The French family has been deeply involved in local happenings for as long as Europeans have inhabited these hills. Two members of the Mayflower Company who came to Plymouth in 1620, Richard Warren and Thomas Rogers, represent the family. They, like many other families, remained in Massachusetts for several generations before fanning out into other parts of the New World. The local branch came to our area from Taunton, Mass., which is located some 20 miles west of Plymouth.That fact by itself is not so remarkable, but in the early stages of the Richard Smith Forge archaeological undertaking, Walt Landgraf came into some interesting information about the Taunton branch of the French family.A William French, born in Taunton in 1740, came to Hartland in the 1760s. Indications are that he was the builder of Richard Smith’s forge in Robertsville, built in 1770. When the history of the earliest attempts at iron making in Massachusetts is consulted, several family names are prominent, among them Cobb, Williams, Hewit and Deane. All of these names appear in the French family genealogy.Coincidently, as the Robertsville forge investigation was getting underway, we were contacted by William C. French from Maine, the grandson of Correll French, a former Colebrook inhabitant, who had information about the “French Place” at the east end of Lake Marguerite in Sandisfield.My terminology, “French Place,” refers to what is today a cellar hole on a promontory east of the lake. This body of water was named Simons Pond after the original pioneer to the location, Eli Simons, who built his home there in the 1760s. Correll French, while living in Colebrook River, bought the old 200-acre Simons place and used it, primarily in the warmer months, until selling it to S. Wood McClave in December 1904. Shortly thereafter, the McClaves renamed the body of water Lake Marguerite, after their eldest daughter. This house site is located on an abandoned north-south road with the name “Beech Hill Road.” This is a little disconcerting for Colebrook people, especially those living on the upland known as Beech Hill. In Sandisfield, the name implies that the road leads to Colebrook’s Beech Hill, while in Colebrook, the road is Simons Pond Road, because that is where it leads to.Correll French’s grandson knew of the old place as I did: an abandoned farmstead being overtaken by vine and forest. He took several black-and-white photos during a visit in the late 1920s that look similar to the ones I took 20 years later. Whereas I have only my pictures, Mr. French is the owner of a large briefcase full of French family genealogy, maps and photos, all of which he most generously made available to the Colebrook Historical Society. One of these was a genealogy of the French family going back prior to the coming of the Pilgrims; another was a hand-drawn map of southwestern Hartland in 1790, with small areas of Colebrook and Barkhamsted (Riverton is referred to as “The Forks”).The very day that I met with William French, I was contacted by Walt Landgraf by telephone, and the first words out of his mouth were, “What do you know about the French family who used to live in Robertsville and Colebrook River?” Walt had just received information from Boston that a William French from Taunton, Mass., was most likely the actual builder of Richard Smith’s forge in Robertsville in 1770, and that additionally he probably had extensive knowledge of the infant iron industry as practiced in eastern Massachusetts Bay Colony. This information came from our research partner, David Ingram, who among other things is a past president of the Massachusetts Historical Society and past president of the Harvard Business School. Mr. Ingram spends much of his time doing research and has uncovered volumes of information concerning the iron and steel industry in southern New England, in particular Litchfield County. The Rev. Hollis French wrote articles in the old “Lure of the Litchfield Hills” and is still remembered by some of our oldest readers. For many years, Rev. French lived in Robertsville and taught in the Old Forge School. His home was 17 Old Forge Road, nearest to the new concrete bridge, whose predecessor bore the name “French Bridge.” The house site is only 300 or 400 yards from the site of the forge. It was his grandfather Correll who had a 5-acre farm in Colebrook River and the 200-acre one on Beech Hill Road in Sandisfield. One article Hollis French wrote for the Taunton, Mass. newspaper shortly before he passed on in 1967 was about Taunton families that had migrated to Hartland, Barkhamsted and Colebrook around 1770. I will include the list of names appearing in this article, as some of them still exist locally, and we would like to hear from you if you have family lore concerning the Colonial and Revolutionary periods. The list reads: Andrews, Burt, Cadwell, Covel, Cobb, Crane, Dean(e), Fox, French, Fuller, Gilbert, Hall, Hatch, Hewit, Hoskins, Jones, King, Leonard, Padelford, Read, Seymour, Smith, Stephens, White and Williams.One of the great frustrations in doing research into the early families in the southeastern section of Colebrook is the fact that Richard Smith purchased the entire section, consisting of some 285 acres. His workers built their houses on Smith’s land, and as a consequence, do not appear on town land records. It wasn’t until after the Revolutionary War was over that the large block of land began to be broken up and individual owner’s names appeared.Bob Grigg is the town historian in Colebrook.
