Margaret “Peggy” Fox has been featured more than any other person in town on the pages of the Hampton Gazette, in part because she lived here all her life and had so much information to offer – including all functions of local government in her role as Town Clerk, and nearly a century’s worth of history as someone who lived here, in various and meaningful ways, for over 90 years. At her Memorial Service, many people shared stories of Peggy, but what the articles attest to is the stories Peggy shared with us.
Most of us came to know Peggy through her role at Town Hall, where she was the “face of the town”, and what a friendly face she was. As Town Clerk, she interacted with everyone, processing over 10,000 licenses and recording countless deeds in her 35 years of service. She and her husband, Charlie, who was our Post Master, were often the first people newcomers met, and were largely responsible for the positive impression people received of the town.
When Peggy retired in 2001, she shared several stories of her tenure on the front page of the Gazette’s August issue. Of the time that a customer’s speech suddenly became unintelligible because he’d removed his false teeth to point out their flaws in detail. Turning to the section on dentists, Peggy gave him the yellow pages. And the time when she was swimming with her friend Jennie at Tumel’s pond until a young woman started running around the shore waving her arms because she’d accepted a proposal and needed a marriage license immediately. Peggy returned to Town Hall soaking wet and typed up the dripping document. And the time that “Chief Red Fox” called wanting to make sure he was talking to the right person, to which Peggy responded, “Well, I’m Chief Town Clerk, so you can talk to me”. And then there was everyone’s favorite, when she answered the telephone at a particularly hectic time with, “Peggy Clerk, Town Fox”.
Upon her retirement, the Secretary of State honored Peggy with a service award for her dedication to the community, though she responded, “The real reward is the priceless friendships built over seventy years in Hampton”.
In 2015, Peggy participated in the series “Random Recollections”, in which residents shared with us stories of long ago life in Hampton. Peggy told of oil lamps and the outhouse, “catalogues and all”. She described walking to the Bell School where grades one through eight were taught together and the chores – bringing in firewood and water – that “didn’t do us harm. It was good for us”, of playing “Fox and Geese” and “Kick the Can” and “Hide and Seek” in an era when parents let children entertain themselves, of swimming in Bigelow Lake, of the students’ first time on a train and the stern warning, “Don’t get near there or you’ll all go to hell!” She spoke of learning to drive around the farm in the Model A Ford which was cut into a truck when she was thirteen, and of manning an observation post near the village during World War II. She shared stories of the town’s characters, Gene Darrow, who dispensed advice on revenge – “you don’t want to do something right aways. Even if it takes ten years, get even”, of Charlie Baker who startled bird watchers when he was bathing in the river because “soap and water were ‘pieson’,”of the local dentist who would simply start “pulling teeth ‘til he found the right one”. With vivid details and her wonderful humor, Peggy’s stories of growing up in Hampton brought the past to life.
Most importantly, on the October 2006 front page, Peggy shared with us what it was like “Growing Up At Trailwood”. She’s the only person in the world who could tell us. The old farmhouse and its environs would later become the nationally, and internationally, acclaimed Connecticut Audubon Sanctuary when Edwin Way Teale, the Pulitzer Prize winning author and naturalist, and his wife Nellie bequeathed the property to the Society. It was Peggy’s mother, Margaret Marcus, who sold the farm to the Teales in 1959, moving into the old farmhouse on Reilly Road with Peggy and Charlie and helping raise their two daughters, Dorothy and Carolyn. Mrs. Marcus, Teale wrote, “was someone we liked from our first moment of meeting”, and her farm encompassed everything they sought – fields, swamps, brooks, a waterfall – “miraculously they all seemed here”. And in A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm, Teale described the gentle, quiet nature of Hampton with this example from the newspaper: “Town Clerk Mrs. Margaret Fox reminds bee owners their hives must be registered in her office by October 1.”
Peggy shared stories of raising cows and chickens at Trailwood where there were two large chicken coops and two small ones; the buildings now used as a museum and visitor center were built by her father, Axel Marcus, for the cows and their stanchions. She told us that there were more open fields and pastures then, of the fruit trees and berry bushes, and of the wildflowers found which are still protected, “bluets, lady slippers, trilliums, violets – blue, violet and yellow – black eyed Susans, daisies, and a host of others”. She told us tales of exploring the Old Colonial and Old Woods roads and those cow paths which would become the well-known and traveled trails.
Peggy’s early years at Trailwood most assuredly influenced her entire life. It was there that she first cultivated a love of nature, spending most of her time when she was away from the office out of doors. Toward the end of her life, one would frequently find her sitting outside alone – alone and immersed in nature – that was all right with her. She lived all her life in remote areas of town, surrounded by native flora and fauna.
And it was at Trailwood that she cultivated a love of animals – the squirrels and chipmunks, turkeys and other birds, the foxes, raccoons, deer, rabbits, bears, porcupines, possums, even coyotes, bob cats, and a cougar. Most of them she welcomed, like the raccoon, who stood at the end of the queue mornings with the cats, sitting quietly and assuming the felines’ pose, waiting for breakfast to be dispensed in the long line of bowls. Or more recently, the black bear who she encountered, face-to-face, while she was raking, and greeted with the words — “Hello there. Aren’t you a handsome fellow?” — because he was, and feeling no fear, returned to her task.
Most especially, Peggy loved her cats, Strays were always left there, or found their way, as if people, or the cats themselves, knew how to communicate that at Peggy’s place, there was a haven for them. They kept her company throughout her life, and especially at its end.
Her wonderful stories, which she shared so generously with us, instructed us on the past, informed us in the present, and provided a map for us to follow as neighbors in this small town in New England, for Peggy personified the best of Hampton. And so we honor her here one last time. Thank you, Peggy, for your service to the town, for sharing your memories of growing up here, for your stewardship of the land and of the Little River, for your sense of humor, your graciousness, your patience, for your wonderful welcoming way, for making us all feel at home.