Thanks to the newspapers and the contributions of various writers a lot of information about how people lived in Pleasant Valley during the period interpreted by Howell Farm is available to us today.  The series of stories listed to the left all relate to that time period or within a few years of it.

The first story, "Ye Correspondent," is the story of Rachel Williamson, a resident of Pleasant Valley who contributed a regular column on happenings in the Valley to the Hopewell Herald between 1888 and 1908.  Information from her columns has inspired some of these stories.  Her twenty years of writing forms a kind of diary of life in the Valley and many of the stories about families, places, events, customs, etc. owe a great deal to her.  We recommend that her story be read first in order to get the context for other stories.

All the stories in the series are listed on this page although many of them are also found listed on pages about the various topics associated with the Pleasant Valley Rural Historic District.  The stories are all in PDF format and require the use of Adobe Reader which is a free download from Adobe.com.