Tag Archives: Agnes Hall

Twelve Treats of Christmas – Day Four

Plum Pudding

“Oh bring us a Figgy Pudding. Oh bring us a Figgy Pudding. Oh bring us a Figgy Pudding, and a cup of good cheer.”

Figgy pudding is like plum pudding. It’s very British and very child un-friendly. When I was young, my favorite parts of the dessert my Grandma Hall made each December were the flames from the burning brandy and the garnish of hard sauce made with sugar, butter, and more brandy. My feeling was that one tablespoon of pudding required at least two tablespoons of hard sauce to make it edible. But tastes change, and right now I would love a dish of that plum pudding.

My grandmother, Agnes Biggs Hall, made Christmas plum puddings to eat at the farm and to give away. She did this until the last year of her life. In December 1969, just eight months before she died, her sister Ethel Biggs wrote to her from Hartford.

“About your making plum pudding for us. You know we love it but will not be surprised if anyone else gets there first. I am sure it is too heavy for you to make. Don’t wear your arms out on other people. Problems of the raisins are due to the grape shortage, I am sure.”

I was in California that Christmas, and remember the grape boycott. I don’t know if she made the pudding that year or not, but I hope she did. A shortage of raisins wouldn’t deter my grandma – I’m pretty sure of that.

“Plum Pudding,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache, 2015

Easter Cards for Agnes

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Last November I shared some of the birthday cards sent to my grandmother Agnes Hall by her childhood Sunday school teacher. There was some discussion at the time about his motivation in painting and sending Agnes these cards over many years.

But that was the era when post cards, greeting cards, and hand-painted scenes were a form of entertainment both for the person making the object and for the recipient. It was a time when Beatrix Potter was painting the pictures we’re so familiar with today.

Maybe Mr. Hulbert knew that my grandmother would save the cards he made, and that someday they’d influence others in the family to communicate using pen, pencil, paint, and brush.

Here are two of Agnes’ Easter cards. One of them is made like a little book, so I’ll post each page separately. I’m especially fond of the page with the hepatica and the singing bird. My mother and I went each spring onto the mountainside near the reservoir to search for the spring hepatica. They were hard to spot under the brown leaves and twigs, but their purple-blue petals were a joy to find. I now have a sharp-lobed hepatica growing in my garden in Alaska, and it reminds me of those spring searches with my mother.

Easter Card, J. O. Hulbert, 1900

Easter Card, J. O. Hulbert, 1902, page 1

Easter Card, J. O. Hulbert, 1902, page 2

Easter Card, J. O. Hulbert, 1902, page 3

Easter Card, J. O. Hulbert, 1902, page 4

Easter Card, J. O. Hulbert, 1902, page 5

On Monday: Lydia Jane’s Birthday

Foraging

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My grandmother, Agnes Biggs Hall, could cook anything. She fed people day in and day out using her two stoves in the farmhouse kitchen. She baked bread, pies, and cookies, roasted chickens and beef, fried donuts and bacon, boiled potatoes and sweet corn, churned butter, pasteurized milk, put up pickles and peaches, and saved scraps to feed the pigs, dogs, and cats.

No wonder she loved going out to eat. She had a surprisingly adventurous palate. The first avocado I ever saw was one she was eating at her kitchen table, scooping the flesh from a half of the black-skinned orb and telling me how delicious it was. She probably would have cooked more adventurously had my grandfather’s taste in food not run to the bland side. His favorite supper was something he called “spaghetti soup” – un-drained spaghetti with watery tomato sauce and buttered white bread. So going to a restaurant was often the only way my grandmother got to try new things.

She was an enthusiastic forager. When spring came, she cut dandelion greens, boiled them, and served them with butter and vinegar. Finding edible mushrooms was not a problem for her. She went into the yard, looked for the rings of what I think were probably “Fairy Ring Mushrooms.” Unafraid of being wrong, she cut them efficiently with her sharp knife, gathered them in her apron, and took them inside to cook with onions and butter.

And she loved to go fishing and clamming. Her clam chowder was delicious. She made it with a light milky broth and served it with a little pat of butter and a sprinkling of oyster crackers.

When I got married, she gave me an old cookbook called “The Improved Housewife,” published in 1847 and written by “A Married Lady.”

