The Coley House Room 2 of 6 · Office and sewing room
Cleora's Office
The story of the Coley House begins with a woman, Mary Eliza Andrews, and ends with one. Cleora Burr Coley was a nurse, a bookkeeper, a Grange officer and, in 1942, one of the five people who decided how much sugar Weston got.
Miss Burr, R.N.
Cleora Barnes Burr was born in New Hampshire in 1899 and grew up on the Burr family's farm in Redding. She trained as a nurse at the Bridgeport Hospital Training School and graduated in 1922. She nursed in New York, and the family remembers that she nursed in Panama too.
While she was working in Queens, Jim Coley was in Weston building them a house. His letters to her said, “I'm working on your house. I'm working in your kitchen.” They married in 1931 and spent their first ten years in that house on Norfield Road. In the spring of 1941, with baby Jimmy, they moved to the homestead to look after Jim's mother.
Cleora did not work outside the home, but she was never idle: she kept the books for Jim's carpentry and rental business, cared for her mother-in-law and her son, and, as the newspapers show, helped run half the organizations in town.
Cleora's desk
What Cleora kept: her certificates, her cards and her wedding.
Bridgeport Hospital Training School
Cleora finished the three-year nursing course in March 1922. The diploma hangs on the wall of her office today.
Miss Cleora B. Burr, R.N.
Her card from the training school's alumnae association.
Graduate Nurses' Association of Connecticut
An active member in good standing, January 1926. The card has her name as Clara.
The Degree of Flora
The Grange, the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry, was farm families' club, school and social life rolled into one. Its sixth degree, Flora, was conferred at the state level, and Cleora was the Norfield Grange's lecturer, the officer who arranged its programs.
The ABC Course in Sewing
From the Fairfield County Farm Bureau and the Extension Service of Connecticut State College, June 1940. It gave her the skills to make the family's clothes, the curtains and the rag rugs.
Saturday 30 May 1931
At Christ Church in Redding, “a rose point lace gown over an ivory satin slip, and an illusion veil with lilies of the valley.” The wedding, the paper said, “united members of two of the oldest families in Fairfield County.”
Cleora's scrapbook
The Center's volunteers found Mrs. James S. Coley in the Norwalk Hour again and again: running meetings, raising money, winning at cards.
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Two hundred Grange members meet in Weston for the Fairfield County Pomona Grange. Mrs. James S. Coley receives the fifth degree.
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“Democrats Organize New Club in Weston.” Mrs. James S. Coley is one of its representatives, in a town that votes Republican.
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Sixty people at the Grange card party. Cleora wins a prize at college whist.
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“Oberlin with Mr. and Mrs. Howard Hartmann and Mr. and Mrs. James S. Coley playing, was the winning table … There were 24 tables of whist.”
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“Mrs. James S. Coley, lecturer of Norfield Grange” goes to the State Lecturers' Conference in Kingston, Rhode Island.
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Jim Coley runs for selectman as a Democrat. He gets 146 votes; the Republicans win.
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“The many friends of Mrs. James S. Coley will be surprised to hear that she was admitted to the Bridgeport Hospital for treatment Tuesday morning.” Two days later she is improving, and her mother comes from Redding Ridge to stay.
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Cleora is elected to the executive committee of the Westport Chapter of the American Red Cross.
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Four hundred people at a Halloween dance in Wilton. “Mr. and Mrs. James S. Coley of Weston, dressed in Spanish costumes, won the first prize for fancy costumes.”
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After the great flood of 1936, “Weston residents wishing to contribute to the Red Cross flood relief fund, may send their contributions to Mrs. James S. Coley.”
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An all-day Farm Bureau meeting at Cleora's house. “The topic under discussion will be ‘The Emergency Shelf.’”
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At the Farm Bureau's fashion revue, one member models a dress nearly 100 years old, another a modern gown, and “Mrs. James Coley modeled a gown of 10 years ago.”
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Cleora and the children of the Hurlbutt School's two 4-H clubs go to the round-up at Putnam Park.
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The Weston Farm Bureau meets at Cleora's house. “Topic for discussion was ‘Christmas Suggestions.’” Pearl Harbor is eight days away.
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Cleora is elected Director-at-large of the Fairfield County Farm Bureau.
