In Search of Fancy Hills

In 1791 ancestors of mine, John & Jane Crozier, purchased the deed to a 36 acre farm from John Pierce Duvaul near Smithfield in Fayette County PA. The deed to this land, purchased by the Duvauls from the Commonwealth of PEnnsylvania in 1787, has been passed down through my family for the last 220 years, though we no longer own the land. This document is recorded on a heavy parchment, with tight, precise script. It was signed by the then president of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth, Benjamin Franklin.

The deed describes a property by the name of “Fancy”. The location is given relative to Georges Creek, which runs south of Smithfield in Fayette County, and a road that runs to Hyde’s ferry. The survey points marking the bounds of the property are given, using trees, rocks, posts, and other nearby farms as markers. Distances are measured out in perches (a perch is the same as a rod, or 16.5 feet).

This document was passed to me because my chosen vocation is urban planning and therefore such a document “might be of interest to me”. It was quite an honor to receive it, and I decided to accept this as a challenge and try to find out what else I could about this old property, to link the abstraction described in the document with reality.  

The first line of investigation involved finding the general region of the farm. Fayette County is in south-western Pennsylvania, on the border with Maryland. On the deed the property is placed in Springhill township, however that township was later divided to create Nicholson township. Georges Creek flows south and west from a ridge of the Laurel Highlands into the Monogehela River south of New Geneva (a small town with it’s own interesting past, involving an abortive Swiss colony and the future Secretary of the Treasury of the young United States). I’ve been unable to turn up any trace of a Hyde’s ferry, but I figured it must be either at New Geneva or along the straight, low-banked stretch of the river to the north as far as Masontown. If the farm is on the waters of Georges Creek, but south of the road, then likely the road ran north of the creek.

 

I found some old maps of Pennsylvania and Fayette county which show several roads running south-west to the river. Some have the farms of the area labeled, including one from 1853, in which I spotted “T. Crozier” near a branch of the creek. Turning to Google Maps I found that this branch was named “Crozier’s Run”. It lies in the hills just above the small town of Smithfield in Nicholson Township. [map] [photo]

I also used Ancestry.com to learn more about my relationship to John and Jane Crozier. Building on genealogy work already completed by other members of my family I found that John and Jane were my great-great-great-grandparents. Their marriage certificate from Amagh County Ireland has been uploaded to Ancestry.com. [image] At this time I do not know more about their heritage in Ireland, whether they had Scotch, Anglo, Irish, or other roots. The word crozier means the staff wielded by a bishop. The term comes from French but is used in English as well.

My line of the Croziers did not stay in Fayette County, but gradually moved north, ultimately to Warren, PA, where my father was born. However the 1801 birthplace for my great-great-grandfather, as reported on Ancestry.com, was “Fancy Hills” in Fayette County. He was a preacher and later moved north-west to Elizabeth, PA, where he is buried. Another historic map and a text on local geology both indicate that Croziers remained at the site until the 1870’s at least.

In order to find the exact location of the old property I had to find its size and shape. No overall size is listed on the deed, only the property’s survey coordinates. Based on these coordinates I’ve attempted to draw its boundaries, and compare them with existing properties in the neighborhood.

Here I began to run into dead ends. No existing property matches the boundaries I have drawn. The location indicated on the 1870 map is on a steep hillside, now forested. The property itself, at only 36 acres, was quite small, considering that this was “virgin” territory. I visited Smithfield and found no mention of the Croziers in records of the town's founding and early days or on Tombstones in the cemetery.

A few routes remain to be explored. It is likely there exist more precise maps marking property boundaries in County or library historical records. I knocked on a couple of doors in the presumed neighborhood of the farm to ask if they knew anything about the Croziers or Fancy Hills, but no one was home. I may attempt to reach these folks by mail. There may also be more information available with Nicholson Township.

I walked the roads surrounding the cluster of farms, among which I believe the old Crozier farm was located. There are several very old barns and other structures. Much of the land is forested, most of the rest is used as pasture for cattle. The hills rise abruptly up from the streambeds, and provide grand views to the east. Some of the streams nearby run orange from athracide runoff due to coal mining, but Crozier’s run does not.      

