Take Me to the Pound
By Peter Cameron
June 2025
In 2012, while doing research, I examined the original Town of Loudon records in the Otis Town Hall basement. In the earmark book (circa 1773), and various early Town Selectmen’s records, they mentioned the building of a Town Pound to contain roaming farm animals. In addition, at each town meeting from 1773 through the early 1800s, a Pound Keeper was appointed to oversee its operations.
In Nellie Haskell’s diary, compiled in a book by Lynn Humason in 1974, Haskill notes that the old Town Pound was located on the east side of the Farmington River, “… between the Davison Farm and Scott Place.” While I knew where the Davison farm was, the location of the “Scott Place” was a mystery. After highlighting the Otis Historical Properties program in a previous column, I received an email from homeowners near Davison Farm who indicated the Town Pound was on their property.
The Pound as it exists today, Photo: Peter Cameron
Now, to identify this property as “the Scott place.” An 1850 map in Nellie Haskell’s diary showed an “E. Scott” living next to the Davison farm. In the Otis Vital Records, 1773 through 1850, there was a record of marriage for Henry W. Scott of Blandford and Eunice Hunter of Otis in 1827. Census records show the married couple living in Otis in 1830. Henry W. Scott died in 1835. That would leave Eunice Scott or E. Scott, the widow, living in this house. She lived in Otis with her daughter until she passed away in 1865, so she was there in 1850, corroborating the Haskill map data. We had found E. Scott.
It took almost a month to get schedules to line up and finally, on a snowy Saturday, I met the homeowners at their place. The owners, amateur historians themselves, reported that they believed that they had found the old Town Pound, still in existence and on their property. I explored their small home, and found the chestnut post and beam construction matched the era of the Scott family marriage in the late 1820s.
The homeowners provided me with the original listing for the property from 20 years ago, which stated that the original Town Pound was on the property. They purchased the property from the Calvanese family, which Haskill notes in her diary as owning the old Scott Place. Game, set and match! This was the Scott place Haskill had mentioned.
My excitement was high as we trekked through the melting snow up Davison Lane towards Route 23. In the woods, and very close to Route 23, was a manmade stone wall enclosure about 30-yards square. On the west side was an 8-foot opening, probably originally gated as an entrance. The height of the stone wall was above waist-high on me, and I am 6’ 4”. This towers above all the stone walls we find elsewhere in the woods around Otis. The trees growing inside the wall were only about six inches in diameter, new growth compared to the trees outside the wall that were two to three feet in diameter. This indicated that trees in the interior of the structure had been cut down at one point. All this matches Nellie Haskill’s description of the pound, “… a town pound enclosed by a high stone wall with heavy logs on top.” Of course, the logs were long rotted away.
As I stood inside, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I was standing in the middle of pre–Revolutionary War Otis history, where pound keepers stood some 250 years ago! Otis history is alive and well, waiting to be found.
