June Window

3 Replies

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

6 Replies

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

Doing Dishes

8 Replies

“Sunday Dishes,” Carol Crump Bryner, colored pencil, 2014

When a friend mentioned that she was overly particular about loading her dishwasher, I admitted that I, too, moved the plates and bowls around to their “proper” places after they’d been loaded “wrong” by well-meaning helpers.

Kitchen routines, especially dish related ones, are like that. Once you get into a pattern it’s hard to change. On the farm, the dishwashing rhythm, established who knows when, was unchanging. Someone – usually my grandmother – filled a pan in the white sink with hot soapy water. Soap was never wasted, so only one pan of washing water was used for the whole gamut of dirt.

Grandma Hall washed the glasses first, the silverware second, the cups, china, and tea things next. The greasy pots and pans came last, taking their bath in tepid grimy water. She put the soapy dishes onto the draining board where they waited to be “scalded” with boiling water from the silver-colored kettle simmering on the stovetop. When I was the dryer I complained about soapy traces left on the dishes and was told it was my job to wipe everything clean with the towel – a little soap never hurt anyone. Besides, Grandma Hall said, after the scalding, the dishes were perfectly sterile.

I remember a Sunday morning when I was in college. I decided at the last minute to drive home and surprise my family by joining them for Sunday dinner at the farm. I felt the need to be in the loving circle of parents and brother and grandparents for a little while. The noon meal was the big meal of the day on the farm, and the Sunday dinner was always special.

I don’t remember what we ate, but I do remember standing at the kitchen sink with my grandmother and mother while I dried the dishes. I wore a favorite 1960’s college girl outfit – black sweater, black and white pleated wool skirt, black stockings, black shoes, and probably a gold circle pin. It was comforting to be in the midst of the steamy haze and the patter of small talk and feel that I totally belonged. I was independent, but not quite. I drove back to school that afternoon wishing I could stay at the farm with my family and forget about getting on in the world.

These old-fashioned routines haunt me long after I’ve established my own more modern ones. And I’m trying to remember the kettle. I can only approximate the way it looked, but to this day I feel its heft and remember the hot thrill of pouring boiling water over precious and fragile glassware and china.

“Kitchen Kettle,” Carol Crump Bryner, pen and ink, 2012

On Wednesday: Water on the Farm – The Spring

Dark Purple Lilacs

18 Replies

My mother’s likes and dislikes are not just memories for me – they’re imbedded in my own preferences. They go bone deep.

Maybe this is one of the ways a person lives on. Not just through memories but through the influence of their choices.

Planted near the farmhouse was a lilac of legend. It was reputed to have come from England on a ship with my great-grandfather, Joseph Biggs, my Grandma Hall’s father. He planted the first cutting in Glastonbury, Connecticut where he lived and worked and where my grandmother grew up. After my grandmother married my grandfather and moved to the farm, my great-grandfather Joseph planted a cutting from the English lilac at the back of the Hall farmhouse.

Joseph Biggs, sometime before he came to America in 1888, photo curtesy of Donna Palmer

The lilac was a deep dark purple – a very unique bloom, and highly prized by my mother. So when we moved to our own land on Whirlwind Hill, she planted a cutting behind the garage. It thrived. It was a lovely tree. I took this photo of a branch amongst a bouquet of lighter lilacs and dogwood in 2008. You can see the darker lilacs reflected in the mirror.

Whirlwind Hill Lilacs, 2008

Seven or eight years ago I pulled a lilac “sucker” from a dark purple lilac planted by a friend here in Anchorage. Because of my mother’s strong preference for this color lilac, I had to have one. The property where it was growing was being sold, the building demolished, and the tree transplanted, and I wanted to see if I could grow my own dark lilac. (The last I heard was that the transplanted tree didn’t survive.)

My husband and I have watched the baby tree every year for signs of flowers. Finally, this spring, we were excited to see buds. The friend who planted the original tree died this past winter, and it seems fitting for the tree to bloom in her honor. I’m sure my mother and my friend who both loved these English lilacs would be happy about their legacy.

Anchorage Lilac, 2014

On Monday: Doing Dishes

The House that Aaron Built

4 Replies

First, a disclaimer: I don’t know for sure that Aaron built the farmhouse, but it is most likely that he did. So I will proceed on that assumption and on a few other speculations in this post that I state as facts.

Aaron Hall was born in 1760 in the original Hall homestead. This small house, which eventually became the kitchen and dining room of the large house had a dirt-floored cellar, a ground floor kitchen and living space, and an upstairs attic sleeping room. Aaron was the last child born to Asahel and Sarah Hall, and one of six of their twelve children who lived to adulthood. Since Aaron’s own eleven children seem to have fared better, I wonder if their long and productive lives were due in part to the house that Aaron built.

In 1781 Aaron married Elizabeth Cook, and not long after built his new house on the upward slope of Whirlwind Hill. The Federal style addition to the original home was graceful and dignified. He was a patriot, and built in a manner that would befit his stature as a veteran of the American Revolution. I have one early picture of the house the way it must have looked in the decades after it was built.

