YESTERDAY AND TODAY...

An annotated trip along Ridge and Middle Roads with Jim Dann, August 2003

This trip starts on Ridge Road, southbound from the intersection with the southern end of Acker Road.

presently 1085 Ridge Road...

This is the "Worden Farm" where Fred and Mary moved in the spring of 1899. In later years it was sometimes known as the "Chappel Farm" because it was share- cropped by Roy Chappel for many years. When Roy had to move on (health?) Gerald operated it; this was 1940 or so.

The original house on this farm burned, 1914 is the consensus of the date. The family rebuilt the house in the course of a year or so; Jim Dann couldn't say where Fred and Mary stayed during the rebuilding, but speculated that it was probably with Mary's brother Frank Mosher ... there were only two farms in between.

Back then there was a church on the 4- corners near the farm, where the highway barns are now located. The oldest boys, Laurance and Robert stayed at the old church parsonage, upstairs, no heat in the winter. Clothes would freeze stiff overnight.

Probably unrelated to this picture was an anecdote that Gerald "hurt himself real bad" when he was 5-7 years old and spent most of a summer in a baby carraige that had the ends pushed out of it... He could get around by pushing on the wheels.

For more pictures of the Worden Farm, press here

Donald Dann was killed while skidding logs at the top of the ravine in this picture. On a downhill pull, the tractor went on one side of a tree, and the log went on the other; the tractor was flipped over when the chain caught. Young Frank Dann... "Fritzy"... one of Gerald's boys, was riding on the fender and was pinned under the tractor when it flipped. He was soaked with gasoline, but there was no fire.

Jim said that all the family would pitch together on the different farms, and on this day they had changed plans and were doing logs instead of something else. Paul and Jim usually worked together felling trees, and others were also paired up. Laurance usually did the skidding with his horses, and could usually skid about as fast as two or three teams could cut. On this day though, Laurance was out of town on buisness related to the Federal Land Bank.

They were cutting timbers for the barn they were building on the Worden Farm with Gerald, and this picture was taken just south of there.

The Veteran town barns. This is at the Church road intersection; There was a church here in the years that the family was on the Ridge.

presently 936 Ridge Road...

The Mosher house. They were Mary Dann's family. The house is mostly original, but has been extensively reworked. An older house used to stand behind it, and in Jim's time it was used for varous things such as starting chicks or storing grain. Jim remembers gypsies coming through and that Frank (Mary Mosher Dann's brother) would let them sleep in the old house. There were barns across the road.

presently 903 Ridge Road...

The Van Duzer house. They were the local tinkers,had a nice shop, and also farmed. They fixed most of the broken tools and implements in the area.

On the left, Dann Boulevard heads east from Ridge Road. There were a whole lot of Danns on the ridge when this road was named, but pretty much it is named for Stanley.

Stan was drafted into running for the job of town highway superintendant, to replace a superintendant who was unpopular. Stan, besides being clever and industrious, had some level of training in engineering. In addition to the routine maintenance of the roads and the road equipment... a tough job in the depression... he started a campaign to remove the hedgerows from alongside all the town's roads.

It had been common to allow brush and trees to grow at the edge of the fields where they bordered the roads, much as trees bordered the other perimeters of the fields. Having a swath of trees and brush along both sides of a road caused snow to drift deeply in the roadways. Often the fields adjacent to the roads would be bare! This was one of the first such programs in the area.

As an aside, after the 1935 flood, Stanley's talents were in great demand, as all the local townships lost many bridges in the flash flooding that followed a series of torrential thunderstorms. Other highway superintendants called upon him to help design new bridges.

This house was built on the site of the "halfway house", the family home which burned in October of 1938. It is sometimes referred to as the "Vary Farm". Jim said it was halfway between Horseheads and Odessa, and that it had been a sort of a road house in years prior to 1916 when Fred purchased it. He said it was a great big house'with six or seven bedrooms and a big kitchen, dining room and pantry. In the back there was the "ballroom"; He does not recall it ever being used as such, but said thet there was a pump organ back there.

The fire broke out in the middle of the afternoon, after hot ashes had been dumped behind the woodshed. Jim said that the house was so long out back ...the entire first floor below the ballroom was woodshed, about 30 by 35... that the fire was quite well developed before anyone even had a hint of its existence. At the time that it burned, it had been split into a duplex, and was occupied by Donald, Gerald, and their families. Jim said that the layout of the house made it a very awkward split as a two family home, but that when it was replaced, it was laid out as a duplex.

After the fire Donald and Fran moved to the Tifft place. Gerald and Marion moved to Newfield with Marion's folks. They all moved back as soon as the new house was completed. Gerald moved to the Worden farm a short time later, and Donald operated the Vary farm himself. Steve Cortright (his family farmed on the Middle Road) rented the north side of the house.

