BOOK TALK AT BOOK COVE IN JUNE

Akin Free Library, Quaker Hill, NY

I'll be at the Book Cove in Pawling, NY, probably the first weekend in June to showcase my father, Croswell Bowen's book of photographs of the Hudson Valley, Great River of the Mountains: The Hudson. He began the research for this right up the hill at the Akin Free Library with the story of Mehitable Wing and William Prendergast and the 18th Century Rent Wars.

The exact date and time TBD!

Stay tuned!

Croswell Bowen's Curse of the Misbegotten Online!

Of interest to Shermanites who recall that the artists and writers in residence here included Eleanor Fitzgerald, Sue Jenkins Brown, Paul Lund of the Provincetown Players, as well as admirers of Eugene O'Neill such as Malcolm Cowley and Hart Crane:

Croswell Bowen's 1959 biography of Eugene O'Neill, Curse of the Misbegotten: A Tale of the House of O'Neill is now online at the premier site for O'Neill fans and scholars, eOneill.com. This site is the creation of Harley J Hammerman, MD, and is an example of what the Web should be. My sisters and I wrote an introductory essay for the electronic version.

And the River Flows..Down Under!

Join me as I meet myself in Australia! Home to the "Desert Rats," who defended Tobruk before my father arrived in time for Rommel's attack!

Whose Woods?

     Part of my hope in searching the deeds at the Sherman Town Hall Vaults was to understand how the dozens of fields enclosed by stone walls were used by 19th residents on Hardscrabble Road. Alas, the vague descriptions of the era, "a pile of stones," " a soft maple tree," combined with nature's changes to the landscape make this difficult.

     I wanted Marge Josephson, of the Naromi Land Trust, and Gloria Thorne, of the Sherman Historical Society to see this massive stone wall, located at the northern boundary of my father's old place. It may be the zig-zag wall that one of the deeds references. It is eight or ten feet wide, located perpendicular to a perennial wet section between two other fences, its purpose not clear.

     We walked the land which, when Hidden Hollow was subdivided by its new owners, was donated to the Naromi Land Trust. I'm glad that section, with other curious stone structures, possibly a sheep fold, is a conservation area.

Of Boundaries and Bounders

Disputed Territory: Croswell Bowen owned this one acre parcel, across from Hidden Hollow. Helen Tee-Van called it John Worden's Arbutus Swamp and was disturbed when Bowen put up a writing studio which turned out to be on the Tee-Van side of the boundary.

     In describing my father in psycho-analytic terms, his cousin, Dr. Carolyn Mackenzie, observed that he had problems with personal, social boundaries and limits. His relationship with his neighbors at Hidden Hollow is a grand metaphor for this.

    As I've written, the Tee-Vans were great friends of Walter and Isobel Merritt, who presented them with the deed to their house and property at Christmas, 1928. This relation was partly based on a shared love of nature, and partly on both couples' places in New York Society. I've explained Merritt's brilliant success as a pro-management lawyer in labor disputes. The Tee-Van's position in New York was more complicated. Helen Tee-Van was the daughter of Frank Damrosch, a distinguished member of a distinguished family that included musicians Leopold and Walter Damrosch, and David Mannes, and the writer Marya Mannes. Mrs. Tee-Van was an artist, illustrator and author. She met John Tee-Van while both accompanied the New York Zoological Society's expedition to British Guiana with the famous explorer, William Beebe. For decades she continued her career as an illustrator and muralist of wild life in its setting. John Tee-Van's origins were humbler, his skills as impressive. Tee-Van's father came from Ireland and worked on the construction of the Bronx Zoo. John Tee-Van, born in Brooklyn, worked at the Zoo as assistant keeper or cage cleaner in the birdhouse. In 1916,  William Beebe, recognizing his skills in caring for animals, made him his assistant in the Department of Tropical Research. Two dozen expeditions and many publications followed, and he became Director of the Bronx Zoo. 

