Milmine, Mary

MEMOIRof

Mary (Molly) P. Milmine

Transcript of a taped interview

Narrator: Molly Milmine

Tape#: 30A

Date: November 29, 1993.

Place of interview: Mrs. Milmine’s house in Lakeville.

Interviewer: Eleanor R, Dorsett

Mrs. Milmine gives the history of the Salisbury Public Health Nursing Association from its beginnings until the present day. She details the activities of the first nurse, Henrietta Van Cleft, which information was found in the records kept by Miss Van Cleft. At the end of the interview with Mrs. Milmine, there was recorded (at a later time) a conversation with Mrs. Dorsett and Mrs. Haeberle about the one room schoolhouses in the town of Salisbury.

1983

Property of the Oral History ProjectSalisbury Association at the Seoville Memorial Library

Salisbury, Connecticut 06068

 

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MM: you’ve never read them, have you? They are in the files at the office and should never be, never be destroyed. We are presumably, and there is no reason to deny it, we ae the earliest, the first rural agency in the state.

Waterbury is the first city agency. We were established in nineteen hundred and two. Well, it went on for years.

Miss Van Cleft was here for twenty-three years. She was very active in the church. She established the Girl Scouts and during the 1918 epidemic, when we had a hundred people sick at the same time, she was the only nurse. She also set up a soup kitchen and taught nutrition to a lot of these people.

She must have been an amazing woman, I think, very energetic. She was quite definite about things. She went around in a horse and wagon until about 1910, I think, when she was given a Ford car, which she loathed, was terrified of, and always rejoiced when it was put up in the winter and said so definitely in her papers. But she had a fine black horse. No, It must have been a roan, I guess, named Strawberry, It came from the livery stable in Lakeville, When she went to Taconic to do her work, she took the train for two cents from Lakeville to Taconic and there she was met by a man from the livery stable in Taconic. Every time she had to do that, she makes a note of that, that that horse is not brushed and cleaned and polished the way that Strawberry is.

She also… She was free to do things then which our nurses are no longer free to do. She would take Mrs. Jones to call on Mrs. Smith with her, while she made different calls in the area and then she would pick Mrs. Jones up and bring her home. That got Mrs. Jones out of the house for the day or something. There was one young boy who was accidentally shot: there was nothing anybody could do about him. He was thirteen or so, she would arrange to get some of his friends, then they would drive up to Hotchkiss to a football game or something. She would leave them there together: then she’d come back and pick them up. Meantime, she would take the boy’s mother out and give her a little whirl while she was driving around with Strawberry. She was an amazing woman.

One of her stories is of a little Italian girl who came over and terribly unaware of what she was getting into. (her husband worked in the mines in One Hill, I think) she arrived and was pregnant and couldn’t speak any English. So, the baby died. Miss

 

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Van Cleft arranged the funeral, invited her friends to go to the funeral so that this little girl wouldn’t feel uncomfortable and lonely. That kind of thing turns up all the way through her things.

She eventually grew quite old. She was highly respected, she knew everybody. She worked with Dr. Peterson when he first came. She worked with the Drs. Bissell. She also described occasionally doing an operation on the kitchen table, for instance, which they did automatically in those days, as far as I know.

She arranged…. She wasaway every summer for about a month, I think.

She arranged to have some girls from Henry Street come up to take her place

while she was gone so they could get some training in rural nursing, which of course, was developing quite rapidly at that particular point.

She didn’t keep any particular records. I don’t know what her salary must have been. It must have been minimal. She lived in the village, in Lakeville, and had a little clinic in her house in the evening so the people could come easily to see her. She finally developed great rapport with all the people in town through various things.

Mrs. Drummond, who was a member of the Board, was a nurse and sometimes would go with Miss Van Cleft and explain that she herself was a nurse and that they didn’t bite or anything, that they weren’t poisonous and they weren’t dangerous arid that they could trust her to do the right thing for them.

If they, the books, are very interesting and I’m not sure they shouldn’t be perhaps published because they are unique, I think probably. When she got older, she retired. She was here twenty- three years: then the problem was what to do about a successor. By that time the organization was a really going concern.

Oh, another thing that she did. She dropped in on the Ore Hill School. She stopped in and found that the children were not well. There was an epidemic of colds and sniffles: that there were lice in their hair. She took care of that. From then on, she started stopping in at the other area schools, of which there were five, of course, one in each village. That developed the business of our nurses going into the schools, which is a rare business.

