On Saturday morning, longtime Greenfield resident and retired ConVal history teacher Bob Marshall led a walk to the Dane Farm cellar hole site off Slip Road. About 30 people attended the walk, looping through this now very quiet corner of Greenfield.
The walk was organized by the Greenfield Historical Society (especially Sylvia Shea, who is excellent at getting the word out).
The walk was a follow-up to Bob’s presentation last fall about his years of research into Greenfield cellar holes, which are dotted throughout town and throughout rural New England. Cellar holes tell a story of what life was like in the mid 1800s, when European descent farmers cleared the woods to try to farm livestock or crops. But because New Hampshire, like much of New England, is really meant to grow only one crop — trees (not to mention, rocks) — many farmers gave up and moved to the Midwest or the West, where the black earth prairies made for much easier farming. As roads, populations, and means of transportation shifted, many of these old homes were abandoned, leaving nothing but massive stone cellarholes behind.
“The Dane farm would have been a stunning spot back where there were no trees,” Bob said. “You would have seen North Pack right there to the south, you might have seen other hills to the north and east.”
The Dane farm was the homestead of John Dane, who was one of the founders of Greenfield. Dane, who was born in 1762, was one of the signers of the petition to create the town of Greenfield in 1790 out of land from Lyndeborough and Peterborough.
The Dane farm site includes the roughly square cellarhole of the house, the ell connecting the house to the barn, and the vast barns on the east side. Traces of the old road connecting the Dane Farm to Gulf Road remain.
“If I were a selectman back then and we had to build a road to the Dane Farm, I would have made it the most direct route possible, which would have been here straight to Gulf Road,” Marshall said.
In his research, Marshall also came across a more recent “historic site” — an old parking area that had been used by Greenfield teens in the 1980s.
“They built a nice stone fireplace, and there was plenty of parking,” Marshall said. “They were very careful; they chose this spot because the police could not see their headlights from Slip Road when they were up here.”
Marshall chuckled that a few of his former students — some of whose parents may have been on the walk — have admitted to creating the party spot, which has since been cleaned up.
Looking at the massive fieldstones and chunks of granite used to build the foundations, everyone on the walk talked about how hard life must have been back then. Oxen would have been used to haul stones, farmers would have felled trees by hand, and dragged “stone boats” over the cleared land to collect the rocks, which were then piled into stone walls.
Like most cellarholes, the Dane Farm site includes the original moss-lined stone well. (Bob urges everyone who explores cellar homes to keep a careful eye out for old wells, as all cellar holes have wells, and falling in could be extremely dangerous.)
Jarvis Adams Sr., who has experienced his share of old dug wells in his profession as a plumber, said that to dig wells at depths of 30 or 40 feet, the farmers would have had to dig a crater with a circumference of 30 feet or more.
“Then they would build the well, and then they would fill the dirt back in all around it,” Jarvis said.
Jarvis said the old wells typically fill up with leaves and debris and rarely have standing water in them.
According to Lenny Cornwell, the Dane family came to Ipswich, Mass. from England in 1600s. They then migrated to Andover, MA, and kept moving north to New Hampshire.
“Some of them kept going and went as far as Coos County,” Lenny said.
Lenny said he has not been able to locate the graves of any of the Dane Family, except for the grave of John Dane, which is in the Meetinghouse cemetery.
The walk began close to where Slip Road Extension (formerly known as Gulf Road, which is what everyone still calls it) takes a sharp turn to the south. Gulf Road is named for the steep gulch along the bottom of North Pack, which is now inhabited by beavers. The old Gulf Road was closed decades ago after flooding (courtesy of the beavers), and the town decided not to repair it. No one lives on the road, and it can still be used for walking, mountain biking, and horseback riding. The land in that part of town is mostly privately owned, and much of it is in conservation easement with the Monadnock Conservancy or the New England Forestry Foundation.
On the way back, we walked along the old Gulf Road, where we gazed down the steep slope into the gulf, where a beaver stream meanders through. Several people on the walks said they had no idea the Gulf was there.
Karen Nadeau, who has lived in town since 1984, said she remembers the gulf being full of water many times over the years. Others remembered driving down Gulf Road before it was closed, and at least one mom remembered her now adult boys accidentally “drowning” a vehicle when they hit the flooded part of the road.
Right where Slip Road meets Gulf Road, a Class VI road formerly known as Peavey Road heads due south, up the slope of North Pack. That part of town used to be a lot busier, as Slip Road and Peavey Road connected to Mountain Road, which at one time was the main route to Peterborough. Gulf Road was constructed later to avoid the steep slopes of Peavey Road and Mountain Road.
According to Roger Swain, who lives on Mountain Road, Peavey Road used to have a bunch of houses on it, back when it was the main connector to Mountain Road. Swain remembers a spectacular Craftsman-style house that has since been torn down.
“It had stained glass windows, and a circular staircase made of birch, and it was built right over the cliff, and had spectacular views,” Swain said. “The guy who owned it was a little dodgy.”
The group decided the next GHS walk should maybe explore Peavey Road, as long as it starts from the uphill side.
“It’s a very steep hill,” Roger said. “We definitely would want to start at the top and come down.”
Everyone kept saying what a beautiful day it was on Saturday. It was 46 degrees and overcast, and it’s almost May, but as Bob pointed out, there were no blackflies. It was a perfect day for a walk in the woods.