HUTCHINSON HOMESTEAD FOLLOW-UP
Backwoods Blog;
in the woods and on the road…
Carl Hutchinson driving tractor during potato harvest of ’79 (photo by Susan Barry Kerby)
Last week’s post about the old Hutchinson homestead generated several interesting responses from family members so I thought I’d share a few as a follow-up in this week’s edition. My cousin Fran sent this great color photo of her father wearing his Monticello Potato Shippers jacket while working on the old Hutchinson homestead during the harvest of 1979. Here are her comments.
Great post as always Dave, and I especially love the photos! Definitely some stories to tell of the year we collaborated on the harvest. I can’t remember the exact year that Dad and Grampie Charlie finally quit farming, but they were definitely still at it in the fall of 1979. It was my 2nd year at Bowdoin and one of my friends had a shiny new car, so she and another friend (“city girls” both of them ;-)) and I took a road trip one weekend, up to the County so I could show them what it was all about. My friend Sue took this photo of Dad, in the big field behind the house site (of course long since burned down at that point), on the Hutchinson farm. It’s one of my favorite pictures of Dad – after he died in 2018 we donated the jacket and a copy of this photo to the Southern Aroostook Agricultural Museum.
There were also questions about the history of the farmhouse, where did my grandparents live in later years and who lived on the property until the house burned in the early 70s. My cousin Larry Hutchinson added his recollections.
I do believe it was 1944 that Grammy and Grampy moved to Monticello into the Babe Miller house (on top of Lowell Hill on the north corner of the Station Road). We often closed up the farmhouse and spent the winter months with Grammy and Grampy since Dad worked at the station in a potato house. They were still living there in 1948 because that was the winter they were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary and the family party had to be cancelled because of me. We were living there that winter and on their anniversary I had Scarlett fever. They moved to Houlton, I believe, the summer of ’48. They were living on Columbia Street when Grampy died on Aug. 5, 1950. You said dates and memories are a funny thing to keep in order. I think the above is correct but don’t take it as gospel!! Thank your for recording some of the family history!
And a little more from cousin Fran;
Interesting to read Larry’s note. I do not remember being aware of much of the history of the original Hutchinson farm growing up. Great Grammie was already a widow and living with John and Dot in the house on the main road (famous for Dot’s donuts) in my memory. It would be fun to see the history of who lived in the Fullerton Road house and the years. I knew that Merle and his family lived there for a while, but I do not know the dates. And of course we lived there from ‘58 or so (I think it was not long after Carla was born). I thought we were the last family members to live there but I am not sure. I was only 2 when we moved in town, but I have the impression that it was not great shape even then (cold upstairs, no bathroom, handpump in the kitchen). Mom took our laundry to a laundromat in Bridgewater and I understand we’d go to Grammie Lottie and Grampie Charlie’s for baths. And of course I think I have told you the story that the last straw for Mom was when she got stuck in a spring snowstorm, with the four of us, in a snowbank on the Fullerton Rd. She was in sight of the house, but the wind was blowing so hard one or two of us started to be blown away across the field. She managed to get us all home, but after that they started looking for a house in town.
In the woods,
Dave
October 26, 2023
Charlie and Lottie Hutchinson celebrating a wedding anniversary (photo submitted by Jill Hutchinson Sewall)