I believe I've located the farm, though the property boundaries don’t align with any existing plot as far as I can tell. The land in the immediate vicinity is rugged. Some of it is forested and has been recently logged, some is used for pasture. There are no visible structures. There's a logging road seems to follow the path of an old right-of-way that ran parallel to Crozier's Run. I followed this old over-grown road to where it opened onto a pasture. I trespassed through the property, past open fields, natural gas pumps, and then, under the electric fence twice to bypass some confrontational cows, and back down to the main road making a loop. There are several old farmhouses near there and old structures in the woods off the road. I thought I could try and contact folks to who live around here and I ended up knocking on the doors of two houses but I got no response. I've thought of mailing these people a message, to ask it they know anything about the history of this land or the Croziers of Crozier's Run, but have yet to do so.

For now that's it. It was a fun adventure to try to track down the ancestral plot, if the end was anticlimactic. After I left Smithfield I drove north to visit the more recent ancestral home of the White's, my paternal grandmother's family, south of Pittsburgh in Hickory PA. After a few days in Pittsburgh visiting an old Peace Corps friend and some site's from my dad's time in that city I rode the train to Washington DC, again passing through the green rolling hills of southwestern Pennyslvania following the smooth curves of the Youghiogheny River.

Highway 2 to Leavenworth

Today I got in the car and drove out east over the mountains. I have not been exploring nearly enough since I moved to the mainland. I have a car for christsake.

I wandered my way through the suburbs and exurbs towards highway 2, which runs from Monroe through Gold Bar and past Skykomish up to Stevens Pass, then down to Leavenworth.

It was a beautiful drive, and so much better than I-90. As I wound up towards the pass the road came up into the clouds. There were few cars at that point (after a ridiculous traffic jam in Sultan) and it was gorgeous and dreamlike.

I stopped many times while driving to get out and take a look at the scenery. I feel like I've been in Washington long enough that I must have seen it all already or some stupid idea like that, but there are so many places I haven't been, or that I need to return to.

After I went over the pass I stopped and climbed down to a little grassy spot in the pines and sat and sketched and ate my sandwich.

I need to go on hikes, go camping, go on picnics, go to hot springs. I need to plan these things myself. I need to invite people far enough in advance to that we can plan something together that can work. I need to get a tent.

I am often surprised by how wonderful May is. I spend the winter thinking about high summer, bike rides, and jumping in the sound, and fruit, and late sunsets. May this year is warm, but the plants and trees are still lush and verdant. May also means the days are still getting longer, that summer is yet to come. There is something (for me) melancholy about the way that once summer begins, the days are already getting shorter, and the shortening just accelerates the closer you get to fall. Then it all falls apart at once..
But in May, you can ride your bike, you can sail, you can sit in the greenery by the water and read your book and the days just keep getting longer.

The rest of the drive towards Leavenworth was goregous. The town itself was strange, but it does look like downtown core may have adopted some of the European culture of dense, walkable streets and 2/3 storey mixed use buildings.

I then took the 97 towards Cle Elum, which wound back up again through the Wenatchee NF, but I turned towards Ellensburg when the road split so that I could get out of the forest into the open country. I got out of the car at the top of a big hill overlooking the plain. There were enormous wind turbines, which sounded like distant airplanes at the top and on other hills to the south. The overcast clouds of the Puget Sound seemed to have been agitated by their passage over the mountains, and now both sun and showers unfolded over the plain.

I turned onto state highway 10 headed towards Cle Elum again. This was a quite two-lane blacktop winding along the Yakima River and the railroad tracks and irrigation canals that flank it. The highway ran parallel to the interstate and was so much lovelier. The sun was starting to go down in the west and was still peaking through clouds.

At Cle Elum I got on I-90 to power over the pass and back to the City, arriving just as it got dark. 280 miles logged for the day.

Why Athens is worth studying

excerpted from The City in History by Lewis Mumford
pp 165-168

[chapter 6 part 3 begins by describing Athens as a cramped, dirty, unsanitary, labyrinthine, and materially poor city]

This seems like a sorry picture for a great city, until we remember that we are dealing with a people unfettered by many other standard requirements of civilization, freed in an unusual degree from the busy routines of getting and spending: not given to guzzling and over-drinking, not making undue effort to secure comforts and luxuries, furnishings and upholstery: living and athletic, indeed abstemious life, conducting all their affairs under the open sky. Beauty was cheap and the best goods of this life, above all the city itself, were there for the asking.

For all the crudeness of the urban setting... the Greek citizen has mastered Emerson's great secret: Save on the low levels and spend on the high ones. ... The Greek citizen was poor in comforts and convenience; but he was rich in a wide variety of experiences, precisely because he had succeeded in by-passing so many of the life-defeating routines and materialistic compulsions of civilization. Partly he had done this by throwing a large share of physical burden slaves; but even more by cutting down on his own purely physical demands, and expanding the province of his own mind. If he did not see the dirt around him, it was because beauty held his eye and charmed his ear.

