spoken for

The internet is awesome, I tell you what. Yesterday, someone contacted me via Flickr and boom, within 24 hours I have in my virtual hands photos of the house my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather built in 1784. Yup, you read right, that’s 7 greats. The photos were taken later, the lady assumes sometime around when her great-great-grandfather moved in, 1865. I’m so giddy. Go ahead, make fun of me, I know it’s coming, but dang, I’m excited!

What is really cool, though, is that before I lived here, when I would visit for various events with my mom and we’d pass that house, it was always a point of interest for me. Mostly because the land surrounding it was covered in old, rusty cars. I mean old cars. I later found out that the man who owned it then just plain refused to do anything with it, or the cars. I’m not sure if he died, or what, but the house finally sold sometime in my first few years of marriage and the people who own it now are slowly but surely restoring it to its former glory. I’ve taken lots of photos of the process and hope to keep capturing the progress.

It doesn’t look like much has been done lately, but they made the most progress over the past summer, so hopefully that will happen again when it gets warm. You can’t do much in the ice! And speaking of, those last two photos were from just this evening.

Along these same lines, I am saddened about another building in our town. This one, serving as a Bed & Breakfast was built in the 1860′s and early Thursday morning, it caught on fire. The damage isn’t as bad as I feared when I first heard about it, but it is bad! But the outter brickwork is still standing and the owners hope to rebuild so I hope they do! It’s so sad when this happens.

If you get a chance, click through to that photo that’s closer on the window and check out the icicles hanging from that fire escape. From what I understand, it was harder to get the fire put out due to the ice and such. They said the fireman’s ladders were freezing and getting slippery and such. The fire, though, they believe was electrical and started in the sub-ceiling above the kitchen (though last I heard they were unsure if it started at the first or second floor of the three story building). They said there’d been issues in the last month and there had been checkups due to the “smell of electricity” and a few other things. I’m left wondering if a certain rat electrician here that my husband used to hate working for is going to get sued or what. But besides the historical significance of the place, I hope it can get running again for the owners’ sake. The man who owns it with his wife, I met him once, nice people and I hope they can quickly get this part of their livelihood (and our tourism) back!

So there’s Val’s history news for the week. Enjoy. :P