In 1993, James and Janet Robertson, an historian and a novelist, published a book about the property they purchased here. All Our Yesterdays, A Century of Family Life in an American Small Town was the result of a “treasure trove” of papers –letters, bills, catalogues, newspapers, pamphlets, receipts, invitations, documents, deeds — some of which came with the home’s attic, and most of which were the “piecemeal” offerings of previous owner, friend and neighbor, Wendell Davis, whose family had lived in the homestead since 1804. Pouring through the papers and piecing them together, the items illustrated the “private lives in a world that no longer existed,” the Robertsons wrote in the Prologue. “These relics from a long-ago past were not so mute as the house itself, or the stone walls and fields in the town.” Indeed, All Our Yesterdays provides us with as thorough a glimpse of the agricultural life of the Taintor family, and of the town at large, as we could hope to find.

On June 8, 1804, Roger and Solomon Taintor purchased the property, which included the home built in 1790 by Thomas Stedman, Jr., and eleven acres. Roger and Solomon were primarily sheep farmers, selling animals and wool from their flock. The Taintors earned several hundred dollars annually as wool producers and brokers and from the sale of sheep, lamb, mutton, sheepskins, and ram stud services. They provided food, shelter, and pasturing space for the sheep, accruing more than three hundred acres for farming here and in neighboring towns and hiring men to plant and hay and shear the sheep every year.  The Taintors also purchased produce from Hampton farmers to export. In their role as merchant farmers, they processed products on their own farm, which included a distillery for apple cider, applejack, and apple brandy, and a cheese press.

Solomon and Judith Taintor’s third child, Henry, carried on the family’s agricultural tradition. He and his wife Delia lived in the homestead all of their lives, and all of his life, Henry called himself “a farmer”, attending to the daily feeding of the animals and toiling seasonally in the fields. The only difference between Henry and his less affluent neighbors was his ability to afford hired help for the more laborious months. These would include weeks of sheering sheep, plowing and sowing in spring, haying throughout the summer, cradling, shocking and threshing grains – hay, rye and buckwheat, and in the fall, “sledding” apples and digging potatoes. Henry also retained a hired man “in residence” who was responsible for most of the routine chores throughout the farming months, approximately eight a year — six full days a week and essential tasks on Sunday — in return for food, a place to sleep, and a small stipend, $12 per month was recorded in 1838, for example, $15 per month in 1847.

For the most part, Henry farmed the way of his father, though his methods were undoubtedly influenced by his subscription to The New England Farmer, which he started in 1833. This periodical contained articles reporting scientific information as it pertained to improvements in agricultural techniques, such as crop management. Henry’s accounts verify that he did purchase commercial fertilizer and commercial seeds. The rhythm of the work, however, remained the same: summer was for mowing and haying, followed by   harvesting the grains – “cutting the rye”, “cradling the barley”, “thrashing the oats”, “husking the corn”;  fall was for apples and harvesting potatoes and other root vegetables; and the winter revolved around wood – cutting, splitting, chopping and hauling. The year began a new with rock picking, plowing, planting, animals giving birth.

Though Henry did not maintain a daily journal, Wendell Davis came into possession of such a record when someone who once lived here happened upon the journal of Benjamin Brown, who farmed on the Hampton-Brooklyn border, in an antiques shop in California. A sample of farming in April:

• Cleaned out East stables in South barn. Cut wood in Woodhouse. Went to mill.
• White-washed kitchen. Boys finished picking stone in North lot & began in 10 acre lot. Plowed in orchard & began in old house lot.
• Sowed hayseed in lower East lot & bushed it. Sowed 2 acres in lower lot, oats & hay seed. Took sows out of hog pen.
• Sowed North East lot east mowing. Plowed with two teams in middle lot in PM. Boys picked stones in 10 acre lot in PM.
• Plowed in middle lot with horses. Plowed with oxen in old house lot. Boys picked stones. White faced cow calved.
• Finished plowing in middle lot. Plowed in lower lot. Plowed in orchard. Carted stones from old wall in orchard.
• Carted stones off hog pasture & made wall. First sow had five pigs last night.
• Finished plowing in orchard. Began to plow in hog pasture. Plowed in lower lot with horses. Albert picked stone in 10 acre lot. Second sow had 7 pigs last night.
• Finished plowing lower lot. Finished harrowing hog pasture. Carted manure on the garden & commenced plowing it.
• Finished plowing garden & planted corn, beans, potatoes, cucumbers, onions, peas, saffron, peppers, lettuce, peppergrass, cabbage, tomatoes.
• Set out cabbage stumps, beets & carrots. Made fence to shut up sows & pigs. Furrowed some in hog pasture.

