Judy Spenser loaned me this newspaper article. See below for a copy of the text and pictures.
A Special Section of the Landmark
– July 10, 1997
Generations share the
Rice / Griffin Farmhouse
By Patty Youngblood
 |
| Henry Rice |
When you see the Griffin
farmhouse on Prospect Street, you know immediately it’s been around a long
time. The fence surrounding the house is
right at the edge of the road, and the house isn’t too much further back.
It’s been a long time since
taste and zoning regulations put an end to “the house by the side of the road,”
as the old poem had it. The other houses
on Prescott Street are mostly new and large ▬ and set
way, way back. But the Rice / Griffin
homestead does go way, way back in time, if not space, telling the story of a
Rutland family with deep roots.
The house was
built in 1843 for Dwight Rice. Dwight’s
father Asa has come to Rutland in 1795 and married Charlotte Savage, whose
family was among Rutland’s original grant holders.
It was on
Savage land that Asa and Charlotte’s son Dwight built the Prospect Road
farmhouse. A family scrapbook contains an agreement between Dwight and his
builder, Edbridge Howe, “to build a house of the following dimintions (sic)
twenty by thirty feet square, one and a half stories high, also an addition to
the foundation by twenty [feet], one story high for $75, the frame to be as
good as the one Lawson Savage built in the past season in Deathville for
himself.”
John Griffin
assumes that Lawson Savage was an in-law, although he’s not sure of the
location of Deathville. He notes the
canny builder stipulated the $75 construction fee was to be paid in cash.
John, now
retired from the Worcester Telegram and Gazette art department, is the last
Griffin living in the old farmstead. For years he shared the house with his
brother, Carl, a retired te4acher who passed away in 1990.
A third
brother, George, also lives in Rutland. George teaches at Anna Maria College
and was a long-time Rutland selectman, with a tenure that ran from the mid-60s
to 1990.
But back to the
past. In 1848, Dwight’s son, Henry Rice
married Alice Taylor, who was related to the Moulton family, another name that
runs through town history.
 |
| Fred & Margaret Rice |
“When my
great-grandfather Henry was an infant he was so ill the doctor gave up hope,”
John says. “An Indian who lived in the night pasture [land near Irish Lane and
Route 122] brought some herbs and treated him. He survived and lived a healthy
life until a diphtheria outbreak that killed one son and a daughter, Charlotte.
Henry tried to
breathe life back into daughter and caught the disease himself, leaving only
his wife and one son, John’s grandfather, George.
“That Indian
kept the family going for awhile,” John says.
“He’s buried on the top of the night pasture hill ▬ I owe my
being around to him.
“It was common
in those days, “ he adds, “for Indians to be living in the pastures and
woodlands. Even when I was born there
was an Indian named Gus Eagle living in our pasture with no objection from
anyone. He worked around at odd jobs, then just disappeared.”
Becoming
Catholic
George married
Catherine Cullen, a Roman Catholic in 1893.
The couple live in the handsome Maple Avenue residence that would later
become the home of Catherine’s nephew Archer Parquette and his wife Madeline.
Catherine and
George’s daughter Margaret married Carl Griffin in the rectory of St. Mary’s
Church in Jefferson in 1922. That’s how it was done back then, when Catholic
married Protestant.
“At one point
Margaret, Carl and sons shared the not-so-large farm house with Margaret’s
parents and with her uncle, Fred Rice and his wife Anna. It was a happy and
comfortable arrangement, John Says, perhaps because the family was used to lots
of people under one roof.
“My
grandparents took and raised oodles of children from Boston,” he recalls. “ My
mother always said all the children were treated equally. She remembered a time
when someone brought her and my uncle Fred two red bananas and they couldn’t
enjoy them because there wasn’t enough to share.
“My mother was
the first Catholic elected to any office in Rutland.” John Griffin says. “She served on the school committee from the time
her eldest child started school until the oldest graduated.”
Uncle Fred,
noted for his humor and great disposition, has no children so was the last
person to bear the name Rice.
As the Rice
name faded, however, the Griffins became connected to another Rutland family
with pre-Revolutionary roots. Carl Griffin’s father, John, came to Rutland from
Hubbardston and married Jennie Miles, a descendant of Captain Benjamin Miles,
who came to Rutland From Concord in 1750.
The Miles
family (eventual founders of Miles Funeral Home in Holden) were also related to
Rutland;s Calkins family.
At the end of
the Rice and Miles chain were Carl and Margaret Griffin and their three boys ▬ John,
George and Carl Jr. ▬ living in the old West Rutland
homestead.
 |
| (Top) John & Carl Jr. 1939 (Bottom) Margaret & Carl Sr. |
A good sized
dairy barn was attached to the house for years, John says, with a second barn
eventually added for horses. The dairy barn came down about eight or nine years
ago, and the farm has gradually been whittled back from 230 acres to 100.
“My uncle Fred
and grandfather took care of the cows, about 40 head, and my father took care
of the horses.” George says. “We stabled about 18 horses and two work teams for
other people. On a Sunday morning, you’d
think it was an English hunt.”
