Tag Archives: Whirlwind Hill

Names

I’ve always liked the custom of passing down family names, even though my own mother named me after the Christmas songs being sung at the hospital when I was born.

The Hall family followed a rhythm of repetition when they named their children. The first three generations included four Johns, and one Jonathan, the Jonathan being a brother to one of the Johns. And there were three Marys, three Elizabeths, and two Sarahs.

In the fourth generation Asahel Hall and his wife Sarah Goldsmith gave birth to twelve children. Many of them “died young,” and in those days, because child mortality was so common, it was customary to name a surviving child after a brother or sister who had already died. So Asahel and Sarah bore two Aarons, three Asahels, and two Sarahs. The surviving Aaron (Aaron Hall, Esq), lived for seventy-two years, giving birth to his own sons Aaron and Asahel and his own daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. Here and there an odd name crops up. Asahel (itself a bit odd) and Sarah had a Mehitabel and Aaron an Electa.

My great-great-grandfather, Salmon Hall, had a younger brother Billious Kirtland Hall. He seems to have been named after a Dr. Billious Kirtland whose family plot is next to the Halls in the Wallingford Cemetery. I’m still trying to find out more about this family connection. The name Billious was never used again, as far as I know, but one of my mother’s favorite cousins as well as my brother shared the name Kirtland.

Salmon (pronounced Sal-mon) may have been a version of Solomon. Biblical names were popular. This photo, probably taken around 1860, may be my great-great-grandfather. My grandmother wrote on the back “Possibly Salmon Hall.” But recently my cousin Patti sent me photos of two portraits that used to hang in the farm living room. She refers to them as “The Eggheads,” and they may be Salmon and his wife Cornelia. It’s always nice to have a face to go along with a name, but for now I have one name and two faces that don’t appear to belong to the same person.

Possibly Salmon Hall

Also Possibly Salmon Hall

The last name of mysterious origin is Whirlwind Hill. I always thought it was named after the Wallingford Tornado of 1878, but in his book, “History of Wallingford, Connecticut,” Charles Davis says, “Whirlwind is that high land east of the late residence of Luther Hall, and west from Pistapaug Pond.”

Since Davis wrote his book in 1870, our hill couldn’t have been named after the 1878 whirlwind. I read somewhere that it had once been called “Wild Mare’s Hill,” but can’t seem to find that reference again. If anyone has any ideas or clues to the source of the name “Whirlwind Hill,” I’d love to hear about it. For now I’ll just let it conjure thoughts of wild winds, blowing trees, and houses flying over hill and dale.

At the top of Whirlwind Hill, May 2014

On Friday: May Window

Wildflowers

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Spring arrives slowly in Alaska. Piles of dirty snow sit on the north side of the house and in the shadowed patches on the south. Near our front porch the white mounds defy the sun, and hopes for an early spring are usually disappointed. This is when my thoughts turn to Whirlwind Hill and wildflowers.

“Front Door with Snow,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache and colored pencil, 2013

My mother, who grew up roaming the fields and hills around the farm, knew her wildflowers and birds. The repeated rhythms of her stories about gathering spring flowers on the mountain come back to me in a list of names – hepatica, spring beauty, adder’s tongues, Dutchman’s breeches, trillium, violets. When she was growing up, she and her brothers and sister picked these wildflowers for May Day baskets.

The old-fashioned ritual of hanging baskets of flowers on doors on May first, “May Day,” knocking, and then running away to hide, appeals to me, but it’s not something that’s going to happen in Alaska. Instead, I hang a blue metal basket of hopeful pussy willows near the front door to remind me that spring will arrive eventually.

While my mother was still alive I continued a tradition started by her older brother Francis. Every spring when the adder’s tongues (also called trout lilies or dogs-tooth violets) bloomed in their usual spot by the spring at the cow pond, Francis picked a bunch and brought them up the lane to the farmhouse for his mother, my Grandma Hall. When my mother could no longer walk to the pond I picked them for her. They’re such lovely and cheerful little flowers, but they do have a slight reptilian quality because of their spotted waxy leaves, tongue-like stamens, and curled back petals. They grow in colonies that, if undisturbed, can last for decades. I find them in the same spots, year after year. They come back, much like I do to Whirlwind Hill, because their roots are there.

