A Slice of Life on the Farm
T
ry to remember or imagine growing up on 100 acres of land, helping your family run a farm, and your playground included barns, ponies, and three acres of woods surrounding your pond. It’s 1946 and your daily life includes early morning chores like cleaning the stables, washing the eggs, and getting ready for school. You remember helping your mother can the fruits and vegetables grown in your garden. These would ensure a nice supply of foods through the winter months. The Carr children, Jeanne, Bob, and Marilyn remember such a childhood that spanned six years on the property that is now called Cottell Park. When John A. Carr, Rosemary Constable Carr, and family settled in the rundown farm house, life would not always be easy. Life was filled with hope and promise for the would-be farmers. They named their land Carcrest. The Carr boys, Bob and John1 became fast farmers, helping their father work the fields by plowing and cultivating. They cleaned the barns of manure, worked the hay
baler, hauled the bales of hay, and helped to milk the cows, too. The property included chicken houses and tenant houses. Mr. Carr improved the plumbing, added a two-car garage, and updated the kitchen. The Carr family joined a long line of property owners on the almost perfectly square lot. By 1946 the Carrs would become part of a story along with a house that had been built 110 years earlier by a young man named James Finney. Finney purchase the land from his father and would begin to lay the foundation for parts of the home that stand today, now known as the Snyder House at Cottell Park. From that time on, families would farm and flourish on the property. They would make improvements to the house, plow the fields, picnic on the land, and begin to grow the community they called Deerfield Township. The Carr family raised Holsteins – Ayrshires, beef cattle, hogs, and chickens. Bob Carr remembers overseeing cleaning the eggs. At one time the family owned over 1,000 chickens! Bob Carr recounts a story about his Uncle Bud Constable, who after returning from WWII helped on the farm. “My dad hired my Uncle Bud Constable to work on our (Clockwise from left) Property in1948; Marilyn with her cows at the farm; Bob, Jeanne and Marilyn; Jeanne, Bob, and Marilyn today
COTTELL PARK AND SURROUNDING AREA FUN FACTS 1803 Deerfield Township is organized, and is named for the many salt licks where deer came to lick the saline waters.
1839 Montgomery Road was built four miles east of Cottell Park.
32 CenterPoint SPRING 2019
BY 1856 The now called Fields Ertel, Snyder, and Irwin Simpson roads were in place.
1890 McVey Pike, Finney Turnpike, Thompson & Spinner Pike were renamed Snyder Road.
18271931
1957
The 100 acre corner, now known as Cottell Park, was in the Finney family for over 100 years. Most of the Finney family are buried in Deerfield’s Rose Hill Cemetery.
Jack and Mary Cottell purchase the property and name it Bonterre, French for “good earth.”