Joseph Barnard (1817-1899) was a lumberman with numerous wood lots (oak and pine) in the northeastern quadrant of Hopkinton at the time the railroad was coming to Hopkinton. One source says, “he became interested in the Boston and Maine Railroad and negotiated the deal whereby he furnished all the lumber for the railroad tracks when the railroad was put through from Concord to Warner.” He was also one of the original incorporators of the Contoocook Valley Railroad in 1849. Much of the family property went from Broad Cove Rd. north toward the town border with Webster.

Barnard had lived most all his life in Hopkinton at the family homestead on Briar Hill Road. Besides the lumber industry (he would also provide lumber for ships used during the Civil War, including the USS Kearsarge), Barnard was a prominent dairyman and farmer, winning awards for Guernsey cattle and for fruit production. He was the 3rd generation of Joseph Barnards in Hopkinton; his grandfather also named Joseph Barnard (1737-1815) came from Amesbury, Massachusetts, in the 1760s. A descendant wrote about this ancestor, he “was somewhat assisted by slave labor, as is clearly shown by the copy of a deed now in the possession of Joseph Barnard (the grandson), it being a bill of sale, dated March 29, 1777, given him by Ruth Currier, of Kingston, NH, conveying unto him a negro man named Seeko. Mr. Barnard has likewise the indenture of a boy of 13, dated in 1769. This deed of sale proves conclusively that slavery once existed in the old Granite State, although the contrary has been persistently asserted by some high in authority.“

Seeko Barnard’s story – including service in the American Revolution – is explored in the Hopkinton Historical Society’s 2019 Putney Hill Cemetery Walk which constructs an inclusive multi-vocal narrative of Hopkinton past and present, and is a recent recipient of a national “Leadership in History” award from the American Association of State and Local History. Copies of the Cemetery Walk are available for purchase at the Society.

[Information Source: Hopkinton Historical Society]