NEW HARTFORD, MINNESOTA Memories of New Hartford written by Connie Verse [connie_verse at yahoo.com] When you see the name of this town you may at first think of the New Hartford that is near the Twin Cities but guess again. My New Hartford Minnesota is located in the southeast section of Winona County, about 21 Miles from La Crosse, Wisconsin and I doubt that it can even be located on any current maps. I tried to look it up in map quest but the only New Hartford they found is one located by the Twin Cities. My New Hartford is located in New Hartford Township, in Winona County in the southeastern portion of Minnesota. It was organized in 1858, and its earlier village, in section 19, was platted in August 1857. This area was named by settlers from Connecticut. It was thought that there was supposed to be a railroad coming through the valley and it New Hartford was already on a stage route so it began to grow. After the decision was made not to run the railroad way, the town stopped growing. For the years that I lived there, New Hartford was always referred to as, “The Town That Died”. The township had a post office about twelve miles away located in Nodine, originally named Rose Hill, established three times between 1857 and 1905; the township also had a station of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad, both were located in the village of Nodine but they were to serve the New Hartford area. Nodine is a village in sections 9 and 16 of New Hartford Township. It was platted as Rose Hill, but the name of Rose Hill was changed to Nodine. According to the local story, two government surveyors were working in the area of Rose Hill surveying for the proposed railroad, which originally wanted to go through that area. They became very hungry after a long days work and decided to try to find a place to eat. Surly there would be one in this growing little village but alas, they could not find a place to eat. They were so upset about this situation that every time they were in the area they would complain that there was “NO place to DINE” hence the name change from Rose Hill to NODINE. Let me tell you a little about the New Hartford Minnesota where I grew up. I was about three years old when we moved there so it is really the only family home I ever knew. My family consisted of my Dad, Herbert E Herold, Mom; Alice J (Smith) Herold, my brother Steven G. who is 1 year and 5 months older than my sister Linda L., and she is 1 year and 2 months older than I and, yes, I’m the baby of the family; oh how I hated to have my Mom introduce me that way to people! Hello, my name is Connie; of course at the time of this writing, Dad and Mom are both gone, we three are all married with grown children and grandchildren, but I am going to concentrate on my years in New Hartford. A House to Remember The house I remember growing up in was a large brick house located in the heart of New Hartford. It was a small farm of about 40 acres. The house was a large brick house that had been built in two sections forming an almost T shape. It was two and a half stories on one section, which contained the attic, and two stories on the other section. The house had a full basement with a dirt floor. The walls of the basement were of fieldstone construction. The original entrance to the basement was from the outside of the house. There was a door on an angle from the ground that had to be lifted and fieldstone steps that brought you to another door made with heavy iron hinges and latch system that allowed you to enter the basement. The heavy beams were definitely hand hewn and there were tree trunks placed strategically throughout the basement as braces to hold up the massive beams. There were two sections to the basement with a door separating them. I remember thinking that the people who built the house must have been very small because my Dad, at 6’ 3”, had to always duck to get through the basement doors. I remember three small windows that let in a small amount of light, just enough to make me feel as though I was in a dungeon. For many years the basement both frightened me and yet had a strange draw on me. When I would venture down there, I could hear the house various creaks and groans, as most old houses do, and I would duck the spiders and cobwebs that were everywhere. When I would look toward the old dirty windows, I could see the dust filtering down in front of them causing a ghostly effect. There were two full porches on the house, one in front by the road and one in back facing the barnyard. We used the back porch for the main entrance to the house. Both porches had roofs over them with large beams holding up the roofs and a set of wooden stairs leading to the ground. The entire house had a tin roof on it creating quite the melodic sound when the rain danced on it. On the front porch was one ornate door with a stained glass window in it creating a warm inviting welcome to visitors. This door opened to the living room. The back porch had two doors, one leading directly into the kitchen and the other opened to what we called the mudroom. It was a small hall with doors at both ends and hooks lining both walls for coats and hats and barn clothes to be hung and dirty boots and shoes were left on the floor before entering the house. This way we wouldn’t drag unnecessary dirt into the house proper. The second door entered into the living room. Every room was huge; the kitchen had a wood burning kitchen stove that was used for all the baking and cooking work and doubled as the only source of heat for the entire house during the winter months. The stove had a warming