Okay, tell me about the monastery. The first settler that came in over there was an underground Negro. He escaped from the South for slavery and he settled east of the swamp. This is at Nagel's? At the Nagel place. That's where the monastery is. And when you plow down in there, you can find broken up dishes and knives and forks and things. I used to turn them up. Okay, about what year would that have been? Anybody know? Well, that was before 1865. That was when there was slavery. And then the settlers began to come in. And I don't know what happened to him. When he died, he just moved out. Then the Nagos came up there, and I think they came up there in 1874 or 1878, the year my father was born.

[01:05]

And they cleared the land. About how much did they clear originally? Anybody know? an acre at a time or two acres every year. And they finally cleared a hundred acres of filterable soil and a hundred and some acres of forest. Then the Hartmans came down below. That's the place they called King John's? Yeah, that's the next place below. How old is that house down there? Oh, all those houses were built in the 70s and the 60s, or 65. And so it's all after the Civil War. And then, after that, the Kellers bought it, and they took it over. And then they bought the Peterson place over on your side. And that was cleared, more or less, by the Petersons, and on the last end it was taken over by the Rhodes.

[02:15]

She married twice. Then back in the corner, southeast in the corner, was the original Neal place. And then they went over on the farm and cleared where you were. And that was the grandfather and the father. And then the grandson, that was Robert. and the granddaughter was Louise. And Pete Munson, the Munsons, bought that corner down in there. There was a house down in there and a barn. And that's where the Munsons got started. And the boys went for themselves, and the old folks died, and the girl went to town and got married. And Pete stayed over there. Well, then in the Depression years, Pete sold out. And Robert Neal bought it back. And you can see where he started to do some work down there. Have you ever been down in there?

[03:17]

Where he dug a cellar again and started to lay stones and brick, ginger box. And then finally he got sick. Well, the Madigans, they came in here about the same time. Oh, we dare say 1860. Maybe a little earlier than the Nagles did. Okay, or a little bit of the foray, you know Madigan's live in a place. They call a place down. Yeah place down and the old man's name was Pat and I forget what the His wife's name was but I remember her I Don't remember Pat and they were married for 10 years Before they had any children And after they had the house built and the barns built and things like that, then they raised a family of three boys and two girls. And Pat, he died first.

[04:21]

Then the mother lived, oh, I dare say, after World War I. I think I got into 1918, 1919, somewhere in there, and she died with a stroke. Well, then the next place down on the end of the road was a Negro moved in there, and he built a little shack in there, and they built on to this house ever since. And he married a white woman. And Charlie Wool, one of the old-timers here, was in here before the Revolutionary War, and he remembers this colored guy, and they had one child. And this child was half white and half black. Down the middle. Don't seem possible. Some people won't believe that if you tell them that. And she was very shy, and she died, and they buried her across the creek.

[05:23]

from the house, there were some apple trees up in there, and she's buried in that side. Then the Negro left and the Welshers came in. And they farmed it and put more, more addition on to the house. Then the Welshers sold it to Tim Thompson and Sam. They bought the place. And they lived there quite a few years. They lived there till 1912 or 1911. They sold out. And they were great fax owners. And they were farmers. And when they sold, they sold to the Hartmans. And the Hartmans stayed there. until he died and they sold out to, I think in 36 to the Bozes.

[06:28]

You've heard of Bozes, haven't you? Turkey Boze and Bill Boze and all that. This is right at the base of the room. And the Bozes kept it until here recently, they sold it out to Spritz now. That's the way that place changed hands. That's the way that went on. And then the Negroes, they built They were two brothers. The one brother had the western half of the farm, and the other brother had the eastern half of the farm. And the eastern half of the farm was oak land, and the western half was pine. And the pine soil plows easier, and it's easier to work than the oak soil. The oak soil is black gumbo, and it's hard to plow. And they worked together, And they built that big barn. And then... The big barn... Over, over where it is now. What they call St. Peter's Barn with the... Yeah.

[07:28]

Then they built another barn where Father Price's fruit cellar is. That was the sheep barn. How big was that barn? Oh, pretty good size. And that other barn was the cow barn. So, uh... One time, I can't tell you the year, in November, we had a big thundershower. In November? And lightning struck that barn and burned it to the ground. And it was full of grain and hay, clear to the peak, and worked it to the ground. About when was that? Well, that was back in the 18-something. I couldn't tell you. It could have been 1890, 1892, or it could have been a little longer. So they rebuilt this barn again, and the Conklins were good barn builders. They always got a nice shape to the gamble.

[08:29]

You notice that's got a pretty gamble. Well, we are the ones that put the addition on, on the south side of it. We bought that barn down where Fink's was. Ed Dickinson moved away and his mother died, and the house burnt down. So the barn sat there and my father bought the barn for $300. And we torn down and built a foundation up there and moved it up there. Well then in 1940, in the 20th of August, lightning hit the barn where Father Flash's fruit cellar is. Burnt that down. So in order It was unhandy to have one barn over here and one barn over there and then thrash out of both barns. You had to move the machine. So we decided we'd buy this Dickerson barn and move it up there and have all the barns together. And then we had places to keep the straw and everything and didn't have to have a straw stack outdoors anymore.

[09:36]

So the Madigan, the Madigan business down there, they, Mike, built That milk house there, that stone house there, you know. And the barn used to set up the lane. Now when you say the stone house, you mean the... That little small stone milk house. Right behind the house. Yeah, up this way from the house. That was the milk house. Then the barn used to set up there. And when they say milk house, what did they do with that? They had the creamery in there, they separated the milk. Then Mike moved the barn down over across the road where it is now. And he built on to it, and then he finally built a silo too. Then he built a nice tool shed, and that's gone now, where this Hayes put this milk house in there, and the nuns used it now, you know. The nuns used it now. Now, when the monastery bought St. John's and St. James, who did they buy it from?

[10:38]

The monastery bought the Keller Place off of Ned Schuster, the florist. He lives in Seneca Falls. That's St. John's? That's the Red House. And John Harding, bought the place off of Mike Madigan and farmed it there two or three years and the mooks bought it off of Young Hardin. Now how about St. Gertrude's up there on the hill? That was the old Armstead farm. Armstead was the first one to? The old man at Armstead was the first man more or less in here and that was before 1865. And he built that hip roof house up there. That's up there now. Was built before? First he lived in a log cabin. Where was that cabin? Right south of the house. You can still see some remains of it. And he had four boys.

[11:40]

When do you figure he built that house? Charlie was next to the oldest one, and he was six or seven years old, and he remembers the Civil War. And they started to build a house right after the Civil War, 1865. Yep, that's how long that house had been up there since 1865. The one with the hip ropes. That old man Darnston built a big barn and a big tool shed, and it had a blacksmith shop in it, and the boys didn't belong. Right up there on the hill, up by the... And they let everything rot down. The barns? There were barns up there? Oh yeah, they fell down, and the tube shed fell down, and the house was ready to fall down. And John and Charlie inherited the place, but they never got along. One lived upstairs, one lived downstairs. And Jake went to Penny End, and he was the engineer in the Grand Tiley

[12:42]

powerhouse, and they built a streetcar. And the Glenn Tylees run the streetcar from Penny End to Branchport, and carted the grape-stacking corp, and had passenger service, too. So John went up there, worked one year in the powerhouse, and they wanted to put him in for motor-print on the streetcar. They tried it, they didn't like it. And he stayed one year, and he came back home here on the farm. But they wouldn't do no farming, because they didn't get along. So the Glen Cowleys were crooks. They sold stocks. And after the business got to going, then they wanted more money. And these farmers didn't have it, and they said, well, we'll buy it. Got the whole works out. These damn crooks, they were the goldies. They bought this place down here? Huh? They bought this place down here? I'm talking about Penny End now, the Darmstead. Oh, yeah. I'm talking about the Darmstead family now. Oh. So Jake stayed in Penny End and raised two children. And Frank was the oldest.

