by Roxy Triebel
treebz65@hotmail.com

Bring lots of picture that have been taken over the last thirty years to share and we can all laugh at the styles that have changed from clothing to hair do's.  We can take a moment to remember the loves no longer with us.

Please pass this invitation around your family so no one is forgotten.
For questions call or e-mail:
Vince Barringer - 845-657-2064
Davida Gray - 845-657-2276 or [email protected]

Hope to see you all!

   
Freeman Swartout Barringer and Elnora (Kerr) Barringer circa 1873.
(large image files)

Shortly after Freeman S. Barringer and Elnora Kerr were married, they moved from Town of Olive, Ulster County to Pennsylvania, near Dallas.  His parents and all the family went.  They had a couple of wagons, and made coverings for them of rag carpets, and camped along the way.  I don't know how long it took for the trip, but it is several hundred miles, so took some time.  I don't know what their reason was for going, nor what they did there.  Freeman and his brother, Thomas, also recently married, lived together in a farm house in a wilderness area.  The two men left for work each day and the wives (they were both girls in their teens) were so very homesick, they would climb to the highest hill and stand facing what they thought must be the direction of "HOME" and cry.

Freeman and Elnora did not stay long, as their first child, Bertha was born in Ulster county, new York, but they did go back to visit.  Their third child, Frederick, was born there.  They must have gone at least once by train, because Bertha was old enough that she remembered her Aunts swinging her by her arms in front of the approaching train.

Thomas and wife stayed longer, as at least one of their children was born there.  The parents, Frederick William and Judith also moved back.  When Judith died 1897 they resided at Winfield Corners, Ulster Co.

On the trip moving out to Pennsylvania, Judith had a back problem, so they fixed a rocking chair for her to sit in while riding - thus the start of the "Rock and Roll".

Grandpa Freeman S. Barringer was a farmer.  He worked as a tenant farmer on many farms in Ulster County.  In 1900, he was living in Shokan, New York, but shortly after that he moved to Kingston, and they lived for a short time in the brick apartment house - I think it was called the DELAVAN HOUSE at that time.  It was on North Front Street near the corner of Green Street - still is an apartment house (in 1987 - RT).  I remember sitting on the front steps and watching the trolly cars on the switch in the street in front of the house.

By 1914, they were living on the farm at 223 Hurley Avenue - owned then by the Cohen family.  Grandma said the name of the farm was the "Glen Burnie Farm", but I never heard anyone else refer to it as that.  It was a beautiful place.  Part of the house was stone and pre-Revolutionary War.  The rest was also very old, but of wood.  It had a basement kitchen and at least 4 huge rooms and a large entrance hall that ran from front to back, with a lovely open stairway.

Upstairs, on the next floor, were at least 5 big rooms and a large walk-in attic.  One room up there the Cohens had for a Museum - all sorts of Indian artifacts - Indian clothes - Civil War uniforms - old muskets - pretty old dishes and jugs.  Grandma used to let me help dust, when she cleaned the rooms.  I usually ended up so fascinated with everything that I did very little dusting - maybe just as well, because I was only 5 or 6 years old then.

       

Grandma and Grandpa Barringer stayed there until they died - almost twenty years.  There was a pond by the house with a rustic two-story summerhouse built over one end.  It had a bell from the Mary Powell boat hanging there, that we loved to ring.  This was all torn down when the New York State Thruway was built.  What had been the barn, was moved nearer the road and is now used for offices (1987).

Freeman Barringer in his pumpkin patch

Grandpa had a wonderful garden there, and it was his pride that he always for the 4th of July supplied us with new potatoes and sweet corn from his garden.  Grandma did love potatoes.  It was not a meal to her if they were not a part of the menu.  They always put their winter potatoes in the cellar in the fall, but sometimes, for some reason, they would fall a bit short before the new crop came in.  Grandpa strictly forbade any such foolishness as buying any potatoes from the store to fill in.  Grandma, knowing there must be some good sized potatoes in some of the hills would watch her chance adn go pry under the dirt with her fingers, up and down the rows, until she would manage to get a pot full.  Of course, Grandpa would rant about it, when he saw them on the table, but I notice that he ate his full share too.

Elnora (Kerr) Barringer

They had flocks of ducks, geese (I and the ganders never did get along, and I never understood that all Grandma had to do was swish her big apron at them and they would go on their way), turkeys, and a big white swan named Billie - a snapping turtle had taken a couple toes off one big webbed foot.  They also had guinea hens.  These were all free to roam the yard through the day, but, in cages, they had a collection of all sorts of fancy pigeons and birds they called Turkhens.  They said they were a cross between turkeys and chickens.  I wouldn't know - but they were very odd looking.  They had some other type of birds with very bright feathers.

Also in a cage was JINKS the monkey.  In wintertime he was taken away and kept inside somewhere, but all summer JINKS was on hand.  Grandma took all care of him and she was very fussy about his care.  He didn't always appreciate her attention, and, at least once, bit her hand, and she had a very sore hand.  She would never go to a doctor. Some of the family used to tease her by saying that she spent so much time with Jinks, she was getting to look like him, and they gave her the nickname of "Jinks", and most of the family called her that.  She always wore long full black skirts with a big gingham checked apron over, with big pockets.  I remember going in to the garden with her.  She always carried a small pearl-handled knife (which she gave to me in later years, and I lost it) and some salt folded in a wax paper.  She would take a cucumber or tomato, or whatever was available, and silce it and sprinkle her salt, and eat as she worked.

One day, as I was going to Grandma's, (summertime and I had my bare feet) as I entered the long driveway to the house, my two Aunts opened a side door and yelled "Run Dot, run fast".  I didn't know why, but I ran for the side dodor where they were - it was the nearest.  When I got to it, they swung it wide open and grabbed me and pulled me inside, slammed the door, and I heard a BANG against the door as it closed.  It was Jinks the monkey.  He had somehow gotten out of his yard.  I don't know what he would have done if he had caught me, but probably bitten me anyway.

   
The Cohen farm house.  Date unknown - 1940s maybe?

There are so many good memories of that beautiful place.  I still cannot understand WHY the Thruway couldn't have gone a few hundred feet one side through a vacant, stoney field, and left that house standing.

There were, I think, four trees in the yard here, that I have always wondered about.  I have never seen any like them.  Grandpa said they were some type of locust (a newspaper clipping claimed they were sycamore / buttonwood trees, but don't know for sure about that either - RT).  They were huge and so tall, but the rootswere what was so different.  Each had at least 3 or 4 roots that formed like a wall up to 3 or 4 feet high - making like rooms around the tree.  We kids loved to play house there.

Once in the Kingston newspaper, I read an article about the place.  Guess that was one thing I did not stow away - at least I never found it - and there it said that an earlier resident had used these "rooms" to shut sheep in at night, fixing a gate across the open end.  (We found this article in one of her scrapbooks - click here for a transcript. -- RT)

The front porch was one huge flagstone, at least 10 feet square, and the stone was at least 6 inches thick, and had stone steps up the front.  By the basement door was another stone about the same size, perhaps a bit larger.

There was a big apple orchard in the back and down to the O & W railroad tracks and, in the spring, it was carpeted with the biggest violets.  Around the pond were weeping willow trees and a wall, and a dam at one side, where the water went from there down to the creek.

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