Halfway Brook

In 1824, more than half a century ago, the marquis Gilbert Motier de Lafayette, for the Fourth Time, visited the United States. His arrival was hailed with universal joy throughout the land; and he passed through the twenty-four States of the Union in a round of civic and martial triumphs, unequaled in magnificence and splendor. During that visit, it was my good fortune to become acquainted with him, and to witness some of the most splendid displays on that occasion…—Amos Parker, Recollections of Lafayette, p. 9.

In August 1824 the very popular Revolutionary War Hero of two continents, Marquis de Lafayette, age sixty-six, began his fourth and last tour of the United States.

At eleven o’clock the morning of September fourth, General Lafayette arrived at Hartford, Connecticut. A street full of militia and many others, including the Smiths, welcomed him.

Julia Smith had never seen so many people. She and her family waited while Lafayette ate lunch in the house on the opposite side of the street. Around one o’clock the Smiths went to the courthouse where they “were presented to the Marquis who took us by the hand.”

As Lafayette took her hand, Julia said in French, “We are pleased to see you Monsieur le Marquis. Lafayette replied in French, thanking her. “Monsieur le Marquis left Hartford for New York in a steamboat,” Julia wrote in French in her journal.

In New York Lafayette visited Mrs. Willard’s Troy Female Seminary. “The General was much moved” and requested three copies (one for each of his daughters) of the welcome song the young ladies of the Troy Female Seminary had sung.

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Halfway Brook Friends,

I hope everyone is staying well and warm with all the snow, ice, and cold this winter. It was 30 degrees here in Cave Creek, AZ when I got up this morning. A bit cold for this time of year here, but nothing like what other parts of the country are facing.

I am disappointed to report that the latest proof copy of Abby, Laurilla, and Mary Ann did not come close to being approved. We are currently looking into a new printer, in hopes that will work. I’ll update you when I have news of the imminent availability of Abby, Laurilla, and Mary Ann.

Meanwhile, I hope to post some more excerpts or images from Abby, Laurilla, and Mary Ann, though not in chronological order.

I collected a number of sleighing images for Abby, Laurilla, and Mary Ann. I thought Halfway Brook readers might enjoy this one which was not used. (Click on it twice to get the full size.)

Until next time,

Louise

I have ordered a second hard copy proof of Abby, Laurilla, and Mary Ann, and am hopeful that I can make it available at that time. (The time it takes to ship have increased, so it may be at least two weeks away. The interior is in the best color printing available, and of course the costs have risen, so the book will be more costly than I hoped.)

Table of Contents Abby, Laurilla, and Mary Ann
(There are also 150 sidebars listed in the book, Abby, Laurilla, and Mary Ann.)
Northeast United States Map
1848 Connecticut Map
1868 Southbury, Connecticut Map
1855 Glastenbury, Connecticut Map
1854 Towns of Lumberland and Highland, New York Map
Selected Descendants of William and Elizabeth Hitchcock
1600–1930 Timeline

Chapter 1: The First Four Hickok Ancestors
William, Joseph, Benjamin, Justus, 1635–1770

Chapter 2: Shillings, Scholars, Linen, and Pecks
David Hickok’s Journals, 1769–1775

Chapter 3: Ticonderoga and Crown Point
The Hickoks and the Revolutionary War, 1775–1783

Chapter 4: Books, Conversations, and Chocolate
Hannah’s Journal, 1784–1786

Chapter 5: Farewell to South Britain
The Hickok First Cousins, 1790–1800

Chapter 6: Reading, Writing, and Responsibilities
Five Smith Daughters, 1800-1816

Chapter 7: Rugged Wilderness Living
Hannah Hickok in Lumberland, 1812–1818

Chapter 8: Caring, Visiting, and Teaching
The Smiths, 1817–1824

Chapter 9: Hannah Marries James
Lumberland, New York, 1825–1827

Chapter 10: The Heinous Sin
The Smiths and the Abolitionists, 1830s
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We leave the Smiths in Glastenbury in 1825 to visit the younger Hannah Hickok, her brother Justus Hickok, and the Eldred Family who live in Lumberland, New York. Hannah’s life is about to have a major change.

Daily work in Lumberland, whether on the farm, inside the house, or lumbering, continued to be challenging. Obtaining food and necessities of life was still difficult and time consuming. Unlike the Smiths who were just seven miles from the major city of Hartford, the Hickoks and Eldreds had to travel quite a distance.

The 120-mile-round trip to Newburgh, New York, on the Hudson River, took a week. It was only nineteen miles to Port Jervis, New York, to purchase grains ground into flour and dry goods. But the route, which overlooked the Delaware River, included the Hawk’s Nest, a winding, sometimes treacherous path, carved out of the mountainside. Travel was easiest in the winter when the Delaware River was frozen.

Hickoks in Pennsylvania
In 1825 only Hannah Hickok and her brother Justus Hickok and his family remained in Lumberland, New York. Their parents Asa and Esther Hinman Hickok, and siblings Louisa and Reuben Hickok had relocated to Warren Township, Bradford County.