[13:48]

And he married a Snyder girl. And they lived right across from the monastery where some of the monks stay now. That was the old Snyder farm. You know what I mean now? You know where... They call it the Lochner house. Then they called it the Lochner House. And he married one of those girls. And Lucy is still alive yet. She's old. That Lochner House, who built that to begin with? The Snyders. The barn the monks tore down. Yeah. The Snyders. That was a heck of a big barn. Yeah, I know it. And then it went over into the herds. They were related into the Snyders. So, Frank Drownage. He worked for the Reynolds down on the lower Maple Avenue on a farm that, at the last end, it was called the Brees farm, the Mott Brees.

[14:53]

He got killed with a bow. And the 1889 flood was, and Seeley Creek came up, and they told him not to go across the creek and get the cows. It was bank full, but he wouldn't listen. He's a little bit shined up. And they went across with the boat, and the boat tipped over, and they found him down at the mouth of Sealy Creek, when the flood was over. So that left Lucy, she was a small girl, and her mother, a widow. Well, she and her mother, they stayed together. And Lucy got to working, and earned her bread and butter, and took care of her mother, and now she's retired. And she suffered heavy again on this 72 flood. All that was left then was Charlie. He was next to the oldest. He never got married. That's Charlie Snyder. And the next one was John. He was the third oldest. He never got married. And Jake was the youngest.

[15:55]

He was the engineer in the dynamo house for the Grand Tire Leagues when they were on the streetcar. And he died at the end. And his wife's name was Laura. And she died at the end. She was a redhead. And she had one daughter by the name of Freda, and one boy by the name of Earl. Freda is dead and gone, but Earl is still alive. And he was the caretaker of the Keuka College, until he retired. So that was the Darnston farm. The first true settlers in here, way back in 1790. were the Dalers. Where did they go? They lived on top of the hill at a house and barn, two barns up there. When you go down the buffer and you look up this way, that's where the house and barn was.

[16:58]

And they were the ones that sold the biggest share of the land around here to the neighbors. They bought the land off the government for three cents an acre. That's all it cost. And Daly had a great big family, and he had no education. And he couldn't read or write, or he didn't work. And one time, the newspaper came to the place, and he couldn't tell if it was upside down or right side up, and he looked at it, and he said, it's a big storm on the Atlantic Ocean, the ship upside down. It wasn't upside down. He had the newspaper upside down. So some of the daily boys got to be bums. And some of them turned out good. So this greenhouse down here Butler got is one of the old daily homesteads. And his name was John. And he died in 34. And the Lochner farm over there, where Horny is now, was all Daly property.

[18:02]

And that was bought, I can't tell you for sure. How old is that place? Oh, way back in the, all back around 1860, 1865. And that, I forget who the first owner was there, then Perkin and Keller owned it. Now that's a pretty big barn down there. Yeah. And uh, and then that Lou took over. It was the color place, and he had one boy and four girls. There was Amelia, Annie, Birdie, and Cherry, and one boy. Had five children. Had five children. And they were good farmers. And then, my old man got old, but I remember when the mother died, and then they uh, had uh, The Lochner came in there. He took over. And he was a foot farmer. He took good care of the land. Now the monks call the house up on top of the hill there.

[19:05]

What house on top of the hill? Up where they tore down the barn. That was the old Schneider barn. They call that the Lochner house. That is the old Lochner house. That was the Schneider and the Herd. And Lochner owned the house that Horny was in. Old Maynard Herd married a Schneider. And then one of the Darmstadt boys married a Schneider. And the herds took the place over. And I remember when they lived there. Then they sold out. And when they sold out, they sold out to a guy in Corning by the name of Lopshire. And he tried to farm it. It was a city farm and he couldn't. So he sold it to Gus Nowlitz. And the Gus Nowlitz place that the monks owned That is the oldest, let's see, where Wagner lives now, Bumgardner. That is the old Bumgardner farm.

[20:08]

Otis and his wife settled in there. And Paul Goss married the daughter. And from that time on, it was called an islets farm. And then when he died and the mother died, the mother died with a urinic poisoning. And he lived there alone for quite a while, and the boys, and they farmed it. Then when he died, Gus inherited it. And Fritz went for himself. And Aggie lived down here in Ohio. She married a Dickerson. She married a Dickerson's brother, Fritz. And she raised a family of two boys and one girl. Oh, when Gus got old, he sold the place to the monks, you know. And Gus married a Keller girl. Good for them Kellers.

[21:10]

We're just talking about, we're horny. Now, how about Peterson? They came over from Sweden. And they settled over there. Were they the first one to build there? Just about the first ones in there. And they were poor. And they had a pretty good-sized family. They were not too big. And they went to town by second-hand bed. And it was plastered with scarlet fever. That was an awful epidemic through here, and that little Clara died. She's buried in the corner down there, you don't worry. She was the same age my father, and I think she was 12 or 14 years old when she died. It's on the tombstone. And she was born in January, and my father was born in March. They were both the same age. I can remember when there was a picket fence around there and it was taken care of.

[22:17]

Then there's so many more places around here. The Gardner places over here, the Gardners. The Gardners was a big relative ship up here that was plastered with gardens. Then There was the Coons. Where were these gardeners? Where were they located? Well, the Cape Creek place up here, up here, where Quarry Barrow was the gardener's place. Then, the backside of Gus Nottage, when you go down, where Mole, that was the old gardener homestead right there. Now how about the place Squire's owned on the corner down there, you know the big stone wall? That was the old original Hypes. They built that, the Hypes. They were one of the first settlers in here, or not really the first, but they were one of the first that was buried up here. On the Dutch Hill Cemetery. The Dutch Hill Cemetery. Yeah. Dutch Hill Cemetery, yeah. That house is, about how old do you figure that one is? The old house? The old house was way back the same, the ages.

[23:19]

Some of them go back to the 50s. Says, Gordon, how old are you, 18 means here? 1850. Then, the butler place down here was the ool place. And before the ools had it, Gus Fritsch had it. He was a coal dealer in the Heights. and they bought it off of the Storms. There was J. Storms and J. C. Storms, and they were two brothers. And I think J. C. Storms built the house in Barnes where Butler is, and J. Storms built the house here where Voorhees has got their house now. And that house burnt down. And there's nobody anymore alive that can give you a record of that house. But Wheeler up here has got the map. The old atlas. And there's the house and there's the name. Wheeler.

