Category Archives: Ancestors

“Make-work”

Lydia Jane Hall with “make-work” on her lap, around 1900

Monday, July 25, 1921 – “A very warm day – men busy working at hay in Peterland. Agnes helping out of doors most of the time – going to town looking after the children, making cookies, bread, etc…As for myself cannot do much but knit or sew make-work, etc.” – Lydia Jane Hall

The dictionary defines “make-work” as – work, usually of little importance, created to keep a person from being idle or unemployed.

I take umbrage with that sentence, because I never think of the things created by hand – not to earn money necessarily, but to add to the richness of life – as being of little importance.

Saturday, August 13, 1921 – “Nice day – all hustling to get the work done. Men gathering the apples. Agnes going to town. Emily going to dentist, the children going also. I am left alone with my knitting…Francis’ sweater keeps me busy – should be lonely without something to do.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Janet, Francis, and Lydia Hall, 1921 – Francis holding a chicken and wearing a hand-knit sweater

My daughter and I, like my great-grandmother and her great-great-grandmother, enjoy knitting. The repetitive motion of the needles calms me down when I’m waiting for an airplane to take off. It gives my daughter a creative focus when her busy children threaten to upset the equilibrium of the day.

Right now I’m working on an afghan like the one given to me in 1968 by my grandmother Agnes’ Whirlwind Hill neighbor and friend Lena Schneider. Lena always had knitting on her lap, and made many blankets like the one she gave me years ago.

Our afghan traveled with us from Connecticut to California and then to Alaska. My children cuddled under it, and the cats slept on top of it. But a few years ago the holes in the lacy pattern began to get bigger. The yarn grew so thin I decided it was time to knit another one like it.

Lena’s afghan in 2013 with extra holes

After about a year of searching, I found a similar pattern and knitted a new one. Now I’m working on a second one for my daughter and her family.

The new afghan

My daughter has taken knitting to another level. She creates colorful and intricate things to wear and to love. She shows them off at her Instagram page, where she goes by the name “orangeknits.” And she has done this presentation of her work so humbly and quietly I didn’t know about her public persona until a few days ago.

Like my great-grandmother Lydia, who did her sewing and knitting despite painful arthritis, my daughter uses her skill to keep her hands limber and active and to cheer us all up. She makes beautiful hats, shawls, socks, mittens, and tiny animals. They are labors of love, and she gives many of them, like this tiny chicken she made for me, to family and friends.

Tiny chicken, knitted by Mara Bryner

One day when I was wearing a pair of orange socks she made me, I told her, “When you wear something made by someone you love, you think about them all day.”

My orange socks

Lydia reported that after several months – “I have finished the sweater at last, which seems to please Francis. It is nice and warm.”

I’m grateful for this kind of work – the doing and the receiving, especially when it’s made with care and thoughtfulness. It pleases me, keeps me warm, and makes me smile.

Henry and Mara keeping warm

On Wednesday: Skating on the Cow Pond

Dressmaking

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I started sewing when I was nine. Every Saturday afternoon our 4-H club – the Wallingford 4-H Harmonizers – met at Mrs. Porter’s house to practice our skills. We started by sewing straight lines on paper, learned to make tailor tacks, pleats, and button holes. Finally, when we were in high school, we made full outfits that we wore on the runway at the statewide “Dress Review.”

Until around 1988, I kept my 1954 portable Singer sewing machine busy. In 1968 I made three bridesmaid dresses and one flower girl dress for my wedding.

Cousin Skip, and Cousin Sue (wearing the “Maid of Honor” dress I made) at my wedding in 1968

For the next twenty years I made maternity clothes, curtains, pillows, placemats, dresses, and Halloween costumes.

Paul in the clown costume, 1975

I even made snow pants and down jackets.

My children in well-used snow clothes, 1978

And then I lost interest. I got tired of sewing. After all, it was almost cheaper to buy what I needed and wanted in the store. But for my great-grandmother Lydia, that wasn’t an option.

There’s a dress shop near us in Portland that displays different dresses in its window every day, and I try to walk by to see what they’ve come up with to match their moods, the season, or the holiday.

