I had a house on Quaker Hill.   I had a house on Quaker Hill.  The opening scene from Karen Dinesen's ​Out of Africa has always haunted me.   My heart broke when she had to say goodbye to the resting place of her beloved Denys Finch Hatton and her beautiful farm in Africa, perhaps already somehow knowing I, too, would have to walk through an empty Hall Christy house and wrench myself away from the graves of my beautiful goldens, my children, who shared it with me.  Unlike Dinesen, I did it voluntarily, mostly, although taxes and work were sapping us from our energy, and I never wanted to be in a position to resent my gem of a home.

I left my soul there.   It took almost six years to acquire that house and we spent another
thirty years cherishing it, preserving it and protecting it so it could go on after us for others to love, hoping it would be my legacy to the future, as I did not have children which are usually the legacy of others.  I wanted the future to have the beauty, history and even wonder of this house.

I always thought that the house loved to laugh.   It made me a better person by living in it.  By opening myself to trying to imagine the lives of those who lived there before, I opened myself to give to those who now walked through that door.   By noticing every wonderful detail, I paid attention to the details in other living creatures to better understand them, to accept that the details of their lives made them the special people I loved.  By watching not just the physical, but the shadows, it taught me that there is so much more to the story of a life than what we think we see.  It taught me that I am such
a small part of human history, that I have benefitted from what those did who came before me, so I should be very careful to conduct my life as to not damage those who come after me.  

In the last three years, we had experienced quite a few losses of beloveds in our life.   Somehow, walking through the house, they were still with me, hearing them laugh, seeing their smiles, the wagging tail, the stories told around the dinner table under the candlelit chandelier.  The house anchored and comforted me.

It was April 21st at 2:45 PM that I shut the gate for the last tie.   Walking through the house, I felt like I was also saying goodbye to all those souls to whom I had already said goodbye once before.   It was one of the most difficult days of my life.   But , yet, as I looked back, the house stood,  with a part of soul left there, but it stood, ready to live on well past its 270 years.

Alas, it was not to be.   We learned that in the early morning of July 16th, the Hall Christy house vanished in smoke and fire.*  There was no one in it at the time.  It was empty of any human habitation.  The tragedy is simply and yet enormously in the loss of it alone.  I know that a part of me died in that fire, I hope not the better, giving part it gave to me.  I am told there is nothing left to sift through to salvage those amazing details.   The proportion, design, and the wonderful shadows will not be found.  Nor that piece of my heart I left behind.    I had a house on Quaker Hill.    I had a house on Quaker Hill.



*I had protected the house for 30 years and the new owner could not protect it for 3 months.   Let's just say that I feel there will be more chapters to that story.

That is what has become a rumor around the community.   In actuality, we do only use candles in the parlor and dining room, but only because we like the way it looks.   There is electric to code throughout the entire house, including these two rooms.

But it does bring up the point that the need for electric outlets and light switches in a colonial period home can grate on purist sensibilites.   I know it did on mine so it took some thinking to overcome the problem.

The first thing to remember is that codes and what electricians are used to doing are not necessarily the same.   Most electricians, for instance, wish to put the outlets 16 inches above the floor.   In our neck of the woods, that is not code, just common practice, a practice that puts them right smack in the plaster wall in eyesight.  Our solution was to place them in the baseboards.   This means more work for your electrician who has to crouch a little more and for your carpenter who is going to have to cut the baseboard for the electric box.  We were very careful in asking for our original estimates to let the electrician know about these requirements so he could adjust the estimate accordingly. In the finishing, we tried to match original baseboard colors on the plates covering the electric outlets.

Now for those ugly switches!  What we chose to do is to cover them with reproduction pipe boxes, candle boxes or needlepoint wall pockets.   Again, this takes some planning.
For instance, if you wish the box to be centered on a wall, remember that at the time of roughing in the electric, neighboring door and window moldings are rarely in so one has to account for these widths in centering.   Also, another good thing to do is to leave some slack in the wires in case boxes need slight adjustments.   For the pipe boxes, the backs of the boxes are cut out enough to allow for the switch plates and the bottoms are removed as much as possible to allow hands to reach up and under for the switches.  We were careful to make sure switches at the top of stairs were evident, however, for safety.  Of course there was the added advantage that the Hall Christy house was dismantled and reconstructed instead of having to retrofit the electric as well as the other systems.

Below are pictures of several of our solutions.   I hope that it is helpful to others living in these incredible 18th Century houses.

     For those colonial home owners who have found it challenging to integrate modern
plumbing into an 18th Century house, perhaps some of the solutions we found for the Hall Christy house can be of help.
     When we found the house, there was only one corner that had plumbing in it.   We tried to limit our modern solutions to that corner with the kitchen and powder room below and the upstairs bathroom above.   This was nearly 30 years ago so we had to use our own ingenuity to come up with what has become more readily available on the market.
     The Hall Christy house did not tend to a primitive look as there is some rather sophisticated paneling and wood work throughout, so our choices were more formal, although they readily could be adapted to a primitive style of cabinetry.  And, yes, we love the wonderful stone baths we encounter in Europe, but did not think them appropriate for an American farm house nor, quite frankly, did we have the room.   As with most 18th Century houses, bathroom spaces are not large.

