Category Archives: Land

The Little House in the Glen

“Tools,” Carol Crump Bryner, watercolor, 2014

It’s hard for me to ask people to do things I can do myself. Finding babysitters for my children when they were young, hiring someone to clean the house, asking a neighbor to feed the cat, or even asking my own grandson to pick his coat up off the floor require a sense of authority that eludes me.

For my grandparents, great-grandparents, and the generations before them, asking for and hiring help was a necessity. The journals of my great-grandmother Lydia lament the everyday problems of getting and keeping workers. She records the trials and tribulations of Pauline, a woman who worked for them for several years.

March 13, 1913 – “Pauline busy in the morning sweeping, etc – very quiet, don’t say much – suppose she is disgusted with the Halls.” – Lydia Jane Hall

April 15, 1913 – “Pauline said she couldn’t come to help us. She wants a change – good bye.” – Lydia Jane Hall

April 28, 1913 – “Rosa helping the best she can, but wishes she was at home. Distressing to have such help.” – Lydia Jane Hall

May 25, 1913 – “Ellen went to town to meet Mrs. Arnold at the car line. She came and seems quite pleasant.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Mrs. Arnold lasted a few months, and was replaced by Rosie.

August 5, 1913 – “A fine day. Cool for ironing. Rosie done the ironing – it looks very good. Pretty good young girl I think.” – Lydia Jane Hall

In December that year, my grandfather Ellsworth married my grandmother Agnes and brought her home to the farm to live (and to work). My great-grandmother’s load was lightened, but complaints about “the help” pop up in the journals.

December 14, 1914 – “Jennie Cella says she cannot wash for us anymore. Has to help her mother.” – Lydia Jane Hall

August 8, 1921 – “Ellsworth is getting very tired and worn very thin. I feel worried about him and wish he could have a few days rest for a change. It is hard to get good strong help.” – Lydia Jane Hall

But throughout Lydia’s journals there are always kind words about Andrew and Mary Rossi and their son Peter, and notes of appreciation for their help in the house and in the barn and fields. The Rossi family was for many years an established part of the farm, lured there by the prospect of steady work and by one other wonderful thing – the little house in the glen.

A glen is a valley-like ditch, with some kind of water running through it. Our glen – or “gutter,” as it came to be called later on – was a shady stream with steep banks. An orchard on a sloping hill separated the glen from the farmhouse. Now the orchard is gone, and a big green field has replaced the trees.

Walking to the Gutter, 2013

In 1912, before my grandfather met my grandmother, there were always problems with keeping a hired man. The farm was a long way from most of these workers’ homes, and boys and men got homesick or eager to move on to something more exciting. So in August 1912, my grandfather, with the help of friends and hired labor, built a house.

August 29, 1912 – “Men working at the new cellar of the new house on the place.” – Lydia Jane Hall

October 14, 1912 – “Men busy putting up the house in the glen.” – Lydia Jane Hall

February 17, 1913 – “Ellsworth and men worked in peach orchard in morning – in afternoon worked with John Botsford painting the new house.” – Lydia Jane Hall

March 11, 1913 – “A nice spring-like day. The birds are singing – the blue birds especially. The men are trimming peach trees in the Orrin Land. They expect to hire a new man soon. I hope they will get a willing worker. –Bargain made – will move the wife and child soon.” – Lydia Jane Hall

March 26, 1913 – “Raining hard…the new family [Andrew, Mary, and Peter Rossi] moved into our house in the glen.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Unlike the farmhouse, which burned in 1971, the little house is still a part of the farmland. I don’t know how the house looked when it sat next to the gutter, because sometime before 1943 it was moved, and I’ll talk about that on Wednesday. But my mother remembers being scared and running as fast as she could whenever she was sent to the little house on an errand. She admits that most of these errands took place after the evening meal, when dusk must have made the woods around the glen seem darker and bigger and maybe just a little bit haunted.

“The Little House,” Carol Crump Bryner, 2013

On Wednesday: The Little House on the Hill

Berries

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Berries ripen in July – whortleberries, huckleberries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries – and beg to be picked and made into pies.

“Berries,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache, 2014

Tuesday, July 16, 1912 – “Very warm – showery nearly all day. Pauline [hired girl] went whortleburing in afternoon. Got nearly two quarts. Very nice ones.” – Lydia Jane Hall

You may, like me, wonder, “what in the world is a whortleberry?” Well, whortleberries are blueberries, but not quite. They are more like a wild bog blueberry, and I have no idea where they would have grown on the farm. Maybe someone can tell me.