Jim Dann relates the following story of the fire:
Ed Van Duzer was the superintendent of Veteran #10 school, (accross from the Vary Cemerery) and drove up in his green model A Ford to say that the Dann house was on fire, and he was getting neighbors to help fight it. Jim thought that it was his house that was burning, and immediately feared for a $37 check he had just received from showing his Holstein heifer at the Chemung County Fair!

He (and others) ran up the hill and quickly saw that it was the halfway house that was on fire. Phoebe had taken Stanley up the road in the car, but he was unable to get around or see too well at this point (due to the injuries which eventually caused his death). Ed Van Duzer had returned and was carrying dishes out two at a time, one in each hand and putting them in the garden. (He didn't break any).

At the same time there were men upstairs handing furniture out the windows on the north side. He remembers in particular seeing them yell to Donald as they tossed a loaded cedar chest from the window... he caught it in his outstretched arms and two others then carried it to the garden.

For another picture of this house, press here

AND A PLEA... There are photographs taken on the Ridge Road farms prior to the time that the house burned... Certainly there is a picture somewhere of the Halfway House?!

presently 726 Ridge Road...

Jim was brought up in this house. Note brick smokehouse... Jim remembers putting a lot of chips and corncobs through it, keeping it going for the folks. There was a barn across the road, and much the same as Frank Mosher, Stanley let gypsies stay in the barn accross the road, so long as they surrendered their matches. It was a 72 acre farm which Jim's dad (Stanley) bought from Csajor. He paid 3500 cash and borrowed 3500 at 5% interest from Aunt Edith and Uncle Levi Root, with F.O. cosigning. Jim has remarked that Stanley seemed to be a favorite nephew of Edith and Levi.

This farm and the Westlake farm are tangled up between the records of Laurance's family and Stanley's family. A clarification follows, placed here because there is already a lot of information regarding the Westlake farm.

Just after Laurance and Julia were married in 1919, they lived with Fred and Mary, and then moved to the Worden farm for a few years. Julia's mother was in poor health and her father, Sam, was starting to fail too. Normally, a couple like Laurance and Julia would have moved in with them to run the place, but Laurance and Sam did not "see eye to eye" on many things.

The Turner farm (pictured above) had been sold to a man named Csajor who needed someone to operate it. Laurance and Julia moved there. Stanley and Phoebe were married in 1926 and also lived with Fred and Mary at first. By this time Julia's mother had died and her father needed help... He didn't want to sell, and wanted to live out his life on that farm. Stanley and Phoebe moved in to help him with the farm.

After Sam died, Laurance and Julia bought the farm from the estate and moved there. Stanley and Phoebe then moved to this Turner farm, which they were able to purchase rather than rent or share.

After this shuffle was complete, the record of the two families becomes fairly straightforward.

There are two notes regarding this story as related by Jim Dann. In referring to Fred and Mary, he used the term "Fred and Mate" As I understand it, Fred almost always addressed her as "Mate". Also, in describing the relationship between Laurance and Sam, It was stated that "Sam was strong- willed as was Julia".

This is formally known as the Turner Cemetery, and is just downhill and across the road from the Turner farm where Stanley and Phoebe lived. The last burial in this cemetery was in 1909, many years before Jim made his first dollar here, killing skunks when he was five or six. The place was full of skunk holes, and he remembers sitting in the cemetary with his dog "Ted" waiting for a chance to jump one. A normal pelt was worth fifty cents, but a real good one was worth two dollars.

Several years later Jim put his experience to good use by placing a dead skunk in the hot air ducting of the high school down in Horseheads... The town boys looked down on the country boys, and periodic lessons in respect had to be administered. Jim had the building closed down for two days!

For a winter picture of the cemetery, press here

The Vary cemetery, where you can visit with many of the Ridge Road Danns.

Jim recalls a story related to this cemetery... I repeat it not so much for the story, but to illustrate the way things were done 'back then. I will quote fairly closely:

..."We were as poor as dirt about the time that Dad died, so to save money, Stanley Benjamin (next door neighbor) was going to dig the foundation for his brother's marker, and would show me how and where to dig and form the foundation for Dad's stone. Somehow we miscalculated -or I dug too deep- and I brought up a chip of my dad's "rough box" with my pick- axe."

"It haunted me for years."

Just Below the Vary Cemetery and on the other side of the road, the Veteran #10 School. This is the original building, long ago converted into a house.

Pictures of AJ Dann's Moreland farm used to be here. Click here to view them. They are also linked to the "Notes of AJ Dann section".