[24:22]

What's his first name? Raymond Wheeler. His wife was a schoolteacher. And he's the guy that I found out who built that house. It was the Storms. And they're buried up in the corner there, where this new house just came up. This way from Mount Butler. And if you go up there, you will find the Tombstone. Storms and Liza. And we called her Aunt Liza. I didn't, but people that was older than I. And if I remember right, they lived, they moved down to the river and lived where Father John's brother owned Rory's cottage. That was the old storm's place down there. That's right. That's right.

[25:23]

Her name was Liza. We used to always talk about Aunt Liza. Oh, there Aunt Liza. She was a good woman. And they called her Aunt Liza. And I think when they died, they had this top sergeant up here, and they were brought back up here and were buried. How about Pampy Gillis' place there on, uh... That was originally, they called that the Old Fisher Place. That's where it got the... There could have been somebody there ahead of time. Not, not too much. See, these places started out small. But, uh... The Fishers, they were old settlers here too, and the Baumgartners, and the Dalys. And the place over there where Shirley lives, that is the old Daly place too. And his name was Seymour. And he raised one boy

[26:23]

Maybe, and maybe a couple of girls. I don't remember anything of the girls, but I remember the mother. But I don't remember Seymour, his father. And he farmed it, and he sold it to Jimmy Hunter. And he went to town to work, and he was the term C in the Shalom County Jail. And then he retired. got a county pension and chose to do purity. And he built that house down here, you know, where Elmer Daly's boy lives. You know where Paul Kimport lives? Then comes Lou Daly's house, and then comes Elmer over here, the electrician that works for Cali Electric. And the Conklins had relatives in here. I don't remember their names anymore. And they were buried on the hillside, right across the mole. That's all woods now.

[27:33]

And I remember I picked a fence down in there. Well, this Wally, from New York City, was a water girl. After he came up and marries Mae. They're all dead now. There was Mae, and Lottie, and another girl, she married Phil Smith. I forgot her name now. And she married Phil Smith. And Berk Smith, he married a hype. And that is called Kimport's wife's father. And her mother was a hype. So, this Wally was a radical. And he thought he could farm it, but he didn't. And he plowed up there on that hill, and he took all them tombstones and dragged them over in the fence. And I probably wasn't much over nine, ten years old. I remember them things, fellas, and I forgot about them.

[28:36]

They disappeared. I never thought of them at all. So one night I was over on the Burksmith's place, and I helped a guy sort potatoes in the Depression years. And they were selling for 25 cents a boozle, and you couldn't give them away. And I came across there over that fence, shortcuts for the gasoline lander and I jumped across that fence and I jumped into these tombstones. And I started to read the names off of them. I thought to myself, where the hell did they come from? Oh, I said to myself, I'm going to ask Charlie Darnston, that lives up there where St. Gertrude is. Yeah, he says, I remember them people, he says, they were related to the conflict. I was seven, eight years old, he says, when they died and were buried over there on that hillside and Wally dragged a couple stones in the fence.

[29:38]

So I had that figured out. Then down below the Seymour Daly place is the Dornses. And the Dornses came in here from Ireland. Oh, down below, where... Yeah, where that plate lives now. Where that green light is out there at night, it shines. When you go up to Steep Hill, that's plate, that's the old orange. All right? He settled in there and cleared that land. He was a small farmer, and I remember him. He sat back in the kitchen stove and smoked his pipe. He got awful old, but the mother died early. So he had three daughters and two boys. And Will was the caretaker of the Elmira Arnett Arts Gallery for the Yanks. And Johnny was the farmer.

[30:42]

And then there was nobody left anymore but Mary. And eventually she died and they had some cousins came in and they took over the properties. And they sold this place. But the land was all grown up in the woods. That was all plowed clear back over towards the mullet farm and the beewater farm. And then the beewaters are old settlers in here too. And Charlie Old lived down here where Butler lives. He lived up where that Mrs. Buck lived, where that pond is up there.

[31:46]

at one time. They bought that off of the beewallers. So Charlie Ool had two boys, Henry and Freddie, and the girls all died when they were real small, the pembricites. And his wife was a beewaller, and she was an awful good woman. So John Ool from Scranton was a blacksmith. He bought this place here where Charlie lived, where Butler is, and had a blacksmith shop in there, and shot horses, and made all kinds of things that farmers needed. Door hinges, and put on wagons, tires, you know what a blacksmith does. So he sells the place to Charlie Ewell. And he went back to Scranton and Dodge, that old... And Charlie the Ool's kept the place then until 1951. And Freddy was the last one and he died.

[32:54]

And he willed it to his cousin, Mrs. Guernsey. She was a Ool. Her father was a brother of the Charlie Ool and his name was Will. Another brother in Corning, his name was Pete. Another brother lived down in Birmingham, Alabama. His name was Henry. Another brother went west and had never heard anything of him. And another brother drowned in the Susquehanna Creek down here, not too far from here. And what become of the other brothers, I can't tell you. There was 11 or 12 boys in that family. And they came from Stratton. shortly before the Revolutionary War. And they settled over here on this farm over here, where Jack Watts is. That is the old original Uhlholdsfeld.

[33:56]

And Charlie was the oldest one in the family, and he had to work in the coal mines. And they misused them coal miners terribly out there. And he says to his mother, let's go up on the Deutschen Berg and buy us a farm. He said, let's go up on Dutch Hill and buy us a farm. And they bought this farm over here. And then these boys spread out. There was Fred, too. I forgot Fred. He kept the whole farm over here. How about, you know where Archie Benedict lives? Yeah. What do you know about that place up there? That, that there, you've got me over a barrel. I remember who owned that place, whether it was the Pearsons, or whether it came off of the Roney Freese, where the Redfield place is. The Redfield place over there has changed hands a good many times. One of the older, huh? When you say Redfield, that's where Holden lives now. That's right across from where you live.

[34:59]

Yeah. Holden. Yeah. And Roley Freese had it the longest. He married his sister, Charlie Neal. So, and she died. And he sold it and sold it to the Redfields. And the Redfields, his wife was a Jew. And I think her sister was a Sholansky. She married a Sholansky down here where the greenhouse is, see? They're all related around. You stepped on one toe, she stepped on them all. There was the Gardners, and the Jacobsons, and let me see, and the Biewallers, And the Motswans, they were pretty big relationships around here. Now those houses, you know, from Archie's place there, Benedict's, across the Neal Road, where Burkhart's live now.

[36:07]

How old is that house? Is that a very old house? Who lives there now? Burkhart lives there now. Burkhart. Over there? Yeah, just across the road from it. From who? Sits up on the bank. No, not from me. Now you know where Archie Benedict is, right down on the road. Okay, where the big barn sits up on top of the road there. And then you look across Neal Road, there's another little white house that's got a gable roof that's hit just on the edges of it. The bank? Yeah, up, sits up in the bank. That was the old win-up place. There used to be a big house there, a mammoth house, and a big barn. That's the old Gwinnip. The Gwinnips and the Arnips owned all the land in here at one time. And when these farmers bought this land around here, they bought it off of the Gwinnips and the Arnips. And the Gwinnips didn't have too much money, but they gambled with Arnip.