     For the powder room, we simply sheathed the walls in vertical boards similar to those found in the Skidmore house which we had recycled into the Hall Christy house.   We put a similar color on them to the 1760 paint color found in the dining room and parlor.   We found a reproduction japanned lowboy with burl veneer top in which we put a brass drop sink.   Simple acorn brass sconces made by Hurley Pantentee flank a 19th gilded mirror.  I did a gilded stenciled frieze.   Of course, we went with a modern taupe Kohler low profile toilet, rather than the traditional one-holer.
     We wanted the upstairs bathroom to appear as an 18th Century dressing room.  As you can see from the pictures, what appears to be a corner cupboard is really the shower.   The cupboard across from the sink (corian sunk into a Baker furniture Queen Anne cherry sideboard) opens up to my favorite thing in the bathroom - a jacuzzi tub!  

We reconfigured a second period Chippendale mirror into a medicine cabinet slightly paring down its ears so that it could open.   The recessed cabinet, made of cherry like the mirror protrudes from the wall about 1 1/2 inches, again so the mirror can open.   It is flanked by two Williamsburg brass sconces and vertical cherry blinds are on the window.   This room may seem rather formal, but the paneling and chair rail pick up the profile of the originals in the dining room so they are appropriate for this house.
     Our biggest challenge came when we wanted to add for marketing purposes a second Jack and Jill bathroom upstairs between the two guest bedrooms.    Our house is built in the Hudson Valley Dutch frame vernacular so that the ceilings below are the floors above - no place for plumbing.   The upstairs ceiling height is also too low to allow for putting a higher floor in the bathroom area to make a space for the plumbing.   One of the bedrooms was in the lean-to section of our saltbox  with the floor level being two feet lower than the non-lean-to section of the second floor.

     I finally came up with the idea of (1) putting all the fixtures on the bathroom wall shared with that bedroom and (2) commandeering about a foot of that bedroom to allow for a chase for plumbing.  Because this wall was also the original exterior wall of the house, at least 6 inches thick , it also allowed us to put in a wall-hung toilet which takes up less floor space.  Since most colonial houses are a puzzle of add-ons hiding old exterior walls, the wall-hung toilet might be a good solution in many instances.

     The trickiest part was the shower.   It is placed between two beams.   Decorative tile covers the beam depth so that there is the maximum amount of head room in between for the shower user.  This also allows a nice shelf mid-way up for soaps, shampoo, etc.

As you can see below, the floor of the shower is the same elevation as the bathroom floor.
Magic?  No.   We simply put the drain into the adjacent bedroom where there was the two foot drop.   The soil pipe for all the bathroom fitures is in the space borrowed from the bedroom.  The soil pipe then goes straight down through another chase created by the lean-to addition directly to the basement and soil pipe leading outside to the septic system.

We camouflaged all this by built-ins in the bedroom.   The doors below the two working drawers open to the plumbing in case of need for repairs.   Of course, all the adjoining walls are heavily insulated so that nighttime trips to the necessary do not interrupt anyone's sleep.   The bathroom floor, itself, was raised about 1 1/2 inches to accommodate insulation between it and the parlor as well as a membrane to prevent any water from entering the parlor below in case of overflows in the sink, etc. above.

     The vanity in this bathroom is a Baker flip-top bachelor's chest that my cabinet maker and myself reconfigured to receive a tile backsplash and Herbeau vessel sink.   We had wanted to reflect a delft type look to go with our Dutch house, but finding no delft sink, we chose the blue and white Herbeau Moustier pattern.   Amazingly, we found a little lady in Denton, Texas that paints and refires Home Depot tiles so she picked up the leaf pattern that was in the Herbeau sink for the tiles in the shower and blacksplash  and even painted two tiles with pheasants to go with the gilded pheasant on the mirror.  Again, Hurley Patentee brass sconces flank the mirror.   

We added a vertical board partition between the vanity area and the shower and toilet to aide in privacy for the Jack and Jill bathroom.   We chose to put the faucet to the side of the bowl which allows the bottom two drawers of the vanity to be used for storage.

     Our last bathroom serves the guest quarters over the garage.   We used a cherry nightstand for the vanity with a pottery vessel sink.   Again the shower is hidden, appearing to be a closet.

     Although in taking our house down, piece by piece and reconstructing it piece by piece enabled us to put in modern insulation, it is always best not to put your plumbing fixtures on an outside wall, especially in cold climates.
     I hope this helps you all to get your creative juices going for your own solutions.  This hiding of the modern fitures has an added benefit of providing hours of delight for all the children who visit.  They run in asking if they can go through the house to see what's behind all the doors!

     The Hall Christy house was only the second oldest house in the Beekman Patent. The oldest was a wonderful stone house built by the Emigh family only slightly before Peter John Hall built our house.   We had the good fortune to wonder through it before it was purchased and restored.   The bones were great, but there was nary a wooden piece left in it except the beams - no doors, no floor boards, no paneling and therefore no hardware.
     We immediately realized the miracle of our house was finding such a treasure trove of details, especially in the paneling and hardware.   Because of these details, we can feel that we actually see and feel this house in the same way that those who came before us did.
     In fact, it was a special little detail that allowed us to recover the paneling when it was stolen just before we dismantled the house (another story for another snowy day). On the inside of the door to the small parlor closet under the dog leg staircase, there is a delicately carved latch in wood that, as well as the inside of the door, retains the original red 1747 stain of the first room of the house.  Once that was discovered, all the other pieces became obvious and were retrieved.
      Of course, the very first piece of iron seen at the Hall Christy house is the original 1747
numerals that were most likely on the exterior side of the original fireplace wall and removed to the stoop when the 1760's addition was made until we found it.

