by Alice Fitzgerald Wood

Page 4

They told me of how Grandmother’s only brother – James Bennett Lusk (1842-1864) had gone to Michigan to teach school. A brother of my great grandfather was reputedly the governor of Michigan at that time. He had got this position (teacher) for Great Uncle Bennett. While teaching there he contracted the measles. Apparently recovered, he went into the door-yard to get a drink at the well. He caught cold and had a relapse. The people where he was living sent word to his father (my great grandfather) to come at once. (I think by telegram). Great grandfather made preparations to leave the next morning. He was sleeping soundly when he was awakened by 3 raps on the head of his bed. Startled, he heard his wife’s voice saying reproachfully, "James! James!" She had died four years before in 1860. He lit a candle and looked at the hour of the night. It disturbed him so that he slept no more that night and he started for Michigan the next day as soon as he could. When he arrived they said that Uncle Bennett was dead. He had died at the exact hour great grandfather had heard the rappings and voice of his departed wife. Of course, the idea of Spiritualism has been abandoned by the family and the only explanation to me is that it was a dream half-waking, half-sleeping, or else a feeling of guilt that he hadn’t left earlier. Who knows for sure? Maybe we are drifting away from contact with the departed. It wasn’t a new idea by any means and I think it was often a comfort and eased the irreparable sense of lass that bereaved ones had. Some call it superstition. I have laughed with them but when I think of the feeling I had when I went through the old house recently I’m not so sure. I could see them all and almost hear their voices. It is just wishful thinking, of course. I haven’t lived there for forty years (1913-1953) but it is so vivid.

The small southwest room was always called the guestroom. In that room was the bureau and commode that I have in my "black bedroom" now. The bed was too high to take up the stairs so Mother left it at Uncle George Cowles’. The set was reunited when he moved to Holley in 1913. The little old rocker of my great grandmother was in this room and also Uncle Johnnie’s folding chair that Aunt Mabel has now. The northwest room was tiny, but mother and I shared this until I was 13 years old. There was only room for a bed, small dresser and one chair.

It seems as if my children and grandchildren must see it all, too. When I was little I sat, enthralled, by tales of the experiences they had all had. I remember sitting in my little Morris chair by the stove in the sitting room. Everyone was gathered around when suddenly everyone could hear steps descending the stairs and the latch rattled (they said it lifted). Each one raised his eyes toward the door and waited to see who was there. When nothing happened they investigated and found no one. Grandma said, "They are lonesome and want to join us." Each member of the family claimed to have had an eerie experience while alone in the front of the house. It was generally a step heard by their side and a touch on the shoulder. No one was there. I'll never forget the evening early in the fall when the family were all in the kitchen by the fire. The door into the front rooms was closed to conserve heat. I was seated at the organ just playing at making music, when I heard a sound like a pile of books falling. After 45 years I can still feel the goose flesh and the feeling of every hair on my head standing on end. I walked stiffly into the kitchen with my mouth and eyes wide open. It was like a nightmare. The family looked up and said, "It finally happened to her." When I could, I told them what I had heard. They investigated and found nothing. They tried to quiet me the departed were all friendly and would not harm me. No wonder I never went to bed upstairs until someone went with me.

The loft over the kitchen was another place of mystery to me. Up there was Great grandmother’s old spinning wheel, which we finally came into possession of after nearly 100 years. Also the sap buckets and wooden troughs which were used at the sugar bush in the woods. The remains or traces of remains of the sugarhouse are still there (Sept. 1953). It was never worked after Uncle Johnnie died in 1900 because he was the one that tended it and for some distorted sense of loyalty no one else was allowed to touch them. Another instance of this was the fact that my grandmother would not make mustard pickles after the death of Johnnie because he was so fond of running in from play and fishing out of the cauliflower from the crock that sat on the cellar stairway wall. My grandmother's favorite cake was a Lady Baltimore with boiled frosting and raisins. After she died no one in the family ever made it until I started to make it after I was married. The last food mm mother tasted and the last request she made to me before she died was for a piece of warm gingerbread. I made it and she tasted a little bit. It was a long time before I could make gingerbread without pangs of remembering so I can understand how some of those strange ideas happened.

I have described the inside of the house so now I’ll speak of the front porch. It was very narrow and how I dreaded wash day in the wintertime because mother always hung up the clothes there, which made the sitting room so dark. On this porch which we always called the "stoop," were two old school benches that came out of the old red school house located on the farm on the north side of the road opposite the "South Road" and Perry Glidden homestead. It was just west of the house on the east farm built for my grandmother. All of Grandmother's children started there to school. At one time Gertrude Preston Partridge taught there. (Corinne Partridge’s mother). They had a big picnic there some time around 1890. I have the written up by David Copeland, the Clarendon bard, author of Copeland's "History of Clarendon" which he dedicated to his mother. This was called the Glidden district, mentioned on page 325 in above-mentioned book. On page 352 it lists the graves in Calico Cemetery better known as Glidden burying ground. At that time he had found Great-great grandfather Samuel Lusk's grave; he was buried in 1835, aged 55 (born in 1780). I have never found that grave. On page 157 of "History of Clarendon" it tells of the first settler on Grandfather’s farm – Andrew Ingersoll. On page 259 it mentions James Lusk as assessor for the town of Clarendon in 1878. On page l09 it tells of the Bennetts of Bennett’s Corners.

To go back to the little red schoolhouse on the farm on East Glidden Road as it was called, the original school burned and another was built in the 1870's. I was about 5 years old when a man by the name of Lawler bought it and removed it to his farm on Hall Road, where it now stands. I remember watching them move it. I was tiny and shy and hung tightly, to my "Papa’s" hand. (My grandfather)

On the fencerow, one lot in from the Hall Road, there was a row of sweet cherry trees. I spent many happy summer afternoons there getting my fill of cherries. Wentworth Wood (later my husband) and I picked them together there in 1913.

In my rambling I have gotten ahead of my story. The property known as the "east place" came into the possession of Great-great grandfather Samuel Lusk about 1817 from James Bodwell Jr. whose father cleared the land. The west 50 acres were cleared by him prior to that. He was born in 1780 and cleared and lived on that land in a log cabin (location already described). I do not know when the cabin was built but from reading and hearsay, I believe Great-great grandfather Lusk's son James was born there. His wife was Comfort Williams (should be Comfort Hull). I don't know about them and their family except Great-grandfather James and his second wife Susannah Williams. Their oldest child, Bennett, was given Great-grandfather’s first wife’s maiden name. In 1835, had he married Charlotte Bennett of the Bennett’s Corners Bennetts: she and their first child died the next year.

In 1840 he married the above mentioned Susannah. They had two children born in the cabin – Great Uncle Bennett Lusk and Great Aunt Naomi Lusk Gray. She used to tell me how her grandmother hid her children in the root cellar near the cabin because she used to be afraid of the Indians who came along the road begging for food. They hadn’t been put on reservations. It was from this cabin that my great grandfather started to walk to Clarendon for supplies through drifted snow banks in Feb. It happened to be on Aunt Naomi's 6th birthday. He brought her back a little green pail (country tin) for a present. I have it now. She gave it to me in about 1923 and told me the story about it. About that year her father built the old home and they moved from the cabin into it. Amongst their pieces of furniture was the spinning wheel, which they put up in the loft: it was taken down in 1953 when it came back into our family. Also a little homemade chair in which great grandmother held her babies in front of the fireplace in the cabin. Later, grandfather McCormick put rockers on it.