Earlier this month, I led a hike around BNRC’s Mother Loop trail in Alford Springs as part of a series of “getting to know Alford” walks to celebrate the 250th anniversary of incorporation of the town. Along the way, I mentioned some of the history of the land, and promised to provide more information.
What follows is Part One of a lightly-edited version of a September 2017 post. When I mention things 20 or 30 years ago, you can add the 7 years that have passed since I first wrote this account. Because of the length of this tale, I have broken it into two parts. Part Two contains more information about Doctor Beebe.
I hardly know where to begin this story, because its roots stretch back a long way before my time. It centers around an old foundation, abandoned more than 100 years ago, that is now in the middle of the woods, but in its day was at the center of much activity.
I first encountered this remnant of an old homestead while horseback riding, more than 20 years ago. It is only in recent months that I have discovered it was the homesite of a Dr. Richard Beebe, and I’ve set myself on a mission to learn more about him. Some of what I’ve learned is contained in Part Two of this post. First, I will tell you how I came to be interested in this enigmatic ruin.
For the past 30 years, I have owned a house in Alford Massachusetts. In the early days, it was a part-time dwelling. When I bought the house, my primary residence was in Manhattan, where I worked for Morgan Stanley as a research analyst. After about five years, I took a job as a portfolio manager and product developer for State Street Bank, and I moved to Boston. So the Alford house was still a weekend address.
I named my property Thyme Hill, for both descriptive and sentimental reasons. The sun-drenched hillside to the south of the house was (and still is) covered with wild thyme, in keeping with the spirit of most New England lawns, which are often composed more of weeds and wildflowers than they are of grass. The sentimental connection was to another property named Thyme Hill that had been a favorite place of mine during my youth.
I grew up in Stockbridge (Alford does not border that town, but is directly south of West Stockbridge), and for a week or two of every summer, I would stay with my Aunt Belle (actually my grandaunt, as she was quick to point out, since she was my grandmother’s sister) and her husband, my Uncle John (Weiss). They had built a house in Monterey, a town to the southeast of Stockbridge, and named it Thyme Hill because of the wild thyme growing on the hillside below their house. My grandmother (and, of course, her sister) was a Bidwell, a name that had been in Monterey since 1750, when the area was part of Housatonic Township #1.
Aunt Belle had left this world before I bought the Alford property, and I am glad to have a sign at the top of my driveway to honor her and keep alive the wonderful memories I have of time spent with her and Uncle John. After living in Boston for about five years, I moved to Alford full time, having left State Street to start my own business.
Oftentimes, I teasingly refer to my place as my estate, or my farm (I keep two horses on my property), but the truth is that my holdings are tiny; a small corner carved out of a 200-acre farm, on the site of an old marble quarry. When I’m standing in my yard, however, I feel a connection with the wider world around me, looking south many miles down the Alford Valley, with a spectacular view of Mount Everett.
To the north and east are mostly woods, and to the west I have another grand view of a ridgeline atop the steeply-rising Taconic mountain range that runs on a nearly true south-to-north line, intersecting and crossing the New York state boundary line, which tilts slightly eastward as it moves north.
The story of Doctor Bebee (ah, yes, remember him? the subject of this post?), for me, is connected to the property visible behind the horses in that last picture. In Part Two of this post, I will tell some of the history of the property (and my feeling of connection to it), and also several items I discovered that relate to Doctor Beebe and the well-preserved foundation that can be seen along the Mother Loop trail.
Addendum September 2024:
Before we set off on our recent walk, I welcomed the hikers with words in the Algonkian language, to acknowledge and express gratitude to the people who lived on the land for thousands of years before Europeans arrived.