Any one from Northbridge? (Grafton, Whitinsville: lease, house, water heater)

[labratinaz]

I was researching the Oelschlegel family name and found reference to "Oelschlegel Ln"... Google maps does not identify this lane.

Anyone know if it exists?? I would like to let the folks know that a street was named after them, afterall!

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks....


http://www.city-data.com/city/Northb...achusetts.html

NORTHBRIDGE, Oelschlegel Ln, Overall height: 54.9 m, Call Sign: WMT891
Assigned Frequencies : 10567.5 MHz

[DebCookie]

Originally Posted by labratinaz

I was researching the Oelschlegel family name and found reference to "Oelschlegel Ln"... Google maps does not identify this lane.

Anyone know if it exists?? I would like to let the folks know that a street was named after them, afterall!

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks....


http://www.city-data.com/city/Northb...achusetts.html

NORTHBRIDGE, Oelschlegel Ln, Overall height: 54.9 m, Call Sign: WMT891
Assigned Frequencies : 10567.5 MHz

I grew up on Oelschlegel Lane. It's now called Mahoney Lane. The farmhouse I lived in burned down after we moved into Whitinsville after my dad's surgery in the mid-1960's, but the old stone silo from the barn is still there. The barn fell down more than 30 years ago. We rented from the Mahoney's, and their house is still there, across from where the barn used to be. The old farmhouse was at the head of the lane, and access is now blocked off by a chain gate. It was owned in the early 1900's by a German family named Oelshlegel, and I believe the Mahoney's bought it from them. The entire farm was about 150 acres, but parts of it have since been sold off in the front for housing on Rt. 122. It's within feet of the Grafton-Northbridge line on Rt. 122, and the farm spans three towns - Northbridge, Grafton, and Upton. We used to wait for the schoolbus at the bottom of the lane by the hazelnut tree, where it was the farthest stop, and the bus would turn around in the lane to pick up the kids from the other side of the street on the way to the school in Rockdale. If you pull the old census records, you will find the Oelschlegel family living there in the early 1900's. They came from Germany, but the farm was already there. It was put together with wooden pegs instead of nails, and young saplings had been used to mark out the boundaries of each room - the corners were built around these saplings and each corner was squared inward to accommodate them. The cellar had a dirt floor, and the foundation was large boulders laid upon each other, much like a stone wall but below ground level. There was a huge central beehive oven, large enough to roast whole cows, off of which were 4 large fireplaces opening into four of the rooms. My Dad found more than 12 bushels of bones in the central oven, and my mom insisted he cement it up, which he did. We speculated that the early colonists who built the farm may have used the central oven as a hiding place from Indian raids in the early days of the country being settled. There was a large apple orchard in the meadow behind the house, and a small herd of 24 deer that used to graze on the apples in the fall. Behind the orchard was a stone wall, and behind it were the woods, filled with paths, and wildflowers, and streams. I used to go there as a child to pick lady's slippers, and remember one day seeing baby foxes playing. On the far side of the barn were 'pignut' trees, and we used to love husking the nuts to eat in the fall. In the front, on either side of the lane, were meadows that were leased out to a farmer for haying for his cows. In the winter all the neighborhood kids would bring their sleds up the lane and slide down on them to the bottom in the meadow just in front of the barn. A small stream crossed the lane at the bottom, and we used to catch tadpoles there. The farmhouse was rustic, with no water heater and no bathroom. We had an outhouse in back off the woodshed, and heated water in the kitchen on the wood-fueled cookstove. We also had a gas stove in the kitchen that ran on propane that we used sometimes. No city water, we had a well that had the freshest-tasting water! It was an amazing place to grow up...