House History

Hidden Hollow c 1982. Original center section with three windows and door.

     When I planned my fall trip to Sherman, CT, my goal was to examine the records in the Town Vaults to see if I could learn more about the families who lived here before mine. I had no idea that I would have the privilege of meeting Lida Beckwith's descendants, Ted Adams 1,2 and 3. Ted 2 had done a great deal of research on the Worden Family. More discoveries about another Hardscrabble Road family were to follow.

     The couple who bought the TeeVan house just up the road graciously invited me to dinner. We poured over a copy of an photo-album-house-diary that the Damrosches, Helen TeeVan's brother's family, had sent them when the bought the house. Then they told me that a descendant of the Ingersoll family had called, and gave me her address. I could hardly believe it; the Ingersolls sold the house more than 100 years ago, But there she was, living near Hartford. I spent an afternoon with her, and learned that she had done all the hard genealogical work, and knew what happened to the Ingersoll children and grandchildren. 

     Inspired by information these wonderful people provided me, far beyond my expectations for the trip,  I began to sort out the tangled web of Wills and Deeds, and absorb the world of Hardscrabble Road in the 19th Century. I literally must not see the forests that now surround these houses. The fear of forests in an ancient one, and in the case of these second growth wood lots, obscures the neighborly nature of the houses on Hardscrabble Road. Absent the trees, the houses are in sight of the others, and their adjoining fields contiguous. Moreover in 1850, just a mile's walk down the hill, was a gaggle of small industries, mill, tannery, harness shop and two blacksmiths. A mile and half north, on what's now a "ghost road," were school, shop and chapel. Less than two miles west, in New York State was another school and a store.

     I must also dispense with the idea that these stony fields were the only source of income for the residents. Farm they did, but the first documented occupants, the Osborns, had a shoe shop, and various members of the family were carpenters, sawyers and millers as well. In fact, the built history of the houses, with their additions, two to Hidden Hollow, and the conjoined nature of the TeeVan's house, was possibly the result of the Osborn's skills and their expanding families in the early 19th Century.

     Sometimes the houses seemed to serve as retirement homes, for elderly couples, each marrying for the second time, their chlidren living nest door. Connecticut changed its statutes to allow women to contract and hold property independent of their husbands in 1877. Two of the residents, Nancy Ingersoll and Jane Ludington Worden, were wealthy widows, who remarried after the change. In both cases, their real estate is sold to satisfy the claims of all heirs, not just their husband and his heirs.

     The largest of the landowners of the area was Joel Durga, who lived up what's now called Parker road, but was, according to Mrs. TeeVan's notes, called "Jayville Road," possibly because most of the Durga children had names starting with J: James, John, Joel. Although much of the land that he acquired remained in the family's hands into the 20th Century, the portion of their lands which was to make up my father's 20 odd acres had a strange history. It seems to have been the portion of Joel's son John Durga. John married in 1853 and had two children. By 1880 he was living alone; his wife and children living in Macon, Missouri. In 1897 he as declared an insane pauper by the Selectmen, and sent to the Connecticut Retreat for the Insane in Middletown. 6 months later, he was dead, leaving only his house, acreage, a pair of boots, a flynet for his horse, an Indian blanket an anvil and a plow. The real estate was sold by his estate to Lida Beckwith's father, John Henry Worden.

     Death, divorce, diapers.