1 • ^ J 1 summer in ocarsdale

My wife Nova and I and our four children, Louis, Leister, Emma and Eva are living in the Old Dutch farmhouse on the post Road that used to belong to the Underhill family. Scarsdale is the same quiet peaceful village .hat it was before the railroad came when Joshua Underhill lived here. He was bom in he house in 1776 an after his death in 1850 his daughter Hannah Hunter and her family lived here, but eventually they sold it to us and moved away. We have some boarders living with us, which is a common practice these days. August and Annie Slingwater live here, he often works in Bate's quarry as a manager, and John Galloway is a farm laborer helping out on the farm, which is 127 acres.

We just had a census and our village is still the very smallest in Westchester County; only 529 people live here. The population is beginning to change, and I think I should tell you about that.

There seem to be three distinct groups here in Scarsdale. Most of the old farming, land owning families, some of whom having lived here since the 18^th century, are still here, like he Dobbs, Carpenters, Pophams, Hyatts, Cornells, Drakes and Secors just to name a few. We have a whole new group of very wealthy people who have been buying up farms and building huge mansions and estates. Some may call themselves farmers on the census, but their fortunes are utterly dependent on business in New York City. That's where the third group comes in. Almost a third of Scarsdale is now what you'd call serving class who are gardeners, overseers, servants and their children. Many of us in town are foreign bom and come from Germany, England, Switzerland, Sweden and Ireland. John Galloway is from Ireland, Annie and August are from Germany, my wife is from Prussia, and I am from Baden. Matter of fact, there are so many Germans in this area that every summer we have a huge German parade in White Plains. I work the farm with John, and August is a quarry master for the Bate's quarry, which is just over the Eastchester line down the road.

I'd like to tell you about the mansions and their owners. Most of them are wealthy businessmen from New York City, who brought their families out here because it's such a pleasant and healthy region. Many of them still have homes in the City, and join their families on weekends. Others take the train in every day like Mr. Popham, who has his own train stop. Then too, ever since Central Avenue was built from City Hall right up to White Plains, you have men who drive their fast teams to the City in the morning, transact business, and return for late dinner. The Bates boys drive their milk into the Harlem market early in the morning, go to classes at Columbia College, and come home to Homestead Road at night.

There's still a lot of complaining about that Central highway I must say. People tell that it's a scandalous affair, with all sorts of secret land deals and briberies. "Boss Tweed" was the man who had the highway built, and it was just finished in 1871. People say it's a good opportunity to build hotels, restaurants and business like the ones at Hart's Comers, but we've been having bad financial times in this country lately, so not too much is happening with these proposed enterprises. I should mention that Scarsdale still doesn't have any stores, so depending on what part of Scarsdale we live in; we shop in Eastchester, White Plains, New Rochelle, or Hart's Comers. I can go right up the road to White Plains and find any kind of store or doctor or dentist. It's a big city now and gets bigger all the time since they built the Court House.

One of the most important men in recent time to build a mansion is our neighbor Charles Butler. His nephew Benjamin was living across the road at Wayside Cottage, and thought the climate would be good for Charles's son Ogden, who was in poor health. Mr. Butler followed his nephew's advice, bought property here in 1853, built a home on the grounds of the old Tompkins place, and now he spends summers out here in Fox Meadow. Ogden, a college graduate, became very interested in horticulture, and devoted himself to building vineyards, apple orchards, greenhouses, ponds, and beautiful gardens. He managed all this until his death in 1856, being the fourth of Mr. Butler's sons to die young. (Pond behind the Library is Ogden's)

