Evelyn Barton was destined to die in 1825, but a stranger from the future traveled back in time, arriving at Barton Place, an estate that had been in the Barton family since 1743, and then changed everything for Evelyn Barton and her family.

Evelyn is the only daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth Barton of Barton Place, Thomas’s inheritance, following a family lineage since 1743, when King George II bestowed the earldom of Barclay on his great grandfather, with land nestled between Cambridge, Brighton and Brookline, overlooking the Charles River on the outskirts of Boston. 

This earldom passed to his son and heir, Vinvent Barton, who in 1775 renounced the Barclay title, and renamed it to Barton Place, based on his strong antagonism to debtors' prisons. During the Panic of 1796-1797, his strong convictions compelled him to stand surety for debtors and thereby save them as denizens of debtor's prison. As a refuge, these debtors rented at minimal fee a patch of land on Barton estate, sustaining themselves through husbandry. 

Thomas unknowingly inherited these servitude contracts, and when the Panic of 1819 struck, he stayed true to his ancestral convictions and took on even more debtors’ debt, otherwise destined for debtors’ prison.

By 1823, the panic was over, but not for the Bartons. Despite his substantial inheritance, in the autumn of 1825 Thomas found himself mired in debt, with his daughter on death’s door, hopeless to save her life or his estate from bankruptcy. Thomas never doubted that Mr. Hagen, his creditor, aimed to obtain Barton Place in a clandestine manner, even by debtor's imprisonment of Thomas himself. Hagen postured himself as a refined "cream of the crop" grandee of Boston, having built his immense wealth from income through loans, not through labor.

Amidst these overwhelming burdens, Reed Whitaker, a lawyer and orphan with a physical disability, came knocking at Bartons’ door for help, cognisant of their commitment to providing shelter in times of nee