Jesse Barber House (1800)

The house at 259 Cherry Brook Road in Canton was built sometime before 1800 (an chestnut beam in the attic is inscribed with the date 1789). It was the home of Jesse Barber, a cobbler who had a shop north of his house and also a tannery. He would fix the shoes of the children who walked by his home on their way to school. For many years the house’s residents got their water from a spring on the hill to the east which traveled through a system of split and grooved logs laid end-to-end. This was later replaced by a lead pipe that had to be kept unfrozen in the winter to prevent clogging. New owners, Dennis and Wanda Mahoney, replaced this system with an artesian well in 1953. They also extensively restored the house and totally rebuilt the rear ell. An earlier owner, Ambrose Norman, had kept riding horses, but gave up the house to a grain merchant from Granby to satisfy an unpaid feed bill.