“The Improved Housewife”

I don’t know if the cookbook came from the farm or was something she brought with her when she married. The recipes (my grandmother always called them “receipts,” just as it’s spelled on the title page of the cookbook) are both practical and brief. Here are a few that might have helped her cook her harvests.

# 444 – Greens

Turnip tops, white mustard, dock, spinach, water-cresses, dandelion, cabbage plants, the roots and tops of beets, all make nice greens. Boil them, adding a little salaeratus and salt to the water. If not fresh and plump, soak them half an hour in salt and water before cooking. When boiled enough, they will sink to the bottom of the pot.

“Dandelion Greens, ” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache, 2015

# 459 – Stewed Mushrooms

Gather such as are grown, but are young enough to have red gills; cut off that part of the stem which grew in the earth, wash them carefully, and take the skin from the top; put them in a stew pan with some salt, stew them till tender, thickening them with a spoonful of butter, mixed with one of brown flour. A little red wine may be added, but the flavor of the mushroom is too delicious to require any thing.

“Mushrooms,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache, 2015

#758 – Clams and Crabs

Cut the hinge of the clam-shell with a thin sharp-pointed knife. Roast, take out, chop fine, season, then replace them in the one half their shell with a paste cover, and bake. Very nice. So are crabs. Serve them hot.

Agnes Biggs Hall digging for clams

And in case you were wondering how to cure your Erysipelas (or maybe your indigestion from eating the clams or crabs) here’s what the “Married Lady” advises.

#562 – For the Erysipelas

Take three ounces of sarsaparilla root, two of burdock root, three of the bark of sweet ozier, two of cumfrey root, two of the bark of the root of bittersweet, three of princes pine, two of black alder bark, and two handfuls of low mallow leaves, and put it all in four quarts of pure, soft water; steep half away; strain it; add half a pint of molasses, and four ounces of good figs, and boil the mixture ten or fifteen minutes. Strain it again. When cold add one pint of gin. Take a wineglass three times a day.

On Wednesday: The Barnyard

Letters

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“Pen,” Carol Crump Bryner, colored pencil, 2015

Among the Whirlwind Hill documents my mother treasured were a dozen or so letters written between 1812 and 1815 to my great-great-grandfather Salmon Hall. Until recently I assumed these letters to be written by his brother Aaron Chauncey Hall. All the signatures on the letters were either A. C. Hall, or A. Hall.

A. C. Hall signature

But just last week I discovered upon closer reading, that many of these old letters were written by my great-great-uncle, Asahel Hall, son of Aaron Hall Esq., older brother of Salmon Hall, and younger brother of Aaron Chauncey Hall. His signature is different than Aaron’s and the letters he wrote more detailed and informal. I was happy to be able to finally connect this Asahel to the Dr. Asahel Hall lauded in an obituary that my mother kept with these letters.

Dr. Asahel Hall signature

Asahel grew up on the farm, became a doctor, and during the war of 1812, when he was just twenty years old, became a surgeon’s mate at Fort Griswold in New London, Connecticut. (I wonder what this says about the medical profession in those days, that a twenty-year old could become a doctor?) Later in his life he settled in Poughkeepsie, NY, where he practiced medicine, married, and had four children. One of his sons, Henry Clay Hall, was a long-serving United States diplomat to Mexico, Cuba, and Central America, and was consul-general in Matanzas and Havana, Cuba. Abraham Lincoln signed Henry’s appointment as vice-consul general of Matanzas.

Asahel’s letters home to his brother from his post at Fort Griswold are affectionate and personal. He often laments the fact that he hasn’t heard from his four brothers and six sisters, and wishes he could come home to see them.

“Dear Brother, The mail has come in & nought [sic] do I hear from you & why? Are you too busy to give me a line, or your mind & attention given to the fair daughters? If the latter be the case, I will not presume but admonish you to relax a little and give me a word or two to revive a flagging spirit.” – Asahel Hall, in a letter to his brother Salmon from Fort Griswold, Connecticut, May 20, 1814

He also spends time thinking about women.

“Dear Brother, I am comfortably seated by a good fire in a warm room, although it is devilish cold without & in fact it has been so cold for a number of days, I have hardly made the daring attempt to call on the fair ones. Just after my return, I attended two parties & my favorite lady was there. She almost tempted me to sin. Her glistening arms & ruddy cheeks – her fine fair form & lips so sweet, would almost raise the devil with any fellow.” – Asahel Hall, in a letter to his brother Salmon from Fort Griswold, Connecticut, February 1, 1814

And he gives Salmon advice on planning for the future.

