HOCKING COUNTY HISTORICAL AND GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY AND MUSEUM

11/24/2025

Beautiful Stone Barns, painted in Oil and framed in barnwood, complete with a fascinating history of each barn can be found at www.BiddingOwl.com
These five barns are being used as fund raisers for the Hocking County Historical Society in Logan, Ohio. Please check these and the other 46 paintings being offered by 10 other historical societies.

11/24/2025

The Ohio Democrat of Dec. 24, 1897
Lewis Coakley, residing three miles north of Logan, was kicked by a vicious horse one day last week, receiving internal injuries which caused his death Sunday morning. His funeral is being planned.

OBITRUARY
The Ohio Democrat of Dec. 31, 1897
Lewis Coakley was born January 1st, 1849, aged 48 years, 11 months and 11 days.
In March of the year 1868, he was married to Miss Elizabeth Ballard; this union was blessed with 11 children; 8 sons and 3 daughters, one daughter having preceded him to the spirit world.
Mr. Coakley was a kind and obliging neighbor, well respected by all who knew him, strictly honest in his dealings. He came to his death by being kicked by a horse and lingered but a few days. He was conscious of the3 fact that his end was approaching and made preparations for it.
He began to set his house in order; his business and family affairs were arranged. He sought pardon for his sins and found peace in Christ and said he was prepared to go. He spoke encouraging words to his family as to how they should live and gave advice for the proper training of his grandchildren. He leaves a father, 2 brothers, a wife, 10 children and 2 great grandchildren to mourn their loss.

Note: His Funeral was preached by Rev. W.H. Wright at the Ebenezer Church near Carbon Hill.

Send a message to learn more

11/23/2025

CUTTING AFFRAY AT COONVILLE. Nov. 23, 2025
One Man Badly Carved Up.
A Dangerous Nail.
The Hocking Sentinel of August 11, 1887

The little mining town of Coonville five or six miles south of this city was the scene of a terrible cutting affray Sunday evening last.
It seems that a man by the name of Richardson had filled himself with some rare old liquor and was of the opinion that he could do up one J.W. Nail.
In the alteration that followed, Nail used his knife with terrible effect upon Richardson, severing his right ear from his head and cutting him terribly across the chest. The knife passing through his necktie and coursing diagonally across his chest and down his body nearly to the last rib.
Richardson’s ear was sewed on again and his wounds patched up. It is thought he will pull through, although it will be some time before he will be considered out of danger.
Sheriff John Gallagher went out to Coonville Monday morning, but Nail had left for parts unknown and no arrest was made. This is the first affair of the kind that has ever happened at Coonville since the mines were opened there. There is no liquor sold within three or four miles of the place, and it is not likely we will be called upon again very soon to record a like affair.
1876 Map of Starr Twp and the Coonville Mine Area. The Coonville mine is on the lower right side of the map.

11/22/2025

This is the last in the Greendale series (for now). I hope you enjoyed these stories.
MURDER OF EIGHT-YEAR-OLD AT GREENDALE (Logan, OH.)
August 21, 1919, Lancaster Eagle-Gazette
Previously printed on this page years ago.

An eight-year-old girl was found drowned in a creek near Greendale. It is believed she met her death at the hands of Ray Phelps, who was traced to his boarding house by bloodhounds.
What is believed to have been one of the most brutal murders in the history of Hocking County came to light Tuesday with the finding of the body of Frances Jewell, eight-year-old daughter of B.M. Jewell, of Greendale, in a creek about a quarter mile from her home. After bloodhounds were secured from Athens County, the alleged murderer was traced to a room in the Greendale boarding house and taken from there before daylight Wednesday to the jail in Logan, where he is being held pending a preliminary hearing. He is Ray Phelps, aged twenty-two, a transient who has been working at the Greendale Brick Plant.
Because of the feeling that has been aroused in Greendale over the affair, Sheriff Larimer endeavored to keep the time of a hearing secret, fearing a lynching.

