Tag Archives: Lydia Jane Hall

Peaches

Whirlwind Hill was once crowded with trees whose lavish spring blossoms ripened into round, bright fruit in late summer. The orchards that were already starting to diminish in the 1950’s are completely gone from the hill now, replaced by fields of hay, acres of new houses with long driveways and tidy lawns, and a winery and vineyard.

“Orchards in Spring,” Carol Crump Bryner, ipad painting, 2013

For many years peaches brought work and cash to my ancestors. There were apple orchards on the farm for decades when, sometime after 1875, my great-grandfather, William Ellsworth Hall, introduced peaches. But by around 1920 my grandparents were concentrating on dairy cows and apples, and the peach trees were few.

In 1912 my great-grandmother still writes about selling peaches.

Wednesday, August 21, 1912 – “Another close day. Picking peaches. Sold twenty-four baskets for seventy cents a basket. Pretty good for the first.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Thursday, August 29, 1912 – “We have been very busy canning peaches besides our usual work. Canned eleven quarts. They look very nice.” – Lydia Jane Hall

By 1921, other farms on the hill had taken over the commercial selling of the crop.

Monday, August 29, 1921 – “A nice day, warmer. September days are coming. Apples and peaches are ripening fast. Large truck loads of peaches going past to the depot toward evening.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Saturday, September 10, 1921 – “Nice day and a busy one for all. Agnes has canned peaches pears & tomatoes. We have had all our peaches off the few trees that were left on the hill lot, which were very nice to eat and can.” – Lydia Jane Hall

For the past two years I’ve been slowly transcribing journals kept by my great-grandfather William. His journal entries tell me very little about him, and I’ve hesitated to try to sum up his life from sentences like this.

January 10, 1861 – “Went to New Haven with apples. Mother spent the evening at Widow L. Hall’s. Put up some cider in the evening.” – William E. Hall

January 11, 1861 – “Finish putting up cider.” Went to the mountain after wood in the afternoon.” – William E. Hall

But I learned more about him through a speech and poem he wrote to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the Wallingford Grange. Paper-clipped to the speech was a letter of sympathy to my family from the Grange written after William’s death in 1920. In this letter, the writers call my great-grandfather “The Father of the Wallingford Grange.” This photo of him as a young man was taken before he and thirty-one other people founded the town Grange in 1885.

William Ellsworth Hall, around 1875

Granges were organized to bring farmers together. It was through the Grange that Wallingford became home to so many fruit orchards. When I buy peaches at the farmers’ markets here in the Pacific Northwest, or buy beets and carrots at the markets in Alaska, I feel the same spirit that must have driven the early farmers of Wallingford to respect the land and to work together as a community to bring their produce to market. In his speech to the Grange, William said:

“Our hills are covered with fruit trees. Wallingford has come to be recognized as a center for great peach orchards. There is no fairer sight than the hills covered with blossoms, no more earnest sight than the industry of gathering and sending to market the product of our labor. For years much of this land had gone to waste. It has been recognized as pasture or at least, barren hill. But now there are everywhere vineyards and orchards. Our Grange has done more than its share toward bringing this about. Because from the first the organization has aimed to support conservation of all natural resources…Every possible precaution for preserving the soil should be taken, and the fact that no one has a right to become robber of the soil should be taught in the home, the school, the church, and the Grange. For in this and all other things we say, ‘The greatest good to the greatest number.’ ” – William Ellsworth Hall

“Blueberries and Peaches,” Carol Crump Bryner, watercolor and colored pencil, 1994

On Monday: The Porch

The Little House in the Glen

4 Replies

“Tools,” Carol Crump Bryner, watercolor, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Walking to the Gutter, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The Little House,” Carol Crump Bryner, 2013

On Wednesday: The Little House on the Hill

Janet

12 Replies

“Birthday Cake for Janet,” Carol Crump Bryner, watercolor and colored pencil, 2014

My mom, Janet Hall Crump, appears often in my blog posts. She was my most direct connection to the farm. The stories she told became part of my stories – as though I’d been right there with her when things happened. Her sentiments became my sentiments, and sometimes it seems she lives on in my head, speaking to me moment to moment – thinking out loud the way she always did.

