I got the idea to share this site on Front Porch Forum from my writers’ group with Sara Tucker. https://www.korongobooks.com/ Great idea!
So far, I have heard from at least three neighbors, life-long residents of Ridge Road as well as newer folks, plus many more (maybe 100 visitors) have looked at this website because of that notice. Thank you for getting in touch. It makes me feel very welcomed.
Thank you to Wayside Farm for reaching out. My husband remembers the Abbot farm well. We think this is a photo of Hartwell Abbot on one of his fields off Ridge Road.
Followup-
(Good questions in the comments below Sara. So, to answer those questions to the best of my ability, see below. I really should just be asking Chet Abbot from Wayside Farm but I like trying to solve mysteries the hard way.)
Dan Cooley says: this is from a slide (most likely in an older family collection of slides). The color is real (a Kodachrome slide), not colorized. Dan thinks either his grandfather Harry or his father Charles Cooley took it. Dan did a bunch of scanning of old family slides and saved this along with the others. We have it in our digitized collection of photos. Kodachrome was invented in 1935 and used for slides starting in 1936 (used by many Americans after WWII around 1945). Maybe if I look for the original slide it has a date on it. Or maybe I can see which other slides were scanned around the same time and infer a date from that.
When I research Hartwell Abbot there was a Hartwell Brown Abbot Sr., which made me wonder...is this Hartwell Abbot Sr. or Jr.? Dan says Hartwell's son was Brownie Abbot (so maybe Brownie was Hartwell Jr.? But Dan is sure this is not a photo of Brownie Abbot). Hartwell Abbot Sr. lived from 1912-1977.
Most horse-drawn equipment was replaced by tractors in the 1940s. It could be a photo just before horses were replaced by tractors on their farm (except Hartwell looks older than his 30s in this photo). Or it could be a photo of someone who had access to tractors but was very versed in horse-drawn farm equipment.
So it's a photo taken via a Kodachrome slide film sometime after the 1940s (and before 1977 when Hartwell passed away). It's a field of corn with a beautiful team of white horses, one who is listening to the team driver, and one who has one ear towards the photographer, one ear to the driver. I can't imagine the team driver would be just doing this as a photo op, so real work was being done. The fields are open with a border of trees along the edges. Almost looks like a huge Elm tree in the left background. Many Elms were wiped out by Dutch Elm disease by the 1950s but a few were resistant.
Now I hope Chester Abbot can comment and confirm or correct.
Thank you, Sylvia! I commend you and Dan for saving the photo. It’s a nice one.
Great photo. Can you tell us more about it? Any idea when it was taken? Was the original in color or has it been colorized? You don’t often see color photos of horses working a field. What makes you think it is a photo of Hartsell Abbott and where did you find it? I have a Pictures Into Words workshop where we write captions to photos from our personal collections, telling what we observe in the photo, what we know about it, and what we don’t know. By going down a sort of checklist of questions, the captions become little essays. This photo would be a good subject for that workshop.
I was happy to see your post on Front Porch Forum!