Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Now on YouTube! - Beauregard Brothers in their Nineties, Relate Stories of Growing up on Ragged Hill



   Rachel Faugno interviews Paul and Bob Beauregard as they share their experiences as part of a large family growing up on a farm in West Brookfield. Paul died on January 2, 2017, just weeks after this interview. Their parents, Joseph and Ida (Provencal) Beauregard moved to West Brookfield from Gilbertville in 1906.  The Beauregards first leased the 235 acre farm on Ragged Hill belonging to Henry Jordan. They purchased it in 1911.  Ida Beauregard sold the farm in 1945, three years after the death of her husband.
      Learn about their chores on the farm, and their schooling in the one room school house they attended in the days before they had electricity and running water.  Listen to their description of social life in Wickaboag Valley including barn dances in their barn, and programs held by the Wickaboag Valley Association. They describe entertainment including swimming in the pond in summer, and sliding down the hill in winter.
   Paul sadly recalls the accidental drowning of his sister Elsie who, at age six,  had been sliding across an ice covered pond on her shoes. She was accompanied that day by Paul, and a sister Edna.
   Tools used by their father for leather work were shown, as they talked about the necessity in those days for being resourceful.
   See the video filmed in October 2016, by Dan Hamilton and Warren Tirrell, at: Ragged Hill Memories of Paul and Robert Beauregard
   For more about the Beauregard family see http://www.westbrookfieldgenealogy.org/genealogy/