Eldred, New York

by Louise Smith Posted on October 21, 2010

The next few posts will feature family postcards or photos of the village of Eldred, New York, where my Austin and Leavenworth relatives lived.

This first photo was in Great Aunt Aida Austin’s photo album and looks to be a postcard. It is a view of Eldred looking west from the vicinity of Highland Lake and Proctor Roads.

For those of you who have read The Mill on Halfway Brook, the house on the right was that of C.C.P. Eldred, son of James and Polly Mulford Eldred. C.C.P. was the postmaster for a number of years.

On the far left is the home of Abel Sprague Myers and his second wife Maria Hankins. The house was a boarding house at one time and called Orchard Terrace. I don’t know when the home was originally built.

Second from the left is the Congregational Church built in 1835.

The Methodist church, built in 1859, is in the distance and has a steeple on it. I have read that there was no steeple on the Methodist or the Congregational Church until after 1900.

However, in my great-grandmother Mary Ann Austin’s 1879 letter, she mentioned they were to have put the steeple up in July of that year. I don’t know whether that happened or not.

I do have two photos that will be in book two of the churches with no steeples.

If you have more information on any of these Eldred photos, please feel free to leave a comment on this site or contact me by email:
info at halfwaybrook dot com

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On organizing “Echo Hill and Mountain Grove”

by Louise Smith Posted on October 20, 2010


Organizing the boarding houses that will be in “Echo Hill and Mountain Grove.’

Since April, I have been working on Echo Hill and Mountain Grove, book 2 in the series, Memoirs from Eldred, New York, 1800 to 1950.

Echo Hill Farm House, owned by my Leavenworth relatives, and Mountain Grove House, owned by my Austin relatives, were just 2 of the many boarding houses of Highland, New York, located within 5 miles of the Delaware River.

Echo Hill and Mountain Grove covers the years 1880 to 1925 and includes many of the boarding houses/summer homes that were near Yulan, Barryville, Eldred, and Highland Lake (Venoge for a time). (EH&MG ends at 1925 and 400+ pages.)

Boarding houses continued to be a main part of the economy of the area until the 1960s and will be included in Book 3— 1925 to 1950.

The boarding houses changed names and owners through the years and brain boggle set in. The photo above shows my attempt at organizing the years, the locations, the names, and owners of the boarding houses. The different colors are not significant; they were the colors available at the time.

This project was/is powered by tea—the cup sitting on the table in the background highlights my new kitchen completed during the writing of The Mill on Halfway Brook.

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