Three dresses in a shop window, Portland, Oregon, November, 2014

I wonder what Lydia would have thought of these festive offerings? I think she would have loved them, because even though her wardrobe consisted of only a few dresses each year, they were carefully and beautifully made, partly done by her, but most often done by Miss Norton.

Monday, June 1, 1914 – “Pa went in town to get Miss Norton to dressmake for us. Hattie came out with them, made one dress, a dimity for Agnes.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Thursday, December 1, 1921 – “Miss Norton here today cutting & making pants for Francis out of old coats, which are very nice.” – Lydia Jane Hall

I inherited one of the dresses from the farm. It may have belonged to my great-grandmother, but I suspect it was made for her mother, my great-great-grandmother Lydia Reed Hart.

Dress from the farm

There are twelve yards of fabric in the skirt. Two different colors of cotton line the bodice and sleeves. Although the seams are machine-stitched, almost everything else was sewn by hand.

Lining and seams of dress

On the right side of the skirt, hidden in the seam, is a large pocket, capacious enough for handkerchiefs, spectacles, a small journal, and maybe a pencil. What a chore it must have been to do up all those buttons, and I can’t help but wonder how handy these big dresses were during trips to the “privy.”

Inside of dress showing linings and pocket

In a three-generation photo from the early 1900’s, my great-grandmother Lydia Jane Hall, and her own mother, Lydia Reed Hart, are seated in front of my great aunt Hattie. The elder Lydia’s dress looks very much like the dress that hangs today in my bedroom closet. She wears it, as was the custom then, with an apron tied around her waist and a white lace bow at her neck, dressed up for the photo session which, the elder woman claimed, (as reported in her daughter’s journal), was “nothing but an aggravation.”

Seated: Lydia Jane Hall, Lydia Reed Hart, Standing: Hattie Cannon Hall

On Wednesday: Candlelight

Afternoon Coffee

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My husband thinks nothing of having breakfast at 1:30 in the afternoon or dinner at 9:00 at night. This goes against my grain, because I try to hold fast to the routines of my childhood – breakfast immediately upon rising, lunch at noon, dinner around 6:00, and snacks taken at a reasonable midpoint between the meals.

My mother, who grew up with the cow-oriented daily routine of the farm, passed on to me her love of the afternoon coffee break.

As often as we could, we went the farm for the 3:00 – 4:00 coffee hour. For my grandfather and uncles and hired men, this was their time to relax before the late afternoon milking. Although tea was brewed after the noontime dinner, the rest of the day – starting at 5:30 in the morning – was all about coffee, coffee, and more coffee.

In a photo of the farm kitchen from the 1950’s, there are three different coffee pots and a stovetop teakettle. When I was very young, my grandmother Agnes bought her coffee at the A & P on Simpson Court in Wallingford. She ground the beans in a large machine near the store’s front door. The smell was heavenly.

Farmhouse kitchen around 1950

She brewed the coffee on the stove in big double-decker pots. I think they were “drip” pots and not percolators, but if anyone remembers more specifically, please let me know.

We sat around the kitchen table or stood leaning against the sink or the gun cupboard while coffee was poured, lightened with cream, sweetened with sugar, stirred with one of the spoons from the spoon jar, and drunk with cookies, or donuts, or leftover cake.

I wish I could report that the coffee was served in the kind of heavy white mugs one sees at truck stops – to me the ideal container for a warm beverage.

“White Cup,” Carol Crump Bryner, colored pencil, 2014

But in my childhood, Melmac was all the rage, and the grown-ups drank out of thick grey-green plastic cups and saucers, sometimes pouring the coffee into the saucer to cool.

“Green Cup,” Carol Crump Bryner, colored pencil, 2014

Every few weeks, the inside of the cups grew badly stained from the dark coffee, so my grandmother soaked them in Clorox. For days after their cleansing baths, the cups smelled of bleach, and the coffee tasted a bit “off.” At our house, we had the same kind of cups and saucers made in “Boonton, U.S.A,” except ours were yellow and blue. I still have a few of those, and think about the afternoon coffee hours at the farm every time I pick one up.

Blue and yellow Melmac cups

Over the years tea has replaced coffee for my afternoon breaks, and my grandsons have begun to observe this routine with me. They have cookies and milk, I have tea and cookies, and in this way the customs of the generations before are passed on and cherished.