[37:11]

And Arnip lost in a gamble. And he forked over a lot of land to get out of the hole. Now that happened. And the Arnetts is the ones that built Railroad Avenue in Elmira before the railroad was elevated. You know, moving on up Handy Hollow Road, you know where Wilson lives now in the stone place there with the red trim on it? Used to be old Tony Eakes. You mean all these houses that's built right there below the Eakes place? Well, Ekes, you know where old Mrs. Ekes lived there? Yeah. And then there's the house just towards town from that. On the same side of the road used to be Tony Ekes, I guess. Yeah, that's a Madigan property. He sold that to the Baldwins. And the Baldwins built that house. Okay. Yeah, that's a Baldwins place. And all these other houses right there, they didn't mean a thing. That was all Gwinnip property.

[38:13]

And at one time a fellow by the name of Henry Schmidt owned that. See, the Winnipses built the house in the barn and Schmidt bought it. His name was Henry Schmidt. He was sawmill man. And his sawmill used to set down in there where Howard Baldwin built the house over across from these right along the bank there. You know, the house sets down in there by the creek. And that used to be the Howard Ballroom. I actually built that in 1921, 22. And that's where the sawmill was. And you know where the sawmill is now? It's over here with Todd Schmidt. He saw his number with it today. That mill I remember for 50 or 60 years. It's still going. Yes, sir. Now, let's see. Once you Why don't you talk about the Fick's Hollow a little bit?

[39:16]

The what? Well, you know, the history of your farm down there on the river. Where that started from. Well, that place originally was cleared and built by the Eastons in 1865. Easton is first. Yeah. And they built that little red house there. Right there. And then Pickering built the kitchen up to it this way. Right. That was the site. That was in 1865. And they kept it until they died out and the Wolves got in there. Okay, about when would that be? They were, they were, they had a sawmill here, a great big sawmill here in the house. And one of them was a game warden. And they got into that. It's, it's, that's right, the left one. Then, after the Wolves got into it, the Mundys, or the Ways, had something to do with it.

[40:18]

And then there's a fellow lint there by the name of Jerry Tranchel. And he was married to an Indian woman. His wife was an Indian. And he lent his life out there. Then Pickering's sisters, or sister, bought the place in 1899 or somewhere in there. And in 1901, Pick was established there. Okay, now his sisters bought... Why did they buy that place up there? His sisters? Yeah. Well, he was he couldn't handle alcohol. He was a boozer. Yeah. Well, no way. He had a college education though picked it and college education those days were scarce and he worked for Barbara Rosen Clinton in the winter time and the summer time he come to the farm and raised berries and Caught eagles in the fall in the winter. He'd go to Barkers and be shipping cart down there the Barbara Rosen Clinton

[41:23]

So he kept the place till 1934. He had it all that time. When I was picked, the guy you said that had the thing wrong with his throat? Yeah, he's the one trying to commit suicide, yeah. Then? Then, uh... Did you know him very well? You must have been a kid. I wish there was a kid. He used to go down and get his boats and he'd let us ride boat and canoe. He was a good fella to the kids. He was a hell of a good guy. Was he married to anybody or did he live there all by himself? At one time he was married long enough that he had a boy and a daughter. And he had one brother in New York City who was a jeweler. He was a pickling too. And his grandfather, his father was sheriff of Chemung County, and picked himself was born in the county jail. They were, they were, they were politicians. And his uncle, or granduncle, was a colonel Pickering in the Revolutionary War and fought with Washington.

[42:38]

That's in the history book. If you get that in the history book, yeah. So, when Pick died in 34, then his daughter lived there for quite a few years. Then she moved out, and the place deteriorates. And there was a mortgage against it then, and taxes, and Dalbert Rochelle. Dalbert Rochelle bought the place, and he kept the place. for quite a few years, and he sold it to us guys in 1939. 1939. That's the way the Pick went. Now, Pick... I was trying to think about what you told me about Pick before. He operated a ferry there, is that right? That's right. What kind of a ferry was it? Was it a raft? Well, I never seen it. My father saw it. I was too small. That was back in 1914. 1915, I didn't get around until about 1890, then I started traveling out.

[43:43]

And the cables is around there yet. Yeah, they're around the tree. And some of the cables are down in Farragher Way. And I imagine it was just a flat boat. And he brought my father across in the ferry in 1915. I remember that well. Now, when they didn't have the ferry there, Apparently they didn't run the ferry very long. Not too long. And when they didn't have, before they had... How did they get in and out of there? Easy. They, uh... The road at that time went over the hill to Big Flats. Along the woods. It's still there yet. Over the... And it came down between Pickering's house and the barn. That's a legal highway at that time. Right down through the valley? came right down the valley off of the creek on the north side. They had stations up there, and came down between. And Swan and Cary and the Seymours all came down, and the Storms all came down this way.

[44:48]

They went between Pickering House and Barn. Then they went by the willow tree that tipped over and went down in an incline there where the rifts are. That was shallow. And there they went across the rifts and went down to the point of Sing Sing Creek and came up along the creek and that was a legal highway worked by the town of the Big Flats. On which side of the creek? This side. This side. West side. And when the streetcar came through In 1912 or 11, everybody got rid of their horses and their wagons, and they'd go across the river with the boats and take the streetcar and ride the Elvira for a nickel, and ride the Elvira back for a nickel. Didn't pay to keep horses no more. That's what abandoned that road over there. Now, starting from Pickering's place, going up the river, Okay. That next place that was in the gully that burned down there, what was the name of that again?

[45:53]

Where the pump is? Oh, that was the Uno Cottage. Uno, and that's where the cat kicked over the... Yeah, that there, that land belonged to Pickering, I guess, and he let somebody build a cottage there. Then the next place was down over the bank was Dowling. Dowling, and that's the one... He let him have that land, whether he had a right to or not, but he did. Then when you go across the creek was the Casteline place. Now that's the old, what they call the old logcutter's shed? The old what? Logcutter's cabin or something like that? The logcutters were there in 34, 35, yeah. Logcutters were there. But that was Pickering that owned that place there? He didn't own the Casteline place. Or Casteline? No, no, no. The Castelines always owned that. Okay. Did they live there or was it just a cottage? They used to live there. They lived right there? That was quite a cottage. I remember that one was pretty good shape. Then they went from there up and come to the Storms' where the Rode's place is. Storms were the first one to build that?

[46:55]

Storms were the first ones at the Rode's place? Yeah, that was a little bit of a shack for a house too and they kept building them out. And that little shell made it beautiful. It made a beautiful place on it. Then going up there, you know, there's a big gully. Yeah, there used to be a bridge growing there. Brother John's brother's building right next to the gully. I see. There is where the... And there is a cable that goes across. Yeah, they used to drift the drag wood across there. That's all that was. That wasn't a bridge. Then going up there, you know, there's a big gully. Yeah, there used to be a bridge where I entered. Brother John's brother's building right next to the gully. Now you see, there is where... And there is a cable that goes across there. Yeah, they used to drift the dredge wood across there. That's all that was, there wasn't a bridge. That's all. Rochelle put that up to dredge logs across. And he brought that all on a tetra and then Rory Lexington put back it.