     The TeeVans named their Hardscrabble Road house Kartabo, after a locale in British Guiana. Helen delighted in the seasonal progression of plants. The couple's first weekend guests were the wife and son of the Former Borough President of New York, George McAneny. Many interesting visitors followed: Frank Damrosch, Warder and Polly Norton, founders of the publishing company, Clifford Pope, who accompanied Roy Chapman Andrews to China and found the first fossilized dinosaur eggs, Eugene Gudger, the foremost expert on whale sharks, Laura Bragg, a pioneer as head of the Charleston Museum, and many other fascinating personalities. Among the most interesting to me would have been Chiang Yee. Chiang Yee, trained as a chemist, but was prolific as a writer, poet and painter of the Silent Traveller series. John Tee-Van and Chiang Yee corresponded about pandas; John Tee-Van was called the panda nurse because he successfully brought two young giant pandas from Chungking, just as Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

     When Chiang Yee visited the TeeVans in 1953, Hidden Hollow was leased to their friends, Paul Fitzpatrick and Toni Hatvany, and I was seven years old. Three months later, we went for a picnic by the brook opposite the house. I remember it, and evidently it made an impression on Mrs. Tee-Van as well, for she noted in her album that we had behaved noisily in the "Arbutus Swamp." A week later, she discovered my father building a house in which to type, above the Swamp. She contacted the Zoning Board to see if he had permission, and then decided to investigate if in fact the shack was on the TeeVan's land. Sherman's land record and surveying experts were called out to investigate the boundaries. The building was on the Tee-Van's land, although my father claimed he had been told otherwise by Lida Beckwith.

     The shack remained on the hillside, unused and becoming more and more of a shack. A few years later, the Fitzpatricks gave up their lease, and we regained Hidden Hollow. Helen Tee-Van had not much like my father, referring to the famous Pedro, aka Piotr Lupinski, as one of Croswell Bowen's tramp friends, and remarking in 1937 that Croswell Bowen, a friend of some of her messier tenants, had bought John Worden's house. I think she valued her privacy and quiet. She had no children of her own, but doted on her Damrosch nieces, taken them to visit the Goldenrod Jungle, across the road. She remained annoyed with my father; her disdain felt even by me.

     My question about this symbolic interaction is whether or not my father intended to discomfit Mrs. Tee-Van by ignoring the boundary, and thus shake loose the Fitzpatricks from the house? Did she dislike him because his quicksilver intelligence flickered too lightly over the scientific analysis of the Tee-Van's world and the artistic seriousness of the Damrosch's?  

     

     

     

     

Why is the 20th of April 1877 a special day?

Graves of Betsy and Franklin Ingersoll, Coburn Cemetery, Sherman, CT

     In late 19th Century wills, the phrase "married since the 20th Day of April 1877" appears repeatedly. Upon further investigation, I learned that was when Connecticut changed its laws such that husbands no longer automatically gained control of property a wife brought to a marriage. Women became legal entities apart from their husbands and could make contracts etc. This didn't apply to Betsy, who married Franklin Ingersoll in 1828, and over the next 20 years bore him 9 children. Before 1860, they moved with 4 of their children from north of Chapel Hill Road to Hardscrabble Road. Nancy died in 1876.

     Franklin remarried, after 1877 but  before 1880. This second wife was Nancy Riggs; she may have been the widow of Stephen Briggs. She must have been wealthy; 53 years old in 1880, she and the 73 year old Franklin lived in the TeeVan's house with a couple, the Richmonds, to help with the housekeeping and farm chores. 

     Nancy died in 1888, Franklin lived two years longer. Because her property was held separately, under the 10 year old law, and because she died without making a will, Franklin's share was half her estate, and her surviving brothers and sisters received the other half. An inventory of the estate was required to make an equitable distribution. This inventory is a window into both the farm and domestic life of Hardscrabble Road.

     Only a foundation now exists where a barn once stood. That barn contained not only a horse, hay, robe and blanket, harness, wagon, 2 sleds, 2 plows, a pole tongue, a stone boat, old wagons, a sleigh and an ox breaching and bells, but also diverse tools of farming.  A scythe, 2 yokes and flails, a fanning mill, a cutting box, 6 forks and 4 rakes, were also counted. Implements like augers, an anvil, chains, an adz, 3 axes, saws, planes, stone augers, and 6 punch lathes were on hand. Although these were generally part of the man's realm on farms, they were all counted in the inventory of Nancy's personal goods. 

The house consisted of no more than 6 rooms, including the kitchen ell. We can imagine how it was furnished. The northern addition probably served as parlor, with an office chair, a parlor rocker, a lounge, a writing desk, a parlor stove and 20 yards of parlor carpet. In the bedrooms there were three bedsteads, 3 straw ticks, 1 feather tick, dutch blankets, blue plaid blankets, 7 pillow cases, 2 quilts, 2 bed pillows and bolsters. There were wash bowls and pitchers and chamber pots with lids.

