The Baker Homestead: Part 3

In this bonus episode Joe tells another ghost story along with another chapter of the family history in the house on Cape Cod.

Transcript

Have you ever heard the expression, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater? It comes from a time when families had to share a tub, usually setup in a common area like the kitchen, once a week and each family member took their turn with the bathwater, typically oldest to youngest. As the baths went on they replaces some of the dirtied water with clean, warm water from  the kitchen stove. And even though they replenished it, by the time the youngest got the chance to bathe the water was probably discolored, making it easier to forget that the baby was possibly still sloshing around in the Luke warm pool you were eager to toss out. 

Now personally, I’ve never lived in a place that didn’t have indoor plumbing. Obviously camping and being deployed to Iraq would be the exceptions here. And except for those that have chosen to live without this luxury, I don’t know anyone who does. But the Homestead was built in a time before plumbing was a standardized building practice, and my aunt remembers life before this thing that we now take seemingly for granted. 

In the dark forest lies a secret, told in broken stories by those who have bore witness, a monster, a murder, a long forgotten homestead. We’re on the search for the ghosts who haunt these places, and we want you to come along. 

Welcome to tales trails and taverns, here we take an active approach to finding places that people might warn you not to go. Haunted trails, abandoned towns, old taverns where you might catch a glimpse of a long deceased patron.

So lace up your boots, grab a working flashlight, and join us as we tell the tales, hike the trails, and grab a cold pint at the local tavern.

When I was a teenager the homestead did have indoor plumbing, and a bathroom in what used to be the front hallway, which was at one point a room for housing all the children. How they fit beds and cribs in that tiny room I’ll never quite understand. But one morning when I was about sixteen I remember getting up before the sun for school. My plan of the day was to take a quick shower before anyone else was up. So I came upstairs from my room in the basement, and went into the bathroom. For some reason I walked back out of the bathroom and as I did I looked up the stairs, Now by this time Nellies trunk had moved from the back of the closet to the hall at the top of the stairs. And as I looked up the darkened staircase I saw her, it was mostly a white mist, but clearly in the shape of a person, and I knew it was her. She was coming down the stairs towards me. The light in the living room was on so I walked across to the couch, the one that faced the bottom of the stairs and the bathroom door and I sat down, and waited. The way the wall is you can only see someone standing on the first six steps or so, so I sat facing those last few steps expecting to see Nellies ghostly form descend at any second. I didn’t move from that spot until the sun came up enough to illuminate the rest of the house. 

Nellie Baker passed in June of 1945, Leaving the oldest son Royce as heir to the homestead, his younger brother having been institutionalized for having fits of rage. Grampa Roe, as I have heard him called so many times spent his entire life in the village of Santuit, Living in the house his father built. My aunt remembers him well and described him as having a gruff exterior. He liked the reputation his mother had made for herself, one not to be crossed or trifled with in any way and he aimed to keep that reputation for himself. Not only that, but he believed that what was good enough for his mother, was good enough for his family. As the years went on and technology improved, Royce held his ground on the state of the Homestead, this started to cause issues when his son Ralph, my grandfather, was raising his own family in the same home. 

My aunt was the oldest of the seven kids that Ralph raised in the Homestead, and she remembers the times of having a Saturday bath with the family, she’s told me about how they would set up the tin tub in the kitchen, chairs with towels were placed around for privacy and warmth, how they heated water on the coal stove, contrary to the old saying the babies were first, then the cleanest person, replacing some water with warm water as they went.  grandpa Roe would wear his best red shirt after his Saturday bath in preparation to go visit his girlfriend. If you remember from the last episode, his wife left, bought the house across the street and refused to get divorced. 

After Royce had a heart attack he could no longer manage climbing the stairs, so his sons family moved upstairs, finishing the three bedrooms, allowing the front hallway to become a front hallway again, instead of the kids room. As the kids got older my grandmother Harriet starting working on Ralph to get plumbing installed in the house. Royce kept insisting that they didn’t need it, he believed having a bathroom inside was dirty somehow. But kept a chamber pot in his room, explain that one to me please. 

Eventually Harriet got sick of the house not being up to the standards of other homes, having had seven children in eleven years, and eventually threatened to leave Ralph with the kids if an indoor bathroom wasn’t installed. With this looming threat, another wife ready to leave the house, Ralph hatched a plan. Knowing his father spent two weeks every year hunting in Maine, this was the perfect time. When he returned to his home he found that his son had converted the front hall into an indoor bathroom. 

Knowing that I used the same bathroom decades later, obviously it stayed, but Royce, being as stubborn as he was refused to use it, opting to keep a chamber pot in his room that he only emptied once a week. He would dump it out, douse a rag in kerosene and light it in the pot to sterilize it. The story goes that some of the grandkids were playing in the house, chasing each other around and ran into Royce’s room. There one of them knocked his chamber pot spilling it and making an awful mess. Harriet scolded him for keeping the dam thing exclaiming “it would kill you to become civilized” This would be when Royce finally got rid of the chamber pot, and in a weeks’ time he had a second heart attack that ended his life. 

I wonder sometimes if the house that Oziel built would be recognizable compared to how it looks today, so much has changed over the roughly one hundred and fifty years that the house has been there. The biggest changes coming at the hands of my father and grandfather. If I were to describe it in an architectural style I might have to say Victorian farmhouse fits best. Its quintessential New England, but not a saltbox, or cape cod, or even a colonial. But the fingerprints left by the generations of sweat equity are very apparent, if you know what your looking for when walking through it. 

If I had the resources to bring it back to life I would, maybe give the guys at this old house a call, let them pick apart each craftsman’s skill level, while enlightening them to their name, history, and which generation of my family they belonged to. For now, the house isn’t going anywhere, it’s not abandoned, although it’s not being lived in, but it’s not going to be sold off anytime soon. Time will tell what will happen to the old place. 

Thank you for joining me for part three, check back on Friday for our regular episode, it should definitely be a good one, and check back here next Tuesday, for the next bonus episode about the baker Homestead.