overhead area where Mom would keep food warm for Dad if he were late coming in from doing his farm work. The cooking surface had four burner lids, two directly over the fire pot and two directly next to them. The first two were the hottest and the other two were not quite as hot but still hot enough to burn you. There was a removable handle used to lift the burner lids over the fire pot where wood was added to keep the fire going. Next to the burning pot was an oven where Mom would make roasts, bake breads and cakes and cookies. There was a wood box behind the stove where extra wood was kept for the purpose of keeping the fire going. The wood box had to be filled every day so Mom always had a ready supply of fuel. This was the stove I learned to cook with. The kitchen also contained a couple of freestanding cupboards that were used to store dishes and pots and pans in. The kitchen table and chairs which was not only used for meals but also was used to let pans of bread raise on and in the evenings the pan of warm water was placed on so baths could be taken. The kitchen was truly the heart of the home, most of the living of every day life happened there. Neighbors would visit and sit in the kitchen to talk and drink coffee. The kitchen was truly where the action was. Next to the kitchen was the laundry room. There were two large washstands that held large tubs, one for washing and one for rinsing. We also had a hand pump in this room that we used for all our water needs. In this respect our house was quite modern. Most people still had to go outside to a pump for their water. Mom used a washboard for her washing. The next room was the living room, the one room that had three entrances leading to it, one from the front porch, one from the mudroom and one from the kitchen. There were three more doors in this room, one led to the parlor and another led to a hallway that ran between the parlor and the stairs that led to the open staircase that took you upstairs, one led to Mom’s sewing room and at the other end of the hall was another door that led down to the other portion of the basement. The living room had two large windows in one wall and six doors. It was good that it was a large room; otherwise there would not have been a place to sit and read. The lower half of the walls were covered with wainscoting with a chair rail on top of it and the top half was wallpapered. The ceilings in all the rooms were nine foot high and there was a grate in each ceiling leading to the adjacent upstairs rooms to supply heat in the winter to the sleeping quarters. The kitchen, mudroom and laundry room had linoleum on the floors for ease of cleaning, the rest of the house had hard wood floors. The stairs that led to the upstairs bedrooms has a banister with a heavy wood railing and carved banisters, the bottom of the railing took a bend to the right toward the hallway. There was a narrow hall upstairs also which had a continuation of the railing system on one side over the open staircase and a wall on the other side. Directly at the top of the stairs to the right was the first bedroom, this was assigned to my brother, directly across from that was a larger bedroom the Mom and Dad claimed for their room. At the other end of the hall to the left was a small door again to the left that led to the attic and directly to the right of the attic door was a medium sized room that my sister and I shared for a few years and at the end of the hall was a large room over the living room and there were two smaller rooms off of this room. The large room was originally used as our playroom where we kept our toys and the other two rooms were used for storage. Every room in the house had at least one window and the larger rooms had more. Mom and Dads’ room had a door that led out onto the flat roof of the front porch. It had a railing around the edge of it for safety.To me this was a mansion with many secrets and many good hiding places. What child would not like to grow up in a place like this? The remainder of the town had many interesting places and people that lived there too. Mom's Weekly Schedule Each day of the week was delegated for a specific large task. Mom did all her own baking, every Monday was home made bread day and she would spend the entire day making bread dough into loaves, buns and sweet rolls for the family. I always loved Mondays because the smell of homemade bread baking filled the house. We would always have a fresh loaf still warm from the oven for supper and when you put the homemade butter on the bread it would melt instantly. What a heavenly delight. Mom would freeze the rest to be used during the rest of the week. Tuesday was washday, Mom would shave her bar of fels-naphtha soap into the wash tub and add hot water to dissolve it then add cold water until she could stand to have her hands in the water. The laundry was washed and rinsed by hand and hung on the line to dry. If everything went well, the laundry would be dry by the end of the day and brought into the house. Wednesday was ironing day, Mom had a solid flat iron that was heated on the cook stove. In order to test the iron to make sure it was hot enough to use, she would wet her finger and quickly touch it to the surface of the iron, if the iron sizzled it was ready to use. Of course the trick was to keep it moving so you wouldn’t scorch the clothes. The iron would have to be replaced on the stove between each item in order to keep it hot enough to do a good job. Mom was lucky, she had a modern iron, and it had a wooden handle so she didn’t have to hold it with a towel or hot pad. She ironed