Locating The Farmhouse

To the Editor:

We were delighted to see our property featured in the Way We Were section of your June 12 issue. This is the second time within the past six months that we’ve been so favored in this section. The last occasion was in your February 6 issue and we identified the house depicted as beings ours in a letter we sent you on February 10. You then told your readers that it was our house in the Top Of The Mountain column of the February 13 issue.

Unfortunately, as in the previous case, the caption under the photo is incorrect. The location is 8 Obtuse Road (the road can be seen as it passes to the right of the barn) about a mile north of I-84, and several of the structures shown are still standing. We own the property on both sides of the road, our home being barely visible behind the evergreen trees on the right.

The error is not your fault as you obviously got your information from the caption under the same picture that appears on page 62 of Dan Cruson’s 1997 book about Newtown. When we first spotted the mistake in his book we told Dan about it in a letter we sent him on December 9, 1998, and he replied by phone telling us that he had just driven by our property and realized that the caption was incorrect.

The letter to Dan points out changes that have occurred to the structures and general scene after the picture was taken, but since then there have been even more changes. The evergreen trees on the right side of the road are gone because lightning brought one of them down in 2005 and in falling it took the others with it. In the same year the large tree (a maple) just to the left of the evergreen by the road fell on our roof and is now gone.

As mentioned to Dan, its not possible to photograph this area from the same place the photographer stood years ago because a number of trees are now blocking the view.

Sincerely yours,

Tom & Dot Dwyer

8 Obtuse Road, Newtown                                                 June 15, 2009