USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Tyringham > Hinterland settlement Tyringham, Massachusetts and bordering lands > Part 6
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For architectural beauty, the finest was the De Witt Heath home, located on a knoll across the brook, back of the library. It held a com-
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manding view of Hop Brook and the church. Squire Thomas Garfield patterned this house after some of the beautiful old, square houses in Connecticut whence he came in 1794. It had a broad central hall extending from the front entrance to the back entrance. Many, many days before central heating, families who came to church from outlying districts, gathered around the great fireplace in the south front room during the noon hour to eat their lunch, for church meet- ings then, lasted all day, and the parishioners traveled by cart or horse- back. In its last years the property changed ownership often. Mr. De Forest, brief owner, sold to Mrs. Shepell, in 1948, who was having it renovated and restored before occupancy. Workmen burned some rubbish in an attic fireplace and during the night someone discovered the whole structure ablaze. This was a tragic loss to the charm of the village.
The gingerbread-trimmed cottage between the two bridges was once a plain, low, brown building, occupied in early days by a Fargo. He conducted a store there and at one period it held the Post Office. When the West Brothers owned the Wrapping Mill near by, they too, had a store there. For many years after that George Garfield occupied it as a home and made alterations and additions. Frank Dorman, then Irem Smith followed in ownership.
Trustum Stedman, Jr. bought 50 acres of land of Ezra, Abijah and Edmund Heath for $1400. and built the front part of the Warren house-so called-across from the town hall. Col. Francis Hearick held the mortgage. For many years George R. Warren and wife, Etta, owned the property. Mr. Warren who was a civic-minded individual, was town clerk, sexton of the M.E. church, sang in the choir, conducted a wagon shop, was a painter, raised bees and the life of every party that took place in the community. His wife took in summer guests.
Not much is known about Walter Stedman's home, between the Post Office and the Warren house, only that a Fargo lived there before Lucian Heath. Around 1900, a widow, Margaret Crittenden, owned it and left it to the Methodist Church for a parsonage. It was used as such until they sold and bought the present parsonage, next to the church.
The house north of Warren's was the Albert Thompson home. His daughter, Frances, was born there in 1839. From 1844 to '50, Rev. George Phippen, Baptist minister, occupied this house. Fifty years later James Seymour and his mother owned it. In recent years Arthur Gilmore and family had possession.
From here north to Orchard House, the houses were built during the middle of the 19th century, about the time of the paper mill era. A Chaffin built the John Heath house and the home of the late Mrs. Blanche Rouse which was the Baptist parsonage. One of the Websters from East Mountam lived in Mrs. Olds' House. He built that, the Reber and the Darey houses.
Stephen Johnson moved from Middletown, Conn. with his family to the Paper Mill District in Tyringham about 1830. He built his home
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against the hill across the road from Hop Brook. It was a small house but as the family grew, in future generations, additions were made until it became the long, rambling Orchard House. His daughter, Maria, did the baking for the Paper Mill Boarding House below. There, in the large but'ry over the hatchway, she would stand most of the day making bread, pies and gingercake for the ravenous mill-hands. At sundown the prints of her feet were left on the flour-covered floor by the shelf where she baked up a whole barrel of flour. Daniel Heath worked in the sawmill across the way and it was an easy matter, when he ate dinner at the boarding house, to discover what a wonderful cook Maria was. To this day 'tis said the nearest way to a man's heart is via his stomach. It's suspected that is the way Maria Johnson caught Daniel Heath. They were married and went to housekeeping in the cottage next to Orchard House. When the old folks died, Daniel and Maria built an addition to the second floor and moved into the old house. Here they raised three daughters; Anna married Charles Hale, Etta married George Warren and Sarah married William Canon. (The first telephone switchboard in town was installed in the south front room on the street level, in 1905. It was operated by Sarah's daughter-in-law, Mrs. Elizabeth Cannon. Each noon she gave the signal, one long ring, followed by the time and weather report. Every- one listened in. Before this the only telephone in town was a pay sta- tion in Tinker's Store.)
Sarah's eldest child was Beulah, who started a Boarding House-Inn in 1908 when the Tytus mansion was being built. Many of the Scandi- navian workmen boarded with her. That winter brought severe cold and deep snows which these men thoroughly enjoyed. On weekends they gathered in the rake shop below to fashion and polish their skis. Evenings and Sundays the villagers congregated to watch them demonstrate their skill in this new sport. The natives quickly caught on and soon every boy in town had a pair of skis. Perhaps this was Berkshire County's first introduction to this now popular winter sport.