[48:00]

And then comes the... Seymour's. Seymour's. There was one or two or three cottages in there on Seymour's. And I think there were two, as I recall. There were two little stone cottages. And then came the Carey place. Now, tell me all about Carey. Well, Carey, he was an Umbrella Hospital man in Elmira. He had a sign out, Umbrella Hospital, and he fixed umbrellas. And that's the way he made his living. Did he live up the river at that time? Uh-uh. Uh-uh. He lived in town. Then when he got old, couldn't work anymore, he came up here and retired on that place and bought that little place. It was cheap and he lived there. And he got sick in 1939, the first year of Dursey's. I remember when he got sick. And they took him out, I think in January or sometime, took him to the hospital, and he had kidney trouble and he died. So Swan paid the taxes on the place.

[49:03]

Well, they weren't very far apart, were they? Swan, in theory, places were... There wasn't much there. Of course, it looks wild now, but it was better then. And then Swan, he came in. Swan was a boozer too, wasn't he? Yeah, Swan up above in the Swan Place. I forget who had that before he had it. I probably heard him say. He came in there, oh, 1900 and something, 8, 9, 10 or something like that. And his sisters put him up there to get him away. He was a very talented carpenter. A fine carpenter. And his sisters got him out. One of them's name was Mr. Schweppes. And she just died here a while ago. And another sister, she was very nice. The girls was awful nice. And his father, Swan's father, was a contractor in Elmire. And he built the city hall in Elmire. That was his work. And he was a well-to-do man.

[50:05]

And he left him just so much a month up there, and the sisters took care of all the rest. So he was moved in there in 1910 or something like that? Oh, could be 1908, 19... The streetcar was still running up there. When did the streetcar quit running? In 1929. It was put up in 1911 and stopped in 1929. And that was a Corning, painted post, Corning, Waverly, streetcar. Now, Swan, you knew Swan pretty well. Oh yeah, I knew him real well. He built a lot of boats and stuff. Oh yeah. He was a good carpenter. I tell you, he could do fine work. What did he do with himself up there? Did he just sit around and read? He was well educated. Did he farm that up in there? Yeah, and he used to have peaches up there, and asparagus, fennel, garlic and stuff. Then after he got up in the, towards the 80s, he stopped all that.

[51:08]

He didn't do that. Did he trap? Did he trap up in there? Yeah, great fisherman and a great trapper he was at the time. He liked trapping, he liked fishing. You said he died in what, 49? 1949, in August. You took him out, didn't you? Yeah, we took him out. He came down and stayed with us. The front was in 46. He lived one year more up there in 47, and then he came down in 40. I think we took him out in 48. That's when we took him out, yeah. He came down and lived with you? I didn't live down there. I lived with Teddy that lived down there. Teddy? Shrek. And he stayed there and come there in March in the spring, and he stayed there through the 4th of July. We took him out on the 4th of July and took him to the hospital.

[52:11]

And he was down there a couple of weeks, and then they took him to Breeceport, which is Cheever. And in Breeceport, he died in August. And when he died in August, he was buried out of the Barrett funeral home. And all he had left was about $600. And Barrett took it all. Yeah, he had a good job. He was a very intelligent man. Well, he was a little bit on the cranky side. Was there anybody that you knew that lived on that side of the river there above Swan's Place? No more. I never lived there. All the way to South Point? Many more cottages up there. Ain't no place to put them. Right next to the river. And no solid, no foundations, no nothing up there. Now, let's see. Going down the river. Going down the river from your place, there wasn't any other place down there until you got down to- Until you got down to Fire Rock first.

[53:19]

That was the first one up there. All those colleges in Fire Rock where it was well kept, and beautiful places. And finally the cheaper class got in there and the 46th flood took quite a few of them out. And the 72 took more. And that 46 flood, did your place get underwater in that 46 flood? It got about four feet in the house. Inside the house. It got into the Rory Cottage too. Yeah. About four and a half feet. And it got into the Rory Cottage too. And it was probably about four feet, three and a half, four feet deep in there too. And the 1889 floods, Never got in a roadie cottage at all.

[54:20]

But he got into the pickering cottage about that deep. But there was four foot of water in your cottage in 46th and all. What's that? There was four foot of water in there in 46th. Oh yeah, about that up to roadies we put in your house. Must have made a heck of a mess then, didn't it? It did, but not so bad. Did you clean it out? Oh yeah, I just washed it out. Put it on the old floor again. It wasn't so bad. Took a couple two or three days. Yeah. And the 1889 was about my thrift. And I found all the holes where they cut holes in the corners in the rooms and swastika down the trees. Up the mud down. Up and down the rail. Yeah, that's right. Did you ever see the washouts? If you catch them before the river goes down too far, then you can swish. But there's never nobody there. That's a howler. If you get in there when the water's about that deep, the river stops. The water takes the mud with it and carries it out again.

[55:22]

Did you know Professor Stevens at all? Oh yeah, I knew him real well, knew his daughter too. How did you get to know him? Well, in the Depression years, in the beginning of the war, And all through the forties and fifties, I used to go down here every Sunday. Down to the river? Oh, yeah. And I'd go up to the Lordy Cottage and the girls would come over. Professor Stevens would come over. He'd done quite a bit of fishing. I knew him real well. I knew his wife, too. Then they'd come up in the wintertime and skate. On the river? On the coves. The last time the river froze over was in 1942. It froze over in the fall. The ice got three feet thick.

[56:24]

And on the first of February, it went out. And in the middle of February, it was back again. Three feet thick. And the river never freezes over twice. It did that year. And that was the last time there ever was any more ice in the Chemung River. The Chemung River never closed over anymore since. Whether it's the sewage or what happened, I don't know. It never closed over anymore. And they used to, everybody used to have ice houses down there, cut ice. On the river? On the river. There was an ice house on the creek frame place, too. In fact, light sawdust, yeah, in fact, there was sawdust down there. Everybody put ice in. And down here, at the mouth of this very bridge, was a big ice house. Commercial. Phelps. Phelps Ice House. You used to put ice in there.

[57:26]

The farmers would go down in the summer. In the winter, I mean, and make a little bunk, duck and ice. Then down on Chemung Street, down along below Roy's Friend, was another big ice house. And they cut ice out of the river, too. And after 1942, we didn't buy any more ice. The river gets freezing. I can remember when the skaters would come from Corning and skate, go up on the streetcar and skate from Corning to Elmira for sport. No more eating, that's gone, too. See how things change, you know. When, uh, you said that deer hunting started in 1939? 1939 was the first deer season. When, when was, uh, before that, that they allowed hunting? No deer, no. Didn't you say that one time that you, that some people came into that hollow over there with dogs and shot the last deer out of there or something?

[58:33]

That deer was before the logs in the past. That, that was back in the wolves. when they owned the Pickering plots, you know, and they had dogs. And that was back in the 18, 1890, 95. And, uh, they came up to the dogshed farm, and they went down there and hunted, and had dogs, and one of the last deer was shot. That was the end of the deer. And nobody saw any deer again for... And no more deer came back until 1921. And they came back out of that and around that mountain. And then they evolved quite fast. And they were so tame and so bold. When did you remember seeing your first deer? In 1921, in August. Seeing hay off of the concrete house and back in the house. Right up on the hill. Yep, and my father had it put in the paper. That was a big curiosity. And in 1939, they were so thick around here, but they were different than they are now.