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Dick Hermans in the Oblong Bookstore on Millerton\u2019s Main Street in 1985.
Provided
For Hermans, the award has prompted some reflection about why he has spent so much of his life involved in community projects.
“I was thinking about it this morning: Why do I do what I do?” he said. “And I think no matter what I’ve done, whether it’s been school board or rail trail, I’m trying to be useful to the communities I’m associated with.”
Hermans is perhaps best known as the longtime co-founder and steward of Oblong Books in Millerton, a business that began almost by accident. He and his former partner, Holly Nelson, were living in Millerton and looking for something to do during the winter. They had been painting houses, including the Grange Hall in Millerton, a job Hermans got through his aunt, who belonged to the Grange.
At the time, Hermans was also working in insurance for his father, doing collections.
“It was fine except I was doing collections, and it really kind of left me cold,” he said.
He and Nelson began thinking about what they might do together. Nelson was an avid reader, while Hermans had studied journalism and had worked in a record store. They noticed a chain of book and record stores operating elsewhere in the Hudson Valley and decided to follow that model.
And so Oblong was born.
Dick Hermans in the Oblong Bookstore on Millerton’s Main Street in 1985.Provided
“We really learned it by the seat of our pants,” Hermans said.
The business would eventually become a beloved and integral part of Millerton’s commercial life. But although Hermans may have learned the book business as he went, his affinity for retail — and for the connections that happen across a counter — had begun much earlier.
As a child, his second-grade teacher operated a little cardboard pencil shop in the classroom, and Hermans still remembers the satisfaction of selling a pencil for a nickel.
“I really liked selling somebody a pencil for a nickel,” he recalled. “I can remember that experience, and it was so pleasant.”
Later, while living in Arizona, he helped establish a food co-op and worked at the counter.
“I kind of knew that I liked doing that kind of thing,” he said. “It’s a nice way to be pleasant with people, but without making too much commitment to them.”
His relationship with Millerton also predates Oblong. His grandparents lived in the village, and he first came to Millerton as a baby. Over the years, he has watched the town change through several generations.
He remembers a Millerton with a much broader array of businesses, when stores such as Delson’s, the Main Street department store that stood for nearly 40 years in what is now Millerton’s Antiques Center, seemed to carry almost everything a resident might need.
“You could find everything from a set of dishes to a shotgun,” he recalled.
The rise of shopping malls changed that kind of downtown retail, he said, but Millerton has remained a lively commercial village.
“For us, it’s been a great place to have business,” Hermans said. “It’s a busy village.”
For Hermans, running a store was never simply about selling books and records. It was a way of being part of a place.
Music has remained another constant. Hermans continues to sell music at Oblong and hosts the radio program “New Harmony” on WKZE. The business of selling music has changed dramatically over the years, particularly with the rise of streaming, but Hermans has adapted.
He was initially reluctant to bring vinyl records back into the store because of their expense. But about four or five years ago, he began stocking LPs again, and they have become the main form of music the store sells.
He finds that many of the customers buying them are reconnecting with music they loved years ago.
“I do best with classic albums that people may have had when they were young,” he said. “And now that they’re retired, they want to hear it again.”
Hermans still reviews between 700 and 1,200 new music releases each week through the store’s distributor, Alliance Entertainment, carefully deciding what belongs on Oblong’s shelves.
