Historic Photos history, photography 10:31
I think this is George Creevey, Lucy Creevey’s husband. In real life, he was a well respected NYC surgeon. Although filed in the West Hill Pond photographs, I suspect this was actually one of the road! trips into the Catskills. Complete with converted ox cart as a trailer behind a Model A Ford. Clearly, in that era, being handy with an axe and a bit of rope was a rather useful skill.
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Historic Photos and Historical Events history, photography 13:07
Until the big water company reservoirs were built in the 1930’s, New Hartford had only an assortment of small ponds and rivers to swim in. Greenwoods pond served the town center admirably; it was a large mill pond (really at two miles long it was a lake) created by damming the Farmington River.* There were other assorted mill ponds throughout town and deep curves of the Nepaug River, swimming holes in fact. However, there was also West Hill Pond. Although a dam added height, this was and is a natural pond of substantial depth. Spring fed it is very cold and very clean, even today. Pre World War II, there was almost no development on it (there is now!!).
The lake is on the next hill over, and a series of roads has linked Town Hill and West Hill since New Hartford’s founding.* Until the early twentieth century there was a very direct road, since abandoned. But even today along several twisting roads it is an easy ride with a horse. Until the 1950’s/early 1960’s, Esperanza owned two large pieces of the shoreline: ‘Boys and Girls Points’. These pieces were given to the Boy Scouts’ Camp Sequassen and remain part of the camp today. Until that time, camping and swimming at West Hill featured prominently in the summer activities.
I can only identify the person paddling past on the log in the background: Eileen Creevey Hall. The photo is circa 1920-23
*Greenwoods pond vanished entirely in March 1936: a flood took out the dam, which was 32 feet high and 200 feet long); along with the pond went a good chunk of the town.
*Yes, there is an East Hill!
Historic Photos and Historical Events history, photography 14:03
Celebrating the Fourth in 1913, a reading of the Declaration perhaps?, in an antique uniform, sadly since vanished (except for the sword). Who all is involved, I couldn’t quite say. However, the moustache strongly suggests that the reader is William Webster Ellsworth. He would be the natural choice, as the family’s elder statesman, a gifted orator, and descendant of those worthy Wolcott, Ellsworth, Webster…ad infinitum.
I do like the parasol. The house is just visible, today, where they are sitting is a shady garden bed.
Historic Photos and Modern Photos farming, gardening, history, photography 19:16
you can see the chucker in action in the modern photo, that eliminates two or three people, right there.
Good thing, since extra bodies don’t seem to be around this year, but what a good year! My guess, conservatively, close to ten tons of hay, and bone dry at that, so very light.*
We are pretty much a cheering squad, a friend does the actual work…
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Historic Photos 14:47
Lest one think we are well organized….We have an impressive run of photographs here, slowly being digitized*, however; it is not well labelled. Actually, it really is mostly unlabeled.** Now, family members can usually be sorted out, there are enough pictures connected to enough other information that patterns can be combined with elimination with some level of success. Visitors and such are a headache but marginally possible, in theory. The impossible ones are those one-time photos at a special event.
This photo is an example of that, taken in 1911 at what appears to be a school graduation (unknown). Who is it? Clearly, someone important to the photographer (also an unknown). I must admire the clothing though, and the parasol, and the gloves, and the fan, and all that white lace on the cuffs and the neckline! In summer. Can you imagine the work?
*funnily enough the current gaps in the digital record are from the late 1800’s, prints and glass negatives, and the late 1900’s, also prints. The majority of the 1905-1930’s negatives have been scanned and after that slide film was used into the 1980’s, which has all been digitized. Post 2000, most of the print film was also on CD’s, and then shortly thereafter we went completely digital.
** Yes, that is a hint for some help with keywords…
Esperanza and Historic Photos and Historical Events and Modern Photos 05:18
“hundreds of nights on the white road have I passed it by, in my lonely walk, and stopped and listened to it, standing there in its lights, like a kind of low singing in the trees; and when I have come home later, on the white road, and the lights were all put out, I still feel it speaking there, faint against heaven, with all its sleep, its young and old sleep, its memories and hopes of birth and death, lifting itself in the night, a prayer of generations.”
Gerald Stanley Lee, writing of Esperanza in his book ‘The Lost Art of Reading’ published 1902.
On March 1st, 1872, Julie took possession of the old Lyman house. Morris had bought it over Christmas, 1871, as a replacement for the neighboring house, bought in 1871, which had burnt down in late November. The Lyman house was not available until March, 1872 because it was being rented.
In January, 1872, Julie wrote to a friend, “Satis Bene lies in ruins, but I have become the happy possessor of the Lyman place, to which Morris and I have given the name, Esperanza-Anchor of Hope.” Thus started the story.
Esperanza, circa 1875-1880, mid-summer.
Esperanza, July 2011
May it continue!
Historic Photos 11:59
Eileen Creevey Hall and one of the black ponies, Nip or Tuck, in the fields below the Royal Oak. Taken from a negative scan of a set of photos long forgotten.
