Jonathan Kirkbride Wing: Pickled in a Barrel!

By Cyndy Doherty

Halloween is associated with lots of spooky things: ghosts and goblins, cemeteries and coffins. This is a story about a man who made a circuitous journey home to be buried in the town where he had lived. The spooky part is that the man was dead when he began that journey.

Jonathan Kirkbride Wing, (1810-1849) was, according to articles in the OWL, a successful merchant with stores in Albany, New York, (where he resided), Boston and even San Francisco. Though I can’t find any more information about his San Francisco store, we know it existed during the Gold Rush era as reported in the OWL. My best guess is that Jonathan K. Wing invested in this West Coast enterprise, understanding that it promised a good return. Gold miners passed through San Francisco on their way to striking it rich in the Sierras. Many entrepreneurs like Jonathan K. Wing, saw their road to striking it rich was to provision those gold miners.

In 1848 Mr. Wing took the arduous journey from New York to San Francisco by boat with overland travel in Mexico (this was before creation of the Panama Canal) to check on his investment. Tragically on November 21,1849,at the young age of 38, Jonathan K. Wing died. Even sadder, his wife, Mary Jenette (Burnell) Wing, had died only 18 months earlier. Jonathan’s death left his two young children Albert, (9) and Phoebe (10) orphaned.  

His business partner, a Mr. Brooks, approached the crew of a boat sailing to New York to ask them to bring Jonathan’s body back with them. The crew was evidently a superstitious lot and were concerned about including a corpse on their long journey.  They refused.

Mr. Brooks, being an enterprising man, did not give up. As the story goes, he sealed Mr. Wing in a cask of rum which he then inserted in a hogshead. He packed the space between the two containers with seaweed and went back to the same crew. This time he said he had merchandise he wanted sent back to Mr. Wing’s store in Albany. The crew allowed the barrel onto their ship. Either the crew was very gullible, had short term memory issues, or perhaps were paid enough to make it worth the risk.

And here’s where the story gets spooky. 

The boat was wrecked near Panama (confirming the superstitions of the crew). A ship bound for China picked up the hogshead floating in the sea. Somehow, 18 months later, the container was delivered to the Albany, New York, address Mr. Brooks had placed on the barrel a year and a half earlier. 

In an unbelievable coincidence, Mr. Brooks was in Albany, literally in the deceased Mr. Wing’s store, when the hogshead was delivered. Mr. Brooks was understandably shaken, but steadied himself and opened the container in private. 

As the story goes, Jonathan Kirkbride Wing’s body was well preserved, looking almost lifelike after all that time at sea. He finally received a proper funeral and burial, being interred at Mt. Olivet, Albany, New York.

The story of Jonathan Kirkbride Wing’s journey is almost unbelievable. Shipped in a hogshead from San Francisco, shipwrecked in Panama, bobbing in the sea, sailing to China then back to Albany, New York. Finally arriving on the very day that the man who addressed the hogshead 18 months earlier happened to be in Jonathan K. Wing’s store.  Almost as unbelievable as ghosts who inhabit buildings or black cats being bad luck.  But isn’t that what Halloween is all about?