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10/19/10 |
       
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I have many newspaper articles, obituaries, wedding announcements, stories and photo's to add. You will find all the links here.
One of the most notables is Orlando was known as the hermit of Connecticut
Hill, Newfield, NY. He used to walk to Ithaca and back for groceries. I hear
there was an article in the Ithaca Journal on May 10, 1931 and states he was
80 years old. Here is the article, I have retyped the article so it is much easier for everyone to read.
In Lone Life in One-room Cabin
Hermit and Lonely Home
Orlando Teeter, 80, Remembers When Woods Covered Entire Section
ITHACA – They call him the hermit of Connecticut hill, but he doesn’t deserve it. Hermits in story books are old men who have lived alone in a cabin so long that they have lost all love of mankind. Orlando Teeter is old enough as years are counted to qualify as a hermit. He lives alone in a tiny one-room cabin that snuggles close in to the protecting side of Connecticut hill. He has been a bachelor all of his four-score years, But he doesn’t hate mankind. Nor is he unwilling to pass a friendly hour gossiping on him cabin step of those ripe old days when wolves howled nightly from the neighboring hills. The little dirt road that winds south from Selberling settlement isn’t much more than the path it was in the early days and visitors are comparatively few. Unless they knew right where to look for it, beneath a few great pines on the hillside, the cabin might easily be passed by unseen.
Paring Potatoes
The hermit was paring potatoes in the cabin when his visitors arrived. There was a big pan of the ‘taters already finished, but Orlan’ as his neighbors call him, doesn’t like paring potatoes any more than other bachelors, and when he gets down to the job he goes in for it in a big way-enough for a week, he explained, apologetically. His one-room floor plan is a model of efficiency, one which no home economics expert could have planned better to make steps. From any given spot in the room Orlan’ can set his modest table, replenish his ancient wood burner, make up his bunk or if tired lie upon’it or even feed his chickens, without taking more than two steps. He likes things handy and there isn’t any woman about to mind if the odd paring falls under foot. The hermit: consented to being interviewed on the porch of his little cabin. He dried his hands a ???? hermit and ran an explorative hand over a week’s stubble of beard when a picture was suggested, and he donned a heavy cap which he turned to a rakish angle when he looked at the camera.
Cuts 100 Fence Posts
In his prime Orlando Teeter stood six feet two inches in his bare feet and weighted 190 pounds without an ounce of fat. “Not many took him down,” as he expressed it. He went to work when he was 7 years old and “teamed it to town when too small to unload.” And the other day, only 73 years late, he went out and cut himself 100 white chestnut fence posts! All of his 80 years Orlan’ has lived within a few miles of his cabin. He has himself seen the change that has come over the hills: forests and game disappear and broad fields replace the woods. But even his early childhood was tame compared to what his father, George Teeter, who lived to be 80 and his grandfather who lived to be 96, experienced.
Grandfather a Patriot
His grandfather fought at Bunker Hill and on the plains of Abraham, and later in the war of 1812. He came to Connecticut hill soon after the first settlers, ????, arrived from Hendricks. His maternal grand-mother shoots Indians from her cabin near what is now Rogues Harbor. As Orlan” reminisced it was easy for his visitors to picture the neighboring hills those lonely winters, the blue smoke spiraling like sentinel fires from only a few white men’s cabins, and wolves howling in the moonlight from the crest of the ridges. He told of how his Grandfather Andrew’s sheep had to be yarded at night and how when they were herded in a little late or after twilight the wolves would be snapping at the stragglers and how sulphur was burned on an iron ladle so the fumes would keep them away. Pointing to a distant hill, Orlan’ recalled one story his grandmother told him when he was a boy which he has never forgotten.
Wolves Thick Then
“Wolves was that thick you could hear them howl all night,” Orlan’ related. “I remember my grandmother told the fellow’s name. He had been butchering for some people that lived way over there on that hill where you can see that red barn-way across that valley. It came night and they told this man he’d better stay the night, but he wouldn’t. He left to go home with only that butcher knife in his hand. “Next morning all they could find of him was a few locks of his hair and the butcher knife. But in the circle lay five dead wolves. He told of his grandmother’s uncle an early circuit rider, who returned late many a night with the pack snapping at his heels.
Sees Deer Return
Mr. Teeter is interested keenly in the conservation work the state is doing on the new game sanctuary on Connecticut hill. He has seen the deer stage an unbelievable comeback, until now the shy creatures are quite often seen thereabouts: and now he predicts that bear will return also. The hermit of Connecticut hill is eligible for old age pension relief and the county welfare officers have sounded him out on the subject, but so far they have been unable to persuade him to leave his cabin and Orlan’ plans to go on hermit-ting indefinitely, pausing whatever visitors come his way to spin a yarn of the old days and then goes back cheerfully to his one-room shack and the potato paring.
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