer there, while Mom’s father H.R. commuted from Chatham and New York City. When I was a kid, family vacations usually found us at raw and rugged places along the east coast, from Bar Harbor to Ocracoke. We often summered in a cottage beside the cliffs of Block Island, where Dad loved to surf-fish. At Black Rock, Mom caught a 42-pound striped bass on 12-pound test line, her cheap rod and push-button reel. It was a record.

*

Dad was larger than life. He was frequently on television. They made a play about his role in the Pentagon Papers. Sometimes people would stop and ask him for his autograph. It was tough to walk through an airport without a person recognizing Dad, and vice versa. He swelled in this context and I had trouble relating to him, though I worked earnestly to understand his world. Dinner time was often a recitation of Dad’s daily interviewing on Capitol Hill or at the Pentagon; a phone call with Senator this or that, or a General or Cabinet Secretary; or another headline-yielding excavation. He would pause and ask Mom about her day. “Lesson-plans and two-variable equations,” she’d report, “X-times-Y.” Kathy or I would describe a geography project or the cafeteria lunch. I spoke of my second-base infield position where I’d knock down hits and tag outs. I was embarrassed that I always struck out and I said nothing of my batting. Dad’s follow-ups were mostly brief. He disliked math, was bad at it; and he tended to make fun of classroom education. His was a world of experience and grit, battlefield trenches, mud soldiers, and ship bellies, among those who suffered and made a difference. We felt what we did was small; indeed, we were lesser than Dad.

Stripped naked of this, on the water in a small boat with a rising breeze, Dad and I found new geography, a place of tenderness and mutuality, a place we cherished, which I loved deeply. At Sherwood Forest, Dad gave me several sailing books which I read over-and-over, Aymar’s Start ‘Em Sailing, Manry’s Tinkerbell, and Royce’s Sailing Illustrated. Sherwood Forest had a junior sailing club that raced Penguins, an 11-foot five-inch dinghy class designed by Philip Rhodes in 1938. We scanned the papers for a wooden Penguin and brought one home on a rickety trailer. We paid $400 for the boat, $125 for the trailer. Dad and I stripped and polished the brightwork, sanded and varnished the spars, gunwales, and ribbing. We pulled and sanded the centerboard, which would swell and get stuck in its well when wet. We replaced the wood centerboard with a composite. (I delighted in using the old board to skim atop shallow water aside the sand beach.)

Growing up, probably like any child, I felt over-powered by my parents and the adult world, and I sought a place I could own and care for by myself — whether that was a hutch under the attic eaves in DC, a private collection of baseball cards rubber-banded aside my bunk bed, or my boat — the Penguin. I savored every inch of “Cheetah” – the name we gave her. (“Cheetah” was a derivative of my and Kathy’s nicknames, “Che-Che” and “Tahzee,” the best our baby tongues could muster for one another — and not coincidently the world’s fastest land animal.)

I coiled every sheet and line, waxed the chines, and carefully pulled Cheetah onto rollers out of the water so she would dry and get lighter before each race day. Dad taught me to race, the secret of approaching the start line, turning about with one minute to go, clocking 25 seconds headed away on a stop watch, and turning about again to sail back, luff briefly upwind, and cross the start line beating at full speed, unshadowed by the fleet. Dad’s math skills and geometry were weak, but his essentials were strong.

As I got better, Dad bought feathery green and red tell-tales that hung on Cheetah’s starboard and port stays. The feathers showed the direction of the wind and helped me to position the sail so that it spilled little propulsive air as the boat beat close-hauled to the wind, reached midway, or ran downwind. We learned to put our feet under straps and hiked out over the water to keep the boat as flat as possible, so the sail caught more air and beat faster. I loved doing this, a tiny stick extending from the tiller so I could hang out far. Sometimes a hard breeze hit and we were nearly knocked flat. One time Dad and I sailed from Round Bay up the Severn into the Chesapeake, around the Naval Academy, and docked in City Slip, the center of old town Annapolis. On our sail, we lacked a horn or whistle, so to open the low bridge over the Severn we cut back and forth while Dad waived his arms. He blew a lowing “train-whistle” through his cupped hands. The keeper eventually opened the bridge and we tacked up Spa Creek into the harbor. I was at the helm and I felt king of the world. We grabbed cold-cut sandwiches, chips, and drinks from Rookie’s butcher shop, ate heartily, and sailed back. Dad gave me a few swigs from his beer. He said, “That-a-boy.” “I’m going to take a nap,” and he lay his frame over Cheetah’s mid-thwart, his head and feet dangling over water, his long nose pointed to the sun.

When the wind burst and Cheetah heeled sharply, Dad’s feet plunged into the Severn. He said, “Oooo … that’s my alarm!” and hiked over the windward side to make Cheetah more stable. I smiled endlessly on these journeys. At night I lay reading my sailing books, made lists, and packed my bags with pemmican, canteens, and compass. Like Manry, I dreamt of sailing my small boat across the Atlantic. I sketched my tiny, hooded focsle, provision bins, lifelines, lights, and radio. I plotted wind and currents. I gained Mom and Dad’s trust and they let me take Cheetah out by myself and for longer expeditions. I have good geometry and navigation skills, and I was able to sail Cheetah with her sail flat, without luff and speedy. I won the Round Bay junior sailing championship every summer. Kids complained about my unfairly "fast boat.” We traded. I beat everyone again. It was not the boat. I never took Cheetah to the ocean or attempted a crossing more ambitious than the coves about Round Bay. But later when I was 23 my skill showed-up for the Great Ocean Race, where I crewed with Team IBM.

One time I was sailing Cheetah downwind in a run but I incorrectly had the sail close-hauled. The boom beat from side-to-side as she jibed with wind blowing-in from the rear. I looked back at the dock and saw Dad waving his arms, his hands raising over his head and pushing forward. I thought this meant for me to keep going toward the duck blind, my turn-around point. It did not. He meant that I should let the sail out, so the boat would stop jibing and run with the wind. I did not. A heavy gust hit, and pushed Cheetah’s bow starboard, while the port chine and centerboard bit the salt water. Cheetah fully caught the wind, and went up high, sharply high; I was standing on the centerboard trunk and she went flat on the water. I fell in, in between the sunk port gunwale and the now floating boom. I paddled about, mostly calm. Dad was always there for me. He asked our friend Toby for a lift in Toby’s mahogany speedboat, and soon they were alongside. Dad jumped into the water and guided me to the Chris Craft, and I clambered aboard. We tied a line between the two boats and gently hauled the mostly submerged Penguin back to the pier and beach. Dad and I bailed and cleaned Cheetah. I coiled her ropes and fluffed the drying tell-tales. I took her sail home and hosed it with fresh water. That evening, Dad drew pictures on paper of the wind angle that caused my capsize, and he pulled out two rulers and an ice cube to demonstrate the angular physics of wind, sail, chine, and centerboard.

Dad’s math was not that bad.