The small barn at the northeast corner of Routes 6 and 97 has become quite a popular summertime destination these last few years. Residents wait in anticipation for the sign to signal that “Fresh Corn” is available. Other vegetables will follow – summer squash and cucumbers, and later the stable will become colorfully plump with pumpkins and gourds. Some of us remember when it sheltered cattle, when it was part of the Jewett farm, and though we still refer to it as such, the property has known many owners and rural uses.
According to the deeds, early owners were John Bullen and Benjamin Burgess and early uses included a saw mill and a grist mill along the Cedar Swamp Brook on the southwest corner of Routes 97 and 6. Bullen’s 1718 grist mill was sold to Burgess, along with lot 24 (the northwest corner of Routes 97 and 6) in 1733 for 400 pounds, which is the equivalent of one million of today’s dollars, quite a hefty price for the town and the times. At that point, mills were the only buildings listed. In 1756, Burgess sold to David Martin, and in 1798, Martin sold the property, which included 31 acres, to Jedidiah Burnham for 500 dollars. David Searles sold another neighboring parcel of land to Burnham in 1819. Searles ran a tannery in that area –perhaps in the house at 24 Main Street, which is far older than it appears. Searles’ son, who was a leather worker, eventually lived in the Burnham Hibbard House. Burnham to Burnham transactions, which included 62 and 29 acres, occurred in 1837, and in 1877, Burnham sold to William Greenslit, who owned quite a lot of property in town, 133 acres with a house and two barns. Though this is the first reference to these structures, the house at 9 Main Street is circa 1750. Eleven years later, in 1888, John Fitts purchased the property from Greenslit, and in 1920, Fitts sold the property, which included 90 acres, to Carl Jewett.
Though the Jewett family was the last family to farm the land, their arrival in Hampton is much earlier. According to Susan Jewett Griggs’ “Folklore and Firesides”, the Jewetts came to the area from Rowley, Massachusetts around 1732. Benjamin Jewett II was a blacksmith in Canterbury. His sons, both blacksmiths, settled in Hampton, Benjamin III and Ebenezer, who served under Captain Josiah Hammond during the Revolutionary War. Ebenezer’s life would connect the Jewett family with several local institutions. After the war, Ebenezer married the Captain’s daughter, Abigail Hammond, whose sister, Sarah, is remembered for “The House the Women Built”. Their son, Ebenezer II, built the Bell Schoolhouse and the exhibition buildings at the Brooklyn Fairgrounds. Ebenezer II’s daughter, Maria, would marry John Porter Pearl, their union linking the two families, and his eldest son Ebenezer III, a Baptist minister, provided Mrs. Griggs with much folkloric information.
While Ebenezer III was the renowned “storehouse of folklore”, and William was the legendary “farmer poet of Hampton”, the most famous of the Jewetts was Leslie. Born in 1917 in Hampton, the son of Carl and Dorothy Jewett, Leslie enlisted in the U. S. Army in March of 1941 and was assigned to the 29th Infantry Division. On June 6, 1944, the 29th was the first to storm Omaha Beach, and Leslie, at the age of 27, would become the town’s only casualty of World War II. The American Legion Post 106 and the bridge on Old Kings Highway are named in his honor.
Entire pages of the Index to the Town’s Land Records from Incorporation to the 1930’s are dedicated to the Jewett’s property transactions. Though the Jewetts originally settled on the abandoned town road that linked Howard Valley and Clark’s Corner, the family grew and lived in western, eastern, and southern sections of town as well as in the village. Notably, Ebenezer Jewett lived for a time in the “haunted house”, where folklore tells of a peddler who was murdered there, and inhabitants told of latches rattling all night and refusing to stay fastened and the visage of a headless, hairy monster who would vanish in the fireplace. In Remembering 97 Years, A Spiritual Life, Alison Davis describes the farm her family purchased as a “summer home” from Mary and Chester Jewett, where Mary coped without plumbing, a furnace, or an electric refrigerator or stove, and Chester, who farmed “from morning till night”, surely wondered, Alison speculated, when he observed her father on the lawn washing the white birch logs kept in the fireplace when it wasn’t burning, “By jeepers! Looks like he’s washin’ the firewood! Is that all he has to do?”
