Reynoldston Research

Category: Community Life

  • Community Life

    Community Life              Although, Reynoldston never existed as an incorporated village, its three hundred and fifty residents formed a small close knit community of lumberjacks and mill hands, many drawn from large extended families such as the Bordeauxs, the Campbells, the Bombards, the Trushaws, the Moquins and the Trims. These families and about thirty others were…

  • Housing Styles and Gallery

    Housing Styles Reynoldston’s houses revealed a great deal about the community. Most of the laborers’ houses lining the Eddy Road were essentially alike; simple gabled structures completely devoid of the ornamentation so common in the era in which they were built – the 1890s and early 1900s. Many were constructed by Reynolds Brothers carpenters and…

  • Family Life in Reynoldston 1880-1970

    Family Life in Reynoldston 1880-1970                 [flagallery gid=2 name=”Gallery”]

  • Reynoldston School

    One Room Schoolhouse     Earliest Schooling Mrs. Delia Moquin remembers hearing that when Orson and Phoebe Reynoldst first started the mill that Phoebe taught school to the few children that lived in the community in the same building that later became the company store. *   Only Institution in Reynoldston The Reynoldston school was…

  • Christmas in Reynoldston NY

                            Christmas In Reynoldston Christmas in Reynoldston was celebrated in a very modest way during most of its history.   Few people had much money to buy gifts for Christmas.  For many of the men it was one of the few holidays they did not…

  • NEW YEAR’S EVE IN REYNOLDSTON

    For a Video narrative/skit of the following  short shory CLICK HERE   New Year’s Eve in Reynoldston     By W. Langlois & R.H. McGowan * This story previously published in York State Tradition summer 1970 was based on stories told to us by residents.  It is an fictitious elaboration on a traditional New Year’s Eve event…

  • The Bordeaux Hall

    The Bordeaux Dance Hall    Around 1906, Ted and Miner Bordeaux, tried to make money by setting up their own business. At this point in its history Reynoldston had not started to lose population; furthermore, in Skerry to the East and in the Bangor to the north family farms provided a decent living for their…

  • Religious Beliefs

    Religion The people we interviewed for the history of Reynoldston uniformly thought that the majority of the community’s residents were Catholic. The Reynoldses and Trims, however, were Protestant, and there were those who practiced no religion at all. As no church was ever built in Reynoldston, religious instruction rested primarily with the family.  Devout Catholics…

  • Home Life

      Home Life   Many of the houses of Reynoldston provided little more than four walls, a floor, and a ceiling. Most families lived in a small company built houses, while the Reynolds family built two large, richly decorated homes, and the poor lived in cabins or log houses. The one and a half story…

  • Social Life

    Social Life   As with religious life, social life occurred largely within the family. Unrelated people who lived next door to each other  for years, and who even knew some of the details of each others lives, might never enter each others houses.  Class barriers were not prevalent as such, but the extremes of wealth and…