The very large late 19th century Hathaway Barn was built as part of a moderate-sized family farm. When Hiram V. Hathaway was born to Jabez and Olive Hathaway in 1844 he became about the 30th settler on the then unincorporated lands. In 1857 Jabez joined 10 other families in purchasing homestead lots. Over the next 60 years, the family cleared the 140-acre farmstead of rocks and trees and built barns and houses to suit their needs.

The Hathaway Barn is a bank barn, set on the west side of Nortons Corner Road, located just north of Hathaway Brook. The large barn is estimated, based on construction techniques and materials, to date to about 1880, and was apparently built by Hathaway in anticipation of increased demand for dairy products, occasioned by a boom in demand for cheese and butter in Maine markets in the 1870s.  The building is framed with large timbers fastened by pegs, and smaller structural elements are fastened with wire nails, a clue to the building’s construction date.

Between 1860 and 1870 the value of Jabez S. Hathaway’s estate jumped from a $500 dollar cash value for the farm to $2500. During this decade he added $375 worth of farm machinery and implements, increased the number of his horses from one to five, and doubled the size of his flock of sheep. He cleared 20 additional acres of fields and raised his production of rye by 12 bushels, corn by 35 bushels, and hay by 15 tons, while adding new crops of barley and buckwheat. During these years, he built or enlarged his home for his wife and eight children and worked the land with his sons Hiram and William.

The Hathaways farmed the land on a moderate level, but after the death of Jabez Hathaway in 1893 the workforce on the farm consisted primarily of his son Hiram, who married in 1880.  When they sold the property in 1915, they sold with it the remaining “horses, cattle and swine and hens on said farm, also all the farming tools and farming machinery and all carriages and vehicles except one wheelbarrow, one sleigh, and one handsled.” They also sold the crops, “harvested or unharvested”.

The Hathaway barn remains as a testament to the scale of the possibilities that the farmer settlers hoped to attain in this wild, open land. While only small scale farming continues in Willimantic, Hathaway Barn stands as a witness to the optimism of a late 19th-century farm family in the North woods of Maine. [Christi A. Mitchell photos, 2003]

The barn was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. The address today is 2621 Elliotsville Road.