USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > Greens Farms > Greens Farms, Connecticut, the old West parish of Fairfield historical sketches and reminiscences > Part 6
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For over fifty years this organization was known throughout the state for its intelligent and progressive discussions. All politics were ignored. Among the later presidents were William J. Jennings, John Henry Jennings, William H. Burr, the author, and Joseph Adams. Judge Silas Burr Sherwood was for a long time the secretary, followed by Edward C. Birge, J. Frank Elwood, Joseph Adams, and when the club dis- continued, Herbert S. Baldwin was the secretary.
There was a fine friendly community spirit during these years of the Farmers' Club. These farmers took a prominent part in supporting the Connecticut Agri- cultural Experiment Station. They encouraged ex- hibits of fruits, vegetables, and produce at the Norwalk Fair. For a number of years the club sent a train of
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DEACON FREDERICK T. BEDFORD 1823-1904
The Farmers' Club
oxen, sometimes as many as forty yoke, to the fair and brought home the first prize of $25.00; this money was appropriated for an oyster supper or an institute where outside speakers and professors from the Agri- cultural Station were asked to be present. Doctor E. H. Jenkins, for a long time the director of the Station, was a yearly visitor either at the club meetings or at the institute, which was generally held on Washing- ton's Birthday. T. S. Gold of West Cornwall, for many years secretary of agriculture for the state, enjoyed coming and meeting with the farmers.
However, in reading over some of the recommenda- tions of the club relating to varieties of fruits and vegetables, one finds that such information would be obsolete in today's pomological meetings.
The following is a copy of the inventory of tools and teams which my father sold to Mr. Frederick T. Bed- ford when he sold him his farm in the spring of 1864:
one pair of oxen
$150.00
one horse
100.00
2 COWS
50.00
2 heifers
25.00
4 pigs
14.00
one ox cart
20.00
2 farm waggons
50.00
I ox sled and stone boat
10.00
2 sleighs
35.00
2 harnesses and weffletree
30.00
2 ploughs
10.00
3 harrows
20.00
2 chains
4.00
2 ox yokes
5.00
I Wheelbarrow
2.00
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Greens Farms, Connecticut
I grind stone
$2.00
Scythes and grain cradle
7.00
Onion sower
3.00
3 onion hoes
5.00
Crowbar, shovels, hoes and forks
3.50
Hay cutter
7.00
Horse rake
6.00
Ashes
40.00
Manure
48.00
$646.50
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Oystering
O NE of the earliest votes in town meeting after Westport was organized in 1835, was the limiting of the bushels of oysters which any one person could take from the public grounds in the Sound and harbor. This rule seemed to have no teeth in it as there was no penalty attached. However, all down the century, the town has been very jealous of its public clam and oyster grounds along the Sound.
About 1840, the town allotted to certain people under-water land in Compo Mill Pond for oyster planting. Perhaps this was the beginning of oyster cultivation that has reached such a large extent in Long Island Sound. Mill Pond oysters soon won the blue ribbon, and, at one time, they brought $20.00 a barrel in the Fulton Market in New York. These oys- ters still maintain their superior quality.
Eels have always been plentiful in the creeks, but fifty years ago this kind of seafood was much more popular than now. Captain Justus Mills has told me that there used to be as many as a dozen boats with flashlights working for eels over the pond at night. Crabs run in August and September, and those caught in local creeks seem to be particularly palatable. Clamming used to be very popular-and our beaches have supplied surprisingly large quantities of round
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Greens Farms, Connecticut
and long clams. An especially high tide lashed by strong winds would often wash in from the Sound oys- ters and round clams and they would be picked up on the shore in shallow water as the tide went out. Sometimes beds of round clams were located, usually in eel grass, near the shore, and at low tide it was high sport to don rubber hip-boots, and, armed with a clam rake and with a basket tied around the waist, gather a "mess" of round clams.
Long clamming is safe but calls for more persever- ence. Long clams live down in the flats; perigee tide with high winds, particularly in winter, will uncover a big area of clam flats, and the biggest clams are al- ways nearer the water-line. The bigger the clam, the deeper he lives, the more strongly entrenched, and the more cleverly he eludes capture. He sends his head up to the surface of the mud for air, and the instant he hears a step (his hearing is acute), his head retreats- but leaves a hole. That is how he is located. One looks for clam holes. Often they eject salt water- "squirting" is the local word for it-and they are lo- cated that way, too. Vindictively they will sometimes squirt into one's eyes when the hoe is almost down to them.