These boarders were the inception for Miss Cannon's small but exclusive Orchard House Inn. During her forty-two years of operation, distinguished names in literature, art, music, finance, diplomacy and society were entered in her register. Soon after Orchard House opened as an Inn, Alice Hegan Rice came there to write "Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch". In 1912 Jean Webster, niece of Mark Twain, made a two week reservation, only to stay six months and write the book, "Daddy Long Legs". The next year she returned with Anne Crawford Flexner (Mrs. Abraham) to dramatize it. During the Institute of Politics at Williams College, Miss Cannon opened her inn to twelve different nationalities attending the Institute. Three generations of the De Courcy Hard family from Cederhurst, L. I. are listed among her guests. For many years Mrs. Bayard James was a frequent guest and even after Mrs. James built "Port Apple" near by, she continued as a dinner guest, along with Mrs. Samuel Reber, to enjoy Miss Cannon's famous "homespun" cooking.
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Other names found in the register are Peggy Woods, Ruth Chat- terton, Sinclair Lewis and Mary Miller, the poetess. Loren Ford will long be remembered for the long black cape she wore swinging from her shoulders, reminding one of a witch. Janet Beecher spent one sum- mer there, studying for the part of a young woman she was to take in New York that fall. She was too attractively plump for the part and her director requested a slim-down. There were no reducing salons in Tyringham so Miss Beecher devised her own, right in the court-yard garden. Each morning, when the sun was high in midsummer, the actress stood in the unshaded garden and shook herself until the perspiration rolled in little rivulets, down her face and body. No one ever heard how many pounds she lost but it must have been sufficient, for she went on stage on schedule. And think-she did her exercises to the tune of bird songs, not radio!
That was the year Miss Beecher was divorcing her husband, Hoffman. She had their young son and nursemaid with her. One day Hoffman sent his sister to visit the boy. She took the little fellow for a friendly stroll down the street. At the foot of Paper Mill Hill a car and chauffeur waited and they disappeared in it. A few days later a lawyer appeared looking for witnesses but no one was available. This kid- naping was the sensational high-light of that summer.
North of Orchard House stood the "Long House" of four tene- ments built in the opulent days of the Platner and Smith Paper Mill. Later, employees of the rake factory flowed in and out, like the tides of the ocean, as they migrated from town to town. The building remained mostly in its original state but became "shop-worn" and was removed in 1936.
Across from the rake factory is the house built by Justus Battle from virgin-tree timbers, sawed in the mill across the road. Battle branded the date, 1793, in the tongue of the hand-wrought, iron latch on the plank door. In the north front bedroom under the wall paper is the original black and red stencilling done by the journeyman artist, Eaton, as he passed through Berkshire County. It is not known exactly who the first inhabitant of this house was. It might have been anyone of these men who first ventured in mill business or a son of the builder; there is no question of its use as a boarding house for the paper mill. The attic was finished off into three rooms and these were the sleeping quarters for the male help. The girls who worked in the paper mill occupied the second floor rooms in the ell. In 1920 some of their names inscribed on a closet door were legible. Many of these girls married Lee men who later became prominent in business there. Across the back of the main second floor was one long room where dances were held. "Wellie" Thompson was the last superintendent of the mill and one of his duties was to arouse the help at 4.30 in the morning for breakfast so they could be ready in time for work. He never had much trouble getting the girls up but with the men in the attic it was a dif- ferent story.
As previously stated, Maria Johnson was the cook and much of her baking was done in the chimney brick oven in the cellar. To get down
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there she had to lift a heavy trap door under the dining room table. Several times she had taken her problem of inconvenience to the mill owners but to no avail. One day Mr. Smith came to dinner. She needed more bread from the oven, so asked him to lift the door for her. Soon after that carpenters arrived and said they had orders to build some cellar stairs.
After Elizah Smith moved his business to Lee, for a time the old boarding house was empty. It began to deteriorate so that when Charles Stedman bought the property he replaced the small pane windows, removed the old center chimney and modernized it in many ways. When Marshall Stedman took possession he immediately in- stalled modern plumbing. He and Miss Cannon were the first in town to enjoy the comforts of bathrooms. In the fall of 1904 Mr. Stedman supplied his house with electricity from a dynamo in the rake factory, the first in town to boast of modern lighting. Shortly the two stores, the library and Main Street were electrified. The town was literally in the limelight.
