Gertrude Armstrong Gilson of Unadilla
Forks
by
Jerry Davis
Gert, the
daughter of a widow, Mary T. Arnold, and a widower, Eugene Armstrong, neither
young, was an unexpected and, on her mother's part, probably unwanted,
child. Eugene Armstrong was a respected farmer and descendant of a
Revolutionary War veteran who had been one of the first settlers in the Town of
Plainfield. With a full beard and dignified expression, Gene Armstrong looked
like an elder statesman, someone whose opinion was listened to. He first
operated the old homestead farm on the Skaneateles Turnpike close to Plainfield
Center. He learned to speak Welsh in order to better organize his newest
group of laborers, Welshmen who were coming to Plainfield in droves in the late
nineteenth century. Later, he moved to his grandfather's farm, Mount
Markham Farm, on the edge of Unadilla Forks. With rare foresight and
respect for his forbears, he moved their bodies from the Spooners' Corners
rural cemetery to The Forks, realizing that country cemeteries would gradually
grow up to forest and be forgotten. His first wife, Minnie E. Goodier,
borne three children; Edith, the mother of Minnie and Ruth Hoxie, Gert's
nieces, lived next door to the farm.
I imagine that, after marrying Eugene Armstrong, Mary had enough to do with her
new responsibility as a farm wife--hired men to feed, men who lived there in
the house and whose clothes and bedding she had to wash--to help him during the
extra--busy times, such as harvest and butchering seasons. There may have been
a hired girl, but Gert never mentioned one. Baby Gert's arrival was
surely an extra burden.
Her parents drilled the concept of duty into Gert at a young age. Ruth
and Minnie were her nieces, she was their aunt, and an aunt took care of and
entertained nieces. The three girls were very close in age, but Gert was
expected to do a lot of amusing and baby sitting. As an adult, Ruth lived
just up the street with her husband Herb Evans; Gert visited Ruth daily until
she died. Ruth’s son, Herb Evans, Jr. has a beautiful photo of the three
little girls riding in the pony cart, Gert driving her beloved pony which she
often rode to the far corners of the farm. She was a lovely child with
big eyes, fine features and long blond hair. Always slim, she became an
elegant young lady in the flapper dresses of her young adulthood. The
school was just up Penny Street from the farm and offered classes from first to
tenth grades. When Gert finished tenth, she expected and had eagerly
planned to go to high school in West Winfield where she would board and room
with a family in town, going home weekends. Her father, a persuasive man
and a member of the school board, managed to have year eleven reinstated. The
last school year she stayed with the Williams family at their farm in the
village on West Main Street (now owned by the Puztai family) and graduated from
Winfield High School. Oswego Normal School was her choice after graduation, and
although she seldom mentioned this experience, she probably enjoyed it. A
naval fleet was stationed at Oswego on Lake Ontario, the base clustered about
the old limestone fort built to protect the U.S. from British invasion from
Canada. Snapshots show that she was interested in the sailors, at least enough
to take their picture; they wore bellbottoms and neckerchiefs.
Travel was by train and she liked to imitate the conductor on the DL&W
train from Utica to "Bridgewater Junction, change trains for Unadilla
Forks, Leonardsville, West Edmeston, Sweet's Crossing----------". It
is probable that she met her future husband on the train. One early crush
was Chauncey Adams whom she thought inordinately handsome. She said that
Lloyd Williams, a dairy farmer at DeLancy¹s corners, was "the best looking
man she had ever seen."