The old farmers used to go after the biggest ones in front of Phippses at perigee tides, sometimes down eighteen to twenty inches and more. These are called "goslins" and were considered a great delicacy when
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Oystering
stuffed and baked. But all this now belongs to his- tory, and in spots along the beach thick sand is being washed up over the clam flats; possibly in a genera- tion or two nature will have taken away the last re- maining suggestion of the habitat of the clam in our midst.
[IOI]
Men of Brawn
T HE old stock of men born and raised in Greens Farms was hardy and strong, and generally the men were physically big. Most of them were farmers, many of them well-to-do, and their lin- eage, community position, and personal dignity war- ranted their being called "square" by their neighbors. But they were a hard-working race, active in the fields from dawn to sunset, and setting the pace for the farm "help."
My father was such a worker. I have heard Mr. Thomas Shaughnessy relate that as a young man fresh from Ireland he hired out to Father, and they set off together to hoe corn. Hoeing corn in that day was a man's job. It required hard labor and some skill in handling the hoe, for the corn was planted on ridges formed by turning two furrows of sod together, and although gone over with the plow before the hoeing, there was always a grassy ridge in the centre of the furrow to be covered with earth and cut thor- oughly with the hoe. Twitch grass, the most diabol- ical of all weeds to try the farmer's patience, usually took hold in a corn field. And hoeing corn always must be done under the hot sultry sky of July and August-the dog-days.
Father started his row, and then turned to show his
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Men of Brawn
new man how to break the clods down without in- juring the young grain shoots. Then Father started in to lead. The young fellow watched the older man for a minute. Then he shook his head and spit on his hands. "Be Jabbers," he said to himself, "the Yankee ain't goin' to down this Irishman." By noon both men were well tired out, but had gained mutual re- spect for each other's strength, and through life con- tinued friendly and neighborly relations.
Road making developed muscles. It was hard work, and performed in a primitive fashion. Ditches were plowed on the side of the road and the loose earth scraped into the middle and rounded up, with frequent water bars to shed the rains into the ditches. It is hardly possible now to imagine the amount of dust generated on these roads during the dry season, the amount of mud after a heavy rain, or the frozen ruts of winter. It was a relief to have these ruts blan- keted by snow. Later, when gravel was introduced to spread on the roads, the notion was condemned gen- erally as an extravagance-this in 1870. Bankside was still conservative.
I recall several men who "made" most of our roads fifty years ago. Harry Hull up on Sturges Highway was a veteran road-repair man. He had a team of oxen so trained that they would "gee" and "haw" and "back" as he held the scraper, thus saving the driver. Charles Mills on North Avenue was another road
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Greens Farms, Connecticut
man; he made the old Dingee race track. Oscar Lewis is the last one of our native sons to carry on the road- making traditions.
The Mills family produced husky men, many of them stone masons. Most of the stone walls still re- maining in these parts and many of the cellars were laid by them. It was a common practice for a gang of stone masons to walk as far as Greenfield Hill for a day's work, and back again at night, after handling stone all day. One who has handled heavy stone all day can understand what that means. Samuel Mills with a couple of his sons and his brother David, formed an outstanding wall-building gang; they were just as efficient in cradling grain, threshing with the flail, and butchering hogs in the fall. They had little schooling, but much innate honesty and good com- mon sense that was able to give practical criticism to those who had superior advantages.
Fifty years ago, Father had a stone wall built along Turkey Hill Road. The Millses built it at a certain price per rod. While talking, Sam paced off the distance and named the price. The deal was made and neither side thought of any written agreement. Their word had been passed. They would cradle a field of rye for Uncle Henry Wakeman by the acre and estimate the acreage by looking at the lot.
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Home Economies
T HE "foremothers" of the West Parish of Fair- field looked well to their households. It was their pride to work and save. Thriftiness and economy were racial inheritances; conditions made them frugal. Somewhere hidden away was a stocking to hold the coin-the beginning of our mutual savings bank. Nothing was wasted; it was a case of waste not, want not. It's a Yankee, an Anglo-Saxon bit of wisdom, that still holds good. Everything was saved and put to use.