At the foot of the hill is another house built by the same Justus Battle, prior to the one just mentioned. This he built for himself and family, on much the same lines, only larger. It was occupied by Jus- tus, Jr. and his wife Bathsheba. She sold it in 1814 to Ezra Heath and took a transfer from the church. Justus Battle Senior left town for the Connecticut Reserves in 1831. When Asa Judd came to town to enter the paper mill business he bought the house and farm of the Heaths. Somewhere along the line Henry Heath, son of Capt. Ezra, acquired the property and sold in 1836 to Lucian B. Moore.
The wealthy and notables from New York and Boston soon dis- covered the charm and beauty of the Berkshire Hills. By 1878 Stock- bridge and Lenox, on the Housatonic Railroad line, were famous as resort towns. In the spring long trains of the so-called Four Hundred and their employees, horses and equipage puffed into these resorts. A few, less affluent, families found their way to the more isolated sections. Lucian Moore, alert to the opportunities of the times and noting the success of Dr. Jones at Fernside, named his place Riverside Farm and advertised for summer boarders. Before this, in the local items of an 1880 weekly paper was, "City boarders at W. W. Thompsons and Heman Heaths". So these four ushered in the new business of paying- guests which lasted until Orchard House closed as an Inn in 1949.
It was Mr. Moore who first attracted the famous men who later bought many of the hill-farms, to become permanent summer resi- dents. One of his first guests was Mrs. M. F. Hazen of New York, who purchased the Shaker North Family farm. She was followed soon by Richard Watson Gilder, Robert Rudd, Mrs. Andrews, John Hutton, Hon. Francis E. Leupp, H. C. Fordham, Robb de P. Tytus and others.
Riverside guests included such notables as Mr. Hollister of the Eden Musee, Simon Flexner, Edith M. Thomas, Hamilton Mabie, C Anne Douglas Sedgwick, Adele Aus der Ohe, Mary Hallock Foote and others. John R. Procter was a guest there for ten successive sum- mers (1896-1906).
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Grover Cleveland received much publicity throughout the summer he stayed there. Especially interested in fishing, Mr. Cleveland angled in all the Tyringham streams and lakes in the surrounding territory. It was not only his good friend, Mr. Gilder, but also Hop Brook run- ning through the village that enticed Mr. Cleveland to summer at Riverside Inn. On Memorial Day 1899, Mr. Moore provided Cleveland with a horse and carriage and driver to take him to the south end of the village to fish in Hop Brook. The driver let him out at the school- house bridge and Grover started casting up the stream. The speckled beauties were tantalizing that morning as they dashed from under the overhanging banks and leaped for an insect in the air. Heedless of the No-Trespass signs on the fence posts or the farmer hoeing his tobacco in the meadow, Mr. Cleveland worked his way up stream. Suddenly a voice rent the air, "Hey, you fat fellow, clear out of that trout brook or, b'gosh, I'll hoe ye!" Startled, Cleveland looked up and saw Frank Johnson striding toward him with hoe upheld. He said afterward that Johnson looked like a wild bull charging. The former Commander- in-Chief of the U. S. Army knew when it was time to retreat, so he started for the fence as fast as his 300 pounds could make it. The top rail of the fence crushed under that weight, like a timber from a burn- ing barn, carrying the second rail with Grover to the ground. Some- how, Grover got to his feet and down the road to the carriage, still hanging on to his fishpole. By the horse he turned to see Johnson standing by the fence, swinging his hoe and yelling something about the hole in the fence. Then Grover distinctly heard, "That's the time I made you skedaddle! I've got even with that man Cleveland, b'gosh!". But did he, really? Grover had a big trout dangling from his line as he crawled, out of breath, into the carriage.
Someone asked Johnson why he'd do such a thing to an Ex- President. "Wa'll", sez he, "I'm an independent chap, even if I am a farmer, and I stock this brook at my own expense." He pulled a red bandana from his pocket and wiped his nose, "I ain't allowing no poachin' or fishin' here. I don't give a rap whether it's a big gun or a little one, they'll get bounced if I catch 'em". The truth of the matter was that Johnson was especially sore at Cleveland's administration for the reduction of tax on tobacco by the Wilson Bill.