Her first teaching job was at a school in the Italian neighborhood in downtown
Utica; her kindergartners spoke mostly Italian. The primary focus of that year
was to make them fluent in English so they could learn alongside native
speakers in first grade. She and another teacher shared a large room and
taught fifty students numbers, colors and shapes-in English-and how to sing,
recite nursery rhymes, and play in a "band." Always teaching, when
her father was on his deathbed, she was there with the doctor. When he
asked her to pass him a thermometer, she did, but out of habit held it tight
until the doctor said, "Please, teacher." She loved children
and especially the demonstrative, enthusiastic Italian children. Twice a year
teachers made mandatory visits to parents' homes and her eyes always lit up
when she recounted her calls. The students would see her coming, run
home, and as they sprinted up the stairs to their tenement apartments, would
shout, "Miss Armstrong is coming, Miss Armstrong is coming!"
The mamas, ready with some hoarded treats, quickly had the wine and cookies
carefully set out on the best lace cloth when Miss Armstrong arrived. The
worst insult was to refuse their invitation. So, from one delicious
Italian biscotti to another, fueled by plenty of wine, Gert was the "Queen
of Little Italy."
A secondary job was instructing a night class for adults in Americanization.
Again, the students were Italian; again, she was a queen. A lookout at
the door was detailed to warn of her coming; all students were standing when
she arrived; in unison they bowed and solemnly said, "Good evening, Miss
Armstrong." Someone took her coat and hung it up, another carried
her books and papers to the desk, and a third pulled out the chair and seated her.
Then, all the students, all male, many masons and construction workers, all
eager to learn the language of their new country, to learn how to gain
citizenship, sat down and tried their best to absorb every lesson she taught.
When Gert married, she broke a rule: Married teachers were never hired.
Her punishment was to be sent to the Polish school. The students there
were well-behaved and cooperative, but emotionally repressed. No hugging
the teacher there. Home visits consisted of finding the house, knocking,
seeing the curtain in the window twitch, waiting a decent time and then
leaving. That was her last year as a salaried teacher.
As generations of kids she had taught knew, Carmen and I were fortunate to have
Gert next door. We often wondered if she regretted her decision to have
us for neighbors. Ted Burdick, nephew of Laura Rider, the owner of the
house we wanted to buy, had control of the sale. There were two parties
interested, ourselves and some people from Leonardsville. Ted asked Gert
which she preferred for a neighbor and she chose us. Every afternoon the
boys would go over to "Gert's House" where all of them would sit on
the sofa with her and watch cartoons. It was natural for her to continue
to teach. She taught them counting, colors, games, songs, all of the things
that their parents were supposed to be teaching them. Fighting was not
allowed; if a squabble broke out, Gert stood silently, opened the door, waited
until the guilty party(ies) sheepishly left and, still silent, shut the door behind
them. Carmen and I slept in every Saturday as late as we wished. We
wouldn't see the kids, who had quietly "gone to Gert's house" until
at least
For her next venture she decided to open a gift shop in the old blacksmith shop
in West Winfield. At the wholesale gift market on Fifth Avenue in New
York she stocked up on Italian pottery, Irish linen, and stationery, then swept
out the shop, furnished it with antique tables and display cupboards and hung
out her sign. (That sign, "Greystone," now painted over and
re-lettered, hangs in front of the bookstore in Leonardsville.) Aunt Edna
was one of her best customers, and I remember going there with her after having
dinner at the Tasty Toasty, a restaurant operated by the three West sisters and
located across the street in what is now a bar. Don¹t laugh at the name;
these events all took place a long time ago when a name like Tasty Toasty would
draw customers. It was tasty home cooking, too, done by a family of
famous cooks.
Aunt Edna had two large pottery jars, one yellow, one aqua, on either side of
the path from the porch to the garden, which she had bought from Gert's
shop. Liz Cooper had a huge yellow pottery strawberry jar that also came
from the shop. She put it on the stone wall next to our drive every
summer, and then it was stolen, I always assumed by one of our
"customers" who simply schlepped it into their van one day when we
weren't home and Liz Cooper wasn't on the lookout as she usually was.
Gert enjoyed the shop and did very well as Route 20 was extremely busy in the
summer. The thruway hadn't even been thought of and Route 20 was a major
East - West route. Rick Rowlands and I used to sit on the steps of
Matteson's corner drugstore and watch for out-of- state license plates.
