More Old Photos

 Last week, here, I shared some old photos of our house though we were not the intended subject of the photos.  Saturday I joined the local historical society and purchased two books that tell the history of this town.  Three more photos from one of those books show our house, too. 

We've been learning more about our house after the tip to search the deeds online at the Sullivan County website.  I'll share what we've learned in a future post.

The first photo is the Inn and store that used to be next to our property. Notice our house tucked in the right side.  This is a more recent photo than than one posted last week because the trees are grown.  We think that the year must be in the 1910s because of the car.  See it in front of the brick building?

The second photo is dated 1927 after the fire.  Again our house on the right.  But notice the hill behind - devoid of trees.  That's the hill we see out back and it's covered with trees as you know.

From the history book here's a description of the fire:

"April 7, 1927 - At 3 am, fire was discovered in the brick cottage ell of the C****** Inn by a son of A.F. Davis, the proprietor.  Connected to the 28 room hotel was a large, heavily timbered open shed with a hall on the second floor which was used for dances and public gatherings.  Beyond this. was a three story brick store owned by Evarts P. Brown.  The burning of these buildings and the barn, stables and smaller sheds resulted in a spectacular fire.  Fanned  by a strong wind, sparks and embers were scattered for nearly a mile.  The Inn and store were nearly 125 years old and in good condition, the loss was estimated between ten and twenty thousand dollars, only partially insured.  The library, furniture, jewels and equipment of the Cheshire Lodge, F. and A.M., which used the third floor of the store, were a total loss.  Several residences nearby (likely ours!) caught fire but were extinguished quickly; a heavy snow squall came at the height of the blaze, preventing any further chance of the fire spreading. The *** Fire Department arrived within a half hour. No one was injured."

The final photo has got to be in the 1950s judging from the car. A new store has been built.  That is still there but expanded and one day may be a new library/community center.  Again our house on the right and with a magnifying glass we can see the shadow of the barn.  The shutters are off compared to the picture above but the renovation to the long back part hasn't been done yet because the windows are different from what we have.  Finally the hill behind is overgrown with trees now.

I've been reading about New Hampshire history and learned this tidbit.  The part of NH where we are bordering Vermont on the Connecticut River petitioned to become part of Vermont as it was going through the process of becoming a state.  It nearly went through until the Continental Congress stepped in and said no.  After all the rest of NH didn't want to lose this part.

Old Photos

The local historical society has shared some old photos from our township.  I picked out these two.

Above is a hotel which would be our neighbor if it hadn't burned many years ago.  Notice the little house to the right of the hotel?  That's our home.

Here's the view out my window of The Meeting House.

 

Here's how it looked in an undated photo.  Those cattle would have been in a pasture next door to us.

How times change.

Cream Separator Sign

 When we visited the local historical society with our friends who visited in October, I told the curator about our cream separator sign and showed him photos.  Later by email he asked if he could do a historical society email about it.  Apparently this is something he does weekly.  I said, sure, and sent him the photos with explanations.

Here is his preamble to the photos.

Marcia Brown sent us these photographs of a sign she and her husband, Dan, who live in the Flat, found in their barn.  It is an advertisement for a device that was used to separate cream from milk.  At the bottom of the sign is the name Huggins, who was the Superintendent of the C****** Creamery.  There is a picture of him in Child(vol 1, p.184) with this caption: "C****** Creamery. Burt E. Huggins, Sperintendent, 1910.").  The Creamery was located just south of the Flat in what is now the home of Henry Homeyer and Cindy Heath.

Guess we'll never know how the sign ended up the Brown Barn.

#1 Original location of sign in the barn - attached to the barn wall and looking like a chalkboard.

#2 Sign removed from barn to clean it up.

#3 Backside of sign (photo upside down) showing mailing address.

#4 Sign installed in our loft/rec room in the barn.

Here are some of the more detailed comments he has received.

That is INCREDIBLE! What a beautiful sign. Every day I hope to find a gift from the Wellmans buried somewhere in this house, but so far I've only turned up mouse droppings. 

The cream separator was one of the great breakthrough inventions in the food processing industry. Prior to its adoption the separation of cream from whole milk relied on simply allowing the milk to sit and waiting for the cream to rise to the top. In the case of the C****** Creamery I'm quite sure that initially it used the practice of having the milk "set." That meant pouring the fresh whole milk into large flat pans and leaving it overnight. In the morning it would be "skimmed" for the risen cream. Chances are it would "set" a few hours longer to get a little more cream, and then the "skim milk" would be poured out of the pans and either dumped or taken back to the farms to be fed to calves and hogs. Needless to say, setting milk was very unsanitary--imagine the flies--and the separator not only saved time and labor, it greatly enhanced food safety. Most cream at creameries like C****** would be churned into butter on site, salted and shipped downcountry. A principal of C****** Creamery was Fred H. Rogers of Meriden, a very progressive farmer, politician and leader of the state Grange movement. That sign is a priceless piece of C****** history and deserves preservation. I once gave the C****** Historical Society a medal which had been won by your town's other creamery, The Hillside, for its butter at a major competition--I hope it has been accorded proper care and safekeeping. 

