We decided that we
would like to have Christmas in our new house. We
spent the two days before Christmas moving our beds, kitchen
wares including the Christmas dinner, the Christmas tree and
a few clothes in our station wagon. We moved everything in
the station wagon. We had a nice Christmas Eve. My mother
was there, Jimmy's folks were present and so were my Aunt
Samantha, Uncle Alfred and Rich. Poor Jimmy nearly fell
asleep - he really had worked hard bringing all the things
into the house. After everyone had left and we picked up a
bit we realized the stuff for the Christmas stockings was
still in Seymour, so we drove to Seymour, picked up the
stocking stuffers and the St. Bernard dog, Dolly. She was so
big there just wasn't room for her before this trip.
We bought the
property for the land. The house was falling apart. Mrs.
Wells, the lady who owned the property, said that she would
carry our mortgage for a year while we sold the Maple Street
property. This seemed like a good idea and very considerate
of her. However, when we did sell the house and went to our
bank, Ansonia Savings Bank, to re-mortgage the Oxford house
they refused us saying that the house was in too poor a
condition. At that time the land was of no value. We then
went to three other banks. They all knew the house and
refused to have anything to do with it. We went back to the
realtor, who sold us the house, and asked her what we could
do. In the meantime we put in a furnace, and when I say "we"
I mean Jimmy and I. Putting in a furnace is no small job,
one needs a strong back if nothing else. Jimmy had also put
in a sump pump for there was lots of water in the cellar. He
also had installed a new electrical panel. Mrs. Gardner, the
realtor, said that she thought the Woodbury Bank would give
us a mortgage inasmuch as we were doing so much toward
restoring the house.
One morning I
decided to re-putty some of the windows. I had them spread
out on the dining room table. There were 820 panels in the
house. Most of the windows were "twelve over twelve," that
is there were twenty four little panes of glass in each
window. Some of the panes were the original ones. To get
back to the morning I was puttying. there was a knock on the
front door. When I answered the door, there were three very
distinguished gentlemen. They were from the Woodbury Savings
Bank. As the morning wore on, it was evident they knew the
house. I told them about the furnace and electrical panel
and they wished to see it. When we went down cellar they
asked what happened to the water, so I showed them the sump
pump. They asked if we had fixed the roof-it leaked-I told
them that we had not gotten to that yet. They asked lots of
questions about the house, but we had not been able to do
all the repairs in that length of time. It took us five
years to complete the work.
When they left I
just knew we would be turned down, but the good news was
they would finance the house after seeing all that we had
done. Needless to say it was a great relief. In fixing up
the house we knocked out walls and ceilings. What a mess!
The older girls helped, but Margaret was the one who sand
papered the mantels and panels where there was the beautiful
molding with many, many coats of paint. The fireplaces had
been bricked up and plastered over. We knocked out the
plaster and took out the bricks and found five delightful
fireplaces.
They also built the
kitchen onto the house. The room which we used for a dining
room was the original kitchen with the huge fireplace and
Dutch oven. In place of fireplaces, they had installed
stoves. The hearthstone for the original kitchen had been
removed. We found it across the street and dragged it home.
We slid it down cellar and jacked it up bit by bit until it
was in place. The house was built many years ago and had
been in the same family for seven generations when we bought
the house. When we went up into the attic after taking
possession, the floor was knee deep in rubble. We threw the
junk out the attic window to the ground beneath. However,
down at the bottom we found all the original fireplace
equipment, pots, a teakettle, tongs, etc.
Speaking of junk, in
the cellar were just loads of canning jars, some empty and
some full. We carried them out into the yard and hired a man
to carry them to the dump. Funny, the things you remember.
It wasn't too many years after that time when canning jars
became valuable. We lost a fortune. Bill also installed a
new sill. The sill had rotted away. He jacked up the side of
the house and put in a new sill. Not a small job. In the
kitchen two rooms had been added by putting up walls and
making the kitchen smaller. We took these walls out.
However, we wondered if this might have weakened the
ceiling, so Bill had some of the kids go up in the attic and
jump up and down, and, as expected, the ceiling went up and
down (it was a wooden ceiling). So he put a pipe in the
middle of the kitchen table which was about in the middle of
the kitchen to support the ceiling. This pipe coming out of
the table was a subject for discussion for years. Before we
finished we papered and painted every room.
There was a small
bedroom in the back of the house where the chimney was the
entire wall. It had been plastered over, but we took the
plaster off and left the brick wall, which I thought was
quite nice. At one time the house was used for two families,
and one of the upstairs bedrooms had been turned into a
kitchen. We took out the sink but left the cabinets, and
whoever had that bedroom enjoyed the cupboards. From that
bedroom one could go to the attic. We had wasps in the attic
every spring.
One year Frank, when
he was quite young, had that bedroom and upon finding wasps
on his floor asked me to kill the wasps because I didn't cry
if they bit me. The back bedroom on the opposite side of the
house from the one I just described opened into the attic
above the kitchen so whoever had that bedroom had a huge
closet. It was a fun house with three sets of stairs. I
painted the barns and the house. The barns were painted red
and the house white. After the house was painted once, each
year I would paint one side, that way it always looked good.
We had a dug well beside the house: we also had a big oil
drum full of kerosene in back of the house. Somehow the
faucet on the oil drum was turned on and not turned off. The
oil drained into the well. We could not use the well. Bill
did run a pipe down from the well which served the barn.
This was fine for
summer time, but we knew as soon as frost came the pipe
would freeze so Bill dug a well in the cellar. We used that
well for a couple of years. In the meantime we would pump
"the oil well" dry and eventually got rid of the oil. When
we finally finished restoring the house, it was on
the Derby Historical House Tour. If I think of any
place as "home," this is the house. We lived there
for fifteen years. It is the longest time that I have lived
in one place. The four oldest girls were married from there
and the three youngest were born while we lived there.
