ROWE — Imagine living in a frontier town in 1788 where the town doctor makes house calls on snowshoes or on horseback, his instruments thumping against the horse’s sides in medical saddlebags.
That was Dr. Pardon Haynes, Rowe’s first town physician, as described by Dr. Stephen W. Williams of Deerfield in his 1845 book, “American Medical Biographies.”
Now the Rowe Historical Society has put many of Dr. Haynes’ home furnishings, possessions and medical equipment on display at the Kemp-McCarthy Museum at 282 Zoar Road. The museum is open on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. through Oct. 8. It is also open by appointment.
Haynes was the town physician from 1788 until 1832. Besides his 45 years as town doctor, Haynes was also captain of the town militia in 1795 — commissioned by John Hancock and Samuel Adams. He was also a town selectman in 1797 and 1809. He helped to set up “Rowe’s Social Library” in 1797. He bought land on Middleton Hill Road in 1788, which included the site of Fort Pelham.
Members of his family lived there for 150 years.
Haynes’s great-great granddaughter, Olive Wright Chamberlain, lived in the house until 1941 and donated many of Haynes’ possessions to the Historical Society in the 1960s and 1970s. Before she died, in 2001, she asked family members to pass on additional household heirlooms, photographs and documents to the Historical Society. She attached notes to the back of many objects, realizing that they would someday end up at the Rowe museum, according to Ellen Miller.
Haynes’ successor as town doctor, Dr. Humphrey Gould, wrote of his father-in-law’s character and work ethic: “Little do the physicians of the city know of the hardships and privations of our physicians on our western mountains, during the long, dreary and inclement winters. Frequently their only mode of conveyance is on foot, on Indian rackets or snow shoes, and all this for the paltry sum on one shilling a mile, even at which some of their employers find fault.”
Gould goes on to say that, “Dr. Haynes never permitted any obstacle to prevent his visiting his patients at the appointed hour, if it was in his power to prevent it. He was often obliged to cross the Deerfield River, which rises in Hoosac Mountain, at the imminent hazard of his life. … he would often swim his horse when the ice would beat the skin from his limbs. … He was no surgeon, but a good and able physician and particularly distinguished as a practitioner of Midwifery, in which department few excelled him.”
Much later, Dr. Haynes’ spacious house became known as “The Fort Pelham Farm House, an inn for weekend guests, and celebrated for its $1 creamed chicken dinners. Some of the memorabilia from those days are on display as well.