The subject of this article, the Carl Jewett farm, contained two houses, two barns and a milking parlor; the land was eventually divided by three roads, Route 97, Fisk Street, and Highway 6. Along with running a dairy farm, Carl Jewett was a selectman and in charge of the roads and the road crew.
Before I became first selectman that office entailed road work – construction and maintenance of the roads. When I came in, Carl Jewett who was the second selectman, had been the first selectman and loved the road part of the job, but he wasn’t so fond of the finance and relief-welfare end of things. Well I had a job all day in Danielson and I couldn’t stay up all night plowing roads and do my job during the day so Carl took over the roads and I did the finances and welfare and we had many years of a very happy relationship.
John Holt, from “Hampton Remembers”
When I was first selectman, Carl Jewett was in charge of the roads. He had been for years. He was a wonderful guy and he had a lot of funny sayings. He said, “That would be just about as handy as a pocket in your underdrawers!” I remember cutting bushes on the road down there where Lenny Holmes lives, Lenny’s Lane, and they were cuttin’ down some fairly tall trees and they bumped into the wires. The wires were hot and there were sparks flyin’ all over the place and Carl yells, “If you’re still alive don’t move!”
Wendell Davis, from “Hampton Remembers”
According to Carl’s grandson, Brian Caya, when State regulations imposed restrictions on dairy farms in the 60’s, Mr. Jewett decided it wasn’t worth the investment of all the mandated changes to continue the dairy operation and instead, he raised cattle. Those of us who grew up here remember the cattle in the stable. Later and current owners, the Castillo family, cultivated a lot of vegetables, raised a few pigs and goats, and Elaine had an elderly quarter horse for a while. Classmates Brian and Elaine remember playing in the old barn, building forts with the hay bales and flying kites from the roof. “We would put the spools of string on the lightning rods at the peak,” Elaine recalls. Brian remembers sliding down the shoot meant for hay bales. And like everyone who grew up in town, he remembers haying. The summit of the three fields rising above Routes 6 and 97 provides one of the most magnificent views in town, but Brian remembers haying those fields, and choosing the highest of them in order to roll the bales downhill. The remains of the original farm include the old milking parlor, converted into another use, the vegetable stand that once sheltered cattle, and the two houses associated with the farm, including the homestead, which current owners, Conrad and Diane Castillo, have restored beautifully.
Keith Christadore is responsible for the beautiful corn we all crave and relish. Keith’s agricultural roots, and his roots in Hampton, run deep. His grandparents operated a farm at 131 Main Street, which is still referred to as “the Jaworski’s”. After Richard Jaworski returned from World War II, he and Ethel raised their two daughters, Carolyn, and Keith’s mother, Candace, as well as chickens, pigs, cows and horses. A member of the Farm Bureau, Richard built the first milking parlor in town. Prior to the Jaworski’s, Keith’s great-grandparents, Bertha and Jesse Burnham, and great-great grandparents, Lester and Nina Burnham, farmed the 200 acres, which also included an ice, a coal and a lumber business.
Today, most of the acreage on “Lone Elm Farm” is used for hay, but a portion is reserved for growing corn, other summer and autumn vegetables, and a pumpkin patch. Originally, Keith, who has been cultivating his crop since 2005, originally sold the corn at a farm stand at the end of his driveway prior to moving to the corner of Routes 6 and 97, a prime spot. And so the two farms have formed a perfect relationship, with Keith using the acreage on the “old Jaworski place” to grow the produce he sells on the “old Jewett place”, and the property that once sprawled across three roads and housed mills, farms, and at least two homes, has morphed into a farm stand, a picturesque corner along the Route 6 corridor where we wait in earnest anticipation every summer for the colorful sign announcing that those delicious cobs of ‘Silver Queen’ and ‘Butter and Sugar’ are ready. We can’t think of a greater example in Hampton of repurposed space.
Alison Davis’ “Hampton Remembers” and “Remembering 97 Years, a Spiritual Life” are available at Amazon and at Fletcher Memorial Library.