Granby Living Jan2018

CELEBRATING OUR SENIORS
NANCY FISCHER HAS ENJOYED LIVING ‘UP ON THE MOUNTAIN’
FOR THREE-QUARTERS OF A CENTURY
BY SARAH MERRILL
Although Nancy Fischer is not a native
of Granby, she has been enjoying the
town’s beauty for nearly 75 years, first
traveling with her family each summer to visit
her great-uncle at his home on Mountain Road,
and later making her own home in the very
same house.
Nancy was born in 1943 and grew up in Bay
City, Michigan. Each summer, her schoolteacher
father packed the family — Nancy and her three
sisters, their mother and their grandparents —
into two cars to make the two-day trip to visit G.
Ray Smith, or “Uncle Ray.” The family spent the
month of August at his house “up on the mountain”
in North Granby.
Historians believe that the house was built
around 1720, possibly earlier, by a member of the
Holcomb family, and there are indications that
it was among the first houses built in the village
then known as “Salmon Brook.” Apparently, the
house was moved in about 1760 to its current site
on Mountain Road. How this was accomplished
— Nancy wonders if it was on logs, pulled by
oxen — is a mystery, but a historian called it “The
House that Moved to the Mountain.”
It was in the late 1930s that Nancy’s greatuncle
settled there. Although he, too, was raised
in Michigan, his job of opening Chrysler dealerships
took him all over the country, and he was
in Hartford when World War II began. As there
was “not a scrap of metal left” for cars, he closed
the dealership in Hartford and moved to Granby.
Uncle Ray’s property encompassed 370 acres
of woodland on the south side of Mountain
Road and another 40 acres on the north side.
Until 1955 or so, Mountain Road did not extend
past Ray’s driveway. But after major flooding,
when “water just poured down the mountain,”
the state paved the road to Hartland and Mountain
Road became State Highway 539.
“When we arrived in North Granby every
summer as kids,” says Nancy, “the first thing my
father did was march his four daughters down
the hill to get rid of all our pent-up energy from
two days in the car. We walked nine-tenths of a
mile down to Sam Goldschmidt’s general store,
at the bottom of the hill, and we bought penny
candy.” (This building is the white multi-unit
structure with tall pillars on Granville Road
near East Street.)
“We grew up in the city,” explains Nancy.
“Granby was the wild countryside to us. We
loved walking the mountains and exploring the
woods. What I liked best was searching for wildflowers
and studying trees. It was so quiet and
serene.” Nancy notes that they never saw a bear
or a coyote in those days, wildlife that she now
enjoys seeing in her yard quite often.
Nancy moved to Connecticut in 1968, starting
a 27-year career in medical records at Hartford
Hospital. She lived in Wethersfield during
those years but still visited North Granby every
Sunday to see her great-uncle and bring him
meals. When G. Ray Smith died in 1989, he left
his house to his great-niece, Nancy. She moved
to Granby in 1990 and, after leaving Hartford
Hospital, worked out of her home for 19 years as
a medical transcriptionist.
Nancy is retired now but she keeps busy. In
addition to working as a proofreader for the
Granby Drummer, Nancy is co-coordinator of
Thinking of buying, selling
or investing in real estate?
Call Jessica Moore
your local REALTOR ®
860-808-4904
jessica.moore@kw.com
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12 GRANBY LIVING
Jessica Moore, REALTOR®
5 Star Zillow Premier Agent
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