My mother and her older sister Lydia were champion berry gatherers.

Wednesday, July 20, 1921 – “Fairly good day – still manage to get in some hay. Agnes went in town – brought Hattie out to go after berries with Lydia. She brought Lydia a small pail for her own, which she thought was fine. She picked it full up. A good little girl for work.” – Lydia Jane Hall

A few years later, my mother, Janet Hall, wearing plaid stockings and a necktie, went berrying with her own bucket.

Janet Hall (on right) with friend and berry pails

My mother knew the whereabouts of all the best berry patches, and in 1986 she took my daughter and her friend Winifred into the back lots to gather blackberries.

Janet Hall Crump, Mara Bryner, Winifred Guidone with berries, 1986

That afternoon my mom made one of her perfect berry pies. We ate it with vanilla ice cream just as the fireflies began to flicker and glow in the warm dark Connecticut evening.

“Blackberry/Blueberry Pie,” Carol Crump Bryner, pen and ink, 1986

On Friday: August Window

Gardens

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When a cousin visited me recently, we talked about the gardens on the farm. Most of the large crops of hay, corn, alfalfa, oats, barley, etc. were planted in fields away from the house. But near the house my grandparents grew all kinds of shrubs, flowers and vegetables.

My mother and her brothers and sister started their interest in gardens when they were very young. In this photo of them from Children’s Sunday, 1921, they hold tiny potted plants received that morning at church. All the Hall children went on to have “green thumbs.” My Aunt Lydia studied animal and plant life and raised orchids, Uncle Francis worked his whole life on the farm, Uncle Aaron tended a beautiful yard and garden, and my mother made striking bouquets from her flowers and then did paintings of them.

Francis, Lydia, Ellsworth, and Janet Hall, 1021

The visiting cousin, Skip, spent many years working on the farm and for our Uncle Francis and my grandparents. Skip never understood how anything could grow in the vegetable garden behind the farmhouse – it was so very full of rocks. I pulled up carrots from that garden and wiped them “clean” on my pants before taking a gritty bite. They tasted of sunshine and earth, and I don’t think there is any better way to eat a carrot.

“Garden Carrot,” Carol Crump Bryner, watercolor, 2014

At the foot of the hill leading to my Aunt Glenna and Uncle Francis’s house my grandmother grew flowers, and around the front of the house and across the street near the barnyard fence my grandfather planted hollyhocks. When they bloomed in the heat of summer he brought single hollyhock blossoms into the kitchen for my grandmother. They looked like dancing girls in brightly colored skirts balanced on the tips of his fingers.

Iris, hostas, peonies, and phlox are what I picture when I remember my grandmother’s gardens. Maybe that’s because the plants lived on for many years after she died. In 1986, sixteen years after her death, my grandmother’s flowers were plentiful enough for a bouquet. During a summer visit that year, my mother and my daughter picked an armful of phlox and hostas to put into a pewter pitcher for the dining room table. Most people grow hostas for their foliage, but I’ve always loved the pale lavender-colored blossoms because they remind me of Julys on Whirlwind Hill.

Mara Bryner and Janet Hall Crump picking flowers, 1986

On Monday: Agnes

Independence Day

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On July 4th, 1776, one of my ancestors added his signature to the Declaration of Independence. Lyman Hall, a grandson of John the Immigrant (I wrote about him here) was born in Wallingford, Connecticut, but as an adult he moved to Georgia and became a Congressman. Celebrating Independence Day took on more meaning for me because someone in my family had played a part in its making.

For the past few years we’ve celebrated the Fourth of July in Portland, Oregon at our daughter’s house, where her very careful husband sets off a modest, but still impressive, display of fireworks at the end of the driveway, followed by sparkler waving in the wet grass of the back yard.

When I was growing up we had picnics at the farm. Mostly I remember quiet feasts outside in the yard.

Farm Picnic, 1948

But one year in the 1950’s, someone in the family brought to the farm a car load of fireworks. After the day’s celebrations, when dusk turned the night sky a deep blue, we rode in cars and pickup trucks down the lane toward the cow pond and up the hill to the field with the lone tree. On blankets spread over the stubble of mown hay we waited for the men to start the show. One minute we were sitting in the dark, and the next the sky lit up with one burst after another. Under the “rockets’ red glare” we shared together a magical evening marking the birthdate of our country.

Happy Birthday America!

