Agriculture

You are going to think I am overly preoccupied with grandmothers, but since yesterday I’ve been thinking a lot about my third grandmother, Winifred Thayer. This grandmother was acquired through adoption, not blood, and unlike in most adoptions, I was an adult and it was not a one way process. My late partner Peter and I adopted her as much as the other way around. My recollections of Mrs.Thayer were prompted first by attending to a long postponed task: packing a motley collection of stuff yesterday to ship to an appraiser, in order to donate it to a museum. All of it was associated with the family of Ephraim Niles Byram, a noted clockmaker, self-trained scientist, technician of navigational instruments for Sag Harbor whaling fleet, and the builder in 1852 of the eccentric Oakland Cottage, in Sag Harbor, New York, which Peter and I once owned. It is all destined for the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum, which already has an entire wall devoted to Byram. It includes a daguerrotype of Byram; original deeds going b