Day 4... Early brickmaking in New England...

My campaign to save my house from the tax man continues.  Everyday I hear of foreclosures.  There are many who would think buying a foreclosed house to be a bargain. I don't think I could do that. In so many cases, the folks who cannot pay their mortgages are behind in payments because of rising medical bills, job loss, energy prices... things beyond their control. And sometimes it seems there is no way out. When things start slipping, we assume things will get better, a new job, lower gas prices, we won't get sick. Many sell out and move in with relatives. And some just keep hanging on. And then the tax man or bank man commith. 

I am a potter. I work with earth. I work with my hands.  Pottery today is a lot easier than in 1629. I do not dig and mix my own clay. I do not have a wood kiln. I have tested these things but in today's world of competition and the type of pottery I make, electricity and clay processors make my life so much easier and the end product almost.. just almost.. the same.

In Salem MA in 1629. Rev Higginson wrote in a letter home,

"It is thought here is a good clay to make bricke, and Tyles and Earthen pots, as need be. At this instant, we are setting a brick-kill on worke to make Brickes and Tyles for the building of our houses."

It turns out the Birge family who built my house had their own brick yard. Most of the clay in New England will turn out red when heated over 1000 degrees. We have a lot of iron in the ground which contaminates the weathered feldspar, that of which makes up most clays.  Some people call it "blue clay" as it looks blueish grey in the ground, some looks grey, some looks red from the start.  The clay was dug out of a pit where feldspar had been broken down into the soft gooey stuff and mixed with water to form a sludge. Then a horse, mule or oxen was coaxed into walking in circles for hours,spinning a blade in the large bin of clay sludge till it was consistent.  Then the clay is screened, dried a little and put aside to age. Bricks were made with wooden molds. Early bricks were smaller then common bricks today, but standard sizes were not followed.  The stiff clay was formed in the molds and set outside in the sun to dry. Often, sheep, dogs, cats, children, birds walked over the bricks. These special bricks are coveted by brick collectors.

Yes, there are brick collectors. http://brickcollecting.com/  A friend of mine, Frank Clement in Orchard Park NY, http://www.buffaloah.com/a/DCTNRY/mat/brk/clement/clemtc.html, showed me many of these bricks with foot prints. Sometimes workers on their breaks would scratch pitchers and sayings into the bricks lying out to dry. Unfortunately, one must take apart a whole building to find the foot prints or sayings as they are usually on the flat side of the brick.. the side that has been mortared to the brick on top or below the foot print. I hesitate to start taking apart my brick house to find the collectible dog foot print, but I have search the loose ones in the attic with no success.



English Chimney pots.

 The English had made roof tiles and chimney pots in England, and so the early settlers thought they would work here. Roof "tyles" did not meet with success in New England. Red clay tends to crack and flake in the winter as you may have noticed if you ever left a flower pot outside over the winter.  Clay tiles and thatch gave way to wood shakes and slate tiles. 







Colonial Williamsburg


 As I mentioned, the bricks are a little smaller than today. Mine are 7 1/2" x 3 1/2"x 2", today's bricks are 9"x4"x2".  My bricks also have bits of stones, shells, other mystery ingredients, holes, folds, pits and they are a bit warped. Charming. Colors of the finished bricks varied by where they were in relation to the heat source, how hot they got and what was in the clay. Sidney Portier stared in a great movie about brick making by Hallmark films.. "The last brickmaker in America".  The bricks were the kiln. http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/winter05-06/brickmaker_slideshow/#





My two story house 30' x 20' would have over 19,000 bricks in its walls. At $350 per thousand bricks at today's rate, this would cost around $6650 at today's prices... but then it would take more than a few hours to mortar and place each one while keeping an eye out for dog prints. And not brick-faced building mind you, two courses thick and two chimneys. I wonder how long it did take the Birges to build this house in 1820?

The town of Torrington just tore down its 1898 brick train station in one day. It takes a lot longer to build things than tear them down.

I am still working on my project. Keep tuned in to see what develops.

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Day 3... Rocks, Boulders in New England

Hello friends!