I've always thought that if I wrote a book about the reconstruction  of the Hall Christy House, the above would be the title.   Sooner or later you will need one.   My husband's came when we were still in our previous house with the completion of the Hall Christy house only a dream.   He was scraping a door which had retained its beautiful H & L hinge when his hand got a beautiful slice by that same beautiful hinge.   A trip to the ER and a tetanus shot later we were back in business.  My turn came while scraping floor boards when one flopped over on my leg leaving a hole the shape of a perfectly squared nail in my thigh.   No ER at that time but a tetanus shot the next day.

Other than a tetanus shot, there are a few other essentials needed when restoring an old house.   The most important is a Red Devil "305" scraper with carbide blades.     Every single floor board had to be scraped, often on both sides as many floor boards were ceiling boards for the room below.   Sometimes they were scraped bare and sometimes carefully scraped to the original paint as were those for the ceiling in the Keeping Room and the kitchen.  Early Hudson Valley rooms had unpainted ceilings and beams until the English custom of plaster and paint was introduced.   The Halls and Christys were great with keeping up with the times.   Thus, most of our ceilings and beams had several coats of white on the ceiling and colored paint on the beams to eliminate.   Then came the wall sheathing, the fireplace wall sheathings in the parlor and dining room and the dozens of sheathing boards gleaned from the Skidmore house.  In the latter case, we were fortunate to have some with only the original paint - a beautiful find and a relief to put in the "done" pile.   The bedroom sheathing had never been painted, but had seven coats of wallpaper on it.   All these boards and beams were to be dry-scraped, excepting those with wallpaper which needed the white vinegar treatment.

Where to begin?   We soon learned so as  not to get defeated you never looked at the pile to be done or the pile already completed - just concentrate on what you were doing at the time.   We both worked during the day, so the scraping had to be done at night and on weekends.   At this time, all the parts were stored in two tractor trailers on site (One neighbor passed the rumor that we were living in them!).  I or my husband would drive our little Chevy S-10 up to the trailers after work, the men hired to reconstruct the house would put some boards in the back and we would unload them in the carport of where we were then living.   I am a night person so I would take the night shift and scrape,  my husband the morning until all the boards were done and loaded back into the S-10 for dropping back off at the site the next morning.   We noticed that the workmen likely had bets among themselves as to our productivity.   Every night they would load increasingly larger numbers of boards into the truck only to be amazed that every morning every single one of those boards would arrive back on site scraped.  On weekends, we would tackle the beams.   This is where another essential comes in - several pairs of jeans.   We would lift the beams a few inches off the ground, straddle one and go to scraping.   At the end of the beam, we would turn it and head back down the other side.   I went through several seats of my pants!  By "crane day" which is when the crane comes to lift the beams in place, we had all but two feet on one side of one beam scraped and all the boards.   Once they were up in place and as we fine finished each room we then went around gingerly picking out every last bit of paint and then 0000 steel woolling them down to a satin finish.

The fourth essential for me was my little Chevy S-10.  I am short and even in the S-10 had a hard time turning around looking backwards without my foot coming off the clutch, but otherwise this vehicle fit me perfectly - I could see over the steering wheel after all.  As previously mentioned, it was essential for the floorboards.  In addition, it helped create "Lynne's Rock Pile".   The foundation of the reconstructed house is 12 inch block but the last two or three feet showing above ground has a veneer of the original foundation stones of the house.   Those stones arrived on the property via me loading the S-10 every night and driving them over to the house site and unload them. (My husband has a bad back.)  In addition, the garage house which took the roof structure of the Skidmore house has a block first floor with stone veneer on three sides.   One of our clients had to remove stone walls (by edict from the Town and not his wish) for a development project so I would go over there, stomp on top of the walls hoping any snakes (eek!) would disappear and toss appropriate stones into the truck.   I created quite a rock pile for my masons.   Thank you S-10.

Another essential for reconstruction is to have the mindset to never throw anything from the original structure away because sooner or later all will find its rightful place. One also should always be on the lookout for period pieces, whether it be sheathing, mantles, hardware or whatever, no matter if you have an immediate use for them or not.
We bought a box of odds and ends , hinges, pintles, iron whatnots that have mostly all been used.   We have bought doors and built-in cupboards, some of which we moved around for twenty years before using.   The 18th Century Dutch tiles on the parlor fireplace were found cemented in as the top of a modern outdoor iron table.   Not only did we use the tiles, we are still using the table with modern leftover tiles from the kitchen in place of the old.

One late afternoon as I was driving up the main highway into town, I noticed bulldozers and demolishing equipment in front of an old house that had sat vacant for awhile.   Immediately "old parts" danced in my head, so I hit the brakes and pulled in.   There was a pickup truck parked in the driveway with what appeared to be two men in it. Otherwise, there was no one about.  They were very still as I approached with my heart in my throat.   Were they dead?  I tapped lightly on the truck window - no movement. I tapped a little harder and was relieved to see one of them stirring.   When to my even greater relief, then finally awoke from a sleep I can only envy, they answered my inquiries by telling me that the property was being demolished with no parts being saved and I was welcome to anything I could get that night.

