Well, firstly I wouldn't personally have acted like your great-grandmother because I'd happily trade jewels for a horse, I love horses. :) But, I do see where she was coming from.

Secondly, the more I hear of your grandfather the more I feel his kindred spirit. I know what it is to be at the tail end of a once more 'better off 'family and I certainly always turn to the soil and cooking and animals and the paintbrush to keep me going or when I need to forge ahead. I'm hoping there is a parallel me hanging out with your great grandfather somewhere.

I LOVE that well and the house. I have, well @winstonalden and I, have discussed getting a cheap old farmhouse in France. There are some affordable ones with some need of 'help'. Now, however, he is back to working in the city, but I still keep that hope alive.

I Love old things. I have a cottage I love here on the cape that is old for my country, built in 1718, and it too has an old well on it. Though not a great stone one like this, the early settlers in American in New England mainly used the forest to build their things, so we are lacking is some stone and brick that they used more in the South. But the history of the house speaks to me. I have to rent it out in Summers to keep it, but I do what I have to do and this time of the year, when it is empty (usually have a winter tenant but he left early) I go there and just sit in it's history.

I have had my family live in it. My aged dying mother with Alzheimers spent her final days there. I helped my father weed the old brick path that meanders in the back garden. We have had it filled with family and friends in Victorian costume for one of our crazy 'themed Christmas' we used to do. IT is like a portal to the past for me and sometimes I think, if I squint just right, I can see someone in Puritan garb using the old open fireplace in the keeping room, now dining room.

I love this story and the connection to your family. And I really do love Steemit for bringing these sort of things into my life.

I think I would probably look for the things, as I am always randomly finding old pits of pottery or glass bottles when digging a fence post at our old place. Once I found an old Victorian shoe when I was digging a deep hole for a grey water drainage.

Again, lovely story. What an enchanting read with my morning coffee.