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| My Mum and I checked out the sheepcote at the 2005 Wyman Family Reunion |
The Francis Wyman house was built in Woburn (now
Burlington), Massachusetts in 1666. It
is located on 56 Francis Wyman Road, and is owned by the Wyman Family
Association. Every fall there is a reunion
at the homestead. The first thing all
the kids (big and little) do is to run over to the stone wall near the house
and look for the “hidey hole” or “sheepcote” (a pen for sheep).
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| The entrance to the Sheepcote |
This strange stone chamber pre-dates the 1666 house,
and pre-dates European settlement, so it was probably never used as a shelter
for sheep. It is obviously too small for
sheep, too. There were Indian settlements
nearby, but usually the Indians in this part of New England did not build stone
structures. The large stone which forms
the “roof” of this structure would have been difficult to move into place
without iron or metal tools.
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| The large "roof" stone of the sheepcote |
I don’t know who named this the “Sheepcote”. It is a true history mystery!
The Wyman Family Association website www.wyman.org
This post is part of a series of stories I wrote for
this week all about stone walls.
Story 1 – America's Stonehenge, Salem, New Hampshire
http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2012/06/stone-wall-stories-week-1-americas.html
http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2012/06/stone-wall-stories-week-1-americas.html
Story 2- Stone Walls -
http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2012/06/stone-wall-stories-2-stone-walls-and.html
http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2012/06/stone-wall-stories-2-stone-walls-and.html
Story 3- Dogtown, Massachusetts
http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2012/06/stone-wall-stories-3-dogtown.html
http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2012/06/stone-wall-stories-3-dogtown.html
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Copyright 2012, Heather Wilkinson Rojo
Here's a contemporary view of the barns from earth. Like the main house, Daheim's barns are so complicated you don't notice the new metal roofed equipment shed (light green roof on the left) that replaces the grand old hay barn. When built during the first decade of the twentieth century, this farm was a model dairy. For the last half century it's seen a lot of hard use as a beef cattle operation'
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