Old Photographs, Newspapers and the Internet

     

     Before I moved to California, Mrs. Dawson, from the foot of Hardscrabble Road, gave me some old photographs of the Wordens of Hidden Hollow. They show John Henry Worden, Otis Durga, Althilla Worden and Mary Beckwith, photographed sometime in the 1920's. They have been the touchstone of my investigation of the house. I am determined to know more about their lives.

     A discovery on the Internet took me forward. A local newpaper, the Putnam County Courier is on line. (http://www.localarchives.org/mahopac/) In it, for decades, in the early 1900's, someone wrote a neighborhood news column under the heading "Maple Glenn." Featured were the travels, socializing, births and deaths of the Wordens, the Durgas, the Dawsons and their neighbors on Route 37 in New Fairfield and Haviland Hollow Road in Patterson, NY.

    Mrs. Dawson's daughter, now Mrs. Margaret Beagle, figures prominently in the columns, with shopping trips to Danbury, picnics and dances. I printed out the newspaper pages, and took them with me to visit her. She and her family still live one of the Jennings houses near the old mill site. Her blue eyes sparkled as she tried to fathom which neighbor had written the columns almost 90 years ago; this was the first time she'd seen them. She recalled old Henry Worden coming down to play cards and how her mother disapproved of his leaving his wife alone on the hill.

     I'm learning that small scale industry came to these Northwestern hills of Connecticut early in the 19th Century. I'm also recognizing that this was a community. We might think it dispersed, spreading as it does, up the hill and across a few miles, but even before automobiles and party lines, trade and family made it a neighborhood.

     

     

     

     

    

A 19th Century Industrial Park

Old Industry 

Rural Peace

Ward Moss has lived in the 200 year old house at the foot of Hardscrabble Road for as long as I can remember. According to a 19th Century map, Ward's house is located next to Jenning's Mill, a tannery, a carriage shop, a blacksmith and two shoemakers. Because of flooding from Hardscrabble Brook as it joins Quaker Brook, Ward has had to rebuild the old stonework. In doing so, he came upon the piece pictured above, possibly part of the old tannery bark mill.

 That is not the only ghostly presence of the past. A few years ago, he decided to add a bay window to his kitchen. When siding and plaster were removed, he found a pair of high button baby shoes, concealed within the walls of the house. Researching the practice, Ward learned that the concealment of shoes to ensure fertility, or ward off evil spirits, was an old European folk practice. 

Ward, truck driver and rider of motorcycles and horses, is  himself is a great teller of the great tales he heard from the last of those who farmed in Sherman. His knowledge of the area's people is vast, his love for it, profound. Ward, who has traveled this country over hauling horses, helps me understand how and why people choose to stay here.

In Endings A Beginning

     I begin with two gravestones in a cemetery in Northwest Connecticut. On the left, Lida Beckwith, who sold Hidden Hollow to my father in 1937. On the right, her husband, Burton Beckwith, who I know only through Lida's  description of him, recently deceased, in a letter to my father. The day is perfect fall. I talk with the President of the Coburn Cemetery about the graves of Lida's father, John Henry Worden, and his wife, Arthilla, which have toppled over. I feel almost as though they are my own relatives, and that I am being very Chinese in caring for their graves.

With amazement, I find the marker for Lida's first daughter Mary, who appears in the 1910 Census, but never again. It seems that Mary married an Adams, and they are both buried here. Armed with their birth and death dates, I return to the Rocky River Motel and my Internet connection and Ancestry.com, the genealogist's best friend. To my delight, I find that there is a complete family tree for Lida, and the poster probably lives in New Milford. A few emails and telephone calls, and I am in touch with Lida's grand, great-grand and great-great grandsons, or as I like to call them, Ted I,II and III. Ted II, the genealogist is eager to meet with me and share what he has learned.

     As I arrive in New Preston, where he lives, I immediately find some answers to the question underlying my book, Hidden Hollow: Why do people stay in one place? Although Lida sold Hidden Hollow, and moved to Sherman Center, her great grandson has not travelled far. His house is situated on a lovely hillside, and family live nearby, just as they did at Hidden Hollow for 150 years. 

More surprises are quick to follow. Ted produces the adoption papers for Lida! It seems that after 10 childless years, John Henry Worden and Arthilla adopted an infant from New York City. I learn all about Mary and her husband, a surveyor for the State of Connecticut, who worked on the design of Merritt Parkway. And then I learn that Lida's second child, Frances, whom she described in her letter to my father, is alive and living in New Milford! She did marry her war-time sweetheart, but they divorced and she remarried. 

Ted's interest in genealogy has sparked a fascination with history in his son, Ted III, a very bright young man. With reluctance I leave them and return to the Rocky River. An auspicious beginning, I think.

     

     

Another Journey East

Hidden Hollow, circa 1937

     October finds me in northwestern Connecticut. After more than a year's research and writing about my father, the photo-journalist, crime reporter and O'Neill biographer, Croswell Bowen, and his house, Hidden Hollow, there are questions that can only be answered in the record vaults of the small towns that surround the house: Patterson and Pawling, New York; and Sherman and New Fairfield, Connecticut. Maybe there are people who remember him.

     I've made a reservation to stay at the Rocky River Motel in New Milford. The Rocky River used to flow into the Housatonic; now it lies beneath Candlewood Lake. From innumerable childhood rides to New Milford for supplies, I remembered the location not far from the Connecticut Light and Power pumping station. The Patel family have done a great job rescuing this motel and making it a wonderful alternative to Bad-Day Inns on the interstates.

     Using the Internet, I've scouted the various places and people I need to visit, and written annunciatory letters. Yet, I'm anxious. Will I have time to visit all these libraries, historical societies, town clerks? How will old friends of mine and my father's receive me? How will visiting an old place, loved and lost, effect me? Will I find the answers I'm seeking?