It was already late afternoon and I hurried up to the house site, hoping my guys would be there to help me get as much as I could, but they had left for the day.   I quickly drove back to our house, changed into jeans , grabbed some hammers and crowbars and set off in that trusty S-10 passing by my husband's office to drop him off some jeans and old clothes so he could join me later.   The men in the truck had gone when I returned so I entered the house and scouted for good parts.   I found a few doors to unhinge, but almost everything was Victorian.   Although probably of late 18th Century origin, the house had been remodeled in the 19th Century.   So up to the second floor I went in search for possible 18th Century recycled parts.   I found some good floorboards so took the crowbar and started lifting them.   Dusk was arriving.   Suddenly out of no where a scruffy face appeared around the corner.   All I could think of was Jack Nicolson in "The Shining" with that manic smile "Here's Johnny".    I swung the crowbar in front of me as the man asked me questions and I answered.   He thought it great we were trying to save some of the house and wanted to help.   I let him know, of course, that my husband was coming and I kept the crowbar in hand (This was long before cell phones.)   He rightfully suggested that there might be some floor boards in the attic.    One problem - there was only a crawl hole in the bathroom ceiling for access.   I still cannot believe that I let him lift me up, even with the crowbar still in hand and no "redrum" on the bathroom mirror, but I did and he was right.   Kevin arrived shortly and as it was now dark, by flashlight and our S-10 lights shining through the windows, we did manage to lift quite a few boards that night.   Those boards are now the floor of the potting shed and the ceiling of the gazebo.

Was this all worth it?   You bet ya!  Did our friends think we were crazy?   We did find out later there were several private discussions among them about how maybe we should be committed, but living in this house is like living in a collection of short stories - incredible short stories.

Being able to take the house down and reconstruct it rather than restoring it on site was an enormous help.   Obviously all that initial scraping was easier with the boards not in place.   Okay, so I had to move the stones, but the end result is really a pristine historical house with all necessary conveniences - modern insulation (no seaweed like we found in it on site), dry and modern basement, electrical to code, security system, modern heat and air conditioning and even central vac, with everything hidden,not having had to be retrofitted  after the fact.   Anyone purchasing this house will not have any unpleasant surprises that sometimes scare a buyer of old houses.   You really can enjoy both worlds.
Someone really should.

It's Black History month and the little corner of the world where the Hall Christy House sits played a significant role in the abolition of slavery.

In the first half of the 18th Century, the first settlers came over the mountains from
western Connecticut to settle what is now called "Quaker Hill" in the area known as the Oblong, now part of the Town of Pawling.   For the most part, they were farmers who were brought forth by ancestors steeped in the tradition of fearlessness in personal religious beliefs, ancestors who had fled the strict precepts of the Puritan City on the Hill to establish the more accepting colonies of Rhode Island and the English settlements under the Dutch on Long Island.   There they were receptive to the new teachings of George Fox and Quakerism.   Those first pioneers brought their ancestor's beliefs with them and in 1741 were granted by the Purchase, Westchester, Monthly Meeting permission to build their meeting house, the earliest mention of a Quaker 
"meeting" in Dutchess County.  By 1744 , the Oblong Meeting became a permanent legislative congregation.   The Quaker farmers flourished on this verdant hill and by 1764, the congregation had so expanded, a larger Meeting House was built, the structure that is still standing today and celebrating its 250th Anniversary this year.

The Society of Friends believed that the Spirit of God dwells in every man (and woman, as well, white or black).   Their adversion to War stemmed from this belief, as did their opposition to slavery.   The latter conclusion came about gradually with the Oblong Meeting in the forefront of their own Society, even before Thomas Jefferson wrote our cherished Declaration of Independence.   Quakers throughout the northeastern colonies had forbidden their members to take part in the trading , buying and selling of slaves.   However, this dodged the question of outright ownership.

At this time, slavery was quite prevalent in the Hudson Valley and on Long Island, where the Oblong's parent Meeting was located in Flushing.    The Hudson Valley and Long Island were still generally agricultural communities.   Slaves still provided an enormous convenience in man power over the alternative of indentured servants.   The Quakers believed in a moral way of life, but they were also astute businessmen.  Freeing slaves altogether would have been an economic hardship.

Nevertheless, the Oblong Friends carried their beliefs to the logical conclusion - in 1767, they approached Flushing with this query:

     If it is not consistent with Christianity to buy and sell our Fellowman for slaves
     during their lives and their Posterities after them, then whether it is consistent
     with a Christian Spirit to keep those in slavery that we have already in possession
     by Purchase, Gift and any other ways?"

If God was in every man and obviously you could not own God, then you could not own another man.   Their parent meeting, many of the members who owned slaves themselves, did not have the courage to give them an answer at that time, but by 1777,
not waiting for an answer from their parent Meeting, all members of the Oblong Meeting had voluntarily freed any slaves they may have still owned.  And they were welcomed into the Meeting .   There are records of black weddings in the Oblong records.

