Located on the northwest corner of Sport Hill & Adams Road, this complex originally operated as a grocery store run by future Town Clerk John S. Adams and his wife Marietta beginning in the late 1830’s. During the most of 19th century, this area was one of Easton’s main hubs of commerce. Adam’s father Eli ran an inn and tavern on the southwest corner of the same intersection. That building had a large ballroom on the second floor that was used as a meeting place for groups such as the Masons, as well as being a political gathering place where several early town meetings were held after the town was incorporated in 1845. Eli maintained stables on the southern end of the property for his overnight travelers, and that building has since been moved north and west and now sits behind the main house. Before John built this store, his father also ran a general store in part of his tavern. Eli even distilled his own liquor in another building on the property. The Historical Society of Easton has seven of the original journals from the Adams Store as well as fifteen day books that recorded every sale and how each transaction was paid for – either in cash, credit on the account, or by barter, a most common way of doing business in a town where most people were farmers who could trade milk, eggs, butter, and the like for molasses, spices, and bolts of cloth.
In the early 1900’s when this photograph was taken, Fred and Ester Haeublein were operating the store shown here as a combination grocery and feed store. The house is still there, but after Haeublein closed the store, in July of 1931 the structure housing the store was sold and removed to another location to be made into a residence. Photo taken looking west across Sport Hill Road from Adams.
On Adams Road, near the same corner, there was a blacksmith shop that sat a few yards east of the original location of the Adams’ schoolhouse. In the late 1930’s the old schoolhouse was sold to Samuel Senior, who moved it to his Tersana Farm property on lower Sport Hill Road. The Adams’ school has since been moved again to the present location on Westport Road where the Historical Society continues to maintain it as a living history exhibit. During the 1950’s the intersection of Adams and Sport Hill was realigned and the hill just south of the intersection on Sport Hill Road lowered considerably in order to make a better sightline to reduce the number of automobile accidents that had become an all too common occurrence on that stretch of highway.
