The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1906-11-24

At exactly eleven O'Clock on New
years morning there was curious
ceremony at the old Edward S place"
in Maine. The word ceremony, in
fact, but family describes what hap
pened. 1t was more like a jubilee,
with the semblance of barbaric rite
added. All the Edwards kith and
kin were there, with a goodly num-
Der of their friends and neighbors.
At the farther end of the garden,
in front of the farmhouse, there is
knoll, at the top of which a messy
ledge crops out. On this ledge there
was pyre erected of dry wood, pitch,
and rolls of curled birch bark-a fine
pile of it. At the center stood an
iron rod, set in hole, drilled in the
ledge, and here an old oppressor of
the Edwards homestead was burned
at the stake !
This sounds so savage that l make
haste to say that the old oppressor
was not an animate form of flesh and
blood, but merely an efigy.
The efigy was masterpiece in its
way, the very simulacrum of rapacity,
with a face like the tabled Harpies,
and hands like talons, hugging to its
breast folded, yellowed paper.
That yellowed paper was a mort
gage, which had rested on the home
farm for one entire generation.
The history of that mortgage is so
much like thousands of others that it
would hardly be worth relating if, at
the last moment, noble effort to lift
it had not been crowned by success.
The story of that effort is one I like
to tell.
The Edwards farm adjoins the one
where / lived when a boy. There
were three hundred acres of tillage,
pasture and woodland, with a we'll
built two-story house and two large
barns. The Edwards children =
Chester, Thomas, Catherine, Eunice
were my youthful neighbors and
schoolrates.
In those days the farm was we'll
titled, unencumbered and prosperous;
but in an evil hour a travelling agent
cajoled Jonas Edwards, the father,
into buying the State right to make
and sell certain newly patented au-
tomato farm gate, for the sum of two
thousand dollars. Edwards had a
thousand dollars in the savings bank
he drew out this and raised the other
thousand by mortgaging the home
stead.
1t was the old story. The much
vaunted gate proved gate to trouble
for Edwards. He was never able to
sell it. But if the gate proved illu-
sorry, the mortgage was tangible. The
farmer spent the remaining fifteen
years Of his life paying interest on it.
Thoughts of the mortgage were
said to have sadly embittered the last
moments of his life. He had his sons
bring in the model" of that patent
gate and burn it. "Never play the
fool as I've DONE" he said to Chester
and Tom.
After his fathers death Chester
Edwards went home to live," as
people say in Maine. The family
then consisted of his mother, his
sister Eunice, who was an invalid
from spinal curvature, and his moth
er's brother, Uncle Horace, who had
lost leg in the Civil War, but for
some reason did not draw a pension.
Chester began by selling off the wood
and timber on the old farm, thereby
paying the accumulated interest. He
then embarked in the dairy business,
but did not prove successful farmer,
and during the fifth season lost almost
his entire herd of cows from tubercu-
losis. Becoming discouraged, he gave
up and set off suddenly for the Klon-
dixie gold region.
A nephew then carried on the farm
for year, but did not remain.
Meanwhile Thomas, the younger
son, had become a Methodist minis
ter. He was unable to do anything
toward reducing the mortgage.
"The mortgage will get the old
place now, and no help for it," the
neighbors said.
But there was still another men,
Der of the family to be heard from
Catherine, the younger daughter.
Largely by her own efforts, Cathe-
rine Edwards had graduated from the
State normal school, and obtained a
position as instructor in another nor
NAL school at good salary. We
imagined that Catherine would aid
her mother and sister, but never sup
posed that she would come home to
care for them there.
But after Chester left, Catherine
never hesitated for a moment. She
resigned her position, bade farewell
to all prospects of advancement as a
teacher, and came home.
She had saved seven hundred dol
lars. With this she paid years in
terest, had the leaky roofs repaired,
and hired such help as was necessary,
indoors and out. Yet what could
she do with that old farm and its
mortgage?
That season, however-Ioo3-th the
old place quietly put forward one of its
natural assets.
Our county is in what is known as
''the apple belt" of New England.
Apple trees spring up everywhere
here, and if grated and trimmed
soon bear we'll. Although cripple,
Uncle Horace Flint had been in the
habit every spring of hobbling about
from one young apple tree to another