International studio (56.1915)

An Old New England Home


A RENOVATED FARMSTEAD

BY PHILLIPS WARD

AN OLD NEW ENGLAND HOME
/\ BY GEORGE S. BRYAN
When the Pittsfield express reaches
Brookfield Junction, Connecticut,
there opens upon the traveller a vista of charac-
teristic and beautiful New England country.
Connecticut, geologists tell us, was in the path-
way of the continental ice; and this section of
the State wears abundant traces of that far-off
time. Through a valley averaging a mile in
width, the railway follows the Still River to
Still River station; there the Still River is re-
ceived by the Housatonic. Not far beyond the
pleasant town of New Milford, the railway
swings northwestward beside the Housatonic
stream; and northeastward extends the narrow
watershed of the West Aspetuck.
Not unknown to fame, the Aspetuck; for it has
been a fond haunt of the roving artist, and echoes
of it have reached even to the Luxembourg Gal-
lery. Several collectors and cognoscenti are
familiar with the delicate etchings for which
Walworth Stilson found inspiration along these
banks. Less than two years ago, Mr. George
Sumner, of England and Australia, purchased in
the West Aspetuck Valley—at Lower Merryall,

about four miles from New Milford—a farmstead
comprising some thirty-five acres of land and an
ancient dwelling in which his practised eye saw
many possibilities.
In the last few years the “ back-to-the-land ”
movement has most interestingly entered these
parts. By this I do not mean the kind of thing
with which Horace Greeley, on his Chappaqua
estate, added to the public stock of harmless
pleasure. I mean close-to-the-ground farm
activity. At New Milford, or within a five-mile
radius therefrom, farms have been taken up by
Mr. W. B. Pell, artist and man-of-affairs; Mr. C.
E. Pomeroy, one of the pioneers in the commercial
development of the English walnut; Mme. Roder-
ick, a former well-known vocal teacher of New
York; Miss P. M. Pomeroy, of the Pomeroy
Advertising Agency (New York); and others, in-
cluding Mr. Sumner.
Born in Liverpool, cosmopolitan in experience
—physician, architect, and artist, Mr. Sumner
found in the Aspetuck region a rather marked
similarity to the English countryside, especially
to the picturesque scenery of Surrey. The late
Mrs. Sumner, nee Kvsxy Draper and a sister of
Herbert Draper, R.A., was a gifted painter and
notably successful as a miniaturist. She, too,

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