The Vedder Research Library

Greenville Free Academy, pre-1906

The local farmers bring in their milk to the creamery on South Street (now Carter Bridge Road) of Norton Hill in this picture of about 1900. The Bergmans have built their home around this structure

Birdseye view from Methodist Church steeple, looking west on Main Street, Norton Hill. Extensively cleared fields in background are typical of upstate agricultural NY in late 1800s.

Isaac VerPlanck and son John I pose in front of the wagon shop about 1907 opposite today’s Kilcar on Rt. 81, Norton Hill. John I managed the general store in this building from 1922-1963; he then managed the addition, a one-story appliance and furniture store from 1963-1982. The block building, much enlarged, is run as a machine shop by Siemag; the old wagon shop/store was torn down about 1970.

A mainstay in Norton Hill, Peter R. Stevens’ general store, earlier run by L.H. Powell in the 1930’s, is today used by Liberti’s Pizza. The feed store entrance is on the right. The Methodist Church, background, still remains but the dirt road and wooden bridge have made room for “progress”.

As the blacksmith business waned, Harry Yeomans took on the growing automotive business. Harry Yeomans and Wilbur Cornell stand in front of a fledgling Yeoman’s Garage, once the site of Meddaugh’s blacksmith shop. The concrete block building built in 1933-34 that replaced this early garage still houses the car sales and repair business in the Yeomans name on Main Street in Norton Hill.

The aerial of Norton Hill shows Rt. 81 slicing the picture in half. On the lower right is the Methodist Church; upper right, GNH Lumber Yard anchors the western end of town as it has done since 1938. Side roads, from bottom to top are: Carter Bridge Road, North Road, New Ridge Road.

In the tradition of blacksmith, A.C. Yeomans (1872), Harry “Junior” Yeomans poses beside his tools of the trade in his service and sales building, Yeomans Garage, on Main Street, Norton Hill. Junior has worked in his Chevrolet dealership of 60 years since 1935; his father built the block building in the 1930s.

Located on the corner of Rt. 81 and Carter Bridge Road in Norton Hill, this building has seen many uses. Noted on the 1867 map, this structure has served as a post office, meat market, store, and skimming station, as well as private home. In the 1950’s, Harold and Edith Edmunds opened a popular restaurant, the Chatterbox, which in turn was operated by Howard and Katherine Ingram from 1961-1966

The family of John and Antoinette Gardner poses just before the turn of the century in front of their house in Norton Hill, on the east corner of today’s Route 81 and North Road. The house passed to daughter Vera Ostrander; in 1936, Erwin and Wilhelmina Yeomans bought the house.

John I. VerPlanck posed in 1969 in front of what was one of the area’s best known general stores. His father Isaac had operated a carriage making store (see July 1992) and when he died in 1912, Isaac’s brother-in-law Albert Bell continued for ten years. John I. took over the business in 1922, still dealing with wagons and sleighs but gradually adding a soda fountain, cigarettes, groceries, hardware and clothing. John’s son Jack worked at his father’s store from 1956 until 1982. A growing meat market supplied many of the area resorts. The store saw its prime from the 1940s until early 1960s. It was torn down the same month that this picture was taken, and was replaced by a structure that became an appliance showroom, with another addition in 1982 that carried furniture and floor covering. Today, the site is occupied by Siemag (inset).

Stanley Ingalls founded GNH, a lumber & sawmill & hardware business, in 1937 and it still anchors the western part of Norton Hill. Stanley’s son Randall (Buddy) joined the business in 1940 and designed the current office in 1953; the upper story (see inset) was built ten years later. Stanley’s second son Walter Ingalls joined the business in 1950, Buddy’s son Stanley joined in 1968, and Walter’s son Kevin in 1973. Many will remember the slab and sawdust piles of the 1960s and 1970s, and a sawmill on Old Plank Road in the early 1970s. This business was a continuation of the lumbering business that Truman Ingalls, father of Stanley, did in the area from about 1915 until the early 1930.

The Truman Ingalls Reunion of 1884 at the Lorenzo Hunt residence in Norton Hill (today’s Elliot house, next to the Methodist Church) drew young and old to a tradition that endures even today. An annual event since 1925, except for the four WWII years, the 71st Ingalls Reunion will be celebrated in 1999.