The other day, while making lunch, I heard her say, “Never put tomato on a chicken salad sandwich.” The lovely heirloom tomato I was about to slice stayed whole – my chicken salad unadorned. She’s been gone for six years, but there are times I feel she’s not only always with me, but that I’m becoming her. When I look at my hands, I see her hands. My sideways glance in the mirror shows her face. Her words come out of my mouth when I speak to my children and my husband and my grandchildren. Her adages and advice (“break your ear before you eat it” – “he who hesitates is lost” – “you’ll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”) and mispronunciations (“clorestoral” – “bronical pneumonia” – “Manatuska Valley”) have become part of my family’s vocabulary. She was so full of life, always, and memories of her – both loveable and annoying – keep me company as I cut tomatoes, boil corn, do my shopping, and work on this blog.

Carol and Janet, near Palmer, Alaska, 1971

Yesterday would have been her ninety-sixth birthday. On the farm they celebrated birthdays with cake and ice cream and presents. They donned their best clothes and took time away from chores to mark special occasions – birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. On her last birthday, her eighty-ninth, when she was in a nursing home after a stroke, we gave her a party. She was paralyzed on one side and could barely speak. But she still had her cheerful smile and her sense of humor. My brother gave her a toy hippo dressed in a pink tutu. When the hippo danced across the table to “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” my mother laughed so hard tears ran down her face. She watched the hippo do its act several times, then turned to me and said, “Where’s my cake?”

In my very favorite photo of Janet, her face is hidden. She’s at a party, and she’s falling out of a little chair. It was typical for her to be in motion. Her personality was outgoing. She thrived on the chaos of farm and family life, and avoided quiet solitude. She didn’t hold anything back, and gave generously of her love, opinions, and judgments.

Janet Falling off a Chair, 1919

Another photo taken that same day shows her sitting in her white outfit – still just a baby, but already with her grown up face. She always looked like herself. She had powerful features and dynamic hair, and she took great pride in looking just right.

Janet in a white bonnet, sitting on the ground, 1919

One of her most frequent complaints about her childhood, which seemed otherwise idyllic, was that because she was the third child, no one had time to cut her hair properly or dress her in new clothes. But in entries from my great-grandmother’s journals it’s obvious Janet was loved and celebrated.

Friday, May 13, 1921 – “Nice day. Janet Hall went to the barbers with her mother and sister & brother – came home with her hair all nicely cut. Looking so sweet and peachy. Everyone admires her.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Her family threw a festive party for her on her third birthday.

Tuesday, August 9, 1921 – “Agnes & Hattie, Lydia, Francis & Janet went to Meriden to do some shopping. Janet has a birthday tomorrow. She is three years old. They are getting up a little party of cousins for her all near her age, the oldest seven, youngest three. Agnes is making birthday cake & cookies. She has returned from Meriden with her arms full of packages. Emily is making caps of red, pink & blue paper for each one.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Wednesday, August 10, 1921 – “A very nice time for everyone. All busy with getting apples outside and getting ready for the party indoors. Emily & Agnes setting the house in order, etc., which looks very homelike. The party came about half after three & stayed until after five. Such a happy crowd came marching in with their gifts for little Janet. She was so sweet in receiving them. Ellen with her two, Alice with two, Gertrude with her two, Agnes with her three. Mrs. J. D. McGuaghey with little David, & Hattie. It was a treat to see them around the table eating ice cream & cake. Nine cousins, ten in all. The party a success. Very pleasing to me.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Janet’s third birthday party – Janet in front on right, 1921

In the photo from the party, the cousins are dressed in white outfits, the standard in those days for party wear, maybe because ice cream stains could be bleached out. She does look, however, in need of a haircut. For the rest of her life she took great care with her appearance –she loved nice clothes and red lipstick and a proper hairdo. She posed over and over for my dad’s camera when they were courting, wearing stylish suits, dresses, coats, and shoes.

