Carl and Alice write to me almost every week now and we remember together. Here are some of his memories that should be saved. This was several years ago now. Alice has since left us and is reaping her rewards in Heaven. Carl is still with us and living in an assisted living home, without Alice at his side, things changed for him. She is still with all of us in our memories so this page becomes even more important.
This is a picture Carl sent to me some time ago. It was take in 1995, this is the Alice and Carl I remember. I moved to Florida in 1983 or there about and have not seen either since then but distance and time can not steal the wonderful memories we have.
******* From Carl
” Your dad used to cane charis for the Winn chair factory. He got a dollar for weaving the seat & back for the big Lounge Chair. I don’t remember anyone saying what he got for the chair seats. The plant furnished all of the material and he brought everything home to work on them. Then he returned the finished chairs to the plant and got more to work on. I think he did splint seats too. The plant was across from Bugerons. Phyliss told about her dad taking her to watch the plant burn down. (Must have been about 1933) We have my mother’s little rocking chair that her father got from that plant. I cleaned that chair and refinished it and wove a new seat. Sue has the chair now.
This is Uncle Bing, Phylis’s dad, Aunt Angie, Carl’s mother, and Guy, my father. These were the three living children in 1917.
**********************
Sometime in the 1940’s they used to run a train to Harrisville with material for the mill. I don’t know where that train started from but I left the train station in Keene for Fort Devens when I enlisted in the army. That was Feb 1946. When I got discharged in 1949 the train station and the tracks had been torn down & the tracks ripped up. ” (This is that station in 1908. I don’t remeber it. My bridesmaid lived in the house that was just up the street from this. My Uncle Bing and Aunt Emma lived just across the street from Patty Winn. Before they took the station down Uncle Bing went into the station and got the ticket master’s desk. It is a small portable desk that sat on the counter and now it sits on Norman’s chest of draws that was Aunties.)
This is a picture of Carl and Alice and their whole family at one of their reunions. As you can see they are a very close family. 
This is a picture Carl sent to me, it is of his mother when she was about 2 years old and that is our grand father, Ernest Thayer. This was taken in about 1903. 
This is another picture Carl sent to me. It is a tin type and is of Ernest’s wife Hattie and her mother Addy. Addy is our Great Grand mother, and the baby is Hattie, our grand mother. This is the only picture I have ever seen of Addy Swartz.
This is Auntie (The only grandmother we ever knew. She was Hattie’s sister and when Hattie died in 1905 she took care of the three children and when they moved to Harrisville in 1907 she married Ernest so she could go with them to care for the children.) These are her brother and two half brothers. Carl do you remember them?
This is a picture Carl sent to me of his mother in her sewing class when she was in High School in Hancock, NH. She lived in Harrisville and had to go by train each day. There were very few children at that time that went to high school and very few girls. Most kids went to elementary school until they were 15 or 16 and then went to work in the mill full time. Angie was a very smart girl and her kids were all very bright also. She was town librarian when I was in Jr High and her oldest daughter, Angie May often went to the library with her and read the books. She read all the books in the library , I could hardly wade through one of them!! 
One last picture of Auntie and the three children she raised. My grand father died in 1911 so she had to raise the children alone. My father was the oldest and only 13 years old so he helped some but he says if it had not been for Auntie they could never had stayed together. She worked in the mill when there was work, she was a burlier which meant she pulled all the knots out of the cloth before it was finished and she also took in boarders and cooked for people passing through. She was tiny but a hard worker!!
As I was looking for these pictures I came across a letter from Carl dated 4-6-2012. I saved it because I wanted to add some memories to the page. So better late than never –
Carl and Alice built their own house and lived there all their life. In this letter he remembered back on that time- “I know at your age you were not able to build your house. I was a lot younger when Alice and I built our place. I am 84 and sure would not be able to build this place now.
Also at the time we built there were no permits needed. Now we would have to get a permit to even pick up the hammer.”
He went on to say, “I don’t know much about Aunt Mame. The only time I remember her, Lem and the kids was one time at the farm in Lempster. They stopped to visit with the folks for a few minutes – Never got out of the car. I believe the car was a model I Ford open touring car and the kids were all in or on the back seat. Quiet a bunch.” Aunt Mame was Hattie’s younger sister who had 20 children, no twins! I don’t know how many they could pack into that car.
He also remembered “Mother was worried about TB as her mother died from that. I think my mother had a touch of T B as a child but it cleared up and she was Okey.”
This week when I write to him I will ask if he has any other memories he would like to add, hopefully he will send more stories.
Oumapetts's Blog 