In our series on farms and their histories, we’ve featured barns that housed cows, carriages, horses, sheep, apples, even refugees. But the barn at 237 Main Street is remembered by many for its … parties!!!
The village of the 1950’s is legendary, as the “summer homes” that once lined Main Street started to fill with families. Approximately sixty children at all times lived within what is remembered as “the Magic Mile”, and was colloquially called “the block” and described as “one big playground”. Those who participated in the series “Random Recollections” and shared their memories of growing up in Hampton during that era recall riding horses and bicycles, neighborhood football games and snow ball fights, spending time at one another’s houses where parents treated every child like their own, and eventually, as they grew older, where there were parties — casual affairs, as Jo Freeman recalled her father’s characterization, “they open a bag of chips and some pop and call it a party!” — and dances, at the Little River Grange, the firehouse, and in the barn at Patty and Peggy Jones’ place.
“Our mother was president of the Catholic Club,” Patty Jones explains. “One year she volunteered our barn for a fund-raising dance. We cleaned the main floor of the barn, removing the two cars and the tractor, and the loft so the band could set up their equipment and preform above the dance floor. We also relocated the bull calf we were raising in a pen under the barn and brought him next door to Mrs. Webster’s barn for the night.”
The dance was an enormous success. “There must have been a hundred people – of all ages! And the country western band they hired had everyone in attendance dancing the night away,” Patty reminisces. “The lead singer was Florette, the daughter of Flo and Zack. She fulfilled every young girl’s dream of being a lead singer in a country band – dressed in a turquoise western outfit with white fringe, western boots and hat.”
‘Flo and Zacks’ was a store and restaurant located where the log cabin on Providence Turnpike now houses Judy Kaufman’s ‘Fallen Log Homestead Bakery’. “Flo was a fabulous cook,” Patty recalls. “On Sunday mornings, we went there for newspapers and donuts.”
Louie Chatey’s recollections of Florette were also fond. He remembered riding his bike by the dances in the Jones’ barn, when he was still too young for an invitation, and falling in love for the first time in his life with Florette. A musician, Louie wondered retrospectively if “I learned to play guitar so I could hang out with her.”
Scott Johnson also spoke of those parties during his interview for Random Recollections. “Mrs. Jones had dances with soft drinks in the barn that still had a 1937 tractor in it!” he recalled.
“It was the perfect place for a party,” Patty said. After that initial success, there were many dances in the barn, but it was also used for animals.
Along with families, the village housed a lot of horses. Interviews for Random Recollections revealed that most families owned at least one horse, and at one time there were thirty of them on Main Street. “Children rode horses with names like Jingo and Cheyenne to the General Store,” Scott recollected, “which looked like a scene from the wild west with horses tied in front.”
The Jones’ barn was home to two mares, Lady Bess and Blanca, and Jingo, the colt. “We didn’t have to tie him,” Patty said. Their neighbor, Mary Lou Trowbridge, brought Jingo all the way to Colorado with her, where he lived for 30 years.
“We raised two bull calves under the barn,” Peggy recalls. “There was a cellar and we built a pen there. It was a 4-H project. We raised them for meat”.
As with any barn, there were other, unwanted, critters. Patty remembers once when her mother was parking the car back in the barn, she stepped out of the vehicle while her mother was still in the driver’s seat and screamed because a snake slithered under the car near her feet. “My mother screamed to get back in the car. I jumped in the back seat window, half in and half out, while my mother rolled the car back and forth to kill the snake. With me screaming, my mother shouting, the car rolling back and forth in the barn, Mrs. Webster came running over, shouting for my father to come quick. She thought I was being run over in the barn! The snake, by the time everyone came running in, was long gone – terrified to be sure!”
The house was built by Jonathan Clark, who was responsible for building many fine homes in Hampton, between 1801 and 1803. It was originally called the “Captain John Tweedy House”. The barn was built at the same time, or shortly afterwards. It’s an English barn, as the entrance is on the eave side and usually had a drive-through back door. English barns were built through the 1850’s, but rarely after 1830 when the New England barn, with the entrance on the gable side, gained favor. Captain Tweedy owned the parcel of land where the Hansen’s home is now which was called “Tweedy’s Mowing”, evidencing the need to store, and use, hay.
Though the original barn remains, there were more structures than there are now. “There was another barn in back and to the side,” Patty describes the barn, then a stall, then a porch, then another stall, and then another barn. The buildings were in a row and the porch was open to the back corral.
“An open attached shed was made into two horse stalls with a porch to the rear of the stalls which led to a corral and open fields,” Peggy explains. “The horses were allowed to graze in Mrs. Webster’s field. There was a hay loft upstairs with an attached smaller barn for hay. The tack room smelled of grain and had two saddles set up on stands so you could pretend to ride. The blacksmith would come and tie up the horses ropes on both sides to do the shoeing,” she recalls. She also remembers the items left from past owners: an egg basket and pile of old slate for roof repair. “There was a gas pump and an underground gas tank right before you entered the barn. Cedar trees were planted in front and the arched trellis led to the underbelly of barn. A three-seater outhouse was attached, and there were two well houses, though one became contaminated as it was near the manure. In the back yard there was a clay tennis court with a three-walled shingled open pavilion.”
“We loved playing in the barn when we were young as there were rooms set up by the previous owner to house the chauffeur,” Patty remembers. “A bell in the main house rang in the barn when Mr. Street wanted to contact his driver! There was a pot-bellied stove for warmth and sink with a hand pump for water.”
Current owner Peter Witkowski reports that the only things, besides the barn, remaining when he purchased the property in 2007 were the outhouse and one well house. “The very level upper lawn must be where the tennis court existed. I’ve worked around the barn’s entrance and there are no remains of a gas pump or underground tank,” he says, adding “ Inside the barn there is a bell in the lower level northwest room, but the potbelly stove is gone, just the chimney remains.”
Also remaining are the names “Peggy, Patty, and Robbie”, and their surname, painted on the wall. Their time in a barn that provided them with unlimited childhood play, a home for their horses, a dance hall for their friends, remains on one of its timbers, and, clearly, in their memories.