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“James Burr Coley, son of Mr. and Mrs. James S. Coley of Danbury road, was one year old on Tuesday.”
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“Sugar Board Appointed Here.” Five members, on the First Selectman's recommendation. One is Mrs. James S. Coley.
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The Rationing Board meets every Wednesday evening at the Town Hall to hear appeals for extra gasoline: “applicants should not wait until their last unit of gasoline has been used before they apply for more.”
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Jimmy is baptized at Norfield Congregational Church. His uncle, Arthur Burr of Redding, is one of his sponsors.
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“Members Make Dress Forms”: an all-day Farm Bureau meeting, each member bringing her own lunch.
Wednesday evening, June 1942 · Weston Town Hall
Sit on the Ration Board
Gasoline rationing has just begun in the East, and the board meets every week to hear appeals for more. You are Mrs. James S. Coley. Five of your neighbors are waiting. Grant their appeal, or turn it down?
The applicants are made up. The rules, and the board, were real.
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The country doctor
His patients are spread across Weston, Easton and Redding, and his ration is gone by Tuesday. He needs enough to make his house calls.
What the board would likely decide: Almost certainly yes. Driving that kept people healthy came first, and doctors were among the first to get extra gasoline.
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The war worker
He builds aircraft parts at a Bridgeport plant and drives there every day. He wants enough for the commute.
What the board would likely decide: Yes, but the board would ask how he gets there. War workers could get extra gas for the drive to work, if they shared the ride. Bridgeport's plants ran buses for workers from Weston, and the town's school buses took commuters to the train in Westport.
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The dairy farmer
His truck carries milk to the dairy every morning, and he can't keep it running on a car's ration.
What the board would likely decide: Yes. Food was war work: farmers were spared the draft for it, as Jim Coley was. A board would see that the milk still got to the dairy.
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The Grange officer
She drives to Grange and Farm Bureau meetings all over the county, and she'd like extra gas to keep going.
What the board would likely decide: Not in 1942: meetings weren't essential driving. But the next January the Office of Price Administration ruled that Grange and Farm Bureau members could use their cars to get to meetings. Those were Cleora's own clubs.
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The weekend driver
He wants enough gasoline to take the family to the beach on summer Sundays.
What the board would likely decide: No. Pleasure driving was what rationing was meant to stop, and in January 1943 it was banned altogether in the East.
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Cleora did this every week, for neighbors she knew by name. As the board told the town in the Norwalk Hour: “applicants should not wait until their last unit of gasoline has been used before they apply for more.” Ration stamps lie on her desk in the house today.
What's on at the Farm Bureau?
The Farm Bureau's women met in each other's houses, often Cleora's, to learn from each other and from the experts at the state college at Storrs. Some of their topics, from the newspaper:
- 1933 Floor waxes and polishes, made at home
- 1933 Chair caning and rush seats
- 1935 The removal of spots and stains
- 1937 The emergency shelf
- 1937 Homemaking, a profession
- 1938 Menus for buffet suppers
- 1941 Christmas suggestions
- 1942 Meat substitutes
- 1942 Making dress forms
The sewing room
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.” New clothes were hard to come by in wartime, and Cleora's Farm Bureau sewing course paid off: socks were darned, scraps became rag rugs, and the family's clothes were made at home on a Singer machine. Wartime dresses had shorter hems and no zippers, and with nylon needed for parachutes, stockings gave way to leg makeup.
In the room today a wrap dress, sewn from a 1940s pattern, is half finished on the dress form.
A life of caring
Cleora nursed her family for most of her life: her mother-in-law Florence, who lived until 1947; her own mother, who came to live in the parlor in her last years; and Jimmy, who lived at home with her for 42 years. After Jim died in 1965 she kept his rental business going, to secure money for Jimmy after she was gone.
Waiting for you in the house
- Cleora's diploma on the office wall
- Ration stamps on her desk
- Her Singer sewing machine, and a 1940s wrap dress half made on the dress form
- The sunroom next door, where she grew African violets
Guided tours Thursdays and the first and last Sundays of the month, at 1, 2 and 3 pm, and by appointment. $5 adults, $3 ages 5–17; under 5 and members free.
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Conserving the Coley family's hair wreath cost $3,795. Adopt the next object that needs a conservator's care.