“The Rockets’ Red Glare,” Carol Crump Bryner, 2014

On Monday: The Back Staircase

July Window

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Weather was a major pre-occupation for the Whirlwind Hill farmers. Each year in June and July they looked for sunny dry days to help make good hay. Journal keepers often start entries talking about what kind of day it was. Lydia was no exception. I do it myself when I write in my own diary. It eases me into the recollection of the day and makes each entry part of a bigger cycle of life and living.

“July Window,” Carol Crump Bryner, monoprint

Tuesday, July 28, 1914 – “Rainy. Men working around home. Pa went to town in afternoon. Agnes ironing, etc. All done at three o’clock, a busy day for housekeepers, quite a large ironing for us. Am willing to help but think I am more in the way than I can do good, but never mind, they will all get old if they live long enough. It is hard to grow old and feel that your usefulness is gone.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Saturday, July 16, 1921 – “Nice hay day. All very busy. The busiest of all. Agnes took the children to town in morning. Emily [hired girl] busy doing the work, righting the upset rooms, washing dishes – scrubbing the floors, doing chamber work. Agnes doing the baking when home, also helping rake the hay and drive the horses for unloading it at the barn. They got in most of the hay that was cut.” – Lydia Jane Hall

On Friday: Independence Day

Three Notches

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The southern Connecticut towns of Wallingford and Durham are separated by the Totoket Mountains. My great-grandfather William E. Hall grew up on the Wallingford side, and my great-grandmother Lydia Jane Hart on the Durham side. At some point before they married in 1863, one of them must have crossed the Totokets by a now unused road and met the other.

My brother has the dried skin from an impressively large rattlesnake killed by an ancestor on one of these trips over the mountain. In a horse and buggy the journey was long and arduous. These days the drive from Whirlwind Hill to Durham Town Center takes about fifteen minutes.

The section of the mountain range that fascinates me is called “Three Notches.” In a letter written in 1944 to his future wife Betty, my uncle Austin tells her about his home and the things he loves:

“When I was a kid I used to be crazy to go out to Mother’s home [his mother was my great-aunt Ellen, my grandfather Ellsworth’s sister] and help them hay and milk. I would ride my bicycle out there every Saturday just to get in the way and watch. That must be a satisfying way of life, farming I mean…There is a range of hills beyond the farm which we love to climb for a picnic lunch…Our favorite spot on the range is called “Three Notches,” and on the highest notch, Mother’s dad [my great-grandfather William E. Hall] has his name chipped into the rock. That’s the highest point of land in Wallingford and you can see for miles around, Long Island Sound on one side and Hartford, the capitol on the other.” – Austin Hart Norton

After my cousin Margy shared this letter with me this spring, I became obsessed with the “Three Notches.” I love a mystery, and for me these mountains always seemed off-limits and mysterious. My mother warned me about unsavory people in that area, and signs around Paug Pond at the foot of the mountains still say “Danger – Quicksand.”

So when I came east this April, my brother and I began looking at maps and reading histories and going to the library to find out more about the routes taken across these mountains by George Washington in 1775 and 1789 and by our grandparents and great-grandparents in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We didn’t get a chance to climb to the top of the Notches on this trip, and we’ve only begun to discover the old routes and roads, but when we learn more I’ll give a full report. How I will ever be able to find that stone with my great-grandfather’s name chipped into it, I have no idea, but I’m determined to try.

“The Three Notches,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache, 2014

On Monday: Cornelia and the Sea

June Window

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June must have been a welcome month for my great-grandmother, Lydia Jane Hall. By 1921, when she wrote the second quote, she was spending her days in a wheelchair because of rheumatism. But she was also, by that time, surrounded by the busy life of a farmhouse with three young children in it. She patiently sat through her days, watching, trying to help a little, and observing.

“June Window,” Carol Crump Bryner, monoprint

Sunday, June 1, 1913 – “A very fine day – everything is lovely outside. The birds are especially fine around us with their sweet notes, which is very nice for those that are at home like myself. Should be lonely without them.”

Thursday, June 2, 1921 – A nice cool day when the sun shines clear and warm. Everything is beautiful, the fields are full of flowers, the roses and peonies are coming. Lydia [my mother’s sister] brings them in to show me. Soon the harvest will be here. How fast we are going on the wings of time!”

Water on the Farm – The Spring

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The Whirlwind Hill farm never, as far as I know, lacked water. My ancestors chose well when they settled there. Natural springs flowed through the fields and down the hills. Muddy River provided water for animals, fish for dinner, and fertile land for crops.

