The longest lasting and farthest reaching organization in town, the Little River Grange, was the social pulse of Hampton for nearly a century. The village facility we now know as the “Community Center” once housed this formidable institution and served as the premier gathering place for residents from 1906 to 2002 when it closed its doors, and an era.
The National Grange, or the Patrons of Husbandry, was founded in 1867. Its purpose was to create an organization to unite farmers socially, economically, and politically, and to improve agricultural methods and rural life. Eighteen years later, the concepts reached the far corners of New England. The minutes of the first meeting of Little River Grange #36 state: “On December 30, 1885, the citizens to the number of 22, 12 men and 10 women, of the Town of Hampton, Connecticut met according to previous agreement at the House of George M. Holt at 7 o’clock p.m. for the purpose of organizing a grange.” Thus, the local organization began before the building itself was constructed.
“It was started by my great-great grandfather George Holt in this room and the sofa that they sat on is upstairs,” George Fuller relayed in Hampton Remembers. “It was organized here in 1885 and named Little River Grange after the river goin’ by in back here. Great-grandfather was first master and I guess Grandmother was an officer, and nanny. But it started right in this room – they didn’t have any hall for a while, of course they took turns going around. For a good many years they met in the Town Hall.”
A series written for the Gazette by Frederick Pogmore and published in 2003 chronicled the history of Little River Grange #36. In the year following its inception, membership more than doubled, growing from 22 to 54, meetings were held twice a month in the Town Hall, which was housed in the upstairs of the Center School, and the first of several committees was formed to lobby the legislature to fund what was then known as the Storrs Agricultural School.
In 1902, the first Grange Fair, a tradition of decades, featured agricultural products, demonstrations, and exhibits of rural crafts. Receipts for admission, .15 for adults and a dime for children, totaled $17.83 and was deposited into the “Grange Hall Fund”. Donations and dinners and a mortgage secured by the organization contributed to an amount sufficient enough to start construction. W. H Burnham donated the building lot, and in May of 1906, residents Austin and Arthur Pearl began building the grange hall. In 1907, the first meeting was held there. A furnace was installed in 1911, and in 1912, “water was piped from a neighbor’s property to a tub in the back cellar.”
The Grange was in constant use. From Alison Davis’ Hampton Remembers:
The Grange was very important during the war years – that was World War II. I was Master at that time and Dot was lecturer. Because of gas rationing those were the days when nobody could get anyplace but you could get to Grange meetings. Other things were cut down and that gave the Grange an opportunity to emerge. It became more of a social organization than a farming fraternity in those years and everybody went. People from all different groups in town went – the Catholics and Protestants, the rich and the poor. Why I’ve seen Jim Goodwin who was a very wealthy man and who owned all of Pine Acres Farm here in town and gave it to the state for a State Forest – I’ve seen him with a dishtowel around his waist wiping dishes – and he was happy doing it! We all made our own fun and I always thought it was very important to help us get through those war years.
John Holt
For quite a number of years I used to go to the dances every Sat’dy night up to the Grange Hall. They always used to serve cake and coffee. Mother’d bake me a cake and I’d take the cake up and that’s how I got into the dance – by taking the cake for them to have with their coffee. I got my admission for the cake.
Robert Fitts
At the Grange we used to have Competitive Night in July. We had two teams, like the people who wore glasses against those who didn’t wear ‘em, or all the people from the north end of town against the ones from the south, or all the people that weighed over I forgotten what it was, against all those who weighed a-hundred-and-five or something, like I did then. Then you had just so long for your program and if you went overtime or undertime that took off points. And you used to have the judges usually from out of town, three Grange members from somewhere else. We had music, sketches and everything and why you know we’ve put on some programs that really, I tell ya’, they were really worth lookin’ at!
Cora Burdick
In 1939 or 1940 the Juvenile Grange put on “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” for the senior Grange and Evelyn Hughes supplied the seven little dwarfs from her first three grades at the Bell School.
Helene Stensland
Box Socials were held occasionally at the Grange. The ladies would put up sandwiches, cupcakes or cookies and fruit and they’d fix up a box or basket, decorate it more or less the way you would a May basket, fix it all up very fancy and pretty-looking. Then you’d have an auctioneer and this person would stand up and hold up one of these pretty little boxes or baskets and ask how much he was offered for it and the bidding would go on and whoever was the highest bidder would pay this money and take the box. And then after all of them had been sold, the man who had bought the box and the lady who had put it up would eat the contents together. It was a social thing, and a fund-raising affair, too, but it was really fun.
Ethel Jaworski
The Grange wasn’t only a social organization. Civic involvement was legendary, on a local, state and national level. Mr. Pogmore’s timeline includes: a speaker on the women’s suffrage in 1915; a 1918 vote in favor of prohibition; the adoption of the “Dirt Road Bill” in 1931. The Grange worked towards a Department of Agriculture, rural mail delivery, parcel post, improved highways, and vocational education, to name a few causes, and continuously raised funds for charitable donations, educational programs, holiday parties for children, and town projects, such as the Fire Department and the Ambulance Corps.
“I think their big slogan was, ‘Get Connecticut out of the mud’, and that was the impetus basically for state aid for town roads when it first started back there,” George Fuller recalled in Hampton Remembers. “It was a rural agricultural organization with a social life and an educational life, too. It was something the whole family went to y’know ,and we know from belonging that we had really good times. In later years it got to be more of a social function, as agriculture went on the wane, y’know. Its social side was interesting enough for survival.”
At the Little River Grange’s 50th anniversary in 1935, 160 members were in attendance. Twenty years later, the Grange reached its peak, with 333 members. The Grange Scholarship was established in 1960 and continues to be awarded to Hampton students. The Annual Chicken Barbecue became a part of the Memorial Day commemoration starting in the 1970’s. The Annual Grange Fair, which was discontinued during the forties, was reinstituted in 1973, continuing until the turn of the century. Members teamed with the Ladies Aid Society to expand the Holiday Bazaar, and Dot Holt started the community calendar, “recording the birthdays of people in town,” she relayed in Hampton Remembers. “When any newcomer comes to town, I always take them a map of the town and a birthday calendar.”
As the 20th century came to a close, it became clear to its dwindling membership that the Little River Grange could no longer survive as a viable organization. As the granddaughter of a long-standing member put it, “Our world became larger and Hampton was no longer our focus.” At a July 12, 2002, meeting, members voted “to turn in its charter, and cease to exist after all of its assets were properly disposed.” Four months later, residents at a November 18, 2002, special town meeting voted to accept the facility for town use for the fee of one dollar with two conditions: that the sign over the front door be preserved; and that the hall continue to be used as a community center. A committee was formed, a STEAP grant was secured, and the renovated and modernized Community Center hosted its first event in September 2008.
Since then, the building has been in near constant use. Along with private parties and receptions, the space has been used for historical presentations, to host Mother’s Day teas, and for Game Night. It has been transformed into an art gallery and utilized for exhibits and demonstrations during the Fall Festival. The stage has been used for talent shows and political debates, concerts and plays, from local musicians and thespians to a Grammy winner and the acclaimed Flock Theater. The grange hall has been turned into a dance floor for local bands, and the kitchen has been used to serve the seniors’ luncheons and the Memorial Day Barbecue.
In all aspects, the Little River Grange retains the aura of rural life, of a timeless simplicity, of the importance of community so profound in a small town such as our Hampton.