The Farm House

My Parents and me-in front of house
The farm house is made of a brown stone, quarried from the area. It was built before the Revolutionary War. Many farm houses during that time were built with the same stone.
Someone told my brother that a group of slave laborers went around our county from the South and built these houses. I don’t know if that’s accurate, but we think it may be a possibility.

We’ve been told that its first owner was the first superintendent of the church circuit in that area. It was in the wilderness at the time and periodically he would have to call the militia in York (about 25 miles away) to come and fight the Indians. My Father found a lot of arrowheads on the land, so it’s probably true. We can see the place on the one end of the house, where the there was the usual outdoor fireplace used to cook during the summer. The smokehouse still sets, where hams were hung and stored. Next to it is the woodhouse, to store the wood. It was still in use when I was growing up. There was a “summer” kitchen attached to kitchen, which was an addition to the stone portion of the house, added sometime later. One of the rooms in the stone portion of the house had to be the kitchen, because the hearth is still there, with wood cabinets floor to ceiling next to it. We never used it as a kitchen, because by the time my parents lived there, a kitchen addition has been added to the stone portion of the house. I will write about that kitchen in another post. (When I find a good photo of the house and get it scanned, I will post it).

Next to that room would have been the “parlor”, where guests were entertained, and then there is a living room and dining room. In the front off of the parlor and living room is a porch with two doors, on to each room, and nice white railing. There are three very large bedrooms upstairs, with a wood stairway to the top floor. One of the rooms still has the wooden rails on one of the walls with hooks, where they hung their clothes. Only one bedroom had a closet, and the closet is very small. (I wonder how that room rated, to get a closet?) In earlier days, when these houses were built, people did not have the number of clothes that we have today.

My parents lived there a few years before putting in a bathroom. Part of one of the larger bedrooms was taken to make a small bath. I remember going to the outhouse when I was young. The bathroom was added when I was about 6, so I don’t think my siblings remember that, I remember them building the bathroom. My Uncle John (Mom’s brother) was a carpenter and he put it in for Mom and Dad. One unusual thing they did was put in two sinks (in those days they didn’t have vanities with the sinks). On sink had a small basin, and was lower to the floor. It was for us children, so we could reach better. Wasn’t that thoughtful of them! When I was growing up, and even later, I never was in a bathroom that had a children’s sink! Later when all of us were grown up, they took the small sink out and built a linen closet in its place. The bathroom was the only room that had a radiator for heat, the bedrooms depended on floor registers for the heat to rise from below. During the winter months, it would be so cold in the mornings, that I would take my clothing and go into the bathroom and sit on the register to get dressed. When I was real young, I remember, every Saturday night my Dad would stand by the large sink and shave, with the radio on the windowsill tuned to the radio show “The Lone Ranger”.

I don’t know what year a furnace was added, but I remember it being done. The furnace was put in the room that had the fireplace hearth, next to the “parlor”. I also remember when aluminum storm windows were added to all the windows.

When Mom and Dad first lived there, there was no inside water. I was pretty little, but can still remember the “well driller” equipment in the front yard, drilling for water.

One of my Dad’s sisters, Aunt Sara told me that when she was a little girl, she played with the daughter of the people that owned the farm before my Dad owned it. She said that the house was her “dream house”. She loved the deep window sills, the hearth and the cabinets and the floors. As a child, she loved to be in the house and wished someday that she could live there. She told me this after Mother passed away, and asked what would happen to the farm. She was delighted to know that the farm was staying in the family and that my brother would be buying the house and fixing it.

Dad bought the farm before he was married, and rented the house. She told me that she did get to spend time living there in her teen years. Her younger siblings got typhoid fever or some communicable illness (she can’t remember what) and she did not get it, so the Dr. told her Mother to get her out of the house so she wouldn’t get sick. The cousin and his wife that rented from Dad, (Ernest and Mildred) let her live with them and she helped them with chores, and because they liked having her there, she stayed for a long while with them. She told me the house was so beautiful and they kept it so nice. She said that the floors were the wide planks of wood and that Ernest had them varnished so that they had a high gloss. She sure loved those floors.

My Dad was retired for over 20 years before he passed away, and in those retirement years, he and Mom did not have the money to keep the house maintained in the way it should have been. Our family is very happy now that our brother Tim has purchased the house and has already starting making improvements. Aunt Sara and all my aunts and uncles will also be happy!