Tyler House Hunting I

Today my uncle Jim, Gwendolyn, Micah and I went on an adventure to find the homes that my grandparents and father occupied during the 1930s and 40s. Uncle Jim had done all this researching and journeying before, so this was mostly for my benefit. Here are a few of the fruits.

Grandma and Grandpa began their academic careers teaching at Wells College in Aurora, NY. While they struggled to establish themselves on the faculty, they lived in at least three different residences. The first was known as "The Avery House," now a fine refurbished structure at 316 Main Street in downtown (down-village?) Aurora:

Another was the manse of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Moravia, NY. How my grandparents got to use the parsonage, since neither of them was an Episcopal priest, is now anyone's guess:

The first of two gems from this adventure is the discovery of a house known in family records as "Pointed Firs." Here's a photo of it in about 1940, with my grandfather's 1939 Ford parked out front:

The house is still there, in the village of Poplar Ridge, on the high ground between lakes Cayuga and Owasco:

The window shutters and door frame look to be original. A gable has been added and the roof renewed. I could not tell if the fence was original (which in itself was telling). When we knocked, no one was home, so we could not get a tour of the inside. But this is the house that my dad came home to after he was born.

The second gem, Three Horse Chestnuts, will have to wait until a future post. But meantime, here is a photo of the schoolhouse in Scipio where my dad and three of his siblings did their first years of school:

 Though overgrown and neglected (so much so that we couldn't get near it with small children in tow), it is still standing and, according to a local, still has some of the original school furniture inside. The farmer who now owns the land, however, will not tear it down. Maybe he was a fellow student of my dad's?

~ emrys