“Adder’s Tongues,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache and colored pencil, 2013

From Lydia’s journal, May 5, 1924 – “Nice day. Agnes took Francis to school this morning – he took a large bunch of Adder Tongues he picked down in the meadow to Miss Martin. They are very nice, in full bloom. I think they will make her smile.”

On Monday: The Kitchen

Violets

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“Cold and cloudy, rained hard during the night. It is lighting up at noon. Think the storm has passed. Agnes has taken the three children [my mother Janet, her sister Lydia, and her brother Francis] in the auto to Sunday School. Quite a chore for her to get them washed, dressed & ready & home again. It needs perseverance – am glad she has got it. Should be glad to help her but have been miserable lately. The apple trees are out in full bloom. Daisies are budded, blue violets all out…” – Lydia Jane Hall, May 1, 1924

Violets may be starting to bloom in Wallingford now. To me they seem the most old-fashioned of flowers. Near the old barn site on my parents’ property the violets still grow in profusion, and I pick a bunch and put them in the middle of the kitchen table when I’m there.

My great-grandmother Lydia’s cousin, Mary E. Hart, painted watercolors and oils of scenery and flowers. (I’ll return to Mary Hart in more detail in the future.) The violets in this painting by her lie gracefully tied in a loose bouquet. Maybe they were a gift or maybe just an arranged still life. But they seem to me as fresh as they must have been all those years ago when she put her brush to the paper.

“Violets,” Mary E. Hart, watercolor, ca. 1860

On Monday: A Window on the Landing

Foundations

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Last spring we had a Hall family reunion. We came from all over the country to gather on a Saturday in May at the Crump barn on Whirlwind Hill.

On my first day back east before the event I took my favorite walk around the Whirlwind Hill block. The three mile circle starts at the end of our driveway, winds around the reservoir, passes the swampy and woodsy stretch of Scard Road, straightens out and turns to the right on Branford Road, then turns right again to navigate the roller coaster that is Whirlwind Hill. Names of former and present neighbors, some still on their farms or in their houses, come to mind as I pass by – Hale, Riotte. Keogh, Scard, Barnes, Bartholomew, Cella, Foster, Mahan, Kranyak, Pyskaty, Farnam, Parks, Williams, Hall, Ives, and Guidone. Near the end of the walk, on the last downhill stretch, I reach the site of the Hall farmhouse that burned in 1971. Since then, the remains of the house have been taken away, but the foundation endures – a dirt-floored, stone-lined hole invisible from the road because of the trees and weeds and bushes that grow where the house used to stand.

Farmhouse Foundation, May 2013

My feelings about this spot are bittersweet. I’m sad that the house is gone and that trees grow where the walls should be. But I’m happy that the foundation is still there for me to look at. Looking at it is not easy, however, because I’m afraid of ticks – the little ones that you can hardly see and that give you Lyme disease. I had to steel myself to make my way through the brushy growth to reach the edge of the cellar hole. I stayed only long enough to take a few photos and spent a long time afterward brushing imaginary bugs off my legs and arms and head.

For the reunion on May 4, I sketched a very rough family tree putting our great-grandparents William Ellsworth and Lydia Jane Hall at the top. My cousin Nancy and I made nametags that were color coded to indicate the Hall brothers and sisters who were grandparents to the cousins in my generation. At some point during the day people started adding to the tree – family members whose names I hadn’t known, or didn’t remember, and names of the newer generations, many of whom I was meeting for the first time.

Hall Family Tree with Additions

The poster board filled up, and by the end of the day it had begun to look like the old foundation. A small stone here, a larger one there, all joined by the mortar of family. I suppose this is a tenuous comparison, but it pleased me to think of the strength of family ties this way.