Mr. Butler keeps adding to his land anytime anyone is willing to sell. He started with about 146 acres, but it's over 300 now. (Butler estate was eventually almost 500 acres in Fox Meadow.) He's very generous and friendly, and as long as you are on foot and not on horseback, he let's anyone stroll on his grounds. He employs over thirty in help. His overseer, Nathaniel Smith, is a fine fellow, and his wife Martha has become friendly with my wife Nova. They belong to St. James, which is our church, but Mr. Butler is a Presbyterian. Butler has a farm too on his grounds, and grows wheat and barley, has herds of cattle, and has peacocks that stroll the lawns. He recently put in lawn tennis courts for the new game that all the rich people are playing. All the neighborhood children love to go and watch them play. (Now the Fox Meadow Tennis Club). Emily and Anne, his daughters, often go to Europe with their mother for extended vacations. (Anne married and left Scarsdale, but Emily lived with her father here until his death at the age of 95 in 1897, inherited the estate, and died in 1927. She left Wayside Cottage to the Village/or a library, and their mansion was torn down, and the Norman Hellman house was built on its foundation.)

Mr. Butler is hardly the only one in town who has built a mansion. Colonel Crane has bought the Carmer estate, is beginning to buy up as much land as possible, and has really added on to the old house. You wouldn't know it's the same place. (Now Trinity Lutheran Church on Crane Road). William Bailey Lang, an iron merchant from New York, has bought 35 acres from the Drakes over in back of my farm. He built a house called Rowsley, and kept an existing white oak on the front lawn that was three centuries old and it stands in front of the front door. (Now the Scarsdale Woman's Club.) After his wife died in 1864 his daughters moved out here from the City and built houses next to his, although both maintained houses in Manhattan as well. (Houses torn down for Sherbrooke Park.) His daughter Maria Wheeler, who owns Castle Cozy, has a son and seven daughters. We all belong to the same church and our children are close in age, but of course we don't see much of them, the Wheelers having seven servants and all. The town just built a new school, our only Scarsdale debt, but the Wheeler children are tutored at home. Maria's sister Caroline Bailey has three children. She has six servants, two gardeners and a coachman. Both husbands are partners of Mr. Lang. (Early in the 1880's both sons-in-law died and their wives and children moved back to the City. A third daughter, Frances Dunning, lived with her father at Rowsley until his death in 1887, and she sold the house five days after he died.)

I'd like to mention here that the Lang ladies have taken to that game that has come to New York from Ireland by way of England. It's called croquet, and is played by both ladies and gentlemen, and permits the players to be both elegant and on equal terms. They have summer garden parties where they play from four to seven pm. The ladies have long handled mallets so they don't have to stoop. Sometimes they follow these parties with a champagne supper and dancing. Archery and lawn tennis are both very popular spots played by both sexes, but of course I'm not talking about farmers and their wives!

Now I'd like to tell you about farmers. There are still plenty of us who work our own land. Our hours are long; vacations are almost unheard of, and certainly not now in the summer. Although we enjoy a general comfort, none of us could be called rich. Hay is our most important crop. We feed it to our horses, oxen and mules. We nourish our dairy and beef cattle with hay, and our givers of wool, our sheep, are also fed hay. I have to tell you that we've had a terrible problem with our sheep in the last five years doe to packs of wild dogs that are decimating our flocks. I had a real problem with my cattle drowning in the swamp up back of the house that is fed by deep springs, but we dug a small pond and that problem got solved. (The Duck Pond at Heathcote and Sherbrooke Road.)

In addition to hay, I raise six varieties of grapes, ten of apples, two of cherries, and six of pears. I have corn, rye, potatoes and oats, as do most of the local farmers. Now that it's summer I spend a lot of time mowing the clover, the meadow and the orchard with my oxen team. By July I should have twenty-eight loads of hay and seven of clover. This month I smoked 175 pounds of pork and beef. Tomorrow on the first of July I'll plant seed for my most profitable crop, which has long held, sway in the valley of the Bronx.. ..my pickle crop. My friend Shearwood over on Fort Hill Road hit a record last summer with 200,00 cucumbers an acre. I'll be picking from August 20^th till frost. We have our choice of pickle factories around here, there's one at Hart's corners, another on Saxon Woods Road, and of course the biggest one of all is down the Bronx Road. (What is now Coop City was once a pickle factory and farm.)