I grew up on a dairy farm in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, where my family also operated a small retail milk processing and house to house bottled milk and cream delivery business. The separator was an essential part of the operation. I recall many hours spent, as a child, turning the crank and watching skim milk flowing from one spout, and heavy cream from the other. Cleaning the separator daily was a tiresome exercise, as the internal workings are basically a stack of (many) cone shaped stainless steel discs that spin at a high speed throwing the heavier cream from the whole milk to the outside of the stack (as I best recall). A rudimentary centrifuge, I suppose. As time went on homogenized milk became the favored product, but my dad, right to the end, catered to a few of his old heavy cream customers. By then, he had rigged an electric motor replacing the “child power.”

The last time I recall seeing the old deLaval separator was on the scrap metal pile behind the barn. The photo of the sign and your comments brought back some fond memories. Thank you.

My grandmother, Mable Graham, had her hand-cranked separator mounted on the sideboard in the pantry. She had two cows...a Jersey and a Guernsey...and peddled milk and cream to the summer people down on "the point." When she filled the glass milk bottles, sometimes the cream came almost half way down the bottle. Nana's delivery vehicle was an old Buick with one missing door. Carlton, the hired man, drove. Nana always owned a car, but never learned to drive. 

Apparently our sign has generated lots of memories.

From White to Yellow

 

 Above photo taken Oct 31, 2020 when we had the house inspection before settlement in December.

Below is photo taken today, Oct 29, 2021.

Here is move in day December 15, 2020.

Today.

A snowy day last February.

June of this year.

Backyard this summer after deck completed and new flower beds made..

The barn before renovations.

and in progress.

Now.

We are hoping the barn whisperer sees that the painting is complete and will come to put doors on the barn.

Joining the Neighborhood

 

The barriers, both natural and man-made, that have kept us from seeing our neighbors are almost all down.

First we dealt with the natural barriers of trees and overgrown shrubs that limited our views west.

The tree service trimmed everything down and pulled as much of the stumps they could.

The view below shows the deck halved in size and grass seeded where deck once was.  The foreground is where a mass of shrubs lived.

We've had that graded along with the mound beyond the deck and new grass seeded.

Looking the opposite direction and blocking our views of the neighborhood was this massive fence.

To the right was another even longer fence. 

New Hampshire folk are frugal people and when we advertised in our local newsletter that the wood was for the taking if the person took down the fence, our neighbor up the road called to say he wanted it.  He need old wood to fill the gaps in his old barn and other projects. Hooray!

He tackled the front fence first.  Now that it's gone, we can see our neighbors across the way.

He started on the long fence and is taking it down too.

With the fences disappearing neighbors are saying hello and chatting even more. Those fences were barriers to meeting people because the fences said "Private - Stay Out!" without even having a printed sign.

Before and After

 Our driveway was finished on Tuesday afternoon.  What a difference!

Before:

After:

We had trouble with water getting into basement so we had a French drain put in.  He lined the trench he dug with pond liner first, then laid the perforated pipe.  A solid pipe continued under the driveway down to the barn.

Before:

After:

We have access to the barn as a garage, once the cement slab is fully cured and we have a turnaround.

It was amazing to see him with the excavator.  He never once banged the house or barn.

This morning after a hard rain from Ida the driveway is even more settled and packed down.  It's called hard pack.  .

Another contractor done.  Next is the house painter coming this month.  

The barn whisperer has been notified that the grading and driveway are complete.   His wife drove by as we ate our lunch on the front porch.  She stopped to remark on how well it all looked.  Next up for the barn, hopefully before winter, are doors and leveling the left side of the barn.

Fire Pit

 Look what we built Sunday morning?

We used this YouTube Video - LINK here. Our costs were about double of what they described and we had to use 12 stones to make a circle not 10.

The fire Marshall required that we have 1 foot of area outside the circle.  He was surprised that we built it so fast.  He came on Saturday to review whether our placement was okay and then I called him on Sunday afternoon to approve it and issue our burn permit (required by state law).  He was impressed.

We invited daughter and family over for a campfire Sunday night to inaugurate the fire pit.  Emily brought the makings of s'mores except no graham crackers - she substituted gluten free cookies.

After they went home, we sat outside listening to the radio (streaming from WAMU FM a Washington DC station) until the fire burned down.  It was lovely.

p.s. you can see the finished deck there too.  No real furnishings there yet so I'll save featuring that until until next Spring when we make deck furniture purchases.

And today the driveway is being redone!  Progress!