Historic Barn: Last Remnant of the Tuttle Farm

After the ice age, after the Wabanaki discovered this area, after Maine was colonized and Freeport was founded, after all of that history... this land was a working, fertile farm owned by the Tuttle family. This would have been from 1821 until the 1890s. They’re the ones who originally built a barn on this property.

Take a look at the beams, which are the long pieces of wood supporting the structure. The oldest ones come from the 1700s and the trees they were cut from date back to the 1500s! That’s around the time that Europeans first started exploring the Americas. If you look closely, you’ll see that—amazingly—no nails were used to tie the joints together! They use what’s called a “mortise and tenon” construction. Basically it’s a system of notches that fit together like pieces of a 3-D jigsaw puzzle.

As you can see, it makes for an extremely sturdy structure. Even though it’s a better story to say this is a 300-year-old barn, the truth is, it was built in the 19th century. It’s larger and has a bigger entrance area than what they would have built a century before. So, in short, the barn we’re in was cobbled together from a few different barns. The Tuttles built the first one using recycled beams and since then it’s been refurbished and expanded and that continues to this day. In the fall, this barn will become a state-of-the art concert venue while preserving its beautiful historical details.

The farm family patriarch, John Tuttle, was ambitious and, I think it’s fair to say, he could be a little hot-headed. One of the Tuttle descendants once wrote of him: “...Becoming angered at something at a town meeting in the neighboring town of Pownal, John vowed he would never attend another and forthwith moved his house and barn over the townline into Freeport.” The “something” he was angry about was likely the fact that Pownal had been refusing to build a road to the Tuttle property for decades. So he decided to move to a town that might actually respond to his concerns. Talk about “taking your ball and going home!” For John to move his homestead, it took a team of 24 oxen to do the job. Just imagine that visual for a moment—all those animals pulling a HOUSE and a BARN up the poorly made road and then plopping them both down right here on this spot! If we were shooting a John Tuttle biopic, this little story would make for an epic sequence in our film. Later in the tour, we will show you where the house and barn originally stood.

Ok, let’s walk up the stairs and towards the dunes…