Coming Home to This Place

Time slowed as my rental glided up I-684, a highway bordered by endless trees, their leaves shimmering in the morning sun. When I told Grandpa I had arrived, he rattled off roadways and towns like it was nothing. He had made this trek countless times when he lived in New York.

I was there for a week to visit his hometown of Kent Cliffs and Beacon, my grandma’s hometown. I wanted to revisit their lives and encounter tangible artifacts with resonance to their families' experiences. I only had family stories and research as guides, but sought my relatives’ afterimages and what lied beyond their experiences.

But who was I to conjure memories of places unrecognizable by its past denizens?

Left: A “Greetings from Beacon” mural located on Main Street; Right: A Beacon side street.  (Credit: Olivia Dorsey Peacock)

Beacon

Grandma warned me there was nothing left in Beacon. 

I couldn’t ignore that “returning” meant interacting with businesses that were born from urban renewal. I felt guilty as I strolled Main Street, with its lively shops, public notice signs, and hanging petunia baskets. Who was I to grieve this? It was disorienting to encounter residents who were unaware of this history. I straddled multiple identities: an outsider with no memories in this town, a descendant seeking connection, and family historian driven to record everything. I didn’t know how to settle this, but was determined to experience and document what I could.

Left: Home of author’s grandmother (1969). Credit: Beacon Historical Society; Right: Original location of the home. (Credit: Olivia Dorsey Peacock.)

I met up with a cousin, Stephanie, who dictated Main Street’s evolution. “That diner’s been here forever. Grandma Susie and I used to go to the grocery store that was here.” She told me stories as we navigated old neighborhoods and explored the remnants of a brickyard where my grandmother’s father once worked.

A building previously owned by Dennings Point Brickworks, where the author’s great-grandfather worked. (Credit: Olivia Dorsey Peacock)

I imagined my grandmother and her siblings walking across town to school with a gaggle of friends or riding to church. When I passed “Save the Ferry” posters around town, I remembered my grandmother’s favorite memory: eating ice cream and riding that ferry with her family.

View from the entrance of Fishkill Rural Cemetery (Credit: Olivia Dorsey Peacock)

At Fishkill Rural Cemetery, I visited my grandmother’s people. I touched each headstone gently, as if I expected their spirits to welcome and admonish me for tardiness. There, the 2x great-grandmother who migrated from Georgia. Here, my grandmother’s father, his life cut short by a work accident. There, Grandma Susie, my grandmother’s mother. Across the cemetery, I encountered my uncle’s grave for the first time, his headstone a brilliant ebony. Last we spoke, he told me, I’m weak as a kitten, but remained adamant he’d get better. I left behind carnations.

Dana Murry, owner of the Lawrence family home, holding an original map of the property. (Credit: Olivia Dorsey Peacock)

Kent Cliffs

Dana and her husband Len were the third owners of my grandfather’s parents, Callie and Clifford Lawrence’s, home in Kent Cliffs. They led me through the house and yard, among the ruins of a barn Clifford built. Metal roof sheets had fallen in what remained of the doorway. I imagined my grandpa and his siblings running around the forested landscape.

In the soil, I found an archive of forgotten records, offering long ago evidence of life. My grandpa’s family had used the yard to toss anything they no longer found useful. I was speechless. This soil was witness, archivist, and archive all at once. What were the depths of its memory?

Left: Author’s great-grandparents, Clifford (1901-1954) and Callie (1905-1966) (Credit: Lawrence Family); Right: Ruins of Clifford’s barn. (Credit: Olivia Dorsey Peacock)

“Take anything you find,” they encouraged me. 

We uncovered “useless” things: jars, leather, and silverware. They told me they even once found an old prosthetic leg; the replacement for Clifford’s left leg, which he lost in the 1940s. Shaking, I gathered glass, soil, and metal, a sense of desperation rising up in me. I needed to hold onto something. The buried refuse felt like gifts from the departed that I had to carry home.

A fork found in the author’s great-grandparents’ backyard. (Credit: Olivia Dorsey Peacock)

Leaving

Upon departure, I was restless. Each place had held memories waiting to be acknowledged, but I could not bring them all home. This overwhelmed me with an unexpected sorrow. I had encountered stories and found comfort in the places my ancestors moved through. Still, nothing felt like enough.

This pilgrimage had become more than following well-trodden paths or charting evolutions of home. Family lore became palpable. I encountered ancestry with depth and sensitivity, tethering myself to my relatives’ mundanities, hardships, and joys. I understood the meaning of descendant.

Every step and sight I experienced began another entry in our family’s collective memory. These memories became living heritage, perching in trees that had seen generational trials, looking on from brick and crawling out from soil. I could not escape their weight. I needed to honor these sites of memory. Memory, our memory, had become resolute.