Event: Telling Tales Out of School #2
Oral History Project Interviews
Location: Old Lyme Town Senior Center
Date: March 6, 2010
Interviewees:Belton Copp and Genie Copp
Interviewer: Michaelle Pearson
Have you always lived in Old Lyme? No. From whence did you come?
B- Groton, then Memphis. But I was born up here.
So your family comes from the area?
B- My grandfather was the president of the bank in New London, the savings bank of New London. He was a little short guy, but he sure had a lot of big guys on the run. And he always loved his family, kept right up to pace, too.
And so I see that you were an attorney and commissioner of fish and game. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about your area of practice as an attorney?
B- As an attorney, New London County mainly, general practice, I saw a little bit of everything. And if I didn’t know enough about some problem I would try to find somebody that did.
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What was it like being the commissioner of fish and game?
B- You were everybody’s enemy that liked to fish and shoot birds.
G- I don’t know when you became the fish and game commissioner, John Lodge was governor. He appointed you.
B- Yes that’s right.
I see you were involved in Old Lyme conservation, can you tell me a little bit about that?
I think I’ve heard your name in the Conservation Trust.
B- Well, yes that’s right. I did most of the legal work for them. I organized and drafted various documents, that’s about all. Isn’t that right Genie?
G- You encouraged people to give easements or donate land to the trust even if it was a small piece of marsh.
Is it easy to get people to give their land?
B- Some people ask you to do it. It all depends on how well you knew them or how well they knew you. They would gladly cooperate on this venture. Betty ??? There was a man named George Page Ely and we did a lot of this stuff together. Page lived, you know where he lived, its right across the street from. . .
G- The yellow house across the street in town.
B- I’m anxious to please you in any way I can.
Well, I’m just curious to hear what you have to say. Genie, you mentioned Page Ely and woodcocks.
B- Woodcocks were the conventional bird.
And where was your place you used to hunt those?
B- The place I used to hunt most, well, we had it in the woods in back of Page’s house as a matter of fact. You know where his house was? And sometimes we wondered a little further afield. We covered most of the town of Old Lyme and Lyme.
Most people hunted in their yards?
B- Not most people, but just some people who started that way and just kept on. Dan Moore was one of them. Dan Moore . . . I went woodcock shooting and other game, birds or other game, I liked rabbits and things, but we just wondered pretty much from the boundary line on the east side to the river. And then Page, of course, was born and raised in this area, and we just hunted areas that we knew and it was more the walking around and talking. More than hunting.
That sounds like a lot of fun.
B- It was a lot of fun.
G- When you went out with Dan Moore did you go duck hunting?
B- Yes I did, that’s what I mainly did with him.
G- How did you come to own a piece of the marsh out there near watch rock?
Did page give that to you? Did Dan? Did you buy it from Dan Moore?
B- I really don’t know how I got it.
That was given to the Conservation Trust?
G- Yes it was. And of course, duck hunting, you have to set out decoys, that’s a lot more work.
B- I did most of that. Page was about 89 when we were hunting together.
Did you make your own decoys or did you acquire them?
B- Well, Page had some decoys and I had some decoys and Dean’s family had some decoys so we had all the decoys we needed and we didn’t hunt duck much, mostly we were walking around through the trees and the brush and so forth and so on and concentrating on places that Page knew because he had lived here all his life and I hunted with him most of my hunting career which started with Page. He was a character. Wonderful man.
I see this also says that you were board chairman of the Phoebe Griffin Noyes library?
B- Yes, I guess I was.
That must have been an interesting thing, Its such a lovely library.
B- It is a lovely library.
One of the crown jewels of the town, of the area as well. A really special place. How many years, did you do that for a long time?
B- Oh a long time. I founded the . . .