The Society of Friends continued throughout the 19th Century to work on behalf of the slaves.   There were Quaker homes that were stops on the Underground Railroad.   The strong beliefs of the Oblong Meeting in this regard attracted other members of the Society of Friends in Dutchess County to attend this particular meeting instead of those closer to their own homes.   One family doing so were the Andrew Skidmores of LaGrange.  Andrew and Eliza were married at the Oblong and in their home they hid the "sojourners" until it was safe to transport them in a wagon under cover of night to the next stop at Clinton Corners.   Ironically, their home has been moved to the property adjoining the Oblong Meeting house and owned by this writer.

One can still visit the remarkable symbol of freedom from May until October on weekends at Meeting House Road, Pawling, New York .   It is still in its quiet contemplative setting where one can imagine those 18th Century participants struggling over that fundamentally significant query, ahead of so many of their countrymen in their beliefs of human rights.   Later in this year, there will be a celebration of its 250th Anniversary.   Be sure to check it out.

Having successfully established the courtyard gardens after living in the house for a few years, I noticed small spots of lichen dotting my precious trees and stone walls I had worked so hard to install.   I spent hours meticulously scraping it off.

Then we visited one of my favorite areas of France, the Bouriane, where people with respiratory problems actually go to breathe in the pure air.    The woods, gardens and even fruit trees drip with lichen.  It was there I learned that lichen is Mother Nature's clean air indicator.  (This is why I love gardening so much- there is always something new to learn.)  Without getting too technical, lichens are actually fungi living in a symbiotic relationship with algae.   Although they do not need much in the way of moisture and nutrients, growing in barren places such as the tundra and on desert rocks, they do obtain the meager nutrients they need generally from rain water.    If that rain water has pollutants, there is no lichen.   There have been many studies throughout the world, including a study of our own National Forest Service, showing the purer the air, the greater the density of lichens, with very little growing in city environments, as you might expect.    Sulfur dioxide, a product of fuel combustion, nitrogen dioxide, fluoride, ozone, and especially acid rain when absorbed by lichen, destroys it.

So, from that time on, no more scraping of lichens off my trees.   I let them wear their lichen like badges well earned.   The lichen has multiplied, even covering the wood and stone benches along the woodland paths.   The patterns and designs and multi-gray and verdis gris colors are fascinating.

The strange thing is that when we first started our project of rebuilding these 18th Century houses on an empty field, I do not remember seeing any lichen on the perimeter trees.   Instead of turning an agricultural field into a series of suburban houses and lawns, we kept most of our field intact, encouraging the buttercups and wildflowers, at the same time adding trees, trees, and more trees, my passion, nestling courtyard gardens and lily ponds around the houses, restoring the pond and keeping the lawn to a minimum.    Whatever we did, the greenery filters the air and our lichens are happy.   They drink up healthier and we breathe healthier - another great symbiotic relationship.

