Tag Archives: Hall farm

Have you Counted Your Handkerchiefs Lately?

Have you ever thought about counting all the small (and medium and large) things you own? How many pillowcases do you have? Dishtowels? Spoons? Buttons? Cowbells? Nightcaps? Dung forks? And do you think your heirs will count them when you’re gone? Probably not.

“Dung Fork,” Carol Crump Bryner, colored pencil, 2015

But in 1839 when my great-great-great-grandfather Aaron Hall Esq. died, exact inventories were important parts of an estate settlement. Aaron had nine children and one wife, and he was very clear about passing specific property on to them. To read about the belongings he left behind is to gain a more vivid picture of the day-to-day lives of my ancestors.

Last fall, when I was in Wallingford, I went to Probate Court in the Town Hall to find Aaron’s will. I’d put off my search until a day when I had several free hours, thinking it would take a long time. But the efficient woman behind the counter needed only the name of my great-great-great-grandfather and the year of his death. It took her less than ten minutes to find and bring me a large portfolio containing this treasure, and later that afternoon I came back to pick up my copies of the nineteen legal-sized pages of beautiful handwriting and juicy information.

Detail of Will of Aaron Hall, Esq.

These are formidable documents. I’ve read the pages over and over, and still don’t quite understand what much of it means. The inventory is pretty straightforward, but the distribution of property, which I’ll talk about on Wednesday, is complicated and often pretty amusing.

The six-page list of Aaron’s real and personal property includes “wearing apparel,” “farming utensils,” “household furniture,” and “real estate.” My great-great-grandfather Salmon Hall and his brother Billious Kirtland Hall, the will’s executors, counted, recorded, and assigned a value to every item of clothing, cutlery, farm equipment, livestock, hay, money, etc. on the property. This section of a page includes an inventory of the bed sheets (I count 58 total) valued from 25¢ to $1.00.

Detail of Inventory of Aaron Hall, Esq.

Here are a few items from the executors’ list:

1 Loose Gown – 30¢
1 Pair Pantaloons – 20¢
1 Cow Bell – 6¢
1 Spit Box – 8¢
½ of 1 Dung Fork – 17¢, 1 Old Dung Fork – 4¢,
1 Calico Comfortable – 37¢
½ of 1 Cow – $14.00
7 Tons of Hay – $67.65
1 Porridge Pot – 34¢
10 Fowls – $2.37 ½
Pair Great Steelyards – $1.50
1 Sausage Filler – 8¢
4 Night Caps – 12¢
Chaise and Harness – $10.00
1 Beer Pot – 17¢
90 Lbs Cheese – $7.20

Some of Aaron’s inventory may still exist today.

This could be one of the linen pillowcases. It’s hand-hemmed and hand-embroidered with the letter “h.”

Linen Pillowcase

My mother was very fond of the old pewter, and I’m sure this duo was part of what the inventory describes as: “Lot of Old Pewter – $3.27.” It used to sit on the dining room mantel at the farm, and is now in the living room of our house on Whirlwind Hill.

Pewter platter and pitcher

And the foot warmer I talked about in my post about electricity might be the one recorded as: “1 Foot Stove – 50¢.”

Foot Stove

Cash on hand amounted to $56.43, and the sum total of all the personal property was $1400.26.

I try to picture how Salmon and Billious accomplished this task. Did they walk around carrying paper, ink, and quill pen to make their list? Did someone bring the items to them one by one? How did they decide on the value? Why was one pillowcase worth 17¢ when another was valued at only 12¢?

I’m trying hard these days to lighten my own load of unused and unnecessary detritus. But Aaron’s goal was probably to leave as much behind as possible. I’m certainly glad he left this list.

And just for the record – – he left 7 handkerchiefs.

On Wednesday: House Divided

Getting in the Ice

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“Ice,” Carol Crump Bryner, 2015

In June 1967 I moved to California for graduate school. Among the many things I learned about the west coast was that no one there called that thing in our kitchen an icebox. It was a refrigerator. In California-speak a pocketbook became a purse, dungarees became jeans, and sneakers became tennis shoes.

There’s a reason we called it an icebox. The one I remember was a big wooden box with a zinc lining, a heavy door, and a compartment for a block of ice. In this photo from our Thanksgiving supper in 1948, the icebox is right behind my head in the farmhouse kitchen.