CHILD HAD PREMONITION
It was the regular daily custom of the little girl to go from her parents’ home to that of her married sister, Mrs. Edward Snyder, some distance away and from there to the home of a neighboring farmer to secure milk. Tuesday morning the child told her mother she was afraid to go alone, but with the assurance that she had nothing to fear, the child went off.
The little girl started over the hill from her home in the direction of that of her sister and was not seen alive. At 11:30 when the child had not returned, the mother caused an alarm to be sounded, and a posse was formed to search for the child.

NO EVIDENCE OF DROWNING
Her body was found in a pool beneath an overhanging tree beside the creek, where Phelps is believed to have carried it a quarter of a mile from the scene of his attack on her. A post-mortem examination made by the Hocking County Coroner showed no evidence of drowning but indicated that the girl had been attacked and killed by shock and a severe blow to the head.

TRACED TO THE BOARDING HOUSE
From the creek the dog went directly to the boarding house where Phelps had been rooming while in Greendale, and to the man’s room. Members of the posse had hard work to keep the dog from attacking the man when its quarry was found.
Under the mattress in the man’s room were found a pair of shoes, which he claims are not his, but which fit exactly tracks made in the mud beside the creek, even to a rundown heel.
Phelps went to his employer Tuesday evening and asked for his time, saying he wanted to leave. He was given a check for his time, which it is believed he cashed, as he had paid his board bill preparatory to leaving when found.
Greendale, the village near which the murder occurred, is eight miles south of Logan in Hocking County.
The little girl’s father was working at Wilmington and arrived home from there on Wednesday, being met by his four sons at Logan and taken to Greendale.
Phelps claims he was recently discharged from the marines. He said his home was at Nelsonville, Buchtel and in West Virginia respectively.

PRISONER REMOVED FOR SAFETY (Logan, OH)
August 21, 1919, Lancaster Eagle-Gazette
Ray Phelps, 22, single, arrested in connection with the murder of Frances Jewell, 8, was transferred from Greendale to the county jail here. Because of intense feeling in Greendale, Sheriff Larimer is keeping the time of Phelps’ hearing secret. The little girl’s body was found in a pool beside a creek. A post-mortem examination showed the girl had been attacked and then killed by a blow to the head.

FILE MURDER CHARGES AGAINST PLELPS (Logan, OH)
August 22, 1919, Lancaster Eagle-Gazette
After being charged with first degree murder, Raymond Phelps. Twenty-two of Buchtel, was being held in the Hocking County Jail here today without bond.
He is accused of murdering Frances Jewel, an 8-year-old, and concealing her body in Monday Creek near Greendale, south of here.
Phelps entered a plea of not guilty when arraigned before D.H. Lappan, Justice of the Peace, here last night.
Phelps’ arrest resulted from bloodhounds following a trail which led from the creek where the body was found Tuesday to Phelps’s room in a hotel at Greendale.

PHELPS NOW IN DUNGEON (Logan, OH)
August 27, 1919, Lancaster Eagle-Gazette
Raymond Phelps is held in the county jail here awaiting action by the grand jury on a charge of first-degree murder placed against him in connection with the death of the 8-year-old daughter of B.M. Jewell of Greendale, went on a rampage in the jail. Before he was subdued by the sheriff and five assistants, Phelps broke every window in the jail and smashed furniture and overturned the stove. He was shackled and placed in the dungeon.

TAKEN TO COLUMBUS (Logan, OH)
November 18, 1919, Lancaster Eagle-Gazette Sheriff
Was Hocking County Sheriff afraid the prisoner would be lynched?
Sheriff Charles Larimer deemed it advisable to remove Ray Phelps, Greendale murderer, be moved to the Franklin County Jail for safe Keeping, owing to the intense felling against the prisoner at Greendale, after the jury’s verdict of first-degree murder with mercy. Phelps will be returned here Tuesday morning for sentencing.
NOTE: I could find no other information about this murder in the old Logan papers. This was found in the Lancaster papers. There is no further mention of the verdict or sentence in that paper either.