Mrs. Cleveland enjoyed the village life as much as her husband did his fishing. She was quite familiar with the locality even before they summered in Tyringham, for she had been to Mt. Lebanon Shakers and ordered a Shaker cloak made which she wore at the President's inauguration. One hot, July morning she walked into the village store to make a few purchases. Gene Tinker, himself, waited on her. Mrs. Cleveland, a plump, motherly sort of person, appeared like any housewife who was out to do her marketing. Tinker took her for one of the maids at the Inn so he greeted her with the question, "Well, how's old Grover this morning? How does the old fellow stand this hot weather?" The Ex-President's wife looked somewhat surprised but smiled and replied, "Oh, he stands it as well as anyone as stout as he is", and went out. A man standing the other side of the room, offered,
Note: Mr. Cleveland was a guest at the Gilder home in 1899 and at Riverside in 1901.
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"Tinker, do you know who that was you were just talking to?" "Sure, one of the maids at Riverside," confidently answered the storekeeper. "That was none other than Mrs. Grover Cleveland herself", stated the recent listener. Tinker's jaw dropped, he stared at the man, "God, no, it can't be, she had on an apron"! News of the assassination of President Mckinley came to Mr. Cleveland while he was fishing on Laurel Lake in Lee.
Mrs. Moore was lauded as a wonderful cook. On chilly days the long dining room glowed from the big fireplace; on sunny days the sun filtered through lacy vines in the bay window opposite. The gleaming silver and glistening glass on the table attracted both young and old to the hearty and sometimes mysterious foods prepared by Mrs. Moore and her help in the kitchen beyond. Unmindful of the kitchen flies or barn odors, farm fare to city folks, was a "conversation piece" for days to come. The Sunday night suppers of corn meal mush and rich cream were elevated to the press columns. In place of mush and cream, Moore gave the farm help bread and milk for supper. Bill Partridge, a well-known character in town, worked for Moore. One night the workmen had sour milk with their mush. After supper Moore heard a great confusion in his barnyard. Rushing outside to learn the cause, Moore found Bill chasing the cows with a stick. "Hey there, what are you doing to my cows"? yelled Moore. "I'll teach these dank cows to give sour milk, I will. I'll thrash them for that", snapped Bill.
Lucian had a Billy goat, the bane of all his neighbors. He de- stroyed young orchards, chewed clothes drying on the lines, nipped men's heels and at night slept on neighboring porches. One meticulous housewife, desperate from washing her porch every morning, threat- ened Mr. Moore that if he didn't confine that Billy goat, she would dispose of him in her own way. Shortly Billy disappeared. One after- noon the boarders exclaimed over the delicious lamb they had for dinner, and the help, curiously enough, enjoyed the same menu. Later on, during a gossip festival out in the barn, George Swan, the cow man, told how, the week before, he had helped butcher the Billy. And that was the lamb everyone had been raving about that afternoon. A sensitive native lad, standing by, was suddenly awful sick and quit his job as bus-boy in the dining room, right then and there.
There were many gay times during the summer season at River- side Inn. The natives were accepted by the guests and both mingled for entertainment and fun. Sometimes the boarders gave an entertain- ment for the benefit of their neighbors. One such was especially mem- orable. Mrs. Moore cleared the center of her spacious dining room and two guests with blackened faces and dude clothes, demonstrated the latest, the Cake Walk, right from the big city. What a hit that made!
Mr. Moore and the town reciprocated with plenty of country entertainment for his guests and the city folk lapped it up. They entered into the fun at strawberry and ice cream festivals on the church lawn by the light of Japanese lanterns, hayrides on moonlight nights, boating and fishing on Hayes Pond and picnics galore.
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Lucian Moore had an eye for business in more ways than one. He wasn't above pushing a line fence over on a vacant property or springing a shady deal in real estate, or selling cider, or even a quart or two from his imported Kentucky whisky. He attended church regu- larly, lustily sang the hymns, then slept through the sermon. He also had an eye for civic promotion and no doubt did more to further the popularity of Tyringham as a resort than anyone before or since. The summer residents dubbed him, "The Father of the Valley". The town can thank this man for their unique library building, for he worked long and arduously to raise the funds to produce it. He was a typical Yankee.
