|
The following was received in an e-mail
from Alta Flynt (altaf@world-net.net).
I have finished transcribing some more recordings of meetings of the
Alexander-Crawford Historical Society. The first one I am going to share with you is an interview with
Hazel Frost who lived most of her life in Alexander, Maine. This may not be all genealogy information, but
it is such a good description of the life that some of our ancestors lived that I hope you will excuse me for submitting it. Like the
previous tapes, it's too long for one mailing list message and I will split it into two messages. I hope you enjoy it.
As in the previous transcription summaries, names and other words that I
could not transcribe are in italics. Any comments, explanations, and additional names are in parentheses, and sections in quotation marks are
exact quotes from the tape.
Jane Dudley began with the following introduction: "It is Tuesday, September 9, 1980, and this is Jane Dudley of the Alexander-Crawford
Historical Society visiting with Hazel Frost at her home on the Flatt
Road in Alexander. Hazel, tell me about the Townsend House and the Townsend Road."
Hazel Frost said, "Well, the Townsend House had 21 rooms in it. It was
a double house. They was two pantries, two kitchens, two dining rooms,
two living rooms, and then they was - up in the attic and down they was
eight bedrooms."
At one time according to Hazel Frost, this had been a single house, and
two brothers bought it and made it into a double house. They divided the farm so that each worked half the farm land.
Jane Dudley asked about the age of the house and Hazel Frost said, "They
was a woman came to my house when I was there and she was in her eighties and she said her grandfather built the house." Hazel didn't
know the name of the man who built the house, but said it was always called the Townsend house. She and her husband had bought the house in
1932 from Charlie Brown and didn't know who the owner before Charlie Brown had been.
Hazel and Jane discussed that the road from the church down to Route Nine (The Airline Trail) was called Townsend Hill and perhaps the people
who built the house were named Townsend. The Joe McLean family lived in
the north side of the house. Ernest McLean who ran for governor of Maine about 38 years previously was born in that house.
Hazel Frost and her husband, Lyston Frost, lived in the Townsend house
for 39 years. They had five children, three boys and two girls. Two of
the children were born in the Townsend house. Hazel's maiden name was
Cousins. She was a sister of Orris and Harold Cousins. There were eleven
children in their family. Hazel was born on Pocomoonshine Road
in a house which was torn down about three or four years previous to the
interview. A new log cabin has been built on the site. There are still
flowers in the yard from Hazel's mother's garden. Mrs. Cousins had a green
thumb and "had the most beautiful roses, glads and peonies." Mrs.
Cousins had a yellow wisteria bush called Golden Glow.
Hazel Frost described the kitchen in the Townsend House. "Well, it was
a large kitchen, and there a sideboard. My refrigerator set in the right
hand corner by the dining room door. My stove which was a - what
I used mostly was a wood stove. I didn't have the electric stove at first.
And, it was a big Kineo stove. King Kineo. Black with a
polished top. You didn't have to black the top of it. No, all you had
to do was just clean it off. And, that was practically all there was,
the sink and the sideboard in that big kitchen."
Jane Dudley asked about where Hazel rolled out pie crust, if there was
a table in the kitchen. Hazel replied that there was a pantry. "The
pantry had a big sideboard in it and it had shelves in one end of it and
up one - partway up one side and then there was a big cupboard for your
dishes. That's the end of the side - end of the kitchen - end of the pantry.
We used to take and keep all of our tin dishes, cooking dishes
and things like that in there. Under the sideboard there was a barrel
that we kept flour in that was on trucks so all you had to do was take
hold of it and it would roll right out to you. And, I had a board that
stood in by there that I cooked on. And the sugar barrel was the same
way. A flour barrel, just like a flour barrel. It was lined with paper
and that - we used to have that - fill that with sugar in the fall. And,
that too was on a truck. It would roll out to you. And, then they
was two shelves beyond that - from there to the corner where I kept my
bake tins and there was a big crock where I kept bread - like a bread box.
Usually I had two crocks - six gallon crocks." They usually
bought the flour at a store in Woodland, Maine. This was in the 1930s.
