[middtube envs0350a-f08 mp3:giesche_bhurlburt_111808]

Bernie Hurlburt

Dan Baker set up this amazing interview for us both, and I have to say- Bernie told us some pretty amazing things.

**I also have this interview condensed to a 6 minute clip if anyone is interested in that version…

2:00 Rosco family lived there early. Story about Rosco kid who drowned in the well outside Bernie’s house in the early 1800s.
4:45 Pot ash- lots of charcoal pits can be found in the fields (5:15-5:25 quote 6:01-6:11)
7:00 Where Charlie Parker lives today, ‘Place’ was the original settler. ‘Stedmon’ next.
7:35 “I think they started both places about the same time” – settlement of Hillsboro and Little Ireland
7:55 On Hillsboro- “They was farming there, in 1931, when my dad bought this farm. I was six years old. You could look over cross and see them farming, plowing, cuttin’ hay”
8:20 Why was Hillsboro abandoned? “That’s the worse road to travel.”
You could go up in the summer, but it’s mostly impossible, I would think, even with chains on…”
8:50 “When we first moved here, Ernest Diddy was the mail carrier, and he’d come up this road, and go around down that road. And he had a horse and sleigh, and most of the time in the summer he’d have a horse and a buggy… course there was farms all through there.”
12:55 Two first houses on Hillsboro: Little Ed Hannon, and another — Bertha Smith (owned both). Her husband got killed at a sawmill on Little Ireland.
16:45 ‘Farnham’ place- beyond the town’s two farms-2000 acres- by the Fish+Game parking lot- somebody else bought it and then sold it to the state; ‘Tatro’ place after the Twin Bridges
18:34 Hill home in Bertha’s book at the Fish + Game parking lot. Lemuel Hill’s house owned by Mrs. Olsen. Four or five Hills who came at the same time.
20:20 – Places houses: ‘Rosco’, ‘Moody’, School house
21:40 ‘Charlie Devoid’ last person to live at Hillsboro house site above school- related to Bernie’s dad.
23:30 Hotel in Hillsboro area: “There’s a lot of them big houses that they used…”
Could have been the Holcomb Bushnell farm?
24:20 Farnham farm by the parking lot might have been a hotel too- it was a large house. The last people who lived in it were the ‘McLanes’. “It just bowed down after a while.”
26:05 Bertha Smith owned those two places. Charlie Thibault’s father bought them after her- only stayed a year or two. “I guess they didn’t like the hill…” Tucker before the cemetery (2nd house site), D Hill (1st house site), T Brock all the way at the bottom of Hillsboro
28:20 Hannons, Conways—all Irish.
29:40 Cole’s house- where the Little Ireland school house is
31:10 Garage across from Hillsboro was another schoolhouse- area called Little Boston
32:30 B. Hurlburt graduated from L. Ireland SH in 1938
34:00 Talks about all his L. Ireland schoolteachers
36:40 Employment: Creamery… started out farming sheep, then cows… potatoes
40:30 Samuel Hill came to live at the Devoid place (above the Hillsboro SH)
46:40 Devoid place- had an identical barn to Frank Spina’s/Butler’s barn
48:20 The barn had already burned when B. Hurlburt moved up. Fancy house, abandoned. “I think the barn burnt, and that’s why they quite farming”. LW Hill:Devoid
51:10 Dan Baker talks about the size of the barn- “It’s got to speak to the quality of the land”
51:40 Farm size: 10-11 cows- most farms that was about it
55:40 Dunham’s place- used to be the Crowley’s farm (Crowley road?). The house burned, and one part was sold to Connors, then the Johnsons. The other part was sold to the Dunhams.
58:49 Lemuel Hill farm/ Mrs. Olsen place – 3 barns (1 hay barn, 2 cattle barns). House is above the pond. Randall, Murphy, then Cofflin, then T. Hannon.
1:02:50 “It was hard farmin on the hill. It was better to go down the road, it was better farmin” The barn burned.
1:10:20 “Mostly it was hard farmin up here… They moved down where it was easier farmin”. The soil: “It isn’t better, but up here it’s awful stony.”
1:11:40 Frank Hannon used to say “It’s good soil… it had to be strong to hold up all them rocks”
1:13:15 What did this place teach you? “Well… it taught me to work” Talks about telling college kids how to spell things… “We got a good education up here”– 20 kids, 1 teacher.
1:16:00 Explored Hillsboro more when he started hunting… talks about the ‘Gully’.