Tag Archives: Hall farm

Aunt Hattie

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

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

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

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

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

Hattie Hall at an outing, left front, about 1886

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

Hattie Hall (in middle) with friends, around 1890

Hattie in a new hat, around 1892

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

Hattie and William Cannon, 1894

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

William Cannon, around 1897

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

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

Aunt Hattie and Carol, Christmas, 1946

On Wednesday: Aunt Ellen

Siberia

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

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

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

Janet, Lydia, and Francis Hall, 1922

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

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

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

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

On Wednesday: Cigars

Outbuildings #2 – The Pig Pen

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

The Pig Pen

“Pig Pen,” Carol Crump Bryner, pen and ink, 2013

My father took a movie of me when I was about three years old. Dressed in a red coat with a hood and red leggings, I fed the pigs bread crusts, carefully taking each piece out of a basket and sticking it through the slats of the pig pen.

Kept far from the house, this pen moved several times while I was young. The pigs smelled funky, and their dirt “floor” became a muddy mess after months of occupancy. The pigs were born, were fed until they were nice and fat, and then butchered in the open shed behind the house. My mother, when she was a little girl, hid in her room with a pillow over her head when the pigs were brought from the pen to the shed.

My grandparents gave up raising pigs when I was young, and took the pig pen down. But on that same property my uncle Aaron built a house for his new wife Barbara. His daughter Patti told me that after all those years of pig habitation, the soil was rich and dark and perfect for gardening.

On Monday: Walking Down the Lane

The Tree

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“Tree,” Carol Crump Bryner, woodcut

In October 2001, I traveled east to visit my parents. The trip I’d always taken for granted had, after 9/11, come to seem like a miracle. I got on the plane in Anchorage, and eventually got off in Hartford, but it wasn’t until we reached the reservoir and I could see the lights on Whirlwind Hill that I felt the enormous joy and relief of being back home.

After that visit I sent an article to a feature at the Meriden Record. The piece was printed in January 2002, and I’ll reprint it here. The newspaper titled it “And the Tree Lives On.”

“In early October, I made the long trip from my home in Anchorage, Alaska to my parents’ house in Wallingford, Connecticut. Although I haven’t lived in East Wallingford since 1967, I still feel most truly and securely at home there.

The farmland, which has been in our family since before the Revolutionary War, has stayed open and undeveloped. I feel lucky to be able to visit such a timeless treasure and grateful to my relatives for keeping it that way year after year. Each time I come home I walk down the lane and up the hill to sit under my favorite tree. It’s silent there and beautiful, and I’m cheered to see the tree still standing in glorious isolation.

On one of my visits, my aunt told me that when my uncle was a young boy helping his father on the farm, he asked to have a tree planted here. During the long days of summer work he wanted to have a shady spot to put the water jug. Since then the fields have been almost continuously farmed. It must be a nuisance to mow, plant, and harvest around the tree, especially now that water jugs stay cool on their own. The fact that the tree has endured comforted me as I sat under it on October 8, trying to find balance in increasingly unsettling times.

As an artist, I collect images that connect me to the people and places I love. This year when I visited, the tree was still dressed in fall leaves, but in a few months it will look like this photo I took in March, 1972 – an example of the stark, powerful New England landscape I miss when I’m living so far way from home.” – Carol Crump Bryner, October 2001

The Tree, 1972

On Monday: Time

The Parlor

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Gone are the days when guests were greeted at the front door and led into the parlor. “ ‘Will you walk into my parlor?’ said the spider to the fly.” The old poem illustrates the formality of a place where visitors were, in a way, held captive. Because the parlor was where first impressions were made, furniture had to be of good quality. Family portraits and sconces of light adorned the papered walls. Company sat in upright chairs and paid visits. The parlor was a buffer between the outside and inside life of the house.

My ancestors had their picture taken in a parlor that is probably not the parlor at the farm. They appear to be at a wedding. You can see the bride reflected in the mirror. It may have been my grandmother Agnes and grandfather Ellsworth’s wedding or maybe the wedding of Alice Hall to Harry Dickerman. The seated family members wear their best clothes. They look uncomfortable. But I’ve always loved the ghostly look of this parlor photo.

From left: Unidentified relative, William E. Hall, Lydia Jane Hall, Lydia Reed Davidson Hart, Edgar Hall

The farm parlor I remember was a nearly square room with three windows and three doors. It faced south, and provided warmth, light, and sunshine. Cherished paintings and portraits hung on the wallpaper. It was sparsely furnished. A piano took up most of the west wall, and my grandmother’s planters most of the south wall. In one corner an antique marble-topped table held a basket of old photographs. My grandmother often sent me home from my visits with a photo or two from that basket. I’ve used many of them here in my blog posts.