The icebox, 1948

I remember ice blocks being carried into the kitchen hanging from large metal tongs and then squeezed into their icebox compartment. At that time my grandparents were, I assume, buying it commercially, but until at least sometime in the 1930’s my grandfather cut his own ice and stored it in the icehouse.

January was the month for getting in the ice. My grandfather waited until the pond ice was thick enough before spending the several days it took to harvest it.

Monday, January 8, 1912 – “Pleasant morning – washing done. Ellsworth preparing to get ice. Went up to Wilbur’s to get his ice plow. Towards evening commenced to snow.” – Lydia Jane Hall

The ice plow – probably pulled by a horse and guided by the farmer – cut grooves into the ice, first one direction and then another until the gridded ice could be sawed into blocks.

Wednesday, January 10, 1912 – “Clear and cold. Commenced getting ice, which is nice and thick. None so thick in a long time. Mr. Cella and son helping them get ice. Busy all day. Nice sliding on the hills.” – Lydia Jane Hall

The blocks were piled onto sleds and pulled back to the farm by horse teams.

Monday, January 19, 1914 – “A dark cloudy day. Looks much like a storm. Our washing not done. Men cutting ice. Got in three loads in afternoon. Ice twelve inches thick. Hard for the old blacks [the farm horses] to pull it up onto the road.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Ellsworth Hall with Little Doll and Old Doll, 1913

Wednesday, January 21, 1914 – “The men finished getting ice. The ice house is full of nice ice.” – Lydia Jane Hall

I wish I knew where the icehouse stood. It may have been the building next to the creamery. The ice would have been packed in sawdust to keep it frozen, and used all year.

Saturday, January 26, 1924 – “Much colder. Children at home going out and coming in with their cheeks like red roses. Agnes took Lydia to take her music lesson this morning. After dinner helped Edith clean kitchen and dining room and bake cookies. Men cleaning out the ice house getting ready for the ice, which they are expecting soon.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Lydia writes about two of the ponds used for ice cutting.

Tuesday, January 11, 1921 – “Ellsworth is cutting ice. Brought in six loads of ice from Mr. Leete’s pond. Mr. Leete and Charles Argonnis helping him.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Friday, February 8, 1924 – “The men are getting ice from our little pond down in the meadow. Mr. Ives is working with them. They are putting it in his icehouse. Ours is filled. They put it in – nine loads today.” – Lydia Jane Hall

One of the problems of the old-fashioned icebox was that the blocks of ice often had dirt and plant matter in them that made a mess as they melted. But the winter ice for me was all about skating and sledding, and I loved being able to peer down through the ice to see the frozen detritus. We skated on the little cow pond next to the lane until the late 1950’s when my Uncle Francis built a larger pond just up the hill from the smaller one. It was there that my cousins played hockey and I had a skating party where a friend fell and knocked out his front teeth. I’m sure my grandfather would have wanted some of that splendid ice for his icehouse, but these days I’m not sure if he would ever find ice that was twelve inches thick.

Skating on the big pond. The farm on the hill belonged at the time to the Farnam family

Skating on the big pond. The farm on the hill belonged at the time to the Farnham family.

On Monday: Have you Counted your Handkerchiefs lately?

The Woodstove

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It’s a frigid 8-degree day in Anchorage, Alaska, and the ice fog covering the trees and ground and garbage cans makes it feel even colder. There isn’t much color, and there’s no warmth.

How I’d love to step into the kitchen at the farm and sit in the rocker next to the woodstove. My grandfather Ellsworth often sat there rubbing his sore hands and soaking them in Epsom salts – he inherited his mother’s rheumatism, and he felt it in his hands, especially in cold weather. He sat in the rocker on the day before our annual Thanksgiving feasts chopping the onions and celery for stuffing. In the big wooden bowl he held on his lap, he diced the vegetables with a chopper that looked like an Ulu – the Yupik knife used to cut fish.

My grandfather was the one who lit the fire in the stove before dawn each day, warming his hands before he went to the barn. But it was my grandmother Agnes who kept the fire going and baked cookies and breads and roasts in its oven.

