ROCKLAND, Maine — The red barn on Mechanic Street has seen generations come and go. It has hosted Halloween parties, political gatherings, family reunions and picnics since 1930. But its story began more than a century earlier.
Passed down to Peter Richardson, a retired minister and prolific writer, the barn is a living repository of a family and a seaport’s legacy. Originally built for cows, horses and hay, the English-style barn served as a shop in the mid-1800s, during Rockland’s shipbuilding heyday, when this city produced more brigs and schooners than galleries and tourists.
“My great-grandfather, Frank S. Kalloch, moved it in 1876 with oxen across the fields,” Richardson, 75, said.
But the barn almost didn’t make it.
En route to Mechanic Street from the water’s edge, the project stalled.
The barn, neglected by busy people making a living, was deposited in a field, short of its intended destination. When it finally arrived at its current resting spot a year later, Kalloch set up his tinware business and housed livestock.
With such a colorful past, it’s almost inevitable Richardson and his wife, Eleanor, would use the space for creative pursuits that include storytelling. It’s the heart and soul of their publishing imprint: Red Barn Publishing.
“We could either put our own name on it or associate it with the landscape,” said Peter, who, much like Stonewall Kitchen, looked out his window and saw the answer.
“It is a fitting symbol of our ongoing work, which is literary, rather than physical,” their website explains.
In one area, boxes of published works, such as “The Boston Religion: Unitarianism in its Capital City” by Peter, are stored high. Eleanor, an organist and music director, writes about local history. “North Haven Summers” and “Hurricane Island: The Town that Disappeared” are thoughtful accounts inspired by her summers on Vinalhaven.
Like a good book, their barn slowly reveals the DNA of this couple’s past. Peter’s family tree can be traced through the quirky light fixture made by his great uncle, an electrical engineer who electrified barn. Memorabilia from generations, a tin kettle gone but not forgotten, an ancient pram and a rocking chair compliment the hand-hewn pegs and iron staples added by ship joiners.
“Since I was a little boy I was playing around in the barn. … I had a little red wagon,” the friendly Richardson said on a recent tour. “I would fill the wagon with acorns and come back in the barn and store them away,” he said chuckling. “We still come across acorns from time to time from that period.”
The barn is a multidimensional family scrapbook of objects and memory that its stewards care for regularly. They put on a new roof a few years ago, and the barn sports 20 solar panels. This smart move generates enough energy to pay their monthly electric bills.
In the workshop loft, the resourceful Eleanor repairs chairs and taught herself how to make furniture, including a dovetail stool. She sometimes uses tools found in the barn that date back decades.
But in its bones, this barn is social.
A long picnic bench awaits the next function. In August, a family reunion is expected to draw close to 150 relatives, scattered from Maine to New Jersey. Like all barn bashes held here, it will reflect the structure’s working past.
“As a housewife, it makes it very easy to entertain. You have this big space. And when you are inspired, you can invite everyone in in a very relaxed way without getting too uptight,” Eleanor, 68, said. “They can spread out. I don’t care if they spill wine.”
Perpetuating family traditions is important to the Richardsons, who feel buoyed by all the barn represents — not just history, it’s living present.
Eleanor cites by memory the deed to the land the barn occupies:
“I give this land to my grandson for $1 and for the love which I have for my grandson to his heirs and assigns forever,” Eleanor said, quoting her husband’s great-great-grandfather. “And we feel that we are the heirs and assigns forever.”
