Archive Record
Metadata
Object # |
2005.007.001 |
Object Name |
Tape, Audio |
Description |
Interview with Hazel W. Hunt Hazel W. Hunt This is March 18, 1996 and I am Christina Hingston talking with Hazel W. Hunt at 390 Wareham Road in Marion which is directly next to the Captain Hadley house on Route 6. Hazel's middle initial is W which stands for ... Hazel W. Hunt: Wessells, which is a Dutch name. And Hunt is an English name naturally. Interviewer: And your father and mother bought this house in 1945, but you came here earlier. Hazel W. Hunt: I came here in the summer of 1942 to be interviewed for a job. I spent the night in Tabor Hall. Then came down here to teach in the fall at Sippican school. I taught in the junior high section and I had classes in 7th, 8th and 9th grades. I taught world geography, ancient history, civics, US history, girls gym, and I coached the boys basketball. All for the sum of $1,200 a year. It really infuriated me, because there's an estate over in East Marion that's owned by the Countways and he was president of Lever Brothers and he was earning $365,000 a year and I really didn't think he was that much better than I was that he should be earning that much more than I. Interviewer: That was a colossal difference. Hazel W. Hunt: For one day he got $1,000 a day. Interviewer: Was he a benefactor in Marion at all? Hazel W. Hunt: I don't know that he left anything in Marion. There is a wing of the Mt. Aubin hospital that is the Countway wing. Interviewer: I haven't heard that name around here before. Talking to other people. He should have been a little bit more like Elizabeth Taber, who we all love and revere. Hazel W. Hunt: He lived in that area out in East Marion where the wall is with the tile on it. Interviewer: The tile coping, yes. A lovely, lovely spot. Hazel W. Hunt: That was the Countway estate. It's been since broken up, so there's now several houses in there. At one time it was one estate. Interviewer: Well, when you taught all these subjects to these children, how many students did you have? Hazel W. Hunt: I had varying numbers in junior high, you had different classes, so you end up with quite a few. But I had people like Jane McDonald, I had Jay Hiller, Warren Hiller, Andy Santos, Louise Tripp. I could name off probably 25 or 30 of them that I had when I taught here who are still in town. Which is really quite remarkable, I think. Interviewer: When you were at the school and it was not simply an elementary school then. Hazel W. Hunt: No. Interviewer: When did it change to the junior high and the separation? When did that happen? Hazel W. Hunt: I think it was in 19..., after the Sippican School, the students went either to Tabor or they went to Wareham High School and then when they built Old Rochester High School, regional high which was in 1960 or 1961 or 1962, something like that, they took the high school and then they built the regional junior high school after that and took the rest of it away. Interviewer: So that Sippican became entirely elementary. Hazel W. Hunt: Right, just the first six grades. Interviewer: I've met and spoken to Hazel Johnson who taught here. Where you in school together? Were you teaching together? Hazel W. Hunt: Actually, she was here years before I was. She was here long before Sippican School was built. But she did come back to teach. She used to do substitute teaching. Her husband was the superintendent of the grounds out at the Stone Estate. Interviewer: Yes, he was, despite his very Scottish sounding name, I thought, apparently he was from Sweden originally. I understand that you've had ancestors from Holland, the Wessels and your father's family came over in... Hazel W. Hunt: In 1636 to Concord, MA from England. Interviewer: When he and your mother came here ... Hazel W. Hunt: In 1945. When I taught here the first place I lived was down where St. Gabriels church is now. As a matter of fact, there was a building there and 1 lived with the family called the Quinns. Upstairs there was an apartment the Serpas ? lived in. It's right where the Episcopal church is now. Interviewer: I didn't realize that. I sort of imagined that there had always been a church there. Hazel W. Hunt: They had that chapel, the little building. Interviewer: And do you remember the different stores in town when you first came? There must have been more than there are now? Hazel W. Hunt: There was the general store, and the pharmacy and the post office. The Sippican shop, that was downtown. It's where the book store is now and where the children's Sitting Duck used to be, meat market and grocery store. Interviewer: Oh, how handy. Hazel W. Hunt: And then where the Spirits are, that became a supermarket, Rick Angle ran that for quite a few years and in the back they used to have freezer lockers where people could, that was before the days of individual freezers, and you could have a locker down there where you had your frozen things and keep them there. Interviewer: Did you have a pad lock on it? Hazel W. Hunt: I don't know how they worked it, but I guess you had your own section and you had a key to get into your own section. Interviewer: Do you think people caught fish and froze them there? Was there much, I intrigues me that there doesn't seem to have been a fish market in town. I suppose you caught your own and ate it. Hazel W. Hunt: Probably. I don't know that fishing was ever that great around here. They did more clamming and quahoging and scalloping, that sort of thing. I think. Interviewer: Now where the Sitting Duck is, now the corner one. Hazel W. Hunt: That was Jenkins store. Interviewer: Where they there a long time? Hazel W. Hunt: Yes, they had a, you could go in and buy sodas and that sort of thing. And then they developed sort of a magazine and gifts and so on. Interviewer: I'd