1867 Town Maps
1867 Map of Ashland -- Showing the home sites of William & Emily (Barhight) Howard and Garwood & Elenanor (Cargill) Tuttle
and present photos of these areas.
1867 Map of Hensonville, Windham -- Showing the 1867 home site of George and Caroline Drum and present photos
of the general area
1867 Map of Windham -- Showing the home site of Asa & Cynthia (Wade) Law and present photos of this area.
Drum Family Contents Page Law Family Contents Page Tuttle Family Contents Page Howard Family Contents Page
~ About these pages ~
Dad, Mom, Terry, Anita and I took a trip in October of 2007 to Windham and Ashland, New York. The foliage was just about at pique while we were there, and the
backdrop of the Catskill Mountains further added to the beauty. Windham and Ashland are small, quaint little towns without any hustle and bustle. There is one small grocery store in neighboring Prattsville, and a smaller market in Windham itself, but the closest "big" retail stores are in Catskill, about 30 miles away.
Tourism is a big industry, especially in the winter, when skiers can swish down the slopes of Windham Mountain. There is no shortage of places to stay. Bed and Breakfasts are everywhere, all of them quite charming. There are no chain hotels, only mom and pop places and several inns within old homes and historic houses.
It is against this backdrop that we explored Ashland and Windham, seeking out and finding more information to further my genealogical family file. We visited cemeteries, the Town Halls to pour through records and also tried to track down home sites, following the well details maps of 1867 listing where families lived
at that time. In the 140 years since those maps were made, the roads have not changed. I found this amazing. We were able to track the 1867 map right along with the current, Microsoft Streets & Trips maps, thus able to locate most of the home sites we were looking for. Of course, the roads maybe had not changed, but homes had.
In some cases, there was no house, just the property. In other cases, a home was there, but was it the same one that our ancestors had lived in a century and a half ago? With no way to really know, I took pictures of these sites and now have included them in along with the 1867 maps. Since the trip, I have written letters to the current owners of these homes trying to determine when they were built and if they knew any of the history of the home. I've heard back from one person, the current owner of the home on Maplecrest Rd, Route 40, in Windham, near Maplecrest, that was once owned by Romaine W. Law about 1925, and where Papa once lived. The present
owner, who resides on Long Island, said that the home might have been at one time an inn of some kind as there are outlines of numbers above the inner doorways. Since Maplecrest was once a weekend hot spot getaway for residents of New York City and Long Island, it could stand to reason that the homeowner at that time may have rented out rooms. This particular home, along with a picture of Papa (Arthur R. Law) at age 14 in 1927, can be seen in the Law Christian Photo Album.