In my mother’s day the parlor had taken on the role of a multi-purpose room. The family gathered around the piano after Thanksgiving dinner to sing songs accompanied on piano by my Aunt Hattie. Toys sometimes littered the floor. Because it was the warmest room in the house, (shutting all three doors kept in the heat from the cast iron radiator and the warmth of the sun shining through the windows) my great-grandmother sat in the parlor and watched her grandchildren play as chilling drafts of air cooled other rooms.

In 1930, when my mother was twelve, her three-year-old brother Luther died of pneumonia, and his little body lay in a coffin in the parlor during the days of mourning. Friends and family and neighbors came in and out through the front door to say goodbye to the child.

But as life went on and the days grew brighter for my grandparents and mother and aunts and uncles, the room again became a warm and cheerful place. The parlor hosted card games and club meetings. In 1932 the local newspaper ran this photograph of my mother and other members of the “Capable Cooks 4-H Club” doing a demonstration called “Many Ways with Carrots.” I wish I’d been there in the parlor to see that lesson. I would like to have known exactly how many ways there are with carrots.

“Many Ways with Carrots,” cooking demonstration, Janet Hall standing on right, 1932

My mother, standing on the right, looks tidy and professional. Because I was a 4-H member myself, I know that 4-H cooking demonstrations have to be detailed and exact. My mother cooked that way for the rest of her life. She measured her ingredients closely, cut her cucumber slices to a paper thinness, soaked cut onions in ice water, and greased and flowered her baking pans so thoroughly that not a single crumb would be left behind after the cake was turned out onto the plate. She learned her lessons well, and was always a “capable cook.”

In my dining room in Alaska, I have a Christmas cactus grown from a cutting of my grandmother’s original plant. In this photo my mother stands in front of one of the parlor windows. Through the window you can see the plants my grandmother Agnes grew – geraniums, Christmas cactus, amaryllis, and begonias – and also, reflected in the glass, the silhouette of the barn across the street with its rooftop cupola.

Janet and the parlor window, 1942

On Wednesday: The Tree

October Window

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The voices of my ancestors keep me company while I write these posts. Some days this process of living in the past makes me sad, and I feel all too mortal. But the cyclical nature of dying and birth, summer and winter, war and peace, loss and recovery, helps me understand these people who paved my way, and gives me clues about how to live my own life.

The strongest voice I hear is my great-grandmother’s. Lydia Jane Hall left me a cherished legacy – her words. She always said just enough. This October entry is her last. She died in 1926. But the joy of these cycles is that next month I can go back to an earlier year when she still had many more words to share.

“October Window,” Carol Crump Bryner, monoprint

Saturday, October 11, 1924 – “Nice cool morning. The foliage is changing. The winds are blowing, the bright colors are coming. Nature is putting on her bight robes. Beautiful but sad, when the change comes, we are passing on. ‘Time waits for no one.’ ” – Lydia Jane Hall

See also: April, May, June, July, August, September windows

On Monday: The Parlor

Barns – Part I

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“Hall Barn around 1950,” Carol Crump Bryner, pen and ink, 2013

My grandparents’ barn wasn’t really my territory. It was dark inside and filled with cobwebs. The cows, in their stanchions twice a day at milking time, were formidable creatures. They ate hay at one end and made smelly messes at the other while the milking machines attached to their swollen udders vibrated and pumped.

Cows being milked

It was here that my sweet grandfather and my gruff uncle spent much of their time. When I walked into the barn, Uncle Francis teased me. “Why aren’t you in school? Don’t you have anything to do?” He believed in hard work and demanded it from those around him, so, without a job to do I often felt out of place in the barn. I wanted to be like Fern in “Charlotte’s Web” – a girl who understood animals and loved being with pigs and spiders and rats – but I was a reader and preferred to sit in the farmhouse and read about barn life.

And there was so much life in my grandparents’ barn. Downstairs, below the haymow, the cows filled the air with their steamy breath. Cats and kittens surrounded pie tins of warm milk. The bull demanded attention. And spiders – none of them “Charlotte” – inhabited every nook and cranny. Upstairs, swallows and bats swooped through the rafters, and horses stood to be brushed in their stalls. The farmers dropped hay down to the cows through a big hole in the floor – a dangerous spot for children – but when we were allowed to, we played in the haymow, and on Easter Sunday our grandfather hid painted eggs in and around the dusty bales and stacks.