To see a couple of California plates in the course of an hour was not
unusual. The war and gas rationing put an end to the shop and the Tasty
Toasty, too.
Then Gert worked for friends Claire and Inez Colwell in their drugstore; at the
soda fountain she made the "Famous 50,000 Dollar Chocolate
Soda." I was addicted to them. A squirt of homemade chocolate
syrup, some soda water, then real whipped cream, all mixed together with a
strong, thin stream of soda and finally a big scoop of ice cream. She
hated them. Hated making the syrup in the back room on an electric
hotplate. "It always boiled over," she said. Hated whipping the
cream in a miniature metal churn (the whipped cream was given "body"
by the addition of gooey marshmallow creme.). Hated washing up in the
primitive sink behind the counter and handpacking ice cream into cardboard
containers. But she loved being busy and helping her friends who had lost
their regulars to the service or to "war work," and the customers
liked her; if it took patience on her part to put up with some of their inane
banter, she never let it show.
With only an "A" ration card, it was difficult to find enough gas to
get to work. She recounted how everyone at the Post Office used to seethe
with righteous indignation when the lucky man who had a more generous rationing
designation because he worked in a munitions plant would come in, leaving the
motor running while he chatted, to get his mail. Most people had been
forced to "put up" their cars for the "duration."
Generosity, trust and kindness were Gert's nature. The week before the
Fireman¹s Fair, she was busy inventing jobs for the kids who came knocking at
the door, looking to earn something for the fair. College loans were
given but not repaid, a situation that provoked sadness and disappointment.
Truthful herself, she gave everyone else the benefit of the doubt, a condition
many took advantage of. Her annuity looted, loans unpaid, crooked deals
involving a small amount of money separated her from the farm she had inherited
from her aunt. At the home farm, the barn burned. Naturally, the
young fellow who had bought the farm could not afford to rebuild. The
farm was sold again, not as a working farm, but as a place to raise a large
family of boys. The portion of the farm that included the
"face" of Mt. Markham was retained.
By the time we became neighbors, her husband Frank had died. Gert's
entertaining had been scaled back, was now limited to church and book club
events. At one time there had been a group of couples in the area that
she and Frank had often entertained and we heard wistful remembrances of
them. When she did invite people, she was a wonderful hostess. She
would take me by the hand, lead me to someone she wanted me to meet, and say,
"Jerry, I want you to meet my friend____ because he is very interested in
_____, and I know that you will want to discuss ____ because you have that
common interest." So considerate, she always provided a ready-made
"opener". It was obvious that her best effort had been made.
Fresh flowers stood in an old brass bucket in the center of the table; the
arrangements were never stingy, and she strongly objected to the tortured,
artificial "arrangements" that florists favored. She wanted the
flowers to look natural, just as they had looked in the garden. The best
linen was out; the best food and drink were served. If she did anything,
it was done in the right way.
Her best friend in town was Lyda Clark, who, with her husband Ted, lived in a
retirement home in Connecticut. Otto and Reba (Bassett) Huddle were both
gone from the Bassett homestead, which had been their summer home. Howard
and Ann Goff had bought it and quickly became good, helpful friends to
her. But it was not really the same as before when her own house had been
full of guests, and Otto and friends, with too much to
drink, rowed up the river at
She often remarked that she could have tried to become a "big frog in a
big pond," but had chosen to be a "big frog in a little
puddle." She protected her little puddle fiercely. A spring
flood washed out the old wooden dam and her beloved pond disappeared, the pond
where she and other children, using child-sized coffins from the attic of the
old furniture factory, used to go "boating." (Two of these tiny
coffins were still stored in her garage, having served as window boxes for many
years.) She quickly formed "The Dam Committee." There were
house tours and amateur plays and other efforts that she coordinated. Her
talent was to host the planning meeting and then sit silently, listening to
others' opinions. When something was mentioned that coincided with her
thoughts, she would exclaim, "What a wonderful idea! Shouldn't we
all pitch in to help Mr. X with his great plan?" Some of these ideas
had been subliminally implanted in casual conversations days before.