Janet near Muddy River, 1942

My brother, father, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and I were the happy recipients of her party-loving nature. We each had a special cake or pie for our own birthdays – my brother an orange cake for his June birthday, my grandfather a coconut cake for his December birthday, my uncle Aaron a blueberry pie. On my ninth birthday she gave me a party at the farm, and invited twenty-one girls, our entire Girl Scout troop. She wouldn’t let me pick and choose my favorite friends – I wasn’t allowed to leave anyone out. She organized games and party favors and food, as she did for all my birthdays. She always made me feel special.

Carol’s Farm Birthday Party

In 1938 she went to college in Boston to study art. She stayed only one year, but she was a good student and became an accomplished painter. As much as she loved school, however, her heart was at the farm. My grandmother wrote her weekly letters relating the news of Whirlwind Hill. In this note Agnes talks about her own birthday.

“Dear Janet, Just a line or two this morning to thank you for the dearest birthday card I have ever had. Did you get your piece of my birthday cake? I forgot and left it in the oven all night and it was a little dry in spots, but I took your piece out of the middle, or center, should I say.” Agnes Biggs Hall

The happiest occasion of her life may have been marrying my father. She always knew what she liked, and she liked my dad. My grandmother warned her that he was a “playboy,” and not to be trusted. But as my mother told me often, she was madly in love with her Charlie. They married during the war and wrote letters to each other daily. On Wednesday I’ll talk about my dad – the other half of the equation that made me.

Janet’s Wedding, February 6, 1943

I never knew until I had my own children about the fears that plagued my mother. She suffered panic attacks, and it was sometimes torture for her to drive long distances. But if she loved someone, she made a beeline through her anxiety, and got to where she needed to be. She drove me to New York, to Massachusetts, to New Hampshire. She flew to Alaska by herself to visit me seventeen times, and I never realized how hard those trips might have been for her.

Janet told me once that she wanted to be remembered the way she looked in this 1966 photo, taken on a bridge on the Wheaton College campus in Norton, Massachusetts during a visit to me. She looks so happy – so well dressed in her suit, gloves, and matching shoes and pocketbook. She had arranged her legs just the way she always told me to pose for the camera. “Bend one knee, Carol, so you cover up your other leg, because you have a ‘funny’ leg.”

If you’re listening Mom, I still try to hide that funny leg. And I still think of you every day. Happy, Happy Birthday. I miss you!

Janet, 1966

On Wednesday: Charlie

The Cottage

9 Replies

Taking a vacation was a rare event for my grandparents. The most they could afford in summer, when so much work needed to be done, was to go on outings for the day. And it seems, from reading journals and letters and post cards, that the favored outings took place near bodies of water.

My Aunt Ellen, (my grandfather Ellsworth’s older sister) lived on the farm until she married Henry Norton and moved into downtown Wallingford, Connecticut. Ellen and Henry, to escape the summer heat, took trips to the Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut coasts. In the early 1920’s they started going to what my great-grandmother Lydia refers to as “East River.”

Monday, June 6, 1921 – “Nice day. Men busy hoeing corn. Agnes went to town to the dentist…Ellen and family went to East River yesterday afternoon. Got home about eight. They expect to spend their vacation there soon.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Ellen and Henry must have rented a cottage in East River during the summer of 1921, and my grandmother Agnes took my mother and her brother and sister there for outings.

Thursday, June 30, 1921 – “Stormy some of the time…Agnes is all ready to go. Children are delighted. They have finally gone about half after eight. Went after Hattie and went town way. Hope they will get home safely…All reached home safely at six o’clock.” – Lydia Jane Hall.

