In the Garden
New Ipswich Historical Society
A Member of the Gibson Family?
This photo was in an album labeled residents of Gibson village. It has a collection reference number 97.87. One of our ongoing projects it finding the “Rosetta Stone” so we can decode the database numbering system.
On this day - July 23, 1908
James Roger diary entry
23rd (Thursday)
Warm and muggy. David went for coop and got horses shod this afternoon, then went for Alice & Jessie Cochrane. Grange night and supper in church.
On this day - July 23, 1897
William Jurian Kaula diary - Clouds
I am lying out in the grass at present where I can absorb an occasional bit of nature and watch the change of shape and color in the rolling clouds overhead. "Oh" said a young man that I once knew, "I like to lie on my back and watch the cloud scenery, it is so beautiful a sight that I can spend hours in this way." His young lady friends thought this was one of the attributes of genius - he was so devoted to nature that someday he would be a great painter. But when this young man was on his feet he forgot all about these ethereal dreams and all the physical energy he had left was required in going fishing. We ought to have a guardian who is invested with powers extraordinary and whose cheif [sic] duty would be to patrol the fields, club in hand, searching for the young artists and poets who are lying concealed in the grass dreaming of glorious nature. Cartwright says that nine men out of ten are naturally lazy and that work is a habit. Most of the young "artists" over here ought to be recalled by their parents and put to "work."
Records and Reminiscences of the New Ipswich Children’s Fair from 1862 to 1911
By Mrs. C. H. Obear - Pages 26 - 33 (Continued)
Had there not been men and women of the same steady, unyielding principle of their ancestry on the general committee who managed each successive year the one unpretending stream sending its waters through many channels, would have ceased; it would have no longer given expression to desire to bless a needy world, everywhere.
Any suggestion that would check entire freedom of choice of objects on which donors should bestow their gifts was unheeded, and the majority of the friends of the fair being with them, the usual entire harmony was maintained.
Some persons would urge the propriety of calling especial attention to the needs of our own town, or a church want, and thus leave our little stream less free; but no departure has been made from the rule first made, of uninfluenced, entire freedom of choice in the bestowment of the gift.
After these nearly fifty years have passed away, there comes evidences of how firmly intrenched in the hearts of the young people of the last half of the last century, was their interest in and love for this harvest festival. And who can tell the influence its teaching has had in widening their views. in regard to sharing with those less favored, the abundance bestowed on themselves? We, who have remained at home. in New Ipswich, are cheered and encouraged by the manifestations of interest and regard from abroad.
There seems little to review in the years that intervened between the report of the committee of the fair of 1873 and that of 1887 which marked our 25th anniversary. Interest and enjoyment of the occasion did not diminish, nor money receipts. Not so much came from the auction table, but more from dinner and door tickets. As I think I have remarked, our farms were beginning to pass into the hands of other than the descendants of our early settlers; and our boys and girls found employment abroad in the world, where wider doors opened for lucrative use of their energies.
It is somewhat remarkable that no day appointed for the Children's Fair has been stormy except one, and the attendance on that day was so large, it was adopted as a rule that "hereafter there would be no postponement on account of weather." I recall two mornings when the sky looked unpromising, but the clouds lifted and the sun come out for the usual pastimes on the Common, and there was a pleasant drive home to close the day..
PICTURES
It is so common to embellish even very insignificant volumes with pictures to illustrate their prominent scenes, I think that before coming to a review of the Quarter Centennial of Children's Fair in 1887, I will attempt a few pictures.
These will not be presented to your material vision, dear friends, but an effort to transfer from my own halls of memory the scenes I find closeted there that will call forth for your view what you, too, hold in your memory, but no touch calls out..
We do not forget, I hold; but the normal human mind has in store more or less numerous pictures of the scenes of the past. It needs some circumstance or, perhaps, allusion to bring them to the front. They have not left the mind. They only have been concealed.
Perhaps in the retirement and quiet that comes to the aged, I can bring to your view what has long been covered. Who knows?
Here is the first to offer itself for use as I write. A beautiful, bright morning in autumn, and yet a hazy mist hangs over the hills and over the tree-tops, where "Calls the crow throughout the live-long day." It is early morning and the sun's rising beams are softened, not dimmed, by the pale-yellow haze. Stepping out, I look abroad, and early as it is, I see some children. Why are they so early up and out? Oh! they are gathering beech-nuts for the fair. I turn to go in, and there is not far from me a collection of garden crops beets washed clean for market, squashes whose weight has been marked with pencil near the stem, apples and pears, the choicest the children of the house have found among the piles in the orchard the last weeks, exclaiming,. "Oh, there's a bouncing one for Children's Fair!" They are to be marked by the donors and to be taken to the church when it is opened.