We had a glorious day – sunny and warm and infused with the joyful cheer that comes when families gather to celebrate the past and build memories for the next generations.

Hall Family Reunion, photo courtesy of Charles Peters

On Friday: Violets

The House

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On a frigid night in January 1971, my father, a volunteer fireman with the East Wallingford Fire Department, was called to a house fire on Whirlwind Hill. I was living in Alaska then, and it was days before my shocked and grieving mother could bring herself to call and tell me that my grandparents’ farmhouse was gone. The house had stood empty since my grandmother’s death that August. The men fought the fire all night long, but lost. The photo in the paper the next morning showed the ruins of the house covered with snow and icicles.

Farmhouse Ruins, Carol Crump Bryner, pen and ink, 2013

This was the end of the house with the five stairways, the six bedrooms, the two attics, the one bathroom, and the large living room with nine doors. But it was the beginning of our memories and our longing.

My brother and I dream about this house that we loved, and in our dreams our grandparents and aunts and uncles are still vividly alive. They greet us on the porch, and we walk together in a hazy silence through the half-remembered rooms of our childhood.

One of the reasons I started this Whirlwind Hill project was to bring the farmhouse back to life in words and pictures. It probably looms larger in my imagination than it ever did in its physical presence, but it was a wonderful and memorable place. For more than two hundred years its walls sheltered my ancestors and watched them move through their daily routines. During the next weeks and months I’ll revisit its rooms, peek through its doors, look out its windows, climb its stairs, and maybe discover some secrets in the dusty corners.

Kitchen door of the farmhouse around 1920 - the child in the doorway is possibly my mother, Janet Hall Crump at age 2

Kitchen door of the farmhouse around 1920 – the child in the doorway is possibly my mother, Janet Hall Crump, around age 2

On Wednesday: Foundations

Seeing the Big Picture

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You may notice that I skip around a bit in my blog posts. Events won’t necessarily be going in chronological order. The way I’m writing my posts is not all that different from my collage-making process.

I started doing collage when I was learning how to paint. I was exasperated because the paint colors I mixed came out muddy and muted instead of bright and clear. My painting teacher suggested I try collage.

Making a collage gives me the chance to “paint” a picture using bits and pieces of color and pattern that already exist – I pick the pieces up, sort them out, and put them together like a puzzle. It’s a searching and discovering way of doing art and similar to my approach to writing “On Whirlwind Hill.”

Pile of collage scraps

I have most of the scraps – the pieces of history, the photos, the journals, etc. I’d like to come upon more. I hope I do.

I’ll put the scraps out there for all of you to see. They won’t necessarily be in an orderly timeline, nor will I use every bit of information I have, but by the end of the year I hope there will be some kind of “big picture.” For me the fun is in the finding-out and in the deciding what pieces to put where.

A Sunny Day on Whirlwind Hill, Carol Crump Bryner, collage, 2014

On Monday: The House

Wilderness

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When I had a tooth pulled a few years ago I fussed and complained about it for days before and for days after. My great-grandfather William Ellsworth Hall didn’t make a very big deal about his adventures at the dentist. Nor did he say much about the start of the Civil War. Here’s what he wrote in his 1861 journal.

Saturday, April 20 – “Went to New Haven. Had 8 teeth out. Spent the night with Aaron.”

Sunday, April 21 – “Went in town to have teeth out. Had 8 out. Walk home. War news.”

Monday, May 6 – “Got my teeth. Came home.”

He may have complained about his teeth to his wife, but didn’t share his feelings in his journal. Sometimes it bothers me that the past reaches me in this consciously or unconsciously edited way. William was a busy man and penned only a few words each day. But he wrote what he thought were the essentials, and it’s fun for me to have these glimpses into his life.

Journal of William Ellsworth Hall, 1861

The women and men who built the Hall farm were probably even tougher than my great-grandfather. The first settlers carved the town of Wallingford out of land “purchased” from Quinnipiac Indians Mantowese and Sawseunck in 1638. In his “History of Wallingford Connecticut” Charles Davis describes the purchase.

