From the Vineyard Gazette edition of May 10, 1957:

Not particularly odd, but interesting, is the fact that in the study of dates, year to year, it is an easy matter to find anniversaries. A little study of almost any year will reveal it to be the hundredth anniversary of something or other.

Naturally the majority of these things are highly unimportant. They will never be mentioned in history books, or even historical novels, where the authors delve into records and ancient correspondence to find out just what the color of Jacob’s coat might have been and whether or not there were silver decorations on the flintlock with which he dropped the wolf at seventy-five yards.

No, the majority of these events which began a century ago are not even that important, and by the same token, as time passes, hundredth anniversaries become less and less impressive. Only those things which were a century old, long ago, become more important as time passes. For one day they will be 200 years old, perhaps three, and then, perhaps, they will attract real attention.

Of such is the barn of John Hammett.

In a day when the great majority of Vineyard men went down to the sea John Hammett was a landsman so far as is known. Certainly he was in the prime of life, owning one of the largest of Island farms and with holdings elsewhere, and tending his flocks and herds, likewise raising wheat for the Island flour mills, and whatever other crops were required for the sustenance of his livestock and his family. And then, seeing his storehouse filed, he built larger, like the man of Scripture, but with more kindly results.

The arrival of warm weather this year will bring the anniversary date of the building of his barn, 110 years ago. The actual month in which the work began is not known. That his undertaking attracted Island-wide attention cannot be doubted, because it was the largest barn on the Island at the time and in its construction Mr. Hammett departed from all tradition and built it of bricks. It may be added at this point that another farmer followed his lead and a second brick barn was eventually built, but the eventual decline of brick-making undoubtedly brought to a halt what might have constituted a Vineyard trend in building construction.

But at this time brick-making as an Island industry was in its heyday. A large number of men were employed in and outside of the brickyard, for teamsters brought the clay and sand, others attended to the mixing, still more watched the burning, and in the loading and shipping of bricks numerous others were employed.

In examining this barn today, a thing that is noticeable is the evidence of fine workmanship, of skill in the mixing of the mortar and a knowledge of strains and stresses, possessed, in some mysterious manner, by the builders.

The barn is a landmark and bids fair to become even more than that in the course of time. Every detail of the original construction may be followed on the inside: the swelled bricks in the walls, the details timbering to support the mows, the buttresses fashioned to hold the timbers. More interesting, the doorways, which are arched. For this work, the finest bricks were selected, and the builders knew all of the mystery and skill connected with the construction of arches and their supporting columns.

The thickness of the walls may be gauged, twelve inches except where pilasters and other reinforcements were built to add strength, and all joined, “bonded”, with the old fashioned mortar made from the lime and sand.

It has not settled nor cracked. The walls stand as when they were built. Though generations of men and their livestock have passed in and out of those arched doorways and have become one with the past, the old barn stands, plumb, square and level, and offering shelter for yet further generations.

Other places and other lands have their castles and homes of the famous, the majority built of masonry which time cannot easily destroy. Many such places have become shrines, visited by the thousands who know and love history and who hold in veneration the outstanding characters who moved through the historic years.

The Vineyard has even fewer of such things than many a mainland town or city. But here, up among the hills, stands the barn of John Hammett, a plain structure, built for use and not for decorative purposes. As an all-Island production there is little or nothing to rival it and although nothing of outstanding historical note ever took place in or around it, still it memorializes a distinct period of Island history.

The day may well arrive when automobiles will be stored inside these brick walls, possibly small helicopters, for who knows what changes may occur? But in this old barn lies the possibility of preserving for the Island something that is really old and which will resist the ravages of time. Not as a monument to its builder, but to his lusty generation, for “there were giants in those days."

Compiled by Hilary Wall
library@mvgazette.com