Barnstable Historical Society – A treasure chest of history at the Phinney-Jones House

The Barnstable Historical Society ~ Phinney-Jones House

Location : 3087 Main Street, Barnstable – Across from Sturgis Library

Barnstable Historical Society Museum, known locally as the Phinney-Jones House, offers nine exhibit rooms within a two-story Greek revival house built circa 1834. Each exhibit room tells a story of the maritime and cultural history of the Town of Barnstable from the 18th- to the early 20th-century. Visitors are sure to find something in the exhibition to pique their interest in the Victorian era and the townspeople who called Barnstable home.

Museum	Hours of Operation
June to October	Thursday – Saturday
A donation of $5 per person is greatly appreciated	1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Blair Memorial Gardens

Location : Behind the BHS museum

Visitors are invited to spend time in the Victorian-inspired garden, conceived by Cambridge MA landscape architect Rick Lamb and named in honor of BHS museum’s long-standing curator Lisa Tulis Blair.

Within the garden’s peaceful confines, visitors can find areas that invite lingering, and a setting that is a visual and aesthetic experience. The garden showcases wildflower-native plant beds and mixed shrub-perennial plantings, within defined mulch beds, surrounding broad lawn vistas. Old stone walls mark visitor pathways and serve as boundary markers along property lines. Throughout the garden, visitors can hear the gentle sound that emanates from hand tuned wind chimes hanging from flowering trees. Several sitting benches, strategically placed within the garden, provide visitors quiet spaces for a peaceful interlude. The whimsical gazebo establishes a cozy hideaway where visitors can watch native birds and butterflies in their natural environment or catch a glimpse of the deer and other wildlife that make this area their habitat.

The Old Jail

Location: 3365 Main Street, Barnstable – Next to the Coast Guard Heritage Museum

Barnstable’s Old Jail is an historic wooden jail, resembling a colonial domestic residence, which was built by Barnstable’s Old Jail is an historic wooden jail, resembling a colonial domestic residence, which was built by order of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colony courts circa 1690. It served as the Barnstable County jail from 1690 to 1820 and is the oldest wooden jail in the United States. Despite an unfortunate fire which occurred in early
1973, the Old Jail remains as a remarkably intact example of an early colonial period jail. The six confining cells remain intact, providing vivid evidence of the harsh living conditions for the incarcerated.

The Blacksmith

Location: 3365 Main Street, Barnstable – Next to the Coast Guard Heritage Museum

Blacksmiths living in the 1800s took on the roles of both tradesmen and businessmen in order to manage successful workshops and provide a variety of services. Townspeople valued the range of skills blacksmiths possessed and relied on them to create the tools, implements, and household objects necessary for survival. With advances in heating techniques and a greater understanding of iron properties, Smiths could manipulate metal in endless ways, but usually created and repaired farm equipment such as hoes, plows, rakes and other tools as well as kitchen utensils, hardware and wheels for wagons, and horseshoes.

The village blacksmith shop is operated by Blacksmith James Otis Ellis and his apprentice Marc Grenier, in the carriage house on the grounds of the Coast Guard Heritage Museum located on Main Street in Barnstable Village. Ellis has lived a life committed to his blacksmithing profession and is dedicated to preserving the tools of traditional blacksmithing. Visitors can see his vast array of blacksmithing equipment and watch Jim or Marc make the revered Kent-style eel spears and other objects. A Wheel Stone used during the installation of hot iron tires to wood wagon wheels is also on display.