 

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Most places have a school nurse. But we still keep a nurse in the school who is our nurse because that person can go into the children’s houses. The school nurse does not do that, she just sends them home and then reports if they don’t come back and doesn’t go and find out why. But our nurse does go in the house and through that we have found several children who are what might be considered “hidden children” that the family has been embarrassed about and kept hidden away. We have been able to pick them up and through the other children, we could see that the house has been straightened. I can think of three of them who had been hidden who are living happily in the village now: one who was born with congenital cataracts. We got those straightened out for her: the last time I heard of her she was a lieutenant in the army, did extremely well. So it was very rewarding from that point of view.

So, the next nurse that took over was Ruth Miner. She had done a little bit of work with Miss Van Cleft, although she always denied it, but everyone knew better. We knew them both and knew that she did occasionally go out with Miss Van Cleft and that she had also been quite active in the little clinic that Miss Van Cleft carried on. So, here was a nurse right under our noses, a local person, liked by everybody. So, Miss Miner joined our forces. She, for several years was the only nurse we had. She was very definite, too, like Miss Van Cleft. She did the school: she did the outside work and would go out at night, if necessary. She was, I find, a very interesting person. I can’t remember where she was trained, but she also was trained In New York, I think. Anyway, she was with us a long time and did a beautiful job,

We had no home: we had to find places to stay. Once we were in the school but that didn’t work out. Then we went to the new school: that didn’t work out very well because there really wasn’t room enough for us, the children, and everything else that was going on.

She was instrumental in doing the inoculations and immunization program. She was very keen on that and worked closely with Dr. Peterson who was invaluable to us, in rendering advice and always being there. I remember once when we were having a clinic for the children to check them and inject for polio or something of that sort, all the children in town were invited. Dr. Brewer was new at the time, had just come. He was helping out for the day. Everything was going very, very smoothly when one

 

 

large family arrived. All of the; children, and there must have been sixteen of them, I think, shrieking. It was terrifying and making the most awful racket, when they arrived, Dr. Peterson very kindly said, “You go and see Dr. Brewer. He really hhhurtshurtshurts.

hurts! Well they finally stopped. Dr. Brewer was simply furious, but it worked out very well. They were finally all injected and properly taken care of. We did

were on duty all the time, day in and day out. We only had Miss Miner working with us: she had no assistants at all, except occasionally, when we would pick up a nurse in the village that could help her out. She stuck with it for a long while and was very popular. She had a car that didn’t frighten her. She drove around all over the place.

Then during her tenure Mrs. Parsons resigned and gave up completely. She’d had it. Mrs. Donald Warner took over. She was very, very able and worked very hard on it, but decided at the time that perhaps the support of the agency ought to be spread a little bit further. She began working on the idea of having public support for the agency and perhaps getting better salaries. The first budget was twenty-one hundred dollars. We paid Miss Miner (Inaudible, Ed.) The car was a gift and was supported as a gift. It wasn’t a very expensive program. When Miss Miner came in, a dollar and a half was charged for the visit, if the people could pay. If she decided they couldn’t, they didn’t. We had one treasurer, Harry Jones, Mrs. Warner and Miss Miner. They did the work. Mrs. Warner, about nine years after she had been president, resigned. I was asked to take over.

At that time, we had one room office in what was the old tavern in Lakeville, We had space in the central school and we had Miss Miner. Miss Miner was a marvelous person.

When I started, things were going to get more expensive: I felt that more people ought to support it then had been asked to do it before that. So we sent a general appeal out to everyone else. By that time the budget had gone up to about seven thousand. Then shortly after that, it was decided by the Board, which was then…. what is the word for…. not self-supporting, but regulated itself. There was no limit to the amount of years you had or anything else. If you got tired of it, you get off: if you didn’t, you didn’t. But we did still retain the, not rule, but general practice that there should be at least two people from every area in town, so

 

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that if anything went wrong in, say Amesville, someone from Amesville might pick it up, report it, and do something about it. That worked out very well. I think it is still in practice, although I know it is not a requirement any more.

So we sent out the application. We appealed to everyone in town. We still didn’t charge anyone who couldn’t pay. We still served anyone who came to us asking for service. We still referred them to hospitals and we still referred them to other agencies that might help them out. We still had doctors who were enormously helpful and always available to us. I remember one child who had to go for about three years to Newington Hospital for Children: it was a wonderful experience to take that child over and watch the child develop, to begin with, and also the wonderful service we were able to get for nothing from them, in the hospital over there.

