Preface

Twenty years ago I fell in love with Theodore. He’s here with me now, in my heart, but I’ve never seen or touched him. I know him though, very well. He traveled through time to tell me his story, to take me on a journey through 150 years to when it all began. I need to tell you how I met him and the women who made it possible.

Chapter 1

It was a lovely old 18^th century English style farm. At one time it had a hundred acres of fruit trees, a cobblestone driveway and picket fences that were painted every year by hired hands. The house and its outbuildings all with the same English style peaks, held all the mysteries of the past, of the people who lived there and the way life used to be.

North of the house was the barn with its English facade, the door so heavily covered with ivy you could barely open it to squeeze through. Once inside there were cathedral like ceilings that made you feel you should be whispering out of respect for those who once lived and worked there. You could see the stanchions where the cows once fed. Mice had found their homes all through the musty decades old hay, and every sort of farming tool used in the past 100 years was in evidence, each with its own story. There was a particularly beautiful corn husker with all its original bright green and yellow paint advertising its maker. Ladders which started very wide at the bottom and becoming progressively narrow at the top stretched way up into the eaves where the barn swallows lived. There the sun rays poured through splintered roof boards onto their nests.

In a separate room in the front of the barn, maybe at one time used as a small workshop, was an ornate organ that had disintegrated in place both from the weather and countless gnawing mice. Looking out the loft door towards the orchards you could see the old weather worn tenant house where workers would stay during harvest season. Deep green watercress still grows in abundance on the banks of the stream passing by that feeds the pond with icy cold water.

Adjacent to the barn was a carriage house of the same design. Here again, stories are told by the remnants of their owners. There were elegant sleighs as well as a wagon similar to the ones that you picture owned by someone touting his latest and greatest tonic or elixir.  Its windowed sides could be removed, making it an open wagon to hold baskets of fruit and vegetables, or maybe a warm pile of hay for the autumn hayride through the fields. And of course there was a surrey with its fringe on top, a bit tattered, but nonetheless quite elegant in its time. Hanging from every beam and across the walls were every sort of harness and bridle as well as the obligatory sleigh bells to be fastened to lap blankets on those cold wintry nights. There was even a wooden foot warmer lined with tin, carved with the family monogram. They would put hot coals inside and then tuck it under the blanket, keeping their feet toasty warm. Inside the stone foundation of the carriage house was a storage area for all the presses. Every size imaginable, used to press apples for cider in the fall.

Behind the house, fashioned as a smaller twin to the carriage house,was the hen house. Not a chicken coop, a hen house. Of course only the most sophisticated hens lived here. They had a wide open view to the morning sun through small paned windows that spanned the entire back side of the building. In front was a towering windmill that furnished power for well water. The chickens were free to roam at the feet of the windmill and throughout the barnyard during the day, returning happily to roost in the safety of the hen house in the evening hours.

And then there was the house itself, where all the stories began and lived day to day. Babies were born, and grandparents died. You can picture the farmer on hot summer evenings rocking in his chair on the porch reading his latest copy of the “Country Gentleman” eager for news of the war, the Civil War, where his nephew Henry was fighting under the command of Major General McClellan. While reading, he could listen to his wife Elizabeth playing the piano in the music room behind him. He liked to call her Lib, as did the rest of the family. She was everyone’s favorite, Aunt Lib, to whom everyone liked to write letters and share the stories of their lives.

It was in this house that I first met Theodore.