Summer in the 1940s met hoisting horse-drawn loose hay into the hay mow on the Stanton-Brown farm on the corner of Old Plank Road and Carter Bridge Road in Norton Hill. Frank Brown, on ground, supervises: l–r George Palmer, son Lee Brown, and two boarders. Lee’s grandmother, Francis Smith Stanton (or Frankie, as she was affectionately called), started taking in boarders in 1901, naming her boarding house Mountain View Farm and then Balsam Shade Retreat. Later, the name would change to Stanton-Brown. Frankie’s children Omar Stanton and Cora Stanton (she married first Burton Winnie and then Frank Brown, and raised four sons) worked the farm and boarding house, a combination that became an economic mainstay in the area throughout the mid-20th century.

In 1906, the students of District #1, Norton Hill pose for this picture. Bottom: Raymond Ingalls, Frank Hallenbeck, Clarence Ingalls, Stanley Ingalls, Niles VanAuken, Ray Hunt, Burdette Bear, Robert Francis, Perry Stevens; 2nd: Grace VerPlanck, Helen Hallenbeck (behind Grace), Gladys Simpson, Cora Stanton, Hattie Gifford, Bertie Farley, Elgirtha Ingalls, Ruth Ingalls, Helen Tripp, Harold Bell, Lois Tripp, Jane? Francis; 3rd: Earl VanAuken, Merritt Francis, William Hall – teacher, Grace Bell (front of teacher), Clara Tryon, Agnes Baker, Eleanor Goff (front of Baker), Phyllis Simpson, Bertha Davis, Floyd Tryon, Lloyd Tryon, John Searles; 5th (back row of five girls): Mildred Hallenbeck, Vera Gardner, Carrie Ingalls, Bertha Ingalls, Edna Davis; top Mrs. Wm. Hull, Minnie Davis; right rear: Truant Officer Joseph Alverson.

The seventy-fifth annual Ingalls Reunion, to be held in 2003, celebrates the lives of the descendants of Jacob Ingalls who arrived in this area in 1793. The first reunion found 88 attendees braving a near blizzard on October 10, 1925, and the reunion tradition has continued except for the four WWII years. This photo, taken at the yard of the Stevens/Elliott house next to the Methodist Church on Rt 81, Norton Hill, memorializes the 1931 reunion which, according to the invitation, met at the public hall. Local surnames, in addition to Ingalls, include Stevens, Rugg, Gordon, Gardiner, Gardner, Mabie, Parks, Elliott, Smith, Goff, Winans, VerPlanck, Story, Hunt, Ostrander, Hannay, Adams, Irish, Williams, Dedie, Jennings, Cook, Ellis, McAneny and more.

Claribel Gardiner’s sketch of Norton Hill shown on the cover was one of the several she drew for the 1976 Bicentennial Calendar

When Main Street (Rt. 81), Norton Hill was a less traveled thoroughfare, an occasional cattle drive marched by. The building shown served Norton Hill as its school house until the centralization of the Greenville Central school District in 1930 and the new central building (the current elementary building) was utilized in 1932. Currently this building is connected to, and serves, the Norton Hill-Greenville Methodist Church as a Nursery School, Sunday School and meeting room.

Stacks of neatly piled, fresh-cut lumber dot this 1957 backyard of the GNH Lumber Company in Norton Hill. GNH occupied that Norton Hill site from 1937 until 2004 when it assumed the space formerly used by Ames in the Bryant’s Country Plaza, one mile north of Greenville’s four corners.

Shane and Mitzie Pilato’s (inset) loving touches can be seen in the renovation of their home (also locally known as the Nehemiah Ramsdell house, whose family owned it from 1836 to 1903). Bought by the Pilatos in 1999, this structure was in jeopardy of being demolished. The Pilatos’ efforts (shown in the before and after photos), and others like theirs, are most welcome, not only for restoring the good looks of the structures of the area, but also for respecting the historic nature of its community

Posing in 1893, this Stanton family portrait captures the taste of the day. Frances and Oscar Stanton flank their son Omar. The Stantons lived on the corner of Main Street and Carter Bridge Road in Norton Hill. A daughter of this couple, Cora, had four sons, one of whom, Lee Brown, still lives on the family homestead on Old Plank Road.

A relic of our near past, this miracle mile sign alerted 1960s-1990s passers-by of the aspiring businesses in Norton Hill on State Route 81, an unchanging sign even as some of these businesses closed or moved. The mile stretched from the GNH site on the west end a couple hundred yards east of New Ridge Road to the first small valley east of the hamlet.

This recently married couple, Merritt Elliott (1898-1989, son of Edith Merritt and Peter Elliott) and Ruth Ingalls (1900-1996, daughter of Carrie Spalding and Truman Ingalls) enjoy a carriage ride near the Ingalls homestead on Old Plan Road in Norton Hill (near junction with Johnnycake Lane).

C. Gardiner sketch of Norton Hill Church