They grew hay for their horse and three milk cows, Belinda, Bessie, and Buttercup. On the second and third floors of the barn, they kept chickens. A neighbor fondly remembered climbing through the Wilmington barn when she was a girl, collecting eggs and playing with kittens. Mrs. Richardson described a typical week’s work in a letter to her daughters in August 1949: Sunday we did corn. 21 qt. boxes…Yesterday the hens upstairs (3rd floor) went so none left now but 2nd. They have started cleaning downstairs. I packed eggs—took most of day. Rain didn’t help cleanliness of eggs. Sent 3 cases to Boston yesterday but man taking chickens wants to buy them next week. Farm industries extended into the house, which held big iceboxes and a separator for making cream and butter. The Richardsons canned raspberries for jam and juice and froze blueberries, peas, and other vegetables. In her sewing room, Mrs. Richardson raised white mice to sell to scientific researchers in Boston. At the end of the long days, the family would gather around the large table in the dining room for supper, although no one was allowed to talk while Mr. Richardson listened to Lowell Thomas on the radio. In 1949, the girls took a summer off and drove to Alaska on the new Alaska Highway, which had opened the year before. Filling the family station wagon with canned goods and camping gear, the trio headed west. Mrs. Richardson followed their itinerary on a map and sent letters ahead, addressed to post offices in Champaign, Illinois; Seattle, and Fairbanks. In a letter posted to them in the Badlands at Kadoka, South Dakota, she wrote, “Am going to try making succotash this afternoon. The garden is scant and what there is will taste better than canned things, particularly to you girls where you have lived on canned food all summer. Daddy thinks now the rain saved the sweet corn in lower field—so if frost keeps away you may have some.” In 1958, most of the Richardson fields were taken by eminent domain to make way for Interstate 93. Alvin, by then in his seventies, gave up commercial farming. The Richardsons bought a lot overlooking Pautuckaway Lake in Nottingham, New Hampshire, and built a vacation cottage there, using wood they hauled from Wilmington. Alvin set up a portable sawmill to saw into boards the trees doomed by the Interstate. Following their mother’s lead, the girls all went to college and built careers. Willard, the eldest, served as dietician at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. A diligent student of covered bridges, she traveled across New England and the Midwest, photographing bridges and recording their dimensions in scrapbooks. Winifred earned a bachelor of science in education degree from Boston University and
taught kindergarten in nearby Winchester, Massachusetts, for thirty-six years. Her desk contained photographs of each class. Elinor graduated with a bachelor of science in education degree from Tufts University and eventually became the head occupational therapist at Worcester State Hospital. A box in the attic yielded her bright abstract watercolors. After their parents died in the 1970s, the three Richardson sisters stayed on at the farm in Wilmington and continued to raise fruits and vegetables for their own use. The farm buildings with “Colonial Appeal” survive to provide insights into centuries of New England farm life, culminating in the market gardening career of Alvin Richardson. The Richardson family papers, now in Historic New England’s Library and Archives, shed light on a second narrative—two generations of professionally trained, independent women who did not conform to old stereotypes of farm women. Winifred Richardson’s gift to Historic New England preserves the memory of three sisters, their parents, and the farm the family loved. —Timothy T. Orwig Tim Orwig, an architectural and social historian, worked with the Historic New England team studying the Richardson farm.
Maude and Alvin Richardson with their Shelties. Winifred on horseback. ABOVE Winifred and Elinor harvest their garden under the watchful eye of a Sheltie. FACING PAGE TOP
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Summer 2013 Historic New England
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