No. 28 The VanDyke Barns
English barn
Built about: 1820
English dairy barn 40’x 30’ with eave entrance, center drive-through threshing bay.
Yankee barn
Built about: 1858
Yankee horse barn 30’ x 24’ Gable entrance, high single pane horse stall windows.
Located on a picturesque hill top in the hamlet of Tarbellville, in the Town of Mount Holly, this early farm gives a good sense of the kind of working/living arrangement that characterized the Mount Holly landscape during the last century and was the center of social and economic life. This farm was part of Marshall Tarbell’s rake, hoe and fork handle manufactory that produced more rakes in 1860’s than any other in New England.
Tarbell was a remarkable man; with only a modest education he was able to build a small empire, which resulted in the employment in dozens of men. His business interests included a cheese factory which marketed its product as far as Ohio and Connecticut. The hamlet contained a gristmill, sawmill, starch factory, blacksmith shop, store, school, workmen’s boarding, dance hall, and cemetery.