In 1854 Abby and Laurilla Smith first visit Louisa and Reuben Hickok, in Pennsylvania, before spending time with Hannah and Justus, in New York.

James Eldred, Widower
Such sadness in the James Eldred Family. From 1820 to 1823 three daughters (two had been born in Lumberland) of James and Polly Eldred died. Then in January of 1825 Polly Mulford Eldred died, at age thirty-seven. James was now a widower with four children, ages nine to nineteen, living at home.

James Eldred continued working in the local Lumberland government as Town Clerk, Commissioner of Highways, and Town Marshall. James owned almost 685 acres. The northwest corner of one parcel was the location of the future Halfway Brook Village, later renamed Eldred.

Hannah Hickok, her brother Justus and his wife Mary Wells continued to attend the rural church often held at the Eldred home where James was the Bible teacher.

Hannah Marries James
In February 1826 Hannah Hickok married James Eldred. She now had the care of the two youngest children: Eliza, who married the following year, and Phebe Maria, age ten. The family still lived in the old log cabin by the sawmill, near Halfway Brook.

Mary Ann Eldred
In December 1827 Mary Ann Eldred, my great-grandmother was born. (The Smith sisters and Mary Ann Eldred were second cousins.)

I’m excited to say I am on the final edit of a black and white hard copy of Abby, Laurilla, and Mary Ann. The maps, timeline, trees, sidebars, text, Endnotes, Bibliography, Acknowledgments, Index, and About the Author are complete.

The cover is in the final stages. The book interior will be in color. There are still some steps before the book is printed, but, after seven years, it’s encouraging to be getting so close.

Laurilla and Zephina Smith saw Mrs. Willard (Emma Hart Willard) when they were in Hartford, in September 1821.

Soon after, Mrs. Willard opened her Female Seminary for boarding and day students, in Troy, New York. Finally, a school which offered mathematics, philosophy, geography, history, and science to women.

In 1823 Almira Hart Lincoln, Emma’s sister, became a teacher and Vice-Principal at Troy Female Seminary. A recent widow Almira, the youngest of seventeen children, had lived with the Smiths for several weeks (in 1813) so she could copy Laurilla’s paintings.

In January 1823 Emma Hart Willard, in her continual search for qualified teachers, wrote and asked Laurilla Smith to teach French. Julia did not want Laurilla to leave. But Laurilla wanted to go. So in February 1823 Laurilla, age thirty-four, left for Troy, New York, some 100 miles northwest of Glastenbury, Connecticut.

Learn Euclid, Teach French
Emma Willard needed someone to teach Euclidean geometry. She thought Julia would be that person. This was the plan: Mrs. Willard would teach geometry to Julia. To pay for those lessons Julia would teach French. After Julia learned Euclidean geometry, Julia would teach the subject to students at the Troy Female Seminary.

Hannah, Laurilla, Cyrinthia, Zephina, and Abby thought that was a good idea. Julia did not. Perhaps Laurilla’s tease that Julia would have to take a back seat to the young Eden ladies who (Laurilla said) “knew twenty languages,” was a challenge Julia could not pass up.

Julia quipped that she “would not take a back seat, for great books do not always make great scholars. When I see these young ladies I will ask them ‘nine plain questions’ from Steady Habits Vindicated; or, Nine Plain Questions to the People of Connecticut, a book on Federalism.” Many years later Julia commented to her friend Frances Burr:

I became a teacher of French and mathematics at Mrs. Willard’s and taught these very same young ladies, Aaron Burr’s friends, the Misses Eden, who knew so much. I wrote home that these young ladies who were going to make me take a back seat, were my scholars.
—Abby, Laurilla, and Mary Ann, p. 114.

Emma Hart was the sixteenth child of Samuel Hart and the ninth child of Mr. Hart and his second wife Lydia. Samuel encouraged his daughter Emma to love learning, reading, and to think for herself.

In 1802 when Laurilla and Cyrinthia Smith attended Sarah Pierce’s Litchfield Female Academy, Emma Hart, fifteen, attended the Berlin Academy in Connecticut, for the first time. By 1806 Emma was in charge of the academy for a term.

In 1807 Emma was principal of the Middlebury Female Seminary, in Vermont, where Emma met and married physician John Willard.

(In March of 1813 Emma’s younger sister Almira Hart stayed at the Smith home for three or four weeks to copy Laurilla’s paintings.)

In 1814 Emma, champion for equal education for young women, opened a boarding school for girls in her own home (in Vermont) so they could study the same subjects her nephew took at College.

Emma Hart Willard strongly believed that young women should be offered the same subjects as men took in college. At the time finishing schools, which mainly taught social graces, were thought to be the correct education for girls. Emma faced similar opposition to educating women as Sarah Pierce had in 1790.

Using her teaching experience in Vermont, Emma wrote a pamphlet, A Plan for Improving Female Education. In 1819 hoping the New York Legislature would fund a seminary for women as they did men’s schools, Emma presented her plan. She explained that some of the weakness in female education was because the Legislatures undervalued “the importance of women in society.” Finishing schools, which majored on protocols and etiquette, were expensive and not a good value. “Another error” was that educating women had been “to prepare them to please” men. Continue reading →

James Eldred Homestead
At the end of 1815 James Eldred, his wife Polly Mulford, and their five children arrived from Orange County, New York. Ten days later their daughter Phebe Maria Eldred was born.

