Editor’s note:
Between 1953 and 1972 Freeman Harrison wrote a series of articles for the West Essex Tribune about Christmas in early Livingston. Mr. Harrison was the township’s unofficial historian, and wrote of these holidays from his own experience.
Bomin 1887 in Livingston, he was the son of Amos Harrison, in whose honorthe elementary school onNorth Livingston Avenue is named. He graduated from Princeton University in 1911, and taught at Livingston High School when the classes met in a small wood frame building where the Firestone garage is now located.
For a period Mr. Harrison was a journalist for the New York livening Sun, and wrote for several literary magazines. When his father died, he took over the family’s real estate and insurance business at Livingston Center. He served on the Board of Education and the Township Committee, the predecessor of the present Township Council, in the 1920s and 1930s.
His book, Flames Over the Riker, is a collection of stories about early Livingston. The series of Christmas stories was collected from the West Essex Tribune by the Livingston Historical Society, and published in a booklet in 1981 as part of its series of historical works about Livingston.
Mr. Harrison died in Livingston in 1973, and the Tribune has continued the tradition of publishing his Christmas stories in the issue just before this holy day each year. This story first appeared in the Tribune on December 21, 1967.
•••
Around 1957, William K. Page Jr., painstakingly made a list of Livingston’s earlier homes. It would be much shorter now, for one by one the old homes disappear. Due to location or disrepair, some retain little of their former charm, but each loss takes something from our sense of history and stability. Fortunately many remain, some so ancient that the eyes of Washington’s soldiers may have rested on them. There is the splendid Force Home, purchased and possibly saved - by a thoughtful town government. A scant few of the landmarks are owned and occupied by descendants of the original owners, bearing the same family name.
But enough of this. Our purpose is to tell a Christmas story about Clara Abbot, who was one of those people who cherish old homes. In her case there was one in particular - the home of her youth. She had been a girl here a terribly long while ago, and she had known the Squiers, Dickinsons, and other families of the section. She remembered the churches, schools and stores of an earlier time.
She was old now, this small grayhaired widow, who had moved from Livingston years ago, but neither time nor distance had dimmed her affection for the town of her youth or the Colonial farmhouse in which shewas bom. Before her marriage she had been a Parker, and five genera (Continued on Page A-6)
