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Paul Miller on his John Deere
Model 4010 Diesel (1963).
Within the past year (2009) this well-known farmstead, was razed to make way for a supermarket and other businesses on Rt. 94, which links the Township of Warwick, NY with a state border and nearby Vernon, New Jersey. Once consisting of a large farmhouse, a horse stable and carriage barn, a well house, 2-car garage, 5-car garage, two 2 1/2 story tenant houses, an ice house, a granary, a 4-stall wagon barn, a feldstone smoke house, a main barn and ell, an attached milk house and two wooden corn silos. The only original structures to the farm that remain are a circa 1880s three story carriage barn and a ground-level roofed well that may have served as a location for milk cooling in a much earlier dairying scenario (a mortarless, hand-laid stone cistern within still holds water).
Less than 50 miles from Manhattan this Orange County dairy farm dates to the early 18th century when Thomas Blain purchased the site, cleared it of ash, oak, chestnuts, and other hard and softer woods. The site was in proximity to a local Native American settlement , and what became later hay and corn fields have yielded many flint arrowheads which evidence the site's use as a hunting ground. Legend has it that the site's grave plot of reputedly some 60 graves still extant was once an "Indian burial site, " and that Thomas Blain and later owners chose as their family's final resting place. The earliest documented gravestones on the site is that of "John Blain 1816" and "Jain Blain 1817" ; the spelling and inverted "N" s on the crude fieldstone evidence that the family member that likely created the stone had access to little education a little over a mile outside the Village of Warwick that had likely seen habitation as early as the late 17th century and had a concentration of residences, businesses, and churches along the Waywayananda Creek. New Milford Road (Rt.94) stretched through the farm of over 200 acres to the village .
The earliest view of the well-known farmhouse, "the foundation laid in 1730 [ as a penciled in caption states on an early 20th century photo of the front of the house revealing the half-circle driveway that once came to the front porch] ," had it situated on a large plateau that climbed some 12 feet above the surface of the present day road bed. This earlier hill landing was reached by a natural and gradual incline that began about a hundred yards down the one-time dirt road from the direction of the Village of Warwick. The hill came to a flattened height where the front of the farmhouse stood facing it and 50 yards opposite the front doors of the still extant horse and carriage barn had been conveniently situated. Given gthe heights that were necessitated in a fieldstone veranda off the farmhouse constructed by Paul Miller in the 1950s it is likely the hill dropped dramatically off the back end of the main farmhouse. When the veranda and large barbecue chimney was constructed a root cellar that could be entered from the interior basement of the house was filled in out of necessity. The laid stone door lintel remained until the house was razed. This "root cellar" was cut into the ground ,and one could stand upright in it . This was likely constructed in the theorized slope that fell from the back of the farmhouse. It was also related that a further justification for filling it in was that the walls were continously crumbling making it necessary to shovel and clean out the fallen earth.
In the 1930s New Deal road improvements divided the house from the horse stable and carriage barn. The road that came to be in front of the house was excavated and leveled to its current location. The original house had only consisted of a below ground first floor where large, dressed fieldstone blocks evidenced the location of the kitchen hearth. A second story was probably first a sleeping loft and later, with the construction of greater pitch to the roof, two rooms divided by a central hall with a fireplace facing South in each. In fact, the sunburst design mantel pieces in these rooms [that are similar to those found in the Pelton Farmhouse on Rt.1], that are now in the collection of the Warwick Historical Society, were likely from a renovation in the first decade of the 19th century as was the cast iron firebox to the most southerly room which has a relief of a spread winged eagle that was reputedly cast in the Ringwood Ironworks responsible for the great chain once stretched across the Hudson River during the Revolutionary War. The Blain family were responsible for these renovations to the farmhouse; it was during Milton Sanford's ownership of the farm, after the Blains had inhabited the property for more than a hundred and fifty years, that the house took on its Dutch Colonial style with a full second story with faux half timber and stucco dormers looking out onto the road, a third story crawlspace attic, a wrap around porch with Doric style columns of mahogany, spindles and balustrade on two sides of the house and a front portico with matching architectural details. The charred remains of the spindles and balustrade removed to the carriage barn where it remained until recently and a charred narrow interior staircase linking the cellar kitchen twith the floor above still extant but blocked by a newly constructed faux fireplace in the dining room until the houses razing evidenced a fire sometime after the 1880s Dutch Colonial re-model. The fire was likely during the Raynors ownership.
