This was known to my grandfather as the Merchant place, a working farm with a million dollar view of Pownal Valley. Today it still has the view, and is a merchant place of a different kind.
The Merchant or Marchant family of Pownal can be traced back to John and Prudence (Stoddard) Marchant of Connecticut. John served in the Revolution for CT but moved with his family to Dutchess Co NY. Many of the old families of Pownal shared a similar migration pattern. Their son Stoddard Merchant moved to Pownal where he died at the age of 47 in 1828. The story of this farm as a Merchant place probably begins with Stoddard's son Homer Merchant (1806-1888) and his wife Phebe Thompson, who, as a Barber descendant, was a relative of my family.
My grandfather would have known Homer and Phebe, contemporaries of his grandparents. He probably helped here during thrashing season when he was a young man, in the later 1880s. It was customary in those days for neighbors to help each other, especially during the busiest times on the farms, haying, threshing, harvest. The men and some women would band together to get the work done, efficiently, and then on to the next farm The wives were responsible for a big dinner for the crew when they were at their farms They would make their best meal, which I was told, was usually chicken fricasee As good as it was, the men would get tired of it every day during that busy season. But if they complained it was quietly, at home, where they told their wives they made the best dinner.
Homer Merchant outlived his son Edgar, so the farm passed to his grandson Arthur. Arthur also passed in mid life, leaving the place to his son Edgar Merchant, whose mother was an Armstrong. These were all household names in my family, and the Merchant place was one of the annual stops my grandfather would make, working diligently for that chicken dinner It was a hard life for farmers in those days before mechanization. My grandfather died in his late 60s as a consequence of breathing in all that hay dust Perhaps that was the problem for some of the Merchant men, too. Edgar was younger than my grandfather, and the story goes that after the war he relied on one of his younger Armstrong relatives to help him with the farm He had no children, so when his health failed, the farm went into the Armstrong family, where it remains today
Enjoy the view here. There is parking. Admire the moose, too.
As this is a privately owned place of business it is requested that it only be visited during daylight hours.
This has been placed with permission of Howard Armstrong, owner.
FTF honors go to fkrol