“Haymow,” Carol Crump Bryner, watercolor, 2014

Unlike the house, the barn now seems totally gone. I can still see the house foundation, the well stone, the sidewalk, and the cellar door of the house, but there’s no trace of the barn on the Whirlwind Hill property. Any hole or stone it might have left behind is covered with dirt and grass. I have to guess at where it used to stand.

But, in truth, it isn’t totally gone, because in 1975 a young woodworker named George Senercia read a book that changed the course of his life and the fate of the Hall barn. The book was “Diary of an Early American Boy” by Eric Sloane, a New England artist who wrote and illustrated books about early American barns and tools. This book started George on a lifelong quest to learn and use and teach the process of building and restoring barns the way it was done in 18^th and 19^th century New England.

George Senercia (center) working on a timber

On Easter Sunday, 1977, while driving down Whirlwind Hill, George noticed the Hall barn, which by then was starting to deteriorate. My uncle stopped farming in the early 1970’s, and the barn was abandoned. George knocked on Francis’ door and offered to take the barn down and haul it away for free. When they came to an agreement, George dismantled, restored, and rebuilt the barn as his workshop in the nearby town of Northford, Connecticut.

In the course of the painstaking work of taking apart the barn, George found a beam into which my great-great-great grandfather Aaron Hall had carved his name and the date 1818. George became so interested in the history of the Hall family that he probably knows more about my relatives than I do.

So in 2008, when my parent’s barn was aging, my brother asked George if he would restore it. He agreed, and in August 2008, he began to take apart our barn. It took two years before the Crump barn was ready to be raised again. On Wednesday I’ll tell you about it.

“Crump Barn, around 1990,” Carol Crump Bryner, pen and ink, 2014

On Wednesday: Barns – Part II

Money and Apples

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I always liked the idea that earning money on the farm was a last resort – that a farm should be able to sustain itself without cash. But after reading my great-grandfather William E. Hall’s journals, I can see he thought often about making, having, and spending money.

He filled the back pages of his diaries with columns of figures and notes about what he spent and what he earned. The last page of his 1861 journal looks like a daydream about dollars.

Page from journal of William E. Hall, 1861

His notes record that he sold a load of wood for $10 and spent $10 on his new teeth. His 1864 diary cost 25 cents, a postage stamp 6 cents, and a telegraph 30 cents. The sale of a cow earned $12.50 and a load of hay $28.75. There was the purchase of the mysterious “dog candy” for 45 cents. Some cotton cloth cost $16.20, and a new buggy relieved him of a whopping $45.00.

The record of farm goods and produce he sold for cash includes cows, oxen, hogs, horses, hay, buckwheat, wood, milk, butter, eggs, hard cider (my great-grandfather also had a still), peaches, and apples. The list of purchased items is much, much longer.

“Modern Apple,” Carol Crump Bryner, ipad painting

For years apples were a major source of revenue because, unlike peaches, they could be stored in a root cellar and sold throughout the winter.

Monday, October 5, 1914 – “Men busy picking apples, selling them. The trees are many of them loaded. Not very large, but seem to be good and sound.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Wednesday, October 7, 1914 – “Ellsworth sold his apples for 35 cents a bushel, to be carried off by the seventh of December.” – Lydia Jane Hall

My great-grandfather William’s 1873 diary includes names of apples he may have grown or thought about growing. (There are about thirty varieties on his list, but I’ve had to leave out some and guess at others because his writing is hard to decipher.)

Pown Sweets
Peck’s Pleasants
Stripe Pippins
Gilliflower
Maiden Blush
Wine Apple
New Town Pippin
Bell Flower
Roxbury Russets
Fair Maine
English Sweets
Hall’s Seedlings
James Linds
Citron Apples
Lord Thorntons
Baxter Greenings
Rome Apple
Black Pearmain
Fall Pippins
Roderick Greening
Red Stripe
Balmunds
Ruck Apples

I have no idea what kind of apples my mother is eating in this photo, or whether they were grown on the farm. In 1943 when my dad took this portrait of my mom in the fields below the farmhouse, there were probably still apple trees around, but I have a feeling the apples in the photo came from Young’s Apple Orchard, which was at the top of Whirlwind Hill. The orchard was still in business when I started living in Alaska in 1969, and I remember going there to buy apples one fall when I was visiting my parents. Mr. Young packed them up for me and shipped them all the way to the 49^th State. What would my great-grandfather have thought of that!