     With the intertwining of the Hall Christy House and the Skidmore House, now both owned by the Dentons and placed on land owned by one of the founders of Quaker Hill, right next to the Old Quaker Meeting House founded by such families as the Ferrises, Birdsalls, Akins and Merrits , there is a sense that it is right and good that these families, whose lives brushed against each other in the formative years of this country, should connect once more.
     On first blush all the families associated with the house seem to have emigrated from disperate places, Great Britain to be sure, but from various shires - William Hall from London, the Christys from Scotland, the Skidmores from Gloucester, the Dentons from Yorkshire.   In exploring the genealogies of each of these emigrating families, however, it is the frequency of links and ties that amaze.  It truly is a small world, even in the 18th Century.
     The first of the families in question to arrive was the Denton family, Rev. Richard Denton came in 1635 on the James out of Bristol, England into the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  He moved to Watertown, Massachusetts, to Wethersfield, Ct. in 1638 , and then to New Haven, being one of the founders of Stamford from 1642 to 1644 and finally to Hempstead, Long Island in 1644.  The Halls came sometime between 1635 and 1638 landing in Rhode Island.   In fact, William was one of the founders of Portsmouth, Rhode Island along with William Hutchinson, husband of Anne Hutchinson after she was expelled from Boston.    The Skidmores came sometime between 1637 and 1643 and settled in Jamaica, Long Island, not far from where Rev. Richard finally settled.  The Halls and Skidmores were what are referred to as pre- Quakers so it is natural that the Halls would settle in Rhode Island, where Roger Williams had established the Quaker faith and the Skidmores in Long Island, ruled by the Dutch at this time who were tolerant of all religions.  It is said that Rev. Richard established the first Presbyterian churches in Stamford and Hempstead, although along the way he seems to have had arguments with members of his own faith, starting in Halifax, England, then Watertown, Wethersfield and Stamford. Hempstead suited him as well being able to live under the tolerance of the Dutch.
     It is also not unusual that families emigrating together intermarried and we find this especially true of the Halls, Tripps, and Gidleys.   We find one generation of Halls marrying Tripp brothers and sisters.  As for the Gidleys and Halls, maybe there was a little too much intermarrying by today's standards with the great granddaughter  and the great grandson of the builder of the Hall Christy house becoming husband and wife.  
The Halls and the Christys were connected in a couple of ways.   Bejamin Hall's daughter, Esther, married a Benjamin Christy while Gideon Hall's (Benjamin's brother) daughter, Ruth, married a Leonard Christy.  Leonard's mother was also a Tripp.  Gideon's son, Peter married a Mary Tilton and Ruth's son, Gilbert, married Mary's niece.  The Tripps also married into the Quaker Hill families, Anne Tripp marrying
Reed Ferris and Anthony Tripp marrying a Mary Birdsall.
     In reading the genealogies of the families, it seems remarkable that so many of the children of sometimes very prolific parents made it into adulthood and produced families of their own.  By the early 18th Century, the increase of population in each area originally settled, thus pressuring the ability to maintain a livelihood, led to many of the younger sons, especially, seeking land further west or inland.   For the most part, these men were farmers so they sought rich productive farmland, John Hall emigrating from Rhode Island in 1747 to what is now known as "the Clove" in Dutchess County at a time when it was wilderness as did Andrew Skidmore coming from Long Island probably also in the late 1740's or 1750's establishing a mill near the Hall settlement and also farming in the Sprout Creek Valley nearby.  The Dentons came from Long Island and the Connecticut Sound communities, buying land from the Indians at Whaley Lake in the Town of Pawling in the 1740's.   The original settler of Quaker Hill, Nathan Birdsall, came in 1728, finding such rich farm land that he encouraged the other Quaker families to come shortly thereafter.  In addition, what is now known as the Skidmore House was being constructed sometime between then and the Revolutionary War on lands owned by the Lossees via a Livingston Patent grant, most likely by a tenant farmer.
     Now, the connections.  While on Long Island, the Birdsalls and the Skidmores must have known each other, the Birdsalls living in Oyster Bay, but marrying Hempstead spouses.   Phoebe Skidmore (born 1698, daughter of Samuel Skidmore, granddaughter of the emigrating Skidmore, John) married Robert Denton (born 1695, died 1779, son of Nathaniel Skidmore, also the line of the present house owner Denton and the grandson of Rev. Richard Denton, the emigrating Denton).   There is also one record that shows another grandson of Rev. Richard, Thomas, son of Daniel, also marrying a Skidmore.
This makes me wonder if the Skidmores were yet Quakers as the Dentons were avid Presbyterians with even Cotton Mather extolling Rev. Richard's preaching ability, or if love simply triumphed over religion.  The Birdsalls were from York and may have even come over with Rev. Richard Denton as it is noted in the diary of a passenger  of the James that the ship carried many honest Yorkshiremen, with about eighty names being absent from the existing passenger list.  Nathan Birdsall, the first Quaker Hill settler was married in Jamaica, Queens, by a Rev. Thomas Poyer, the same minister who married Solomon Denton and his wife, Solomon being the father of the Denton buying the land at Whaley Lake from the Indians and ancestor of the current owner of the Hall Christy and Skidmore houses. The Wanzers who were to marry into the Skidmores once in Dutchess County, also must have known the Dentons while both families resided in Greenwich in the early 18th Century.   Eliza Wanzer's great grandfather, Abraham Wanzer married Abigail Husted in Greenwich, Ct. while Abigail's nieces Lydia and Judith Husted , daughters of Abigail's brother, David, married Solomon Denton,  great, great grandson of Rev. Richard Denton.   The Ferrisses, who were one of the founding members of the Quaker Hill Meeting House and who once owned the land on which the Hall Christy and Skidmore houses now sit was also originally a Presbyterian in Jamaica or Hempstead, Long Island, so must of known the Dentons and Skidmores.   Zachariah Ferriss moved to New Milford Ct. sometime before 1731 as it is in this year that we have the Rev. Daniel Boardman of the Presbyterian Church in the same community naming Zachariah Ferriss, his wife and sons as some of the church members who "fell away to Quakerism".
The Merritts, another early Quaker Hill family, were in Wethersfield, Ct., the same years as Rev. Richard Denton.
     Once in Dutchess County, we find that , althought John Hall came from Rhode Island and Andrew Skidmore from Long Island, it is John's son Benjamin who marries Elizabeth Skidmore, Elizabeth being a distant cousin of the mill-founder Andrew Skidmore, Andrew's great great grandfather and Elizabeth's great, great, great grandfather being the original emigrating Skidmore, Thomas.   This mill would also link the Skidmore and Hall Christy houses as in dismantly and reconstructing the the structures, we find that the floor boards in the parts of the houses built after 1760 are of identical width and probably came from the Skidmore mill.  
      The Halls and Christys have their own ironic re-emerging of families and land.   The original 300 acres John Hall acquired upon settling in the Clove was divided at his death between his sons Benjamin and Gideon, Gideon retaining the homestead with Benjamin constructing a house on his own land.   Generations later, these two pieces of land and homes would come under the same ownership once again.   Benjamin had willed his house to his then spinster daughter, Abigail, who willed it to her step-daughter Mary Woolley.   Mary's daughter, Mary Frances McCord would marry Peter Harrison Christy whose great grandfather was Benjamin's brother Gideon, owner of the Hall Christy house.  Peter would inherit the house through his grandmother, Ruth Hall Christy, Gideon's daughter.
     We do not find any marriage connections between the Dentons and Halls, Christys or Skidmores once in Dutchess County as the Dentons were strict Baptists and most likely would not have married a member of the Quaker faith.   They would have agreed with the Rev. Boardman about the falling off stuff.
     The Skidmores, however, would develop a connection with Quaker Hill and the Oblong Quaker Meeting.  The Andrew Skidmore who was the grandson of the Andrew Skidmore who established the Mill on Clove Creek most likely was the first Skidmore to attend the Oblong Meeting.   The Skidmores would have had a choice of Meetings between the Nine Partners, the Oswego Meeting and the Oblong.   The Oblong was really quite a distance from Sprout Creek and the Clove, but, perhaps, it was the anti-slavery movement that brought them together with the Oblong Meeting being the first Quaker Meeting to vote against slavery and forbid members to hold slaves and in the pre-Civil War years, the Skidmore house was used as a stop on the Underground Railroad.  Although I cannot find the genealogical connection, Andrew's son was given the middle name "Akin", one of the prominent families in the Oblong Meeting.  Andrew Akin Skidmore was the owner of the Skidmore house now owned by this writer, having obtained it from his father Andrew and Uncle James who purchased it from a Thomas Burtis.  Andrew Akin Skidmore and his brother Jesse would meet Quaker Hill Meeting ladies and marry them, Andrew A. marrying Elizabeth (Eliza) Wanzer in 1829 and Jesse marrying Sarah Akin in 1827 , both at the Quaker Hill Oblong Meeting House.   The guests would have parked their carriages and wagons, perhaps, in the same field in which Andrew's house now stands.
     Even the present four-footed occupant of the Hall Christy house has a connection.  The present golden retriever is named "Le Comte de Rochambeau" after the French General who aided Washington in the decisive battle for America's independence at Yorktown.  Looking through the Hall genealogies, it seems Benjamin Hall took as his second wife a relative of the same General Rochambeau.
     There is one last possible Denton/Hall connection.  Rev. Richard's first wife, back in jolly old England, was a Sarah Hall.  Although the emigrating William Hall was said to be living in London at the time of his departure from England, there is some evidence that his father hailed from Yorkshire.  Could she have been the emigrating William's sister?  It's fun to think so.

