My New Favorite Tractor Photo

[chesbaycruiser 83]

This is another one of those "family history" things I felt inclined to share.

I saw the image below for the first time a few days ago. It was in a box of old slides I was going through with my mom. She and my dad (both 81) recently moved from their house of 50 years to a new, albeit smaller place and I've been helping them clear out old stuff.

I know I'm biased, but I think this is pretty damn near a perfect photo. If it has a flaw, it is only that I am not the boy in it. The image shows my grandfather on a pristine Ford 8N tractor, alongside my older brother Mike sitting astride an equally shiny (although slightly smaller) mount of his own. There is no date on the photo, but my best guess puts it around 1960.

To give you a little history, my grandfather came to Richmond a Scottish immigrant in the early 1930's, hired by a prominent Richmond family as the farm manager of their large estate just north of the city called Brook Hill. The property ownership dates back to 1714 and the manor house was built in 1731. Although today all of the farmland has succumbed to urban sprawl, the house and remaining acreage is still in the hands of descendents of the original owners. The house in this photo is not "the big house", but is the one my grandparents lived in. It is part of the Brook Hill property, and has it's own historic roadside marker. Appropriately called the "Toll House", it dates back to pre-Civil War times where it literally served as a toll gate when roads were privately maintained.

My grandfather was a man loved and respected by all, from the farm-hands he supervised to the "old money" family who owned the property. He was a quiet man who spoke with a soft Scottish brough; quick to laugh and never had a harsh word to say about anyone. He was the kind of man who would come in out of the fields, drive to our house, pick up my brother and take him back to farm just to show him the family of raccoons or other creatures he had discovered. My brother worshiped the ground he walked on. One of my greatest regrets is that I have no memory of him. He died from cancer at the age of 63 the day before JFK was killed in 1963. I was 18 months old, my brother was nearly 8.

This photo holds special value for a number of reasons. Obviously the tractors -- both the shiny, original 8N and the vintage pedal-tractor. Add that to the great period clothing, hats, red shoes, and you get an image right out of 1950's Hollywood central-casting. Because our family has never been great picture-takers, finding something like this is all the more remarkable. Finally, and most importantly, I don't believe my brother has ever seen this before. He has no idea that I have the slide, that I had it professionally scanned, that I cleaned it up in Photoshop, printed it and framed it to give to him on his birthday the 25th of this month.

Honestly, I'm not sure I can wait that long to give it to him because I can't wait to see the look on his face! I'll report back and let you know how it goes.

So without further ado, here's the photo:

(you may need to click on it to see it at full size)

And my framing job...

[sorekiwi 761]

Very cool!

[855ownerJoel 32]

Awesome gift, he should love it and the memory.

[Jake Kuhn 1,579]

:text-coolphotos:

[neil 2,410]

what an awesome story

[Fun Engineer 859]

Good things shouldn't wait. Give it to him now. You'll both enjoy the memories.

Great story by the way.

[JC 1965 1,532]

That is truly priceless !! defiantly one of those gifts that keeps on giving.Thanks for sharing. :thumbs2:

[sscotsman 186]

Wow! that really is a fabulous photo!

you are very blessed to have found it..im sure your brother will love it!

To me, what makes it such a "nearly perfect photo" as you said, is the excellent composition,

but the best part is how your brother is looking straight at the camera, with a nice smile,

then your grandfather is looking at your brother, with a content "yep, thats my boy!" look on his face!

just awesome all around..

great find!

Scot

[312Hydro 474]

That's a great picture and story! Glad I was able to read it,thanks for sharing. You should enter it in the something red contest on photobucket. Looks like a winner to me. :)

[JimD 3,347]

You did good. :)

[chesbaycruiser 83]

Thanks all for all the great comments; they are very much appreciated. It's nice to have a place to share such images outside the boundaries of our relatively small family.

As far as the promised update, I just got home from my brother's house after giving him the framed photo, and I am happy to report that he was as psyched as I hoped he would be. In hindsight, it's amazing how tiny little details from one image can form a chain-reaction and dredge up so many different memories. The photo kicked off a rambling trip down memory lane that started on the farm, criss-crossed our childhood, zigged back to my dad's Air Force days, zagged across the pond to our Scottish family, and ended up back here with our own descendants. Good times.

[chesbaycruiser 83]

For those of you not completely bored to death with all of this by now, here's a few more historical facts about the Brook Hill property:

Brook Hill is located just north of the city of Richmond on Brook Road, or as it's known up and down the east coast, Route 1. It stands about five miles from the heart of downtown, in Henrico County, just outside of the official city limits. As mentioned before, it is now mostly surrounded by urban sprawl.

During the Civil War, the outer-defenses of Richmond literally cut across the property, and to this day you can still find vestiges of the Confederate earth-works. The Toll House (shown in the tractor photo) marks the nearest point at which Federal troops approached Richmond during the war during March of 1864. The manor house served as a hospital, and all rooms not actually occupied by the family were filled with sick Confederate soldiers brought in from the various camps situated on the property or in the surrounding countryside. Throughout the course of the war, all of the leaders of the Confederacy (with the exception of Stonewall Jackson) were guests there at one time or another.

When my family lived at Brook Hill, the "Grande Dame" of the property was Miss Annie Stewart. Annie was born in 1853 and lived to be 104. According to my parents and grandparents, she could recount stories of the soldiers encamped on the property and the generals and dignitaries who where entertained in the house. After my parents were married and came back to Richmond while my dad was on leave (see newspaper article below), Miss Stewart requested an "audience" so she could meet his new wife. That was 1954, and she was 101. Upon her death, she established the trust that now maintains the property.

The owners of Brook Hill, the Stewart/Bryan family owned the Richmond newspaper(s) and eventually a large media conglomerate (Media General, Inc), which they just sold in the last year or so.

Today, the front of the manor house looks like this:

If you are still not bored to tears, you can go to Google maps, then copy and past the lat/long coordinates below and it should point you at the manor house. Using the "bird's eye" feature you can zoom in an rotate around to get a better fiew. All of the development on the other side of Brook Road stands on what was once Brook Hill farmland. When they developed that land, they tore down the house my father grew up in, before my grandparents moved into the Toll House.

Manor House: 37.609731,-77.454981

I've also included the coordinates for the Toll House, however trees make all but the chimney impossible to find: 37.611348,-77.456259

Lastly, here's the article I mentioned above:

[KC9KAS 4,744]

Very nice photo and story.

Taking a stroll down memory lane is good. I enjoy listening to the older generations talking about "the good old days".

 

Many years ago a couple of old timers here in town told me so many things about the town and our volunteer fire department. My only regret is the fact that I didn't record the conversations, or write them down, as I now have forgot a lot of what we talked about.