I had to dig a new well last month. It's 22 feet deep, 12 feet in diameter and four feet at the well opening. Two weeks after I finished my son Louis found three frogs in it. He's a big help around here. I've taught him to make chicken coops and he finished off two yesterday. (At the age of seventeen, Lois was listed on the 1880 census as a store clerk.

Most of the old houses still use the fireplaces to heat; the new mansions all have central heating with coal. We have a new cooking range and find that the wood stove does a good job of heating that end of the house. The mansions have gaslights, but we are content with our kerosene lamps. We still have the outdoor privy, but I'm thinking of building a shed attachment near the back door, so as to attach the "sanitary" to the inside of the house like a window seat. (Such an attachment was made, and is still in the house. When some reshingling was done it was discovered that a panel of shingles actually lifted off the back of the house and the tin "sanitary " box rolled out for easy emptying.)

Next week is the big celebration for the 4^th of July. That's our biggest holiday, always parades and picnics and fireworks. Because this is America's Centennial, the 4^th will be a bigger and better celebration than ever. The

family wants to go over to the river in Ossining to see the special parade and fireworks, but I don't like that long drive home from the Hudson at night, especially the last trek down breakneck hill on the Ardsley Road. The horses don't either. The only time I enjoy the trip across that hill is on the rare time I go fishing at the Croton River. A few years back I caught a 51-pound bass.

I should mention the Centennial Exhibition that was opened in Philadelphia by President Grant in May. It's going to run until November and they say about ten million people will go there. When you live in a town of 529 souls, it's pretty hard to imagine what ten million is like. They're charging 50 cents a person to enter; seems like a lot to me. The papers had an article about the Japanese commissioner to the exhibition, Mr. Fukui, who described the opening ceremony: "The first day crowds come like sheep, run here, run there, run everywhere, one man start, one thousand follow. Nobody can see anything, nobody can do anything. All rush, say damn great many times, get very tired, and go home." I don't think we'll go. I do hear thought that there is a bacchanal show of Rhine wines, where the vine in leaf and cluster wreathes pillars and cornice, and a little maid sits making more vine-leaves out of paper. It has been said that the Exhibition is as big as a German principality. Nova and I don't know about that.

Since I discussed what the rich people do for summer leisure, perhaps I should talk about the farmers. You have to understand that we have to care for our livestock seven days a week, each morning and each evening. Even if we have a handyman, we still can't take much time off. There are those in our station in life who occasionally enjoy the beach in the summer, but it's usually only our children who get to go with friends on an occasional outing. They love to go sea bathing over to New Rochelle or Mamaroneck, but not an inch of skin from throat to wrists to ankles are allowed to show. (In the 1880's the rules were relaxed and bare arms were allowed at the beach.) The boys swim all summer in one of the holes at the Bronx River. They don't wear suits of course. There are Sunday boat excursions on the Hudson, and maybe once a summer some families go to the amusement park at Clason Park. Mostly my children amuse themselves at home with backgammon, checkers, rolling hoops, walking on stilts, or making shadows on the wall. Our church is a great source of pleasure to us and we spend much time there on weekends. Our good Mr. Lang had a beautiful chapel built in memory of his wife Susan in 1864. (The chapel, along with the rest of the church, was destroyed by fire on Palm Sunday, 1882.)

There's been a terrible drought this summer, and last year as well. We've had some bad fires. In the fall before last the beautiful Carpenter house on the Mamaroneck Road, its barn and all outbuildings burned to the ground. (South side on the hill near present Cooper Road.) We hear the Carpenters may sell to a developer. Lewis Morris started that trend ten years ago when he bought up some of the Cornell farms in Quaker Ridge and cut them up into ten to fifty acre parcels for sale at auction in New York as "country seats." I can't imagine what this town is coming to!