[59:37]

And boy, what beautiful racks and horns. Bucks. That were 6, 7, 8, 9 years old. I would tell you they had racks on them, 24 points. Great, great spreads. You used to hunt deer yourself, didn't you? Years ago, yeah. Did you hunt the first, when they started hunting deer? I hunted deer, I hunted deer up to 19... 50 or 51. All shotguns. There never was a rifle around. Last deer hunting I done was in 1951 in the fall of the year. Oh gosh I couldn't tell you that no more. I had some beautiful horns down there. I remember a pretty big rack down in your place down there. Did you shot that deer? That's down here on this other house here now.

[60:38]

You shot that deer? Yeah, I shot that deer. Then I'd give you racks of waiting for people in New York City, at one of them. There we had some beautiful racks, I'll tell you that. And those there tasted different. And they were better than the deers we got now. And they were bigger. And nicer. And they had different habits. And different runways. They were altogether different. They weren't as hard to get as they are now. They're easier to hunt, no? Hm? Easier to hunt? Oh yeah, they're a lot easier to hunt. Well, I guess they've gotten used to being hunted. Oh yeah, they're wild animals. They're foxes. There used to be a lot of quail around here too. Once the rail fences worked, we had an enormous amount of quails around here. That was sport, to hunt quail.

[61:40]

And then when the farmers began to clean the hedgerows and began to take the rail fences down, then our quails died out. Then we used to have a lot of Congolese fashions. But they didn't come here for themselves, they were raised by the farmers. I know one farmer around here, he used to get a hundred, a hundred and fifty chicks. And, uh, they were brought to him by the conservation. And all summer long, they'd stay there. At night, they'd go and stop in the trap out there, where that tree was just covered there. They were far from, you know, disappearing. They scattered around here and made good festivals and good hikes. Now nobody raises them anymore, but it's the only place that I see pheasants once a while, that's over the monastery. Yeah, they're stocked. No, nobody bothers them too much. They're stocked in their conservation. So what were they again, what kind of birds?

[62:59]

Hungarian pheasants. They were little birds. Then back, then back in 1890, they timbered off all the timber over there. And when you go down the road from the monastery with the snow on, you can still see the steep ridge they had over there, when the steep's coming down. That's where they put snow in and poured water on. And then they'd pull the logs to the top and give them a push and they'd pull themselves down to the creek where they saw me. And at one time there was nine sawdust piles up that creek where they cut timber. Then the Nagles had a hundred acres. And a money man, an oil man from Texas came up there and wanted to invest in land. And he bought a hundred acres off of him.

[64:02]

And that was beautiful pine timber out there. But he paid out more in taxes than what he got for the price of the timber, you know. Timber was cheap then. If he'd been alive and kept it till now, boy, he'd make a fortune. So his name was George Calvin. And he came up from Texas once and made us a visit over there on the farm. And he wanted to sell us that land down in there. We weren't interested. After Wheaton took a million more feet of timber off of there. And after Wheaton took the timber off, what good was it? But Father Burns, when they brought the monastery, he wanted to get it back. in with the property and he bought it. But I know he paid more and more for it, but he got squashed. You know, you figure, figure... How about the Stege place? The Stege place?

[65:05]

The Stege's, they cleared that place out. There was two places over there. The Hollett's place and the Stege. Ain't neither one of them standing now, is there? Nope. The Hollett's house is round that part down in 1917. The barn fell down, I remember that. I used to play in it. And the old stagy house down there cumbled down, and the two big barns, Fritz Hollis, fell down. And the stagies came in there, oh, way back in the 1880s. And she was a widow, and she had 14 children. And she had lots of boys, and she bought that farm. and made a goal. And they always had the best threshmen, too. They were workers. All of them, but three, was incentives. They were wrong in their minds. And the three managed.

[66:08]

And then they bought the Hollis farm to it. And I think they owned around 400 acres. And the Nymphs Farm was on this other side in there. The Nymphs were old settlers up there too. They settled up there. You know where the Nymphs Farm is, where you're in back of Kennesee, you go up that road, it's blocked off. And there's nothing up there but a foundation up there now. Oh, that's... I thought that was the Stiggy Place. Oh, no, no, no. That's the Nymphs Place. That's the Nymphs... Well, where is the Stiggy Place then? Off this way, towards the north a little farther, and down below. There's the Stiggy... The Stiggy... The Nymphs Road comes out where the Kennedy's Flower is. Flowers. Then you go quite a ways. and then goes a road back up in there to the state new farm. So they're quite a ways apart, the two farms. So you can still see the remains of the foundation?

[67:10]

Oh, yeah, you can see the remains of the foundation of the house, and you can see where the state new barns were. They were beautiful barns, big barns. And then you can see the foundation of the Hollis Place. That cellar was built like a Red Cross, like this. And Hermit say he lived there. And he wasn't too bright. And his brother Otto wasn't any brighter, and the rest of them weren't any brighter, but August, and another one, and one girl. They were all right. And as long as August was alive, everything went on. August died, everything went to hell. So... But Herman lived up on the Hollis Place. And he built a big flash fire and killed one party. The chimney wasn't too good, and I guess he went out to buy new drawers.

[68:11]

When he came back, the thing was up in smoke. It had gone too far. I remember that fire real well. Yes, sir. That was back in 1914, 1915, when that Hollis House broke down. And I remember a little of the old Holluxes. They were an old couple. And the Nimpses, they had a family of around 14 children. And some of the boys, some of the children are still alive in Elmire. And Pauline was my schoolteacher. And she's still alive, and she lives up on The Beckley farm, if I remember right. She married at Beckley. Where did you go to school when you lived up there? Down here on district number 14. Right, at the foot of Leech Hill? That's where Saul Beagle lives.

[69:11]

Is that the schoolhouse there at the... Yeah, where he lived, Bumpaw Butler's. That's district 14, and this was district Robin. And the one down the hollow was District 12. They all went in districts. And this one up on the hill here, I forget what district that was. So you were in the one right by Leech Hill? Is that the one you went to? That was District 12. And you went to District... And I went to District 14. Which was... Yeah, the one down on the Leech Hill is still there, and the one down here is still there. I guess I don't know where... I guess I don't know where that one is. above Bob Butler's. You know where Bob Butler lived? Yeah. That building up there, that's the pool. You mean that White House up there? Sure, sure. That was the schoolhouse. That's the old schoolhouse. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, hell yes, that's where I went to school. And that land was donated by the Hypes. They were the first settlers. And when Fishers bought the place... How many grades did you go to?

[70:15]

How many grades did they have up there? Eight. And from there the kids went to high school. Did you go to high school down there? No, they had to walk. Those days there were no buses. Anybody that went to high school, they hitchhiked a ride. They hitchhiked a ride home. How did they... where was the high school on? Southside. Southside. Yeah, Southside. Men's not... The Heights has donated that land, and when the Fishers bought the farm, the schoolhouse was there. When Gillis bought the farm, the schoolhouse was abandoned. So this old bagel comes up there and buys their schoolhouse. He didn't know what the hell he was doing. Gillis thought he owned it. Well, guess you know it went back to the Heights quick. And Paul Kinport's wife down there, she's a hiker. And Paul is pretty shrewd.

