ROWE — Driving up Zoar Road into rural Rowe, past grazing deer and a running brook, it’s hard to imagine that Rowe was a busy manufacturing town during the 1800s, with a sawmill, grist mill, a tannery, casket and cabinet shop and the three-story Satinet factory, which produced a sturdy, wool-cotton blend cloth.
Markers dot the landscape where these places used to stand, and now one of the last-standing old industrial buildings — the Browning Bench Tool Factory — houses part of the town’s history.
The Rowe Historical Society, which runs the Kemp-McCarthy Museum, has turned the Browning Bench Tool Factory into a museum annex that is now open to the public on Saturdays, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., through early autumn.
In its heyday, the Browning Bench Tool Factory made tools, including hand-held wooden planes. In 1976, the building was moved from its original location and restored. After the restoration, it was used was to house local crafts made by townspeople. In recent years, however, it has been open only during the town’s Old Home Days.
It now houses artifacts and historic photos that can’t be displayed at the Kemp McCarthy Museum, for lack of space. The items on view include large farm vehicles and sleighs on the lowest floor. In the center floor, there are several historic photos that were scanned by Joanne Semanie, a Historical Society member and a professional photographer. The scanned reproductions look fresh and vivid.
Society member Wayne Zavotka said one of his favorite new exhibits is a “guess what this is” collection of antique objects. One of the mystery objects is an insulator from a Marconi wireless telegraph. Another is a metal “ice shoe” clamped on to a horse’s foot during slick, icy weather. There is also a spear-like pitch fork that was known as an “eel gig” for catching them.
“At one time, the brooks of Rowe were filled with eels,” said Zavotka. “The story is that, during school recess, the kids would gig for eels, and then have them for lunch.”
In honor of the town’s textile history, the top floor features a temporary exhibit of weaving and textile handiwork, along with spinning wheels and remnants of old weaving equipment from Rowe homes. A large floor loom that was built between 1790 and 1820 is on display. On most Saturdays, Semanie will be using this antique loom to demonstrate how the weaving was done.
Both the Kemp-McCarthy Museum, on Zoar Road, and the Browning Bench Tool building, on Pond Road, are open Saturdays from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. They are admission free, but donations are welcomed.