It's David Hoffman filmmaker here with another story that I hope you'll enjoy.

I thank you for watching my Gym Key and Bilkey Horse Story and enjoying it so much.

Here's another one.

This one involves a film I made about a woman who tells a story that's really hard to believe, but it's true.

I'm gonna prove it's true after you watch this clip.

Her name is Nettie Mitchell.

The time is the 19 seventies.

She's nearly 90 and she's a reporter in the small little town of Maine.

Fayette mean?

And she tells kind of gossip and stuff like that.

And I'm doing a series for television, of people who I call independent Americans, people who do things their own way, who don't listen to the government, particularly, and don't listen to the neighbors particularly and tell stories.

And Nettie Mitchell is one of the people I've chosen, and I go to Maine on I'm filming the Story, which is a story of Nettie reporting on local events, a baby contest, and she's just great great old woman.

Beautiful personality comes the last day in the last moment, and we take a photograph of the crew that with Nettie and I'm gonna leave.

And then he says, David, I have a story to tell you And she kisses me on the lips and I was shocked.

Pay attention, David.

I have a story.

So I left my camera.

Man set up a beautiful scene.

She was sitting in her kitchen and I said, Nettie, you tell the story to Francis and she tells the story you're about to see.

It's one of the most shocking stories I have ever heard.

Hard to believe it's true, but it is before I run the clip.

Let me just tell you just a bit about New England at that time.

I think it's important.

This is Puritan, New England, this cruelty and this kindness.

There's proper nous and there's things you're not supposed to do, like dance like have fun.

I remember somebody telling me that in Maine, in the Puritan times you took a moment off from your work, from the chores you had to do when you were sick and dying as the only time you took off.

There wasn't a lot of joy.

I think it was 18 16 and 18 21 it froze every single day.

Nothing group.

I mean, people were starving.

These were extremely poor farmers in extremely rough condition in an extremely cold time and run about 18 40.

There were these mills down in Massachusetts, Lowell, Massachusetts, woolen mills, thread mills.

And they were extraordinary because they were hiring girls and young women to come off the farms.

Come down, stay in these dormitories which were safe, they said, and work for a couple of years.

The women would keep a portion of the money on the portion of the money would go back to the farm.

It was the first time women had an opportunity like this to make money like this and em align the story that you're going to hear.

She went down to one of these mills as a girl of about 14.

I'll let Neddy tell the rest of the story.

And then I'll tell you after what happened as a result of this recording, I am not a Mitchell I made in nine years of age.

I live in the town of Fayette and where Ray was born and flipped bricklayer all my lifetime, and I would like to tell you one of the saddest and most heartbreaking tales that has come to minors is a true story, something that happened right here in this town.

Men in the long ago I knew.

That's already when I was attending a child and she was very sweet and lovely.

She was one of a large family of Children in a very impoverished home in the early 18 hundreds at the age of 13.

This is from Lynn, Massachusetts, righted the home and seeing the poverty and the provisions there said, Why don't you let us take Emil?

I'm back with us to ruin and Jake and work in the cotton mills.

She's old enough to work there, and you can go work in the gut mills and send you money.

Thio help with a expenses back home.

They thought it over, and this had let her go, and she went.

She was an efficient, hair booking little girl, but she was barely among strangers in a strange land, very, very different than anything she had ever known before.

Among there was who were friendly Door is most of them went out because she was entitled.

It different was a young boss, young man and he became very friendly.

And she yielded to him to his frustration.

And by the time she was and 14 she was the mother of his child.

She did not dare to letter people back home know what is the good?

The people way, she was saying, made arrangements to sail her baby.

Do a childless couple nearby them who were I would pay her expenses and pay for transportation back home because you would go with soon.

She was able, she returned your home and she would very hard in the fields and all.

But she didn't join very freely, and they a social life of the community.

As you grow older, her parents and others began to wonder why it was that she shunned Ali young gentleman around.

She was a very pretty girl and they couldn't understand it.

When she was 21 they began to worry because that you she's past the first mark and she's gonna be an old maid.

And they wanted very much for to marry and have a home room.

The time went on, and in spite of all the urging of those about it, she kept reticent.

And when she was about 30.

They began to wonder why it Wasit.

She didn't respond to anyone.

And she really an old maid in early thirties?

Uh, well, she was working at home.

A young man came to town to build highways and he was a very personable young chap and they came to board their home.

Although she was so many years older than me, he fell desperately in love with her and she with him, and they decided to marry and ever hold their own.

They did build a little cottage down by the shore, oppose your bond.

It moved in there and had been married something less than a year.

When his people from masters is decided to come to visit them, it came down into their horror.

They discovered that he had married his own mother, of course, when this was revealed and they marriages And now the client broke that.

And hey, reluctantly, Better Goodbye and went back with this.

Plus the parents to Massachusetts remained the rest of his life the indignation of her parents and of the community at the fact that L A.

She had had an illegitimate child she had to conceal that fact from them all through these years, it was considered a horrible scene for have had the child and she had married, eh?

Legitimately.

And therefore she was entirely ostracised.

Ah, lower home was almost in sight.