“I had some conversations with Father, about you & business. He said he had not mentioned to you anything about living with him the ensuing year, but was of the opinion it would be best for both for you to tarry another year, as in the course of that time the prospects of affairs might change, & some good opportunity arise for you. He said he would give you so much per month or give you a proportional part of the products of his land, etc. etc. Under all circumstances I could but believe an agreement in one or the other of those points, would be better than entering into any other business.” – Asahel Hall, in a letter to his brother Salmon from Fort Griswold, Connecticut, February 1, 1814

Salmon took his brother’s advice, and so the Hall farm was passed down for generations to enjoy.

Letters sustained me for much of my life. I became homesick easily, and newsy letters arriving at camp, college, summer jobs, and my eventual exile in the far west were always welcome. Both of my grandmothers and my mother regularly wrote me news of all sorts. In this letter sent to me at camp in 1958, my grandmother reports on all of my Hall first cousins except Dean, who hadn’t yet been born.

Grandma Hall’s letter to me at Silver Lake Camp, Front page, summer 1958

Grandma Hall’s letter to me at Silver Lake Camp, back page, summer 1958

During my teenage years I corresponded with a pen pal, Merle. She and I wrote letters back and forth from her home in England to my little red house in Wallingford, Connecticut. We talked about lipstick, nail polish, new dresses, our parents, our siblings, our pets, and boys.

I never met Merle, but felt I knew her through the details she sent to me about her everyday life. And now I’m gradually starting to get acquainted with my distant and sometimes mysterious forefathers and mothers. Although their lives and times were different from mine, we shared a similar desire to stay connected, to send and receive news, and to give advice. Maybe the ancestors didn’t talk about lipstick and perfume as I did with Merle, and I certainly never advised anyone to take Calomel the way one brother advised another, but we enjoyed the process of writing a letter – of putting pen to paper and using words to bring another person closer to us and to let them know we care.

A letter from Asahel to Salmon

On Monday: Foraging

Outbuildings #6 – A House for an Auto

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Most of 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 and as quickly abandoned when seasons or activities changed. Others had longer lives and a bigger 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.

A House for an Auto

In the spring of 1921 my grandfather Ellsworth began to think about getting a car and building a garage for it. I think of this “auto” looking like the one Uncle Wiggly, “The Bunny Rabbit Gentleman,” drove in my mother’s favorite childhood book, “Uncle Wiggly’s Auto Sled.”

From “Uncle Wiggly’s Auto Sled,” written by Howard R. Garis, Illustrated by Lang Campbell, 1920

My great-grandmother Lydia recorded the progress of the garage and the auto.

Saturday, March 12, 1921 – “Ellsworth…is thinking of building a house for an auto when he gets one. Children all have hard colds. Agnes and Emily have one. They are all sneezing in concert.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Wednesday, March 16, 1921 – “Man came to show Ellsworth a Buick automobile.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Thursday, March 17, 1921 – “Nice day. Men busy carting dirt getting ready to build a garage opposite the horse barn at the top of the hill.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Friday, March 25, 1921 – “Ellsworth has a new automobile – came today.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Saturday, April 9, 1921 – “Agnes went out to take her lesson in the automobile this afternoon with Mr. Beaumont for teacher. Will have to give her several lessons. Am afraid they will have an accident someday, but hope not.” – Lydia Jane Hall

I don’t think that my grandmother, who was a very good driver, ever did have an accident in any automobile on the farm. She did almost all the driving. Her big black car fit perfectly into the garage, and we loved being asked to go along on her errands. We followed her into the dark muskiness of the garage, climbed onto the big back seat where, unencumbered by seat belts, we bounced up and down as the car traversed the East Wallingford hills, hoping to be bouncing up when we hit a big bump so our heads would touch the car ceiling.

“A Shed for a Car,” Carol Crump Bryner, pen and ink, 2013

See also Outbuildings #1, #2, #3, #4, #5

On Monday: March Window

A Few Old Books

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A few old books

Some of my ancestors’ books seem worth sharing. Most of them are educational in nature – three are dictionaries. Despite their two hundred years of existence and what must have been frequent use, the pages remain supple and thick. Most of the bindings still hold together, and the leather covers feel like velvet. As I open them and look at their inscriptions, doodles, jottings, and marks of usage, I applaud my relatives for their literacy and love of history.

