Yesterday was a total loss. I spent the entire day dragging cartons of books down multiple flights of stairs and now the entry hall is lined with them. Thankfully Mr. Hardacre has conceded to letting me have a key to the attic so I can empty out the buckets and continue my efforts to preserve any books from water damage. Now that the crisis is being managed I have time to write again.

Over the weekend I decided to take a trip into town. If I am honest, I’ve been getting a little woodsy out here. It’s easy to get into a rhythm of living where the outside world becomes mostly theoretical. The roads into town are not great and the constant rain has not helped. Thankfully my escape was facilitated by a brief break in the weather.

Tiny local museums are such a treasure. The value of a Historical Society cannot be understated when it comes to research. They have often already done the handwork of collecting photographs and personal accounts. They also consist mainly of retired volunteers who have all the time in the world to spread their local knowledge. Just don’t be surprised if you get strong armed by a little old white haired lady for a ‘voluntary’ donation.

The local historical society museum is located in an old wooden building, the kind where the layers of paint have rounded all the edges on the woodwork and siding. If you are a book lover you will know that libraries have a certain smell. Little museums have a smell, too. It’s a bit like damp and rust plus the ghost of chemicals that are probably known in the state of California to cause cancer. They just feel old as soon as you walk inside and this is exactly as it should be when you are delving into the past.

The docent for the museum was both enthusiastic and extremely helpful. Apparently this house I am currently residing in is a bit of a local curiosity. This brick behemoth is not the original house. There was originally a house here from the mid 1600s that burnt down in 1889. Supposedly the original cellar is still underneath all of this.

The house that burned to the ground was owned by William Ames, who perished in the fire. It was his son Fredrick William Ames who funded the building of the current house. The family had started out with sheep breeding but Fredrick Ames had made his fortune bringing industrialized textile mills to the local area, which at the time employed nearly everyone in town in one way or another.

No one would have talked about it at the time, knowing where their pay checks came from, but later documents were found that revealed that Fredrick Ames was not entirely trusted. Technically he was a local since the Ames family held lands in the area for hundreds of years, but Fredrick spent much of his time in New York or traveling abroad and the local felt he had strange, somewhat heretical views.

It was noted in several personal correspondences and journals that he never attended church and frequently had eccentric visitors, including holding seances on more than one occasion. One letter from a maid who worked in the house sent to a cousin in a neighboring town complained of being made to leave just after dinner was served and not being allowed back in until morning. Occultism was quite popular at the time so it’s not surprising, but I am sure it was scandalous to the locals.

It was Fredrick’s son, Nathan Fredrick Ames who was the last owner of this house. He died the last surviving member of his family. His wife passed away giving birth to the their third child and all three children died before they reached the age of majority. He never remarried. The current town residence are understandably curious about the contents of his will. I had other disappoints them when I admitted I knew nothing else.

There was one other final thing I found at the historical society. It was a picture of a group of men at a banquet held in the dining room here. In the background was a banner with the same symbol I had seen in the Initiates of the Flame, a triangle with a flame bursting from its center.

I stopped by the local library as well. Small towns often had their own newspapers until they were outdone by larger newspapers or eventually killed by the internet. The librarian was proud to tell me that she had personally applied for and received a grant to digitize all of their back issues, so now I have access to all the local papers going back to the 1840s. It’ll take some time to dig through them, but I am curious to find more information about Fredrick Ames.