Then things began to get a little tight. Well, until about twelve years ago, I guess, the board members of the smaller agencies all got together and met regularly, with a representative coming to each meeting, at which we decided…We discussed our problems together and came up with ideas that might be helpful one to another and worked out various things. At the same time the nurses were meeting: they would report to us what they came up with. We would report to them what we had come up with, so that we had a very close rapport and a very informal rapport. Everything worked out very smoothly and the board members’ organization, in my opinion, was extremely valuable, an organization of devoted, interested, caring, intelligent people who cared about the future of the agency,

For some reason or other the state didn’t seem to like us much: they decided that we weren’t using the right nurses: that our nurses should be more highly trained, should have certain degrees that they might not have had. We went finally en masse to talk to the Commissioner of Health, Dr. Foote. He said he couldn’t talk to us there were so many of us, so would we come back with a lessen number, which we did. We still weren’t small enough for him. So, finally we said, “Will you appoint a person to talk with us so that we can communicate with you at the state level and you can get our ideas?” So he finally did let us do that. At that time we felt that a small agency, if it had a. person who had good experience in the field, whether she was a trained public health nurse or what she was, that that was sufficient or perhaps better, than getting a highly-trained person. Well, he didn’t agree with us on that one

 

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and neither his agent, so finally our backs vent up very stiff and our hair came up to stand up on its end. So we finally took it to the Legislature. We said that we thought that this was sufficient: it was more efficient, and that we were not and frankly we knew everybody and were doing a fuller service than any of the bigger agencies which we knew did not do anything but just home service, and so forth, home nursing. We got it through the Legislature: we felt very victorious about that one. We then decided that if we felt supervision of these nurses was necessary, we could get a supervisor who could serve a group of twenty thousand people, which sight take x number of agencies, although we didn’t like the idea of amalgamating it, unifying it.

That, I’m afraid started us on the wrong track, because almost at once the state decided that we were wrong. They set up a system that our nurses must be trained in certain directions. They had to have certain degrees before they could do this and that. We lost out on that one, after a real battle! We had a wonderful time with that one: we became closer than ever as a result of it. The limits of that did go on after Medicare and Medicaid and all the requirements that we now have to run the show. We have been very lucky here, because every nurse we had, after Miss Miner, was a local person, retired. She had then an assistant, Phoebe Storms, who filled in when she was on vacation or away. She was right there waiting for the job and extremely…., took educating in the field and was extremely knowledgeable about the job. She took over head nurse position and then we got Marion Romeo, came in next. She, er, no…

ED: Marion…

MM: No, it was Mrs. Sherwood, Dorothy Sherwood then joined as a nurse under Phoebe: she took charge of the school and also in the afternoons when they closed the schools, she was then a nurse and took over then. After that we got Marion Romeo, who had the required degrees, but didn’t want to be head of the thing. We still struggled along with a person who didn’t have the correct degrees in Phoebe, who is an extraordinary person. She had a great sense of the people that she was working for and with, and was a very, very valuable person. Phoebe finally retired. Marion didn’t want to do it: Mrs. Sherwood didn’t have the right degrees and so we were stuck.

 

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At that point, I had a call from a person named Mrs. Joseph, I had forgotten about her and here she was right under our noses. She had come back from the field in East Asia, in the Peace Corps. She was just perfect for the job: she took it on.

So that is the history of our nursing. But now, for instance, Miss Van Cleft and Miss Miner had the time and had the ability and the mission to go and call on people and check them out that way. They also, every once in a while, would say, “Well, I can’t do it then because I’m going to cut somebody’s toe nails or something that afternoon.” or, “I’m sorry, but actually, I can’t do It because I’ve already told Mrs. So-and-so I’ll come to call on her and talk about what to do next about her daughter,” Or, “I’ve got to talk to Dr. So-and so about what is going on.”

That is no longer possible. If, for instance, any member of the Board goes to talk with the nurse about anything, it all has to be checked off as time given to this man. Every minute of the day has to be covered, recorded and accounted for, which is hampering. I mean, if you just drop in and say, “Hello” and stay over ten minutes to talk to someone, it all has to be recorded, kept track of and somebody comes out and sees about it. The state has been coming out….the state has always been very supportive, but they are a little bit annoying at the moment, and have been for several years, because they have to come out and go through all the records and go and discuss this and that with you. You have to have committees that report to them. You have to have board members or very specific committees talking about this and that. A lot of them don’t know what in the world they are talking about.