The farm eventually passed to F.C. Raynor who opened a grocery in the nearby village. Here he sold and delivered milk produced and bottled at the farm as well as other food staples. Ironically, Paul Miller's brother-in-law , Aaron Hasbrouck grew up on the farm as a ward of the Raynors. His bedroom was located in what would become the new kitchen of the house in later years. In the 1970s a visiting Raynor family member who had long since moved away from the area related that he accidently fired a 30/30 rifle shell through the door of the room when he inhabited it; there seemed to be no signs of such a mishap and the doors had all likely been replaced in a remodel after that. The future owner of the property Paul Miller grew up on a rented farm now the site of Pennings Orchards. The small farmhouse that remains at the beginning of the climb up Moe Mountain, as it was called, housed Peter Miller and his wife Elizabeth Paffenroth Miller's thirteen children [Mrs. Miller died in childbirth in 1936]. Paul, who was the first child and born in 1913, grew up literally in the shadows of that large dairy farm that he eventually would own after renting the Sanford Farm from 1938-1947, and before that he worked with his father-in-law phillip Kiel on his farm in Little York from the time of his marriage to Emma Kiel in 1936.
In 1943, Fair Meade Farm was bought by Brooklynite Otto Nagel From Wilfred Raynor. Nagel, like others from the city found farms to purchase and run in nearby Orange County during the Second World War. Although the rationale for these purchases can never be fully verified some reputedly used farm ownership as a means to avoid the draft as farmers received a dispensation from military service as agriculture was a necessity both in peace and war. Nagel hired the Raynor's foreman to run the dairy for him. In 1947, Paul Miller, partnering with his father-in-law, Philip Kiel, now a retired dairy farmer, purchased the farm from Nagel for 50,000 dollars. Kiel wopuld eventually set up a produce stand ( constructed from a World War II surplus qounset hut) on some of the farmland that would later become the site of Stan Meduski's Supermarket, Lloyd's, and, finally, Shop-Rite. Quickly, Miller set to work modernizing the farm. His wife Emma started the equivalent of one of today's bed and breakfasts offering home-made meals and lodging in the spacious 9 room house. Produce, meat, and dairy were all produced on the farm. The fieldstone walls that once divided the farm into small fields from a time of horse drawn implements were buried, and the farm fields were opened up for modern tractors and machinery. A cement block milkhouse with stainless steel fixtures and bulk tank was created and a glass pipe milking system installed in the barn that dated from the mid-19th century. A modern barn cleaner was installed into the brick and concrete floor of the cow barn and an addition was built onto the earliest barn structure ground floor.
This early barn structure became the site for the young stock of his purebred Holstein herd that eventually grew to 76 milking cows. This earliest barn structure, which was attached to the later 19th century main barn and a roofed structure built by Miller off that main barn for the purpose of allowing the barn cleaner to empty manure to an awaiting manure spreader parked below, was likely built in the 18th century as the beams and large planks that realized a hay mow and exterior were 24 inches wide or more; these original exterior boards were still in place when the enirety of the barns ere razed in 2009. In 1964, the year after paying off the entirety of his mortgage on the farm, and being a leading Orange County farmer and member of the New York State Dairymen League, Paul Miller passed away at age 51. during the Town of Warwick's Centennial Celebration in 1967, he was awarded "Farmer of the Century" posthumously. The dairy went to his son who continued the business until 1971. What remains of the farm remains in the ownership of the family sometimes leased out to tenant farmers for hay and corn crops. Less than one third of the original farm remains having been sold for commercial development.
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