When Johan and Janet Brongers bought their South Amherst house in 1999, they knew they were taking possession of a piece of history. Built in 1805, according to its cornerstone, the house was one of the earliest in South Amherst, which was then a largely self-sustaining farming village.
Living in an historic house, the Brongerses are sojourners of a sort.
“We feel that the house is ours only temporarily and that we have an obligation to preserve it as best we can,” Johan Brongers said in a recent interview.
But the couple, who have lived in many places all over the world, have in turn brought their own rich personal history to the house.
The house was built by Elisha Smith on a 90-acre farm on the southeast side of the South Amherst Common. Smith was an innkeeper and served as a town selectman, Town Meeting moderator and a representative to the General Court in Boston. He was also clerk for the committee that ultimately established the South Congregational Church that was built in 1824-25.
Smith built the white clapboard house around a large central brick chimney, with four rooms upstairs and downstairs.
“It was not a rich man’s house,” Brongers said. “There’s no fancy woodwork. The layout is very simple.”
In “Amherst: A Guide to its Architecture,” architectural historian Paul E. Norton noted that although the house was built in the early 19th century, it had the plan and appearance of a much earlier house.
Tradition was very strong in Amherst in its religion and culture, he said, and “it is very likely that a less-traditional house would have displeased the farming community of which Smith was very much a part.”
The house was known for many years as the Thomas Read farm, after an early (perhaps the second) owner of the house, who died in 1832. The property passed to Read’s son, also named Thomas. Known as Deacon Read, the younger Thomas was a leader in the South Amherst Lyceum, “a society for mutual improvement,” and a sheep farmer.
The most interesting chapter in the house’s history took place during Deacon Read’s tenure, when the house became a part of the Underground Railway for fugitive slaves.
Slaves were hidden in a narrow closet next to the fireplace. “There was a secret compartment behind the wall inside the closet,” Brongers revealed, adding that slaves also hid in the house’s brick chimney, standing on boards that were fitted into the chimney for that purpose.
After Deacon Read’s death in 1901, the property passed through many hands. In 1939 the MacLeod family of Longmeadow bought it because they wanted to live out in the country.
Betsey Johnson, one of the MacLeod children who grew up in the house, now lives several houses down on South East Street. “She’s a true piece of history,” Brongers said.
In 1998, the Singleton family, who had bought the house from the MacLeods in 1952, sold it to Hampshire College. The college intended the house to be for its treasurer. When Brongers became college treasurer in 1999, Hampshire offered to rent the house to him.
The couple said they loved the house, but that it needed a lot of work, inside and out.
“We thought it was important to preserve the house and we wanted to buy it,” he said. “It didn’t make sense for us to put a lot of work into it if we didn’t own it.”
The Brongerses say they were delighted when Hampshire agreed to sell the house.
For nearly 30 years, they had been sojourners of another sort, living all over Europe and Asia while Johan Brongers worked for Opel, the German automobile company. They raised three children abroad.
“After 27 years, we decided that was enough,” Brongers said. “Our children were all in the U.S. and we wanted to stay put.”
The couple made extensive structural renovations to the house that included replacing damaged clapboards and other exterior woodwork and putting new roofs on the house and barn. They also installed a French drain system so the basement would be dry year-round.
To make the house more energy efficient, they added insulation and replaced all the windows.
“According to an energy audit by Mass Save, our house is the most energy efficient of any older farm house they have reviewed in recent times,” Brongers said.
Inside, they replaced crumbling plaster and torn wallpaper. They rebuilt the main fireplace to repair damage from an earlier fire that had broken through the floor and burned the supporting beams. “We wanted to put our resources into fixing it up and we haven’t regretted it,” he said.
The Brongerses have put their own historical stamp on the house by bringing in furniture and personal belongings they acquired during their years abroad.
A collection of Delft tiles they installed over the fireplaces in the front parlor and dining room conveys an important piece of World War II history as well as family history, including the romantic origin of their nearly 50-year marriage.
Johan Brongers, who was born and raised in the Netherlands, met his future wife in 1972 at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. He was an exchange student in the M.B.A. program; she was finishing her undergraduate degree.
Brongers recalled that when he told Janet he was from the Netherlands, she said, “Oh, I know all about Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg).”
“I was surprised,” Brongers said. “I didn’t think anybody knew what Benelux was.”
As it happened, Janet Bronger’s uncle had worked as an engineer in Europe at the end of World War II and had befriended a Dutch family named Labrijn who had lost everything in the war. Her mother and aunt sent the family care packages, and in gratitude the Labrijns sent each woman a commemorative Delft tile showing a Royal Air Force plane dropping relief supplies over a Dutch village, part of Operation Manna. The tile was one of a series produced to raise money for war victims.
During their years in Europe, the couple got to know the Labrijns. And they collected other Delft World War II tiles that now adorn the fireplaces.
Although most of the land had been sold off over the years, the 10 remaining acres were ample space for the Brongerses to have what they call a “hobby farm.”
“We wanted to enjoy and learn about having animals and growing small crops for our own consumption,” Johan Brongers explained. “It was a very different lifestyle compared to our previous odyssey around the world.”
They kept chickens, goats, sheep, pigs, a steer and a dairy cow, and also grew vegetables and fruit trees.
“I learned a lot by trial and error and really just by doing it,” he said. “Luckily, Janet has a green thumb.”
The Brongerses renovated the barn as an entertainment space, adding a kitchen, hot tub and sun porch, as well as an upstairs studio where guests and family stay. Above that is a loft with a peaked ceiling.
“It feels like a tree house,” Brongers said. “It’s a great place for reading.”
They preserved some of the barn’s original features, including stanchions for the dairy cows and the brick floor. And they kept the front part in its original form, using it to store farm and garden equipment.
In 2007, the couple headed overseas again when Johan Brongers took an administrative post at the University of Afghanistan in Kabul. Three years later, he helped launch the American University of Iraq. His wife worked as admissions director at both schools.
“It was an adventure,” he said. “We couldn’t turn it down.”
They returned to Amherst in 2012 and say they enjoy living in South Amherst.
“This is perfect,” Brongers said. “We have beautiful scenery and we are close to people.”
Even though neighbors still refer to the house as “the Singleton house,” he said, “over time we came to understand that the property belongs to the South Amherst community. We have the joy of living here and the privilege to be good stewards, for as long as we have the energy and good health.”
Mickey Rathbun can be reached at foxglover8@gmail.com.
