Barryville, New York circa 1900

In 1900 Charles M. and Lottie Bradley Colville and their newborn daughter Ruth lived in Barryville. Charles was a farmer. Lottie was a daughter of Isaac and Joanna Bradley. We learn a bit more about the Colville family through letters Ruth writes in 1918, to my uncle McKinley Austin.

Samuel and Elizabeth Hulse’s son Chester was a friend of Rowlee Schoonover. Mary Eaton, a servant, and Mr. Decker, 57, boarded with them.

Marie DeKnetel taught music. George and Julia Eckhart had 2 children, Albert and Lillie.

August and Anna Clouse had 3 children: Katie, Freddie, and Clarence. August was a master carpenter. We will read about him in a later chapter.

Samuel Rusby was a pastor. He and his wife Carrie had 6 children.

Gilbert and Mary Nelson had been married 30 years. Gilbert was a mail carrier. Their daughter Minnie, 26, would attend the Methodist Church in the 1930s when Irwin Briggs was the preacher. (The Gilbert Nelson family was not related to the Robert Nelson family who would later live nearby.)

Brothers John and George Steel were both butchers.

Menzo Quick was a General Merchant; James Quick was a foreman with the D&H Canal company; Charles Nelson was a railroad laborer.

Mary Rixton, 68, lived with her son Henry who was a hotel keeper. Oliver Cory was a house painter. James Ozenbaugh was a salesman. John Fox from Pennsylvania was a collar maker.

The Gardner and Calkin families in Barryville were related to Eliza Eldred Gardner, daughter of James and Polly V. Eldred, who settled in late 1815, in what became Eldred.

Eliza Gardner, 89, had been a widow since 1860. She lived with her son Stephen St. John Gardner and his family. Stephen had been married to his second wife Maggie Terns for 20 years. His daughter Katie and his brother-in-law John Terns, 72, lived with them. Stephen’s son Myers Gardner and his wife Annie Long were in California. Myers was a bookkeeper for a lumber firm in Stockton.

Stephen and his son James K. Gardner ran the store in Shohola next to the Shohola Glen House. James K. sold coal and lumber.

James K. (namesake of his grandfather) and Ella Breen Gardner’s daughter Edna, 9, would be the organist at my parents wedding. Edna’s twin sister had died young.

Ella Breen Gardner was a sister to Meda Breen Tether, wife of Walter Tether. The Tethers also had a house in Barryville.

Maria Calkin was Eliza Gardner’s daughter. Oliver, a farmer, and Maria Calkin’s children: James Calkin, a telegraph lineman; Charles F. Calkin, a gristmill worker; and Maria (Lilly?) lived with them.

Eliza’s son James E. Gardner and his wife Rebecca Rider were in Brooklyn where James E. ran a grocery store in 1900. Susan Gardner was their daughter.