Hall Farmhouse around 1870

My mother, who had strong opinions about aesthetic beauty, said that the stately house was spoiled when Aaron’s heirs and their wives made practical changes to the exterior over the years. Until the early 1900’s the home had classical moldings around the doors and windows, an iconic fanlight window in the attic pediment, twelve-over-twelve paned windows on the front, and white-painted clapboards. All these details were made for show and not for comfort or easy maintenance.

Aaron’s new house had more room, but bigger rooms and more windows brought the need for more heat and more furniture. The new house would have been cold enough in winter to have an upstairs bedroom called Siberia. There was more privacy, certainly, but with a front parlor and a sitting room and multiple bedrooms there would have been enough added housework to require hired help.

By the time my grandfather Ellsworth was a teenager in 1900, the family had filled the house with comfort. My great-grandmother Lydia records in her journals the family gatherings, the evenings when neighbors came to play cards and eat cake, and the celebrations to welcome a new generation. In this photo, which is one of the last that shows the house with its white clapboards, my great-grandparents pose at the front door (a place of many family portraits) with their youngest children, my grandfather Ellsworth and his older sister Ellen. To me they look both proud and happy. Life was good for them.

Ellen, Ellsworth, Lydia Jane, and William E. Hall, around 1905

I’ve always loved this ancestral portrait showing my grandfather as a young man, but it wasn’t until recently when I came across the photo below that I realized the extent of its influence. In the fall of 1968, just two months after our wedding, my husband and I asked a friend to take our first Christmas card photo. We were living in an old Victorian house in the middle of downtown Menlo Park, California. We had a small barn in the back yard, a little duck pond, six ducks, two chickens, and one cat. We felt like urban farmers and decided to dress the part. I don’t remember consciously posing in the style of my ancestors, but here we are, doing just that as we stand in our sunny doorway looking toward the future.

Alex and Carol Bryner, 1968

On Friday: Dark Purple Lilacs

Decoration Day

14 Replies

As you can see, this is not “The House that Aaron Built,” which I had promised today. That will appear on Wednesday instead.

It’s Memorial Day, and I want to mark it. It seems important on this day to pause and remember. The custom in our family was to go to the cemetery with flowers – not just for soldiers, but for all those we held dear. I admit to being a cemetery person. I like the quiet grounds and find it peaceful to visit the resting places of my ancestors. Here in Anchorage, because I’m so far away from the place where my own mother and father are buried, I’ll go today to the local cemetery and place a small bouquet of flowers on the graves of Bill and Frances – parents of a good friend. This cemetery in the middle of town is a busy place on Memorial Day. Families picnic near their loved ones, and visitors prune vegetation and place flags and flowers at the headstones.

In the early part of the twentieth century Memorial Day was always on May 30, and it was called “Decoration Day.”

My great-grandmother Lydia Hall wrote in her 1924 journal:

Friday, May 30 – “Pleasant. This is Decoration day. Agnes took the children in town to see the parade. They were too late. Very quiet for Wallingford. The decorations were very nice. I have been sitting out of doors for an hour this morning enjoying the sunshine and warm air. It is the first time I have been out since last fall.” – Lydia Jane Hall

For her “decorations,” my mother gathered flowers from the farm or from her own garden to make a patriotic bouquet. Red and white peonies and indigo blue baptisia were her blooms of choice, and under my mother’s skillful hands, they made a striking arrangement.

janet Hall Crump with Red Peonies

One year she painted this tiny watercolor of her bouquet. It hangs in an alcove in my house and greets me in the morning when I come downstairs to breakfast. Today when I see it I’ll pause, and remember, and thank her for this good life.

“Memorial Day Bouquet,” Janet Hall Crump, watercolor

On Wednesday: The House that Aaron Built

Muddy River

6 Replies

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

The Letter

9 Replies

More often than not, paperwork overwhelms my desk and makes me grumpy. Organizing financial records, bills, checks, insurance forms, airline receipts, etc., gets more complicated every year. My computer, which is supposed to make things easier, just seems to add to my confusion. Some days I long for simpler times, even though I know they were neither simple nor easy. They just left a smaller paper trail.

In 1825 my great-great-great-grandfather Aaron Hall, Esq. wrote a letter summing up his life. The document hung in the farmhouse parlor next to his portrait, and although it was always referred to as his “letter,” it’s really more of a statement left for posterity. In it he sets down the facts of his time on this earth.

It’s easier for me and fairer to Aaron if I quote the letter instead of printing a photograph of the document, as it’s very hard to read. The misspellings and the missing punctuation are his, and I’ve added hyphens to clarify his sentence breaks.