Near by, a neighbor's children are up, and are gleefully chattering over the store of things the parents are designating, asking questions and discussing the merits of the Home for Little Wanderers, or the New Hampshire Orphans' Home, or the boy puts in a plea for the "Seamen, the minister told about Sunday, up to the church." The air seems full of stir of excitement while the sun looks down through the soft haze, on the scarlet, and purple, and yellow, and brown, and crimson of the fields and woods below him.
Going into the house, my eyes are greeted by a table where are various sorts of articles which must be put on the hay rigging, when the vegetables and fruit go, and there are the provisions for the table committees; the pudding and beans will keep hot for dinner in the cooking stove and furnace ovens at the church hall. "We must take brief time for breakfast, children. The boxes to provide for the people who buy at the auction are above stairs; you may run up to get them from under the eaves. It will help the sale. The grocer has been generous and given the paper bags and wooden boxes. The meat-man gave me a dollar to put in for orphans or temperance, or the sailors; everybody in town gives Children's Fair Day."
All over the town there is this pleasant excitement of the children, in village-house or farm-house, for as yet we have at this time few but New England-born citizens on our farms. The things have gone to the church. I turn the key in the door and another picture presents itself. Up the street on the Church Common teams are coming to the hall from all parts of the town. The Lockes, Bucknams, Deacon Reuben, Taylors, Geo. W. Wheelers, the three Davis' and others from Davis Village; in short, every family at the foot of Binney Hill, and in "No. 6," and Smith's Village, and the south part of the town. They are nearly all patrons and workers in the Children's Fairs, and they come with their gifts and their children. They bring chairs, and crickets, and sleds, and high stools from the shops where their hand-craft was done, and from their farms and neighborhoods, the crops their boys have raised; melons, vegetables, and cranberries, nuts and eggs, needle-books, pin-cushions and mats, edging, mittens and holders, gathered to raise money at the Children's Fair.
As I passed up the street, wheel-barrows full of various things went by me, and as I stopped to let them pass, I turned and looked back at Kidder and the Flat Mountain range of mountains sleeping with all the beautiful coloring in the softened light of the approaching" Indian Summer," and some of the beautiful expressions of the Psalms came to mind- "The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof," "The cattle on a thousand hills are His," "Honor the Lord with thy substance, with the first fruits of all thine increase."
Had I been going to the fair in a later year, I should have seen, on the grounds of "Obearville" (now the summer residence of Mr. Myron Taylor), what remained of his summer crops, after sending what he wished to Boston or Arlington for his own use, which he had given to his sister-Miss Ettie and myself to put into the Children's Fair. They would be waiting to be taken when Daniel went up with Grandpa Taylor's load, or one of his loads, for Chas. Taylor, at Smithville or in town, was among the first to inaugurate the fair for benevolent objects and never failed in his interest in it as long as he lived. Nor do his children.
Thanks to his son for the name he has given to the old Obear place, in their family about 150 years, the former house having been built by the son of Abijah Foster, the first who remained in town during the winter of the year its first settlers came. Thanks to Mr. Taylor, the name "Oberlea" he will preserve, and the influences that go out of the place will keep up pleasant memories of the name when all who bore it will have departed from town.
Now I resume my walk to the church, and another picture I bring before you. As I draw near, a varied and lively scene presents itself. On the north side of the Church Common stands the old church, with its tall and graceful spire, which can be seen from all the approaches to the town. Coming from the central village, when I first came to New Ipswich, its painfully plain north side made the house look to me as if it was starting on a march out of town. Near this back-side, teams are being taken to a long row of horse sheds. Teams are also at the front of the house, emptying out loads of women, children, and other products of the town, all come to the fair.
Groups of little folks are scattered all over the Common arranging games like "Round the ring in Uncle Johnnie's gar "Here I bake and here. brew," or "Wash the ladies' den," dishes," those old-fashioned games we old folks played in our childhood in the "long ago."
Some children, somewhat older, are beginning to have a circle formed to play "Drop the handkerchief," and those landed from the teams swell their numbers, seeking those of their own age.
For the boys and the people who want to be out-of-doors and have no duties in the house, one of the attractions of Children's Fair is a lively game of base-ball with competitors other than those from their own schools, and lookers-on, to cheer their success.