Then, without contributing a single idea directly, she would serve
refreshments, the main reason many came to meetings, and subtly make sure that
the programs would be carried out: "We are depending on you."
The Fire Department was her beneficiary, too. The annual turkey dinner
was always adequately staffed; the donated food always arrived, thanks to her
subtle organization. "Louise, would you mind making the dressing again
this year? You make it so much better than anyone else."
Everyone sent in the food promptly or suffered the silent reproach that she
could broadcast for long distances. The same skills made the Election Day
Dinner a wonderful tradition of ham, scalloped potatoes, and pies. When
she left The Forks, the Election Day Dinner died, buried aptly enough by the
Cemetery Association, which had used it as a fundraiser since before anyone
could remember. Every Sunday she was up and dressed, often in her smart Chanel
suit, ready for church. Even as the congregation gradually morphed into
fundamentalism, surely painful for a liberal person, her support never wavered.
Once a week she gave Fanny Noll a ride to and from Gen Gates's to do the weekly
cleaning. Each morning she went next door to button Mr. Rogers's shirt
and pants, which was impossible for him to do as both of his hands were
crippled with arthritis. She had visited her mother-in-law, long
bedridden in Richfield Springs, daily, not to be greeted by "Hello,
Gert," but to hear, "Where is my Frankie
Emphysema gradually made her life more difficult, the wonderful garden she
always cared for, a chore. I remember helping her plant the zinnias and
snapdragons, about twelve packets of seeds, one seed at a time, carefully
spaced and planned so the pastels would gradually merge with the bolder colors
that dominated the end of the bed. She was exhausted, each seed a
superhuman effort, but she soldiered on, kept the garden looking good all
summer, hoping that would help the place sell. When these seeds grew and
bloomed, there were cut flowers for the whole town, just as there was fresh
asparagus every spring. It was a generous garden with a hedge of lilacs
that bloomed for over a month, 175 rosebushes, and a cutting garden. One
winter over 100 roses were winter-killed; all were immediately replaced with
new ones. The garden was the site of the church picnic, DAR luncheons, weddings
and parties. It involved a lot of work as everything had to be carried
out there, then back inside to be washed and put away. Frank had built a
workshop first, a wonderful space that Gert let me use for my antique
projects. It was fully equipped for, as she said, Frank could never pass
a hardware store without going in and buying something. She decided that
if he could have a workshop, she could have a summerhouse for entertaining. The
south side was screened, with roller doors that could be closed in the winter;
a chimney was built over a barbeque that I believe was never used. A huge 1840s
file cabinet (once the property of Governor Horatio Seymour) filled with a
display of china was on the east wall, and a window was on the north.
This window faced our back yard; from most angles it looked dark; you couldn't
see through, and I always felt "watched" by an invisible
"someone," even though I knew that the garden house was empty.
The house itself was the work and pride of both Gert and Frank. One of several
in town by the same builder, it is the most elegant example of his work.
The original fireplace was restored, two small rooms in front were combined
into a living room with a period-style fireplace, the woodshed became a garage,
and an entry was converted into a terrace with a canvas awning. It was a
showplace. The chimney tops were painted black, a custom in Bennington,
Vermont, from whence Gert's Armstrong ancestors had emigrated. Totally
furnished in antiques arranged with incredible taste and class, her collection
was spotty, not limited to any period, not necessarily of the first quality,
but it had a wonderful "look." One of her finest pieces had
spent most of its life hidden in attics. When I cleaned the attic for
her, it was my "pay": a paint-decorated blanket box from
Arlington, Vermont, one of a small group of pieces decorated there in the early
nineteenth century with false mahogany, rosewood and birds' eye maple
"inlay" done in black on a red background. People gave her
things, too. The DeLancy sisters gave her the big blue transfer platter
that was the centerpiece of her corner cupboard display. Her mother
objected to Gert's raids on the farmhouse attic, not out of selfishness, but in
an effort to prevent her only child from embarrassing the family by putting
"that old junk" into her home.
