A One-Name Study for the BARNUM/BARNHAM Surname

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Notes for Earl Morton BARNUM

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From the website of the Girl Scout Council of Western Connecticut: by Earl M. Barnum, written August 5, 1966. Mr. Barnum's family owned the land where Camp Francis is located. He shares some family history and his early childhood recollections of going to the family farm (now known as Camp Francis).

It was nice to visit again in my old age a place very dear to me as a boy and where I visited many summers for nearly thirty years.

My grandfather, Beecher Barnum, bought or built the old homestead perhaps about 1830. Nothing remains of that house now except some old foundation stones on the slope below the present house. Beecher was born in 1800. He was a carpenter and millwright and he moved his family to Danbury when my father, Eli C. Barnum was ten years old. For some reason, perhaps because of ill health, he returned to the farm and died in 1859 when my father, who was born December 14th 1844, was barely 14. Beecher is buried in Kent Hollow cemetery.

After his death his widow moved to Danbury and apparently the farm was sold. There were five children, three boys besides my father, Lewis, Lafayette, and Marcus, all of whom became railroad engineers, a daughter Mary, and Eli the youngest. I can remember my father saying that sometimes his brothers could hear the whistle of the engines on the Housatonic Railroad about five miles away and the sound so intrigued them that they were crazy to get away from the farm onto the railroad.

My father was a clerk in a general store in Botsford, Conn. for about three years and eventually came to Naugatuck to work in a store. He later went into business for himself and ran a general store in Naugatuck for many years. When the Naugatuck Water Co. was organized about 1886 he was hired to keep the books and as the company grew he finally sold the store and became Secretary and General Manager, retiring a few years before his death in 1926. He had married Eliza Ward in 1868 and they lived to celebrate their 57th wedding anniversary. My mother died only two months after my father.

Recollections of the farm in West Kent were always with my father and some time in the 1890s he set about to looking up heirs to the property and after some search he was able to acquire the old homestead. My first visit to the farm was about 1896 when I was ten years old. We set out one summer morning in a surrey with the fringe on top, my father and mother and Aunt Mary to see the old place. It was about a thirty mile drive through Woodbury and Rumford and a little ways beyond the Rumford station we stopped for lunch next to the Shepaug River where there had once been a house and we found a spring for our drinking water; thermos bottles had not been invented. From there we drove on to Lake Waramaug stopping overnight at an inn no longer there. The next day we drove up to East Kent.

The roads in those days were not good, with many hills, and the horses got pretty tired. The approach to the farm was particularly bad. We stayed overnight at the home of Mr. Edward Bemoan, who ran a sawmill below the pond which you now use for swimming. The road from his house down to the farm was over rock ledges and so we walked. While there a heavy thunder shower occurred and we took refuge in the old house which was in pretty bad repair. It had a central chimney and the rooms around it were all connected and I remember my father and Aunt Mary recalling that as kids they "ran around the chimney."

In 1901 my father built a barn for the horses as Mr. Bemoan had no stable, and close by a new house which stands today. He hired Mr. Adams, a widower with two sons, Harper Adams about my age, and his older brother to work on the place, camping out by the old house, cutting brush and trees and clearing it up to restore it as a farm.

My Mother and I started out one summer Sunday afternoon in a buggy with one horse and drove to Woodbury where we stayed overnight at the Curtiss House, then drove to East Kent the next day. We had expected to find Mr. Adams there with some furniture that he had driven down to Naugatuck to get. He had left there Sunday A.M. but he had a hard time on the road with its steep hills and such a heavy load that he did not arrive till after we did, later on that Monday. We were able to get a couple of beds put up and from then on our days were spent in establishing a summer home.

The house was built with one side for the farmer and the other for us. The idea of having a farmer was to run the place as much like a farm as possible, with cows to provide us with milk, chickens for eggs, a vegetable garden, etc. There were no supermarkets and the drive from Naugatuck was five or six hours, so when we went there we went to stay.

And a delightful place it was to stay. Harper and I had many good times exploring the surrounding country, going fishing in North Spectacle, etc. My father built an ice pond at the foot of the meadow below the house and in the summer there were lots of frogs. Further down the lane we discovered a place where there were enormous ant hills, some at least a foot high. I have never seen any like them anywhere else. There was an old abandoned mine shaft about six feet square but only about 25 feet deep hewed out of almost solid rock. It was pretty well filled with debris and my father did not seem to know its history.

After a year or two when the farm had been cleared up Mr. Adams was let go and a farmer and his wife came to live there. It was a hard life with no market for the produce from the farm and after a few years the farmer quit. Then a cousin of my father, Curtis Chamberlain, and his wife Rose were persuaded to take over.

When we were well settled I used to invite some friends to come and spend a week or two. The first time we went up there on our bicycles, riding through Woodbury and Rumford, starting out at five a.m. and reaching Lake Waramaug about noon. We bought some snacks at the New Preston store and then went on to the farm. We were pretty tired. My mother was not there at the time so we got our meals with the farmer and his wife. Our room looked out over the upstairs porch and in those days the trees had been cut to give us a view of the valley. One morning my friend woke me up yelling, "wake up, Earl, Lake Waramaug has run out into Kent Hollow." It was a heavy fog that lay so flat that it covered everything except Sugar Loaf, which stuck up through it and it, looked like a great body of water.