Afternoon tea break with Henry, 2014

On Monday: Dressmaking

December Window

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As I turn over the calendar on December first, I think of this nursery rhyme I read to my children when they were little:

“The north wind doth blow, and we shall have snow,

And what will the robin do then, poor thing?

He’ll sit in the barn, and keep himself warm,

And hide his head under his wing, poor thing.”

Snow and cold and darkness were hard for my great-grandmother, especially when she became dependent on a wheelchair. In her journals she laments the absence of loved ones, but also takes joy in the presence of every-day comforts – a furnace, some sunshine, and her grandchildren.

“December Window,” Carol Crump Bryner, monoprint

Sunday, December 1, 1912 – “A nice day. My mother’s birthday – Ninety-two years old. Would like to see her today. She is a well preserved old lady, her great trouble being rheumatism which keeps her from getting around freely. I truly sympathize, being twenty years younger than she is in years, but sometimes think not so many in feelings. Snow still on the hills.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Friday, December 30, 1921 – “Nice day. Quite cold, below zero this morning – windows covered with frost. Couldn’t see out of them. The North window still has some left on it. I have been sitting in the Sitting room this morning in the sunshine to keep warm, the children with me. With the furnace fire and doors closed was very comfortable.” – Lydia Jane Hall

On Wednesday: Afternoon Coffee

Thanksgiving

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I miss the Thanksgiving celebrations on Whirlwind Hill. But since I married and moved to the west coast, I’ve come to love the new traditions that have evolved. For the last twenty years my husband and I and our children have spent Thanksgiving with his family, first in California and now in Oregon. This year we’ll again be in Portland, where the celebrations are chaotic and joyful, but still all about bringing together the generations.

My grandson, Henry Thomas Kennedy, with his great-grandmother, Zoya Bryner, Thanksgiving, 2013

I often think of those special days on the farm and how much the tradition stayed the same year after year.

Tuesday, November 24, 2014 – “Nice day. Men busy about home. Very busy indoors getting ready for the coming Thanksgiving once more. Hope all may have a good time, for the time is short for us all to be here together.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Thanksgiving on Whirlwind Hill was the holiday when all the family came “home” to the homestead to share the big noon feast, the afternoon walks and games of touch foot ball and hide the button, and the evening’s light supper highlighted by Aunt Betty’s chocolate éclairs.

For several days before the event my mother and aunts and cousins and I helped my grandmother clean the farmhouse. We took the china out of the cupboards and washed it, polished the silver, ironed the tablecloths, shined the glassware, and made elaborate centerpieces of fruit and leaves and ferns. On the Wednesday evening before the big day, I did my own two jobs. I cut the red and green grapes in half and took out their seeds to ready them for the meal’s first course – fruit cup – and I made the place cards. In this photo of the 1962 Thanksgiving, you can see my little Pilgrim Hat place cards – probably made that year with the help of cousin Nancy, seated on the right.

Thanksgiving at the farm, 1962

In 1951, the Wallingford Post interviewed my Aunt Ellen for an article titled “Mrs. Henry A. Norton Recalls The Thanksgiving Feast 50 Years Ago.” (And thank you to my cousin Ellen Norton Peters for sharing this article with me.) It seems astonishing how very much work went into this often quickly-eaten meal. My grandfather barely finished carving the turkey and passing the plates when someone wanted seconds. The important part of the meal was the community, because as Lydia said – “The time is short for us all to be here together.”

Thanksgiving, 1960, Charles Crump, Janet Crump, Ellsworth Hall

Here is what my Aunt Ellen said in 1951.

“Father [my great-grandfather William E. Hall] made a great deal of Thanksgiving. It was more of an event than Christmas. All the family came home to the Homestead for the family gathering. It was a happy time for young and old alike. I can remember Mama and I starting about a week ahead of time – polishing silver, waxing the furniture and getting ready for the big day. In those days everything we put on the table was right off the farm. We had mince-meat to make and nuts to gather from the hickory and butternut trees. The day before we started cooking in earnest. All the desserts had to be made, raised donuts, pumpkin pies, mince pies, raised loaf cake and Indian pudding. We made them in quantity for the twenty or more folks coming. There were hot breads to be baked and the turkey to stuff. The old wood stove was working overtime.

