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Life in the Camp Russell Herman: Well, I lived in one tent the first winter we was up there, Fred Turndrick lived in the big tent. His whole family was up there and Squires and his wife lived in a tent. There’s was eh… Squires was 12’ x 24’ and I think that Turndrick’s was bigger than that one. It was up on the side hill there? It was on the side of the hill on the right hand side with the brook going up, a little brook come right down by the boarding house and across the road just below by the barn and it went out onto the sawdust pile and come on down through. And Andrew Jackson and his wife lived in a camp, the first camp going up there before you get to the mill, a little ways from the mill. And that was a big, I think it was12’ x 24’, Andrew Jackson’s camp. And, they had three small camps, 8’ x 12’. Phil Gradly lived in there with his old team up there ________ and Ralph Chase, he lived in one. I think Phil and Ralph lived together, same camp. Some of the other teamsters they boarded in the boarding house. Bella Collins and Bill Murphy run the boarding house. They used to move down to the village every spring after they broke up up there but they lived in the Gibbson block also down there. They eh… last going off, the last two years they didn’t move down to the street at all, they stayed right up there in the boarding house. And eh…I don’t know, they seemed like they weren’t getting along too good for the last few years and eh… an old fella from Winchester there got running around with her and old Murphy didn’t like that. So eh… they was out, this old fella had a car, an old ford I think it was and they was out one Sunday and they drove back and she was huggin’ him up in the car and she says to Bill, she says, “How do you like that Bill? How’s it look Bill?” So, Bill didn’t like that so, then there was an old lady that was staying up there also, I forget her name, but anyway…they went to bed and there was fighting back and forth. Well, the other old lady, she was sleeping upstairs. She hollered down to them, she says, “For God’s sake you fellas go to sleep so somebody else can get rest.” So eh…they kept going through it and she got up to go out to call up old Casey Jones, that’s the fella she was hanging around with. We called him Casey Jones, I don’t know…but anyway, By God, when she come out her bedroom door, he shot her with a shot gun and that old lady upstairs come down. Well then, he took off down around the mill. The old lady got up and put her in a bed and called up Bolton and Bolton got the doctor and they drove up there. She died not too long after he shot her. So, old Bill tried to cut his throat but he had a razor with some awful nicks in it and he didn’t do a very good job. So he come in after the Squires saw that his throat, his neck was bleeding and he was lying in the sawdust pile and he had sawdust in it and oh my, so Bolton took him to Keene up to the hospital and he didn’t live too long up there. He died. |
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