[71:17]

Nine years ago, they went to work. And they bought something that they didn't own. Well, I guess you know they had to come across with a lot, a lot of money before they got full possession and got a feed to that schoolhouse. This schoolhouse down here comes off of the Gardner farm. Where my brother lives, that's the Gardner farm. And old Dan Gardner built that barn and that was a hotel. Where my brother lives down there, that's a hotel. They sold wine, beer, whiskey, and cigars and tobacco there. There was a hotel. And he go there... Why would they have a hotel way up here? I don't know. It was used. Then they went at it and so on and gave that land to the school down here in the corner. Oh, and my brother bought that farm. He was smart. He had that straightened up in the deed. If that schoolhouse was ever abandoned, the land was his.

[72:22]

And nobody would buy the schoolhouse because they had no way to get in, they had no way to get out, and they couldn't take it off of the foundations. So he was the first bidder and the last bidder and the schoolhouse simpler. Well, that works. Well, that's his now, isn't it? Yep. So, this guy paid twice for this whole house down here. He's sitting number 11 down here. That guy's a little smarter. Well, he paid a hell of a price, too. Fifteen to eighteen hundred dollars, I think. Well, he doesn't use the program. Yeah, he keeps tractors in there. Oh, yeah, distantly growing. Yeah. Now that guy is the guy that owns the little greenhouse up there, isn't he? Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people got in trouble buying these schoolhouses. They didn't know that when these people donated this land, there was no lease, no nothing. They just let them use it. And when those schoolhouses were abandoned or burnt down, wasn't built back, that was their land, you know.

[73:29]

They bought it and they paid for it. And it was on the beach, you know. What do you know about this place right here? This here is the old coon place. There were two coons up here. They weren't related. This place over here where that old elaborate house sits, up above Jack Watts, the old farm, There was also a fisher place up there, but they were in no relation to the fisheries over here. And this place down here was the old rosary. And this has always been the bar place down there, and there was a Catholic church up there, too, you know. And that Catholic church sat right up on the low, close to the roads, where that pond is.

[74:31]

And the lumber in that Catholic church was taken out by the Ouls, and that red barn that Butler got down there is the lumber out of the Catholic church from Dutch Hill. All the pictures and statues and everything went to St. John's Church in Elmira on Corner Lake in Sykos. And they'd burn up in the fire? Not too much. Some of them. Some of them they changed and gave away. And all those beautiful stations that they had down there came out of those places, too. All at once, just like that. Well, it's really warm now, isn't it? On Saturday night, I watched the house happen. 90 minutes in, that's pretty fresh, isn't it? Yeah, it's still pretty warm. I'm going to open the other door. Down the hill here, down Clark Hollow, I guess it is, right, right on your brother's place. As you come up the hill, there's an old shack sits. Oh, that don't mean a damn thing.

[75:37]

That don't mean nothing. Brother Tennyson, that's the people who used to live in this. That thing was just put there in 1951 for his brother to live in. That place below my brother is the old Dutenhaver place. And the Dutenhavers has got their names in the history books. They were the first settlers on Dutch Hill. And I knew Jake Dutenhaver just like I know you, and I knew his boy and his His daughter and his father is buried over on the Dutch Hill Cemetery here. He sent me up there once to straighten up the tombstones. Jake got to be 96 years old before he died. He picked it up by himself when he died. But that little place on the side of the hill was just recent then. That there was built in 1950. Who lives there? Probably the name of Kenny Jackson.

[76:38]

Earl Jackson bought the Dutonhaver Place. The Dutonhaver Place stayed in the hands up to the third generation. And then Carl sold it to Jackson. And Jackson had a brother. He wasn't too bright, his wife. They let them build that little shack down there and they lived in it. That's what they were damned then. And when you get down to where Voorhees built the place on the left-hand side, that is the, uh, Hamburg, Mulder Place. That's the Mulders. They were the first settlers there. And then Will Kentridge's father and his wife lived there with Robert. And Robert was an eccentric. He was not very bright. Then they sold it to a party by the name of Ward. John Ward. And they run the Ward's Foundry.

[77:40]

Have you ever heard of the Ward's Foundry? No. Well, they kept it. And then they sold it to somebody else that was a barber. And I went down and had my hair cut several times. And then they sold it to a bunch of people, there was nice people, their name was Miller, Brian Miller, and his wife. And he had two daughters, and they were single, they were home. And one of them married Edwin Daly, from the first settlers here, that was the fourth generation. And the other one married a Kootenai. And the other one was the youngest one, she came late in life. She married a fellow by the name of Evans, if I remember right. He was a welder up in the, what's it, a freighter's aircraft, a grinder factory. He's a welder.

[78:41]

Oh, that's the way that history goes. Then you up the hollow. Now, you know where Squares is there? Yeah. And then there's a place that was owned by the brothers. That, that was built there. That don't mean a damn thing. That all was Hypes. That was all Hypes property. After After Old Man Tech bought the high place, he had a son and his son wanted a house and they moved the old barn up there and made a house out of it. Well that isn't made out of stone then, it's just stucco or something. The house itself is stone down here, the old house. The new house is stucco. And they were raising bricklayers and plasterers. As you go on up, you know, till you get to Cleveland Hollow, Yeah. And you look up Cleveland Hollow, there's a big old place that looks like it's made out of the same kind of construction. It's old? Yeah, looks like it. That was the old Petzl place. Petzl?

[79:45]

Yeah. They're buried where Danny Squires lives. There's a crucifix. Iron crucifix of an old man in the cemetery. And when you went up the hill a little farther, where that mobile home was in there now, that was the old Cleveland boys. That's all rotted down and gone. That's all rotted down. That was the Cleveland place. That's why they call it the Cleveland Hill Road. Then you went on through where Drake lives, you know, that is a pencil place. Those two boys are alive yet. That was a pencil place. Then you went on through And he came to the Wheeler Place, where Elston lived. Who owned the Wheeler Place? Most likely, they settled there. Because I remember Raymond Wheeler's father real well.

[80:46]

That was back in the teens. And they lived there then. So no doubt, Raymond Wheeler's father built that place, and Raymond was there until he sold it to Bob Elston. Then you come up the road this way, where that old sallow is and them two barns, that was all one farm. Toby lived in there. That was the old Joe Kern farm. Who built that before the Kerns did, I couldn't tell you. That big stone house there on Cleveland Hill, that petzl, I think you said it was? That's a petzl. How old would that one be? Is that real? It was written right back to the Hype House. 1860s or before 1850s. Who owns that now, do you know? Chaplins. Chaplins? I don't know him. Do you know anything about him? Oh, sure. His wife was, wasn't there a factory here in Delmar? They called it Kurchis.

[81:47]

Kurchis Furniture Factory. They're a lot of good, they got money. She comes from a real lot of good family. The chaplain, he marries her. They've lived up there since 1954, 54, 55. And that other little white house right across there in the corner, that was built in 1933, 34. Henry built that. That's the new spring up. That's the real worst thing I've done. Remember you said there were some people that died of, I don't know, a plague or something that were buried somewhere on the foot of Neal Road someplace? Where were they buried? Oh, down here in the Andy Creek? Yeah. Oh, yeah. What was it that they were buried, you know?