In 1928 Ellen and Henry bought a cottage near Circle Beach in Madison, Connecticut, and we have all been delighted ever since. I began my visits to the shore when I was six or seven months old.

Janet and Carol Crump at the cottage, 1946

I took my own children there often.

Carol, Mara, and Paul Bryner in front of the cottage – Betty Norton on the porch

Unlike the farmhouse, with its half-remembered rooms, the cottage still sits on a grassy knoll above Long Island Sound. The rooms, with their spare, comfortable furnishings, have changed little over the years. My aunts and uncles, and now my cousins, have gently and lovingly cared for every inch of the house, so that the next generations can also be delighted. It’s a happy place, and a place I’ve tried to make a little bit my own by painting it over and over. On Wednesday I’ll talk about painting the cottage and show you a few of those paintings.

Margy Norton Campion and Austin Campion on the back porch of the cottage, 1984

On Wednesday: Painting the Cottage

August Window

7 Replies

Before air conditioning and before electric fans, people who lived in old houses with heat-trapping upstairs rooms relied on cool breezes and leafy shade to get them through hot summer days. My grandfather wore long underwear winter and summer. He coped with the dog days of August by moving slowly, keeping a cotton bandana around his neck, and wearing his summer underwear beneath denim overalls that had faded to the exact color of his blue eyes.

“August Window,” Carol Crump Bryner, monoprint

Sunday, August 9, 1914 – “A very warm day – sitting in the yard all day to get the breeze.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Thursday, August 4, 1921 – “This day much nicer, clear sunshine, floating clouds, much warmer and could enjoy sitting outside. Have been out most of the afternoon visiting with old friends…Ellen and children came out – spent the afternoon. It is her birthday (42 years). Men been picking apples. Brought in one load of hay.” – Lydia Jane Hall

On Monday: The Cottage

Berries

10 Replies

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

“Berries,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

Janet Hall (on right) with friend and berry pails

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

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

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

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

On Friday: August Window

Agnes

16 Replies

In 1888, my grandmother, Agnes Maud Biggs, came to America from England with her parents, Joseph Biggs and Maud Pawsey Biggs. She was six months old. A photo of her taken before they sailed shows an eager and well-dressed little baby perched on a fur rug.

Agnes Maud Biggs, six months old

The Biggs family settled in Glastonbury, Connecticut along with other Pawsey relatives. My great-grandfather got work in a woolen mill. On the back of a photograph of the mill building my grandmother wrote, “This is the factory where Joseph Biggs spent all his working days in America.”

Agnes was always a good student. In one of her report cards from 1900 she ranked first in her class. She went to nursing school in New Haven, Connecticut and graduated with honors. Her specialty was maternity, and I’m fairly certain she met my grandfather when she was nurse to one of his newborn nephews. When Ellsworth Hall and Agnes Biggs married in December 1913, she gave up her nursing career and her life in Glastonbury, and went to live at the farm on Whirlwind Hill.

Agnes Biggs, (right) in the maternity ward, New Haven Hospital, 1910

According to my great-grandmother’s journals, Agnes was up to the challenge of living in a large house with her in-laws. She entered into marriage, not only to my grandfather, but also to his aging parents, a large house, and a busy farm. During her courtship she was referred to in the journals as Miss Biggs. “Miss Biggs has gone back to her home in Glastonbury. We like her more and more each time she visits.”

Agnes and Ellsworth had three children by 1918. Nine years later, when she was forty years old, my grandmother gave birth to twin boys in the downstairs bedroom of the farmhouse. My mother, who was nine at the time, described the event like this. “I didn’t even know she was going to have a baby. And suddenly there were two little babies, and my mother hadn’t made a peep.”

