SAVING THE BATES-SCOFIELD BARN

The Darien Historical Society is proud to announce that we are saving a historic barn.  It happens to be our historic barn – and we came to know of its existence only by chance.

It was Dick Sanford who informed us that his family’s barn had actually belonged to the Bates-Scofield Homestead.  At the Society we had early photographs of the house and the barn together, but we thought that the barn no longer existed. The Historical Society immediately decided to reunite the house and the barn on our present property.

We had to dismantle the barn and put it in storage until we could develop plans for the new location. Fairfield County Bank, which is developing the Sanford property, graciously gave us a grant to help with the cost of dismantling.

The question for us was whether the barn belonged to the Bates family or the Scofield family, the 18th century family or the 19th century family that lived in the house.  Two construction experts said it was an 18th century barn, but an architectural historian decided that the barn was an early 19th century barn, based on construction techniques.

To help us resolve this question, we asked Professor Ernie Wiegand of Norwalk Community College to conduct an archaeological dig.  Over twenty test pits were dug over two weekends, finding pottery and metal working dating to circa 1820.

We also asked tree ring specialists from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Laboratory to study the barn.  They took samples of the posts and beams to match back in their lab with known, dated sequences of the same species of tree, in this case chestnut.  The dates for 7 of the 8 samples turned out to be 1827, meaning that the barn was built by the Scofield family, who bought the house in 1825.

We plan to attach the barn to our current building with a small connector building, which will contain a fireproof vault for storing our irreplaceable collections relating to the history of Darien.  The barn itself will have a new life as an exhibition space.

We hope you will plan to visit it as soon as it is opened.

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Darien Historical Society
Judy Groppa, Executive Director
Susan Bhirud, Education Coordinator
Ulla Kremer, Office Manager
Telephone: (203) 655-9233
E-mail: darien-historical@sbcglobal.net