TYLER HILL, PA — If you drive west from the Delaware River two miles and up the steep rise of the busy road that passes through our town, your attention will likely be focused on getting safely to the top. You might not notice the green-and-brown, two-story, mansard-roofed house barely visible behind the bushes. 

We were told that the house we live in was built in 1883  by David Fortnam, son of Thomas Fortnam, one of Tyler Hill’s prosperous early founders, for one of his farmhands, although the exact date is disputed. From the  windows of this house, we look out at the cluster of wooden buildings  comprising the center of Tyler Hill, which in 1920,  local farmer and newspaperman J.T. Bradley called “The City on the Hill.”  

This house was built and lived in by farmers until we “city girls” got here.  

It was home to generations of Tyler Hilliarians, many descendants of whom are still living in the town. The west side of the house was set up as an apartment, where many local families and hired men lived at one time or another.   Neighbors spoke to us of their memories of the porch swing and the sliding doors that disappeared into the wall. 

It was the John Diehl house when we bought it, and his chair was rocking on the porch when we moved in during a blizzard in 1991. We heard many versions of the story of John getting hit by lightning in 1950, coming back from milking the cows, and waking up with a mouthful of mud. 

We had a house fire a few years after we moved in, from a faulty wood stove chimney. We ran out and helplessly watched as a third of the house burned down while six  local volunteer fire departments stood waiting for water to come up their hoses from the ice-covered pond a mile and a half down the road. John’s grandson Brian came back hourly through the night on watch for errant flames. 

We were distraught: the thought that this historic house could have burned on our watch! Fortunately, it was saved, and we were able to rebuild it so its profile on the hill still stood. The fire inspector discovered blackened joists in the attic caused by lightning strikes in a previous fire, which we learned had burst through John’s TV set many years before.  

Over time, from stories of neighbors and the meticulous research of Roger Swendsen, retired farmer, neighbor and local historian, we learned more about the fiery history of this place.  

From our kitchen window looking east, we can see the graciously proportioned 1915 Fortnam house with its wide bungalow porch. The original property, now divided into several parcels, was established as the Farview Farm in 1847 by the Englishman Thomas Fortnam Sr.  Four generations of Fortnams lived there, the last being  Clarence (C.D.). C.D. lived, married three times and died there,  leaving no descendants. When the Cochecton Depot in New York opened up in 1851 for the Great NY and Erie Railroad, the family’s prosperity grew along with the towns.  

C.D. exported carloads of potatoes, cider apples and lumber to New York City. He owned and operated the feed mill in Cochecton. He provided crushed stone for the local roads. He had three teams of horses on his farm, equivalent to three tractors today, and owned one of the top registered herds of Holstein cattle in the state.  Choice heifer calves from his farm were sold across the nation.  

According to the record, C.D. Fortnam “always had a problem with fires.” The original grand Fortnam house, known as “The Mansion,” burned in 1915 in a suspicious blaze. It is the house where Clarence’s mother committed suicide in 1913 by cutting her own throat. It was also thought to be the house from which the adopted daughter of David Fortnam, Mary Slater—the birth daughter of the infamous “trans man” Joseph (Lucy) Lobdell—was abducted, chloroformed by a “gang of fiends” and thrown into the Delaware River at Cochecton. (She survived.)  

Shortly after his mother’s suicide, Clarence’s garage burned along with the automobile inside. In 1923, the original  Fortnam barn burned, and  C.D.’s pedigreed cattle perished in the fire. Clarence collected the insurance and set to work building a new barn, but that too burned before he even completed it.

Notably,  Cochecton Feed Mill also burned under C.D.’s ownership. 

Roger Swendsen’s grandparents, Fred and Addie Hinaman,  first rented, then bought, the 258-acre farm from C.D.  In 1927, they drove their cows down the road from Lookout and chased them through the woods to the farmland,  settling into “our” house. Fred and Addie purchased the farm in April 1931. Two months later, they put in indoor plumbing. A day or two later, the fourth barn that C.D. had built burned to the ground, along with 25 loads of hay.  

Described in the paper by J.T. Bradley and transcribed into the historic record by Roger: “The people of Tyler Hill were suddenly awakened about 11:15 p.m. by an enormous light that did not resemble the sunrise; others heard a crackling sound like an approaching rainstorm, and others were awakened by a loud cry of ‘FIRE’ or the wild phone alarm.” 

Most people thought it was Clarence who started the fire. “He’s at it again,” a local woman was quoted as saying. Notably, this fifth fire on the hill occasioned the first appearance of a fire company and chemical fire engine in this community.   

Roger Swendsen was born in 1938  on the first floor of our house, in the middle room of the three rooms on the west side of the house. He was a “blue baby,” born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, He recounts, “I was not looking too healthy, as my Grandmother Swendsen said at the time that she didn’t think ‘they would raise me.’ However, she suggested that they feed me some Jersey cow milk. which is noted for being a rich milk and high in butterfat content, and whatever happened, I survived!” 

Roger’s brother and other relatives and neighbors were also born in our house often before the doctor could arrive, thanks to Addie’s skill in midwifery.  

In 1940, Addie Hinaman wrote of her house to the editor of Homekeeping Hearts: “This is an old house, rambling and unpretentious, but modernized by steam heating, electric lights and up-to-date plumbing. At one time, this house sheltered not only our family of nine but also a hired man, his wife and their four children.”  

Roger’s family moved to Hillacres Farm, a stone’s throw from his birthplace. After his army service in the 1950s, Roger took over that farm from his father and raised his own family there. When we first settled in our house, we could see the bright lights of his barn in the night. Addie and Fred, who had moved to the house across the road, waved and watched me from their porch that first summer as I scraped and painted the hemlock roof shingles. 

Recently, Roger, having sold the farm but still living just a few doors away, wrote to us, “Take care of my birthplace.” I think he means more than keeping it maintained and safe from fires. Memories of the people who lived here are housed within the walls. We recognize that we are temporary owners and impermanent residents of this house, and we are grateful to Roger for recording its history for us and those who come after us.  

Postscript: 

Roger Swendsen spent more than 30 years walking the roads of Tyler Hill, talking and writing with neighbors and former residents, and poring over newspaper clippings and ancient microfilm to put together his book of fiery and fascinating local history. You can read it at the Damascus Historical Society’s Archive Museum, which is open seasonally. Learn more at www.damascustwp.org/histsoc.html.