Janet Hall Crump, 1943

On Monday: The Room with Nine Doors

Washday

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“Clothespin,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache, 2014

My great-grandmother washed clothes every Monday, and she almost always wrote about it in her journal.

Monday, May 6, 1912 – “Another stormy Monday. Clothes washed and on the line. Pa sitting by the fire.” – Lydia Jane Hall

On Tuesdays she ironed.

Tuesday, May 7, 1912 – “Partly cleared. Clothes drying between the showers so they can be ironed.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Winter complicated the process.

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.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Spring and summer brought better days.

Monday, April 1, 1912 – “Nice day. The best yet for washing. Clothes look nice. The birds are singing. Some are building their nests.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Monday, August 11, 1913 – “Nice cool day. Washing done at eleven o’clock – looks very nice and white.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Fall started the weather-related difficulties again.

Monday, October 13, 1913 – “Cooler – look for a frost tonight. Cloudy at night. Clothes dry in the house.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Monday, December 1, 1913 – “Dark dreary day – clothes still hanging on the line – not dry at bed-time. Hope it will be pleasant tomorrow.” – Lydia Jane Hall

I hardly think about doing the laundry. When clothes and linens have made a big enough pile I dump them in the washing machine and push the button. When we first came to Alaska in 1969 I had to go to a commercial laundromat once a week, and I thought that was a hardship.

But in 1912 providing clean laundry for the family must have been incredibly time-consuming. I heard somewhere that washing was done on Mondays because that was the day burning was prohibited. Clothes could be hung on the line without getting covered with black soot.

With a big family and no helpful machines, my great-grandmother and grandmother often needed help for their Monday and Tuesday routines.

Monday, June 8, 1914 – “Agnes done the washing. Two weeks washing. Mary [the help] failed to come, she had a lame back and the clothes were put a soak yesterday so had to wash them. They look very nice.” – Lydia Jane Hall

The clothesline on the farm ran from the back door to the woodshed barn in the back yard. The person hanging the wash stood on the stone steps, took clothespins from the bag hanging at the end of the line, hung the wash piece by piece, and pulled the line using a pulley so that the clothes were suspended out over the back yard.

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

By the late 1940’s, when I was a child, my grandmother had a “washing machine.” On Mondays she wheeled it from the back pantry, hooked the hose up to the kitchen sink faucet, filled the tub with clothes and soap and water, and turned it on. It wiggled and jiggled and made all kinds of noises while it agitated. This is what I begged to stay at home from school to watch. After she emptied the tub, my grandmother put the clothes through the wringer attached to the top of the tub, then hung them on the clothesline in the back yard where they billowed and flapped in the fickle Whirlwind Hill breezes.

I especially loved to watch my grandmother put the sheets and towels and clothes through the ironing mangle. This big heated and padded roller ironed linens in much less time than a regular iron. And my grandmother could sit down while using it.

As far as I know, there never was a clothes dryer on the farm. My grandmother continued to put the clothes out on the line or on a drying rack in the kitchen until she died. I think my town grandmother did the same thing. My own parents had no dryer until I was out of college. My mother hung the clothes on a circular clothesline in the back yard year round. Even when my family and I went back east during the summers to visit, and there was a dryer in a closet on the back porch, we hung our t-shirts and socks out in the sunshine. The smell of clothes dried outdoors is irresistible, and the line-dried towels had a roughness and absorbability that’s hard to find these days. Fluffy towels are one of my least favorite inventions. And don’t even get me started about “dryer sheets.”

“Clothesline,” Carol Crump Bryner, pen and ink, 1986

On Wednesday: Money and Apples

The Muddy River Schoolhouse

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At the foot of Whirlwind Hill, where the MacKenzie reservoir now beckons ducks, geese, swans, turtles, and hopeful fishermen and women, there was once a school. In 1810 the Muddy River Schoolhouse was built in the Wallingford, Connecticut School District No. 8, and the one-room building sat on this same spot until 1932 when plans were made to dig the new reservoir.

MacKenzie Reservoir, spring, 2014

For a hundred and twenty-two years this one-room school saw Wallingford schoolchildren come and go. As many as thirty students at a time from kindergarten to sixth grade spent their days in the company of one hard-working teacher, learning to read and write and cope with all the hardships and joys of wooden desks, chalkboards, and a single stove to provide heat in the winter. For at least a year my mother was one of those students. In a 1923 photo of the school, teacher, and students, she’s the sixth child from the left, her dark hair framed by the school doorway.