11/21/2025

Help support the Hocking County Historical Society by checking out these beautiful stone barns of America. The Hocking County Historical Society is only responsible to sale 5 of the barns. They now have all been posted on our website. Please share the information with anyone you may know from the areas where the barns are found. This is a major fund raiser for us and 10 other historical societies.
“Portsmouth’s Gentleman Farmer” of Newport County, Rhode Island
H.A.C. Taylor built this stone barn in Portsmouth in 1911, located nine miles from Newport. The family's history traces back to Moses Taylor, a London merchant who settled in New York City in 1836.
Moses prospered in New York, and his son Jacob partnered with John Jacob Astor. The next Moses became City Bank president in 1855 and owned a railroad and canal, leaving an estate of $40 million in 1882. Unlike many heirs, Henry maintained the family's wealth.
Born in 1841, Henry graduated from Columbia University, became a New York City lawyer, and later led the National City Bank of New York. He was also involved in steel, mining, and railroads, owning homes in New York and Newport.
Henry soon left Newport and began purchasing farms in Portsmouth. In 1882, he acquired “Glen Farm,” spanning 111 acres with two farmhouses, a grist mill, barns, and outbuildings. The farm was named for its picturesque glen and historic steam-powered gristmill. Henry expanded his holdings, started farming in 1885, raised Guernsey cattle by 1889, then moved on to Clydesdale and Percheron horses. He competed in national dairy shows, winning many awards against other prominent farmers like the Vanderbilts, and filled his office walls with prize ribbons.
Taylor, like other wealthy farmers such as George Washington, took a scientific approach to agriculture and show cased his work. He even chose cattle from Guernsey himself, but when Missy of the Glen broke a butterfat record, a Boston farmer disputed the result.
Taylor, unwilling to accept that his farm workers had acted dishonestly, initiated legal proceedings that ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Following an independent year-long investigation that validated Missy’s record, The New York Times published a headline in 1910: “Champion Cow Vindicated.”
Although Taylor was awarded $10,000 in the judgment, his legal expenses amounted to $25,000—a financial loss mitigated somewhat by the increased value of Missy’s calves. Most significantly, Taylor’s pride and reputation were preserved.
Managers kept the farm productive, raising crops and breeding livestock to support 50 resident families. The gristmill’s generator powered the site, and several buildings—including a blacksmith shop, icehouse, wagon shed, pump house, pottery shed, tool house, and animal hospital—illustrated the farm’s operations.
Taylor added at least five barns to those already present when he acquired the farms, and these still stand today.
The wooden cow barn, built before 1902, is 40 x 100 feet with about 4,000 square feet on two and a half stories featuring dormers for hayloft access. It sits on a rubblestone foundation, as does the nearby 1902 polo barn, which is two stories, measures 34 x 116 feet, has 18 horse stalls, and features a Gambrel roof with dormers and cupolas in the Dutch barn style.
Built of stone in 1907, the dairy barn has two and a half stories and spans over 5,100 square feet. It includes a tack room, 18 horse stalls, a second-floor two-bedroom apartment, and a partial basement supported by steel beams. A stone silo is connected via a covered passage, with brick-lined interior walls and rough-cut rubblestone on the exterior. Windows and doors are accented with brick and granite trim.
The bull barn, constructed in 1910, is a two-story stone structure covering about 3,500 square feet—making it smaller than the other barns. Inside, there are ten stalls, and outside, fenced bull paddocks feature contract posts and steel rails. Arched doorways with segmented designs add an aesthetic touch to the building.
The main stone barn, featured in my painting and built in 1911, stands at 42 x 125 feet and is the largest on the property. Its exterior consists of rough-cut ashlar and rubblestone with a six-inch air gap for temperature control. Dormers and cupolas match other barns, and there's a second-floor apartment heated by an oil-fired boiler. Crenelland brick trims the granite windowsills and lintels. Designed for a gentleman farmer, the farm once spanned over 1,500 acres.
After Henry’s death in 1921, his son Moses and wife Edith ran the farm and finished Henry’s mansion in 1923, designed by John Russell Pope. The family summered at Glen Farm until Moses died in 1928, after which Edith took charge. She remarried in 1938 but kept control, converting the barn to a field hospital and a cottage to a Red Cross unit during World War II. After the war, Edith auctioned off the livestock, ending farming operations. When she died in 1959, her son Reginald sold parts of the farmland.
In 1974, Portsmouth bought part of Glen Farm, including Henry’s 1923 mansion, and began turning it into public parks. When Mason Phelps, Reginald’s grandson, decided to sell, the town spent $3.6 million—approved by a three to one vote—to prevent further development. By then, unused farm buildings and barns had fallen into disrepair.
A Boston developer leased the farm for 10 years, investing over $600,000 to update utilities and restore the barns with original-style brass hardware. He also built a polo field now used by the Newport Polo Club, the nation's second oldest.
The city uses the farmhouse for its recreation department offices and plans to build hiking trails and preserve the stone barns once owned by Henry Augustus Coit Taylor, a notable Portsmouth gentleman farmer.

