Vernon Historical Society

A Vernon Childhood by Jean Kanter Klothe

Jean Kanter Klothe was born in Vernon and lived in the area before moving to New York City in 1932. Her charming memoir describes the changing seasons in Vernon Center when it was a farming community in the early 20th century.

I was born, at home, in Vernon Center on October 13, 1908. My parents, Esther Liebman and Benjamin were married in Romania, then Russia, and came to the United States in 1905.

The first six years I received my schooling in the one-room school house in Vernon Center. Traveling by trolley car I attended 8th grade in Rockville. I graduated from Rockville High School in 1927 and got my first job in Hartford doing office work.

In 1932, during the great Depression, when my boss wanted to cut my salary in half, I packed my suitcase and took off for New York City. I had never been to New York, or anywhere other than home, but nothing stopped me in those days.

I omitted one salient fact above about my youth. My mother died of cancer when I was 13 and I was in "charge" while she was bedridden.

On the train to New York I purchased a New York newspaper and decided where I would look for a place to live. I decided I would live on the West Side, and found a room that night for $7 a week. During my first year I had 21 jobs, but somehow I survived.

I married Louis Klothe in 1940, a teacher, but unfortunately he passed away in 1959. I had two sons to raise and a mortgage to pay. I took shorthand textbooks from the library and landed a secretarial job with the New York Public School System.

I retired in 1978. I always had a "little" garden, and even in summer I still had flowers and tomatoes growing.

In order to relate my recollections of life in Vernon Center, CT, I do have to begin with the arrival to this country of my father and mother, Benjamin and Esther Kanter and 2 year son (my brother) from Romania in 1904, because of the pogroms that were raging at this time. They went at once from Ellis Island to my maternal grandmother in Ellington.

In 1906 my father and his brother-in-law, his sister's husband bought the farm of approximately 100 acres, the place of my birth two years later in Vernon Center. On the land was an eight room house, long an abandoned property, with many missing or broken windows. There was also a barn, a building that was evidently used for storing things and what might have been a hen house. The house had no indoor plumbing, but there was a well only a few feet to the right of the house.

The two young men immediately arranged for two kitchens, each with a large woodburning stove. Coal was sometime later. Although I was very young, I do remember the large black metal sink and a pump.

The demarcation of the property, the full length of the road, was a stone fence, built by the Indians, we were told. As children we very frequently found stone arrow heads, evidence that Indians had lived in that area.

As soon as repairs were made, the two families moved in, thrilled to be having a home of their own and freedom, so precious and so appreciated.

At that point, my father, to earn a living, walked two miles to Rockville to work in a mill there. His earning was $2 a day.

It wasn't long before repairs were made, and a barn and a hen house were ready. My father told me at the beginning there were a few chickens, a horse and buggy, and two cows. As a child I remember four horses, and fifteen cows, a dog and many cats.

Only about fifty percent of the land was arable at the time. There seemed to be hills everywhere and many rocks, some huge boulders. Much of the land had to be dynamited. Upon making inquiries, and learning that the usable land was suitable for tobacco growing, my father and brother-in-law became the first broad-leaf tobacco growers. The tobacco grown in Connecticut is not cigarette tobacco. It is the outside wrapper of the cigar.

We grew all our own fruit and vegetables and of course, hay for the horses and field corn of the cows. There were already there shade trees of all kinds, maple, oak, huge, elms, chestnut trees, wild cherry (choke) and white mulberry trees.

My house is no longer there, not even a remnant of a farm. My father was permitted, by arrangement with the government to live out his life there and when he died, it became a highway. I believe it is now Route 84.

Spring- There is no other was to describe spring. It is the awakening. The whole world seems to come out of a deep sleep.

Long before dawn I would hear the birds chirping. We had a variety, the robin, the bluebird, the Baltimore oriole, and always the unappreciated sparrow. It was nesting time, and we watched on our way to school the constant flying back and forth with strand of grass, leaves, string. It was planting time, fertilizer spreading time, seeding time.

It was also time for bees and mosquitoes. We did have portable screens, useful for air. There was always fly paper on tables and sticky streamers hanging from the ceiling. These were the days that we seeded the long narrow beds with tobacco seeds.

As we started for school the roads were deeply rutted, but it was good to see your neighbor again. Recently I received a 1969 map of Vernon and I was delighted to see listed names of people and places that I passed on my way. The Kneelands were on my right and just up the road on my left were Clarke's. Just a bit further I passed the Biddles' and the Welles. Mr. Welles used to light the street lamps that lined the main street opposite the school. Then the Parsonage would come into view and just past the school, the Congregational Church and nearby the County Home. The Ellis family was listed on the map and well they were represented in several homes as well as at school.

Our teacher would be out front ringing the bell and sometimes we could hear a phonograph playing a band to hurry us in. We were a full school, six grades, and when all came there were 22 pupils. We did learn from listening. Memorial Day was a day the teacher took us on a trip to the cemetery to place bouquets of hand picked flowers on the graves of Civil War veterans and now and then Revolutionary War heroes. This was a memorable history lesson.

After school we hurried home to do our chores. Mine was to make sure all the lamps had kerosene and clean wicks. My brothers would see to the cows and the milking.

Spring meant fishing as soon as we spotted worms. The boys cut their fishing poles from the trees and if hooks weren't available, a safety pin bent to the right shape might do.

And always the flowers, wherever there was a field that had not been plowed. Daisies, black-eyed Susan's, violets, buttercups, irises, wild roses, cowslips, and in damp places, the lady slipper.

It was a time of hope for the future.

(Published in the 'NEWS from the Vernon Historical Society', March 2005)