We have just lived through a period where one heard all the election compaign slogans, for whichever party, and they resonated with the fear of going backwards in time.   "Go forward", they say.   At the same time, the ideals of our Founders are elicited almost as if a mantra.   We are such a conflicted generation, wanting all that is new and glitzy, shedding the old with each new season of IPads and Smart Phones, but somehow wishing that we could go back to what we had before.   We call to the past, but then ignore it.   We grab onto the word "Tea Party", for or against, as if we really know what it means, as if by just saying those words, we can begin to think like those incredible men who created this country of ours and orchestrated our original tea party.

We cannot.   We cannot, because we have no idea how they lived their daily lives.   We have come so far from what they experienced and lived on a daily basis, what actually shaped how they thought, if not what they thought, that we can read what they wrote, but have no idea how they came to that thought, how their thought processes worked to allow them the creativity of their time.   We might think of that time as in the stuffiness of textbooks, slow and stodgy, but it was wonderfully creative and inventive.  Oh, we are creative in our technical world, but are we really creative in our thoughts?  We cannot think as they did if we only inhabit our present linear world of sterile boxes, frenetic energy, glass and steel.  We cannot until we really walk in their shoes, once in awhile wake up to the world they saw in their immediate surroundings, let our eyes see what they saw and convey it to our brains to create a pattern of thought.   Instead of throwing the past away, we need to walk back into it, really walk into it on a daily basis in our private lives, not just a few hours in a museum, but in every waking moment until we can begin to understand how their thoughts were formed.   We need a lengthier personal encounter with the structures of their past, the things they lived with, how they lived in and with them, not merely as relics, but as windows to their lives and their way of thinking.

What they did not see was steel and glass, straight manufactured lines that leave nothing to the imagination, Ikea decorated rooms.   There is nothing wrong with the 21st Century.   Life now is so much easier for most of us as to our physical wellbeing.   They struggled with that and would have been happy not to.   Pain and discomfort are not great for the creative though process.   There is much of the new technology that they would have embraced wholeheartedly.   That technology is so energizing in the modern business world and just getting the job or solution accomplished, if you know what the job or solution is to begin with.  Jefferson, so burdened with correspondence, his inventive mind constantly seeking shortcuts to tasks, would have loved email.   (His love of proper words would have probably ruled out texting or twitter.)  Abigail Adams would have loved reminding John to pick her up some straight pins while in Philadelphia and "not to forget the ladies" by a follow up text.  Downloading on the latest Kindle that treatise of Locke they were looking for would have caused any one of them to do a jig around the parlor - no more waiting months for it to come by post.  Because their way of thinking was already formed, these inventions would have been incredible tools to obtain the information they sought.

It is the formation of that way of thinking that we must look to.   The books in Jefferson's library still would have been the starting point, as reading a paragraph by chance might have inspired a new idea or a new way of applying an old principal of government to their own, whether that principal came from their own English heritage, or from the Old Testament, Koran or even the teachings of Buddha.   They read them all, often in the original language.   These men that we revere had the remarkable ability to not only have the courage to move forward, but also not to forget the lessons of the past, anyone's past.   They would have instantly realized that, although modern technology brings information at the speed of light, it does it basically in a linear fashion.   To think out of the box, one needs curves and shadows, not just shortcuts, but sometimes the long way of getting to a place, exploring along the way, an eye to the unexpected, not just the quickest, straightest line to the solution.   Solutions of any great import generally need contemplation, not the quick click of an app.