11/21/2025

The Logan Daily News Sept. 20, 1961
GREENDALE BRICK ONCE WORLD’S LARGEST (originally posted in 2022)
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following story was written with the assistance of Clarence Johnston of Logan and Mrs. Own Wallace, Daily News New Straitsville correspondent.
By Mark Myers
The Great Depression of the 1930s closed the Greendale brick plant, once one of the largest and most modern clay industries in the world.
At its peak, the great giant employed 175 – 200 men, and had a daily production of 100,000 brick. Shipments were concentrated mostly to New York, Milwaukee, Chicago, and Philadelphia, but its famous specialty, Greendale Rug Brick, found it was all over the world.
Among thousands of schools, churches and other buildings constructed of Greendale Rug are the Deshler-Hilton Hotel in Columbus, Loyola College, and the Shaughnessy Building, both in Montreal.
While the depression was directly responsible for the plant’s closing, it only aggravated difficulties that were born in more prosperous years. These problems grew from a strange combination of management policies which were, at the same time, too progressive and too backward.
Today, Greendale is mostly in ruins, a ghost town. The smokestack and some of the walls of the power plant remain, but little is left of the brick plant itself, which once covered acres.
A handful of people still live in Greendale, five miles north of Rt. 33 and Rt. 595 in Green Twp. High weeds grow about the shells of abandoned homes. But small part of every building remains, except the old boarding house where 40 out-of-town workers lived during the week.
Clarence Johnston who became president of the company shortly after the plant shut down, said the company built one of the first tunnel kiln in the country. The kiln, somewhat similar to the recently built tunnel kiln at Logan Clay was erected in 1923-24 by David Moodie of New Straitsville and William Drayton, superintendent of the brick company.
Like most new products, there were several flaws in the new kiln that made the cost of burning higher than the conventional type of kiln.
Johnston said another visionary project that hurt the plant was a huge power plant planned by the founder, Nils Kachelmacher. With a power plant, the company hoped to supply surrounding communities as well as the brick yard. But it found that Greendale was unable to sell electricity as cheaply as large power companies. As a result, no power was sold outside the plant, and Greendale was saddled with a power plant producing electricity in excess of the amount needed by the brick plant.
Another detriment to the company’s finances resulted from an old-fashioned pride in the product. “Everyone out there, from the president down was pride conscious. They took pride in the fact that they were able to produce most any color of brick the market called for., which necessitated an extensive inventory of nine million bricks.”
“They rarely loaded directly from kiln to railroad car, as most companies do now.” The added cost of sorting and hauling to the cars upped production costs.
That reached a climax in 1925 when the company shipped 25 million brick and lost money on its operations. This so discouraged the Eastern capital they lost interest in its operations.
A beautiful, 36-page brochure published by Greendale Brick Shows 100 shades of brick made at the plant. On the same page of the booklet states: “Greendale Rug Bricks, though inimitable, are the most imitated brick in America.”
Why? Because of the character, tone, distinction, and popularity procured by the texture and because of the magnificent, unsurpassing and reliable service of Greendale Rug Brick. Users and prospective buyers of face brick are cautioned against imitations.