Almost, of course.

The highway from the head of her mother and, uh, brothers and sisters who sell it there.

She was forbidden to enter that home to go inherit it all.

None of them ever went to our spoke to her and nobody spoke to.

No one went nearer except once in a while.

A kindly, afraid, kind personal would bring her a bit of tea or some little thing.

The years went by.

She faked out a living by your own efforts, made our gardens and speeded the mother Spader itself made them in razor food as much as possible and net and did very various things.

A very small step in.

But it was became necessary for to become a papa, which was another disgrace.

And she had to call on the town things, her existence.

They came a very severe window.

And it was a long time, of course, in those days there was no means of of uh, letting anyone know what you needed.

Really?

Think it was no telephone.

There were no Aref DEAs.

There was no way of communication.

And as she was Esther sized and lived by yourself, no communication was possible far early in the spring time.

Mother is very, very deep.

Ah, one of the Cilic men who lived in another section of the town was obliged to go to Chester Veil on its way up.

He called the house that he could see how a moron was doing and head from a window.

Yeah, knock down the door.

No response.

The door was fastened.

He thought he heard a morning sound inside and desperately he managed to burst the Dorian.

And is he game inside?

He saw this form line on the floor with vain moans.

Ah, throughout all these years, she had suffered so terribly seeing the mother's casket carried to the cemetery and without being able to even peep inside it.

And all these terrible things have been happening.

And now here she lay at death's door.

He picked her up carefully and later on a bid, and I now turn this horse about and started full of more falls to get a doctor on the way.

He stopped at one house except Edwards House and asked.

Mrs Edwards took over and she said, I can't possibly for Will is going to the horse and I'm no way to get there.

He went on up to the day comb and made the same request.

And they're the men more way with the horses.

My mother was there and she said I will go home and honest sourcing over And she did.

And she found her this terrible condition with not nothing to be found in the house.

It was any possible valued for diet or anything else.

There were a few drops of blesses clinging to the bottom of jug and a few grains of corn meal in the corners of a box and nothing else was there.

The poor old lady had stuff to death.

She is.

She perished before the doctor, right?

The sadness, the whole thing.

Oh, I have been down there is a child sent many times with a bit of tea and some little things, and I love that you're old soul.

When my mother came home and told us what had happened, I began to cry.

A few days later, her funeral was held in boozy old church.

She was placed in a wooden box, and if we're a gasket and a simple ceremony was held and some several would not have spoken two words or in their lifetime, and Astor says they're completely were there the last at the close of the ceremony, her sister went to the gasket on placing her hand upon it and our other and high in the air, she said.

At last she has paid person.

There was there was the tragedy of the whole the prime mix of the tragedy, and my mother came home so upset and so angry and really, my mother, although she was a very mild person, said, I think her sister said more than she.

She did it This terrible neglect of her through all these years.

Do you think that sweet, sweet little old lady it would it would be so?

It's so grateful with even a child would come and speak toward Lee, just the silence of all those years.

A zit, a child, a child of 13 away from home in a strange city.

It was surrounding.

She'd never seen and only one person being really friendly tour, and she probably had no conception of what the consequences of that association will become.

I cannot see that it was truly a C.

And first of all, I want to thank Jenny Mitchell for telling that story and for being so kind to this woman at a time when people were terrible.

It's a terrible story.

This issue of shunning is really important Typing to this story.

I lived in Maine for 25 years, small town, and I saw people shun people and I was shunned shutting.

You look atyou.

They don't talk to you.

They make it like you don't exist.

It's less violent, certainly than violence, but it's pretty powerful.

When the whole town shunned Emma Line, I made a documentary for television called Sins of Our Mothers.

There was also a book written called Emma Line by Judith Rossner, whom I made a deal with so she could write the book and interview Nettie and give Neddy some money that he survived the rest of her life, got heating for her house and stuff like that on the book rights, and what happened to that book.

There was an operating called Emma Line.

Pretty interesting opera and I have presented clips from this film on my YouTube channel before, but I wanted to tell you how I knew it was true.

First of all, my colleagues and I did a huge amount of research in the libraries and the archives in Fayette, and we found there was indeed, and Emma Line, who lived on Mosher Pond.

You could see her name in these diaries, and so the person did exist, but we had to find somebody who knew somebody who knew M line.

And sure enough, we find this 97 year old lady in an old age home who says Yes, I knew Emma Line.

Some people have asked, Did I ever find Emma Line?

Sun's family?

I didn't I don't know that name.

I couldn't find that name.

So we never did find out what happened to the boy young man when he was yanked out of Emma Lines home and yanked out of the marriage, yanked out of Maine and never heard from again.

I love stories like this that have power and emotion and tragedy and comedy and beauty and kindness, and cruelty.

I want to thank those of you who have been sharing your stories with me as comments and as e mails I don't answer phone calls on.

I wish I could record every one of the good ones because they're spectacular.

But I know ordinary people are extraordinary and have extraordinary stories to tell.

Although Emma Line Holy moly.

What a story.

In any case, thank you for watching David hopping Filmmaker.

Bye bye.