In 1934, when my Aunt Lydia demonstrated to the other “Capable Cooks 4-H Club” members how to make jelly, this big, black, cast iron stove was the only cook-stove in the kitchen.

4-H cooking demonstration in the Hall farmhouse kitchen. Lydia Hall at the stove, Janet Hall second from right, around 1934

When my mother and father and I lived at the farm, my highchair sat near the woodstove, and I stayed warm enough to eat lunch without my socks on. Sometime in the late 1940’s or early 1950’s my grandparents added an electric stove to the already crowded kitchen, and replaced the old wood-burner with a newer version.

Carol near the woodstove, winter 1947

I’m not sure if my memories of the stove are of the ornate black beauty, or of the more modern one that replaced it. Both of them had black cook-tops, and “burners” with concentric rings that could be lifted out by a special handle when wood needed to be added to the fire. How my grandmother regulated the heat I don’t know, but everyone swore that the pies and baked beans and Thanksgiving turkey made in the woodstove’s oven were far superior to the ones made in the “easier,” but much more boring electric one. The woodstove remained the heart of the kitchen. We gravitated toward it as soon as we came into the house. Summer or winter it brought comfort, welcome, and good cheer to the busy kitchen.

Patti Hall Burkett with her parents, Aaron Hall (in rocker), and Barbara Hall (with Patti) near the newer wood stove – -photo courtesy Patti Hall Burkett

On Monday: A Special Day

Electricity

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I try to imagine my life without electricity – without plugging into this and that. It would take some doing and many changes to take myself “off the grid.” Electric power and its many conveniences are thoroughly imbedded in my daily life. Sometimes, when I flick a switch and the magic current fails to make light, I panic. What if it never comes back, this thing that makes my days comfortable and the dark nights less frightening?

“On the Grid,” Carol Crump Bryner, pencil, 2015

My great-grandmother, Lydia Jane Hall, lived most of her life without even the knowledge of electricity. She had many of the comforts that I have today, but was probably more intimately involved with their creation.

Heat

This is a foot warmer. Place warm stones or maybe coal in the metal basin, close door, put under feet in carriage, cover with lap robe. Enjoy a sleigh ride in the snow.

Foot warmer

Light

This lantern is made of cut scrap metal. Light the candle, close the door, carry to the barn at dusk, hang on a hook inside barn door. Milk cows.

Lantern

Communication

Use pen, paper, and a stamp. Write and send a letter to a friend or a relative. Get one back.

Envelope for my great-grandmother, 1920

Transportation

Feed the horse, harness the horse to the buggy. Go for a Sunday drive.

Lydia Jane Hall with horse and carriage, around 1870

In 1914 Lydia mentions electricity for the first time in her journals.

Wednesday, September 16, 1914 – “A very nice cool day. Men gathering peaches. I am here all alone. Agnes gone to the dentist. Hattie gone to spend the day with Grandma Hart. William [William Cannon, her grandson – son of Hattie Hall Cannon] gone to Northford to a place that used to be called “White Hollow” to wire a bungalow “for electricity,” something I never thought of that my grandson would do for that place. Hope he may do it for this place some time.” – Lydia Jane Hall

The front hall light switch in the farmhouse had a white button for on, and a black button for off. It operated the upstairs as well as the downstairs ceiling fixtures.

Front hall light switch

Whether or not William was the one to wire the farm for electricity, I don’t know, but by 1924, when Lydia wrote in her last journal, the farmhouse must have had some form of electric power. And yet my great-grandmother and my grandparents still relied on wood to stoke the furnace and run the kitchen stove, candles to light their way to bed, fresh air to dry the clothes, and words – always words – to record, entertain, and keep alive the most important of energies – human connections.

Journal page – Lydia Jane Hall

On Wednesday: The Wood Stove

January Window

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Garrison Keillor said in one of his “News From Lake Wobegon” segments – “January is hard on people.”

Even though the daylight hours begin to increase, the promise of spring seems far off. The mornings are cold, and the nights are colder. The ice and snow that makes winter such a joy for children can be trying for the elderly. My great-grandmother, Lydia Jane Hall, saw winter life on the farm from her seat by the window. She lamented the frigid temperatures that made her suffer, but also praised the beauty of a deep January winter.