11/20/2025

Logan Daily News Sept 30, 1969

NILS KACHELMACHER WAS A COLORFUL FUGURE, DEVELOPER OF HOCKING VALLEY INDUSTRY
GREENDALE BRICK and OIL
Scouting in Green Twp., he found huge beds of clay above the coal deposits and conceived the idea of a huge brick plant to utilize this fortunate situation.
He met with the officers of the Columbus & Hocking Coal & Iron Co. In its offices in the Wyandotte Building at Columbus and presented his scheme to build a million-dollar plant at what is now known as Greendale.
At that time, however, the location was called Kachelmacher, in honor of the plant’s founder. “The Count” was in a hurry, so he had a huge, 100-yard-long tent constructed at Columbus so building the kilns for the bricks could continue through the first winter.
The Greendale Brick Co. began operation in 1907. It was typical of Kachelmacher’s promotional skill that it became known far and wide as the biggest face brick plant inf the world, although there is some doubt that this was true.
The plant continued to operate into the 1930’s, long after Kachelmacher’s death. At its peak, it produced 30 million bricks a year and had over 200 workers. Still standing at Greendale are some of the brick homes Kachelmacher built for his workers, but the plant has largely vanished, and Greendale is best known as a ghost town.
Kachelmacher also was a pioneer oil driller in the New Straitsville area. Some of his oil holdings are still part of his estate.
Because of ill health, Kachelmacher retired in 1915 as president of the Columbus & Hocking Iron & Coal Co. And moved to Logan to rest.
He and W.R.P. Pomerene, a Columbus attorney who was one of Kachelmacher’s closest associates, has bought some 700 acres on the south side of the Hocking River, opposite Logan.
From a state of wilderness, they developed the Kachelmacher Addition, now known as South Logan, building streets and homes, planting trees and shrubbery and creating a park.
The house Kachelmacher built for himself, now owned by Mr. And Mrs. Pete Burgoon, was not a palatial mansion, nothing like the luxurious apartment he had maintained on the second floor of the old Chittenden house at 69 E. Broad St., Columbus.
But it had the old swimming pool in Logan, the first had ever seen, and Kachelmacher had ambitious plans to develop a zoological garden. He had begun excavating for a lake where he wanted to sail the boat, he had ordered, but his death in 1917 brought cancellation of the boat order. The lake site was in front of the hillside where his ashes are now entombed in a mausoleum was filled in.

Info on the hotel was from Mrs. Viola Courtney, year unknown.
In 1904 Greendale had a hotel and managed by Mr. and Mrs. Doward until 1929 when Mr. and Mrs. Joe Blosser (Mrs. Courtney's parents) assumed management of the hotel.
Most of the men who lived at the old hotel worked at the Greendale Plant and lived in towns as far away as McArthur and Wellston. The workers would stay at the hotel during the week and travel to their homes on the weekends. The two boarders most remembered by Mrs. Courtney was Billy Craig who played the fiddle and Burl Lehman who played the banjo. Most evenings they would entertain the other hotel boarders.
Mrs. Courtney's family lived in the hotel until 1937. The brick plant ceased operation in 1929, but the hotel had renters for several years. In 1935 and 36, most of the boarders were men who worked at the old coal tipple at the Route 33 and 595 intersections near Haydenville about 5 miles away. After 1937 the hotel was vacant.
During the days when the brick pant was in operation, Christmas parties were held at the hotel. During the depression, surplus food from the government was stored at the hotel for distribution.
The photo submitted, is of Ed Dye in front of the hotel.