like you to tell me what you recall this about this particular house, when it was built and who lived here before your family came. Hazel W. Hunt: The house was built in 1842 and it was owned by a Captain Allen. It stayed in the Allen family for many years and then was bought by Chet Vose. He and his first wife lived here and after they divorced, it was rented to various people, at one point it was rented to the Babbitts. Mrs. Babbitt ran a tearoom here. When we bought it, it was being rented by the Jewetts who would be Caroline Sullivan, who was Caroline Jewett, she lived here at the time. We bought it in 1945, so it's only been owned by three families an all those years. Interviewer: When the Babbitts had it as a tearoom, was that when there was still public transportation coming here, or was in the era of the cars? I think that when the trains stopped running and the trolley, it made a big difference and then 195 came in. Do you remember when 195 came in? Hazel W. Hunt: Oh, yes. There was a time when Route 6 was only a two lane road. There was no transportation. If you wanted to get anywhere, you had to go to Wareham and take the train to Boston. Interviewer: You are a member of the Congregational Church. Where you an officer in the church at any time? Hazel W. Hunt: No, I've been a deacon. Interviewer: Was that the correct term? Hazel W. Hunt: Yes, and I also worked on our 150* anniversary celebration we had in 1992. The church was built the same time this house was. Interviewer: So you have a parallel history in lots of ways. I see you have a Tufts chair over there. Is that where you got your teaching degree? Hazel W. Hunt: Yes, I graduated from Tufts and then I got a masters degree from Boston University. Interviewer: Can we have a look at our list here and see, oh you mentioned that... Hazel W. Hunt: The wireless and the Dutchlands that was over here in the corner. I worked two summers at Dutchlands and ... Interviewer: It was a small supermarket? Hazel W. Hunt: No, it wasn't a supermarket, it was like a Howard Johnsons. It had coffee or hamburgers or pie or whatever. And beyond that was where the Marconi wireless was and at the time I was here, while I was teaching, it was taken over by the armed forces. It was run by the armed forces. And 1 was the one who named the Marconi village, because I thought it should be named that where it was in the land where they had the Marconi wireless. And I was here in the hurricane of 1944 and I lived on Front St. opposite what was then Watt's boat house. The hurricane came at dead low tide about the middle of the night and did a lot of destruction in the low landing area and it took, the man across the street lost his garage and his car in that hurricane. I can tell you a funny story, somebody had a great huge boat that came in and it was not damaged, because it came in on the swell and it was leaning against one of the boat houses down there. And it really had no damage done to it and people had bought insurance on their boats after the '38 hurricane so the insurance company came down to get this boat back in the water. They had a great big crane and they hitched it onto the boat and when they went to lift the boat, they wrecked it, because this Steve Watts who was the one in charge of the boathouse was sitting there smoking his pipe and he said, "The damn fools, wouldn't you think they'd know enough to take the water out of the boat before they tried to lift it?" In '54,1 lived in this house and the water came up across my driveway and it crossed Route 6 and there were boats all over the place. Lots of boats on Front St. And it did a lot of damage and actually for about a week, we had the National Guard here and you couldn't go downtown and they blocked people from going downtown at all until things could be straightened out and fixed up. Interviewer: I've only experienced the '92 hurricane. Hazel W. Hunt: Which wasn't really a hurricane compared to others. Hurricane Gloria that we had in '87 wasn't either. We've been very fortunate. We did lose a lot of boats up in the marshes in '87, they used those helicopters to come up and lift the boats off the marshes. It was fascinating. Interviewer: I know, I saw them do that at one point and I was in my car on Route 6 and I felt sure that we'd all be driving into each other on Route 6 because we were so intrigued by the activity. They should have sold tickets. Hazel W. Hunt: They were just like little toys the way they picked them up and brought them in and dropped them down and went out got another one. It was really fascinating. Interviewer: You mentioned a little while ago, the Harbor which is a different harbor from the harbor, harbor. Hazel W. Hunt: The Harbor restaurant which is where the L'Auberge is today. It was a very famous restaurant at the time. Interviewer: Christina Hingston Transcribed by Karilon F. Babbitt Grainger August 13, 1999 |
Search Terms |
Bookstall, The Captain Hadley House Clamming Countway Estate Dutchland Icecream & Sandwich Shop First Congregational Church Harbor Restaurant Hurricane of 1944 Hurricane of 1954 Jenkin's Store L'Auberge Restaurant Marconi Village Old Rochester Regional High School Scalloping Sippican Jr. High School Sippican School Sippican Shop Sitting Duck Sitting Duck for Kids Tabor Academy Tearoom Wareham High School Wareham Road Watts Brothers Boatyard Wireless station (Marconi) St Gabriel's Episcopal Church Wareham Road 390 |
People |
Allen Allen, Captain Hiller, Jay Hiller, Warren Hunt, Hazel Jewett, Caroline Johnson, Hazel MacDonald, Jane Santos, Andy Sullivan, Caroline Jewett Tripp, Louise Vose, Chester A. Watts, Steve |
Event |
Hurricanes |
Year Range from |
1930 |
Year Range to |
1950 |
Category |
10: Unclassifiable Artifacts |
Sub-category |
Need to Classify |
Accession number |
2005.007 |