Local historian and author Dale Potter-Clark will lead the first Readfield History Walk of 2019 Friday, April 26. Participants should gather by 10 a.m. at 41 Walker Road where they will be directed to park.
Potter-Clark will point out where the only four farms were once located on Walker Road and share some familial information. Some of the owners in the 18th and 19th centuries and the years their farms were either built or purchased include: Joshua Johnson (1790), Elias Gove (1800), Thaddeus Richardson Sr. (1802), Steven Bean (1823), Gilman Hawes (1841) and Henry O. White (1846).
Several of those men passed part or all of their properties on to relatives. On the other hand, Bean’s 75-acre homestead had changed hands seven times by 1859, when the Inhabitants of Readfield bought it and established the first of three town poor farms there. None of the buildings from any of these farms have survived.
Previously Walker Road had been known as the Hawes and the Lewis Road. Both families lived in this neighborhood for decades in the 19th and 20th centuries. When road names were changed or made permanent, during the development of the E911 system, it was renamed Walker.
The original homesteads accumulatively held 275 acres, which were subdivided in the 1980s and now holds 17 homes, as well as another road called Frost Lane.
No fee or registration is necessary. Donations to Readfield Historical Society are welcome.
For more information, contact Potter-Clark at 441-9184 or crossings4u@gmail.com or visit readfieldhistorywalks.blogspot.com.
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