     In the center room and ell were chairs, a center table, a kitchen table, a bureau which contained white china, yellow china, glass dishes, platters, a piece of majolica, teacups, saucers, pie plates and so on.

     Kerosene had come into use, there was a can of it. It probably made washing a little less tedious. There were wash tubs and boilers, 21 milk pans and stone (ware)  jugs, a tub of lard, a pot of butter, casks of vinegar and cider, barrels of rags and wool. With the 29 fowl in the chicken yard, Nancy's worldly possessions totalled about $322, a third of the value of her real estate, 90 acres and the house and other buildings, valued at $1200. 

     The latter was sold to the widow Jane Ludington, second wife to Lida's grandfather, John Reynolds Worden, also married since April 20, 1877. When she dies, two years after John R, her property is inherited by her children by her first marriage. It is sold, this time to Lida Beckwith's husband. The two houses are still in the hands of relations. Lida and Burton at the TeeVan house and Lida's father John Henry and his wife Arthilla at Hidden Hollow.

     

Farmer Slack and Farmer Snug

From The American Agriculturalist 16 (March 1857):60, found in 

Sally McMurry's Families and Farmhouses in 19th Century America

     If you own or love an 18th Century house, would not a house description, including owner, construction materials, number of stories and windows, dimensions and plot size, of every house in the 16 states that comprised the US in 1798, be of interest to you? The fear of war with the French caused such an inventory to be made. Sadly, only fragments survive. The inventories for Kent and Warren, CT, were rediscovered in 2004-2005.

     Analysis of the housing stock revealed by these inventories came as a shock to Jack Larkin, chief historian of Old Sturbridge Village. He found that 2/3rds of houses in places like central Massachusetts were one story dwellings, much smaller than ever imagined, resembling the home of Farmer Slack, above left. He observes that the grand houses, the ones at house museums, comprised only 10% of early 19th Century housing, but because they tend to survive on the landscape, they dominate our image of New England.

     Quickly tabulating the numbers of Big, Middling and Small houses illustrated in Sherman's venerable The Sentinel Houses (1978-Out of Print) confirms Larkin's observation. Of the roughly 50 houses shown and discussed in the book, more than half fall into the "Better Sort" category, while just a third represent the historically predominate small houses that were more typical, especially of marginal farming areas. 

     Fortunately for those of us whose love affair has been with smaller houses, such as mine with Hidden Hollow, the last 40 years have seen greater interest in vernacular architecture. The folklorist, Henry Glassie, has written a book of that title. Rather that focussing on monumental buildings or individual architects, vernacular architecture examines the patterns visible in common and anonymous building types. From these patterns, we can learn some things about houses like Hidden Hollow, and the TeeVan house, as I call it, around the bend in Hardscrabble Road. (It would still be wonderful, of course, to find the 1798 Direct Tax list of particulars for New Fairfield and Sherman.)

     Both houses began as simple, one or one and 1/2 room, one story buildings, certainly in place before 1856, as they are shown on maps of that date. At that time they were occupied by related families, generations of the Osborns. The TeeVan house has some characteristics which indicate it may be the older of the two, namely a massive chimney and an orientation to the compass rather than the road. But both houses originally shared an asymmetrical arrangement of door and window. Glassie observed this pattern of half houses world wide: it allows the family to add a balancing addition at a later date. And that is precisely what the Osborns, who were carpenters, seem to have done. In the case of the TeeVan house, they appear to have conjoined two buildings to accomplish the symmetrical floorplan. At Hidden Hollow, the older section is made of ax-hewn visible post and beam and oak or chestnut boards; the new additions have pine flooring and no visible posts. Hidden Hollow's center chimney is just that, with only openings for stove pipes. If it ever had a massive hearth, it was removed.

     To me, both houses were snug and comfortable, but perhaps living in them with a half or a dozen other people, as the Osborns, and later the Ingersolls, did in the 19th Century might have been a little too snug. As for Farmer Slack, he reminds me of the story that Lida Beckwith told of her husband saying her she was so slack, if he died first, she'd be in filth up to her waist. He did, and she wasn't!