[82:50]

Police Chief Wiener's grandfather, came in here and dug all these cellars here with horses. Now, you don't remember Priest T. Weaver. Now, our Priest T. Weaver, you don't remember him. His grandfather dug the cellar for the naval farm, dug the cellar for the next farm, and dug the cellar for the Madigan farm. His business was digging cellars. And John Dickerson, that lives there were Finchlers. Now, he was a well digger. He dug all these dug wells around here and sold them out for water. All right. When Chief Fleece Weaver's grandfather died, they had the smallpox in here, and they called them pests. So they buried Chief Fleece Weaver's grandfather

[83:54]

Well, the Lord Jesus got their house, a bank put down like this. Then there's the crypt. And they buried it in there on the second bank. And they buried the two pests alongside. And John Dickerson was a Civil War soldier. Now, they laid in that house. Which house did they die in? I wonder where old warriors lived? We don't know where they died. I don't know where Chief Priest Weaver's grandfather died. I don't know where the pests died. But John Dickerson buried them. And he was a roughshod character. He was a soldier in the Civil War. And all this stuff. He said, I'll bury him. He took him up and buried him. He buried the grandfather Weaver first, and then later came these pests along, and he dug another grave, and another grave, and buried him. And that's unmarked. I wouldn't even know it was there if it wasn't for Charlie Old remembering it.

[85:02]

And when Charlie Old came in here from Scranton with his mother, The father is buried up here on the Dutch Hill Cemetery. And I think he was buried in 1865 on the tombstone. Because he was a widow. And they came up here, and he was 12 or 14 years old when they came up here. And he worked in the coal mines when he was 12 years old. And people were poor. And he was the breadwinner up here. And he took oxen and a stone boat and hauled wood to the barracks on Waterston, where they had the southern soldiers there for prisons. And he said they died like rats. Again, they wasn't fed proper, they wasn't used to this cold climate, and to a certain extent, they were misused.

[86:03]

I want three or five. I tell you, these old guys are pretty addictive. And I listen, and I remember it, too. And I've got the pictures of the Civil War barracks down here on Water Street. You've got pictures of that? Yes, sir. And I've got the pictures of the mountain house over here where that cross is up on the hill that the Frenchmen put up. When you go from the St. James Bridge up the river, you see that cross over there? Tell me about that cross. I don't even know about that cross. Right in the corner. Where the streetcars came around, in the corner. Now, was that underneath the bridge? You know where the creek comes down through there? The creek comes down through there. And there's a bridge there. On the other side of the creek. was the mountain house. And that mountain house was there before the streetcar went, so.

[87:05]

And if you want to dig around up there, you can find a damn lot of skeletons. When they rode them and knocked them in the head and buried them. That was a tough old boy, how dare you. It was a tough place and finally it worked out. So the Frenchman, the Frenchman, he came in here Oh, probably in 1860, 1870. Now which side of the, which side of Route 17 was this house on? On the right hand side where you go towards Corning. Okay, it was up, it was up on the bank then. Up on the bank, there we go. Did it set up in back, was it, was it to the north of the streetcar track? I imagine it was a little on the northeast corner there. I can't tell you. You go up in there, I think you can find the foundation. So the Frenchman, he came over from France. There was no land murder out there, and he goes into New York City, and he couldn't talk English, and he boards the train through up here.

[88:14]

When they got in Elmira, The conductor honored Elmira, Elmira. He understood Elmira, Elmira. And he gets off and gets acquainted around here and settles down in that corner. And he was a truck guard. Do you remember what his name was? Jean Berthod. Berthod. Berthod. You heard of Paul Berthod, haven't you? The house mover? That's his boy. Jean. Jean Berthod. He was the guy that they called the Frenchman. He's the guy they called the Frenchman. Okay, now, how about the cross? How did... I'll tell you all about that. Then, he had a truck. That island could be farmed. The river didn't come up then like it is now. The warship was in the Alps. Because there was woods. Kept the water back. And he was a successful truck farmer, and he got to be well-to-do. Well-to-do. He took care, and he raised a family of four over fourteen children.

[89:17]

The biggest share of them turned out to be bums. Tracks. He has one boy who was a cripple. He worked for the laundry here. I think it was a K&C Laundry in Elmira, and he walked this way. He could never straighten up. And, uh... So the Frenchman, with his little shoe, brought that little point right there. When you drive up from Route 16, look up there, you think, that's a hell of a way it's up there. Well, I've walked up there. You go up to that point, and it don't take you three minutes. You're up there. And there's a little cliff up there. And he goes at it, and puts that right across there. And somebody got the story going around. Now some folks... What year would you figure that was? Oh, probably back in the 1800s. And somebody, late, maybe 1900, and somebody got the story going around that an Indian maiden jumped off of there to commit suicide from death because a white man was trying to force her for sex relations.

[90:29]

Just a story. Well, Virginia Dare is the same story and Hammond's story. Same damn story. You've seen the wine bottles with a woman on to it, a pretty girl. They call her Virginia Dare. And just that's a mercy story. So, he always kept this cross up there. Always kept it painted. Kept it repainted. And it was a curiosity. People from all over the world that's traveled here talk about that cross. Want to know what the mystery is. So Paul, He's a contractor. He keeps it up now. And it's still painted up there and still neat and fair. That's your cross. Nobody knows why he put it up there. Just for the hell of it. Just for the hell of it. It looks good. It looks nice. It looks nice. It's very nice. Because I heard that rumor from that legend about the Indians and several different nations and several different people.

[91:35]

Well, when you go over on Leech Hill, where the schoolhouse is down there. Yeah, what do you know about that Leech Hill up there? I know plenty about it. The Thomassons were the first settlers up in there. And the Hungerford. They owned the house where you were? And one of the Hungerford's was my tenant in Elmira. And he's an old man, and he's still alive. And he told me a lot about the Hungerford. The Hungerford settled up there. That was his grandmother. Grandmother. And you go up in back of that house, and you'll find the Hungerford Cemetery up there. With the tombstones. where they were buried. Which place is the Hungerford? The last one up where Jimmy Walker lives. The last one. The last one up? In, where the barn is tumbling down. And there is a kind of a swamp there.

[92:37]

And that swamp runs down over the rocks. You can take that and go down. Now, where is the cemetery in relationship to that? Right in back of the house, southwest. It used to be an apple orchard back then. That's right in there. That was the Hunger Prince. Now, what's the place right below it? That was the Thomas Place. And then there was the Leakes Place. They were the old sunroofs. Where is the Leakes Place? Well, quite a ways down. Third place down. Then, after that, everybody got sticking in. Yeah, that's just real tragic. Building here, building there, building... Now, there is a place up there that's abandoned. That's the Leach Place. Down towards the bottom. An old abandoned house and barn sets up there. You can just see a piece of it sitting there. That is the Leach Place. That's the old... Kenny Leach owns that there today. He's alive there. He was... And they never learned anything about it.

[94:14]

On the other hand, we continue and probably the place that we should start to do that is in high school. Because there's going to be one quarter, there's going to be one quarter of people going to finish high school, and half of them are going to go to college, and how many are going to take up an outside enrollment? In order to pass a ballot at the election, or to do a presidential senate seat, you have to know something about it. Meanwhile, we continued to teach people what went on down in Mesopotamia. I learned how to speak in Latin and German when I was in high school. I can just remember a little bit of how it felt now. Now, if you learn a damn thing about economics, which I bet you use a lot, Too bad! But since the public is in that condition of ignorance...

[95:17]

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