Time's Toll Takes Mead Homestead: Old House at Turnpike in Cos Cob Replaced by Handsome School Building

 Source: Greenwich News and Graphic: April 20, 1915. Page 1. 

The Mead homestead on the old Boston turnpike at Cos Cob is another of the monuments to old Greenwich days which are fast demolished to make room for more modern and pretentious structures. Although the old weather-beaten landmarks ugly and ______ out of place in this supposedly harmonious age they still hold a dear and cherished place in the hearts of the old residents of Greenwich who look back into the dim past with straining eyes, seeking to bring back to memory the scene of "yesterday's year." But with the list of the old familiar landmarks, yearly, growing smaller it will, not be long before they will, like the age they dated for, become also a thing of the past.

The old Mead homestead was situated on the land with was sold to the town for a school site and which to-day contain the Cos Cob public school, in a practically finished state. When the new school house began to assume proportion, it was only natural to have the old house torn down.

For more than one hundred and fifty years it had been a landmark and was one to the pretentious houses on the Post Road many years, always attracting attention from the traveler ___ ____ as they passed by on their journeys.

For upward of seventy-five years, it was the home of William Mead, who died over twenty-five years ago. He was a prosperous farmer and owned a large tract of land surrounding house. ___ all the houses built in the _____, the timbers were large, and as the _____ boards were torn away the ____ out, timbers are revealed to view. But what attracts the most attention are the old stone and cement chimneys with the large open fireplaces, which were the only source of heating the spacious house for many years.

Some fifteen years ago, the house was the home of Mr. James Beecher, the wife of one fo the members of the famous Beecher family, who kept a young ladies school there for some time. 

The house was made notable by a large oak tree which stood just in front ____. The tree had been _____ , _____ the normal prehistoric, the old resident said. It measured thirty or forty feet around and its large branches spread over a wide area. In ____ _______ ____ many branches, been ---- the trunk, which was ____ ___ the base and so was the _____ . It was known ____ _______, far and wide, and was _______  ________ with wonder and ______.

In a very few years ago, the trunk ________ fell over, ____ ______ of the great old tree _____ in the ground under which the roots probably remain.