Quakertown Online

Angie Watrous Letters

 

The following are excerpts from letters written by Angie (Chesbro) Watrous just after she had finished writing “Life at the Farm.” They include some interesting details of the history of Quakertown and of Burnetts Corners. 

 

Angie Watrous was born in Groton, Connecticut, Sept. 24, 1899, and married Frederick L. Watrous, Sept. 24, 1920. Further information about her parents and siblings is available at www.chesebro.net under her father’s name, Daniel Gallup Chesebrough.

 


 

April 25, 1988

 

...You ask about my first meeting Fred. I can’t really say because we both went to the same church at Grandpa [Stephen] Watrous[’s] home[, and] then up at the Burning Bush meetings on the ledges... We weren’t saved then, so were interested in going up there for the amusement.  But [t]hen Mary Duncan, a young girl just graduated from Bible school, came and held meetings for Grandpa Watrous. She preached, “You must be born again.” We all got saved. Flora Ingram had been up to meeting and liked her so told us about it and wanted us to come up too. [Mary Duncan] was here for several weeks. She stayed at Grace Chapman’s, because she was from North Carolina, where her home was. I don’t know where she went to Bible school. There wasn’t any electricity then, just oil lamps. The men brought lanterns. There [weren’t] many cars either. Fred got an old Overland truck and used to come down to pick us up and take us to meeting. For a long time the meetings were at Fred’s folks’ house. Lots of times we walked way up to the old Quakertown meeting house and [then back] home. We enjoyed it so much we were ready to walk. We walked way over to the old Morgan house where Austin Watrous lived some time then to get with his family, Lucille and Helen and Priscilla. There were boys too. They all went to church too. I was baptized another year in the Morgan Pond by Grandpa Watrous and Bro. [Edward] Conant. He had the [Apostolic Faith] mission in New London [on Green Street].

 

 

December 2, 1988

 

...I remember the old Quaker meeting house. Joe’s mother lived there for a while and I helped her when Benjamin was born. Aunt Florence Duncan, the blind girl, lived with them then and did what she could see to do... She scrubbed their clothes on the scrub board...

 

 

February 9, 1988

 

I have been up to Las Vegas and visited Mary and Wally for three days. He has a big garage and uses it for a workshop and is building picnic tables and chairs like Fred used to. Only he gets $85.00 or more, where Fred thought he did good to get $25.00 for the table. [Wally] had his painted white. Dad kept his natural wood color.

 

 

September 1, 1988

 

I can’t explain how much I appreciated the Burnetts Corners folder. It seemed almost as if I was right there on the corner by the old school house where we went so many years, all of my sisters of later years. My brothers all died as babies after Dan, and he married and went out west to Bible school. We walked back and forth to school… we—Elsie and I especially—went there through the 8th grade. We decided we wanted to go on, so started to walk to Mystic [to the] High Street school for 2 or 3 years. Our mother died about then and Bertha and Maud moved up from New York and stayed with Pa in the old home while [Maud’s husband] Ack [Lawrence] built their house down on the corner. She came up every day and washed the milk separator and pails for some cream for her coffee. She sort of mothered us for several years. [Ack] bought the land from Grandmother and Grandfather Lamb. Louise died when the influenza came around. Later Elsie wasn’t well and that’s when she married Austin Wolff. After Dad died she moved down to his house where Martha Penn Wolff lives now. Stephen Watrous, Fred’s father, worked on Maud’s house and that’s when Everett and Fred got to coming to the house, which ended in both of us getting married [Bertha and Angie]. We lived near each other in Ledyard for years. Both boys worked for their father on carpentering, building houses, and doing shingling jobs all around Westerly and New London. We bought the old Curran home where we live now for $2,200.00 and paid $10.00 monthly...

 

When Ma didn’t have much to pack for our lunches she would let us stop in Packers Store for Mary Ann cookies and cheese. We liked this. It was a change. We were always hungry when we got home and ate a snack before supper. Sometimes in the winter it would be a big kettle of beef soup or bean soup or macaroni and tomatoes, always a big kettle full. We had to bring in wood and do chores. We were always glad when Pa butchered pigs. We could have tenderloin and baked spareribs. It took a lot of food to feed our big family, but we never went hungry, if it was nothing more than potatoes, stew, and Johnny cakes, we always ate and then dishes to do. In summer Pa would buy a hand of bananas. Usually there was a lot of vegetables put in the cellar for winter—onions, potatoes, carrots, sometimes beets, cabbages, and other winter vegetables. Usually pumpkins for pies and apples for the holidays. Ma and Pa always made a lot of Christmas for us children. Grandmother Lamb usually gave us some long stockings and underwear. We didn’t expect too many toys, but if we got a china doll that was a treat for us. Thanksgiving was usually at Grandma Lamb’s. I can remember seeing her baking the turkey for dinner when we got there. They raised turkeys. Then sometimes it would be New Years at Grandma Watrous’s at Burnetts Corners, and Uncle Ed’s family would be there too. There [were] Alice, Margaret, Bessie, and Albert.  Uncle Henry came too, from North Stonington. They felt a bit better than Pa’s family. We were poor, but it didn’t hurt us any. Thank God for our family and relatives all around, some we know and some we don’t know…

 

 

February 14, 1989

 

Last Saturday night I heard Lawrence Welk... [who] had an Irish tenor sing an Irish song “When the Sun Goes Down Over Galway Bay”... When I was young Fred and Ella Carlson used to come home to supper and some time they would bring Katey and Emanuel Fred’s brother with them. She was Irish and had a brogue. My mother used to love her to sing those Irish songs. She did it so well, and the words were [telling ?] of Ireland. They are all gone now and so many more. Grace Carlson is left and she lives alone over in Waterford.

 

 

March 31, 1989

 

I can remember back a little when I was going to school in Burnetts Corners. We walked a mile and half down there to school. We were bundled up pretty good. I had Irene Hanks for my first teacher. They didn’t, or [weren’t] able, to take many  pictures then. I wish I had some of my first pictures... Elmer Waite was the photographer then. He came up and took pictures of the New Years dinner group at Grandmother Watrous’s on the front piazza.

 

 

April 21, 1989

 

Your letter came today and it seemed so good. My mind was taken back to years ago when the water would be rushing down under the road by the Staplyns House in the spring when the rains were heavy. There by the Waite blacksmith shop we used to like to sit there on those rocks and eat our lunch. Probably now I would be frightened to sit so close to the water. But then it was “know nothing, fear nothing.”

 

 

May 29, 1989

 

About all I think about are the old homestead and the things we knew as children. The water pump in the cellar. We lived down there in the summer and had pond lilies in the half barrel and they were so sweet. The pump was in the dark corner of the cellar. Pa was always busy with his muskmelons—spent most of his time working in them. He had a good trade of customers. They came several of a Sunday afternoon.

 

 


Return to QUAKERTOWN Online