HATFIELD — A three-year effort to catalog every item at the Hatfield Farm Museum advanced recently when Smith Academy varsity boys soccer players helped move a Revolutionary War-era loom.
In the midst of recent hot weather, a dozen players and their coach, Jason Duncan, took a break from a senior class barbecue to help Hatfield Historical Museum Curator Meg Baker at the barn, which houses everything from small hand tools to large onion bagging machines.
Getting the barn loom moved, Baker said, is an essential part of reviewing all items in the tobacco barn, a project being paid for with a three-year grant from the town’s Community Preservation Act account.
“In order to get to the last third of the barn, we needed help moving a very heavy, very old, and very important piece of town history, and that’s where the boys from Smith Academy were needed,” Baker said.
The barn loom holds a network of frames and strings, a bench for the weaver, and a long wooden wheel that would hold the warp threads.
While designed to be taken apart for transport or storage, Baker said there was fear that disassembling it would pose risks.
“We can say with a fair degree of confidence that this loom came down through a particular line in local families,” Baker said.
It first belonged to Dolly Bennett Hoyt, born in 1781, and may have been her mother’s previously. It then passed to Hoyt’s daughter, Fanny Hoyt Andrews, and then to her daughter in-law Lucy Adella Ladd Andrews, before her daughter, Dorothy Bennett Andrews Parmeter donated the loom in 2001.
To get the barn loom out, Baker cleared artifacts, Bob Osley, the Hatfield Historical Society president, wrapped the loom with ratchet straps to support the joinery, and John Pease, the barn’s curator, organized the use of the school’s flatbed trailer.
“As Hatfield has always been a tight knit community, having a few of its own young people help move a piece of the town’s history seemed to make sense,” Duncan said. “It was pretty cool when one of the students who helped move the loom noticed an artifact in the museum that may have belonged to one of his grandfathers as well.“
The barn loom was eventually lowered onto furniture dollies and guided past various antiques to its new location in the center of the barn, part of a 15-minute process.
“This gets the loom out of the back corner and puts it with the other farmhouse items,” Baker said.
“Having young people involved in something like this is a great way to connect them to their own history,” Osley said. “We really appreciate the help from Jason and his athletes.”
