CANAAN — When Reginald Barney came across a lot that bordered the former railroad station off Depot Street in Canaan Village, it was overgrown and neglected. By the time he was finished clearing the land, it was a park.
“He had such interest in the railroad history … that single-handedly, of his own accord … he cleared all the brush and the trees by hand out there,” Barney’s son, Dale, said during an interview at the insurance agency in Canaan Village that he took over after his father retired from the business two decades ago.
Those actions — seeing something the community needed and doing it without fanfare — were typical for Barney, who died at 98 of congestive heart failure on Nov. 24, 2025.
The lifelong Mascoma Valley resident, business owner and stalwart community volunteer was born on March 30, 1927. He was the sixth generation to work the family’s dairy farm, Breezy Nook Farm, on the Grafton and Orange border.
From a young age, he’d go with his father, Lester, to deliver fresh milk, cream, butter and eggs to homes throughout the Mascoma Valley. During that time, he started keeping daily journals where he would recount the tasks he completed that day, down to the exact number of eggs he sold.
“They weren’t being rich or wealthy or anything, but they made a living and they lived comfortably,” Dale Barney said.
After graduating from Canaan High School, Barney, who also went by “Reg” and “Reggie,” slowly took over farm operations, including the roughly two dozen cows, from his father, who was in poor health due to a bout of scarlet fever.
His sisters went to college and, during one visit home, they brought a friend with them: a woman named Eleanor “Ellie” Niles. Barney and Niles took a liking to each other and kept in touch.
“And grandpa would write her faithfully,” Barney’s granddaughter Jocelyn Barney said in an interview at the family insurance agency where she works alongside her father, Dale. “It was a whole little love story.”
The couple married after Ellie finished college and they settled on the farm where they had four children.
He became even more immersed in his community, serving on the Grafton Selectboard and teaching Sunday school at what is now known as the Canaan Assembly of God, which he had attended since he was a child.
Wayne Chapman had Barney as a Sunday school instructor in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He recalled how Barney would reward students for memorizing Bible verses with field trips to the ocean or the White Mountains.
“He was great; just let us enjoy ourselves,” Chapman said in a phone interview from the Canaan Hardware Store where he works. “Just kids being kids.”
He also took groups of kids up to the farm where they would help with maple sugaring, feed the cows and learn how to drive the tractor.
“He was a kind and caring man,” Chapman said.
Growing up, Jack Anderson and his sister spent summers helping out on the Barney farm, especially when the Barneys’ four children were young. His mother and Eleanor “Ellie” Barney were sisters and the Anderson family frequently traveled from Augusta, Maine, to visit.
One of Anderson’s main jobs was to get the cows ready for milking by disinfecting their udders. He’d also help spread fertilizer on the fields and string fences to pasture the cows. When his feet could finally reach the tractor pedals, Barney taught him to drive it.
Even though the days on the farm were long, Barney always made sure there was time for fun. He’d take the kids swimming at Orange Pond and to hike Mount Cardigan.
“After milking … we’d go up and down Cardigan and be back by dark,” Anderson, who lived in Woodstock for 40 years before retiring to Maine, said in a phone interview. Barney would share his knowledge about the mountain’s history, including the spots where the old mica mines were located. “They weren’t often more than a hole in the ground.”
Farm life wasn’t easy and it became more difficult as the years went on, Dale Barney said. Instead of selling milk directly to families, a dairy in Lebanon came to collect milk that was stored in a tank at the farm. The margins for farming were always tight, but it became even more challenging in the late 1960s.
“The grain bill was more than what the milk check was,” Dale Barney said.
In the early 1970s, Barney “made the agonizing decision” to sell the cows and the farm, which was about 450 acres at the time.
Then in his mid-40s, Barney moved his family to Canaan Village and set about finding a new career. He worked for the post office in White River Junction and then a fertilizer plant in Bradford, Vt., where he’d rent a room and only see his family on weekends.
“He was like a skeleton,” Dale Barney said. “When he was done with that job, he had lost so much weight.”