Also, their terms are limited now, which in my mind is a mistake, because the longer you are with the agency, the more you learned about the agency. The more you are involved in the agency, the more you wanted to know about it and the more intelligent you were in making decisions. Now, decisions are pretty such made for you. There is no, as far as I know at the moment, any agency where just the board members can go — meetings to which you go with representatives of the state or the federal government . But they are not places where the experienced board member can come up with ideas which, in my opinion, were extremely valuable because they sore based on experience and understanding. They dealt with the smaller agency which is far different from large city agencies which

 

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for years have been very carefully controlled, very carefully and all the rest of it.

So that….another thing that has happened, of course, Medicare came in and Medicaid came in which was complicated and rather frightening at first. If you kept going with it, as it developed, you could keep up with it and keep it going, I remember one agency in New Hampshire called me up and said, “What do you do about it?” I said, “You just stick with it: they’ll straighten you out and keep going. It’s going to be hard and it is complicated, but it does help a great deal.” Now our budget is now about, nearly $100,000. However, a large amount of that is repaid to us through Medicare and Medicaid so that we are safe on that one. The children still receive care at school for nothing, as part of the school. The nurses still go into the homes where children need help or have something else the trouble.

Now we have, and have had for several years, a trained social worker. That’s very valuable at least it is to us because she, when she is here three days a week, is based in the same building: together nurses and the social worker can work out problems together which is extremely valuable to us. The program that is far families is under both agencies, so that the family that needs more can get more: the family that doesn’t need anything, or needs less, doesn’t get it. It is a very happy arrangement.

ED: Can I interrupt long enough to ask you? You started the dental program, didn’t you?

MM: Yes.

ED: Weren’t you at the bottom of that?

MM: Yes, that’s right. That’s very long ago. I can’t ever remember what year it started. We realized that during the war there was, during the Second World War, no dentist available to us at all. Prior to that point, the school nurse had picked up children who needed dental work and the nurses in the home did find people with dental problems, could get the local dentist to do it for us. Sometimes he was paid, sometimes he wasn’t. But they were all gone. There wasn’t anyone around at all, so, what to do about this? The children’s teeth sere getting worse and worse and worse. We went to the State Dental Department and asked what to do. They said they would send a young man, a dentist, out to us

 

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to stay. He was here for five months: he told me afterwards, “It was a horrendous situation. It was unbelievable.” He couldn’t believe it either because he thought, “Hurray, I’m going out to deal with a bunch of children who drink milk end eat spinach and do the right thing in their diet.” But he said their teeth were in just terrible shape. It took his five months to go through the school children and get them straightened out and squared away and teach them. He taught them how to brush their teeth, how to take care of their tooth, It was a very interesting experience. Now we still do that and let the local dentist take care of the children’s teeth. We pay for some of it and some of it we don’t.

But that has made a tremendous difference in the health of the children at school. I think also the school lunch program has picked up a problem, too. At that time, we didn’t have any school lunches, remember? The children now, I think, eat better although I see them out and about eating cherry pie and drinking Coke, which doesn’t do them very such good. But generally speaking, I think they get a pretty good program and the person who comes out from Hartford-when we have her-she allows about two months to do all the children in the school, is crazy about the children and they adore her, So she has done a good job in explaining the fact that the dentist doesn’t bite and doesn’t hurt, always, which is a very good program. She also will take care of certain individuals who must have their teeth out and begin over again when they get to be older. But we now have two resident dentists, so it’s not as bad as it was.

For a time there it was really rather frightening. Our own local dentist was called out in both wars (we thought on the second one he would be left to us, but no, he was called off) so it was pretty frightening and the children… you couldn’t go to a dentist and those of us who could go, went, but a lot of people couldn’t get anywhere at all.

That’s another thing we’ve done ever since the beginning. We have taken the people who have needed to go, to a specialist on a hospital or something. We have seen that they went there. We either take them ourselves or we see that they get there, which is a good thing. I think we also straightened out some of the snags that bureaucracy creates in demanding, for instance, that people have to go regularly to clinics. There sight be three to go and can go together, which didn’t used to exist. Also some of the welfare

 

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problems, when people went individually, to Torrington once a month or something, to do something, Now it is fixed so that the person from Torrington comes here and covers all the people from three or four towns in one day. That is something that a small agency can do if it puts its mind to it.

We also, very recently, have in the post perhaps five years, introduced a nursing aide program which has helped the nurses a great deal. It takes so long for them to record what they’ve done during the day that they can’t do everything they could do, or would lie to do, so that aides have been very valuable in doing this. Previously, a nurse could go in and stay for six hours, if it was necessary, but now she can’t. She’s not allowed. She can only stay two hours, but the aide can go i and stay a minimum number of two and stay longer if necessary, But that, unfortunately, isn’t paid by Medicare and Medicaid yet, so that is an expense to the individual that has the aide, but that is one of the programs we have.