Small pieces of calico and dress goods were pieced together for bed quilts, and the now-famous old New England quilting bee was introduced. The farmers' wives gathered from far and near to piece a quilt, to drink tea, to gossip; it was a social interlude in their round of household duties, and doubtless a most wel- come one. Occasions for social intercourse were few in those busy days. How the fingers flew, how the tongues wagged, the alert eyes of the older women upon the stitches of the younger ones! Quilting bees became increasingly popular; often the women pieced a quilt in the afternoon, and the men came in at dark, all eating supper together; many happy romances were traced to these bees. Eventually it became quite an
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Greens Farms, Connecticut
industry as the quilts were made more and more elab- orate; from a simple bed-covering for warmth, they became ornamental, and housewives would leave open the bedroom door so visitors could see the quilts on the bed. Many were gorgeous and many were extremely artistic, as new designs were used and more daring colors pieced together. Possibly there were a score or more designs, but those more common and beautiful were the Rose, the Fan, the Tree of Paradise, the Double Irish Chain, the Bear's Paw, the Log Cabin, the Rail Fence, and the Necktie. We still piece quilts here; only last fall our Ladies' Aid Society pieced one.
Much ingenuity was exerted in putting everything to a use. Strips of old woolen cloth were home dyed and braided into rugs; corn husks were made into outdoor mats. Clothing for the children was remade from the older folks' garments, and the boys prized, ever so much, the row of brass buttons on the coat. Spinning and weaving blankets as well as home-made cloth for clothing, preparing flax for linens, and the knitting of mittens and stockings for the men folks were everyday occupations. Tallow was saved for making candles and tallow dips. The skimmings from the boiled meat were used again in frying, or were given to poorer folks, and all left-over fats were cooked and tried out and made into soft soap, a barrelful each year. Goose feathers were saved for feather beds, and the turkey wings for brushes; other feathers, old rags,
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Home Economies
and metals were traded off to the tin-peddler, a pop- ular visitor, for tinware and Yankee notions.
Home work on shirts from the factory in the city was a source of making money later on. The shirt factory sent around a team carrying bundles of shirt material to be worked upon; some of the women sewed in the gussets; others, the seams and bands; stitching and pleating the bosoms, and making collars, was an art. My mother once told me that in two winters she earned enough on shirts to put blinds on the new house. The girls were taught these homely but use- ful duties, while the boys were given night and morn- ing chores, such as keeping the wood-boxes filled-a job in itself in winter-and caring for the stock, with time off for skating and sliding down hill. It was a proud boy who could make his own bow and arrow or a pung sled.
The men became wood workers, helping the boss carpenter by scoring the logs for hewing. Many farm- ers could repair their ox-carts, build ox-sleds, stone- boats, and harrows. Young men who loved the water and were handy with tools could build a rowboat, or a skipjack, and make the sails. In his early married life, my father in the winter got up at 4 A.M., fed his oxen, got breakfast, then started for Good Hill, in Weston, with his ox-team and sled to haul down wood for every third load, and was glad of the job. What do young men of today think of that?
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Greens Farms, Connecticut
Threshing with the flail on the barn floor required many hours in the winter. Summer was as full of toil. By the sweat of their brows our fathers eked out a living, and nature was a long time smiling on their efforts. It was a man's task. Our fathers saved dur- ing their lifetime, and it was their pride to pay off their mortgages by middle life and become freemen and esquires among their fellow townsmen. Of such blood we have sprung.
Generous bunches of herbs both for medicinal and for culinary purposes were gathered and hung up in the attic. Among the former were mountain mint, boneset, pennyroyal, catnip, and fennel, while for cu- linary purposes we find thyme, summer savory, anise, and sage being used. Slippery elm was dried or made into tea which was supposed to relieve coughing. Caraway and mustard seeds and dill were used for various seasonings, while birch bark and sassafras were used for flavoring small beer. Calamus and flag root were boiled down and made into confections. Sweet cicely and calamus were eaten as green herbs. The home dyeing of the virgin wool as well as the re-dyeing of old cloth was an art presided over by the good housewife. Black walnut, butternut, and sumac were used for this purpose, while logwood and indigo were bought at the stores for the other shades.
With the coming of the nineteenth century, mem- bers of the old families were going out into the world
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Home Economies
as business men. William Couch, who was in business in New York, signed his deed, "William Couch, Mer- chant." The members of the Andrews family were in New York and had gone to other western states.
