I often walk and ride horseback past this barn along an old route that connects to Morgan Mile Road. Each time I pass, I’m transported back in time, imagining what life here might have been like. The Neighbor Road Barn in Brookfield has a rich history. Like many old barns, it stopped housing milking cows when bulk milk tanks became necessary.
The farm's stories have always sparked my imagination, and the barn sketch reminds me of those tales.
On a lighter note, a neighbor told me that her uncle courted a young woman who lived on the farm. One moonless night, while visiting without her parents' knowledge, he slipped out of the house before anyone discovered him. As he walked crosslots home in the dark, he tripped over a cow lying in the pasture. Another story, with a somber ending, circulates on the farm: Margery, a Native American medicine woman from the Pequot tribe, married Joseph Griswold, whom she nursed back to health after he nearly drowned. Together, they moved here from Massachusetts in the late 1700s. Margery tended to the sick in the surrounding community and rode an old white mare from house to house. One winter, she set out on horseback during a blizzard to care for a sick family. Halfway there, the mare, belly-deep in snow and too exhausted to continue, forced Margery to proceed on foot. After tending to the ill, she started home but did not survive the journey, perishing in the storm, as did the mare. It is said that her father, who was chief of the tribe, is buried somewhere on the property beneath a pile of rocks. Legend holds that if anyone ever disturbs the rocks, the farm will be forever cursed.