G- I think what you’re remembering the most interesting part was the library at that time consisted of the men’s board and the ladies board. The men’s board, they owned the building, the ladies owned the contents and hired the librarian. Because Belton was a lawyer and knew about things he was made the board chairman and he took one look at this situation. The men were always reluctant to fix what needed to be fixed and the ladies were all saying it’s dripping on the books. So there was all this going on he said this is ridiculous and he a amalgamated – I don’t what procedures they went through, I suppose they had a vote but eventually they brought him on board and then Belton resigned having accomplished that.
I never heard that before. So Genie, I know I’m supposed to be interviewing Belton primarily, but could you tell me a little about how you came to the area.
G- I came with Belton. We were just married and we wanted to live in the country and this is half way between his family and mine. I'm from New Hampshire. I want to also mention one more about the hunting. There were a few people who did hunt. There were no laws. There was a professional guy over in Essex and he used to come up to Whalebone cove and hunt whale there. And Belton went a few times. That required poling. Poling is a pole that had a flange on it so that when you push against the mud, it spreads. So he used to take Belton out. So that’s the main thing.
Sounds like it was very interesting to have the dichotomy between being a hunter and being the fish and game person. Did it make things easier or harder for you?
B- I wasn’t always the commissioner of fish and game and when I was, I decided I wasn’t going to take it because I wanted to keep shooting with my shooting buddies and finally we straightened that all out with the fish and game commissioner. And so we became, I think in our time, which was back whenever Lodge was governor.
G- When you and Page hunted it was right after we moved here in 1948. You know it’s a very short season – 3 or 4 months.
B- I’m sure the foliage--competition of the foliage and the amount of foliage is about the same as it is today. I just went for a walk in the woods a little while ago and I recognize all of the places we used to go. There are places you could go that you had experience with and it’s amazing how often. . . . (tape ended)
G- Saplings in the areas you were in would grow up too much and it would no longer be a good place to go hunting. It does change. And of course the marshes must have changed. There would be definite increase in the fragmities.
B- We would always in the morning . . . . vegetation proliferated the . . .
G- And takes out the cattails.
It was originally cattail and then the fragmities come in.
B- Well . . .
G- Wild rice.
Oh there was wild rice, really?
B- There is still wild rice at the head of whale bone creek. I’m not sure that it’s the same that the Indians reaped.
B- It is the same, everything I’ve read and everything I’ve heard. Same stuff.
G- The Indians reaped it by knocking it in the canoe.
Well, that’s fascinating. Cattails are terrible to loose, they’re pollen and all of that, but I didn’t realize there is actually rice growing. That’s a key piece of information, preservation for the future.
G- I think they tried.
They are trying.
G- And then we didn’t have any loose brush other invasive species. When we moved here I don’t think we had any cardinals in the winter. We had bob whites in the field.
I’ve never seen a bobwhite.
G- They went quite a few years ago when people mowed so much of their field. And I know that we didn’t have any of the kind of bittersweet, I guess Japanese bittersweet.
There’s been big changes natural world, global interpolination. But that’s why preservation is so important so it really nice that you were so involved in the early stages of starting the conservation in Old Lyme. Old Lyme is known for that now.
B- I think I was one of the organizers of the Old Lyme . . .
And I know that a number of your legal clients wanted to leave land to OLCT or maybe another organization that would accept it without selling it. And so you were able to facilitate quite a number of donations like Woody Griswold, Mary Stubey.
This is great because you know this a record of how these things happen. And how we can help them to happen in the future as part of the fabric of the town.
I hope somebody, I don’t know who is interviewing about how we came to have a historic district, any thoughts on that?
G- Have to ask Elsworth ?? , because that’s Jim’s father. Helped to push that through. And I know we were on the zoning board and at one point, somebody was so mad at something, that they were going to sue you and Mr. Smith who ran the hardware store personally and they had a legal phrase for that that was quite impressive, and you were so impressed with Frank Smith who owned what is now the Cooley Gallery because it could impact his business and he stood up for what he thought was right for the town.
B- So were the other people like Woody Griswold. Nobody in the Griswold family other than Woody was very interested in fish and game.
Well, hopefully we have recorded some of this in a journal and I’ll look around to see if I can find something.
Thank you so much for coming in.
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