Here are some of the books, and a few interesting facts about each.

The Oldest Book

I’m a 4-leaf clover hunter. Many of my finds live on between the pages of books and diaries on our bookshelves. So it was no surprise when I opened this book – “Noah Webster’s American Spelling Book,” published in 1803 – and found one of my dried clovers on the first page. At some point, the original binding, made of wood covered with leather and paper, began to deteriorate from hard use, so someone covered it with crudely sewn striped cotton cloth.

“Noah Webster’s American Spelling Book”

At the end of the book are the “Additional Lessons.” My favorite lesson is “Of Cheerfulness.”

Q. Is cheerfulness a virtue?

A. It doubtless is. And a moral duty to practice it.

Q. Can we be cheerful when we please?

A. In general it depends much on ourselves. We can often mold our tempers into a cheerful frame. — We can frequent company and other objects calculated to inspire us with cheerfulness. To indulge an habitual gloominess of mind is weakness and sin.

Wow! Who knew?

The Wrong Asahel

“Entick’s New Spelling Dictionary”

Asahel Hall was the first Hall to live on Whirlwind Hill. My grandmother Agnes assumed that this “Entick’s New Spelling Dictionary” was his, but since he died in 1795 and the Entick’s dictionary wasn’t published until 1805, it must instead have belonged to his grandson – also named Asahel.

The note my grandmother Agnes Hall left in the dictionary

Still – 1805 was a long time ago, and in this book the letter ‘s’ often looks like an ‘f,’ and there are definitions that are definitely of their time.

Oil man, s. a man who deals in oils and pickles

Oil shop, s. a shop where oils and pickles are sold.

Fun with Fonts

Mary Jane Hall, my great-grandfather William’s sister, pasted an 1849 calendar into the back cover of this 1825 dictionary. The printers of these old books had fun with their fonts.

“Walker’s Critical Pronouncing Dictionary”

Early History

This “History of the United States on a New Plan; Adapted to the Capacity of Youth,” published in 1843, belonged to my great-uncle Aaron A. Hall, who wrote a poem on the back page.

Marion DeLong

Asked me for a song

After trying in vain,

The tears ran like rain.

The book is full of lively black and white engravings illustrating America’s history. Someone used paint to hand-color a few of them.

Page from “History of the United States”

The Book I Keep Meaning to Read

Archibald Robbin’s 1821 book about his three years as a captive of the “Wandering Arabs” in the Sahara was a bestseller when it was published. Abraham Lincoln, who read it, referred to it in speeches and spoke of it as an influence on him. I really do need to read it.

“Robbin’s Journal”

My Great-Grandfather Read This???

Another book I mean to read, John C. Cobden’s 1853 “The White Slaves of England,” was written to call attention to the slave-like working conditions of miners, seamstresses, children, tenant farmers, etc. in Great Britain in the mid-nineteenth century. My great-grandfather, William E. Hall wrote his name inside the front cover.

Page from “The White Slaves of England”

A Different Country

My cousin Tom sent me this “Mitchell’s School Atlas – 1848” a few years ago on my birthday. Although it came from the farm, one of the neighbors, Amos Ives, wrote his name and made numerous doodles on its pages.

The colorful maps detail locations of Indian tribes, herds of animals, and routes to the frontier.

In Texas, part of the land is marked “Herds of Buffaloes and Wild Horses,” and “Extensive Prairies.”

1848 Map of Texas

Several states are conspicuously absent from this map of the west coast.

1848 Map of West Coast

Amos must have daydreamed through his geography classes, because the book is sprinkled with doodles. He drew cats and dogs and circles and people. This is my favorite drawing. I wonder if Amos was having girlfriend troubles.

Belle and Beau by Amos Ives

On Wednesday: “Outbuildings #6 – A House for an Auto”

Wallpaper

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Thirty-three years ago, when we remodeled our Alaska house, I papered the bathroom walls with Laura Ashley wallpaper. I bought the rolls at the Laura Ashley store in San Francisco and carried them home on the plane in a huge green plastic bag. I’m both proud and embarrassed that I still look at this wallpaper on a regular basis – proud that it’s held up pretty well and I still like it, but also embarrassed because it hasn’t held up ALL that well, and it really should be replaced.

The Laura Ashley wallpaper I love, but really should replace.