“January WIndow,” Carol Crump Bryner, monoprint

Monday, January 29, 1912 – “Cold. Snowed all day. Washed. Put out clothes, but didn’t dry. Brought them in frozen stiff, and dried them in the house. Ellsworth cutting cornstalks.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Tuesday, January 25, 1921 – “Very cold this morn. The night was so cold and the wind blew fearfully – couldn’t sleep. My room so cold. Agnes took the horse and carriage. Took Lydia to the dancing school. Said she wasn’t cold coming home.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Tuesday, January 22, 1924 – “Very cold morning. Below zero. Children going to school. Men getting wood and working in the barnyard. Work going on indoors as usual. Very cold – making beds upstairs – hands ache with the cold. Cloudy in afternoon – wind rising which makes us think and hope there is no blizzard coming. Night here and we are tucked away in bed with the bright moonlight shining.” – Lydia Jane Hall

See also: April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December windows

On Monday: Electricity

Janet’s Christmas

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My mother wrote this essay in the early 1980’s in answer to a request by my son to tell him how she celebrated Christmas when she was a young girl.

“We would always cut one of our trees from our woods for Christmas. It was always a hemlock, and we would have to get it the day before Christmas because the needles would drop. I would usually go on a logging sled drawn by a horse – that was when I was around your age [probably eight years old]. Later, we would drive our old truck. Often we would just take the top off a tree – that would just fit in our living room. Then the night before, we would all decorate the tree with our old favorite ornaments. We often made colored chains to put around the tree – and sometimes popcorn. But my father liked his popcorn made into popcorn balls that we kept in the back of our wood stove.

My mother always made around 3 plum puddings and a large fruitcake with white boiled frosting. We would hang our biggest knee sock on the doorknobs near the tree – one year we hung them at the foot of our beds. Before we went to bed we would leave 2 oranges on the shelf with a note for Santa Claus.

Christmas morning we would get up around 5:30. That was the time life on the farm started – cows had to be milked and fed. We were always so excited Christmas Eve that we could hardly get to sleep. The 3 of us slept in one room on that evening. When we got around eleven, I slept with my sister, and my brother had his own room.

We usually got about 5 presents Christmas morning – one of them could be skis or a sled. But we were always happy no matter what we got. Christmas was so special on the farm. The windows in the kitchen were covered with beautiful snow flakes that Jack Frost made during the night, and the wood stove gave us a very magic heat, and on the wood stove a large tea kettle sang a little tune.

We would have our Christmas dinner at noon – always a roast beef and Yorkshire pudding with mashed potatoes and boiled onions, peas or corn. We would have company, but it always depended on the weather. Then in the afternoon we went sliding on our beautiful hills or ice skating on our favorite pond. We also might go down the hill to our neighbors to see their presents and play with them for a while.

Then late in the afternoon I would go out in the barn and help my father at milking time. Even if it were zero outdoors, it was always warm in the barn. Somehow 30 or 40 cows help make lots of heat.” – Janet Hall Crump, 1983

Wishing you all a warm and peaceful holiday!

“Winter Scene,” Janet Hall Crump, watercolor

On Monday: Ellsworth’s Birthday

Dolls and Poodle Skirts

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My parents and brother and I always spent Thanksgiving at the farm on Whirlwind Hill with my mother’s side of the family. But on Christmas and Easter we celebrated with my dad’s parents – H. A. (Gus) and Charlotte Crump.

After opening presents on Christmas morning and briefly visiting my grandparents at the farm, we drove into town to have a big mid-day dinner and spend the afternoon at the white house on Cedar Street. I dressed up in my best clothes and brought my new toys to show to my cousin Sue. Sue was a year older than I, and I have never known life without her. We’ve always been “best buds.” Aside from the time I accused her of harmonizing on “Taps” at our Girl Scout meeting (a long story), our friendship has been without strife.

Our parents – my mother Janet, and Sue’s mother Charlotte Collins (my dad’s sister) – must have coordinated the presents we got, because it seemed we almost always received the same dolls, clothes, and toys. Even at our very first Christmas together you can see how much I admired my older cousin.

Carol and Sue, Christmas, 1946

My aunt sewed many of her family’s clothes, and sometimes she made Sue and me our Christmas outfits. In this photo Sue and her doll wear matching dresses made by Charlotte.