That same commitment to place has led Hermans into a wide range of community projects. His work with the Harlem Valley Rail Trail is among the efforts he mentions when reflecting on his years of civic involvement. He has also served on the school board and has been involved with the Millerton Business Alliance and the Irondale Schoolhouse. He is now involved with The New Pine Plains Herald, which he sees as complementary to the work of The Millerton News and The Lakeville Journal.
“I really think that the important thing about this award is that people understand what a newspaper does to connect them to their community,” he said. “And if that means anything to their lives, they gotta support it.”
Hermans knew Mary Lou and Robert Estabrook and remembers them as people who were deeply conscious of their responsibilities to the community.
“They were really nice folks,” he said. “They were very conscious of what their role in the community was.”
There is, in fact, still plenty on his plate. Hermans admits he needs to scale back because he has taken on more than his current abilities can comfortably accommodate.
“To be given this award is very special,” he added. “But I don’t feel like I’m done.”
This article has been changed to reflect that Hermans and Nelson were partners. A prior version states that they were married.
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Adamah Farm crew members planning out the day’s tasks on a late September day.
Janna Siller
Over my 15 years of growing vegetables in Falls Village, I’ve exerted my will over all kinds of conditions, from drought to humidity to crows with a taste for cantaloupe. That’s what farming is all about. You zip around the field, hopping on and off tractors, moving hoses and chasing weeds, all in an effort to arrange conditions in favor of your crops. It is the crops’ job to gulp up sunlight and move water through their stems, to transform solar energy into your next pesto or ratatouille or butternut squash soup. It is the job of the farmer to irrigate just enough but not too much, to slice dandelion leaves without damaging delicate cabbage roots, to pander and pamper and stay in tune with what plants need to thrive.
The easy part of farming is trusting plants’ resilience. I have seen bright green shoots barrel ahead out of a plant torn to shreds by hail. I’ve watched wilty, heat-stressed seedlings turn rigid overnight and greet the next morning with vigor. The hard part is letting go of what you can’t control. As our crops lapped up Friday’s gentle sunshine and I considered the weekend forecast, I imagined roots holding tight to wet earth and branches supporting each other in sideways, pelting rain. I made sure all of our storage crops were already harvested and tucked away. I battened down the sides of our greenhouses and wished the remaining field crops good luck.
The nor’easter didn’t materialize too dramatically in our corner of New England. A few broken branches and debris blown about, nothing like the July Fourth storm that sent half a tree crashing onto the deer fence and left crates of fresh veggies in coolers without power.
Fall storage crop harvests amid soil building cover crops at Adamah Farm in Falls Village. Janna Siller
Farming is an exercise in acceptance. To do it well and return year after year, you have to balance hubris and humility. The prize can often be a certain equanimity, a training in the art of moving into the next day even when the last one scrambled all your plans.
Epic change is not always about the unexpected. It also comes like clockwork on the seasonal calendar. As I type, the last of summer’s watermelons wait naively on the vine for a few hot days to finish ripening. Broccoli are holding their leaves wide as they did in June and July, only to find that the hours of sunlight decrease with each earlier sunset. Plants can’t pick up and go south or call the manager to order a bonus round of sunshine. Their growth slows and they get a resigned look to the hue of their leaves, so different from the frenzied growth of summer.
The release of fall is not tragic or gloomy. It is not an ending because so many fall tasks are about setting up for the new beginnings in spring.
We turn the vines that yielded thousands of pounds of fruit into the soil, where healthy microbes feast on their rotting stems. Then we plant cover crops — a mix of cereal grains like rye and oats and legumes like peas, vetch and clover. Cover crops hold the soil and its nutrients in place over winter, feeding the soil food web and adding organic matter that next season’s crops will need to grow.
We sort sprinklers and repair hoses. We inventory tarps. We take notes about which plants did well where and how we might try a new approach for this or that. We stack crates of cured garlic and onions and winter squash in a cool, dark room.
We save seeds from tomatoes and beans and lettuce, carefully labeling each variety for next season’s long, sunny days.
Janna Siller is the farm director at Adamah, a community farm in Falls Village offering CSA shares, educational programs and a food access program.
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