An article in the Hartford Courant written by Pearl Scarpino titled “Hampton’s First Pounds Kept Roamers, No Dogs”, reported on a dog pound built, appropriately, on Old Town Pound Road at the home of Maurice Edwards, the dog warden. The article, however, mostly detailed the long ago need for pounds in agricultural towns such as ours for wandering cattle and other farm animals, notably “horses, asses, mules, sheep, geese, or swine”.

The Town Pound was on the corner of Old Town Pound Road, named for its public use, and Parsonage Road. It was constructed of wood in 1743 and operated by the Sessions family, who lived on what was then “Sessions Road”, which was changed after the new minister, Ludivicus Weld, purchased the Sessions farm in 1795 for a parsonage.

In 1790, a town meeting voted to use stones to rebuild the wooden pound with “walls four feet thick at the bottom, two feet thick at the top, six feet high. Said wall to be bound across three feet from the ground with a tier of flat stones and also bound on the top with a tier of flat stones…with stikes of hewed timber 10 inches locked together on the top of said wall…with a good and sufficient gate four feet wide. Above said pound to be 30 feet square within said wall. Said stick of timber to be of chestnut…”

It was also voted to situate the pound where the “old one now stands”. Amos Utley was hired to build the structure for a rate of five pounds and 16 shillings, and in 1798, the stone pound was completed, thirty by thirty feet and ten feet tall. In 1821, the town voted to pay the pound keeper six cents for every time he locked, or unlocked, the pound. If the pound keeper received a larger fee than that, he would need to pay it to the Town treasury.

In 1833, the town adopted a bylaw to include specific penalties for impounded animals. The pound keeper was not to release an animal until receiving 18 cents for the animal, except sheep and geese, which were still six cents. Stiff penalties were also enacted if the animals were allowed to roam on the Sabbath, when a 50 cent fee was established for violations.

In a sign of the financial times, the law was revised in 1852, to allow anyone who did not “stand in the list” for over $15 to have one cow run loose on the public highway without a charge. The fee for other animals was raised to 25 cents, and the fee for sheep and geese was reduced to four cents.

After there was no longer the need to impound farm animals, the Burchnalls, who lived in what was once the parsonage, kept their pigs in the old pound. In 1918, it was dismantled, and the flat stones were used in the construction of a railroad bridge over Estabrooks Road for the portion of what is now the Airline Trail that runs parallel to Eleventh Section Road.

It’s probable that there was another pound on the south end of town, and former First Selectman Walt Stone claimed that there was one along South Bigelow Road, and there’s a substantial stone wall on the east side of South Bigelow north of Brooklyn Turnpike. The stone structure on the corner of South Bigelow and Cemetery roads was not a pound, but rather an enclosure for shoeing oxen to support these farm animals unable to stand on three legs.

It would be interesting to see if anyone can locate this second pound. After the foliage falls and the woods become clearer, look for a stone structure, with tall walls, approximately 30’ x 30’. Let us know what you find!

Dayna McDermott

Bob Burgoyne contributed to this article.