Not least of Athens' achievements was it's establishment of a golden mean between public and private parts of life, and with this came a large-scale transfer of authority from paid officers, in the service of the King or the Tyrant, to the shoulders of the common citizen, taking his turn in office. He not merely performed military service at call, contributing his own equipment, but he served in the assembly and the law courts, and if he did not become a contestant in one or another of the games, if he did not act in the theater of sing in the chorus, he would at least have a place, in his turn, in the great Panathenais procession. ... Work now done by executives, permanent secretaries, inspectors, and magistrates, was done by ordinary Athenians, rotating in sections of fifty.

Participation in the arts was as much a part of the citizen's activities as service on the council or in the law courts, with six thousand judges. Each spring festival brought a contest between tragic dramatists: this called for twelve new plays annually, with the participation of one hundred and eighty choral singers and dancers; while each contest in comedies demanded sixteen new plays yearly and a hundred and forty-four choral singers and dancers.... Every year something like two thousand Athenians, it has been estimated, had to memorize the words and practice the music and dance figures of a lyric or dramatic chorus. This was an intellectual discipline as well as an aesthetic experience of the highest order; and as an incidental result no small part of the audience consisted of ex-performers, expert judges and critics as well as enthralled spectators.

Thus the public life of the Athenian citizen demanded his constant attention and participation, and these activities, so far from confining him to an office or a limited quarter, took him from the temple to the council chambers, from the agora to the theater, from the gymnasium to the harbor. Not merely by cold reflection and contemplation, as the philosophers erroneously counselled, by action and participation, spurred by strong emotions, but by close observation and direct face-to-face intercourse, did these Athenians conduct their lives.

That open, perpetually varied and animated world produced a correspondingly unfettered mind. Both in the arts and in politics, Athens had largely overcome the original vices of the city: its one-man rule, its segregation of activities, its occupational narrowness, and worse, its bureaucratization- and they had done this for at least a generation without forfeiting skill or lowering the standard of excellence. For a while, city and citizens were one, and no part of life seemed to lie outside of their formative, self-molding activities. This education of the whole man... ha never been equaled in another community so large.

Between the forthright Solon, who cast off, a if it were a soiled garment, the political power he had gathered into his hands, and the devious Pericles, who used words woven out of the deeds of free men to conceal a policy of 'colonial' exploitation, enslavement, and merciless extermination- between these polar opposites there was less than the span of a century. But in that brief period Athens was as rich in citizens as no city had ever been rich before. When this period was over, buildings began to take the place of men. 

Chautauqua

The nighborhood where I live with my dad is one of a handfull of grided neighborhoods on the island. Being generous, one could say it is about 4x3 blocks rising on a bluff over Point Heyer and Tramp harbor. This neighborhood was laid down around a Chautauqua retreat center around the turn of the century. Many of the houses here are original cabins from the retreat. The foundation of this place, as a communal area for shared educational and cultural experiences can be felt in the closely knit character of the small lots and blocks. It is a uniquely walkable neighborhood for the island, and continues to benefit from what was surely the original attraction for the retreat goers, the lovely beach at Point Heyer which is today known as KVI beach.

It is a sweet neighborhood with solid bones. Over the last few months I have been working on creating something of a public art project at the corner of our property at the four-way intersection. This is the key intersection of the neighborhood for both cars and people, as it is where the two roads leading other places intersect and become the two roads the lead to the beach. Out there I've build a small bench, a directional sign-post, and a chalkboard. Periodically I update the chalkboard with tide-charts for the week, or some Walk Whitman poetry, or an announcement, or an open-ended question. I've got a cup with chalk out there now so that people can write their responses.

I sit out at the bench sometimes. It is a good place in some ways... Many people pass it walking dogs, or riding bikes. However by far most of the traffic is cars. It is awkward sitting out by the road watching people come up in noisy steel boxes and then speed away. You can't see their faces very well, you can't talk to them, they usually are headed off somewhere else in a hurry. Few people walk by, because there is no where to walk to, besides the beach.

In Paraguay, I would sit in front of my house in the evening and dar saludos to everyone who would walk by. Neighbors would be out visiting their friends, they would be buying last-minute groceries at any of the several neighborhood stores, or headed to a volleyball court for a game in the cooling evening air. I am very lucky to have friends that live at the top of the hill, three small blocks away. I walk there to visit them. There are no stores in my neighborhood today, of course. People conduct their business and friendships by car and email with people miles and miles away.