The Eldreds settled in a log cabin beside a sawmill on two cleared acres near the middle of Halfway Brook, two miles north of the Hickok family. There was no building for a mile in any direction.

The northwest corner of Mr. Eldred’s property was the location for the future Halfway Brook Village—much later renamed Eldred.

James Eldred lumbered and farmed. He became involved with the local government, overseeing schools, and building roads in this new community. (James and his children play a significant role in the life of Asa’s daughter Hannah.)

One Clock, Three Watches
In 1816 only four frame houses, nine frame barns, and a gristmill sat on Lumberland’s large acreage. The animals included 19 horses, 34 oxen, and 34 cows. There were ten wagons. One person owned a clock which furnished the time for the town. James Eldred owned one of three watches.

Congregational Church
A Congregational Church met in log cabins and barns in remote areas near the Delaware River, in Lumberland. In the fall of 1814 some of the meetings were held at the Hickok Farm.

In 1815 Sylvia Hickok, daughter of Asa and Esther, died at the age of thirty-four. Sylvia was buried in what is now the Old Eldred Cemetery.

In September 1818 revival meetings were held in the Hickok barn. The entire Hickok Family joined the church. As did James and Polly Eldred.

The following year James Eldred, a careful Bible student, was elected a church deacon. Church Services were then held at the home of James and Polly Eldred.

The meetings were so meaningful that at the 1899 Eldred Church Centennial, James’s daughter Eliza Eldred Gardner, at age ninety-nine, commented, “If I were thirty years younger, I would walk up to Eldred, even in a storm, if I might see the same spirit of love there, now, that I saw in those early days.”

In the 1780s Hannah Hickok Smith borrowed and diligently read her uncle Asa Hickok’s geography book. From 1802 to 1812 Uncle Asa, Aunt Esther, and their six children (Hannah Smith’s first cousins) lived in Burlington, part of original Farmington, Connecticut.

In 1812 Asa and Esther and their children: Hannah Hickok (age twenty-three), Reuben, Sylvia, Louisa, Justus, and David (his wife and son Asa Royer Hickok), left Burlington. Their journey of 125 miles took them across the Hudson River, to the remote, rugged wilderness region of Lumberland, in Sullivan County, New York.

This Hickoks settled on property two miles north of the Delaware River. Nearby Halfway Brook rambled through the middle of Lumberland’s 150,000 acres of rolling hills carpeted with huge, ancient trees, interspersed with streams and ponds.

Asa and his sons built their house and barn on land which today includes Hickok Falls on Hickok Brook. Hickok Brook connected with Halfway Brook on its way south to the Delaware River, the town’s southwestern boundary, and the New York-Pennsylvania border. The family built a sawmill near the Hickok Brook and Falls. (Asa’s brother Gideon had run a sawmill in the Greenville, New York area.)

Near the juncture of Halfway Brook and the Delaware River was a hamlet, later called Barryville. A crude, rope-guided ferry was the only way to cross the Delaware River from Barryville south to Shohola, Pennsylvania.

In 1854 Abby and Laurilla Smith crossed from Pennsylvania to New York, on that same ferry. Abby found Lumberland a pleasant place which agreed with her health. Laurilla, the artist, took notice of Halfway Brook. Continue reading →

It was the start of a new century. Daily life continued much the same for Zephaniah and Hannah Hickok Smith, of Glastenbury, Connecticut.

Along with Zephaniah’s law practice, the couple maintained (or hired help for) their large two-story house (Kimberly Mansion) on 133 acres. And tried to keep one step ahead of their five especially bright young daughters (ages three to thirteen), Zephina, Cyrinthia, Laurilla, Julia, and Abby.

Hannah organized and assigned responsibilities to her daughters. Outdoor tasks included tending the gardens and orchard and caring for the animals. Inside there were meals to be made, dishes to be washed, ironing, sewing, spinning, weaving, cooking, and a multitude of other tasks.

But always there was reading!

In 1800 the Smith parents considered two schools in Connecticut: Sarah Pierce’s Female Academy in Litchfield, and the Norwich Boys Academy (which allowed girls to attend). Both schools were boarding situations.

Sarah Pierce’s Litchfield Female Academy
Miss Sarah Pierce, a descendant of the early New Englanders, believed that women and men were intellectually equal. Convinced that girls should be taught the same subjects as boys, Sarah founded the Litchfield Female Academy, one of the earliest schools for girls in the United States.

Miss Sally, as her students called her, wisely integrated an innovative curriculum of academic subjects with the usual “female” skills (that parents expected their daughters to learn) which included music, dancing, singing, needlework, drawing, and painting.

Geography and history lessons were reinforced with maps and charts the students drew and painted. Students’ embroideries and watercolor paintings illustrated poetry, literature, myths, and Bible stories. Continue reading →