The picture was taken late in the 1920’s, so it was whichever pony was still around at that time (help Jamie or Betsy?). They were much loved by Eileen, who still spoke fondly of them eighty years later. They had been bought as a perfectly matched pair, the classic little black welsh pony type.
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Esperanza and Historic Photos 16:38
(no I don’t know why the picture is that small, probably the negative scan) In any event, a view of the east lawn circa 1935, possibly a bit later. It has to be after the mid-1930s because the house is sporting its white, asbestos shingles which it still has but perhaps not so Brightly white. The pines just to the right of the right pillar are still standing, as is the big Norway spruce (the tree second from left); they are a bit fatter today. All the other trees are gone, replaced with others. However, the stump remnants of several can still be found (the stump/hole of the one by the left pillar is forever tripping me) The fringe tree, the shrub in front of the left pillar, is still extant. As is the bench. The pillars, leaning rather alarmingly in this photo, were rebuilt in the 1950’s. The woman is Helen Yale Ellsworth, then in her 70’s or so.
It is interesting to note how the landscaping has changed, at that time the lawn was very, for lack of better terminology, much a lawn, kept short and coming farther out under the trees. Today, there has been a revision to a wilder look. This was partly due at first to the simple fact that if you stop cutting the forest down here…it grows back; today, however, it is a stylistic choice. While I appreciate the aesthetics of the lawn, the fact that a lawn is a monoculture of an invasive species just puts me off. I like my violets, my Indian paintbrush, mosses, ferns, ad infinitum, much more interesting.
Historic Photos 17:30
After the tennis game
This is one of ‘those’ photos wherein identification is difficult. The man seated on the far right is Morris Smith, Julie’s husband; interestingly, he almost always appears in photos seated and in profile, he clearly didn’t care for informal photographs of himself. The woman seated in front in the dark dress is Carlotta Norton Smith, with a hat in her lap. Beyond that, things get difficult. The guest book does tell us that in the few days before the 14th, William Gillette (of Gillette castle fame), Helen Foster (a close family friend) and two men with the last name of Bartlett, one from Hartford and one from New Orleans so presumably business associates of Morris or friends of Carlotta, came to visit. It doesn’t tell us how long they stayed. And there were any number of other people visiting in July of that year according to the guest book….no doubt if I work at it, I will figure it out a bit more…sort of like those infernal puzzles about the girl in the blue house has pet x and the boy with the dog lives in the house of y colour. (all of which assumes the date on the negative is accurate)
So what else? Well, corsets, bustles and hats were clearly in fashion. Women’s hair was always up. Tennis was played with a tie on. Note the terrarium on the right, a wonderful Victorian piece of furnishing. Note the impeccable edge of the path and the lawn… Now, where are we? Believe it or not, they are sitting just about where today the grill is just outside the dining room, where the current east porch narrows. The porch in the photo is Queen Anne style, and was added in the 1870’s. It appears to have been at least two different colours, though what we don’t know.* The porch and the room above it were extended out and above the old, original farmhouse entrance, which was a very simple Greek Revival house.* The Queen Anne porch had a short life, in 1893 the north ell is built and the east facade gains its current appearance with classically inspired square pillars without ornamentation on the nearly full length porch. The tree is long, long gone. It looks like it was a member of the buckeye/horse chestnut family. Since then an elm, and now a Japanese maple have occupied that spot.
*The choices include Pink. Slightly unbelievable, but one of the cottages was originally painted in pink and cream…
*This is one of the headaches of the house’s history. It appears that the facade when they bought the house in 1873 was Greek Revival, an architectural style which is generally dated as beginning around 1825. However, the deeds and interior evidence firmly date the house to 1805-1810 or 1790-1800. Why two dates? Well, an 1805 deed doesn’t mention the house, an 1800 and an 1810 deed do. So? Why is the facade wrong for the date of the house? What is wrong with the deeds? Something, somewhere is askew in the history.
Esperanza and Historic Photos 11:24
One of the earliest known photos of the house taken in 1880. The house’s original c.1800 center section is clearly shown in this picture, prior to the 1893 northern addition. The original driveway alignment is clear here. Today the small dirt road has been moved about a hundred feet farther away (thank heavens) and is now a state highway. The highway was shifted in the 1930’s when the state took over the road. The Y entrance no longer exists; the south arm has vanished, though you can find it in the woods with a shovel easily! One of its last vestiges was the location of the mailbox at a seemingly anomalous point half-way along the property’s front line, apparently unconnected to any house, that was finally changed just this fall. The northern arm has been slightly straightened and extended and is now the drive (the Rabbit Hole).
Obviously the title of Rabbit Hole doesn’t apply yet. (No I don’t know if it was supposed to refer to Alice or not, I sometimes think it ought) All that open space is now a fully mature stand of Norway Spruce, pine, maple, and oak. The taller of the two Norways, to the left, in this picture still stands at 109 feet tall and probably 150-160 years old at the least, since it was clearly well over twenty years old in that photo, so at or before the Civil War. The small maples you can see in a line going across the Y are now old trees, they are no longer immediately obvious as a line of maples because they are buried in the woods, but once you look it is clear.
Acair Fearann 