It was quite customary for members of these and other families to come back to Greens Farms and se- cure "board" during the summer season from the farmers. This proved a source of profit to the farm- er's wife as well as a renewal of early family friend- ships. Later on, Hezekiah Taylor enlarged his house and made a business of taking boarders. Since then this property has been called "Castle Taylor."
Down on the Shore Road the George Palen prop- erty was enlarged and was conducted as a summer hotel and became known as "Beachside Inn."
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The Salt-Box House
s her colonists in the New World were becoming increasingly prosperous-building two-story houses was a sure sign-Queen Anne, early in the eighteenth century, although too domestically inclined to bother much with her colonial empire, viewed with no favor the claims to pretension of those colonists. If they were rich enough to build them- selves two-story houses, they were able to pay more taxes; it was in the Stuart blood to tax. So the decree went out from London that there should be a special tax on all two-story houses in these colonies.
That decree was the cause of the salt-box house being evolved. The Connecticut Yankee, not yet dar- ing to talk back to London, was in no mood to accept the injustice; he hedged the issue. He would stop building two-story houses. He left off whittling nut- megs from basswood and began to whistle and think -and whittle. He picked up a small block of pine and turning it over in his hand he noticed the knot extending through the block to the heart. He stopped whistling, he stopped whittling-and thought. Then his whistling took on a new lilt as he whittled with fresh energy. He had an idea. He would make a house like the block, with the chimney in place of the knot-in one story-and the roof sloping, like a salt-
[110]
The Salt-Box House
box. A little attic above in front, high enough for the children's use, but not high enough to be called a second story. Yankee ingenuity!
So around a gigantic stone chimney was built the house, one big room on each side, while a ladder from below reached up to the half-attic. These attics were usually unplastered and not only the sun came through the cracks of the boards, but the snow and rain. On winter mornings the children found snow on their beds.
The compactness of these houses so pleased the housewife that she suggested extending the rear roof a little way and making a room for general storage purposes. Extending the roof a little more made space for a wood-shed and tool-shop. A secret cupboard was usually built into this type of house-sometimes large, sometimes small, sometimes in one place and some- times in another. Why it was called secret was, per- haps, that the contents of the cupboard were kept- or tried to be kept-secret. My grandfather's secret closet contained his half-gallon demijohn of gin. Other closets in houses here contained Jamaica rum in those queer slim round earthenware bottles now so highly prized by collectors. In such secret closets the spirits -and not the traditional family skeleton-abode.
Next in importance to the secret closet was the salt- box, usually built in a corner of the store-room. Great quantities of salt were imported from Turk's Island in the West Indies, and this parish used its share of the
Greens Farms, Connecticut
commodity to salt down pork and beef, and to cure hides, pelts, and furs. Bushels of it were laid up from time to time by every family. So the "Salt-Box" gives the distinguishing name to this style of house.
Many of the salt-box houses have been taken down or rebuilt. Every cycle of timè has a new style of architecture, and many of the houses built during the last quarter of a century will be obsolete and æsthetic- ally monstrous, while these old salt-box houses con- tinue to add a charm to the roadside.
The picture opposite is of the old Hyde house, built in 1755 and razed in 1866. It stood on the ancestral Hyde estate near Long Lots Road, and was a typical salt-box house of the prosperous farmer of those days. This picture is reproduced from an old oil painting by my cousin, the late Mrs. Mary (Coley Hill) Gage; it is now in the possession of Edward C. Birge, Esq.
Six houses of this salt-box type exist in Greens Farms today, and they all must date before the Revolutionary period. Until recently, when the new owners rebuilt the house, there was an old house on Clapboard Hill Road to the west of the Beerses, the shingles long since weatherbeaten. I have been told that this house was the original home site of the Taylor family in Greens Farms.
