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Showing posts from May, 2010

The first DeJoux House Garden Party

This may be a very foolish thing to do as we have no house and no garden to speak of. However, many people have expressed an interest in seeing the house in the "before" state. Our uber-friend Cindy Gallop will be staying with us so it seemed like a good idea since the weather will be glorious and the brambles are so beautiful now. We decided to host a small gathering of local friends and some of our new neighbors for a drink by the pond. No kitchen so we can only serve sandwiches. The spring water is perfect for chilling wine and the toilet is still plumbed in (although you have to use a bucket to flush!). If any of our DeJouxHouse.com friends are in the area from 4.00 -6.30pm on Sunday 30th May, please feel free to pop buy. (All we ask is that you bring some wine to make sure we don't run out). See you in the field. Daniel and William UPDATE: Photos on facebook CLICK HERE

Lawn mower frenzy

Wow, what a wonderful weekend. No history lessons this week. Far too much to do at the house to be bothered with the past. The 'here and now' is what we were dealing with this week and the 'here and now' is growing fast. Thanks to the wonderful generosity of Daniel's parents, Janet and Jack, I was given a gift card for Lowes . This weekend we used it to buy ourselves a John Deer lawn mower. The grass around the house was getting a bit out of hand, as was the poison ivy. Our intent was to just do the front lawn but John Deer got the better of me. The mower was tough as hell and took no prisoners. We could raise the blade to such a high level and even mow the field out the back. (NB. It was a push mower, not the ride on variety...no easy task!!!) You might remember Bernie the brush hog man who cleared the impenetrable 8-10 feet of brambles and brush from the back field. Since then, we really haven't done much out there. I removed all the wood and ...

Still one missing link

I decided it was time to give up on hearsay and word of mouth and clarify once and for all the provenance of DeJoux House. The goal here is to review the facts as we know them, based on real documents that we have seen or have copies of. The only way to do this is to work backwards from the documents that we have. The contract of sale and the legal deeds of 374 Springtown Road list previous owners back to Jesse and Maria Elting who sold the house to Hiram W. Minard in 1872. The 1875 map of Sprintown also shows the property as belonging to H. Minard. Right on the border of Rosendale, opposite the church and the school. Other sales listed in this document are: George and Jeanne Fiorentino to Arthur and Lona B. Jorgensen in 1941 Arthur and Lona B. Jorgensen to Jane Little in 1960 Jane Little to Russell Gilmore and June Finer in 1984 (and then to us in 2009)... So, we know this was the Hiram Minard farm in 1872 and before that belonged to Jesse and Maria Elting. We have confirmed t...

Weekend of history

This weekend was full of adventure. It's late and we just got back but I want to capture it all before I go to work tomorrow and forget it. First, we arrived at the house and were welcomed by the Parise family. They had been reading the blog and heard that our house was not the haunted house they had been led to believe it was. It was great to see them and Laura gave us a DVD of the pictures she took. I can't post them all here but I have picked out some of the best: We then went on a tour of Huguenot Street and met Eric Roth the Executive Director who showed us around the Historic Houses...(that will have to be a post another time)...and he took us into the Archive to see the Elegy of Maria Deyo. This was the original published version of the poem and was incredibly delicate. We took photos and left. We had read about a talk on Springtown Road ("The other Huguenot street") that evening and although we had already had our fill of history, we pushed ourselves ...

Murder investigations

I have found a record of the murders that clearly identify the deaths to be Maria Terwilliger Hofman Deyo, wife of Josiah Deyo. Here in another document found at the Library of Congress. While the document states the 6th and the records of death state the 13th, this is clearly the same event. (I must say I love the image at the top of this piece that shows the 4 different sized coffins). HOR??D MURDER and SUICIDE. A Narrative of one of the most Shocking and Logical Catastrophes, that ever blackened the Catalogue of human events, which happened the 6th September, 1801, at a place called Paliz 14 miles from Poughkeepsie, State of New-York. THE wife of Mr. Josiah Deo a woman of exemplary character as to piety, modesty and sensibility, rose in the morning and went about the ordinary business of her family, getting breakfast, &c with all her apparent cheerfulness and composure. After breakfast, she con??ved to send out all her family, excepting three Children, which she had desi...

The Deyo family tree - courtesy of my brother

My brother, inspired by the story of our house, sent a family tree of the Deyo family.

Maria Deyo - a chilling tale

We arrived at the house this weekend to meet with the contractors who had poured concrete in the basement on Friday. When we arrived we found a family standing in front of the house taking pictures. Being the friendly types we are, we went over to chat. They told us they were on a haunted house tour and were looking at the house because their daughter had been talking about the ghost at our house for the last couple of days. She had bought a book called "Spooky Hudson Valley" and in it was the story of Maria Deyo and a tragic tale of a mother killing all three children and then killing herself. The family were wonderful and excited to be shown the house. They showed us the book and at the beginning of the story was a picture of our house. The book went on to say that Maria sent the men to the fields and then she slit her daughter's throat and the throat of her other two children...then killed herself. All this happened on September 13 th 1801. There was...