Janet Crump, Charlotte Barton, Harold Crump, Charlotte Crump, Carol, Sue, Christmas, 1947

By the mid-1950’s Sue and I had little brothers, and Sue had a baby sister. And Charlotte was still sewing. For Christmas 1954 she made the poodle skirts we’re wearing in this photo taken with our great-grandmother, Charlotte Sophia Barton. (Yes, my great-grandmother, my grandmother, and my aunt were all named Charlotte, which was very confusing.) She probably made our neckwear also. I loved that skirt and the big scratchy crinoline that I wore with it. I think the skirt was made of felt.

Jeannie Collins, (in highchair), Carol Crump, Sue Collins, Charlotte Sophia Barton, Kirt Crump, Skip Collins

My Grandma Crump fixed the same meal for us on Christmas, Easter, and other holidays – ham and potatoes. It was always ham. She would not touch chicken after growing up next to a chicken farm, so she ate copious amounts of ham. My brother sometimes speculates that all that cured meat contributed to her long life. She died just two weeks short of her 108^th birthday.

Our favorite tradition on those Christmas afternoons was the “Christmas Pie.” I think it started out as the “Christmas Chimney” as you can see in this photo, but over the years it became a pie. Grandma Crump wrapped little presents from the hardware store or W. T. Grant’s (a five and dime store) and tied strings to them with our names at the end. The strings came up through a piece of paper covering the top of the chimney or pie, and we had to cut the paper to get them out. This was her version of a “grab bag,” and the presents in it were always our favorites. We looked forward to this ritual all day. Maybe it was the communal aspect of the opening, or the silliness of some of the gifts, but whatever it was, we loved it, and carried on the tradition at our own Christmas gatherings for years afterwards.

The Christmas Chimney

On Wednesday: Janet’s Christmas

Skating on the Cow Pond

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In late April, the spring at the south end of the cow pond turns green with new life. The skunk cabbage, adder’s tongues, and violets unfurl in their usual spots and last for a heartbreakingly short few weeks. When I walk down the lane past the pond, I hope to hear the call of the red-winged blackbird – a sound I so associate with this place that to hear it anywhere else feels wrong.

These days there are no cows stopping for a drink of water on their way to pasture. My brother keeps the pond’s banks clear of grass and cattails and the land free of the milkweed with its boat-shaped pods.

The cow pond in 1924

This one small spring on the Whirlwind Hill farm feeds a pond that served as a watering hole for the cows and a place of year-round entertainment for children. The August dragonflies hovered over the water as we sat watching and waiting for our red and white bobbers to get tugged below the surface by a fish. We were told we could catch frogs with red flannel attached to a piece of string, and we spent hours bent over the bank of the pond with our lures. I can’t remember catching either fish or frogs, but I still feel the warmth of the sun on my arms and the luxurious sense of time standing still on a long afternoon.

When the leaves turned color in the fall we walked with our great-grandfather Joseph Biggs down the lane past the cow pond looking for hickory nuts. We gathered them in our baskets and brought them into the farmhouse kitchen where they rested for several months behind the stove until dry enough to be cracked open and eaten.

And in winter we skated. As soon as the ice formed a thick enough layer, we put on our wool sweaters, thick socks, bulky snow pants, bulkier jackets, itchy hats, and never-warm-enough mittens and walked to the pond carrying our skates. We learned to skate when we were three or four years old on double-runner blades. Later the boys played hockey and knocked their teeth out. The girls made figure eights and skated backwards. We all played “crack the whip.” I skated until I had frozen toes. I skated until I had frozen fingers. And one day I skated until I had waited too long to take off my skates and walk back up the lane to the farmhouse bathroom. I didn’t care. Skating was joy.

Cousin Nancy and Carol skating on the cow pond, 1953

On Monday: Dolls and Poodle Skirts

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

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

On Whirlwind Hill

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

Tag Archives: Hall farm

Have you Counted Your Handkerchiefs Lately?

Getting in the Ice

The Woodstove

Electricity

January Window

Janet’s Christmas

Dolls and Poodle Skirts

Skating on the Cow Pond

Thanksgiving

Aunt Ellen