Of course we made all our own bread and for dinner we baked raised biscuits and rye bread besides the regular white bread. Mother and I used to do it all. Now, some fifty years later, family still get together, but we all do some of it.

The big day started bright and early. The turkey was popped into the oven, so as to be done to perfection for the noon feast. The men all went hunting that morning. They started off bright and early for rabbits and squirrels and came home with tremendous appetites, ready for their Thanksgiving dinners. The children were sent out to play or had a glorious time playing hide-and-seek around the big house.

The ladies retired to the kitchen to get the meal ready. The big table was pulled out to its full length and set. We caught up on all the gossip and family chatter as we peeled potatoes and turnips and dished up the pickles and jelly. My mother always made a chicken pie, too. One of my brothers liked to have a piece of chicken pie after he’d had the turkey. We all had a small piece, too, or Mother felt quite hurt. How we ate it all I’ll never know. We even made one freezer of ice cream, and tapioca for the little children.

By the time the turkey was ready, the table was loaded with goodies. It is funny, but I don’t remember having cranberry sauce then. That must have been added in later years

There were pickles that we’d put up, little cucumber pickles, mustard pickles, and the other kinds, apple jelly, grape jelly, preserves and celery that we raised in the garden, all the bread and biscuits and butter that we’d churned and those things that made up Thanksgiving dinner.

As the men and children were sitting down, in came great steaming dishes of onions, potatoes, turnips, and finally, with great ceremony the big bird was brought in and put down in front of Father. After grace was said, the turkey was carved and everybody was served.

After the dinner was cleared and the dishes done (believe me there were lots of them, but all of us together made them disappear in a hurry), all the family gathered around the piano and had a grand time singing all the old favorites. How Father loved to sing! It was such a happy homey day. The family still gathers as we have done generation after generation. There will be about twenty this year. In the world today, and the rush of modern times, it is hard to have that happy, relaxed day, as we used to 50 years ago. Still we shouldn’t lose sight of what Thursday, Thanksgiving Day stands for.” ~ Mrs. Henry A. Norton, 1951 – (Ellen Hall Norton)

A Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Thanksgiving on the farm, 1904

People in photo: Front row from left – Melissa Hall, Gertrude Hall, Samuel Hall, William Cannon: Second row – Alice Hall, Ellen Hall Norton: Third row, seated: Lydia Reed Hart, Hattie Hall Cannon: Fourth Row – William Hall, holding hand of his mother Edith Hall, Carrie Hall: Back row from left – Wilbur Hall, John Cannon, Cynthia Hart, John Hart, Lydia Jane Hall, Edgar Hall, William E. Hall, Ellsworth Hall

On Monday: December Window

Outbuildings #3 – The Turkey Pen

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“The real work on the farm happened in the barn, in the fields, and in the house. Some of the outbuildings were so specific in purpose that they were often hastily erected or moved, and as quickly abandoned when seasons or activities changed. Others had longer lives and a more major presence. They were spread out around the property in an almost haphazard way. A few of them I remember from childhood, but others I know only from photos.” – Outbuildings #1, Outbuildings #2

The Turkey Pen

For this photo the turkeys came out of their pen and gathered around my grandmother, Agnes Biggs Hall, when she came to feed them and fatten them up for the winter. They seem exotic and prehistoric. The only turkeys we see now near the farm are the wild ones who appear once in awhile in the fields like groups of dark-suited men standing with their hands behind their backs waiting for a train.

Agnes Biggs Hall and the turkeys, around 1922

On Monday: Giving Thanks

Aunt Ellen

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My aunts and uncles and grandparents seemed ageless. I never thought of them as “old,” or as “getting old.” When my cousin Margy Norton sent me a photo of her grandmother – my Aunt Ellen – she said, “Gramie Norton looked like this for as long as I knew her.”

Ellen Hall Norton in front of the cottage, photo courtesy of Margy Norton Campion

Ellen and her younger brother, my grandfather Ellsworth Hall, shared a sense of humor – Ellsworth’s quiet and twinkly, Ellen’s brash and lively – that must have made life on the farm entertaining.