Another time a boy who visited me came to New Preston Station by train. The only way to reach us in those days other than by horse and wagon was by the railroad running from Hawleyville to Litchfield and we would meet the train at New Preston Station, just above Washington Depot, a drive of about nine miles, or by the railroad along the Housatonic from Hawleyville to Pittsfield and we would meet the train at Kent, about 5 miles. But the road from Kent to East Kent meant dragging up Kent mountain, a hill so steep that only the driver could ride, the others had to walk.

To meet the train at New Preston we would drive from Mr. Beeman's down the hill into Kent Hollow - that hill also being very steep was equipped with what was known as "thank you mams," ditches across the road to take rain water into the gutters to keep the surface from washing away. So when the front wheels of the vehicle went over the hump there was quite a strain on the "reach" which connected the two sets of wheels. On the drive to meet my friend I drove rather carelessly and consequently pulled the reach apart. I tied it together with a halter strap and managed to get to the station and back. Then we had to take the broken part by farm wagon driving through Warren to Bantam - where there was a carriage factory. That was a drive of about nine miles and we left the part to be repaired, going back to get it a few days later. I was a bit more careful in driving after that.

In order to avoid the long way around by Mr. Beeman's, my father acquired a right of way from Mr. Anderson and built a road through his farm and we then approached the house in a nearly direct line from Lake Waramaug opening and carefully closing three gates along the way. It was possible to see the first gate from the house about a mile away and if the approximate time of arrival was known, a watcher at the house could observe the traveler opening the gate. If the watcher was my mother she would wave her apron to let us know that a repast would be ready for us.

There was a hay meadow across the drive in front of the house and beyond that a pasture for cows. A cow barn was built on the hill above the house and is the building you now use for a recreation hall.

The boy whom I had met at New Preston and I conceived the idea of building a tennis court at the west side of the house and I learned to drive the yoke of oxen on the farm and we dug out the slope and dragged the dirt away on a "stone boat" to make a level court. Alas, he went away before it was finished and I got discouraged. It would not have been big enough for a tennis court anyway.

In 1905 my father bought an automobile, a Reliance, a "two lunger" with a two-cylinder engine under the front seat with a crank on the side to start it and a chain driving the rear wheels. We anticipated that this would improve our means of reaching the farm, but the roads being what they were and horse power of cars rather low, tires prone to puncture, we had a good many adventures. The engine would overheat on the hills and we would have to stop and let it cool off or replenish the water from horse watering troughs. But tires were a big problem.

One Sunday we started off intending to drive via Watertown, Bantam, Woodville, and Warren, but we never got beyond Watertown because of a blowout which we could not repair properly. After spending a couple of hours beside the road patching and re-patching we turned around and struggled home.

In 1908 I graduated from Yale and that summer we had a new car, a "Thomas Forty." This was a much better car and the roads had been improved some so we could make the trip in about two hours. I persuaded my mother to let me have a house party including a girl I liked, Louise Hendrickson, who had come to Naugatuck from New Jersey to visit a friend. With another young man for the friend we two couples, with mother for chaperon, had a grand time for a week. One day we drove down to Lake Waramaug to go fishing, got caught in a shower and when we drove home over the new road it was so slippery we could not make one of the grades so I had to leave the others in the shelter of the car while I walked up to the farm and got the yoke of oxen to pull my guests home. When we got there my mother was disgusted to discover my girl's white dress was covered with slime from the anchor rope when I pulled it up over the stern of the boat where she was sitting, so mother washed and ironed the dress so it could be worn again.

In the fall of 1908 I went to work in a foundry, and the following summer we had another house party, same girl for me and another couple. My girl had come to love East Kent too, and one day on a walk down to the brook in the glen I proposed. Under such romantic surroundings how could she refuse? We were not married till 1912 for I had to get into a business where I could earn enough money to support a wife. She and I celebrated our 55th anniversary last April (1967).

We spent many happy vacations and weekends there and my children came to love it too. About 1922 Curtis Chamberlain died and it was soon after that my father decided it would not be possible to keep the place; he was not well and the place was sold.

It has always been a great regret that I did not have the resources to keep it, but it was impossible to run it as a self-supporting farm and so it slipped away. But the memories and the pictures we have bring back the happy times spent there and I have relived them in this writing.

It is nice to know that it is bringing happiness to the girls who go there under the auspices of the Girl Scouts. Perhaps it will create memories for them which they can treasure as we do ours.

Earl Morton Barnum was July 14, 1886, according to his W.W.I draft registration. His W.W.II registration (under Morton Earl Barnum) gives his birth place as Naugatuck, New Haven County, Connecticut. Earl Barnum married Louise Hendrickson of New Jersey in 1912.

Earl Morton Barnum died July 13, 1976, in Naugatuck, New Haven County, Connecticut according to the Connecticut Death Index. His wife Louise H. Barnum was born 1/17/1887 in NJ (SSDI) and died December 31, 1977, in Madison, New Haven County, Connecticut. (Connecticut Death Index).

In the 1920 Census for Naugatuck, New Haven County, Connecticut the family was enumerated as follows:
Earl M. Barnum, 33, born CT
Louise H. Barnum, 32, born NJ
Dorothy C. Barnum, 6, born CT
Elizabeth W. Barnum, 4-7/12, born CT
Richard H. Barnum, 11/12, born CT

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