IRON WORK FARM in ACTON, Inc.
P.0. Box 1111, Acton MA 01720-0111
Fall Newsletter
August 2006 Volume VII,Number 2
Spirits Move Once Again in the Tavern
By Robert Trombly
It was a blustery day in April some two and a half years ago and a few of us were gathered at Jones Tavern to vanquish a winter’s worth of dust and dirt from the floors. A hearty band of board members was attempting to get the tavern ready for another season of open houses and, for the first time, a joint Patriot’s Day celebration with the Acton Historical Society. We were all excited to have a new opportunity to showcase our properties, the Jones Tavern and the Faulkner House, to the community. The long term survival of these treasures depends upon our community knowing them, valuing them, and choosing to support and sustain them. Events like the Patriots’ Day celebration are important means for giving our heritage more visibility to the community.
Truly, for the Faulkner House, nothing could be more appropriate than to be at the center of a celebration of Patriots’ Day. From its very bedroom window Colonel Faulkner fired his musket three times to call out his company of Acton minutemen. On fields now gone to woods those men mustered. After they marched off to Concord to meet their destiny, the women stoked the fires and set kettles aboil for their rations to follow them in wagons to Concord. Surely, April 19, of 1775 is its greatest day in our history.
But what of the tavern? We know little of its history on Patriots’ Day. Did some of the minutemen gather for a draught of something for courage? Undoubtedly its walls witnessed a thousand discussions of politics and crown tax policy in an era where politics absorbed the public mind with an intensity now reserved only for sport and our New England Patriots. But the words spoken in the tavern that day are lost in the wind.
As we cleaned and swept and dusted dust motes sparkling in the sunshine whirling in the fresh breezes of Spring, a new idea began to ferment. “It’s a tavern, we should have a beer tasting”… Tidbits and musings were added to the brew like fresh hops. We could have it in October--that way we’d have Patriots’ Day to open our season and an Octoberfest event at the Tavern to close it. We’ll get microbrews and have hors d’oeuvres and showcase the tavern to some new and different audiences… And so this idea was then set to rest, as if in an oak barrel, for a season or two and the board turned its attention to the serious matters of repairing chimneys and roofs and the ceaseless work of preserving buildings on the threshold of their 4th century.
This fall the barrel was finally tapped! Michaela Moran and Nancy Evans took the lead and whipped up quite a party. We used the occasion of our annual meeting and reached out to our membership with a lovely post card picture of the tavern by Belle Choate. We reached out to a variety of new audiences too by word of mouth and E-Mail lists. The final ingredient to our perfect brew was a cool crisp fall day. Iron Work Farm Members and our guests gathered in the yard with tankards of fresh ale to enjoy the colorful foliage and watch a perfect New England sunset paint the tavern’s walls.
We thank all who supported us--some old friends and some new, including a hearty contingent of Acton Pop Warner parents who answered the call to support the Colonials of old! We look forward to a second annual Octoberfest next fall to help fund the continued preservation and restoration of the Jones Tavern.
Volunteer of the Year: Joan Barta
For the past several years, Joan Barta has lent an unforgettable presence to the Patriots’ Day festivities at the Faulkner House. One year, with her husband, Bob, with whom she shares an impressive collection of antique American toys, she led colonial children’s games on the lawn. After that she branched out, calling on both her teaching skills and a knowledge of colonial crafts that even includes fire-starting without matches. For the past two years, in her mopcap and ragged black apron, she has entertained us all by cooking authentic 1770s dishes over an open fire in front of the house, just the way Acton’s women are known to have done on April 19, 1775. Thank you, Joan, for everything you have done to make Acton’s history come alive for us all!
Visit by Boston University students
Among the many “hats” that our President, Larry Sorli, wears is the one of Visiting Lecturer in the Boston University Preservation Studies graduate program. In September, his Building Conservation students visited Jones Tavern for their exam assignment—to develop a brief preservation plan for the building. This was not an easy task since, as we all know, the tavern presents many preservation challenges, especially because of the extensive fire damage to the south and west parts of the building.
The 2006 open-house season has ended, and will resume in the spring on Patriots’ Day. The monthly planning and business meetings continue, usually on the third Tuesday of the month, 7:30 p.m. All Iron Work Farm members are welcome, and all ideas for the maintenance and preservation of our two buildings are welcome, as well. During the cold weather the meetings are held in private homes. If you are interested in participating, contact Anne Forbes at 978-263-2227 or at aforbes@rcn.com for information on the meeting location.
The Faulkner House at 300!