Ellen, Ellsworth, Lydia Jane, and William E. Hall, around 1900

In the black and white photo Margy sent, Aunt Ellen stands in front of her cottage on Long Island Sound wearing what look like clown shoes. The Hall women were tormented by bunions and corns and coped with them in practical ways. Ellen wore her special slippers. My mother’s cousins Melissa and Gertrude cut holes in their white Keds to accommodate sore feet. They laughed about their creative footwear.

“Keds,” Carol Crump Bryner, pen and ink, 2014

Ellen dressed without vanity, wearing comfortable cotton dresses all summer. In an iconic photo, she sits on the lawn in front of the cottage with her favorite dog Count. This is how I always think of her – surrounded by blue and white and smiling an impish smile.

Ellen Norton and her dog Count

Despite her life’s tragedies – her only daughter Jane died at fourteen, her husband Henry in 1938 leaving her a widow for twenty-six years – she held onto a teasing and fun-loving disposition. Her two sons John and Austin provided her with spirited daughters-in-law and loving grandchildren. At her cottage and in her little house in Wallingford she cooked on coal-burning stoves. Summer life at the cottage was simple, but surprisingly elegant.

“Sleeping Porch Window,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on linen, 1990

She made her famous ginger cookies in the ovens of the massive old stoves and stored them in the same black tin my cousins still use. She greeted me in the kitchen by sticking out her false teeth and asking if I wanted some sour doughnuts. She chided me when I wore lipstick, but I could coax her into playing endless games of Parcheesi and checkers.

Even when I was young and sitting in the living room on the farm listening to the older women talk about their lives, I was learning something from them. Their lessons have become more relevant to me as I grow older. They embodied the adage, “Pain is inevitable – suffering is optional.” The women who paved my way certainly had their share of pain. But they cut holes in their shoes, they played Parcheesi, they gathered in a room together on a Sunday afternoon, they sat on the sea wall in front of a summer cottage, and they made ginger cookies to please the next generation. To all of us they bequeathed their love of family and their enduring sense of place.

“Corner of the Porch,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas

On Friday: Outbuildings #3 – The Turkey Pen

Aunt Hattie

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The old adage, “little pitchers have big ears” definitely applied to me. On Sunday afternoons, when Hall relatives gathered at the farm, and my brother and cousins played outside, I often preferred to sit in the big sunny living room with the “old folks.” These women – my aunts, great aunts, mother, grandmother, and older cousins – drank tea, ate cake and cookies, and talked and talked. Sunday was their day of rest and their day to catch up.

The roster of Hall family women included my mother’s much-older cousins Gertrude, Alice, and Melissa, the wives (Olga, Tilly, and Elsie) of her male cousins, my aunts Barbara, Glenna, Caroline, and Betty, and great aunts Hattie, Ellen, Ethel, Olive and Isabelle. Hattie and Ellen, born nine years apart, were doting older sisters to my grandfather Ellsworth. Both sisters married late. They were a great comfort and help to my great grandmother Lydia as she aged, and she referred to them as “my good girls.”

Hattie Hall Cannon (back), and Ellen Hall Norton (front), 1904

Hattie Cornelia Hall died when I was just ten years old. She was eighty-five. Hattie was her real name – not her nickname. On Thanksgiving she decorated the farmhouse with ferns and fall leaves and played hymns at the piano. On Sunday mornings she climbed the dizzying steps to the steeple of the First Congregational Church in Wallingford to ring the chimes. She held me on her lap when I was a baby and hugged me hard when we visited. Short and stout and white-haired and widowed, Hattie was always just there, and I never thought much about her.

But in her youth she was a delicate and social girl, and in this photo taken on an outing with a group of friends, she sits primly on a rock wearing a dark-colored many-buttoned dress, tight shiny boots, and a hat.

Hattie Hall at an outing, left front, about 1886

In her younger days she favored flamboyant hats and stylish dresses. The name “Hattie” seemed just right for her.

Hattie Hall (in middle) with friends, around 1890

Hattie in a new hat, around 1892

In the early 1890’s she met and married John Cannon. Their only child William was born in 1894.

Hattie and William Cannon, 1894

In this photo of three-year-old William he shows off his mother’s love of fashion.

