A Little piece of Paradise… College Hill, Ohio - SELFCRAFT

The oldest son married and moved out in 1933, lessening the crush on the two available bath rooms.Breakfast was served by the butler in the glass-walled breakfast room until it got too cold, then in thedining room, at 7:15 promptly. Quite plain; fruit, almost always citrus, dry cereal mostly with milk, toastand jelly. None of the boys drank coffee or tea. The parents were served their even scantier breakfast inbed. All the males scattered before 8:00, the two youngest taken to school in Clifton by Mike, the othergoing to Hughes by street-car until he went away to school at fifteen.Mrs. Thomson had a busy morning, every day of the week. Consultation with the cook about meals,very specific for that day, less so about the end of the week. She paid and recorded all the household bills,including the servants....paid weekly by check. During the 20s and 30s, she was president of thesymphony board, the YWCA and very active in local politics. She had two other houses to plan toward:the Indiana `farm’ every weekend through the school year, a summer place (finally, one owned in Canadafrom 1934 to 39). She had been the first woman to drive a car in College Hill but, as soon as Mike gotback from delivering the boys to school, he’d start driving her around her working day. Except during aprotracted illness in 1926, she never had a house-keeper or governess to help her. That time, Miss IsabelCoates from Marlowe Avenue, lived with the family for a year and then moved across the street to LaurelCourt to help Mrs. Logan Thomson.Weekends found the family in Indiana, at their lodge near Holton. The Oaks was never left vacant,however. One man, at least, lived in and Walter Robinson came Saturday morning and Sunday afternoonto check the furnace. Summers, with the family away, was the time for heavy cleaning and gardening. Joeand Nellie Cleeny, who worked at a school during the nine months, moved in to wash and polisheverything possible. Shinny and Sallie, Mike and the current butler went to Canada with the family andtook their annual vacations in late September. Mrs. Thomson’s plans and programs for all this wereusually complete about a year in advance.The days for such a way of life were at an end in 1940, due to the death of Mr. Thomson in 1939 andthe maturing of the four sons. Mrs. Thomson moved to flats or rented houses, helped by Sallie, until thelatter died in 1947. The Oaks was sold, to begin a slow but steady decline for nearly a generation untilDoug Trimmel ‘caught’ it in the nick of time and began its slow, steady restoration. Once again the largeold house, perhaps the oldest continually occupied residence in the state of Ohio, stands proudly on itshill-top, ready to commence another century.Early photo of The Oaks215