everything back then and I mean everything, from blue jeans to sheets and pillowcases, from work shirts to hankies and underwear. Thursday was sewing day, Mom would catch up on her patching and mending and toward fall she would sew new skirts or dresses for my sister and I, which were for church on Sundays. I always enjoyed going in and watching her sew, I found it fascinating how she could take a flat piece of material and turn it into something so pretty. Friday was her day to make out the grocery list, which was usually very short since we raised most of our own food, it generally consisted of the things we could not raise ourselves such as flour, sugar, yeast, spices, herbs, material for sewing and thread and maybe a few other things I can’t remember. Saturday was shopping day, Mom and Dad would go to La Crosse to shop and Linda and I had to stay home and clean house and our brother Steven had to clean barn or whatever outside duties Dad had assigned him. Sunday was our day of rest; Dad always said that it was important to have a day where you didn’t have to work. It usually started with church, and then we would go home, change clothes and help Mom pack a picnic lunch. Dad loved to fish so we would go to Dresbach where Dad kept his flat bottomed boat and he would take us to a sandbar and let us off. Mom would set up the lunch so we could eat a bit, then we all would relax on the beach and after an hour we kids could go swimming or go fishing with Dad. Mostly we swam. Fishing in the summer was one way that Dad supplemented our food supply and in the fall and winter he hunted all kinds of game. Thanks to his skill in both these fields we always had a good variety of food. Dad taught us how to fish, where the best fishing spots were and he taught us to hunt. I remember his main rule on hunting was the one bullet rule. For small game we used a 22 rifle single shot. That meant you had one bullet per kill. If we didn’t hit our target with the first shot, it was time to go home, and for small game and birds it had to be a headshot so as to not ruin any meat. For deer hunting, it was the same rule and we had to use a 12-gauge shotgun with a slug, nothing else. We got to be pretty good, but Dad was the best shot ever. There was no indoors bathroom so we had to heat all the water on the stove to do dishes, baths and warm water for doing laundry. For daily bathroom necessities, we had to leave the house and take the path to the little house with shingle siding. We had a two holer with a stack of old newspapers. They kind of did double duty, if you know what I mean. In the summer it could be sweltering in there and every so often the dreaded hornets would try to build nests in there, if that happened, it was time to call Daddy for help. We learned young that the flies and spiders that lived in this little house were kind of a given so they were never a problem. In the winter, well let me say, I was in and out just as quick as I could and I sure never wanted to go there after dark no matter what time of year it was. Ok, enough of that, I’ll let your imagination go on from there; I’ll take you back to more of the town. The General Store There was a general store, which was still in operation when I was young. That was a very interesting store as I remember it; you could literally get anything from soup to nuts and bolts. I remember it as having a large cement slab in front of the store, it was about 4 feet high with steps going up the sides and huge iron rings eye-bolted along the front edge of the slab so horses could be tethered there when the locals were shopping in the “old days”, of course, we had cars now. I always liked to go there because the old lady that operated the store always had a big jar of candy to offer us a piece from and a kind word. There was a large front door opening into the store and a huge window that pretty much took up the rest of the front wall. The front of the store was always bright with all that light coming in but that was the only window in the entire store portion of the building. Martha, the store lady, had a bench seat inside by the front window but no one would even think of sitting on it. It was full of all kinds of plants, a lot of which were cacti. She also had many different hanging, ivy plants, purple passion, spider plants, some kind of pearl plant. It was always green but it had little round balls linked and looked like a pearl necklace. I do remember one potted plant that just amazed me; she called it a Mexican hat plant. The main plant was quite tall and it had succulent leaves, it didn’t flower but it would develop little joined three leaf clusters with tiny roots coming from each cluster and they would ring each large leaf on the plant. It looked kind of like tassels around the brim of a large hat. The other potted plants mixed in with the cacti were other succulents; I think she called one of them the Mother-in-laws tongue. The counter ran almost to the back of the store but about ¾ of it was packed full of all sorts of things. Just a few inches off the floor, the entire length of the counter ran a copper rail, Martha said it was so the cowboys could prop a foot on it while they enjoyed a beer. She said the stage couch would always make a stop there to let passengers get out and rest and change their teams out for fresh ones. She said that occasionally some Indians would also stop and barter for different items they wanted, but that rarely happened, and certainly not at all in the last 20 some years. But I digress; I was describing the store to you. Behind the counter were shelves reaching all