Elizabeth Moore Excell

Several days before the Skyway Festival, my mandolin playing friend Reyna and I decided to hook up at her place of employment at the green house at Colgate University to practice. What a heavenly cake job she has in this state of the art green house! To be able to work in a steamy, tropical environment with exotic and colorful blooms in the dead of a New York winter would be the ultimate happy pill for me! So practice we did to my song Rim of the World the song I wrote after reading the highly acclaimed book promoted by Oprah called, A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. Which, by the way made total sense to me and I highly recommend it as a book to read and to keep it near. I go back to it quite often.
After our practice Reyna asked me if I had time to visit with a lady who works upstairs as her great grandmother once lived in my house! WOW! Of course I have time for a visit! Come to find out I already knew this lovely person from days gone by! Her name is Janice Holt and her grandmother was Elizabeth Moore Excell. Elizabeth, before immigrating to America was once a hand maiden to the queen of England! Janice also had a old shot of Elizabeth which she gave to me.
With this new treasure in hand I went home and showed the picture around the house in a ghostly dance singing, Elizabeth do you remember this room?...Or this room? Bill came home and I showed him the black and white shot of Elizabeth asking him if he recognized this woman. He said no of course an was quite impressed when I told him it was Elizabeth Moore Excell the great grandmother of my new/old friend Janice and she once lived in this very house! So here is the shot of Elizabeth un-retouched in all its cracks and flaws.
Janice's mother, Bernice remembers her mother, Elizabeth, saying, "Here comes Hanner", referring to Hannah Williams, who was her neighbor, and who lived on Williams Road."
Janice's mom, Bernice Excell Holt spent a lot of time with her grandparents on this farm which is now my home as a child.
I'd love to get my hands on a shot of the farm that was across Williams Road from my house. I have a garden out back of my house and when I was digging it out years ago found several horse shoes and chards of pottery and other relics from the past. Bill thought that area was where the old horse barn was.
So, this is the story of two woman who were friends in days gone by on my quiet country road and I'm willing to bet Hannah Williams lived in the old Victorian up on the hill where my dear friend Leigh Yardley lives now being the only old house near the old apple orchard. Leigh and I walk and meet many times on this road and I'd like to think Hannah and Elizabeth are both picking apples and chatting away in the old, but sadly overgrown apple orchard while Leigh and I do the same walking our dogs and discussing what ever we may.
I now am motivated to clean up the orchard out back and replant some tree's in both Elizabeth and Hannah's memory. I also did go down to the cemetery in Hubbardsville with Lucky Lou Fifty and had a look around for several hours in hopes of finding Elizabeth's grave but to no avail. Perhaps her stone is one of the oldest, broken stones there. Very unfitting if you ask me, her being the hand maid to the queen of England and all.