A Rare Glimpse At A Collection Of Historic Tools

By Shannon Hicks

Jack Farrell began collecting antique tools in 1975, and credits his wife and a visit to The Shelburne Museum for the start of a collection that is now more than 1,000 examples and 30-plus years strong.

Last weekend Mr Farrell showed off his collection in the parking lot of Hawleyville Deli. It was a displayed for the enjoyment of anyone who saw the handwritten sign with large red letting that was posted at the edge of the Route 25 parking lot — large letters proclaiming “Jack’s Old Tools Show” — and was interested enough to stop and look. Mr Farrell answered questions and pointed out different pieces of his collection for seven hours starting around 9 that morning. He probably would have stayed longer, but rains that had been threatening most of the day finally rolled in around 4.

“I was able to get most of the tools back into the truck before the rain started again,” Mr Farrell, 81, said. “Sunday was just a display. I have no interest in selling any of these pieces.”

The collection just about fills a 38-foot trailer, which he uses to shuttle the collection back and forth. There are dozens of hammers and nail pullers, rakes, wire cutters, axes, screwdrivers, wrenches, stovetop and kettle handles, and even an S-shaped pumpkin chopper.

There was a multiuse wrench that had at least 14 different applications, and firefighters’ tools for hydrants and pump operations on fire trucks.

To keep track of his tools — and, unfortunately, to deter theft when they are on display (which does not always work) — Mr Farrell has most of them mounted on large boards.

Mr Farrell said it was during a visit to The Shelburne Museum in Vermont, with one of the country’s most diverse collections of art and Americana including a huge array of 17th to 20th Century artifacts, that the idea for his collection emerged. Mr Farrell found a book about some antique tools in the museum gift shop during a 1975 visit with his wife Mickey and she encouraged him to buy the book.

“We were going to buy that book. I worked around tools all my life, but not like those [pictured in the book] and never saw anything like that,” he recalled. “She wanted to buy that book, and I realized I wanted to get some of those tools.”

“She started it, and it’s kept me out of trouble,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t drink, and I’ve never used any of the house money to buy any of these tools.”

Mrs Farrell died six years ago, after more than 52 years of marriage. “She was a good, good woman,” he said.

When he started looking for antique tools of all shapes, sizes and uses, Mr Farrell started with blacksmithing tools. Then he expanded to ice and then farm tools, “all the stuff you can imagine from a farm,” he said.

He has spent countless hours at Woodbury Flea Market on Saturday mornings, and plenty of Sunday mornings at The Elephant’s Trunk in New Milford. He does not go looking for anything in particular, but continues to enjoy the search. Most weekends he stops at Hawleyville Deli, where he’s a regular, to show off a new find.

“I’ve picked up most of his tools at those shows,” he said this week. “It takes over two hours to work through New Milford. Then I stop at the deli for another round of Show & Tell,” he added, laughing.

Another good place to find new pieces for the collection is tag sales.

“We were driving home from Michigan one year and stopped regularly at tag sales,” Mr Farrell recalled. “At the time, what we saw we bought. Mickey was working at the time, so we had a little extra money.”

He has shown his collection at Danbury Railway Museum and, a member of the local Ancient Order of Hibernians, he has set up a booth at the Greater Danbury Irish Festival a few times.

A collection of his bottle cappers, including one that is more than 150 years old, drew a lot of attention during last year’s Irish festival.

“No one knew what they were,” he said. “Everyone was very curious about them.” He plans to return to the 13th Irish Festival in September, and expects to have most of those bottle cappers with him that weekend.

In 1976 Mr Farrell won a second place trophy for a float he put into the Newtown Labor Day Parade that featured many of the tools in his then-fledgling collection. The theme of the parade was “Remember When,” and Edwin B. Storrs, a past president of Newtown Historical Society and Newtown history buff, was the parade marshal that year. Mr Farrell, who at that time lived in Redding, created a float on a flatbed trailer that re-created a full blacksmith shop right down to what looks, at least according to a photo that ran on the front cover of the September 10, 1976, issue of The Newtown Bee, like a working oven.

(His float was bested only by Newtown Democratic Town Committee, who had FDR and Truman — tough competition!)

Last weekend, he said “I don’t have everything, but I have most of it,” when one visitor commented on the vast assortment of his collection.

“I have no interest in selling these tools,” he reiterated this week. “I have a good time. I just enjoy this.”