We also, in the past, had Mr. Jones who kept the books and Miss Miner wrote the letters, which weren’t very numerous: there weren’t many forms to fill out. But we now have one full-time executive secretary who keeps the books and keeps everything up straight. She works full-time. Also a clerk who writes the letters and that kind of thing and keeps the statistics in line so that when someone comes out from the state or the federal government and asks for something, they can tell them what’s which and all that. Now the staff is actually four staff nurses, (we’ll! be getting another one) Mrs. Sherwood, Mrs. Joseph, Mrs. Romeo and another one, and another one on standby.

Whereas in the past we always could provide all the therapies that were necessary, we now have to have them on our staff, available to us first, so that that makes a fairly large number of people. Last time I heard the figure, it was eight aides that were available to us. I think we could use more of them, but they aren’t available at the moment. Then there are two secretaries, so that the office which is now in the old railroad station, in the same building with the social worker, is just alive with people with typewriters. I expect shortly we’ll have computers, a very different thing from what it used to be. In the past we didn’t have to report any of our finances to anybody but ourselves and the town. Now we have to report to the state. We have to report to the

 

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federal government because we use Medicare and Medicaid forms. We also now do get a grant from the town for many years. I remember once, some twenty years ago, fifteen years ago, we asked for three thousand dollars from the town. I wrote, at that time, to the Chairman for the Board of Finance that we hoped not ever to have to ask for more. Now I think we get something like thirty thousand a year from them.

ED: How many years, about how many years has the town helped?

MM: Well, I would think about thirty years. At first it was a very, very minor amount: now it is a good sized chunk of that actually. [Inaudible conversation between MM and interviewer, Ed.] It is complicated business now and being treasurer is not just a matter of taking in the money.

ED: How long was Harry Jones treasurer? It must have been years and years.

MM: It must have been at least twenty-five, I think.

ED: Because he must have gone off when I came on.

MM: He was on when you came on.

ED: It was Don Mallory.

MM: Yes, Mr. Mallory succeeded Harry. The books at that point were a little black, notebook, [laughter] On one side it said “Out” and on the other page it said ’In1′ That was all it amounted to. It was perfectly logical and made absolute sense,

ED: Absolutely, absolutely, made sense.

MM: That was it.

ED: Now was Mrs. Parsons George’s aunt? [George Milmine, Ed]

MM: Yes

ED: That’s what I thought.

MM: She was fascinated by it. I would like to have known Miss Van Cleft. We do have a photograph of her. She looks rather ferocious and I think some people felt she was rather fierce, but certainly her diaries are not that at all. Her understanding

 

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was really amazing. At that time there were a lot of Italians who came over. They arrived with nothing but tags on saying, [inaudible, Ed.] There was one case where someone with…. There was an Italian girl over there who about to have a baby and was frightened to death, didn’t know English and didn’t know anyone. I guess her husband, perhaps, was rather difficult. So when the baby was due, Miss Van Cleft moved in and stayed with them and produced the baby with her. That’s the kind of thing that would be impossible now.

 

ED: Absolutely

 

V

MM: No nurse could possibly consider it. If she did, she might be fired. We’d be forced to fire her. She just hasn’t got time to be kind any more, or they are not allowed to be, which those of us who worked in the older days (I’m not saying anything about the history of the agency) find very difficult to understand. We did have a lot of fun resisting some of the things the state tried to do. I‘m sure that our objection to the state’s demand on certain degrees for the nurses in the smaller agencies caused the resignation of Dr. Foote because he just couldn’t stick it. He was so such more with us.

ED: I went with you and several others, and Pepper Haas was there, from her agency.

MM: That was it.

ED: That was it. What was the name of the fellow that came, who is now a Senator? United States Senator, it began with an R.

MM: Ratchford

ED: Ratchford, OK.

MM: He supported us.

ED: Yes, he supported us.

MM: We’d go down for these various things for the nursing agency that we have borne as a group and found our own representative end sat right on top of him. Eyes glued. to him so he didn’t dare not vote for us. They have been very good and they’ve been very understanding. I don’t think that the state has been very violent in putting the screws on them in opposition to what we

 

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wanted. I think that they have recognized basically that we did have some valid reasons for doing what we wanted to do and were doing it pretty well.