The House, notice the Rocks



The purpose of this blog is to sell enough of the special piece of pottery I am working on to hold off the tax sale of my house... in July.  Yikes!  I am not asking for handouts, times are tough for everybody, (what about these CT gas prices? $4.05?), I am looking for people who want to help by buying a piece of Americana Art, something made here in the USA.  My goal, by posting this blog, you're help passing on this blog, and getting some followers, is that I will be able to sell 1,000 of these special, $10 pieces over the next year. That will not be so difficult if you will all sign up and help pass it on!  There may be a shipping fee.. haven't thought that far yet. Haven't even decided for sure, what the pottery piece will be.  I am working on something and will post it within the next few weeks.

In the meantime, I will jabber on about the house you will all help to save!

More about Rocks...

In New England, rocks grow up out of the ground to disrupt and hinder our lives like taxes. I suppose it is the frost heaves over the winter that push the rocks up. They really do seem to grow each year. Millions of years ago rocks were broken and  carried here by ice flows. They are buried all over the landscape. Rocks the size of baseballs, rocks the size of cars and rocks the size of houses. There is a rock sitting on the top of a hill a mile from here called Sunset Rock.  A hundred years ago, the hill was cleared of its trees and you could sit on top of the 25 foot cone shaped rock and watch the sun set.  This is typical of New England... http://www.neara.org/Moore/balancedrocks.htm. The largest of these glacial boulders was a rock I visited in New Hampshire. The Madison Boulder is sitting on top of the ground, 83 feet long!!!! 23 feet high and 37 feet wide. That's about 5,000 tons... and that's just what is above the ground! http://www.newhampshire.com/state-parks/madison-boulder-natural-area.aspx





So farmers clearing there fields had to remove some of those rocks. They put them on skids, hooked up the horses or oxen and made a maze of walls that would serve as barriers for the livestock.



The Stone Wall and Me



Originally, the Birge family, (the folks who built my house), cleared about 200 acres of  rocks. The 15 acres that Nathaniel Birge inherited in 1830, has lost all but a few feet of its stone walls. Removing stone walls is illegal in most of New England, but developers tend to ignore this. Stone walls are part of the charm of our landscape. Its a shame to see them go.

Out of the original 15 acres that was attached to this house, only 1 acre is on the property deed, along with 50 feet of stone wall placed there over 200 years ago.



This is a typical story of any early house in any early New England town.  Three 1637 houses still survive in New England.  Hundreds dot our landscape today, woven in amid new constructions and reproductions. The easiest way to tell a house is really old, is by its foundation. Cellars in my area were  made with large granite blocks that can be seen from the road. These blocks, typically about 24x48x 24, were hauled into position by teams of oxen from nearby quarries.





Enough about rocks. Tomorrow... lets talk about clay and bricks, early colonial bricks!

By the way, you can also subscribe by email below and post comments or interesting bits you have found... Do you like stone walls? Roger? Anyone?



Day 2... A House and its' People





Day 2 and things are going great! A good friend has requested an urn for her departed beloved cat's ashes... Thanks Jolene! It will be a pleasure to make up this special piece for you.  Thanks Wednesday for passing this on!  Thank you to all who have already shown their support for signing up as followers and offering their help.



I have a lot of friends who are history buffs, geneaologists and cemetery searchers. They asked for more about my houses' history. Being interested in history myself,  I love to retell the story of my house. 




In 1746, Capt. John Birge of Windsor CT, was the 3rd settler in the newly acquired community of Torringford, CT. Torringford was purchased in 1720 from the Weromaug, Weraroquom, Curlow, Nepatoo, Ahanjean, Mawehew, AwBund, Tawhooks, Paconopeet, Takahous, Worenough and Wossomaug Indians acording to a small booklet entiled, Torringford by Elizabeth Gaylord.  There is little written about the Indians of our area. Ms Gaylord mentions a wigwam just south of the current Apple House gas station and convience store about 1/4 mile from this house. There is also mention of the Mohawks hunting on the land between the Naugatuck and Farmington rivers.



Capt John Birge had six children. One son died at age 17 as a result from war wounds in 1777. Two daughters married and moved nearby, little Isaac was born mute and died at age 26. Two sons were left. The family owned a good deal of property with other relatives and it is hard to tell which son stayed at his fathers house when Capt John died in 1776 at age 53 and which son built this one.