Aaron Hall’s Letter – Detail

Wallingford, January 5^th, 1825 – “I Aaron Hall son of Asahel & Sarah Hall was born November 11^th 1760 and lived with my father and worked on his farm until the 25^th of May 1777 which was the 17^th year of my age – having a thirst for liberty with the consent of my father I inlisted a soldier for three years in the Amarican revolution during which time I indured many hardships and was in sundry battles at Germantown & Monmouth and being troubled with the rhumatis at times but not so as to prevent me from doing my duty – but since I have bin very much troubled and am at this time – after my term of service expired I returned and when I have bin abel have worked on my farm ever since – in 1781 May the 24^th I was married to Elizabeth Cook by whome I had Eleven children and I believe are all alive at this time – my wife Elizabeth died July 16^th 1820 in the 58^th year of her age – in December the 11^th 1820 I was married to Sarah Hall with whome I have lived until this time September 12^th 1826 when my wife Sarah died in the 70^th year of her age – June 11^th 1827 I was married to Annis Brooks

Because of this letter I could, if I wanted, become a Daughter of the American Revolution. I think several of my cousins have done this. But it wasn’t his participation in the revolution or the fact that he had eleven children that impressed me when I was young. Instead, I was amazed that he had THREE WIVES. The statements about these three women are so short, and so matter of fact, that I always pictured the three wives married to him at the same time. But in truth he was first married to Elizabeth, then to Sarah, and finally to Annis.

I’d like to know what these wives looked like and how they lived their lives – how Elizabeth managed to raise eleven children, how Sarah was courted when she was 64 years old, and how Annis met and agreed to marry 67-year-old Aaron. The paper trail for these four people is practically non-existent.

But in my photo collection, I found a tintype from the 1850’s with a label on the back written by my grandmother. The woman in the photo is the fifth of Aaron’s children, Mary Hall. She was born in 1790 and died in 1871. She never married, and, in fact, may have lived her entire life on the farm. In her portrait she looks like a precious and beloved aunt. Her cheerful expression makes me smile. She’s taken great care to dress in her finest clothing with what looks like the parlor rug wrapped around her shoulders and an oversized bow tied under her chin. It seems like this may have been her one chance to look good for the camera, and she was determined to make the best of it.

Mary Hall, 1790 – 1871

On Wednesday: Muddy River

Violets – An Addendum

11 Replies

Two weeks ago I wrote here about violets and about Mary E. Hart’s painting of violets. When I visited Whirlwind Hill recently I took a drive to Durham, Connecticut to visit the old cemetery in the town center. My mother loved this drive, and we went there together often to visit the Hart graves. My great-grandmother, Lydia, was a Hart, and her family had been long-time Durham residents.

So it seemed fitting that when I found Mary’s little grave marker, the grass surrounding it was full of violets.

Mary E. Hart’s grave stone with violets, May 2014

On Monday: The Letter

Out on the Sidewalk

12 Replies

My farm ancestors believed that bedding, rugs, laundry, the very old, and the very young needed to be “aired out” regularly. When I was a baby living in the farmhouse, my mother put me outside on the walk in my carriage for at least a half hour a day. Once, when my mother and father left me in my grandparents’ care for a weekend, my mother wrote a detailed note about what and when to feed me and specific times for napping, bed, and bath. This list, titled “Usual Routine,” instructed my grandmother to feed me liver soup and prunes, and included these lines.

“8:00 or 8:30 – Arise – put in high chair and give 6 drops of oil in Teasp with orange juice – give rest of orange juice in cup. Put outdoors if nice.”

Carol out on the sidewalk, 1946

For the old ones living in the farmhouse, spring weather meant finally being out in the sunshine and feeling truly warm. My great-grandmother, Lydia Jane Hall, welcomed this time of year. In a May journal entry she says it’s the “first day I‘ve been out of the house since the fall.” The front of the house faced south, so it was pleasant and bright in spring and summer. She would have been able to see the barn across the street, people coming and going up and down Whirlwind Hill Road, and the children playing on the lawn.

Sunday, May 8, 1921 – “This is a fine day and it is Mother’s Day. Mothers, children, and grand-children been to see us bringing flowers. Mrs. Biggs here and went home this afternoon. Henry, Ellen, Jane, John, Hattie, Edgar. Wilbur and Edyth’s boy (William E. Hall) whom we think is fine & Emily Crooks. Agnes, & Lydia & Francis went to Sunday school. I have been out with William sitting on the walk. Agnes took our picture.”

This photo could have been taken on the day she talks about. Maybe young William took it of his grandmother Lydia, his Aunt Agnes, and his three cousins, Janet, Lydia, and Francis.

Lydia Jane Hall with Agnes Hall, and the three children – Janet, Lydia, and Francis

My favorite picture of Lydia Jane out in the sun is this one from the early 1900’s. She and her husband William sit in front of the open parlor window, enjoying each other’s company. They’ve brought the parlor chairs outside onto the lawn so they can sit and chat and welcome the Sunday afternoon company.

Lydis and William Hall, around 1900

On Friday: Violets – An Addendum

On Whirlwind Hill

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