Gert had a lobe of one lung removed and that, combined
with emphysema, made life an increasing struggle. Carmen usually called
her in the evening and either invited Gert to come over or accept a "one
of the boys will bring it over" meal. Most nights she
accepted. Finally, the decision was made to leave even though the house
had not sold; she hadn't the strength to carry on any more.
She decided to move to Shelburne, Vermont, because it was so far away no one
would feel obligated to call on her. We tried our best to convince her
otherwise, and I am sure many of her friends did, too, that we would love to
visit, would miss her if she were not nearby, and that it would be a pleasure,
not a duty, to see her. All suggestions were stubbornly resisted. Before she left, Carmen and I organized a
farewell party and invited those of her old friends who were still able and
ambulatory. I was apprehensive because the house was not designed for the
infirm. The conversations seemed to center on pace makers, treatments,
nursing homes and walkers. No one fell and broke a bone, there were no
heart attacks or strokes, and everyone seemed to have a good time.
Fortunately, her great, great nephew Steve Evans and his wife Joan were able to
take some of the better pieces of her furniture for their home. The
remainder was trucked to Leonardsville and sold; the leftovers are still
there. The night before Gert left, she called me over. She was
sitting in the middle of the barren living room, surrounded by albums, some
books and odds and ends. "Jerry, I don¹t have strength to sort through all
of this. Tomorrow I want you to put it all in garbage bags and then out
to the curb to be picked up." I saw a small round piece of colorful
fabric and picked it up. It was embroidered in flame stitch and in the
center were the initials M A and the date 1765. I asked what it was and
she replied, "Something that my great, great grandmother Armstrong
made." "Gert, how can you throw something out that has been in
the family for over 200 years?" I asked. "Get rid of it,"
was the answer. It was heartbreaking to see how helpless she had become, so sad
to leave her home, friends, her "boys", her "Little
Puddle," the garden and everything that had meant so much.
For once I was bad. Some of the photographs are now in the library of the
New York State Historical Society Library in Cooperstown, in the files of the
Town of Plainfield Historian or with family members. We kept a photo of
Gert as a flapper and another of her taken when she was about six years
old. The piece of embroidery, as I later learned, was a potholder, used
when afternoon tea was served to the ladies; it is now in a museum in
Connecticut.
The last time we saw Gert was the following summer. After attending a
Massachusetts flea market, we detoured north to Shelburne and drove to an
imposing, white-painted mansion on the shores of Lake Champlain. Across
the lake was an incredible view of the Adirondack Mountains. The place
was lovely, with large shade trees and winding paths, but deserted. It
seemed deserted inside, too. We sent word up and Gert appeared, overjoyed
to see "her boys" again. We sat on the sun porch, where we met
her friend, and visited. I gathered that the friend was one of the very few
there who even knew where they were, which explained the deserted air of the
place. Never a complainer, she put a brave face on her obvious loneliness
and isolation. She had made her bed------
The next winter, Marcella Evans, the nephew's spouse, kindly stayed in
Shelburne for a few weeks, helping Gert through her last struggle. Gert
was buried next to Frank, back in "The Forks," the town she had loved
so much and had worked so hard to improve. The "face" of Mount
Markham was left to the fire company in the hope that it would be preserved.
When young, she had walked daringly along the ledges of the "face,"
her favorite place on the farm. Her other bequests went to her family
with one exception, gifts to "her boys" for their college funds.
For more details
regarding the history of Unadilla Forks please visit the following web site:
http://home.roadrunner.com/~Unadillaforks