Well, Well, Well! Many Older Homes Still Have Them

By Dottie Evans

Ding, dong, bell, pussy’s in the well!

Who put her in? Little Tommy Green.

Who pulled her out? Little Johnny Stout.

What a naughty thing was that

To try to drown poor pussy cat.

Which never did him any harm,

But killed the mice in his father’s barn.

––Mother Goose nursery rhyme

No doubt, this schoolyard nursery rhyme was a good jingle for singing while jumping rope. It has just the sort of improving, moralistic message that we imagine 19th Century schoolmarms would have recommended for their young charges.

Nearly every family had a well in those days, and it would be interesting to know exactly how many Newtown homes still have them –– those picturesque, peak-roofed icons of early American life. Wells were once as familiar to the domestic landscape as barns for livestock or fencerows to keep in the grazing cows.

Once we start looking around, we can find wells decorating the lawns of many Newtown homes that were built before there were such things as electricity, private water companies, or town sewer lines.

Proximity to fresh water must have been the first thing an early homesteader worried about when he was deciding where to build his house. And even if there were a stream nearby, there was no guarantee that a neighbor’s cows pastured upstream might not muddy the waters.

 Even if pollution were not an issue, hauling water from streamside back to one’s kitchen several times a day was not only inconvenient and time-consuming, it was extremely hard work. Sooner or later, the early settlers had to get down to the business of digging wells –– and what a business it was. The following excerpt from “Digging A Well By Hand” by Al Durtschi, written for the Internet site waltonfeed.com, describes the arduous process.

When a homeowner wanted a well 150 years ago, he dug it by hand. The space required for digging required that the diameter of the well be quite large –– at least three feet in diameter –– so the well digger would have room to maneuver with his pick, a short handled shovel and a six-foot heavy steel bar. Often digging the well was a two-man job, with the second person raising the bucket full of dirt and dumping it, then lowering it down to the digger. He also lowered bricks, stones or boards used to line the well to keep it from collapsing.

In those days, having a working well was almost a luxury as well as a necessity. Whether a bucket on the end of a rope was pulled up by hand or by a windlass under a small roof, or whether a team of oxen raised the buckets, or whether an iron-handled well pump was installed later, the methods of raising fresh well water were numerous and often ingenious.

Keeping the family well clean was a top priority, as Mr Durtschi points out.

The top of the well was covered with boards to prevent children, pets and foreign debris from falling in the well. At least once a year, someone had to go down into the well and clean it out. The wind blew leaves, insects and everything imaginable down into the well. Unless the water level was too far down, mice, frogs and snakes could smell the water and fall in it.

Usually one of the children got saddled with the job of cleaning off the inside boards or rocks, removing algae, scum, moss, and scrubbing the slimy inner walls near water level, which could have been as far down as 25 or more feet.

Sometimes, the old wells doubled as refrigerators, as housewives lowered their milk, cream or butter down the cool shaft to keep it from spoiling.

Newtown Town Historian Dan Cruson commented recently about an old well that was found during excavations carried on in the 1980s behind the Matthew Curtis House at 55 Main Street. The historic house was built in 1750 and is owned by the Newtown Historical Society.

Though no one is certain when this well was dug, Mr Cruson said there is evidence of it still being used in 1916.

“It was old-fashioned and rustic. We have a picture of it hanging in the old kitchen,” he said.

“When digging in the back yard, they came upon some rocks found in a circular stone area that was really wide, maybe three feet in diameter. They must have gone down 30 feet to get at the water. You could tell where the well was dug, because the back-fill was blue gray stone as opposed to the brown clay of the general area. They started way out and angled down to the center at the bottom.

“The only reason we found it was because we were using a metal detector, and when the buzzer went off, we found they’d left an iron ring in the ground that was part of the old well pump. [The metal detector] lit up like a Christmas tree,” Mr Cruson recalled.

In general, Newtown homeowners built their wells in their backyards, Mr Cruson said, “because this was more convenient to the kitchen.”

Even though most of Newtown’s proudly preserved hand-dug stone wells are no longer operable, they are a symbol of the town’s rural past and they attest to the relative antiquity of the adjacent structures.

Indeed, having a picturesque old well standing in one’s front or back yard is still something to be proud of. But the next time we turn on the hot water faucet from inside a heated bathroom, we might give a thought –– and a nod of respect –– to those early well diggers.

And say a silent thank-you because those days have gone by.