A little story to tell today. In 1979 when she was 87 or so, Gertrude Vanderwell Basil wrote a letter to my cousin outlining some history of the Gloucester area. Here is some of that letter, reflecting on her time as a child in Gloucester probably around 1900: “then your great grandma [probably Ann Conlon Handran] left and took a job at a big brick home for tenants who went out fishing and their wives. She was very happy there. I used to stop on my way home and she gave me a little coin purse with 11 cents in it because I stopped and visited her. I was only about 6 or 7 years. On the way home up on Bonds Hill there was a new home built that has a new rock wall in from of their home and I did not want to take that little purse home because Mom (Gertrude Holland Vanderwell) never let us kids accept any money from anyone so—I never did get it back because after years that place was torn down and it made me feel bad to think poor Nannie gave it to me.”
I understood her implication to be that she tucked the coin purse into the rock wall near the home on “Bonds Hill”. As fate would have it, we are staying on Bond Street and those rock walls call to me every time I drive by them. I think of a little girl’s coin purse with 11 cents inside perhaps still right where she tucked it over one hundred years ago. And I think of the long past ties I have to this area and count myself blessed.
Good Morning Gloucester 
Thanks for your story
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Beautiful story and there are so many great tales of walls and hiding spots used them myself (Sometimes we called it the lost and found) Not sure if we lost more or found more the hiding places. The hedges were other spots for hiding my sort of left a trail there! 🙂 Dave & Kim 🙂
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