Some Observations

from the Hill By HH Brown of Owego

On a map dated 1855 which was here in the house when we bought this farm, right about where the District 21 schoolhouse stood, which is across Lisle Road from a little graveyard known as the Bradt Cemetery where several of my wife's ancestors, on her mother's side are buried, is a spot marked Mt. Miseria. Billy Welch called it Mt. Misery and he named the school Lisle Road University.

When Billy's mother got too old to churn and work the butter, he took over. As that was almost his sole means of income, that took first place. He had no ice or means of refrigeration as there was no electricity on the hill till the late 1940's. So he depended on well water to cool the cream and assist in the buttermaking. He didn't want any metal in his well, so he dipped his water up by the pailful as he needed it. To be sure it was the coldest water, he dipped it from the north side of the well. Metal must have been alright for the stock, however, for their water was siphoned through a lead pipe from a small well in the pasture on the other side of Welch Road.

When the water in that little well got low in the summer, Billy would take a brush and stand he had made of hard wood and give the well a good cleaning. Sometimes he had a hired man but for that job he had to have someone to hand the pail of dirty water to. Sometimes a salamander would crawl into the end of the pipe in the well and that would cause him to lose the siphon. For those occasions, Billy had a brass pump with a rubber hose and a plate that he put his foot on to hold the pump upright. He'd put the pump in a pail of water, hold it with his foot, hold the rubber hose against the end of the lead pipe, and pump out the obstruction. Then he'd go back out to the well and fish out the salamander, then back to the watering trough and pump the pipe full of water and it would start to flow again.

I remember one hired man named Nat Shirley who always drove a horse and buggy to work. Nat used to wear a long coat or duster and he carried a small paper sack in his coat pocket. He and his horse got their breakfast and meal at noon at Billy's and he usually took enough grain home in the paper sack for his horse's supper. He was paid $1 a day besides all this. The Babcock family lived in a house right across the road from where Mr. Peter Ellis now lives. Every day at milking time some of the kids would go to Billy's for a pail of milk. One day one of them said to Nat, "They told us in school today that we come from monkeys, do you believe that?" Nat, who had his own way of saying things, said, "Hey, yes, some of we is monkeys still!"