Jerry Tobin delights seniors with tales of farming on Skiff Mountain

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KENT—Life on Skiff Mountain as part of the Tobin family and growing up in town provided a wealth of information for Jerry Tobin to talk about with seniors recently.

Tobin spoke Wednesday, Aug. 21, in the monthly Kent History program at the Kent Senior Center. The program is offered on the third Wednesday at 11 a.m. and is coordinated by Catherine Bachrach and the Kent Historical Society.

As he spoke about his many relatives, Tobin noted he was the youngest of five children in his family. He grew up in the Village and his father operated the garage, where Tobin’s Automotive is now located on South Main Street. 

As a child, he remembers sleeping on the screened porch of their home and seeing lightning strike the silo of the south end of the Templeton Farm barn (where the Senior Center is now located.) He thinks that would have happened in 1949 or 1950.

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“The whole building up to here was absolutely on fire,” he remembered. “The cattle were not in but out in a field.”

He shared other memories of living in town, such as shoveling out the ashes from the basement and sprinkling them on the driveway every Saturday morning.

His family’s property was also a place where others gathered. “We would congregate on summer evenings and kick the can in the backyard. There would be a dozen or more kids,” Tobin said. “I think of all the kids we’d have there—Bruce MacRitchie, Larry Jones and Jake Parson. We had one girl that consistently showed up—probably most of you know Susi Casey Austell Williams.”

He also remembered how his brother would tinker with Model A’s and cross the wires to get them started. 

“We gave a lot of kids the opportunity to learn how to drive in the backyard,” Tobin said. “My father had school bus routes, so particularly when he was off driving that’s when the engines would really get charged up.”

As the youngest child, he benefited in a large family.

“All the rules of the house had been broken by the time I came around, so I had pretty much free rein,” Tobin said and was greeted with loud laughter from all the 21 people attending.

Tobin encouraged everyone attending to join the Kent Historical Society as members and to read the December 2020 newsletter that contains a lengthy story about the Tobin family and how Skiff Mountain was originally settled. It is available online.

Dennis Tobin immigrated to Kent from a small town outside of Cork, Ireland. He came over after the potato famine between 1855-58. He purchased property on Skiff Mountain in 1860. 

Jerry Tobin explained that the Tobin Farm on the top of Skiff Mountain was originally two farms. The south farm is where Austi Brown now lives and the north one, separated by the Skiff house, is now owned by Katherine Skiff Kane. Dennis had two sons, with Daniel inheriting the upper farm and Jim the lower farm. He showed a photo of Jim’s son, John Tobin on a horse-drawn wagon in front of the barn. Daniel had eight children and Jerry’s father was the second oldest, born in 1891.

Jerry and Gail Tobin own the Tobin Farmhouse on the upper farm and in 2015 began the process of renovating the ancient structure. They live across the street from the farmhouse.

Tobin passed around a series of historical photographs from his family’s collection. Several of them were taken by Helen Modley Post, who was later known as an accomplished photographer of Native Americans in the southwest and was married to Rudolf “Rudy” Modley.

“The farm was one of the great places that she loved to take photographs of,” Tobin said.

Farming activities included dairy cattle, arriving in the 1920s, Tobin said, noting the family raised Golden Guernseys, which are known for high butterfat milk. Milk was sent to the Rock Hall Dairy in New Haven. The bull always impressed him.

Tobacco was also grown and was popular for many local farms because of its value, but it required a lot of labor to harvest.

“My uncle Dan Tobin used to say tobacco was a cash crop. If you didn’t have any hail storms, it was really good and going to pay all the bills,” he said.

He also shared how hay was grown and harvested. There were no balers and all hay had to be cut by a scythe and then put onto the wagon by forks. Once the barn was full of hay, they stacked the hay outside. The first tractor on the mountain arrived in 1949. Tobin remembers driving the tractor to the barn but being instructed not to cross a specific line marked by a piece of wood. A rope trolley system was connected to the other end of the barn and a large hay fork was driven down into the hay on the wagon to lift it. If he didn’t stop the tractor where he was directed, it would take part of the barn down.

One of his prized possessions is a license plate from his uncle Paul Tobin’s 1915 Patterson car that was found by Bill Case in the farmhouse where it was covering up a mouse hole. Arnie Valentine made a special wooden frame for the license plate, along with two photos of the car and Paul’s driver’s license from 1916.

Several of Jerry Tobin’s relatives attended the talk, including nephews, Edward Kirby, who lives in Kent, and Kevin Kirby of Sharon, as well as niece, Mo Kirby Dore of Sharon. Several of them prompted Jerry on several family stories.

KHS Curator Marge Smith also prompted Tobin to tell the story about when the North Kent bridge went out in 1936 and the Tobin family strung up a cable across the Housatonic River.

“Milk had to get to the market,” Tobin said. “My father was pretty industrious. They put a big eye hook on either side of the river. There’s a picture of Paul Tobin going across in a little cable car with four milk cans at a time.”

(Editor’s Note: This article was corrected Friday, Aug. 30 at 8:53 a.m. to clarify Jerry Tobin’s relatives.)

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