BRJWinter23Web - Flipbook - Page 32
Looking Back
Recollections of a Seven-Year-Old Boy
in Potersville, New Jersey
The Reminiscences of William Whitehouse
From the Collection of Dorothy Me~ler l Edited by C.G. Wolfe
worked in the foundry. One of the boarders would come home
was one year old when my mother died in 1905. I was taken
Friday evenings with a terrifying headache after suffering the
to Pottersville, New Jersey where I lived with my grandfumes of molten metal poured into the molds. I remember my
mother, my grandfather and their son Edwin until I was seven
grandma baking several loaves of bread which she would let rise
years old. After my father remarried and my step mother became
overnight and I remember too when she would select a chicken
acclimated to city life and to my two older sisters, I joined my
or two from the chicken run and execute them with an axe as a
family in Newark.
preamble to Sunday dinner.
The following resume briefly describes my impression of a
I slept in a feather bed during my stay in Pottersville, and used
young boy living in the country. That life was as dissimilar to city
a
bed
warmer in the winter (a hot brick wrapped in flannel). A
life as day is to night; but that is a different story.
commode was under each bed for use
My grandfather Rowe died suddenly
in the winter or inclement weather. It
while sitting in the living room before
was my job to empty them into a slop
the stove. I was six years old. I remem