The Homestead Of The Nichols
Family
At Newtown Connecticut, Built In 1654
By Pamela Hubbell Lane
Written in 1858
(Wife of William Jared Lane; Born 1798 at Bridgeport, CT)
It may be amusing to your readers, now in
these days of luxury, refinement and wealth, to look back about fifty years and
contrast that period with the present. The
change which a person of sixty years has seen are almost incredible, and when I
picture to myself the old homestead in Connecticut where I used to visit my
grandmother, and the scene in which I partook, I can scarce believe that I could
ever have in reality witnessed them, but that it must have been a story of ages
ago which I heard and remembered in my childhood and which I now read as a
dream.
The old house itself was built somewhere about
1654, and was as much a curiosity in its way, and as full of hiding places and
queer out-of-the-way nooks and corners almost, as an old English castle. It
stood fronting south on a little knoll, which sloped down to a small stream
running through a magnificent orchard, between which and the house was an
old-fashioned garden, with cabbage roses, peonies, pinks, the pretty little
violets and other similar flowers, not forgetting a bed of fennel and coriander.
At the foot of the garden was a hedge of quince bushes and lilacs, and on
the east side, catching the first rays of the sun, were some noble peach trees
under which the bee hives were protected, the inmates of which plundered the
garden and meadows to their heart’s content.
The house originally built on the plan then
general in that part of the country, had a large room probably thirty feet
square on each side of the small hall which only afforded room for entrance and
a broad staircase, and was occupied, the one to the left was the family room,
and the other as the parlor. In the
former, were suspended from immense rafters overhead numerous shelves, where
milk, cheese, etc. were deposited. The
huge fireplace with its immense oven occupied more than half of one side, and
here in the corners were benches placed, which in the cold nights of winter were
eagerly sought by the children. Logs
of the whole length of the cord and wood heaped on the iron dogs, sent a
cheerful blaze through the large room lighting up every corner.
There was no excess of furniture, plain, substantial chairs, a table or
two, a corner cupboard filled with shining pewter and an old-fashioned clock
made up the sum of all that was needed. The
floor was well sanded and no one thought of the luxury of a carpet.
The parlor was wainscoted and curious in some respects - the hearth was
raised above the floor several inches, and although the fireplace was nearly as
large as that in the outroom, as we called it, was different, and an evident
attempt at ornament showed itself. The
furniture, worn and dilapidated, was of extreme age, never having been renewed,
and was of that stiff, massive kind still seen occasionally in every old house,
with claw feet and eagle's beak, and as ponderous and heavy as the house itself.
Many additions had been made to the original
house-- on one side a long immense kitchen, on another an additional and more
modern parlor and bedroom- so that at last the old building covered more than a
hundred feet square. These had been built by my great grandfather for his
youngest son on his marriage to my grandmother, he being the last of eleven
children who had married and left the old castle, as it was universally called.
Here my grandfather and grandmother lived for a few years when my grandfather
dies, leaving four children and a young and handsome widow of twenty-six, and
here with half a dozen Negroes she struggled to keep up the "old farm"
and bring up her children.
The homestead, as it was called, was only a
small part of the original farm, for as his children successively married he had
given a portion to each, and brothers and sister lived in near neighborhood.
My mother, the only daughter, married young and left her native place to
reside about twenty miles south on the sea coast, and it was our yearly visits
to the dear old place that I recall.
As my grandmother advanced in years she spent
most of her time with her son who lived with her, though she made occasional
visits to her daughter. My uncle's
family consisted of eleven boys and one daughter, my mother's, of only two
children, both girls, and my only remaining uncle, the other having died young,
had also two daughters.
Among the old slaves was one immense old woman
whom we all called Granny Fisne, and many a childish frolic has she assisted us
in, and shielded us from many deserved punishments.