the way to the ceiling with a ladder for use to reach items on the top shelves. There were about three free standing shelving units used to hold grocery items in the middle of the store and in the back part of the store there were many bins and cubbies that held many different kinds of nails, screws, nuts, bolts, you know, all the hardware stuff you could possibly need. There were shovels, hoes, plowshares, cultivator blades, horse harnesses, horseshoes and I could go on and on. Many of the latter things mentioned were hanging on the back walls. There was even a small shuffleboard set up with sticks and that puck like thing and sawdust on the floor so it would slide real well. She even had a refrigerator where you could get some milk, butter or eggs if you needed them. Their house was partitioned off the far back end of the store, they had windows in there, and if Martha had been baking she would invite me back into the kitchen and offer me a fresh hot cookie from the oven. She was a good cook! I liked being invited to the kitchen, it made me feel important, Martha and I would sit at the small round wooden table with the homemade crocheted doily in the center of it. On top of the doily was a small fish bowl with the biggest gold fish in it I had ever seen. I doubted if it could even turn around in there it was so big. She had the typical wood-burning cook stove, which was used for all their cooking as well as house and store heating. The living quarters were small and there was a narrow stairway that led upstairs to the bedroom. The bathroom was just like ours, out the door and down the path. Not too bad in the summer but a mighty cold trip in the dead of winter. I think the most shocking thing that ever happened when I went in the store occurred on a hot summer day. When I had gotten to the store, the front door was wide open to let a little breeze in, I went up to the counter to get whatever Mom had sent me to get, when I froze in my tracks. Right there, right in front of me, right by the cash register was a full skun out hog’s head sitting in a large flat pan with its snout pointing in my direction and those two lidless eyes staring right at me. Its mouth was slightly a-gap but the tongue was gone. A fly! “YUCKKK”! came crawling slowly out of the mouth and into the earless hole that remained after the ears were removed. I called, “Martha, are you here?” “I’ll be right there,” she answered from the back room. As I waited I was finally able to look away from the head to ease my nerves when what did I see on the other side of the counter? A soup stock sized pan full of blood. It was already getting thick looking. About this time Martha got there and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, we just butchered a hog this morning.” “Why do you have this head and pan of blood here?” I couldn’t resist asking. I “Oh, I’m going to make head cheese out of the head and blood sausage out of the blood, I’ll let you try some when I get it done.” She said. I felt like I had walked into a horror shop and I was never so glad to get out of there, I didn’t even want to know what they were going to do with the missing tongue. Across the street from the store was a garage. The garage was originally a black smith shop that had been converted when automobiles replaced the horse and buggy. The rest of the building that wasn’t used for repair work had been left to slowly surrender to the years and weather but it had originally been a place to stable the fresh coach horses, tack and food for them. Since it was no longer used they didn’t keep it up and it was slowly fading into the past. There is a creek called Pine Creek that runs between the store and the old pop factory, which is no longer operational. In this building some of the old bottles, washing machines, cases, labels and bottling machines still stood covered with years of dust and being slowly eaten by rust. The Pop Factory At some time n the past, I had one of the labels that were used on the soda that was made in this pop factory. It was called the New Hartford Bottling Company and this building was the bottling facility but the soda was actually made in a building that had already been partially torn down. What was left of the building was now a multipurpose building that had a garage in the back end and the front was divided into two sections. Half was the milk house and the other half was a workshop for Dad. The water tank was spring fed and the water was very cold all year round. We had a natural spring that ran through our property and had been piped into the area we used as a milk house, the cold spring water was circulated through a water tank and back out again to continue on its way to the creek which ran through our other neighbors property. This tank is where we stored the cans of milk from our cows until the milk truck would pick them up every other day. Martha said that a relative of her husband’s family was the first to own the property and he is the one who built the pop factory and used the fresh spring water as a main ingredient for his pop. Unfortunately he was also an alcoholic who decided at the time of prohibition there would be more money in making shine than soda. As a result, his secret shine production took precedence over the soda and the pop factory slowly went out of business. If you will note, I said secret because he had hidden his still in the basement of the house in a secret room under the parlor. The only way to get into the room was through a trapdoor in the floor of the parlor. There was an extra fieldstone wall in the basement that hid his operation so it