GROWING UP IN HARWINTON
ON HARMONY HILL ROAD
By
Frances (DRAKE) LAWRENCE
(Continued)

stone wall. A long driveway from South Road led you to the Peckham home. The choir sang mostly for Sunday School and were dressed in robes and marched into the church just like the Senior Choir did for the church service itself. On special occasions (Easter and Christmas for example) both the Junior and Senior Choirs sang at church services. I do not remember who else sang in the Junior Choir with me. Perhaps some of the following: Bea Kaznay, the Poole girls, the Easton Twins, Mary Douglas, Edwin Kilner, Sidney Swenson. I hope someone reading this will be able to let me know exactly who I sang with. I'm guessing, but I think there were probably at least ten or twelve of us. In the summer, the Church ran Summer School classes. I was an assistant for the kindergartners. My superior was, I believe, either Ethel Fenn or her sister Vera, but my memory on that score, shall we say, is hazy. Mostly we played games with the children. At one time I played the organ for the Summer School services, and for Sunday School when I was older. The Reverend LeRoy Birchall was pastor when I joined the church. He was followed by the Reverend Guthrie Swartz who was pastor at the time the church burned to the ground in 1949. The only part of the church saved was the bell which was hung in the steeple of the new church when it was built.
I also belonged to the Junior League which met on Sunday evenings in the parsonage on South Road next to the old Town Hall. The church itself was on Center Hill on the corner of North Road and opposite the small town green on South Road. Where the church's present day parking lot is located there was a stone chapel with magnificent woodwork and beautiful stained glass windows inside. The chapel was donated to the church by Collis P. Huntington in memory of his mother. Strawberry festivals were always held in the chapel as well as Sunday school and other functions. I'm not sure, but I don't think the chapel was ever heated and our use of the building restricted to warmer weather.
Some people about my age who belonged to the church were: Marilyn and Judy Poole who lived in the center next to the old town hall, north side; Bea Kaznay and her brother Andrew who lived on Whetstone Road; Louise and Virginia Easton (twins) who lived on the corner of South Road and Center Hill in their grandmother's (Mrs. Dennett) home with their mother and brother Danny; Dick and Roger Plaskett who lived on South Road; Robert and Roberta Sibley (twins) who lived over the Center Hill Store; Sidney Swenson who lived further up Center Hill across from the old black smith shop; Edwin Kilner from Locust Road (lived in the old Schibi house); and Cal (Brother) Smith from Harmony Hill Road.
There were numerous opportunities to meet all the young people of Harwinton, even though we all attended different schools. Each school held grades one through eight. I went to Locust Road School for six years, and unless it was raining I walked. In the summer one of Camps' bulls would be tied out very near the road causing me great anxiety as I tried to walk by the bull without him noticing me. Locust Road School closed and I was then bussed to the 4-Corner School. Bob Reynolds from across the street was my bus driver and he drove us in a station wagon. There were also Center School, Clearview School, Campville and Orchard Hill Road School. Previously, there were other schools, but I think by

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