eastwickpress

by Alex Brooks

For two weeks in mid-February George has a bout of illness, with a severe pain in his head and eye.
Thursday, March 16, 1820:  Today I began to keep house by myself, separate from Father’s family.  I regulate and moved things in the house today.
March 28: Tuesday I trimmed apple trees and helped make soap.  Today Mr. Zach Chapman came and paid me $12 on a note dated 3rd of July last of $30.  I took said money and carried it to Caleb Joles, for I was owing him ten dollars and 68 cents, but said Joles refused to take it, for the money was not current, and I returned the whole 12 dol to said Chapman again.
In mid-April he begins plowing, and sows wheat and rye on the 18th.  In early May he goes travelling around the neighboring towns looking for a blacksmith to work in William’s blacksmith shop.  He finds one in Lee, Mass., who walks over to Stephentown to look things over, and they make a bargain: “We are to find said King a house and garden and shop and tools and one-half the stock and coal, and said King the other half and give William a chance to work before the fire and to continue for one year, and we are to pay said King one half that he charged in said shop in that time, in such pay as we could collect of customers.”
June 3, Saturday:  We worked on the highway.  My own assessment was two days, and Father’s seven, and Wm’s two days and Samuel’s one, and in all twelve days, and we worked five of them by taking on my team and Wm worked half a day himself but hired a hand Mr. Johnson King (the blacksmith).
I took my sheep, 23 in number, to Henry Stantons to pasture.  He agreed to pasture said sheep for 13 weeks for 4 dollars and 88 cts and to take his pay in blacksmithing.
In June George works in his corn and potato fields.  On June 13th he turns 29.
June 20 Tues.: Tonight at dark Wm and I started for Albany with a load of cider of 6 barrels.  We traveled all night.
June 21, Wednesday: This morning at eight we got in to Albany and in a short time we sold three barrels of cider and the barrels for 10 dollars 88 cts and the liquor for the other three for 7 dollars and 50 cts.
George bought salt, tea, coffee, rice, molasses, rum, gin, gingham cloth, silk and gauze for his boy’s hat, tobacco, 17 pounds of codfish. a pair of morocco shoes for his wife, steel and iron for his blacksmith shop, and some other things.
“This afternoon we came home from Albany.  We paid 75 cents for gate fee and ferrage and twelve and a half cents for drink on the road.  We got home about midnight.  On the road going we saw the ruins or the smoke of the great fire that broke out in Troy yesterday, which destroyed more than a millions property.  It took out the heart of Troy.  Said fire broke out about the middle of the day by an oven and some hay by a stove in a barn.”
Thursday, June 29:  I plowed out corn and racked off cider.  Today Mr. Tammadge came and got two barrels of cider at 2 dollars per barrel, which makes three barrels in all that he and John Harrington has had and I am to take the pay in pasturing.  On the 8th of May I took three two-year-olds and he agrees to pasture them at 8 cts per week a head and four yearlings at 4 cts per head a week.
June 30, Friday:  Today I took the single wagon and carried Father up to the foot of the mountain in Goodrich Hollow, and then we walked up the mountain and took a view of the farm that one Wm Coons of Hoosic owns, what is called the Rich farm.  We viewed it in order to buy if we could agree on the price.
Holcomb reports that he read a story in the Albany Plough Boy (newspaper) that the fire in Troy on the 20th broke out at 3 in the afternoon and raged until 9 at night, and losses were estimated at $800,000.