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On Exhibit

Rehoboth History

Book Shop

Membership

4 Locust Ave, PO Box 2
Rehoboth, MA 02769
508-252-3031
carpentermuseum@gmail.com

HOURS: Open Tuesdays & Thursdays 1-4pm, Sundays 2-4pm. Closed holiday weekends

History of the Museum

In 1884 a young Rehoboth minister, George H. Tilton, decided that something should be done to preserve the remnants of the town’s colonial past.  Thus inspired, he founded the Rehoboth Antiquarian Society in March of that year.  The Society was established for several purposes: to preserve artifacts relating to Rehoboth's history, to maintain a meeting hall, and to run a consolidated school.  The first Goff Memorial Hall, a large, wooden Victorian-style building, was dedicated in March 1886.  The antiquarian room was housed on the first floor.  In July 1911, the building was struck by lightning and burned to the ground.  Fortunately all of the artifacts were saved.  A new Goff Memorial Hall was quickly planned and built (this time of brick), and was dedicated in May 1915.

During America's bicentennial year, as community interest in local history was at a peak, a decision was reached to build a separate structure to house the collection of the Rehoboth Antiquarian Society.  Backed by the donation of land and money from Elsie and E. Winsor Carpenter, a fund drive was launched to raise funds to build a new museum on Locust Avenue.  Despite the doubts of many as to the feasibility of this project, the Carpenter Museum was constructed entirely by donated funds at an eventual cost of $73,000.  Hundreds of volunteer hours were devoted to this large endeavor.

Modeled after a local 1760 gambrel-roofed house, the Museum contains exhibit rooms, artifact storage area, and social room with kitchen facilities.  Also on the grounds is a reproduction of a 1746 post-and-beam barn. It was constructed in 1993 with a community barn raising, one of the events that celebrated Rehoboth's 350th anniversary.

The Barn

The Barn was built in May of 1993 as one of the celebratory events commemorating the 350th anniversary of the founding of Rehoboth.  Eighty men and woman came together and built the basic structure in a traditional barn raising over one weekend.

Although the barn was constructed in one weekend, this event came after months of preparation and hard work. In the fall of 1992, red and white oaks and white pines from the land of E. Otis Dyer were cut and hauled to the A+R Sawmill on Hornbine Road where they were sawn into timbers.  The timbers were in turn taken to the grounds of Goff Memorial Hall.  During the winter and early spring, two master craftsmen, Hans Schaeffer and his brother, Peter, cut all of the joinery work into the timbers with the help of several volunteers.  The finished timbers were then hauled to the museum site for the barn raising.  

The Barn is based on one built in Rehoboth in 1746 on the property of Sylvanus Martin.  (That area of Rehoboth became the town of Seekonk in 1812.)  The Martin property later became the Horton dairy farm, and the barn was used until 1938, when it was blown down by the Great Hurricane.  Actual plans of the barn, however, had been drawn up as part of a public works project during the Franklin Roosevelt administration.

The Barn is built in actual size and scale, and in the style known as an English Barn, Yankee Barn, or Connecticut Barn. The Barn is three bays long. A bay is the distance between the timber frame bents, roughly 16 feet.  Spanning the barn’s width, each bent is made with three posts and four beams, joined with mortise and tenon joints, held together by wooden pegs. 

In the original barn, the right hand bay housed dairy cattle, oxen, or draft horses, while the left bay stored hay. The huge loft area was also used to store hay.  The middle bay was used for threshing grain with both sets of doors open.  This created a wind tunnel effect which speeded winnowing.  The large doors also allowed hay loaded wagons access to the loft.

Although based on an 18th century model, the barn at the Carpenter Museum was designed and built to be used as a display area for items in the museum’s collection.  The building is heated and fully insulated, and has a modern basement.  Current displays include a collection of antique firearms, woodworking tools, farm implements, American Indian artifacts, and the recently acquired diorama of the Mason Barney Shipyard.