Jack Hennage of Westmoreland has a collection of antique tools that are a link to his family's agrarian past

 

Hennage has right tools for any job UNIQUE COLLECTION

Providing a look at Westmoreland's past

 

THE MOST SURPRISING thing about the tools Westmoreland County's Jack Hennage has collected over the years isn't their look and function.

 

From the ice tongs to the antique box wrenches, the decades-old come-alongs to a mule-drawn stump-puller, the collection that fills sheds and more in the 63-year-old's home on the outskirts of Montross is nothing if not unique.

 

What makes them truly different in this day of standardized tools and gizmos is the fact that this handyman has used most of them.

 

That includes those on 10 wooden display boards Hennage built to display some of his tools. He shows them at Westmoreland State Park, where he is a repairman, maintenance worker and park ranger.

"When I've got a big plumbing job or a repair where I need a certain tool, I'll pull them off the displays," said the soft-spoken Hennage. "It's like my Dad taught me years ago: For certain jobs, there are certain tools that fit."

 

That education came on the Hennage farm, on a road that meanders away from busy State Route 3.

From the time he could scamper about, he and his brother and sister cut firewood and fed an array of animals--from pigs to peacocks and sheep to cattle.

 

His father, Fred Hennage, was like many farmers and tradesman of his era, skilled not only in raising and harvesting crops but also construction, blacksmithing, butchering animals and more.

"Growing up, we learned to use the tools of those various skills," said Hennage. "He would show us and we'd learn watching him."

 

And the family's farm, like most, was a stockpile of tools. There are some used to store and chip ice. Some are custom wrenches that came with farm equipment like thrashers and combines. Tools preserved the financial lifeline of the Hennage household. Learning to use them would give Jack Hennage a livelihood that extended beyond the farm. Working first for a Montross furniture company and then a manufacturing facility, Hennage did small carpentry jobs, installed appliances, and later fixed and maintained large machinery. He'd begun working on the maintenance staff at Westmoreland State Park some 10 years ago when the growing collection began needing organization.

 

He got wooden backboards and made almost a dozen collections, displays which include things like artistic-looking box wrenches with decorative wooden handles. Some are those accumulated by the Hennage family, which has ties back to Robert King Carter in the 1700s. Others are pieces that Hennage has collected at auctions. "I don't pay more than a few dollars for any tool," he said. "It's amazing what you can pick up for that." While he eventually hopes to give his tool collection to a person, business or institution, there are some heirlooms he won't part with.

 

Things like an old musket that's been in his family for generations. Talking to Hennage about his tools and his heritage is like taking a time machine into Westmoreland's past. He remembers chopping corn with a hand knife, traveling farm-to-farm with other youth to help thrash and process wheat, and the day when fences weren't needed for hogs. "They were bound by creeks," he said. "We had marks on the ears to tell them apart. We butchered all our own, once doing 27 in one day." They did it using tools that still are Hennage's link to that past.

CURRY COMB: A grooming tool used to brush horses' hair PIPE WRENCH: A one-size-fits-all tool from the early 1900s

SINK STRAINER WRENCH: Used for plumbing repairs VALVE WRENCH: Once used at water-supply sources ICE PICK: Used to chip small pieces from large blocks of ice

About Jack Hennage.  Part of his home is a former doctor's office he and his brother moved to the site and converted.  For years he worked with troubled Westmoreland youth, getting them outdoors and on a better path in a program called Wilderness Challenge.  He plans to retire and travel, taking advantage of a program where he'd do repair work in state and national parks.  The toughest tool he had to wield: a two-man, 6-foot crosscut saw, used often in his youth.