LIVEZEY BARN (Circa 1876)
The Livezey Barn on the right side of the aerial photo, is located directly behind the site of the former Livezey House, built in 1875 and shown on the 1875 Map of Yardleyville. The property was owned by the Robert W. Welch family in 1903, and the Welch family lived there until 1940. The house burned in 1955 and the barn was converted. William Welch, grandson of Robert, recalls the 1930s...

There was "a big old barn" behind the house. As you come up the driveway to the left of the house, you would pull up in front of the barn, turn right, and drive right into the barn, probably where the carriage entered. You would pass under the hay-loft. Straight ahead was the side of the stairs, which ran along the upriver wall to the second floor. On the right, between the barn and the main house, there was a laundry building. Later, my father put in a partition and made it into a bath house for the tennis and swimming.

At the top of the stairs you turn right, make your way across a large open room toward the hay loft part [Catharine Belville said this large room on the upstairs front was used for dances in the early 1900s]. When you get to the hayloft you turn to the right, and there was a big step-down from the hayloft to the rear... and there was a big ¾" or 1" wire cable in there that ran parallel to the river… and you stepped down into a big open room, where there was an open shaft down to the horse stalls.

At the lower level, if you went in under the loft, you could enter a door into the box stall area where there were stalls for two horses. There was a 2 ft. square cistern, which provided water for barn. There were feed bins on the downriver side.

When you stepped out of barn on the side away from the river... you stepped into chicken yard... The cow shed was on the right even with the right side of the barn. We had lots of chickens... We used the feed bins for all the chicken feed and we use to feed and water the chickens and gather eggs There was a two story chicken house. The top story was a pidgin coup.

We lived in that river. This dock we had was popular and my father had the canoe and rowboat. "Virgil Kauffman kept an outboard motor boat and his Fairchild Seaplane tied up in front of our property. He'd take off and land right in the river in the 1930s. He and father were both born in 1898 and were closest friends since the time they were "little tiny kids" so I use to see lot of him. He sometimes took the kids up in the seaplane. I remember riding up there with him a couple of times. He was an avid hunter and fishermen, and on weekends went to Maine where he was able to land on the lakes.