THE SUSSEX COUNTY LIBRARY SYSTEM

MY FAMILY IN SUSSEX COUNTY HISTORY

WINNING STORY MARCH 2007
Erik Checkur a fourth grader at Wantage Elementary School joined the fun and wrote a story about his great great grandfather – a farmer and poet who lived in Sussex County 1865-1940.  Check out Erik's great great grandfather's book from the library!

DEEP ROOTS

Written by Erik Checkur, grade 4, Wantage Elementary School

My great great grandfather was Peter Lott and I live on Lott Road. He farmed the field that I now ride my quad on. He wrote poems near the stream my dog runs through. He lived in the house that my grandma still lives in. My Sussex County roots are deep.

Peter Lott was born in 1865. he went to school until he was fourteen. He was asked to leave school because he put gunpowder in the schoolhouse’s potbelly stove. BOOM! He left and never went back. He was needed to work with his dad on the farm. When he grew up, he became a farmer.

Peter Lott’s hobby was writing poems. He wrote his poems by a fallen tree near the stream in the backfield. He went to write with his dog and his mule and his lunch. He wrote 800 poems by the stream and 300 of them went into a book. My favorite poem is “My Escape from the Pochuck Witches.”

Every fall the other farmers came to him to have him tell the weather for the winter. He would tell this by looking at the black and brown markings of the wooly-bear caterpillars. The New York Times even asked Peter Lott to predict the weather. When they asked where he learned to look at the caterpillars to predict the weather, he said he learned it from his Grandpappy, who learned it from the Indians.

Peter Lott wrote his last poem on his birthday. He had a stroke after he wrote the poem, “Uncle Peter’s Birthday,” in his field by the stream with his dog, Blue Boy and his mule, Jennie. He died at home 18 days later.

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