Muddy River Schoolhouse with teacher and students around 1923, Janet Hall sixth child from the left

I don’t know for sure how many of my ancestors started their educations there, but in 1861 or 1862 my great-grandmother Lydia Jane Hart came over the Totoket Mountains from Durham, Connecticut to be the teacher. Because the Hall farmland was on the uphill slope above Muddy River, I imagine my great-grandparents meeting for the first time somewhere on Whirlwind Hill. William and Lydia married in 1863, ending Lydia’s career as a teacher but beginning another generation of Muddy River schoolchildren.

In a 1998 Meriden Record article about the school, my mother, Janet Hall Crump, says, “I was pretty young, but I remember the fun things like Christmas time when we would decorate and all the parents would come,” she said. “I’m so glad I had that one year. It’s a rather interesting experience when you’re in a one-room schoolhouse. I am so glad I had that experience.”

But the year at the school that my mother remembers was a short-lived one. In January 1924 my great-grandmother Lydia recorded news of Janet and school.

Friday, January 4, 1924 – “A nice bright morning. Snow gone – no more sliding until more snow and ice come. Agnes has taken the children to school. Janet is at home. She has taken a notion she doesn’t want to go any more. Her mother is going to let her stay home until Spring.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Monday, January 14, 1924 – “Nice bright morning. Quite spring-like, tho we do not hear the birds. Children at school. Janet at home, cutting paper, etc. singing by herself.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Thursday, March 6, 1924 – “A very nice morning. Agnes taking the children to school. Janet outside with her daddy whom she likes to talk with, in the house playing with her dolls, coming with books for Grandma to read to her.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Wednesday, March 19, 1924 – “Nice day – warmer, more like spring. The children have been to school. Agnes has gone to bring them home. Janet is at home this winter. Goes to school next fall. She is as quick to learn as the others. She likes her daddy and likes to be out of doors with him.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Janet Hall with doll, around 1924

It must have been hard for my grandmother Agnes, who made such effort to get her children to school, dance lessons, music lessons, etc., to just let my mom stay at home for this half year. But it was such an important time for Janet. She never forgot the joy of being the “only child” for a few hours each day, of having her daddy all to herself, and of being a part of the daily farm routine. Later on, as a mother herself, she occasionally let my brother and me stay home from school when important things happened on the farm. My brother remembers being allowed to take “sick” days when heavy equipment was working nearby so he could watch the machines in action. And I often begged to stay home so I could go to the farm kitchen to watch my grandmother do the washing.

My mother did go back to school, but not to this little building at the foot of the hill. In the fall she joined her brother and sister at the school in town. She was a good student, and she graduated from Lyman Hall High School. In this high school photo I can still see the little girl who liked to follow her daddy around the farm.

Janet Hall’s High School photo

In 1932, instead of tearing the school down to make way for the dredging of the reservoir, the town of Wallingford gave it to Oscar Williams, a farmer living on nearby Williams Road. Oscar hired Fred Audisio (who was paid in eggs since Oscar Williams raised chickens) to put a chain on the building and drag it up Williams Road to his farm where it sat mostly intact until 1998. It was then donated to the Wallingford Historic Preservation Trust and disassembled for storage. It was supposed to be moved and reassembled on another site, but as far as I know, that has never happened. The Muddy River Schoolhouse may still be in pieces in a barn on Williams Road. It’s another mystery for me to solve, and if I find out anything, I’ll let you know.

The earliest depiction I’ve seen of the schoolhouse is a watercolor by Mary E. Hart (or possibly a copy of her painting made by Melissa Hall) that hangs in my parents’ dining room on Whirlwind Hill. Until a few months ago I thought this was a painting of the Hart Homestead in Durham, but my brother told me its subject is the Muddy River Schoolhouse. I was amazed that I’d looked at this picture for so long without really knowing what it was. For me this discovery was like having a ghost step out of the past and say “howdy!” In the painting, done around 1860 or 1870, the school still has white clapboards. Next to the schoolhouse is the bridge over the river at the bottom of Whirlwind Hill. In the background, on the far side of Muddy River, the painter has brushed in the lush spring blooms of the Hall orchards.

“Muddy River Schoolhouse,” Mary E. Hart, watercolor

On Wednesday: Painters in our Family

On Whirlwind Hill

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

Tag Archives: Hall farm

Aunt Hattie

Siberia

Outbuildings #2 – The Pig Pen

The Tree

The Parlor

October Window

Barns – Part I

Money and Apples

Washday

The Muddy River Schoolhouse