ED: Molly, I’s afraid we‘ll have to stop, interesting though it is, because our time is up.

MM: Well, I recommend any who can get hold of these books of Miss Van Cleft…

ED: Well, we’ll have to leave It up to Marilyn.

MM: Linda has them.

ED: Linda has them.

MM: They are the only ones that are… I think they ought to be published. I really do as a document.

ED: Historical document of the town.

MM: Of the town and also of the agency

ED: Oh, yes, and the person.

MM: And the person, yes. It’s been fun doing this.

[End of Interview of Molly Milmine by Eleanor Dorsett] [There follows a dialogue between Eleanor Dorsett and Marion Haeberle about the history of the nursing service in Salisbury and also about the one room schools in the district. This was taped in the home of Marion Haeberle, after they had listened to the above taped interview.]

ED: Mrs. Joseph Parsons went to call on somebody and discovered a child was sick. There was no nurse who could come and help the mother. She was so horrified that she took a trip to Henry Street in New York, interviewed several young ladies and chose Miss Henrietta Van Cleft who became the nurse and stayed for twenty- three years.

MH: That’s very interesting. I think it’s good to have the real beginning.

 

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ED: Molly has been on the Board during most of the major changes. You see, Mrs. Parsons paid for everything for years. When she thought she could no more continue it, I think she was growing old. Mrs. Donald is some relation to Don Warner. She was on for nine years and it got more than she could handle. Molly took over. So you see why she should have such a proprietary interest in it.

MH: Oh, yes.

ED: The meetings, the Board meetings, were always held at her house. We had a party: I think it was the fiftieth anniversary party. We had it up at Hotchkiss School. I can remember that, but, like Molly, I can’t think how long ago.

MH: It was probably thirty years ago if it was fiftieth because this started in 1904.Because this started, didn’t it, In nineteen oh

ED: Yes, it must have been in there. I was not on the Board when Ruth Miner was nurse. I well remember her. However I was on the Board when Phoebe was.

 

MH: What was the association? Or is there a direct association between this public health nursing agency and the school nurses?

ED: They are all our nurses.

MH:They are.

ED:They are all the association nurses.

MH: Are they paid by the school board?

ED: They are paid by the school board: otherwise they’d have to hire nurses. At one meeting, there was a question. Thomas Bradley, the principal, came to the meeting to ask if it would be possible to have a nurse there, available throughout the day. Ordinarily they were there just in the mornings and accidents can happen in the afternoon, too. Some children have had some very serious illnesses or defects, things like that. Young Doctor John Gallup was then the school physician. He said he would train a couple of our aides to be school nurses for the afternoon session.

 

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MH: I see, and that is the situation,

ED: It’s been a big help,

MH: They are in the Salisbury Central School.

ED: That’s the only school and in the high school they have one.

MH: Oh, there’s one in the high school, also.

ED: Do you know where all the old school houses are?

MH: No.

ED: You go to Sharon to shop?

MH: Yes.

ED:As you go, just about to Arnoff’s I think it is the first place on the left.

MH:You mean going to Millerton to shop?

ED:Millerton, that’s right. There is a big green house set back.

MH: Yes.

ED: That’s the old schoolhouse: Ore Hill, that’s Ore Hill. Lime Rock, that big brown house,

UH:I thought that had been torn down at Ore Hill. It wasn’t.

 

ED: So far as I know, that’s what it is. The one in Amesville is a red house now looking out onto the dam. Let’s see, that’s three, The one in Lakeville is, the old original one is gone, of course, but this was a combination, the front building was a combination of elementary and high school. Then the one In Salisbury was torn down.

MH: That was Grove Street,

ED: Grove Street. Out in Taconic, that one is still there. You go out…..

 

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MH: it’s opposite the post office, isn’t it?

ED: Yes, is it a house now?

MH: Yes, Melanie Bishop, or Barber lives there,

ED: Melanie Barber- Right.

MH:That’s seven,

ED:That’s seven?

MH: Maybe it’s six,

ED: Taconic, Salisbury, Lakeville,

MH:Ore Hill.

ED:Ore Hill, Lime Rock, Amesville

MH: That’s right, it’s 6.

ED: It’s so funny, People In Amesville get their mail in Falls Village and they’re on the Canaan exchange,

MH: They’re Salisbury.

ED: They’re Salisbury residents, There are still a lot of old foundations up there. There was a big, a big settlement.

MH: Yes. There was a big industry, industrial

ED: They expected that that would be another Pittsburgh. That’s what they were aiming for.