was truly a secret room. The only thing that kind of gave it away was the water pipe that ran through the basement wall close to the ground for his fresh water supply for his shine operation. Farm Work The milk barn was one story, long and painted red, it housed the milking parlor, calf pens, chicken coop, feed room and a small pen to raise one or two pigs for the freezer. We had nesting boxes in the coop for the hens but let them free range during the day and lock them in the coop for their protection at night. The chickens gave us our fresh eggs plus a few to sell and a few to let them hatch to maintain a supply of fresh chicken for the freezer. Dad had about 7 cows that he milked by hand twice a day. The milk was then carried to the milk house in shot gun cans and put in large milk cans and placed in the tank of cold water to await the milk truck picking it up. Mom would have us go out the morning after milking and skim the cream off the top and bring it into the house and then we would put it into a large jar with a lid that had a paddle wheel device attached to the lid. We would take turns churning the cream until it turned to butter. We would then rinse the butter in cold water to get all the whey removed from it and lightly salt it and put it into the refrigerator. This was the best tasting butter ever. In the fall, we would butcher the pigs and render lard for bread baking during the rest of the year as well as for other cooking needs. Dad would also butcher a yearling beef that we had raised and sell a couple thereby cutting down on the number of livestock we had to feed and house over the winter months. We worked hard on the little 40-acre farm. Dad had an old horse drawn corn planter that he that he converted so he could pull it behind the tractor during spring planting. In the fall he would take a wagon with one tall side on it and park it in the field and we would go out and help him pick and shuck the corn and throw it in the wagon. We had what was called a hand-shucker that we would wear on one hand. It was made of heavy canvas and had either 1 or 2 large metal teeth in the palm of it. These we would use to rip into the husk and pull it back so we separate the corn from the husk before throwing the corncob into the wagon. After the wagon was full, Dad would drive it to the corncrib where he would hand shovel it for winter storage. We would had shell some of it for the chickens and dad would load corn into the truck and take it to the feed mill in Ridgeway where he would have it ground, he would also buy bags of dry molasses and bran mixed with vitamins and minerals. These would all be stored in the feed room in the cow barn where Dad would hand mix his own special recipe for the cows. Hay Time When it was haying time, Dad would go out and cut the hay with an old cycle mower and when it had dried a bit he would take out the old dump rake. This had originally been horse drawn and Dad had cut the tongue shorter to convert it so he could pull it with the tractor. For some reason I seemed to spend the most time riding the rake. I would sit on that loose seat that would constantly try to buck me off. One foot on the break until Dad would shout "NOW", then I would quickly have to release the break and tromp on the release which would start to raise the rake in the back, quickly reach behind me with my right hand and grab the lever and raise the rake the rest of the way and quickly drop it back down and step on the break to keep the rake in contact with the ground until the next "NOW" command would be given. Once we had the spacing started for the rows of hay, I could dump the rest at the appropriate time in order to have long rows going across the entire length of the field. After the hay was completely dry, Dad would drive the tractor and hay wagon out into the field and we would go with him. Dad and my brother would take pitchforks and toss the loose hay onto the wagon and my sister and I would have to dodge the forks and tramp the hay to pack it so we could get as much as possible on the wagon. When the wagon was full, Dad would drive it back to the barn and we could just stay on the top of the load and ride back to the barn. We did have to lay flat though because we came mighty close to the highline wires and tree branches, and back the wagon into the barn. He would disconnect the tractor from the wagon and hitch the hay rope to it and have my brother take over the driving of the tractor. Dad ran the fork; it was one long piece of steel with a collapsible tine mechanism at the pointed end and a trip handle at the other end with a smaller rope attached to it. Dad would stab the fork as far into the hay on the wagon as he could and set the tines. He would then have my brother drive the tractor forward slowly while Dad guided the fork up and into the track, which carried it and its load of hay to the proper location in the barn. He would signal for my brother to stop and then Dad would jerk the trip rope and the huge load of hay would come falling down. We girls were sent into the haymow to again tramp down the hay as it was sent in. Some times it was difficult to get completely out of the way and we would be covered in hay. Talk about itchy! The barn we stored the hay in had originally been a combination workhorse stable, machine shed, milk barn and hay barn. The faint remainders of horse stalls could still be seen, since Dad had a tractor and not horses; he turned one end of the barn into the haymow where we stored the hay. The center section of the barn was where he operated the hayfork from and stored the tractor when not in