Just above the fulling mill on Muddy Brook still stands the old Hezekiah Phillips house, the present home of Oscar Lewis. This was "Aunt" Polly Phil-
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THE JOSEPH HIDE HOUSE
From a painting by Mary Coley Gage, which painting is now the property of Edward C. Birge
بـ
The Salt-Box House
lips's homestead. A little way up on Muddy Brook on Center Street stands the homestead of Samuel Mills, still in the family name, and present home of Mrs. Mary Mills Avery. Up on Long Lots Road at the head of Bulkley Avenue adjoining the former farm of Daniel B. Bradley, stands another of these ancient houses, well preserved and occupied today. On the original Eleven O'Clock Highway, now known as North Avenue, stands the homestead of Henry E. Mills, whose grandfather had a blacksmith shop a little further up the road opposite the home of Mr. Rollin G. Stoddard. The grandfather occupied this salt-box house. The home of Mrs. Samuel Elwood on Long Lots Road on top of the hill to the west of Morn- ingside Drive is the sixth salt-box house. This was for- merly owned by the Nash family of early times.
[II3]
Seventy Years Ago
I WAS a very small boy when I went with my mother to the "last day of school" of my sister, who was older than I. They did not have graduation exercises then; they may have had exercises-"speak- ing pieces," singing, and addresses, perhaps-but no graduating, for there were no grades.
The old weatherbeaten schoolhouse was then lo- cated on the common on the site of the school that had been burned in General Tryon's raid. This was the second school and was later removed when a then modern schoolhouse was built in 1860 on the southern slope of Clapboard Hill. I attended this new school.
We watched with wonder the trains going down to New York, carrying troops at the beginning of the Civil War. We small boys were fired with the mili- tary spirit and paraded up and down with toy guns in soldier fashion. We were very proud when our mothers furnished us with soldier caps and capes. Soon after, the percale, of which our blouses were made, had miniature colored flags stamped on it.
The Civil War was progressing and there came from Washington requests for lint and bandages for the sol- diers. One afternoon I went with Mother, drawing my small go-cart loaded with sheets, to the house where
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Seventy Years Ago
the women met to scrape lint from the sheets and afterward tear them into bandages.
At another time the whole community met one evening down at Mr. Palen's at Beachside and sliced up several hogsheads of onions which were pickled and forwarded to the soldiers to keep off the scurvy.
As cool weather came on, there were requests for mittens for the soldiers. These mittens were half mitten and half glove, for the forefinger was segre- gated like the thumb to facilitate pulling the trigger.
A company of the 17th Volunteer Regiment was largely recruited in Westport. Henry P. Burr and James E. Hubbell were successive captains of this company. The 28th Regiment was also well repre- sented by Westport men. J. Chapman Taylor was second lieutenant of this regiment. Our only survivor of the old Grand Army is Thomas Glynn of the 28th.
The continuing war kept the prices of farm produce up to a high level. The farmers prospered and one after another bought "Rockaway" carriages made up in Stepney. Civilization hitched up a notch. The stream lines of these Rockaways rivalled the stream lines of the modern automobile.
I went with Father to Westport Village to the Presi- dential election in 1864. The war had strained family relationship in many cases; party feeling and loyal- ties ran high. Westport was strongly Democratic and some who sympathized with the South were called
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Greens Farms, Connecticut
Copperheads. They retaliated by calling Northern sympathizers Black Republicans.
In the spring of 1865 we had moved to a large farm in Wisconsin, and one Saturday about ten o'clock from the telegraph office ten miles away came word that seemed to put a hush over the landscape as the village bells tolled off the years of the martyred Presi- dent, Abraham Lincoln.
As a boy in Greens Farms, I remember going with my parents to a wedding reception at Uncle Gideon Jennings's given in honor of their son Austin and his bride. The Gideon Jennings homestead was on the south side of the road where Greens Farms Road and Beachside Avenue divide midway between the par- sonage and the railway bridge. The grand march was stepped off by couples around the chimney. Some so- cial director in the company told me, young as I was, to get a partner and march-and I did. Any house in which one could not march around the chimney was out of repute in those days, and was incomplete for social functions.
There was cooking rivalry among the women. House and barn raisings were outstanding events that furnished community half-holidays. When buildings were raised, "raising cake," tea, coffee, and cider were passed around. I went to a barn raising while still very small, and mother charged me to "bring home some of Aunt Pulina Whitehead's raising cake."
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Seventy Years Ago
One annual social function was the minister's dona- tion party. Everybody went, carrying pies, cake, chickens, spare-ribs, sausages, and food galore for the minister's family. The latter was fortunate in having anything left after supper, for everybody stayed, and while the women washed up afterwards and the men talked crops, the older children rolled the trencher, played "Boston" and so forth, and we very small fry looked on with big eyes, and perhaps had our first lessons in match-making.
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