Corey, Edith

Interview date: 2014-11-24

Interview date: 1998-10-02, at her Main Street home.

TimeTopic – Corey, Edith, 1998-10-02
00:00 Nathan Corey came to Brookline in about 1880. He lived at the “Inncroft” house on Main Street. He had a son Wilkes, who had a son Charles. Charles had two sons, Herbert and Walter. Herbert was Edith’s grandfather. He had a son Harry (her father) and a daughter (Eva). Harry married a woman by the name Shattuck from Pepperell. Eva married a man named Horace Jackson. They had three kids, one of whom died. They have lost touch with that part of the family. Harry had Helen, who married Ralph Dwyer from Merrimack and who formerly lived in South Lyndeborough; Bernice married John Towne and lived in Mont Vernon; Clarence married Ann Tasker. His two other children were Irwin and Edith. Edith remembers the sounds of the train when she was young. She remembers when they took up the tracks in 1936. Her home on Main Street is on the site of her father’s grain store
05:00 The ice house burned in about 1935. She was about 7. She saw the flames. Her parents did not let her chase fires, so she saw the place the next day
06:00 Alpha Hall said that the sky was red and it was raining embers
06:30 She remembers the Townsend forest fire
06:45 Florence Barnaby was afraid of fires. She would always put hers out when she left home. Edith remembers Florence as pleasant. She rode her bike everywhere. She would go to Pepperell. Elsie Fessenden would sometimes ride with her. Florence would ride to the snack bar for lunch. She worked in Ayer packing apples. She was a very strong woman
08:30 Edith went to school from 1st to 5th grade in the Milford Street School and from 6th to 8th at Daniels Academy. Her teacher at Daniels Academy was Alice Ouellette. Ms. Ouellette left when Edith was in the 8th grade and they had the first man teacher in town, Mr. Lemieux, to replace her. After Daniels Academy, she went to Milford High School
09:30 She does not remember anything about the meetinghouse fire. At the Milford Street School, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades were in one room, the 4th, 5th and 6th were in another room.
10:00 There were two teachers. Edith’s was the biggest class to graduate, 18. She lists her fellow pupils
11:00 Hazel Corey studied family history. Edith does not really know much about it
12:00 Hazel’s maiden name was Taylor. She is from Milford
13:40 There was a livery stable by what is now the Cooks’ across the brook from the Village Store
16:30 She remembers that a row of trees came down across the road in the 1936 hurricane
19:00 There was a granite quarry on Milford Street across from Austin Road on Bedders
19:40 She understands that the granite was hauled by wagons to the railroad station
20:20 There was another quarry by the ski tow where they cut pink granite
21:00 There was another quarry on the way to Milford and went across from Chrysanthi’s Restaurant on Route 13
22:15 The inns in town included the Elmwood Inn
22:30 By Larry Searles’s house, there was a boarding house and a pool room
23:00 There was a boarding house in the alley where Norman Homoleski lives
23:20 Some of the ice workers lived in local homes. One of them was that of Guy Campo. She remembered a story when there was a flood and Guy got up on the kitchen table and refused to leave. The water was that high
25:00 Guy Campo had a penny candy store. She was not allowed to go there. There was a home that took in Ayer kids across from what is now RMMS School. There were bunkhouses out back
26:30 There was an ice cream stand by the former Geraldine Philips house (the large brick-ender on the east side of the south end of Meetinghouse Hill Road, Lock’s Ice Cream, in the mid 30s. The ice cream was made in Hollis. They built a little stand
28:20 As a child, Edith did a lot of gardening in the field behind the Corey homestead. They grew peas, beans, corn, cucumbers and sold them at the roadside
29:00 Her father was a milk carrier
29:30 They also had pigs, cows, horses, ducks. They had a large chicken house that stood nearby
30:00 They traded eggs for groceries at the store
31:00 Behind Maurice Marshall’s house on the east side of the fork of Proctor Hill Road and South Main Street, there was a large melon field. At about age 13 or 14, Edith work at Camp Hideaway in Amherst in the kitchen. She also worked at Textron in Milford for about a year and a half. She quit to take care of her mother, who died last February
32:50 She worked at the railroad snack bar for over 30 years. It was sold in 1971. Someone named Vern bought it and ran it for a year. Then it was purchased by Alex Stewart, who did not do good business. The place failed. He took the 135 railroad pictures and sold them at an auction in Weare
34:30 She and Laurence own the snack bar
35:00 The Whitcomb snack bar began as a small place built on Route 13 across from the Potanipo Garage after Route 13 was built
35:20 The snack bar started in 1948. One day, there were 45 tractor trailers parked. They could not go on Sundays in MA until 8:00 p.m. They were headed to New York City
37:00 She speaks of the successive owners of the ski hill
38:00 The cars of the skiers used to be parked up and down Bond Street and Steam Mill Hill. It made for big business on Saturdays and Sundays. “Things have a way of just passing by.”
40:00 There was a beach where the locals swam beyond the camp, but most people were too busy
41:00 Referring to her family: “We were just hardworking people. We kept to ourselves”
43:00 Her father was born in the next door to hers
43:30 The next house to the south was that of Charles Corey
Snack Shop Moving Invoice