Anyone frustrated with rising electricity costs to run the home entertainment center or the damper of astronomic gasoline prices on family vacation plans doesn’t have to go far in East Lyme to see what home conveniences and transportation were like in colonial and Victorian era Connecticut.
Depending on how you look at it, things either aren’t so bad, or maybe we should try live a little differently. Recent open houses by East Lyme’s two historic homes proved that there are interesting things to do this summer without using a tank of gas to get there.
The Thomas Lee House, the circa 1660s colonial home next to the East Lyme Information Center and Rocky Neck State Park, and the Smith-Harris House, down the gravel path right next to East Lyme’s Community Center, off of Society Road, participated in the annual Connecticut Open House Day on Saturday, June 11.
The program, started in 2005, invites residents to discover – or rediscover – the state’s many art, history, film and tourism sites and destinations through special events. It is sponsored by the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism.
It was sort of a “meet the Lee family” over at the Thomas Lee House, according to Frank Wilson. He and other East Lyme Historical Society members dressed in colonial garb and portrayed residents of one of the oldest wood frame houses in the state that is still on its original site.
Wilson was Elisha Lee, born 1741, the grandson of Thomas Lee III, who was known as Mr. Justice Lee because he served as justice of the peace in the 1700s. For forty years, the elder Lee held court in the lower room of the original house. The room has been known ever since as Judgment Hall.
At age 16, Elisha fought in the French and Indian War. He later fought in the Revolutionary War. The Lee house was passed on to Elisha and his wife Abigail, who raised ten children. While the real ancestor is buried in the Ancient Cemetery on Society Road, Wilson was lively in the part, if not a little warm in his colonial garb.
Kamilah Lindo, an Eastern Connecticut State University junior majoring in theatre, was back for her second year as Violet, a slave of the Lee family. She churned butter in the kitchen, where visitors could sample it on some homemade cornbread. The kitchen and other backrooms were added to the house in 1765, the final major changes made to the structure.
“I wouldn’t want to have to churn butter every day,” she admitted. “It’s a good way to build a few muscles, though.”
Her younger sister, Chelsea, 6, thought it was great fun to pretend being a colonial student in the Little Boston School House, the little red schoolhouse next door. Their mother, Ann, from Norwalk, said it was a bit harder to get her 14-year-old daughter, Shelly Ann, as interested in pre-TV history.
Jordan Duerr, 12, was a colonial girl and Kate Kielty, 14, East Lyme High, was her teacher. Both got involved through Leos, the Lions Club youth program.
The original school is believed to have been founded in 1734. It gave the young men of Niantic, many who became seamen, something to do in the winter to advance their navigational skills, according to historical society literature.
Historians estimate that the current school building was built around 1805 when Elisha Lee deeded land to the 2nd Society of Lyme. It was last used in 1922. The current structure, moved to the Lee House grounds in 1931 from near the entrance to York Correctional Center just down the road, was restored in 1973 as a late 19th century schoolroom.
Visitors also could take a spin in a cart drawn by two Devon steers, experiencing the jolts and smells of colonial travel.
“Devons, from Devonshire, were the first cattle here,” said Ray Ludwig, Devon Farm, Tolland. “If there were any brought over on the Mayflower, it would have been this breed.”
The reddish-brown, horned cows were three-purpose animals, he said, providing muscle power as a work animal, milk and meat. But they couldn’t keep up with the later competition of specialized breeds of Holsteins for milk, Herefords and Angus for meat or horses and then tractors.
Ludwig has raised Devons for about 50 years, providing stock to historic farms as far away as New Jersey, Michigan and Florida. His teams regularly appear at Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts.
Dick Waterman, past society president, was Lt. Ezra Lee. The cousin of Elisha was born in 1749 in Lyme in the Colony of Connecticut. His military career included carrying out secret missions for General George Washington and wintering at Valley Forge in 1777-78. This Lee also fought in the Battles of the Brandywine, Trenton and Monmouth. He is buried in the Duck River Cemetery.