Hazel said she "used mostly Mother Hubbard's. I used that for a long time,
and then I got to Robin Hood, and I've used Pillsbury's Best."
Jane asked about how many loaves of bread Hazel used to bake in a week.
"I baked eight to a time, and I baked on Saturdays, and if it was just
the average people around there, I would bake Wednesdays. At harvest time when I had extra help in I would bake Tuesdays, Thursdays and
Saturdays, so that would be twenty four loaves of bread a week at times." They discussed the temperature control for the oven in the wood
burning kitchen stove. Hazel said, "There was a big timer on the oven,
you know a register, and you built your heat up until it was 300 and I
baked my bread at 300. There was a little dial on the oven door with the temperature gauge on it. There was a hot water font in the stove,
and when I built the - had the fire I had hot water."
Hazel and her husband sold butter for several years. Hazel said, "One
day I churned 125 pounds of butter. Of course, we churned it by
gasoline engine, and this churn - you had to take the butter out, weigh
it, and find out how much salt, and I used to put a little sugar in my
butter, too. Find out how much you needed, put it back in the churn and
the churn worked it. You put it into a different gear and it would work
there. Of course you drained off your buttermilk and washed your butter
and weighed all that butter and put it back in and then started the churn going again and it would run your - work your butter so all you
had to do was print it. My husband used to help me print the butter."
They used two pound wooden butter prints. "He would print it, press it
into the print and then he would dump it onto a wet paper and I would do
them up and stack them and we had wooden slats that would just take the
height of the butter and we'd stack them one on top of the other." They
had a big chest that they put blocks of ice into, and then put the stacks of butter in one end. Cream was kept in the same chests. They
had to replace the blocks of ice about every three days.
The Frost family had chickens and cows on their farm. "We had as high as
30 some that was milking. I think at one time we had 40 head that was
milking. at one time we had two hired men before the boys got big enough and then the boys took over and it helped too until they got so
they wanted to go out and work out and get ahead by themselves. At one
time we had two hired men before the boys got big enough and then the boys took over and it helped too until they got so they wanted to go out
and work out and get ahead by themselves. We used to buy 100 chickens
just as they was hatched and you'd have about 50 - 50. Fifty roosters
and 50 pullets. Then I could kill the roosters in the fall and it would
kind of pay - well it would pay us for bringing up the pullets, and we'd
have pullets all ready to lay. We had a double hen house, you know
partitioned off so we could keep them."
Jane Dudley asked if they sold the milk and Hazel Frost answered, "We didn't at first. At first I made butter. Lyston would go to Woodland
on - or Calais on Tuesdays and Woodland on Fridays and we sold butter,
eggs, cream and buttermilk. He sold it to customers. We had a truck.
It was a car, but it was a truck with just the top over it, but he had
side curtains that he could put on for it. If it rained he had the side
curtains."
Jane Dudley asked about Hazel's mother's herb garden. "Mother had an herb garden back of the house. She used to grow sage and summer savory,
chives, and I don't know what else. I was small at that time. She used
to dry those herbs, and use them, too. She'd hang them upstairs in what
- well, there was one room, we called it the ell chamber. And, it wasn't finished, and it was just, you know, like this, but it had a
floor in it and we'd hang things up in there. That was a nice drying place because the chimney went right up through there."
Jane's next question was about the toys and games in Hazel's childhood.
"Well, we played what they called duck on the rock. We played baseball. We played tag. We used to put a tin can on something and
they'd all go hide. We'd all have a stick and we'd run out and flip this - we used to call it the duck - and see if we could get back hid
before that goal tender would get that back and if he touched that can
why we were caught. I had a doll. My mother made the body for it and
it was a china head. It was a little girl. I remember she had black hair painted on the head."
There were eleven children in the Cousins family. One little girl died
when she was two years old. Hazel's parents are buried in the Alexander
Cemetery. Hazel went to school at the four corners. "My first teacher
was Etta Crosby. She's a relation to Dyer, somewhere. I went to True
Varnum. I went to Bert Legacy, and I went to Bert Flood." Hazel's sister Marcia was also a teacher who taught Hazel. There were nine
grades in the school.
