Memories of ‘Lady Who Beat the Government’

Alice Azubah Ramsdell seemed the typical Yankee old maid: a flower expert and farmer who presided over family reunions with a wooden cheese tub full of lemonade.

In fading photographs she sits stiffly on a parlor sofa, her black oxfords squeezed tightly together.

But those who knew her see mischief in her half smile and bright eyes--eyes that put government agents in their place when they tried to take her farm for a flood-control project.

Alice had a shotgun and wasn’t shy about using it.

Folks differ on what exactly happened when she confronted the Army Corps of Engineers three decades ago, but they agree that the message was clear: You’ll take this farm over my dead body.

The government eventually seized her property, but it allowed her to live out her life on the farm her ancestors built more than 250 years ago in this northeastern corner of Connecticut.

Alice died three years ago at the age of 87. Now the corps is preparing to demolish the farmhouse, which is falling apart and has been vandalized. No date for the demolition has been set.

Preservationists agree that nothing can be done to save the farm, part of which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Still, they lament that the home to eight generations--the home of Alice’s last stand--could soon be set aflame in a training exercise for firefighters.

“I consider it a tragedy that a once wonderful, productive farm with so many architectural styles represented on it has wound up becoming a bonfire,” said Jane Vercelli, local Historical Society president and a family friend.

Who was Alice Ramsdell?

The elder of two daughters, Alice was her father’s “right-hand man.”

“Alice sort of took up the role of son and went with her dad to do a lot of outdoor work, while the sister did inside housework,” said Ruth DeAmicis, a friend and co-worker on town history projects.

From her father she learned surveying, how to run farm machinery, put up the hay, butcher chickens and shear sheep. She operated sometimes on a barter system, trading wool or eggs for what she needed.

She also shared her father’s passion for railroads. For years, she gave area schoolchildren and railroad buffs presentations on the 18-ton small-gauge locomotive the family kept in a shed on the farm.

The family tended fruit trees, developing a kind of apple known in the region as the Ramsdell apple.

Parts of the farmhouse date to 1736, with the front section displaying a regional style known as a “brick-end,” since two sides of the house are made of brick.

Though Alice never married, as a justice of the peace she united countless couples. She is survived by her sister and a nephew.

Alice Ramsdell might have lived a quiet, maybe eccentric, life if it hadn’t been for the flood of 1955.

That year, the French and Quinebaug Rivers overflowed, sweeping away neighborhoods and breaking buildings “like cracker boxes,” a local history book recounts.

In the aftermath, the Corps of Engineers planned to erect a dam and create a lake to control the waters. In the way was the West Thompson neighborhood and the Ramsdell farm.

In the early 1960s, the government approached landowners to sell and relocate. Fifty homes were taken. But not Alice’s.

“When they came to her, she refused to sell. She said even if there’s a flood, the water will never come up to the house,” DeAmicis said.

After repeating her position in a few meetings with the engineers, Alice had had enough and let it be known that she had armed herself with a loaded shotgun.

The corps relented, agreeing that she could stay on the land for a $75 monthly rent until she died, with the understanding that the property could still be flooded, said project manager Kate Higgins. The corps also agreed that she could move the farmhouse to another plot of land, but the move was never made.

“Alice would not leave, and the understanding I have is, she is the only person in New England who was asked to leave who didn’t leave,” Higgins said.

The dam project was completed in 1965, leaving the farmhouse alone on a hill, overlooking the lake and surrounded by woods.

“Contrary to what Alice said, it is within the flood zone. There’s a 100% probability it will be flooded at some point,” said Bob Hanacek, who manages corps projects in the region.

Alice’s victory made her a heroine. She was the marshal of the town’s bicentennial celebration in 1985, and people still revere her as the “lady who beat the government.”

As Alice Ramsdell aged, the farmhouse and outbuildings fell into disrepair.

When she was in her 80s, as she was trying to fix the roof, she fell and was badly injured. The fall impaired her walking and eventually forced her to a nursing home, where she died Dec. 27, 1994.

Today, a ragged blue tarp hangs over part of the house’s roof. The first-floor windows are boarded up, and the second-story windows are mostly broken or missing, revealing rooms with stained and torn wallpaper in pink and blue floral patterns.

The front porch where she confronted government agents is strewn with corncobs and an old raccoon trap, and the decorative whitewashed tracery around the porch peels in the winter damp and cold.

Plastic Easter lilies sprout from beneath a sickly tree. Hulks of farm machinery, wagons and buggies rust nearby.

The farmyard, once home to bleating sheep and clucking chickens, stands silent, except for the distant call of Canada geese that rest on the lake that was the farm’s undoing.

But locals say Alice Ramsdell had the last laugh. From her surveying work she knew the dam project would not threaten the farm.

“She was absolutely right. Even at the highest water, it never came up that far,” DeAmicis said.