The Town of Hampton was incorporated on October 2, 1786, when the Connecticut Assembly granted a petition submitted by citizens requesting independence from Windham. Known formerly as “Windham Village” or “Canada Parish”, Hampton’s first Town Meeting was held a month later, on November 13, when those eligible to vote — white, male, land-owners — elected Captain James Stedman, Deacon Isaac Bennet, and Jeduthan Rogers as the Town’s first Selectmen, and Thomas Stedman as Town Clerk. The following year, a November 12, 1787 Town Meeting appointed a committee of twelve to consult with the delegate selected for the Convention called to consider the ratification of a proposed United States Constitution drafted by delegates assembled in Philadelphia.

Self-governance, of course, came with all sorts of responsibilities. As recorded in All Our Yesterdays, the Robertson’s 1993 chronicle of “A Century of Life in a Small New England Town”, bridges needed to be built and highways necessitated maintenance, chimneys and fences required inspection to prevent fires and stray animals, deeds needed to be recorded, schools to be kept, and “the weights and measures used by everybody in the exchange of food and other produce of their farms had to be supervised for accuracy.”

Fulfilling these responsibilities cost money, so a system of collecting taxes to cover municipal expenses was implemented “Tithingmen collected the tax to support the church, school district committees collected a school tax within each district, highway surveyors collected a highway tax in each district, and constables collected the general town tax.” Since currency was not really in circulation, people usually paid their debts with goods or services to the town.

Prior to incorporation and the separation of church and state, Town meetings were held in the Meeting House where the Congregationalists also worshipped. Following the political changes, the building was remodeled, and the south-facing, center-doored façade of the meeting house, which would have resembled a large colonial home minus a chimney, was refocused with a portico and a steeple facing the Main Street. Town meetings were conducted in the Center School, where the second floor also served as a Town Hall, the polling place, public library, and, occasionally, court. Prior to the use of the Center School, Town Hall was in the small building on the Johnson’s property across from the current Town Hall, and later in a room over the General Store, which also housed the Post Office.

Accounts were recorded in Alison Davis’ Hampton Remembers.

Way back, the town clerk’s office was the little buildin’ that sets back between the houses across from the Consolidated School. It was right where it sets now. But when my mother Gertie Thompson was town clerk the office was upstairs over the store. She was town clerk for twelve years and on the school board forty –nine!

Russell Thompson

I went in as Town Clerk on October 4th, 1937, and I was 22 years right to the very day! And I was treasurer, too. Those days you had the fish and game, you had the dog licenses, the marriage licenses, burial permits, the recording of deeds…If I remember it, I took in a total of $650 the first year and that was from license fees and being the Town Treasurer – making up the town tax-rate book. That is, figgering the individual tax for each taxpayer. That’s a complicated business, collecting taxes. The Assessors, the Board of Tax Review, the Town Treasurer, the Tax Collector – all are involved in collecting the taxes.

Harold Stone

The town clerk’s office was essentially the town clerk’s desk, which followed the town clerk and was housed in the town clerk’s home.

The municipal offices finally acquired their own building in 1960 when the Fire Department sold the original Fire House to the Town of Hampton for the purpose of converting it into a Town Hall. The small building on the southern corner of Old Route 6 West and Main Street held the vault, the offices of the Town Clerk, Tax Collector and Assessor on the main floor, and the office of the First Selectman in a room upstairs.

“I remember trying to do title searches there when I represented someone who wanted to buy a home in Hampton. Tiniest town clerk’s office I ever did a title search in,” Angela Fichter recalled, adding, “That’s ok. I spoke to an elderly man in Scotland whose aunt used to be town clerk in Scotland around 1940. She kept the land records under her bed!”

The tiny building was converted into a polling place for elections. In those days, other votes were taken at town meetings, usually held in the new fire house with people spilling into the parking lot. Many residents attended then, the annual town meeting an event not to be missed!

In 1991, with the construction of the new elementary school, the Town Hall moved to the consolidated school where it remains with offices, at various times, for the First Selectman, the Town Clerk, the Tax Collector, the Assessor, the Registrars of Voters, the Building Department, Planning and Zoning, Inland/Wetlands, the Agent for the Elderly, Small Cities, and Social Services. The Town Hall also houses the vault and the Community Room, and the lower level has been used, almost consistently, for private schools.

Some things never change. According to All Our Yesterdays, surveyors of highways were elected at the first Town Meeting in 1786 to oversee the roads. Among their responsibilities: “whenever the town shall lay a tax for repairing highways, it shall be the duty of the surveyors to warn out the inhabitants of their respective Districts to remove all nuisances in the highways; and in Case the publick highways should be blocked up in the winter Season with Snow So as to impede the publick travel it shall be the duty of the surveyors to warn out the inhabitants of their respective Districts to open the paths in their several districts as Soon as may be after such nuisance hath happened. And the rule of compensation for such Service Shall be four cents pr. hour for a Man while in actual Service and eight cents pr. hour for a yoke of oxen.”

Today roads remain one of the main concerns of the town: we pay the officials at Town Hall to perform statutorily required duties; we support schools to educate our youth; and we take care of our roads. In Hampton Remembers, the chapter “Running Our Town” centers first and foremost on the roads, and provides us with an idea of how far we’ve come in the last hundred years:

List of Town Property – Truck; snow plow; conveyor; road scraper; gravel bin; plow; ox shovel; grindstone; 7 shovels; 1 bush hook; 3 picks; 1 grub hoe; 1 pruning shears; 1 hone; 3 bush scythes; 1 iron bar; 1 sledge hammer; 2 pitch forks.

Town of Hampton Annual Report, 1930

My father had cows but he also worked on the road some – course back them days they only worked part time on the roads anyway. They were dirt roads, remember. They’d scrape the roads in the spring and they wouldn’t do anything more until fall and then there’d be some brush cuttin’ and like o’ that.

Robert Fitts

I can remember the snow filled up the road some places right from the top of some stone wall clear over to the top of the wall on the other side….The men used to take heavy sleds and hitch to a horse and try to make sort of a path through it y’know, the best they could with the horse, and then, men, town men, had to shovel it out.

Vera Hoffman

When it snowed we broke through it with the horse and sled and there’d be six or eight shoveling by hand. When Elmer Stone was selectman he had another idea – we began to have cars then — so he hitched a plow on each side of a sled hoping to make a track that the car would go on, but it was kind of hard to follow the track! When the snow was deep and the wind piled it up in the road we’d go through the barway and go across the lot. Will Pearl would come cross lots with the mail. He didn’t use a car in that kind of weather, horse and sleigh.

John Lewis

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. So today the second selectman still has charge of the roads, helped by the third selectman.

John Holt

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 underwear!” 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