My grandmother, Agnes Hall, definitely would have picked out and hung new paper by now. She enjoyed redecorating. Housework was not her forte, but she liked change, and moved furniture and repainted and repapered the rooms often.

Except for the whitewashed kitchen, all the downstairs rooms and some of the upstairs ones were busy with the patterns of wallpaper. I don’t know when the first sheet of paper was hung at the farm, but from 1912 to 1914, spring meant it was time to repaint and repaper the walls.

Friday, April 12, 1912 – “Pauline taking off the paper in front chambers. Getting ready for the paperhanger. Hard work scratching it off.” – Lydia Jane hall

Saturday, April 13, 1912 – “Pa scratching off paper in Ellen’s room.” – Lydia Jane Hall

And in the midst of this domestic activity my great-grandmother announced:

Sunday, April 14, 1912 – “The steamer Titanic went down. Many lives lost.” – Lydia Jane Hall

But the decorating at the Hall farm went on as usual.

Wednesday, April 17, 1912 – “Ellsworth painted the two chambers upstairs.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Friday, April 19, 1912 – “Mr. Goodspeed here papering.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Tuesday, May 7, 1912 – “Ellsworth painted the bathroom.” – Lydia Jane Hall

One of the upstairs chambers was the room my mother and father used after their marriage in 1943. The photo is in black and white, but I like to imagine the paper in soft pink and cream, so I added a little of my own color.

Janet Hall Crump and the bedroom wallpaper, 1943

The dining room was repapered at least three times between 1945 and 1968.

Aaron P. Hall, Ellsworth Hall, Ellen Hall Norton, Thanksgiving, around 1950

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

Dining room wallpaper in 1962

My grandfather, Ellsworth Hall, in addition to his duties as a farmer and a turkey carver, was also the family painter. It makes sense given his patient and methodical way of doing jobs. In another life he might have been an artist, painting pictures of rooms instead of the rooms themselves.

Wednesday, April 16, 1913 – “Ellsworth whitewashed the kitchen. Looks nice.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Monday, September 22, 1913 – “Ellsworth painted upstairs.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Tuesday, September 30, 1913 – “Mr. Goodspeed here papering the bedroom and preparing the other two rooms.” — Lydia Jane Hall

Here is the living room wallpaper in 1942.

Charlie Crump in the farmhouse living room, 1942

And here it is in 1949.

Living room in 1949 – Carol Crump, Great-grandpa Biggs, Tuck Norton, John Norton

I wonder how the wallpaper patterns were chosen. Did someone come to the house with a book of samples? Were they ordered from a store? However it was done, it must have been fun to have fresh walls every year or so.

Tuesday, June 9, 1914 – “A nice day. Two weeks ironing. All day work, with that the paperhanger called up. Coming tomorrow to paper the bathroom. The paper to be taken off which took until bedtime, and part of the next morning. Everything all stirred up.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Thursday, June 25, 1914 – “Ellsworth whitewashed the kitchen.” – Lydia Jane Hall

The parlor was always such a cozy room, and I love the paper on the walls in this photo of the Capable Cooks Club meeting in 1932. Later on it was replaced by a covering with wide stripes, which never seemed quite so pleasing.

Capable Cooks Club meeting, 1932 - Lydia Hall on far left, Janet Hall in center, Pauline Grace third from right

Capable Cooks Club meeting, 1932 – Lydia Hall to far left, Janet Hall in center, Pauline Grace third from right.

I wonder why paper instead of paint? Maybe it made the rooms seem warmer. Certainly it made them more colorful. Perhaps it was just the times. The downstairs bedroom, where my grandmother slept for as long as I knew her, was a lovely room with a door leading into the backyard and flowery paper on the walls. My brother told me that when the house burned in January 1971, my Grandma’s Hall’s bedroom remained intact- the wallpaper untouched by the flames. I have no photos of that bedroom, but here’s my grandmother standing near the door to her room around 1962. I wish the door had been left open so that I could have one last glimpse of the bedroom walls.

Grandma Hall standing in the living room near her bedroom door, around 1962

On Monday: A Few Old Books

Measles

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Measles and other infectious diseases of childhood have been much in the news recently. Modern day children are mostly free from the epidemics that sometimes threatened the lives of my ancestors. My own children had chicken pox, an illness my grandchildren won’t have to deal with.

