pntaylor1997: Taylor-Bray Farm/Coast Guard Heritagusee Museum/Chatham Coast Guard Station/Lighthose

6/12/21

Phil’s main reason for wanting to go to Cape Cod again was to go to the Taylor Bray Farm again. I believe this was our 3^rd visit to the farm since we discovered it’s existence in 2012. Since then they have had digs done on the original 1600’s house as well as the house that replaced the original. They have not only found artifacts from the Taylor’s who lived there, but from habitants many hundreds of years prior to the Taylor’s.

Phil made contact with one of the administrators of the farm and he came over and gave us a tour of the Samuel Taylor house. I believe that Samuel Taylor was a grandson of Richard Taylor’s. The association has done a good job of refurbishing the house. The Bray Brothers, who bought the farm from the widow of the last Taylor to own it, were also heavily into antiques. At their death, the antiques were dispersed for sale to dealers. When the town of Yarmouth bought the remaining acres of the farm, they found most of the antiques the Bray Brothers had, and have used them to refurbish the Samuel Taylor house.

This is the Samuel Taylor house

This is the old barn, really needs some TLC

The farm animals are mostly rescues, they are all cared for by volunteers from the community

Father's Day weekend is the big Sheep Festival at the farm, then these big guys will get sheered.

Big, heavy duty chicken house

The donkeys are way overweight and are on a special diet

This is an Osprey, sitting on it's nest on a special platform that was placed out in the wetlands that are part of the property

This little guy is not part of the organized farm herd, kind of hard to tell what he is carrying in his mouth, but Phil thought it was a dead leaf, or maybe an editable flower??

The back of Samuel's house

The front door and herb gardens

Don McIntyre and his wife were the caretakers when we first discovered the farm. We spent one whole afternoon with them, talking about the farm and Taylor genealogy.

The story of the house and Samuel Taylor, Capitan, a picture of his ship in the lower left hand corner

The rooms in the house are really small, but that's typical of these old houses

The kitchen

Another shot of Samuel's ship

I didn't get the story behind this sculpture, but we saw a few others around Barnstable

This is inside the old barn, look closely and you can see where some TLC is needed

This is the Taylor family chart, it was up on this wall the first time we visited.

This is a breed of cow found in Scotland

The Bray Brother's were single, never married

After our visit to the farm, we headed to the Coast Guard Heritage Center in Barnstable. Spent a couple of hours there looking at everything, while Phil talked to the two guys working there. Of course, when we were ready to go, he was just winding down and was ready to see the displays. So, he went through it real quick and took some pictures, but I don’t think he saw much.

Our next stop was the Chatham Coast Guard Station/Lighthouse. We spent about an hour out there. Phil and Rick walked down to the water, but Jennifer and I stayed up at the truck.