They were not an urban generation.   (Yes, Hamilton is an exception, but it also can be argued that his philosophy has led us to the banking, fiscal crisis we are in today.)   Their roads twisted and turned to conform with the land - inconvenient at times, of course, but it did allow for thoughts to wander.   Today we do not give ourselves time for wandering thoughts.   It is either a mad rush of ideas (when we are staying away from the games on our IPhone or answering all our tweets), or a complete emptying of the mind as we hum our mantras.   They did not have physical buttons to push for stimulation and escape from bordom.   Think of whom you might believe is the most interesting person in your acquaintance.   Is it someone who spends the whole time on his or her blackberry, or is it someone who is more of a Renaissance man or woman, with many interests, complexities of ideas, and probably lives in a space surrounded by real books , old furniture and paintings.

When these men reached home, it was not filled with much.   Yes, the better off could afford some artwork, but mainly it was the play of light and shadows against the lime-washed wall, curves and figures, that piqued the imagination and could change with the mood.   We, today, find ourselves drawn to any painting by Vermeer with its simple quiet contemplation of the figures and the play of light and shadows upon the scene. These men who created our government did not need an actual Vermeer - the first sight upon waking might be the morning light hitting a brass bedwarmer  next to the fireplace, the pewter ewer on their dresser, or a silhouette of matching birds' heads which is the inverse shape of the back of a Jacob Smith chair reflecting on the opposite wall, and they

 Their houses, like the Nation they created, were built to last, but built with thought and aesthetic taste - after all, this home was probably it for a lifetime and their children's lifetimes.   These houses still exhibit a richness and complexity of detail at the same time maintaining a beauty of form in the finished whole - a mix of detail and finished product they put into their government, a mix we find so hard to match in our own generation.   These homes exhibit a resilience to failure, a resilience of spirit of the occupants, and an acceptance of past generations with the anticipation of future generations under one roof, that one cannot help but feel upon stepping through their thresholds.

They were not a throw away generation - mostly by necessity in their physical world, to be sure.   Goods did not come easy.   Sometimes they might be altered for the next generation.   The same philosophy held for ideas.   They were the ultimate recyclers, often making the tired and broken into something charmingly and brilliantly new.   This generation has nothing on their creativity just because this generation's advances are going at a more rapid rate.   So much is said now of how we must break with the present in order to insure our future.   That may be true, but that does not mean breaking with our past.   The creativity and complexity of thought that our forefathers exhibited combined with the creativity of the modern technological civilization can be the answer to our future.

How to get there?   Fortunately,there is much of our founders' generation to still be enjoyed, to be absorbed, to immerse ourselves in by re-entering the style of life that encouraged that way of creative thought we so desperately need today.   Not just in museums.   That is not sufficient.   Once can personally embrace their homes, or rather the homes of their contemporaries who lived and thought much as they did and carried out the hard work of creating this nation, a place where private thoughts can be retrained to think in their manner.   The energy of our urban centers is wonderful, but it is in our ability to give our children and the next generation to govern this country a mixture of the energy of the city, the haven of capitalism, and the Baroque thought of the past that can inspire the future of our country.   Now, our children's eyes are most often filled with only  new, straight cold lines with the only reflection being glass reflecting other straight steel lines.  We think this is all that interests them, but how do we know if they have never been exposed to the idea of thinking and living with our past.   It is our duty to expose them.   If they wish to reject it, fine, but have you ever seen a bored child at Williamsburg or Sturbridge, for instance, or walking the Freedom Trail?  I believe that the young, if only subconsciously, crave this.   It has been my experience of living in an old house to witness the wonder of the young upon entering.   It would never occur to them to request to live in this way or to even visit, but they never want to leave once here.   We hear responses from the older children of "I wish I could live in a house like this" to the subconscious embrace of the younger ones.  I can put all the DVD's and modern gadgets I can muster in the library and tell them at family events that they are welcome to retire there to their technology, but I still find them hours later sitting in the parlor, with not an electric gadget in sight and actually talking to each other.   When I ask why or remind them they do not have to be polite, I hear "Oh, no. We love sitting here in front of the fire and watching all the candles (think shadows as well)", with their eyes dancing around the room.   We are not giving them enough of these personal encounters with the past that can create so many layers to their future thoughts.

The opportunity exists to give our children, and ourselves, this experience.   There are so many old houses out there to be purchased and lived in and to have more life added to their rich legacy.   Living in one creates a subtle absorption of a more creative way of thinking, a depth of being and thought.   One can actually live in a place where a glance way from the

modern big screen TV (yes, one can also have every modern convenience) will catch where a previous child has engraved his or her initials in a window pane or where looking up from a new tablet one can contemplate the stairs worn down by the previous inhabitants, setting one's mind dancing in thought, where even a weekend away from the hustle of work and school is not just a retreat, but a way to really recharge by letting thoughts wander with the curves of possibilities that our Founders so enjoyed.   We cannot throw away the physical remnants of the past that will allow us to think in the manner we admire.   On the contrary, we must cherish and embrace and live in them.