Asphalt

I spent the day driving around south King county. I had two interviews, one in the morning with the city of Burien for a cool community engagement position, and one in the afternoon for an ESL instructor position at Highline Community College. Both jobs are part time, and since they aren't close to anything, both would require a lot of driving. The Burien one is also shorter-term than I realized.

After spending the day in the boredom and mild-to-moderate frustration that accompanies operating a car in the city, coming home to Vashon is an incredible contrast. The almost absurd lushness of the vegetation on the island this time of year, the idiosyncratic layout of the homes and roads. It is not perfect, but it is better than a lot of what else is out there. Perhaps Vashon is really just a driver's paradise.

I'm finding that I'm increasingly beginning to think like a driver. This is something that I was intentionally trying to avoid. Today I made a left turn as someone was entering the crosswalk. She didn't have to jump out of the way or anything, but if I was her I would have been annoyed. Drivers have an obligation to be extra sure they have a clear path of travel, by virtue of their using huge, deadly machines to get around. When people spend too much time behind the wheel they start to see the world as just a complex gameboard of roads and other cars. The people, the life, the fabric of the city around them is forgotten. Before too long people forget that those things even matter. This is how places like Federal Way get built.

I found out this evening that I did not get in to UW's Master of Urban Planning Program this fall. I should have applied to more than one school, and I shouldn't have assumed I would get in. It wasn't much of a surprise at this point, halfway through May, but it was a disappointment. This was what I was going to be doing. This is what I told myself and anyone who would listen what I'd be doing.

I hate that I've been back a year and have almost nothing to show for myself. I hate how well my friends from peace corps, college, high school are doing. (yes, I'm also glad for them). I hate how I can't give someone any kind of an answer when they ask what I'm doing these days. I had continuing to be a financial drag on my parents this late into my adulthood.
I guess the idea now is to find some kind of full-time work and keep living with the parents and save up enough to be able to go somewhere. Maybe Colombia. Maybe China. Maybe Portland.

Making use of an empty space

It was a fascinating, raucous Vashon community meeting last night about changing the semi-legally-binding "town plan" to allow marijuana production in the central business districts of Vashon and the proposed marjiuana edibles plant in the K2 building. Many, many perspectives were expressed. 
It was very frustrating to me that, even though the distillery's violation of the current town plan was discussed at length, no one made the connection between what the distillery does and what Edipure would do. The disterillery makes intoxicating drinks, Edipure will make intoxicating foods. They are the same under the law now, except that marijuana products have much more stringent security and retail regulation. If you are opposed to marijuana processing in the K2 plant because it is so close to the schools and will send a message to kids, the distillery already does essentially the same thing. The overwhelming sentiment last night was to allow the distillery to continue operations at their current location.
As it currently stands, nobody has applied for a retail marijuana permit on the island. Therefore it won't even be possible to purchase Edipure's products here. How they could somehow increase access to marijuana for youth on the island when they will be in secure facilities or in sealed containers on trucks at all times is very hard to comprehend. If and when there is a marijuana retail location, they may choose to retail Edipure's products. They will assuredly sell sweet marijuana infused treats regardless, whether they be Edipure's products or products from off-island producers, because that is a huge part of the market for legal marijuana (see Colorado).
The degree of industrial-scale production will be less than K2 at its heyday. It will be no less aesthetically appealing than the ski-factory was. The aging K2 site is currently producing no economic activity for the island. For those with comfortable white-collar jobs on or off island, the economic life of Vashon seems secure and comfortable, but those without that security longingly look back to the days when there were jobs on Vashon actually producing things to sell elsewhere. Edipure has projected that they would employ approximately 45 people at the plant in the first stage of operations, and that up to 3 million dollars in renovation work would be available to island contractors. It seem extremely unlikely that another industry is going to come along and want to set up production on the island given the high costs of using ferries.
All the arguments raised in opposition to this project have been quite narrow and break down in the light of the larger context.
It's going to be very interesting to see what happens next.

stupid idea

You get this stupid idea that just because you've trained school teachers in a second language, just because you worked with the mayor, school district administrators, and community committee to open the first ever library in a town of 20,000 people, just because you learned an indigenous South American language to improve the outcomes of your work with the teachers and library, just because you scored in the 97th percentile on the GRE, just because you've never been arrested, used any hard drug, or been fired from a job, just because you graduated and from a good college, just because you have recommendations from successful, well-regarded, influential people, that someone would want to pay you more than minimum wage or give you a job that took advantage of more than the fact that you have a human body and are conscious.