William Cannon, around 1897

But in 1918, when he was just twenty-four years old, William died after a sudden illness – possibly diphtheria or the Spanish flu. For all of his too-few years, he was the light of Hattie’s life.

I remember Aunt Hattie as a cheerful and loving woman. I hope she found joy in her large family of nieces and nephews and their children, and that I was kind to her and hugged her hard enough.

Aunt Hattie and Carol, Christmas, 1946

On Wednesday: Aunt Ellen

Siberia

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I don’t know who named the coldest bedroom on the farm after a country so very far away from Wallingford, Connecticut, but I like their dry sense of humor. The room earned its reputation. We all slept there at one time or another, reluctantly repeating the bone-chilling experience of our ancestors. Modern conveniences in other parts of the house never reached this Siberia.

Siberia, 1922 – Francis, Janet, and Lydia in the front yard

When they were growing up, my mother and her older sister Lydia slept in Siberia – the upstairs bedroom on a southwest corner of the farmhouse. Lydia and brother Francis were the leaders in the family – my mother the good-natured follower. The two girls called each other “Sis,” and in photos from that time were often dressed in identical outfits. I picture them climbing the dark stairs together toward their bed in Siberia – two small dark-haired girls in white nightdresses carrying candles to light their way.

Janet, Lydia, and Francis Hall, 1922

But I have another image of my mother. It’s about seventy-five years after the sisters go up the stairs together, and I’m on one of my twice-yearly visits to Whirlwind Hill. My mother, by this time, has developed a bedtime routine to rout the ghosts of Siberia. She cannot stand to be cold.

We sit in the den and watch a television show. We’ve spent a long and often trying day together, and I’m ready to be alone. My mother stalls and puts off her bedtime. When the show is over she disappears into her room and comes back smelling of Pond’s Cold Cream and carrying her pink brushed-cotton lined pajamas and a flashlight. I wish she had put on the pajamas in the bedroom, but she says she wants to do it here – in front of the television where it’s warm and light. She gets her hot water bottle from the hook in the kitchen closet and fills it with water. She doesn’t exactly fill it. She’s particular about things, and the bottle needs to be just the right temperature and just the right weight.

She stays with me a while longer, then gets up to go, clutching the warmth of the red water bottle to her chest and shining the flashlight into the darkness. I long to be by myself, but suddenly I don’t want her to leave. I feel how frail she is when I hug and kiss her good night, and as I watch her walk away I can see how she’s aged. It’s the first time I realize how final the going will someday be, and my heart fills with loneliness and love.

“Winter Light,” Carol Crump Bryner, linocut, 2001

On Wednesday: Cigars

November Window

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Every November, on Thanksgiving day, my great-grandmother, Lydia Jane Hall, gathered her family around the big dining room table to give thanks. It was hard for her when her children married and sometimes didn’t come back for this celebration. But her well-loved tradition lasted for over forty years after she died. The centerpiece of the meal was the turkey, which was often raised right there on the farm.

“November Window,” Carol Crump Bryner, monoprint

Thursday, November 26, 1914 – “Nice Day. All the family home excepting Alice and husband and baby. We had a very nice time. Two nice turkeys well baked by Agnes, rolls and doughnuts made by Ellen, fine Indian meal pudding, pumpkin and mince pies, cranberry sauce, oysters, pickles, cheese, and coffee.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Thursday, November 24, 1921 – “Stormy. Quite heavy ice storm – unpleasant for Thanksgiving day. We had a very nice turkey well roasted with cranberry sauce, all the vegetables, nice biscuit, pumpkin pie, a nice box of chocolate candies from Ed & Carrie. They took dinner with Alice. We missed our family gathering today which we have had so many years together. We certainly have been blessed for which we are thankful.” – Lydia Jane Hall

See also: April, May, June, July, August, September, and October Windows

On Monday: Siberia

On Whirlwind Hill

An artist's memories of a family farm – Carol Crump Bryner

Category Archives: Ancestors

“Make-work”

Dressmaking

Afternoon Coffee

December Window

Thanksgiving

Outbuildings #3 – The Turkey Pen

Aunt Ellen

Aunt Hattie

Siberia

November Window