“Lastly, the said Theophilus Eaton, John Davenport, &c., accepting from Mantowese this free gift of his land as above do by way of thankful retribution give unto him eleven coats made of trucking cloth, and one coat for himself of English cloth, made up after the English manner.”

At the time of this treaty the Quinnipiacs in the area numbered about two hundred and fifty. By 1774, a mere four were left in Wallingford.

The original 1670 town plan for Wallingford shows the six-acre house lots (forty-two in all) mapped out on the “Long High Way” – the street that would eventually become Main Street. To the east of these lots, in the direction of the Hall farm, the planner wrote two words – “East” and “Wilderness.”

Charles Davis describes the challenges for the first settlers.

“Making a new settlement was quite a formidable undertaking…Wolves, in thousands, infested the new settlements. They killed the cattle, they stole and carried off the sheep, and did what they could by their unearthly howlings at night, to add to the horrors that thickened on the skirts of the wilderness. The moose, the deer and the bear roamed at will through the unbroken wilderness.”

Whether or not it was right for my ancestors to become owners of land that had belonged to Indians and animals that “roamed at will,” is a thornier issue than I can cover in this blog, but it does give me pause to remember that the land I think of as mine and ours was not always so.

When I visit Wallingford and take walks around the block that makes up Whirlwind Hill, I pass a lonely wooded area. It used to be the site of the Scard farm, but in just the few years since the house was taken down, the woods have reclaimed their place. I think about John the Immigrant’s three sons who were among the thirty-eight original settlers of Wallingford. How intrepid they must have been to clear the land one tree at a time to build their homes and their lives and their community. Farming was, and still is, an incessant battle against the forces of nature, and they worked daily to be good caretakers of their land.

In these woods I can almost feel the ancient presence of people and animals that walked and roamed among the trees before any of our family arrived. Someday these familiar acres may be wilderness again, and the thought humbles me as I continue on my way to the top of Whirlwind Hill.

“Wallingford Woods, Carol Crump Bryner, pen and colored pencil, 2012

On Friday: Seeing the Big Picture

OBoy!

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A few weeks after my first birthday my mother wrote in her diary – “Carol awake at 7:00. Had good day. Walks quite a bit saying “OBoy, OBoy.”

Carol in 1946

Sixty-seven years later I say “OBoy” again because I’m excited about starting this blog. For the past year I’ve immersed myself in the history, documents, and memories of my family’s farm on Whirlwind Hill in Wallingford, Connecticut. I’ve thought, written, and made art about this place, and I’m ready to share the results with a wider audience.

I never thought I’d have a blog. And yet, here I am, venturing into a technology far removed from the people and times that are my subject. My Hall ancestors kept journals, wrote letters, sent postcards, made wills, signed deeds, and posed in their best clothes for portraits.

Lydia Jane Hart Hall

They felt a need to record their lives, and I’m grateful that they did. I like to think they would welcome this modern way of passing along history. My great-grandmother, Lydia Jane Hart Hall, whose journals are a rich source of information about farm life, was often housebound and lonely in the last years of her life. A community of writers and readers would have pleased her.

Our own lives revolve around the stories we have in our heads. Some are told by others, and some we tell to ourselves. There is reality, and there is memory, and often the two are so entwined they’re hard to separate.

My family had a farm on a hill in Wallingford, Connecticut. My mind is full of what I’ve heard about my ancestors and their life there. In my physical world the detritus of their existence has taken on even more meaning now that my parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles are gone.

I’ve started writing some of the memories and history down so that my children won’t have to say the sentence William Zinsser claims is one of the saddest he knows – “I wish I had asked my mother about that.”

Please join me on Mondays, Wednesdays, and occasional Fridays, here “On Whirlwind Hill.” I’m launching this blog in April – a time of spring and beginnings. I plan to bring it to an end in April 2015, but who knows – that could change. I welcome comments, stories, corrections, and the company of family and friends.

On Wednesday: A Piece of the Past