Polio was rampant in the mid-1950s, and I remember my mother’s relief when she drove us to Dr. Salinger’s office in New Haven to get our first dose of the polio vaccine. Summertime was the most dangerous season during this epidemic. I wasn’t allowed to swim in the community pool, go to the zoo when we took the train through Chicago on our way to Montana, or be in any large gatherings of children. And to put the fear of God in me about these situations, my mother took me to a trailer on the outskirts of a local circus to I could see for myself a girl in an iron lung.

Pneumonia, diphtheria, typhus, scarlet fever, and measles threatened lives in the generations before mine. The loss of a child to these diseases was common, and no generation before mine was spared. Many of my great-grandmother’s journal entries report the sicknesses of her family and her neighbors. And in 1924 the measles came to visit the Hall farm.

Friday, April 11, 1924 – “This is a fine day. Francis not feeling well – is staying home from school. He has some fever – seems to be ailing. His mother is dosing him with calomel and physic. He thinks he may be having the measles coming on, as they are in the school.”

Thursday, April 17, 1924 – “Francis is broken out with the measles. Dr. is coming out to quarantine us. Suppose we have a siege of it now, for a month or two. Hope we will come out all right.”

Tuesday, April 22, 1924 – “Frances is well again of the measles. We are expecting Lydia and Janet next.”

Thursday, April 24, 1924 – “A nice day. The children are home from school. Lydia and Janet are coming down with measles.”

Tuesday, April 29, 1924 – Pleasant day. Lydia and Janet are still in bed with the measles. Gradually getting better.”

Saturday, May 3, 1924 – A nice day. The children are better. The measles are letting go. All dressed and downstairs but Lydia. She is downstairs but not dressed, lying on the lounge. Think she will be all right in a day or two. They have surely had the measles this time. They have troubled Lydia the most. The mother has taken good care of them. Feels tired from going up and down stairs.” -– Lydia Jane Hall

The mother – my grandmother Agnes Hall – certainly would have been tired after nearly a month nursing the sick children in their upstairs beds. Up she went carrying trays of food, glasses of milk and water, and bottles of nasty-tasting medicine. Back down she came with the empty trays, dirty linens, and full chamber pots. There were three sets of stairs in the house and she probably used them many times each day – not an easy task for a large woman with a bad hip. But she was a good nurse and a devoted mother, and in the end, as my great-grandmother hoped, it “came out all right.”

“Front Staircase,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache and colored pencil, 2015

On Wednesday: Wallpaper

Outbuildings #5 – The Woodshed

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The Woodshed

The woodshed in the backyard of the farmhouse adjoined the old barn. Both buildings were torn down sometime in the early 1950’s I have vague memories of them, the most vivid one involving my grandmother hanging clothes on the line strung from the house to the side of the barn.

“Washing,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache and colored pencil, 2014

My great-grandmother Lydia recorded the origins of this woodshed. I have no idea what they did before that for wood storage. Maybe it was put into the barn, or more likely just kept in a pile close at hand. They needed large stores of wood for the two stoves in the house. Before the arrival of the tractor in 1921, the cutting, splitting, and sawing of sufficient wood was a year round on-going chore. The tractor and the woodshed were great helps for my grandfather and his workers.

Saturday, December 17, 1921 – “Cloudy most of the day. Men busy getting large stones from the ravine to lay the foundation for a shed for the wood pile.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Monday, December 19, 1921 – “Nice day. Men busy placing the stones for the woodshed.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Thursday, December 29, 1921 – “Snowing this morning, cloudy most of the day. At night the wind blew very hard, grew cold, and before morning it was down below zero. Two men worked all day in the shed and didn’t finish. Walter went home. We have quite a large shed.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Saturday, January 5, 1924 – “Clouds and sunshiny. A light snow fell during the night. The wind came up at night and much colder at bedtime. Men busy getting wood ready to saw for the two stoves – with their many chores, keeps them busy.” – Lydia Jane Hall

“The Woodshed,” Carol Crump Bryner, pen and ink, 2015

On Monday: Measles

Outbuildings #4 – The Chicken Coop

On Whirlwind Hill

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

Tag Archives: Agnes Hall

Twelve Treats of Christmas – Day Four

Easter Cards for Agnes

Foraging

Letters

Outbuildings #6 – A House for an Auto

A Few Old Books

Wallpaper

Measles

Outbuildings #5 – The Woodshed

Outbuildings #4 – The Chicken Coop