As you might imagine, running a
boarding house was a considerable
amount of hard work, including
in 1906, getting water from the well.
Just like many other boarding house
owners, Mort Austin also farmed.
In 1906 Mort and Jennie Austin’s
3 sons: McKinley, 7, Raymond, 6,
and Willie (Bill), 3.
Their grandfather Henry Austin still
lived with them.
Mort and Jennie Austin bought the Collins’ place on 9 acres of land for $300 from Emma Kelso Collins, wife of Tom K. Collins, in April 1905. The former Collins’ home (which was on Collins Road) became Mort and Jennie’s boarding house, Homestead Cottage.
Homestead Cottage could accommodate 15 guests. It was a ten minute walk to Highland Lake. The Shohola Railway Station, where Mort met the guests, was 6 miles away. It was a mile to the Eldred Post Office.
This is a fun photo in my mom’s collection. I think this was taken at Coney Island in maybe the 1930s.
In back row: Bud Smith, Bill Warden at the wheel, Charles Geissler, Ian Warden?, Art Austin; front left: Royden Toaspern, Bub Toaspern.
There are more students in the photo than are identified in the yearbook.
What was once Abel Myers Orchard Terrace boarding house, became the school in Eldred in 1925.
From 1925 to 1926 there were 116 students, 5 faculty. Two years of high school and two high school classes were available. The old school was remodeled.
In the 1926 school year, improvements were made and English 3 was added.
1926 seems to be the year my dad started high school. He was able to attend High School in Eldred and graduated in 1930. Being the only student, Dad was valedictorian, but he would sometimes say he graduated at the bottom of his class.
In 1931 the old school was remodeled to make a gym. Sunshine Hall was purchased in 1934 and became an auditorium. The old Orchard Terrace house was still the school in 1937.
I am making great strides towards getting all the pieces (photos and information) organized for Book 3. Above is the band photo from the 1943 Eldred School Yearbook, one of the many new photos I have recently scanned.
In the process of organizing 4 diaries, photos and info from 20-plus school yearbooks, 5 years of emails laden with info tidbits, numerous obits, a new array of letters, recently sent info/photos (all to be incorporated with the original “rest of the book”), I came across a May 2009 email which indicated I was pondering the possibility of breaking the manuscript into more than one book.
Deciding to make 3 books out of the (then) 650 pages has been quite the adventure. It has included meeting many new friends and relatives whose input has been so essential to writing the history of our ancestors who lived in the vicinity of the Town of Highland, not far from Halfway Brook.
And now, three years later, I “know” who so many of the people were who were written about in the letters and diaries from 1920 to 1950—and in some cases even have photos.
Zane Grey’s first Western, The Heritage of the Desert, written in 1910, became a best seller. By 1915 Zane Grey had 15 books on a variety of subjects, including baseball, westerns, fishing, and outdoor adventure.
—wikipedia.org; nps.gov/upde.
Zane and Dolly Roth Grey lived near the Roebling Bridge at Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania. Zane had met his future wife Lina (Dolly) Roth, at the Delaware House in Lackawaxen where Zane and his brother Romer liked to hike and fish.
In 1904 Zane had left his New York City dental practice to become a professional writer. With the help of Dolly, Zane bought 3 acres with a house and barn in Pennsylvania from the Holberts for $1,425.
(Federick and Mary Holbert had bought the 3-acre farm in 1898 for $300 from the Canal which was closing.) The land was just south of the junction of the Delaware and Lackawaxen Rivers, and north of the Roebling Bridge—some 5 miles west of Shohola.
Zane and Polly’s drafty Holbert farmhouse was next to the house and property of Zane’s brother Romer. In 1914 Romer Grey and his wife deeded their house to Zane’s wife, Dolly Grey, for a dollar. Continue reading