The older boys value highly the smiles of the older sisters, who nod approval and wave their handkerchiefs. Now that women have their rights, I think the girls join in the cheers and wouldn't think it improper to join in the game, though I have not seen it at Children's Fair. One more picture from the picture gallery of memory if you are not tired, or if I have failed in its transfer to your mind's eye.
On entering the large vestibule of the old church, the green baize doors that open upstairs are closed this morning. Late comers are bringing in the things to be tagged with a number and put on to the book of the appointed clerk of the auction, and the door-keeper takes the ten cents of those who are not donors to the fair, and those who are, call his attention to what they have brought, and pass in. What an animated scene is before us! As you stand inside the hall door, at your left, on the west side is stretched a long, wide table, fast receiving the varied contributions sent in from the vestibule. At the south end of this table is one of the two furnaces that supply the warmth for the auditorium and singer's gallery above.
At the opposite end is the table for "fancy articles" aprons, dainty pieces of needle-work, knitted and crocheted articles, and all kinds of curious things prepared by the fingers of women and girls, and often gifts from their own choicest stores by the little boys and girls. Scattered here and there are settees on which are seated elderly men and women, the latter in busy talk with former residents returned, visitors who in the first years joined in the labors of the harvest festival. These are in the corner behind the west furnace. The men scattered over the hall, finding themes for discussion in the superior quality of the fruits or vegetables being carried by them to the auction table, or conversation suggested by the card beside the number giving the benevolent objects to which its avails were to be appropriated. (In the early days of the 32
fair this was always appended after being recorded on the book of the clerk of auction.)
As we turn our eyes to the right we see a long table stretch ing from the east furnace along the east wall and another at right angles with it extending to the platform, and a table on that. These are the refreshment tables. The "Plain dinner table" has been laid the day before.
Who can describe the eager interest and absorbed attention. of the two committees as they prepare the food in the corner behind the furnace, or in the wood room beyond, where stand a cupboard and a cooking stove-the flower committee at the same time finding space to arrange for the table the late flowers and bright leaves and berries brought from the yards and gardens of the town. There is gentle clatter of dishes and hum of voices, and borrowing of bread knives from willing church neighbors, and swift but soft steps passing up and down behind the dinner table, and "John Augustus" brings water for the tea and coffee, and low-voiced discussion and comments, and, at intervals in their games, the young people come from the Common, or strangers with curious, interested faces pass around the auction table and note the variety and excellence of the contributions, and also the variety and num ber of the individuals and places to which they will give help. It is a heterogenous collection.
Here a peck of cranberries from the young Taylor girls, Emma and Carrie; near by, two crickets from their brother, and a rocking-chair from their father. Over yonder a kind of cage with two Bantam chickens, the beloved pets of little James or John Farwell, and close beside it, packages of nicely dried herbs from Mrs. Dana Locke, a box of beech-nuts from Alden Sylvester, a pile of squashes and bottles of vinegar and glasses of jelly from the Obear house, a high stool from Eddie Blanchard, a rare fowl from George S. Wheeler, a beauti fully constructed miniature house from Martha Taylor, a box of cents saved during the year by a little girl, a basket of chestnuts and another of walnuts, box of butter, beets, onions, all kinds of vegetables, and all of the first class, and oh! what pumpkins!-tinware from Mr. George Sanders' shop, and grapes, and beans, and tomatoes-green and ripe, and strings of peppers, and pop-corn, all of the best quality.
As has been said, till later years the name of the donor and the benevolent objects to which its proceeds were to be devoted were appended to every article to be sold, and it was interesting to find where the sympathies of our friends and neighbors were; and each and all felt a commendable pride in letting his neighbor know the success he had had on the farm, and in the shop or house.
Children's hearts turned toward giving aid to other child ren, and the Five Points House of Industry and the Home for Little Wanderers received their readiest sympathy. This memory picture is from the shelf in our mind devoted to a period prior to 1887, when our New Hampshire Orphans' Home was less known by us than now when this institution has a liberal share of their gifts.
I have tried to show you a picture of scenes of the morning of Children's Fair Day. At this point it may be of interest to recall some of the letters which came to some of us known to have abiding interest in this "yearly," as one has said, "coming together to show our good will to men." Generally they came from co-laborers and participators in the pleasures of these scenes during all the years of their continuance with us. I remember these testimonials as notes of encouragement to "labor on " in hope when it might have looked a little disheartening.
[ To Be Continued]