Freeville in the 19th Century
Nov. 2nd, 2010 11:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraAs I was trying to figure out where to go and vote this morning, I happened upon a history of Freeville.
Freeville was quite the booming metropolis back in the 19th century. There was a furniture factory, a coal business, a feed business, several blacksmiths, a forging and wagon shop, a cinder block factory that produced 500 – 1200 blocks per day, two lumber yards, hardware stores, hotels and restaurants. A famous juvenile reformatory called George Junior Republic. A spiritualist camp in the summertime!
Today, there’s… nothing. I am one of exactly 517 remaining residents.
I suppose Freeville’s fortunes, like the fortunes of so many of these small New York towns hovering on the border of the Midwest, were tied to the trains. Once trains were no longer an important commercial force, all the businesses relocated to the corridor alongside the highways.
I can’t say I have strong feelings for the place, but there’s no denying Freeville is packed with terroir, that indefinable quality that binds you – or at least me – to a geographical location; that sense of human coral reef and the slow accretion of human lives over centuries, and the traces those lives leave. Sometimes when I walk Milo on the path that leads past where two of the old mills were, I swear I can see the ghosts of the lumbermen.
Winter is definitely here. I’m not ready for it.
On the plus side, my little ghostwriting biz seems to be really taking off. Of course it’s a flawed business model being that I am the sole provider of a service which means the limiting factor is me, and how fast I can write, and whether I can summon enough interest to write convincingly. But I am beginning to think that this most difficult stretch of my life may be drawing to a close and that there are good things on the horizon – financial security, and friends, and self-worth and – who knows? – maybe even love if I can open myself to it.
Freeville was quite the booming metropolis back in the 19th century. There was a furniture factory, a coal business, a feed business, several blacksmiths, a forging and wagon shop, a cinder block factory that produced 500 – 1200 blocks per day, two lumber yards, hardware stores, hotels and restaurants. A famous juvenile reformatory called George Junior Republic. A spiritualist camp in the summertime!
Today, there’s… nothing. I am one of exactly 517 remaining residents.
I suppose Freeville’s fortunes, like the fortunes of so many of these small New York towns hovering on the border of the Midwest, were tied to the trains. Once trains were no longer an important commercial force, all the businesses relocated to the corridor alongside the highways.
I can’t say I have strong feelings for the place, but there’s no denying Freeville is packed with terroir, that indefinable quality that binds you – or at least me – to a geographical location; that sense of human coral reef and the slow accretion of human lives over centuries, and the traces those lives leave. Sometimes when I walk Milo on the path that leads past where two of the old mills were, I swear I can see the ghosts of the lumbermen.
Winter is definitely here. I’m not ready for it.
On the plus side, my little ghostwriting biz seems to be really taking off. Of course it’s a flawed business model being that I am the sole provider of a service which means the limiting factor is me, and how fast I can write, and whether I can summon enough interest to write convincingly. But I am beginning to think that this most difficult stretch of my life may be drawing to a close and that there are good things on the horizon – financial security, and friends, and self-worth and – who knows? – maybe even love if I can open myself to it.
