Hadley Farm Museum

The current location of the Hadley Farm Museum

"The recently established ‘Old Hadley Farm Museum’ has an individuality for which two Johnsons are primarily responsible. Their birthplace was an outlying hamlet of the town about three miles from anywhere else. To preserve their identity they are locally called C. J. and Henry R. Between 1880 and 1885, when these two farm boys arrived at years of indiscretion, they left the old home, and at length fate made C. J. something of an author and illustrator, and Henry R. a successful Springfield bookseller.

            "The years slipped along until a time when the bookseller added an antique department to his business and began learning in the school of hard knocks how to run it. He was both blessed and handicapped by a lively imagination, and one never could be sure in any particular instance whether it were taking him in at Heaven’s gate or escorting him out. He could see possibilities in the contents of dusty garrets not visible to anyone else, nor even to himself after he got away from the magic gloom of the garret environment; and he became the owner of an always increasing accumulation of junk.

            "A radical weeding-out process had to be instituted in the antique department to keep the stock commercially attractive, but much of what had proved to be a failure as a selling proposition, still had charm for Henry R. Why should piece of crockery be discarded utterly because a fragment was gone? Just turn the broken side to the wall and enjoy the loveliness of what was in sight. He tried out his theory in his own home, and was enthusiastic over the results, but his wife wasn’t. Amongst the things that he attempted to get her to admire were a half dozen dainty little goblets. He asked her if she didn’t think they were early Victorian.

            "‘No,’ she said with prompt decision. ‘They look like early Woolworth.’"[1]

Stage coach at the south door of the Farm Museum

According to Clifton, Henry then filled his garage, his summer residence at the Knolls, and then the barns and outbuildings of relatives, including Clifton’s partly empty barn. After all, “Henry R., like nature, abhorred a vacuum.”

In today’s parlance, we might say Henry was a hoarder, but that is not to say he was without discriminating taste or a sense of humor. One time he “bought an imposing black hearse, took some of his relatives for a hilarious fifty-mile ride to Springfield, and there he finally gave the somber thing away.” Another time he bought an enormous oxcart and then, lacking any place to put it, left it in Clifton’s pasture. As Henry’s clutter spread to Clifton’s barn and even his yard, it created some tension. But as with the earlier tension between Henry and Roger at the store, a creative solution was soon forged. “What you need,” Clifton finally exclaimed, “is a museum.”

A boy, most likely Stephen Johnson sitting on a stage coach

Clifton and Henry, always men of action, wasted no time in making plans to put up a large building for the purpose of housing Henry’s growing collection of antique tools and farm instruments. They knew right where they wanted to place it, in the civic center of Hadley, and negotiated the purchase of property behind the Congregational Church. They resolved that the appropriate structure must not look modern but rather resemble an old barn. Being familiar with the countryside for miles around, it wasn’t long before they had a particular barn in mind. Dr. James Huntington, an acquaintance of Clifton’s, was the eighth-generation owner of the nearby historic Porter-Phelps-Huntington estate. When Clifton asked him whether they could copy the design of the property’s barn, which dated to 1782, Huntington immediately agreed. Overnight, however, he changed his thinking.

The weathered Hadley barn

"Early the next morning I telephoned Clifton Johnson. When he heard my name he said, 'Oh! You haven’t changed your mind about the barn have you!' 'Not exactly, but would you and your brother consider taking my barn as a gift?' There was a long pause and then with great emotion he said, 'You mean you are offering your barn to us for a museum?' 'That is exactly what I mean,' I replied. In a surprisingly short time, Mr. Johnson and the architect from Springfield were on the spot and plans were in progress for the museum. The Johnsons, instead of taking down the barn, which would not have been difficult, as it was all pegged together, and then re-assembling it on the new location, preferred rather to incur the greater expense of moving the building as a whole so as to preserve all its original flavor.”[2]

The old barn on its pilgrimage

Moving such a large, old barn more than two miles down the river valley was no small task. Many thought it foolhardy or downright impossible, and there were indeed some serious challenges and near misses. A dozen trees had to be cut down, telephone poles moved, and traffic on the Central Massachusetts Railroad halted. At Cowles Brook, where the barn had to cross 35-feet above the ground, the two giant timbers supporting it, which were from Oregon, began to crack and snap. The barn survived and several days later arrived at its resting place.

Inside of the Hadley Farm Museum

Then the real work began, including overcoming the skeptics who thought the structure was beyond saving. Even before it was relocated, Huntington admitted that the barn had been in “shocking condition,” in need of a new roof and many other repairs. After its journey, Clifton wrote, it looked as if it had been battered by heavy seas. “Probably no museum ever looked more unpromising than this at that time or for some months afterward.” But Clifton and Henry R. relished a challenge, and in consultation with an architect, spent the winter and spring overseeing a careful and thoughtful restoration. The interior remained unpainted so as to display the hand-hewn beams, while the outside was painted white in order to achieve “an outward harmony with the neighboring meeting-house and town hall.” Many other improvements were made, including the addition of an ornate, colonial doorway copied from the main entrance of the McQueston house, the oldest home in Hadley.

The old plow with a wooden mold-board

It all came together to their great satisfaction. Not unlike Clifton’s photography, the museum focuses on artifacts related to rural labor—blacksmith’s bellows, charcoal rakes, cow bells, cheese presses, forks, flails, flax breaks, grain tubs, plows, sickles, yokes, and a pair of hollowed tree trunks used to hold grain or beans. It houses the first broom-making machine and the largest collection of broom-making equipment in the country. In Clifton’s words, “Both the building and its contents have an atmosphere of romance that stirs and charms. At the same time there is a sense of repose in the quiet tones which prevail. That the museum has soothing value for frayed nerves is not at all unlikely… There are people who are tired of jazz and its accessories, and feel refreshed by contacts with the wholesome, simpler phases of life in an earlier period.”[3]

Well sweep and well curb from Connecticut

On Wednesday, May 27, 1931, the 149^th anniversary of the original roof-raising, the barn was dedicated as a museum. The program, attended by a crowd of 500, was held in the meeting-house. According to Huntington, Clifton presided and introduced the speakers, including Henry R., “with great charm and humor.” Open from May to October, the museum received 3000 visitors from 30 states during its first season. For over 25 years, it remained privately owned and operated, free and open to the public.