Agnes with the twins, Luther and Aaron, 1927

How tired my grandmother must have been all the time. She rarely had a minute to herself. She was responsible for keeping the whole show together. She was the nurse, the mother, the grandmother, the daughter, the bookkeeper, the chauffeur, the cook, the veterinarian, the letter writer, the stockbroker, and the babysitter. And she was the go-to person in any emergency.

She treated sick cows, put gentian violet on their wounds, gave my uncle emergency shots when he got stung by bees, rocked new-born grandbabies, herded cows, and lifted my two year old brother up by his heels one day to dislodge a wayward cough drop from his throat. When something went wrong, we called Grandma Hall, and she answered on the big black telephone in the dining room. She embraced new technology, and would, I’m sure, have bought herself an ipad if they’d been invented during her lifetime.

That my grandmother was smart I have no doubt. She was the adult I went to for help with math homework. She called a zero a “cipher.” She kept the farm records, did the driving, and the planning of the meals and activities for her children. When she became a grandmother she often took care of as many as seven grandchildren at one time.

It’s nearly impossible to describe my grandmother Agnes in a few paragraphs. Families are often strengthened by the addition of outsiders, and my grandmother brought new life to the two-hundred-year-old farm. Along with her dark brown eyes, her magnificent hair, and her sturdy body, she brought a desire to educate her children and grandchildren and send them out into the world. My grandmother and I were close. I loved her with a fierce attachment, and I miss her every day.

Agnes Maud Biggs Hall

On Wednesday: The Creamery

July Window

6 Replies

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

“July Window,” Carol Crump Bryner, monoprint

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

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

On Friday: Independence Day

Three Notches

20 Replies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Monday: Cornelia and the Sea

Speckled Beauties

7 Replies

In spring and summer, when my grandfather needed a break from the cows, he went fishing. His mother, Lydia Jane Hall, recorded some of his outings in her journals.

Saturday, May 24, 1913 – “Cloudy and Rainy. Ellsworth, John, and Edgar gone to Paug Pond fishing. Had extremely good luck – caught several large pickerel, the largest weighing over three pounds – enough fish for a dinner for three families. Never brought home so many before.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Wednesday, June 24, 1914 – “Damp foggy morning, very warm until toward evening, then a little cooler…Ellsworth and Agnes spending the day at Paug Pond fishing with John and Mabel. Came home with sunburned faces and few fishes.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Sunday, May 24, 1921 – “A fine day. Ellsworth went early this morning with John Leavenworth to spend the day in the fields by the trout stream…I have been sitting on the walk enjoying the works of nature. Henry, Ellen, Mother Norton, Norton Van Dyne, Jane, and John came to see us. Ellsworth and John home safely with the speckled beauties.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Ellsworth passed his love of fishing to his children. My mother loved to fish, and she was good at it. Her brother, my uncle Francis, must have loved it too.

Monday, May 5, 1924 – Francis has a new fish pole and has caught one fish – thinks he is smart.” Lydia Jane Hall

When my brother and I were young, we dug night-crawlers for bait and sat on the bank of the cow pond or at the edge of the reservoir to watch our red and white bobbers and wait for a bite. I remember hoping I would catch a speckled beauty and not a spiky bullhead. But the speckled beauty I remember best is the one kept in the cow trough near the bullpen.

The bull lived in a stall on the lower level of the barn. His presence dominated the space. I knew bulls were dangerous, and I had been warned to be careful, but I visited him anyway. I liked to look through the slats of the pen and watch the big ring in his nose shake as he snorted and stomped. Then I’d go back outside to visit the fish. Someone – maybe my grandfather or my uncle – kept a trout in the cold spring-fed water of the cow trough. I don’t know why the fish was there, and I’m sure it wasn’t always the same fish, but after the excitement of the bull, it calmed me to put my hand in the cold water and try to touch the fish as it swam around and around in its watery exile.

“Trout in the Cow Trough.” Carol Crump Bryner, ipad painting, 2013

On Monday: The Front Door

On Whirlwind Hill

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