The Whirlwind Hill land I own with my brother shares many of these springs, one of which flows from the cow pond, under the lane, and onto our property. My parents dug a well when they built the house. This well water, although abundant, displeased my mother who found it too “hard” (too full of minerals). She put a water softener in the basement because, she said, softer water made for a better lather and a good “soak in the tub.” But we avoided drinking the bad tasting softened water and bemoaned the impossible-to-rinse-off soap film left on our bodies after bathing.

Now that I’m an urban dweller I turn on my faucets with near-certainty that water will flow into my teakettle or onto my sudsy dishes. Our water is always cold. It always tastes good. It’s always available. But there’s nothing quite so exhilarating as the icy water from an underground spring. It feels new and sparkling as it escapes from its source and meanders over rocks and vegetation, through the culvert, and on into the green, green fields.

“Spring Water Under the Lane,” Carol Crump Bryner, pencil, 2013

On Friday: June Window

Muddy River

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Before the arrival of my ancestors to the hills of East Wallingford, Connecticut, a meandering river kept company with the land. It flowed through the flat acres at the bottom of the hill and continued on through Northford. The earliest deeds to the farm refer to it as Muddy River. When the land was settled and the farms built, the moist banks made rich pastureland for cows and entertaining playgrounds for children.

Muddy River, Carol Crump Bryner, Gouache

The river connected the two significant farms in my life. It flowed not only through the Hall farm – the farm of my mother – but also through the Newton farm in Northford, Connecticut – the farm of my father’s aunt and uncle. Until recently I hadn’t thought of the two “Muddy Rivers” of my childhood as one continuous waterway. The Newtons and the Crumps gathered at the Newton farm beside the cool stream to picnic near the little summer house and swing on the hammocks. We paddled in the shallow rocky water, caught lamprey eels, pulled leeches off our legs, and refused to enter the spider-filled outhouse. In Northford the river was still a river.

But in Wallingford, by the time I was born, the part of the river at the foot of Whirlwind Hill was gone. In 1943 the town dug a hole and flooded the land to create the MacKenzie Reservoir. I never knew the Muddy River of my mother and grandfather and his father before him. I’ve searched for photos of the way it used to look, but have found only this one of my grandmother Agnes in 1921 with her three children and some of the neighbors. In the background is the farm that belonged at that time to Grace and Walter Ives. The children and my grandmother dressed for a party and brought toy boats to float along the bank of Muddy River.

Agnes Hall and children on the bank of Muddy River, 1921

In 2009 the town of Wallingford drained the reservoir so it could be dredged and cleaned. For the first time I saw the path of the river, the stumps of trees that had grown next to the Muddy River School, and the footprint of the old road where, it is said, George Washington rode on his way from New Haven to Boston in 1775 and 1789. At the far south end of the reservoir an old stone wall emerged from the water. It ran through one of our fields and must have once ended at the river. My brother and I kept meaning to walk out and explore it, but time passed and before we could go the reservoir was filled, and all traces of the past were again out of sight.

Reservoir Drained, 2009

It must have been peaceful and beautiful along the river, but the reservoir is my own personal history, and I love it. I fished there, watched birds there, and found peace sitting on the front steps of the house and looking over its quiet water.

A View of the Reservoir, Carol Crump Bryner, gouache, 1992

On Monday: Decoration Day

May Window

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From the farmhouse windows Lydia could see the orchards of apple trees and watch the activity on Whirlwind Hill, the road that ran between the house and the barn.

There are two quotes for this May window. In the nine years between 1912 and 1921 her life had changed. In 1913 her youngest child, my grandfather Ellsworth, married my grandmother, Agnes Biggs, and by 1921 they had three children. Lydia’s husband William died in 1920.

“May Window,” Carol Crump Bryner, monoprint

Sunday, May 19, 1912 – “Fine morning. Apple blossoms are out and everything looks tender and fresh. Autos are flying by. Boys on wheels. Surrey load of young people, auto trucks with lot of people in all going east for an outing. How changed the times when team after team used to go by with people going to church.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Monday, May 9, 1921 – “Nice day. High winds in afternoon and some warmer. The trees have been loaded with apple blossoms and nearly all gone. Soon time to spray them again. The peonies, the shrub peonies, are out in full bloom. The birds are all here nesting, singing songs. Grass looking fine and heavy. Men busy preparing the ground for planting. The farm never looked more promising to me.” – Lydia Jane Hall

On Whirlwind Hill

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

Category Archives: Land

The Little House in the Glen

Berries

Gardens

Independence Day

July Window

Three Notches

June Window

Water on the Farm – The Spring

Muddy River

May Window