My earliest recollections of her are our repeated attempts to wash her
white. Nothing could exceed our
indignation when we heard her called “nigger”, and it was our invariable
custom on Sunday after the family had gone to church to get a great pewter basin
and scrub her poor old face and neck till she was as well saturated as if she
had a shower bath. Then in the cold
winter days when the orchard was covered with snow and frozen so as to bear any
weight, she would mount us all on the old wood sled, after wrapping us in
innumerable shawls, cloaks and mittens, and with a strong push send us down the
knoll to the foot of the orchard, where another stream emptied into the one
before mentioned, and where I recollect she once landed herself and all of us in
the brook. The laughing and
shouting, and splashing I can almost hear again, and I do not know how we should
have been extricated or ever reached home on the frozen snow with our dripping
garments, had not my uncle just then appeared, and taking us all on the sled
with which he had been to the woods, brought safely back, the corner benches
speedily occupied and our dripping garments removed before the roaring fire.
Then in the stormy nights when the snow blew into every crack and cranny,
and there were many of them, and sometimes it would reach even the beds, we
would sit round old granny and she would tell of the cold winter-- how the whole
orchard was covered with snow, and how Granddaddy, that was grandfather, went on
snow shoes and cut off a few twigs on two or three trees whose tops were visible
so that he might know which they were when the snow went away - how they dug out
the sheep after some weeks and found some alive, and how they had to keep the
body of my great grandfather in the
house three weeks before they could
bury him - how they had to cut a hole near the roof of the barn to get in to
feed the cattle, and how hard it was to get enough water for them.
All these, and many more, we listened to with delight, and I recall them
with a pleasure, I am sure no child brought up amid the fashion of the day can
ever have enjoyed. "There are no children now" ---no children such as
my sister and cousins were, whose young hearts were satisfied with a ride on the
old sled, who thought going out to slide on the pond the height of felicity.
Our Christmases were looked forward to, not
for the costly presents and playthings we should have, but to go to church and
see the windows illuminated (the illumination consisting of tallow candles in
every pane) and the pillars decorated with greens, to find under our pillows a
red apple, a doughnut or perhaps a piece of plum cake, and a stocking full of
nuts. The church being about half a
mile from my grandmothers, of course we went in a sleigh and a sleigh ride to
church and back was the finishing stroke of happiness.
Then the teasing and tricks of the boys, and the hiding plays among the
odd nooks of the old house. I
remember in the garret where the new part had been built on, part of the side of
the old house had been taken away. Not
being as high as the new part, a sort of opening was left by which you descended
the immense stones of the old chimney as if it was a staircase and found
yourself in what was called the kitchen chamber of the new part.
Here was the receptacle for all sorts of rubbish- old trucks, old
furniture, here and there a bin for grain, family tools and every conceivable
thing one can imagine and to complete the medley a shoemaker's bench, for in
those days the cobbler went from house to house to make and mend shoes for the
family. There was a swing, an old
cradle, and here we young girls were sometimes sent with some of the younger
boys of my uncle, to amuse the little fellows while his mother spun or attended
to other household matters.
As we grew older, the old house became
wretchedly out of repair, and my uncle at last determined to build in close
proximity to it a new house. This
my grandmother violently opposed, and as she was very old, he yielded for a year
or two to her wishes, but two winters of mortal sickness in his family, and the
sufferings attendant on a want of proper accommodation and comfort, and the
difficulty of obtaining nurses who were willing to undergo the exposure to the
weather, at length determined him. He
began in the early summer to tear down the old part in order to use the chimney
as foundation stone to his new dwelling. This
was almost more than she could bear - to see the old chimney to, where, she used
to tell us the old Virginia speculators came to hide from the sheriff - and how
they went around the chimney and as
the sheriff went down one side,
they went back up the other and finally got into her parlor bedroom where the
sheriff had already been- where her children and grandchildren so often played -
seemed to her little less than sacrilege. And
after the new house was completed she refused to go into it.
She would not go to see it, although not a rod from the old place, and it
was not until long after the family were settled in their new dwelling, and the
weather had become intensely cold, that at the persuasion of my mother she
consented to be removed and not even then until my uncle made a pretense of
removing three doors and windows.
It is long since the old house was demolished,
and although everything is now comfortable and far more convenient, I can scarce
look back at those days without a sigh of regret that my children too could not
have seen it.
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