Beyond Riverside, at the upper corner of Webster Road once stood a little brown house built about 1775 by either Elisha or Lyman Brown, whichever was the doctor. Evidently Brown and his neighbor, Justus Battle, Jr., quarreled, for they were in court over some dis- agreement in 1820. Miss Hyde conducted a private school there at one time. Dwight Thatcher was chairman of the school board and didn't exactly approve of a private school in town. He was very proud of his new teacher, Harmony Clark, so to prove that the public school was just as efficient, or more so, he challenged Miss Hyde to let her pupils participate in a public examination along with Miss Clark's. She accepted but to her disappointment her pupils failed in an example in partial payment. Harry Howland owned the house at the time and was superintendent of the Platner and Smith paper mill. In 1865 he demolished the old house and built a new one on modernistic lines of that period. Today it is used as a summer home by the Gilder-Miller families but bears slight resemblance to Howland's place.
The Gilder-Palmer farm, Four Brooks, is one of the oldest in town and has had only three family owners during its entire existence. Justus Battle settled here in a log cabin on the side of the mountain, during the last of the eighteenth century. Soon he built a part of the house now standing. About 1820 he, or his descendants, sold the farm to John Wesley Sweet, a Methodist preacher, who emigrated from Farmington, Conn. It remained in the Sweet family until purchased by Richard Watson Gilder, editor of Century Magazine and poet, of New York in 1897. For the previous four years the family had sum- mered at Riverside. It is still the summer home of Mr. Gilder's de- scendants.
While Mr. Gilder lived, Four Brooks Farm was the meeting place of many notables in literary, art and musical circles: Actor, Joseph Jefferson; naturalist, John Burroughs; sculptors, Daniel Chester French and August Saint-Gaudens; pianist, Gabrilowitch; artist, Cecilia Beaux; author, Henry Adams and many others. Mr. Gilder and Grover Cleveland were very close friends (Cleveland was his first guest at the farm) and to this was due Cleveland's interest as a so- journer in town. During his last years, Gilder spent more and more time at Four Brooks Farm, where he found inspiration for many of his poems and prose. To Henry Van Dyke, he wrote, "Tyringham is bounded on the north by fountains that never fail, great clouds of
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laurel, hills of rock and the Great Bear; on the south by Willow Glen, Tyringham River, the ghosts of Sister Anne and her fellow Shakers, the ponderous shadows of Fernside Forest and the high horizon line of Shaker Hills; on the east by the Purple Dawn, and on the west by a hundred summer sunsets". At another time he called it, "The Valley of the Stars".
John Sweet the 3rd, grandson of the first John Wesley Sweet, lived in the house next door and this too, was purchased by Mr. Gilder. In the summer of 1904, Mr. Gilder rented it to his friend, Mark Twain. Mr. Samuel Clemens, with his daughters, had just re- turned from Italy where Mrs. Clemens had recently died. It was an unhappy summer for the family and a very quiet one. The place, called Glencote, is owned and occupied summers by Attorney Edward Perkins of New York City.
At the north of Four Brooks stands the home of Donald Davis who conducts Tyringham Galleries in a former barn adjoining. There is no information concerning the date when this house was built nor its first owner. In 1862 it was owned by a man, named Videttoe, when Frederick and Sally Stedman Cone retired from Hickory Farm and came here to live. Both of them lived and died here. In her last days Sally was cared for by George and Lillie Stedman Kopp who inherited it from Sally. George Kopp sold to Benjamin F. Hobron, whose daugh- ter, Marie, married Henry Hudson Kitson, the sculptor.
It was Mr. Kitson who completely changed the appearance of, not only the buildings, but the land. He changed the design of the barn and used it for his studio. The farmers of the town tore down their stone walls and saved the rocks from their plowed fields to dump onto the Kitson property. Thus, he built the chimney on his house to represent smoke rising to the sky and the front of his studio to imitate the grottoes of Europe. The sculptor personally supervised local work- men in the placing of each stone, its contour to conform with its posi- tion. Then he visualized a roof in keeping with the rocks. He wanted a thatched roof like those on the country houses in his old haunts in England. For the thatch, he persuaded a few farmers in Tyringham and Lee to raise rye one summer but the venture failed. So he settled for a composition shingle of many thick layers, with blended colors to represent motion-the motion of wind, swirling autumn leaves.
He named his place "Santerella" and along the highway built a brush fence six feet high, to protect himself from curious eyes, which actually defeated his purpose, for greater grew the wonder of the public. The fence was made of dead pea-brush bound by willow strips between posts, crude and unsightly. It became brittle with age and crumbled in spots, making holes for the curious to peek through.
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