HAMPTON - Unlike last year at this time when she attended a big bash at the Congregational Church in town, Beatrice Barnard spent a quiet day last Wednesday, receiving a few visitors and friends she has known for a long time, including Ruth Stimson, a constant companion.

Beatrice Barnard turned 101 on Aug. 6.

Stimson, who spends time with her friend and neighbor almost on a daily basis, stopped by Beatrice's house with a gift, and helped her read birthday cards she received from friends and relatives.

Barnard, who uses a cane and walker to get around, suffers from poor eyesight and is hard of hearing, but she still lives on her own in the house she purchased half a century ago on Hobbs Road.

"We moved to Hampton in November 1953," Beatrice recalled during a visit with Ruth last week. "My mother and I. In the rain, they moved us from Exeter in an old cart."

Barnard grew up in Stratham and lived in Exeter for a time, before her father died and mother and daughter found their way to Hampton. Beatrice never married, instead caring for her mother and becoming fast friends with Stimson and Helen Hayden, who was at one time Hampton's first selectwoman.

Beatrice loves to tell stories of her times with Ruth and Helen, blueberrying on Mill Road and lunches every Friday at Yoken's in Portsmouth.

"Helen and I didn't know each other at first, but we met finally. She had a voice you wouldn't believe, you could hear her everywhere ... and she knew everybody," Beatrice said, recalling meeting up with Helen at the First Congregationalist Church on Winnacunnet Road. She also remembered trips they used to take to Nottingham for blueberries.

"Helen had a chair and she sat right down on the ground and picked blueberries. One time it started to rain, we had big pails to fill with blueberries and we were bound and determined to fill those pails so we just kept picking. We got wet, absolutely soaked," Barnard said, adding that the "girls" also picked strawberries on Mill Road in Hampton.

Then there was a time Helen invited Beatrice and Ruth to her house to meet "the kids."

"It turned out they were baby goats," Beatrice laughed. "They belonged to (a mutual friend) Martha Clark. We sat on the divan and each of us held one. And two of the kids would follow Helen every time she went into the kitchen."

The girls also made a habit of driving up to Yoken's on Fridays for lunch. "We'd all get fish chowder and pie," she remembered.

Growing up in Stratham, Beatrice attended Robinson's Female Seminary in Exeter. Sometimes she'd travel to school by trolley from Stratham, she said.

Barnard's father was a stern disciplinarian, Stimson noted. Her mother worked for a time on a family poultry farm in the Stratham area, and Beatrice worked as "an egg candler" at the farm, which Stimson said involved checking eggs for freshness.

"The family was of some means, so Beatrice didn't really have to work," Stimson said, adding that through conversations with Beatrice, she learned that the family used to drive cattle, and at age 5, while helping, Beatrice "fell over a stone wall and severely hurt her ankle."

She still wears a bandage on her ankle, and it bothers her at times, which accounts in some measure for her need for a cane. "My toe hurts right up to my hip sometimes," Beatrice said.

Barnard also recalled when she and Jack and Helen Hayden used to drive to Hampton Falls to buy fish.

"Once when Jack was driving we crossed the causeway on Route 1, there were a lot of birds on the wires. Well, Jack blew his horn and all the birds flew around. When we got home, Jack had to spend hours washing the car off of all this bird ... stuff," Beatrice smiled.

These days Beatrice spends her time sitting in the front room, next to a large picture window with the sun streaming in, and her pet Maltese dog named Muffet by her side.

Dressed in slacks, a flowered shirt and white sweater, she leaned back in her easy chair. "You know, my neighbor comes to visit all the time, and she said the other day, 'You look two years younger than you did last year,'" she said with a twinkle in her eyes.