Middlebury farm dates to 1800s

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This image of Biscoe Farm, perhaps circa the 1930s, shows two of the farm’s milk wagons. Notes state the picture was taken around 10:30 a.m., when the milk wagons had just returned from delivering milk to the dairy farm’s customers. The original of this photo is in the Dana Osborn Collection. (Photo courtesy Middlebury Historical Society)

By NATE DEXTER

From the South Street overpass over I-84, you can see a green barn at the end of a dirt driveway that winds through the fields. That barn is part of Bedlam Hill Farm, one of the last working farms in Middlebury.

The farm comprises approximately 350 acres in the Biscoe Hill area of Middlebury, named for Samuel Biscoe, an early 18th century settler, and is a prime example of the country retreats owned by Waterbury and Naugatuck industrialists at the turn of the 19th century.

As recently as the 1970s, this site was home to Biscoe Farms, the gentleman dairy farm of the Naugatuck Tuttle family. The Tuttles were the owners and directors of a company now known as The Eastern Company, an iron works company headquartered in Naugatuck whose stock still trades on the NASDAQ.

Begun in 1858 by Bronson Beecher Tuttle (1835-1903) and John Howard Whittemore (1837-1910), the Tuttle and Whittemore iron works (as the company was first known) was in the historic shop of B. B Tuttle’s father along the Naugatuck River. During the Civil War, the company diversified and added production of cannon parts for the war effort to its production of agricultural implements.

B. B. Tuttle’s son was Howard Beecher (H.B.) Tuttle (1863-1933), president of the Eastern Malleable Iron Company (the company’s name as of 1912) and the Naugatuck National Bank and a one-term state senator. Beginning with his February 2, 1894, purchase of 60 acres from Middlebury farmers Antonio Fanelle and Lewis Yopalucia, he bought up smaller historic farms in that area to create his country estate in the Middlebury hills.

H.B. constructed many renowned houses on his expansive property, most notably his residence, the Adams house, built in 1905 on the same site as a Victorian cottage he had bought from the Boulton family years earlier.

Up until World War I, he created an estate spanning almost 600 acres, comprising over 10 local farms according to a 1909 American Guernsey Cattle Club publication, which described his estate as “beautifully located on the crest of the hills in Middlebury and no matter in which direction one may look there are magnificent and extended views of the surrounding country.”

H.B. bought the first of his Guernsey herd of approximately 60 head, known for their high butter fat content, on the Isle of Guernsey and named his prize bull Biscoe. Biscoe Farms sold primarily milk and butter, delivering them by a fleet of wagons to nearby Naugatuck. In 1908, their products made an average profit per cow of $55.14. H.B. named each cow with names like “Lady Pauline” and “Princess Idalia.”

When Ruby Tuttle, daughter of H.B. and Jeanette (Seymour) Tuttle, married Charles Lewis Larkin Sr., a noted heart doctor, in 1921, the couple was given a 10-acre lot for them to build their house. The property became High Winds Estate, the Larkin family estate with renowned grounds designed by the Fairfield landscape architect Agnes Selkirk Clark.

In the 1950s, Howard Tuttle Larkin, grandson of H.B. and Jeanette Tuttle, took over operation of the dairy, centering the industry in the lower Victorian barn complex built by H.B. Then, in the 1970s, Howard sold the operation to his nephew, Charles Larkin III, who converted the herd to primarily Holsteins due to a cattle disease that affected the Guernseys and soured the milk. In addition, the demand for Guernsey products diminished in that period. The operation ran nearly five years, into the 1980s, as a Holstein dairy.

Today, historic Biscoe Farm lives on as Bedlam Hill Farm, owned by the Larkin family and operating as a hay farm.

Nate Dexter is a summer intern at the Middlebury Historical Society. Bob Rafford is the Society president and Middlebury’s municipal historian. To join or contact the Society, visit MiddleburyHistoricalSociety.org or call Bob at 203-206-4717.