by Martha DeWolf
1/25/2012

In the late nineteenth century the Bullard farm was the joint property of two brothers, Henry and John Anson Bullard.  While Henry worked the farm, John Anson had taken up a business life and married into a Watertown family.  He invested, successfully, in railroads and real estate in Framingham, Boston and Los Angeles, California.  Henry had seven children but as adults none was interested in farming.   

John Anson and his wife had no children.  When Henry died his half interest in the farm was divided equally among the remaining seven children or their heirs.  John Anson wished to see the farm continue into the future as a working farm.  To that end he set up a corporation in 1909 to be funded by his estate, which would provide each of his nephews and nieces with an annual sum of money in return for each of their interests in the farm.  They were to become the sole members of the corporation.  The corporation which was to fund the continuation of the farm would also be funded with an annual payment from his estate and would also provide an annual payment for a farm manager who would be responsible for the actual farming.

It appears from the available records that John Anson Bullard’s nieces and nephews only considered farming the old homestead in order to please their Uncle John.  Before he died, nephew James Hovey Bullard wrote to his sister Alice, “Dr. Ellis will tell you what a standing joke it became with him and myself as year after year he drove from Marlboro to the old Farm of a Sunday and in the afternoon Uncle John and he, and I went with them when I happened to be there and we walked up and down the old hills and talked and planned wisely for a new barn where the hay could be run in from the top of the hills into the top of the barn.  I never could see that the plan was practicable but it pleased Uncle John to talk about it and to plan for it, and we two knew that nothing would ever come of it, although we humored him in all his ideas.”

While he was still alive, to placate him further they bought museum quality display cases and assembled a museum in the old vinegar building to house what were considered the most precious and ancient items.  After his death and contrary to his wishes, his remaining nieces and nephew sold the farm equipment and the large animals at auction. 

The property was renamed the Bullard “Colonial” Farm but the house was fully renovated and brought firmly into the twentieth century by the addition of coal fired hot water, central heating, running water and flush toilets.  Out went the woodstoves and the Victorian wallpaper; the old fireplaces were refurbished for romantic fires and the floors refinished or painted.  The rooms were repapered with “colonial” wallpapers (with a few notable exceptions); all that was “old fashioned” was replaced with refinished antiques from the attic. The pantry was converted into a lavatory and the storage rooms at the rear of the house were converted into an apartment for the farm manager and his wife, the housekeeper.  

While the house was remodeled in what was considered to be the colonial mode, the farming and John Anson Bullard’s vision of a memorial to his grandfather the farmer, never materialized.  Unfortunately, the early Association records are not available so we can only postulate what happened. At least one niece, Fannie Bullard Kingsbury disapproved of what happened to the old family farm.  Fannie told her daughters that she never felt, after Uncle John died, that she was welcome at the farm because of what her sister Hattie and husband E. Harvey Ellis, (president of the Association) were then doing with regards to the farm.  And none of the “improvements” were carried out until after Alice Bullard had died in 1924 so one could speculate that her approval was wanting as well.

Each member would have the privilege of “reserving the farm” for a week’s holiday at a nominal fee. Instead of the new barn John Anson Bullard envisioned to store hay in, Hattie and Dr. Ellis oversaw the building of a four-hole golf course in the old ox pasture with sand traps and, in season, a water hazard as well as a tennis court beside the old barn, most of which was torn down.  A locker and shower building was constructed so that members not “in residence” could use the sporting facilities without using the lavatories in the house, thus disturbing members “in residence”.

Various committees were formed to oversee the management of the farm, which by the 1940’s were given such illustrious names as the Fruit and Nut Committee - charged with overseeing what was left of the old apple orchards and walnut, butternut and Chinese chestnut trees; the House Committee – charged with overseeing what quickly became a bed and breakfast with the housekeeper herself providing fresh-killed chickens for dinner for those association members who asked ahead of time; the Children’s Entertainment Committee – charged with entertaining member’s children while their parents met to decide which branch of the family would get to have the farm for Thanksgiving since they could no longer sit at the same table together.

John Anson Bullard imagined a place where farming as an occupation would be celebrated and taught to future generations.  What emerged from family squabbling was a country escape for the succeeding generations (complete with separate accommodations for the maid); a place to play tennis and golf, to have secret rendezvous with one’s lover, to have a Halloween party or a wedding.  

Today the land sustains no farm at all; the fields lie fallow and the orchards have been taken over by white pine and oak; the pasture which had been planted to red pine in the early twentieth century, at the recommendation of their aunt Rebecca Bullard Whiting, was left to mature without profit because the Bullard descendants had not remembered what their ancestor had intended.  All that is left of the old farming days are the journals and diaries describing the hours of sowing and hoeing, weeding and harvesting, repairing tools and wagons, driving ox teams, pressing cider, shoeing horses and carting manure.

 © Copyright 2012, Martha L. DeWolf