"A History of the Tannenbaum’s House (at least as we know it)
My parents, Harold Tannenbaum (1914-2002) and Beulah Goldstein Tannenbaum (1916-), first came to Woodland Valley as counselors at Camp Woodland in 1945. In the late summer of 1945 they, along with my maternal grandfather, Sol Goldstein (1876-1973), purchased the house (now # 848) for either $1000 or $2000 (my mother can’t remember for sure). They bought the house from the Breithaupt family who had acquired it through foreclosure on a defaulted mortgage. It was unoccupied at the time. It also had no indoor plumbing or electricity (but there was an outhouse which when I was a child I knew as a tool shed.). Confirming the information in Hawley Botchford’s post about Clementine Botchford, the electricity did not come up the valley until early 1946. My mother remembers that the electric company paid them $1 to put the pole on our property. It was my parents’ understanding that the house had been built shortly after the Civil War with the builder using his army pension to fund it’s construction. (Was it possibly Henry Jay Botchford that Hawley writes about?).
The house was built, they were told, to house the foreman of the sawmill, which Rolf Reiss identifies as Craig’s mill, just down the road from us. When they bought the house there were about 15 apple trees on the property. (Were they planted by Johnny Appleseed?) Now only one remains.
Like many houses of its era it had two front doors. The primary entrance was in the center of the porch and opened into a hallway and the stairway to the second floor. The second entrance, called a “coffin door” was on the left and opened directly into the parlor. If there were to be a wake in the house, the coffin could not have made it through the narrow hallway and door adjacent to the stairs, but could easily access the parlor through the “coffin door”. About 1960 we replaced the “coffin door” with a window.
We were satisfied with this history, as we knew no other version, until 1972 when we rebuilt the back addition to the house. A 2-room shed had been added on to the back of the original house, we estimate sometime around 1900. At any rate, by 1972 it was in dire need of replacement. It was so sloped that when the washing machine was on spin cycle, if we didn’t hold on to it, it would “walk” across the floor. When we tore down the old shed to replace it we uncovered the back wall of the original structure. In the wall, as others have similarly reported, newspaper was used as insulation. We were able to salvage a small piece, which is clearly dated 1855 and has a fragment of an article about the Crimean War. Now, either our old story of when the house was built was incorrect, or the builder saved old newspapers. We tend to think that it was built in 1855.
My parents hired Claude Yerry, who lived in “The Mountain House” as their handyman, builder and caretaker. Mr. Yerry related to my parents that he had moved his house board by board from its original location in Shokan where it would have been submerged by the reservoir. Mr. Yerry built our garage in 1950 and the outdoor fireplace and stone wall in front of the house. There is a good story about the wall. When my mother was pregnant with me in the summer of 1949, Mr. Yerry announced that if there was going to be a baby there needed to be a wall so that the baby wouldn’t run out into the road. So in the fall he built the wall and when my parents came up in the spring of 1950 it was finished and planted with flowers. My parents asked him why the flowers (which they loved) and he replied “you can’t have those hikers sitting on your wall”. My grandfather, my parents, and now the next two generations have continued the flower planting ever since.
In the attic we found personal effects from some of the previous residents (also some liquor bottles plastered into the walls). Of most interest was an account book for John Ragan with the A.J. Simpson Dry Goods and Grocery store. The entries begin on February 9, 1884 with a balance from the previous book of $27.14. In addition we have two bills for the Dyer family, who we believe were the next residents. One dated August 29, 1891 is from Hewitt Boice, which appears to be a stone dealer (flagstone, curbing, etc.) from whom Charles Dyer ordered 8” and 10” rocks, totaling $10.48. All that we can see in the remnant of a later bill (1904) from McGrath’s Dry Goods and Groceries in Phoenicia is that it was made out to Chas Dyer and the total was 80 cents. There were also three letters to the Dyers written by one of their daughters from Middletown where we believe she was in the tuberculosis sanitarium. The letters are dated between 1899 and 1901 and are very plaintive in their tone. William Tollenger’s 1985 Woodland Valley Area History cites that in 1899 Chas. Dyer owned 3 acres with an assessed value of $100 and he was taxed 85 cents. He was also listed as having two children, Lewis (17) and Annie (14). My mother also reports that they found a calling card belonging to Evelyn Craig’s mother, which she gave to Miss Craig. It was Evelyn Craig’s grandfather who owned the mill.
That is what we know (or believe we know) and would be glad to receive confirmation or contradiction from those who have further information."
- Carl Tannenbaum
This last photo is from Rolf Reiss. It is of the orchard that Carl mentions when all the trees where still there.