A couple years after selling the farm, a Canaan insurance agency owner named Frank Clark approached Barney and asked if he’d be interested in joining the business. Clark was looking to retire and he knew that Barney was a meticulous record keeper. The two worked together for a year before Barney bought the business from him.
“He loved bookkeeping,” Dale Barney said.
His father had a high school diploma, but did not pursue higher education. What he did have was strong community connections, along with a reputation for being hardworking and dependable.
He also went out of his way to help people in a quiet way: After his death, his family heard from people whose insurance bills he paid when they were struggling.
Although Barney tended to be quiet, he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind and he did so selectively.
“When he said something, you better pay attention because it was important,” Dale Barney said.
He preferred to express himself in writing and if a family member made a personal decision he did not agree with, he penned them what they affectionately called a “grandpa letter” where he tell them why, Jocelyn Barney said.
“He was very thoughtful that way and intentional with his time,” she said.
Barney served the community myriad ways. For example, he was a longtime member of the Canaan Lions Club, where Harry Armstrong met him in 1980.
Barney helped start the club’s blood drives in 1983. He borrowed a bus from a church in Rumney, N.H., and spent the day picking up people to bring them to Canaan Elementary School where the blood drive was being held. Members relied on him to keep track and record of the club’s activities.
“He was very meticulous and everything was on paper,” Armstrong said during an interview at a blood drive in Canaan Village. “Beautiful handwriting.”
Barney also helped recruit other club members and served in various state leadership roles. Anytime a club member needed an extra hand, he was there. He also took it upon himself to care for the grass surrounding the Canaan Lions’ Motorcross Track.
“He says, ‘Oh, this looks terrible. … I’m going to bring my mower up here’,” Dale Barney said.
After retiring from the insurance business in 1996, Barney became even more involved in community activities. He served as treasurer for the Friends of Canaan Village and helped organize the summer concert series that takes place on the Town Common.
Cindy Neily, who succeeded Barney as treasurer of the organization that works to promote and bring people to Canaan Village, said she “had to really straighten out my game to live up to the standards he set, keeping accurate records and enthusiasm for doing it well.”
Through Barney, Neily also learned more about the history of the railroad in Canaan. Barney’s excitement about trains was catching and he would often give talks at the group’s annual meetings.
“He had wonderful records, old newspaper clippings and pictures and his own memory of things,” Neily said in a phone interview. “He did wonderful presentations, really brought the railroad to life as seen through his eyes.”
Barney also used his knowledge of Canaan history to help others. He spent many Saturday afternoons in the summer with town historian Donna Zani-Dunkerton at the Canaan Historical Museum where he’d assist people looking for information.
“I don’t know if there was anything you could comment about that he couldn’t tell you about it,” Zani-Dunkerton said in a phone interview. “He was involved in everything his whole life and he just had such an interest in everything.”
Barney also cared deeply for his friends and they returned that care. After his wife died in 2004, Zani-Dunkerton would make him dinner for his birthday each year and supplied him with chocolate chip cookies to take home after historical society meetings. In return, Barney — an avid jigsaw puzzler — would put together Halloween-themed puzzles and glue them together for Zani-Dunkerton to hang in her home.
Well into his 80s, Barney still regularly hiked Cardigan alone and delivered Meals on Wheels to Grafton into his 90s. His love for trains also continued and he would plan trips to a barbershop in White River Junction around the train schedule.
Sometimes family members would ask him where he’d been, and he’d respond,” Oh, I just went up to the Canadian border and back, chasing trains,” recalled Jocelyn Barney, who cared for her grandfather during the last months of his life. “No cellphone.”
In 2016, the town officially named that lot he’d cleared the Reginald E. Barney Depot Park, acknowledging the work he did to spruce up the site and the history he preserved while doing so.
“I really appreciate you all coming and honoring me like this,” Barney said during the ceremony, the Valley News reported at the time. “I don’t feel like I really deserve it.”
That was typical of Barney, as was the response from those in attendance who disagreed, and loudly applauded him anyway.
“He wasn’t someone who sought the spotlight,” Neily said. “It was a pleasure to know him, a window into another time in this community.”
CORRECTION: John Dow’s first name was incorrect in a caption in an earlier version of this story.