“Hey, diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon …” —Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme

Cows in Newtown in the late 1920s were more grounded, however. Rather than the moon, cows on a long-ago working Taunton farm traveled a path that is now the head of Taunton Lake Road at its intersections with Mt Pleasant Road (Route 6). The detail is just a small part of a bigger story resident Dolores Allen told about her family’s farm life in Newtown. Prompting her thoughts is the recent loss of an old barn at that location.

Travelers heading toward Danbury along Route 6 will pass Taunton Lake Road at the top of a hill. A quick glance to the left will reveal a change in the landscape — a side-by-side barn and tractor shed, more recently converted into a residence, are gone, opening a view toward Taunton Lake. Mrs Allen’s husband, the late Paul Eric Allen, and his brothers and father put in years of labor working on the farm long ago, when the barn and other buildings saw daily use.

Mrs Allen filled in the background to her daughter Randi Allen Kiely’s letter to the editor in The Newtown Bee, published on March 22:

“On the passing of a barn.” Ms Kiely wrote, “No doubt some have noticed a new and spectacular view of Taunton Pond from Route 6 this week, but some may be saddened by the loss of another of the town’s beautiful, old barns.”

The barn on Taunton Lake Road was part of a larger dairy farm once owned by her family. The mother and daughter still live at the old farmhouse across the street from where the barn once stood.

Dolores Allen

“Our house is on a rise at the top of Mount Pleasant… at the top of that hill, the old barn stood on left of the highway,” she said. She refers to the long incline along Route 6 heading toward Danbury. She said Taunton Lake Road once ran parallel to Route 6 before intersecting it.

“Our family constructed the barn in 1931,” after the original structure burned, she said. Her husband’s parents, Sigfrid and Theresa, “bought the property in 1924, and the old barn was intact at the top of the hill.”

“I don’t know if he salvaged anything from the burned structure, but he did salvage a lot from the old home; sheathing and hand-hewn construction” from the original farmhouse are now “in my house,” she said.

“When [Sigfrid] bought it in 1924, he was tasked with taking the old house apart” and rebuilding the residence that now stands at 70 Mount Pleasant Road, two years later, she commented.

She said Sigfrid “grew up in Sweden and came here as a young man.” He bought the property after frequently driving past it from his commute to and from his home in Greenwich. The property was then a large dairy farm, which has since been sold parcel by parcel. The original farm was about 80 acres.

“‘Grandpa Sig’ was a mason who worked on [Edmond] Town Hall, [C.H. Booth] Library, Fairfield Hills. He had work during the depression as a skilled craftsman,” she said.

“He was commuting on Route 6 and saw this place was for sale. He already had three boys — he grew up on a farm, and he said, ‘Ok, this is ready-made. I have farm hands, little boys to grow up into men,’” she said.

Sig and Theresa Allen settled their young family in Newtown in 1926. They had five boys, of which Paul was the youngest — Albert, Robert, George, Charles, and Paul.

“Paul and brothers grew up in Newtown. The oldest was born in 1916 and was about 10 when the house was finished,” she said. Sig “moved the family in, in 1926, after building.”

The family did more than farm.

“What Sig did, he felt they had to keep income,” Mrs Allen said. “If cows don’t give enough milk or crops don’t come through, you have to have income, so he and the boys built other houses,” she said. “That’s what the family did; they would build a house and sell it.”

Her mother-in-law was a hairdresser in Greenwich, New Milford, and Danbury, Mrs Allen said. “She would have the children in the shop with her as little kids.”

If the brothers weren’t working the farm, “they were in the beauty shop,” Mrs Allen added.

Cow Crossing

The cows on the farm walked a path to the barn, which has much to do with the way Taunton Lake Road now “comes in at a right angle,” with the main road, Mrs Allen said. “Taunton Lake Road was sort of in a gully at the time,” she said.

When the new barn went up in 1931, the cows “went to different pastures on both sides of the road. They just went across their land.” They were either returning to be milked or going out to pasture, she said.

Mrs Allen said, “Because it was such easy access, that cow path was no worse than Taunton Lake Road — cars started using the cow path, and finally the town decided to make that a road.

“As the boys grew older, it seemed they would not be farmers,” she added. After her in-laws died, “the farm was divided to the five boys.”

Since 1970

Mrs Allen and her husband moved into the farmhouse in 1970.

Prior to 1970, the farmhouse “was separated from the main farm. The brothers sold the acreage bit by bit,” she said. “They did not want to sell the whole thing, but at that time, all the boys had their own homes elsewhere.”

Before moving into the farmhouse, Mrs Allen and her husband had built a house in the Hanover district “after we married in 1955.” She said, “We had five children [Grace Terry Allen; Randi Allen Kiely and Roderick Kiely, who “bought the house when my husband was ill”; Linda Allen Villafano; Susan Allen Middlebrook; and the late Paul Allen, named after his father, of Newtown] and decided to move to the house that Sig built. “Nobody wanted to sell it. We thought we could fill it and moved here,” she said.

At its height, the farm had between 40 and 50 cows. Once the barn “no longer served a purpose as a working barn, it was difficult to maintain,” Ms Allen said. Her husband was among various owners who “tried to keep it.”

“... the little dog laughed, to see such a sport, and the dish ran away with the spoon.” — Mother Goose.