Hazel Cousins Frost was born May 11, 1902. During the early years of their marriage, Lyston and Hazel Frost lived in Winslow, Maine for about
a year while Lyston worked on a farm. Hazel said they returned to
Alexander because Lyston wanted to come home. "He said that he - that
the work was too heavy for him because he was running a single cross-cut
saw and he wasn't strong enough to do that. But, he learned a lot on that farm because those was registered jerseys and I think that is where
he got interested in running a farm and taking good care of cattle."
(The interview ended and a new recording began.)
"This is Jane Dudley recording the day after the interview with Hazel Frost. On the 1861 map, I find a Mrs. M. B. Townsend recorded as the
resident of the house of which Hazel has been describing. And on the
1881 map a J. McLean and a S. P. Goltel are indicated as co-owners.
I'll spell the name Goltel because I'm not certain it's spelled correctly. The printing is very fancy. G- o-l-t-e-l. (According to
John Dudley of the A-CHS, the name actually is Shephert Cottel or
Cottle) We also have noted on this 1881 map a few misspellings of other
names and this may be one to question."
Jane Dudley: September 16, 1980. We're at a board meeting of the
Alexander-Crawford Historical Society at the Dudley Cabin on Pocomoonshine Lake. Here is Hazel Frost and Ellie Sanford to talk about
the Townsend house and ghost stories. Hazel, will you tell your story?
Hazel Frost: Well, one night, Roy Carlow was boarding with me and we was
sitting in the kitchen. I was knitting. I was sitting by the back kitchen door and he was by the pantry door, and all at once we saw the
door knob turning that went out in the entry. It turned very slow. The
door opened about a foot and stopped. I got up and I asked them to come
in, and I set a chair and asked them to have a chair. I said, "It's cold out tonight. Would you like a cup of hot tea?" I said, "Are you
walking?" Of course there was no answer. Roy, he was as white as a sheet and he says, "Will you shut up?" That's my ghost story.
Jane Dudley: That's a pretty good ghost story. Ellie is going to tell
one about her friend who lived over there in the house for what - about
three years? Ellie: It wasn't that long even, was it? Jane Dudley: What was her name, Ellie?
Ellie: It was Carlene and Bob Anthony. Jane Dudley: Who did they buy the house from?
Ellie: Keerock Rook. He was the one who bought it from you, Hazel,
wasn't it? Hazel Frost: No, bought it from Carleton Davis. Ellie: Ok, Carleton got in the middle there. Let's see, Bob Anthony
worked in New Hampshire during the week and came home on weekends, and
that left Carlene and her two children there all week long Jane Dudley: In that great big house.
Ellie: In that great huge house and they only lived downstairs to keep
warm in the winter, there. And, at 4:30 in the morning every morning,
they heard footsteps coming across the upstairs hall, down through the
stairs and the door opening at the foot of the stairs. They thought it
was probably the farmer that had been in the habit of coming out every
morning and getting the cows milked. Jane Dudley: Yes. What do you think of that, Hazel?
Hazel Frost: Used to happen when I was there. Jane Dudley: It did? Did it really? Maybe it was Mr. Townsend.
Hazel Frost: You know, I heard Aunt Lizzie tell that one time she was
sitting to the dining room table, and she and Edie Brown, and I think Mary Browning,
May Browning, was sitting there, too. And, they heard
three raps very hard between the living room and the dining room and two
weeks after that, Mr. Brown got killed. (According to John Dudley of the
A-CHS, Harry Brown died in 1925, age 50. His wife was Edie. Lizzie
was Charlie Brown's wife. Harry and Charlie were brothers.) Jane Dudley:
Have you heard the footsteps, too, when you lived there?
Hazel Frost: I heard the doors open. Jane Dudley: You head the doors open.
Hazel Frost: Yes, and I stayed there two years all soul alone. Jane Dudley:
Oh boy, you were brave.
Hazel Frost: (Chuckle) As I said, I never hurt anybody that was ever in
that house. Nobody would be wanting to hurt me, and there was plenty of
room for them to live there with me.
Return to Top of Page
|