Lee’s most memorable mission was to operate the first submarine, the Turtle. While David Bushnell of Saybrooke gets the credit for having built the one-man contraption, Lee was the man who went inside it and under water to attack the British flagship Eagle in New York Harbor on September 6, 1776. He volunteered for the dangerous assignment when another man got sick, Waterman said. Although the attack was unsuccessful, the British did remove their fleet from the harbor.
The last Lee to own the home was Dr. Thomas Lee, a New York physician, who summered in the old house until 1875. It was unoccupied until 1914, when it was purchased and restored by the East Lyme Historical Society.
For nine years, each May the historical society has put on a one-day history program for fourth graders of East Lyme, giving them a hands-on taste of local history at the Lee House. This is to prepare them for fifth grade where they study American history.
“We put 180 students through our colonial program every spring,” Waterman said. “We have them here all day long and we do all kinds of hands-on activities with the kids. We do the living history before they get to the textbooks.”
The Lee House is owned by the East Lyme Historical Society, which leases the surrounding grounds from the Town of East Lyme. The buildings are open Wednesdays through Sundays, 1 – 4 pm, June 29 through August 31. Admission is free but the society appreciates all donations. Visitors can tour the buildings, view exhibits and purchase a booklet with a detailed history of the house and its residents. Go to www.eastlymehistoricalsociety.org
Civil War and Victorian Era Connecticut
At the Smith-Harris House, a Greek Revival built in 1845, members of the Friends of Smith-Harris House gave visitors a glimpse of life during Civil War Connecticut. There still was no electricity or gas in the 1860s so the open fireplace was the year-round cook stove.
Georgia Lee Littlefield and other women were sweating it out inside the house, tending to pork ribs roasting in a reflector oven in front of the roaring fireplace. They wisely ditched the hoop skirts and corsets of the era, but still wore long skirts and petticoats in the heat.
“It’s a bugger to clean,” Litttlefield said of the oven, also called a tin kitchen. She demonstrated the handy little back door for the cook to exam her roast and the side spout for draining pan drippings to make gravy.
Mary Cutillo made hoe cakes, cooking them in a hanging skillet over the hot coals.
“It’s a simple, simple bread of corn meal and water; maybe some salt,” she said. “The dough could go out to the field with the farmer, and he could bake them on the side of his hoe, by the fire.”
The cakes could be dipped in honey or molasses to add some flavor. Sometimes the dough was rolled up in grape or cabbage leaves, then tucked into the hearth ashes and cooked slowly, she said. These were called ash cakes.
“We’ve had a lot of people through here, curious about what it was like to live back then,” explained Denise Russo. She showed them a stereograph, which gave people sort of a 3-diminsion viewing of photographs. In pre-electricity America, this was an option for family entertainment.
Visitors also got a garden tour from Judy Aldrich, master gardener. She has tended the large beds the past three years, with her husband, Charles, bringing them back to flowers that would have been grown in Victorian times.
“We’ve made the effort to have everything in it appropriate for the 1845 to 1900,” she said. “That is when this how was lived in as a stately home by Thomas Avery, who built the house, as opposed to years later as a working farm owned by the Smiths and Harris’s.”
This means heritage plants or seed stock, not contemporary cultivars or hybrids. Informative signs list the common and Latin names of the plants, plus how they were used for food or medicines.
“The Victorian period was fantastic. It was when they became wealthy, the beginning of the Industrial Period, businesses were starting,” she said. “It also was the beginning of plant nurseries. People could go and buy plants.”
The gardens include day lilies, pot marigolds, bleeding hearts, Jacob’s Ladder, peonies and hollyhocks, as well as many more native and cultivated plants of the era.
“It’s tempting to plant the new hybrids or cultivars because they are showier, but they aren’t representative of the times,” she said. “Victorian gardeners didn’t put anything in their urns, either.”
The Smith-Harris House, East Lyme’s Town Museum, is owned by the town, overseen the Smith-Harris House Commission and supported by the friends organization.
Summer hours are Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 4 p.m. The barn, designed and constructed by the Yale School of Engineering in 1988, can be rented out for private use for events such as birthday and graduation parties, showers, wedding receptions, square dances and tag sales.
For more info, see www.smithharris.org or call 739-0761.