2007 will mark the 300th birthday of the Faulkner Homestead (more correctly called the Jones-Faulkner House, since it was built by Ephraim Jones in 1707.) The building is the oldest one in the town of Acton, so the year-long celebration fittingly begins with a town-wide lecture by Anne Forbes entitled “The Faulkner House at 300,” sponsored by the Acton Historical Society. The lecture will take place on January 21, 2007 at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Newtown Road, 7:00 p.m. (Refreshments served at 6:30 p.m.)
By Larry Sorli
Visitors at our open-house Sundays are always curious to know more about the tavern operation in Jones Tavern. Although the Tavern Room is not officially open to the public due to the extensive fire damage sustained in the 1967 lightning strike, we often take folks back into this room so they can see what remains and appreciate the effort it will take to restore the space. Our interior restoration efforts to date have largely focused on the rooms in the eastern end of the house that were least affected by the fire. It is now time for us to plan the restoration of two important rooms on the first floor at the western end of the house. These are the original 1737 Kitchen that later became the Jones Boarding House Dining Room, and the original 1750 Tavern Room that served as both a tap room and store (probably the first store in Acton) in its earlier days. It was later converted to a kitchen and other uses in the second half of the 19th century and early 20th century.
We are deeply indebted to the Nylander family for entrusting the Iron Work Farm with stewardship of the large collection of well-organized, hand-written notes and sketches that the late architectural historian Robert Nylander assembled during his years of exhaustive research on the house. We will be utilizing the Nylander research notes to guide us in our restoration of these two fire damaged rooms. The notes are particularly appreciated because they contain important documentation and analysis of original architectural evidence that had survived in the rooms prior to the fire that completely destroyed significant areas of the interior.
Reading through Robert’s notes is like listening to a riveting, running soliloquy of a meticulous forensic architectural historian as he presents evidence and carefully knits together the pieces of a complex puzzle that will eventually explain every aspect of the evolution of this significant structure. It was very much a work-in-progress, as evinced by the frequent revisiting of points of interpretation as well as the constant grappling with how best to restore the salient features of many campaigns of additions and renovations over the building’s long existence. The latter was particularly challenging because the accurate restoration of the earliest architectural appearance of any room invariably requires the destruction of later, but often equally important, historic features that tell the story of how successive generations updated the room.
The restoration of the Tavern Room in 1966, prior to the fire and under Robert’s supervision, is well documented in his notes. Because the tavern and store operation continued over three generations of the Jones family, from 1750 to 1844, his restoration philosophy was to incorporate all surviving features from the nearly century-long existence of the family business that included many alterations to the room. Lost features, such as the original exterior door, were restored based on both the remaining physical evidence and educated conjectural design. The result was a room that had some unavoidable anachronisms due to some of the 1845 alterations that could not be undone without affecting the adjacent rooms, which he planned to restore to that later period of Greek Revival renovations.
One of the best examples of Robert’s genius in accurately reconstructing lost architectural features is his restoration of the bar counter, shelves and tavern desk that were components in a kind of 18th-century built-in assembly on the east wall of the room. He uncovered the original tavern bar counter re-used in an 1845 china closet built within the abandoned 18th-century cellar stairway when the old kitchen was converted to a dining room. He determined the original location of the counter in the Tavern Room by analyzing a square cutout in the corner of the counter that had been made to accommodate its location next to a protruding wall post just north of the original exterior doorway. He also pinpointed the historic location of the original tavern desk from both paint and nail-hole evidence remaining on both the side of the desk and edge of the counter, placing it adjacent and attached to the north side of the counter and against the west wall. This also established the height of the counter. The first shelf above the bar counter is located in accordance with similar marks found on the side of the desk at that height. The second shelf is an original that he found re-used in an 1845 wall of the kitchen/dining room conversion, and the third shelf he identifies as conjectural. Most of the evidence that Robert describes is now lost, as both the surfaces of the original bar counter and tavern desk were severely charred by the 1967 fire.
After the fire, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Robert put his pen to paper in a thorough evaluation of the damage to the Tavern Room and drafted a conceptual plan to restore the room once again. His plan emphasizes the great historical value of the barroom and store as the last surviving Revolutionary meeting place in Acton. Notwithstanding the devastating impact the fire must have made on his spirit, Robert’s plan focuses on a positive outlook for future work. He writes: “Thus if restored now, the barroom would present more accurately its appearance known by Actonians who gathered here in 1768-1775 to discuss the problems which led to Revolution. Admittedly, large parts of it would be done in new wood, but then, in 1775 the room was practically new.”
It is now time for us to bring to fruition the restoration of the Tavern Room that Robert Nylander envisioned forty years ago. We will be keeping you informed in future newsletters as planning develops, and welcome your support and assistance in this endeavor.