Hart House in Essex, Massachusetts
(See the picture above of George & Bessie's house. Their three daughters are in the buggy)

George Albert Hart (1864-1938) wife Bessie (1869-1951) and their three children Grace (1897-1969), Dorothy (1900-1993) and Mary (1908-1978) lived in this small town of Essex, Massachusetts. It was a peaceful place, a little town on the Essex River, not far from the famous old port of Gloucester. Everybody knew everybody else in Essex and everybody else's business. I remember when we got our telephone. If someone called you and you didn't answer, the telephone operator usually knew where you had gone and when you would return, and she would relate this information to the person who had phoned you.

We lived in the last house at the end of a dead end street. Besides the house, there were two storage buildings that my father used in his provision business and a small barn, which housed a horse and a carriage, called a Democrat. Later it was used as a garage, although garden tools and odds and ends could be found there also. All these structures were connected to the house by a porch-like covered walkway.

The street was called Spring Street because, at the corner, there was a clear spring of water where townspeople came with jugs and pails to get drinking water. There was no "town water" yet and pump water was usually hard, had a rusty taste, and wasn't safe to drink anyway. It was cool by the spring - cool and wet - and willow-shaded. The door to it was slanted, like a bulkhead door, and screened so that leaves and debris would not sully the water. When you opened the door, you would always hear "splash, splash" as one frog after another jumped off the brick ledge into the water.

Then there was the trip home with the cool pail bumping your leg, and occasional splashes of water drenching your hot skin. We made lemonade with it and strawberry-aide (with crushed wild berries, sweeter than sugar, with the tang of hot sun in them). In the winter we went for water only on special occasions when there was City Company who might expect it on the table. Thanksgiving and Christmas we went to the spring for water. Otherwise we drank cocoa or tea or coffee, all made with boiled water from the well, pump water. I guess I never liked plain water, and I still don't. Maybe it was because of those frogs!

To get to town was a long way by the road. But we had a short cut. We called it "going across the fields." In front of our house was a large field that had a small hill in it. It was an apple orchard and hay field combined and it opened directly into our lane. On the other side of the road, at the base of Cap'n Sam's Hill, was the shipyard where wooden ships were built. It belonged to Arthur Dana Storey at that time. This was a wonderful and fascinated place. Long planks were piled high and where one protruded beyond his fellows, it became a springboard where we could bounce up and down endlessly.

From our house we could always hear the pounding and hammering as a boat was under construction. These were fishing boats that would, when completed, be launched into the Essex River and then go down to Gloucester to have the masts steeped and the rigging put on. A launching was always attended by many townspeople.

Contributed by Mary (Hart) Pletsch