Sugar beets were a new crop in northeastern Connecticut, and the fact that he grew them shows that Farmer Brown was an abolitionist. Opponents of slavery started growing beets to produce sugar in order to avoid purchasing sugar produced from slave-grown cane.

Though Henry Taintor listed his occupation as “farmer” on censuses, his political career consumed much of his time. “He made a political career for himself in Hampton for which his being a farmer was essential,” the Robertsons wrote, “because he shared the work as well as the values of his neighbors.” Henry was among many farmers in Hampton referred to as “the town fathers”, a phrase which the Robertsons rightfully pointed out is “still used to describe the people who manage public affairs of the town”. Henry was first elected to public office in 1836 as a Town Constable. He was elected to the Board of Relief, today’s Board of Assessment Appeals, in 1842 and in 1847, and from 1842 to 1844 served as a “fence viewer” and “highway surveyor”. He was elected Selectman in 1856 and served as a Justice of the Peace, which made him a local magistrate, from 1848 to 1858 and from 1865 to 1882.  He also served on the State level, as Hampton’s representative to the State Assembly in 1843 and in 1863, and was elected State Senator in 1851. His last State office was as Treasurer in 1866.

After the Civil War, Henry started to treat the farm like an investment, “share-farming” with Henry Jackson and Cyril Whitaker, leaving the management of the farm to them in return for the use of his land, buildings, animals, and tools, and splitting the profits.  Investment farming was a national trend. In the south, share-cropping replaced slavery, and in the north, other sorts of tenancy grew, along with the realization that “land was capital”. In 1850, nearly all adult males in Hampton listed themselves as farmers, as young men working on someone else’s land viewed themselves as potential farmers; in 1860, many listed themselves as farm laborers, realizing their situation as hired hands.  In 1880, 140 men were listed as farmers and 100, farm laborers.

None of Henry and Delia Taintor’s four children continued to farm here, though all four shared the summer home they christened “Maple Terrace” after the fifteen sugar maple trees Roger Taintor planted in 1829, all but two of which remaining when the Robertsons purchased the property in 1967. Their youngest child, Mary, born in 1860, and her husband Frederick Davis, would eventually purchase the siblings’ shares, arriving in spring, and “remaining until the apples were ripe on the trees”. Their son, Roger, his wife Helen Merriam, and their three sons – Roger, Merriam and Wendell – summered in the house north of their grandparents – “Sunny Acres”.

There must have been a large barn on the property to shelter the sheep, and there was a store for merchant farmers Roger and Solomon next to the Congregational Church where a chapel was later erected. The barn that remains was probably built in the 1820’s and served as a carriage house.  But it was not without its livestock.  In the series “Boyhood Recollections”, which Wendell Davis contributed to the Gazette, he wrote, “At one time, in the early fifties, Charley Peeples, the minister, and I went in together to raise sheep and cattle. We kept them in the barn which is now the Robertson’s garage and for several months built a manure pile practically on top of the chapel well. No one commented and we quickly removed the pile before there were any serious problems.”

Alison Davis’s recently published “Remembering 97 Years” adds details. “When we were living in Maple Terrace, Wendy became the farmer he had always wanted to be, although only part time. With the minister, Charley Peeples, he raised turkeys, two beef steer, and two ewe sheep which each delivered a lamb…Wendy and Charley had some troubles with the pregnant ewes. Across the street from us was the parsonage, kept in good condition by the ladies aid of the church. The minister’s wife, Dottie Peeples, was expected to keep the house clean and neat. The ewes lived in our small barn, but because the winter was so cold, Dottie was persuaded, with difficulty, to let the sheep be housed in the warm parsonage cellar. ‘They’ll be due any day now’, Charley promised. But the days went on and on – with no change except for an odor that was picked up by the furnace and distributed throughout the house. Dottie complained more shrilly every day, afraid that the church ladies might call. Finally, after three weeks of a deteriorating marriage, the lambs were born.”

When Wendell Davis “farmed” at Maple Terrace in the 1940’s, farming in Hampton was on a continual decline. In 1900, only half of the men in town listed themselves on the census as farmers. Articles published in the Gazette recalled 28 dairy farms in the 1930’s, 21 dairy farms on the 1957 Grand List and only four listed in 1978.  Today, only one remains.

This summer, a community garden sprung up on the property, cultivated by members of the Mennonite community with the permission of present owner Mark Barnard, restoring some of the field’s acreage to its original purpose: agriculture.  The farms of yore are no longer, but in their place, are the vegetable gardens and fruit orchards of our local farmers’ markets, horse ranches, sheep farms, and chickens everywhere. Our rural roots are stirring.

Dayna McDermott