“The Rices were
always farmers,: says John. “Asa and Dwight were also school teachers, at a
little school that used to be at the end of Prospect Street.”
John has
painted a kitchen mural showing the farm on a big patch of land with long, open
vistas. But that reflects a time when
people had cut down the original forests for farmland, back when Prospect
Street meant the street has vast “prospects,” or views ▬ including
Demond Pond.
Those views are
gone now, hidden by new houses and the second growth that has reclaimed much of
the old farmland. But John remembers a time when Prospect Street only had two
other houses. And George recalls the days when Prospect Street was nothing more
than a one lane dirt road, rutted and impassable during the muddy season. But then so was Pleasantdale Road, all the
way through Paxton.
The boys grew
up in a town where everyone knew everyone and/or was related to them. Their
Aunt Nellie and Uncle Clarence Griffin owned a general store in the center of
town that sold food, hardware and a small supply of clothing. Uncle Miles
Griffin ran the First National grocery store and Uncle Walter has a taxi
business.
College
men
Like many in
their generation, the Griffin boys were the first in their family to go to
college. Their abilities were wide ranging
▬ Carl,
graduated from Clark and Fitchburg State College, becoming an English
teacher. George still teaching math at
Anna Maria College, attended WPI and graduated from Worcester State.
And John, a
UMass and Massachusetts College of Art graduate, ended up in the art department
of the Telegram and Gazette. He’s used
the old farm as the source for many paintings and produced the cover art for
T.C. Murphy’s “History of the town of Rutland.” Published in 1970.
“I got my art
ability from my father,” John says,” although I didn’t know it for a long
time.” After his father’s death, John found beautifully illustrated homework
folders and stories his father had created as a schoolboy.
Carl Sr.
Carl Sr. served
in World War I then came back to Worcester, working on Pleasant Street when he
developed a reputation as the best battery rebuilder in the city. But during
the Depression he brought his family back to the farm in order to feed
everyone.
Later on he
supplemented his farm income as the owner/driver of Rutland’s first school bus,
a 1929 Buick model with a wood frame and a soft top that had to be retarred
every summer. The bus has no defrosted, so candles were placed on the
windshield when conditions were icy and, instead of rows of seats, the students
sat on two long benches running front to back.
‘My father
never wanted us to be farmers,” Carl Jr, said in a 1989 Landmark interview. “I
think he saw advantages to farming, but he also knew it was a pretty hard
life. He wanted something better for us.
“My brothers
and I worked on the farm. We had to
drive the tractor, clean the stables; we were low men on the totem pole. Other kids got the jobs working at the
grocery stores in town.”
Although he had
a long career teaching at Worcester’s Burncoat High School, Carl’s first
teaching job was at Rutland High School. He taught all five subjects ▬ algebra,
geometry, United States history, civics and world history.
“I started
there in 1947,” he said. “At that time, men were returning from World War II
and coming back to high school. I was teaching men my own age, which was
difficult at times. Most of them were serious about school. They has lived a little bit of life, and now
it was time to get an education.
George
Griffin
His brother
George agrees with Carl’s assessment of the farm life, but also says he
wouldn’t have minded farming himself.
“I remember
helping my father and uncle with the haying when I came back from the service
in 1955,” George says. They stopped working the farm in the late ‘50s or early
‘60s. I’d be farming today if you could
make a living at it. You weren’t living on what you made, but on subsidies.
“It wasn’t just
men who had to work extra jobs.” He adds.
“My aunt, Anna Rice, worked in the Jefferson Mill to sup0plement the family
income, although my mother stayed at home and kept house. And I’m convinced that school bus paid the
taxes.”
Like his
mother, George also embarked on a long career in town politics ▬ but as a
selectman. In 1973, he replaced long-time selectman Lloyd Campbell, staying on
the board for none years.
After two-year break, George decided to run again,
mounting a sticker campaign against candidate Louis Cornacchioli. He won the race and the next three terms.
Those years
were full of ferment, as selectmen oversaw ▬ or
instituted ▬ leadership changes throughout town
departments. There were also profound
disagreements with and among the selectboard.
“Things kept coming
up and I kept feeling I had to see them through,” George says. “There was always something with the fire
department or police or DPW. We brought in
a lot of new blood, although [Attilio] Alinovi and I had a major disagreement
over the DPW. Looking back though, I think he’s one of the best selectmen this
town ever had.”
George is the
only one of the three brothers to have married.
He and his wife Dorene (who also served a stint on the local school
committee) have three children ▬ daughter Kelly lives in a family
house across the street from her Uncle John, but her brothers have not remained
in town.
Dirk, the
eldest, is an architect living in Maryland and Glen, the youngest, is making
his way back from the West Coast after a two year stint as a Jesuit Volunteer
in Micronesia. “All three of them like
the Washington and Maryland area,” George says. “They met each other there for
the Fourth of July.”
Could it be the
end of an era in Rutland? George doesn’t answer that question. He’s on the edge of retirement from Anna
Maria, but when asked if he would consider living elsewhere, George’s
conversation turns to needful chores, like painting his house and fixing the
stairs.