I believe it was Simeon, the younger surving son, who built the original house on this spot in 1785. Simeon  had 10 children living here between  1784 and 1803 when daughters Experience died at age 17 along with her unnamed newborn sister. Seven children survied and grew up and moved away leaving the youngest little boy, Nathaniel to inherit the property in 1831.



It is fascinating to know the history of an old house. I walk up the stairs knowing all the names of those who have lived here. Currently, the number of feet total at least 34 pairs that tread on the stairs. The land was almost completely cleared of its' trees. The hugh primival forests were needed for houses with big 8-10" timbers not 2x6's. One upstairs floorboard is 23" wide in this house. And heating one of these old houses costs a fortune these days with no insulation and drafty windows, one can imagine the heating problems back then. The amount of firewood needed in pioneering fireplaces was estimated to be around 30 cords a winter. No modern airtight stoves or fiberglass insulation.  Not to mention there were still areas of the house where your spit would freeze mid-air in December in spite of the 30 cords of wood.





The cleared land was needed for growing corn, grazing and hay for dairy and fields of flax. Cotton was not widely used here before 1830 and the start up of the cotton mills that wove cloth into affordable fabric. Women broke flax stalks, combed and spun it into thread and then wove it into linen cloth. Hence the miles of stonewalls. By 1871 approximately one-third of the 61,515 miles of fencing in Connecticut were stone. Stones "grow" here.  I have three stones growing in my yard that really need to be moved. One year, I conned by brother into digging out a stone. With only 6 square inches showing, it turned out to be about 3 feet across and 8 inches deep. We kept digging, pried it out with pry bars and rolled it across the lawn on pipes till it sits in the garden.



Rock 1 hits the lawn mower blades





Rock 2 hits the snow blower blades



Rock 3 hits the bottom of my car



More talk about stones tomorrow. Thank all of you... all 6 if you include me... that signed up as followers.  Thanks to those who have posted this blog to their friends. I am working on the object. But now, with the suggestion of a friend, am thinking of making it a larger size.



-Reggie the potter.









I saved a homestead... Day 1

Me with our beagles 1959

Ok. So last week, I got a notice from our property tax man that my house would go up for tax sale July 1, 2011.  Had I noticed that my grip on the tax bill was slipping away? Oh yah. About 20 years ago, when I was challenged to pay for the house and raise the two girls by myself. I could have put the girls in day care and got a new career, but I was living in fantasy land and thought I could keep everything going on a potters salary.  So I was here for my girls, and lived a charmed life holding down the fort. Things got a little behind.

This is not a sob story. I don't want a handout. I want people to buy my pottery!  (http://www.eastknollpottery.com/... if you want to help out right away). 

I came up with an idea for a piece of clay... dirt and clay being the basis for my whole life... I will make a clay object and sell it by sharing and publishing my plight. People will love the little object and want one for their own. They will put it on the coffee table or under the Christmas tree or in their yard... they will brighten their house with this object and know that they helped someone fulfill her dream to own this special spot on the planet.

What special spot? What is so special about this house? Well, this is it.....

East Knoll 1910.  Built circa 1820 on the knoll east of the highway.

My Grampa, he is the one over their on the right with one of his calves,

was a florist. His father came from Germany in 1881 at 16 years old and settled in Brooklyn NY.  He and his brother had greenhouses there, back when Brooklyn was more countrified.  Frank fought in WWI and then bought this farm in the village of Torringford in 1927. He raised chickens and cows, veggie plants and flowers and I heard his brother had homing pigeons here.

Phyllis 1946

 This is my mom on the left in front of our barn.  She was born here in 1930, the product of a short and mostly unhappy marriage. My grandparents divorced when she was about 5 years old and grew up here on the small farm.

Dave and me 1958

She married my dad in 1948, and my brother, me and my little sister grew up here too.  Here's my brother and me in front of the greenhouse. It was really cool to grow up in a greenhouse. We played with trucks in dirt piles in the middle of winter. My love of dirt may have started here.

 So here is the background... now what object should I make that people will want to buy for their own?

All I ask from you is to become a follower for my blog up there over on the right and I will keep you posted on what's going on.  Pass this on to your friends too. Don't forget to comment on what's going on. Sharing is good. I like to hear your challenging story too.... really!