use and the other end of the barn we used as a tobacco-hanging shed. Attached to the back of this barn was a lento, which Dad used to store other farm machinery in. Tobacco I mentioned raising tobacco; this was another (fun) crop. In the spring, after the field was prepared, Dad would get the tobacco planting machine and starter plants from his brother who always started the young plants and owned the planting machine. I recall that we kids took turns riding the planter. It was pulled by the tractor, had two large wheels and a huge water tank that we needed to fill whenever it ran out. Below and behind the water tank there were 2 seats for two people to sit. There was a release handle that we would have to set once we were in the field and ready to plant. This would drop us down even lower to the ground. We would be just skimming the top of the dirt and the machine would dig a narrow trench. We would have flat boards on our laps with many baby tobacco plants on the board all facing one way so we could pick up one at a time and plant them at the right moment. I'll try to explain as best I can how it worked. The trenching device would make a narrow opening in the ground and at certain intervals a splash of water would come out of the machine and go in the trench. At the very moment the water came out you would put your baby plant in the ground and follow it with your fingers until you were through the device that covered the soil back in around the plant. Two people had to ride it because one would not be able to keep up with it. Dad only grew one field of Tobacco, so we were usually done in a day with that part of it. It was a good cash crop to grow. Dad would cultivate it with the tractor and cultivator until it got to big then he would hoe the entire field by hand. We kids would have to go out with Dad periodically and help look for and pick off those big green tobacco worms (YUCK!!) and kill them. When it was time to harvest, Dad would break the flowering tops off the plants a day or two before harvest then he would go out with a machete and chop down the plants close to the ground. It would be left to lay for a few hours so it would wilt a bit then we would bring out the tobacco wagon which was a open bed wagon with two 2x4’s running down the middle to walk on, tall framed sides with 2x4 frame on the top which we hung the laths of plants on for transport to the barn. As we got older, we had to take a formed tin spear tip that would fit over the end of a lath and help spear the tobacco onto the laths, about 6 plants to a lath, carry the lath to the wagon and hand them to the person assigned to hang them on the rack. When the wagon was full it would be driven to the barn and unloaded. Usually my brother was in the barn in the upper rafters as the hanger. Dad would carry in the tobacco one lath at a time and hand one end up to the hanger and he would hang it in the rafters. As we got older, Dad would stay in the fields and my brother would drive in the load and us girls would take turns being the hanger. The barn was a series of upright poles for support to the roof and long 2x4 stringers placed correctly so the lath would hang securely between them. The hanger would have to walk on one 2x4, which usually was crooked and liked to rock a lot, maintain his balance, reach down and get the lath, pull it up and hang it on the 2x4's and as soon as that was done be ready for the next one. You had to have really good balance for that job. The tobacco was left to hang in the barn until we got what Dad called "casing weather". That usually came anywhere from mid January to the first of February. It would be a slight warm spell usually accompanied by mild temperatures and fog. It would not last long. Dad would carry the laths of tobacco into the basement of the house where he would hand one lath at a time and "strip" the leaves from the stalk. He would sort the leaves based on their quality. He had about 3, 4-sided 1x24x48 inch long by 1x24x18 inch wide wood board frames that he would put two pieces of twine string in. The string would run down one side, across the open bottom and up the other side, there were notches cut in the top of the sides in which to place the twine so each bale was tied in the same place. The bottom was placed on a large piece of plywood so it would be firm. He had large rolls of heavy brown paper that he would cut a sheet large enough to completely line the frame with extra to fold over the top. When he got the frame almost full to the top he would place a large heavy flat 1x24 inch board on top and get a couple of us kids on the board and have us jump on it to pack the leaves tight. He would then add more leaves and periodically pack them until they would not go below the top of the frame. At that point he would get us kids to come down and get on the top board and jump on it some more. When Dad was satisfied, he would have us get off and he would quickly remove the board we had been jumping on, fold the extra paper over the top of the tobacco and tie the twine strings tightly. He would then pull the frame off the bale and it was ready for market. Dad worked full time at Trane Company in La Crosse during the day and would stay up all hours of the night stripping tobacco until he had it all done. He would then load it and take it to market and sell it. I have no idea how much he got for it, but he said he would not have been able to make it if he didn't raise and sell it. Town Website created by the 9th grade computer class: http://descy.50megs.com/NewHartford/newhtfd.html Return to the Main Index Page ©2008 Genealogy Trails