11/19/2025

Logan Daily News Sept 30, 1969
NILS KACHELMACHER WAS COLORFUL FUGURE, DEVELOPER OF HOCKING VALLEY INDUSTRY

The most colorful of all the big-time operators in the Hocking Valley was Nils Louis Christian Kachelmacher, whose estate this month became a legal controversy instead of the public benefit he meant it to be.
Born in Norway, the son of a wealthy and aristocratic family, he was known among his financier associates in New York and Columbus as the “Norwegian Count".
He lived in Logan only the last two years of his life, but for more than 13 years he was the leading industrialist and promoter of the Valley’s coal, iron, clay, and oil resources.
When he died at the age of 57 in 1917, he left the bulk of his estate in trust, to be liquidated this month, then years after the death of his last surviving heir, and the assets used to establish in South Logan an intuition “devoted solely to research and relief of varicose veins and for the propagation of knowledge to avoid acquiring varicose veins.”
The estate is now valued at nearly $2 million.
“Count” Kachelmacher came to the U.S. from Norway at the age of 21 and engaged in export and import of butter and cheese in New York's market.
He was prospering in that field when he was chosen by New York financiers in 1904 to put new life into the faltering Columbus and Hocking Coal & Iron Co., with headquarters at Columbus. This company formed in 1883, became the leading developer of mineral resources in the Hocking Valley and was its most important industrial concern.
Kachelmacher had no experience in the coal industry, but he was the kind of man the company sought after several reverses – a man with ideas, vision, and versatility.
He was successful in bringing new life to the Valley’s coal industry after a series of crippling strikes and financial panics. He built the biggest coal yard in Columbus next to tracks of the Hocking Valley Railroad. The bins held thousands of tons of coal from the Hocking Mines, and coal production rose to its highest peak in the Hocking and Sunday Creek valleys.
When this prosperity began to ebb in 1905, Kachelmacher sought new ways to bolster his company. He organized the Bessie Furnace property near New Straitsville. Originally built in 1877 and put in production in 1878, it had been abandoned for many years.
Kachelmacher put the furnace back in blast and made it the state’s leading furnace, noted for quality and its iron.

11/18/2025

Facebook Friends, if you know anyone in New Jersey that could help spread this beautiful barn painting, and the on-line auction information, please share this post to help support the Hocking County Historical Society.

“PATRIOTISM PERSONIFIED” OF MERCER COUNTY, NEW JERSEY
This farmstead and its stone barn are located in Mercer County, named for Brigadier General Hugh Mercer—a surgeon who died at the Battle of Princeton in 1777, served with George Washington during the French and Indian War, and fought with the Jacobite’s at Culloden in 1746. Three months earlier, John Witherspoon, a Scottish Presbyterian minister opposed to the Jacobite cause, was imprisoned after their victory at Falkirk Muir. Witherspoon later founded the estate where this barn stands.
Witherspoon maintained his distinguished standing within church circles following the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charles and his highlanders at the Battle of Culloden. In 1766, he was offered the presidency of the College of New Jersey, which would later become Princeton University. Richard Stockton, whose father John had generously donated land for the college’s relocation from Newark to Princeton, extended the invitation to Witherspoon. Although Witherspoon’s wife initially advised him to decline the position, he ultimately accepted. He emigrated to America with his wife Elizabeth and their five children, settling in Princeton in 1768.
Founded in 1746 to train Protestant clergy, the College of New Jersey faced challenges until Reverend Witherspoon became its sixth president in 1768. He improved instruction, relieved debt, expanded the library with his own books, and revamped the curriculum following Scottish university models. His leadership contributed to the success of students like James Madison, later the fourth U.S. president. The college was renamed Princeton University in 1896, and Witherspoon served as president until 1794.
In 1774, Witherspoon supported colonial independence and was elected congressional chaplain. He signed the Declaration of Independence, served on more than 100 committees, helped organize executive departments, and contributed to the Articles of Confederation.
As British forces neared Princeton during the war, Witherspoon closed and evacuated the college, which was later damaged and many of his papers destroyed. After defeating the British at Trenton, Washington surprised them by marching to Princeton in January 1777, won the battle, and then withdrew to Morristown.
In 1773, Witherspoon established the Tusculum estate, just a mile from Nassau Hall. Named after Cicero’s Roman retreat, the stone house spanned 5,000 square feet with several rooms. Initially rented to tenants with small gardens, Witherspoon later farmed the land himself and experimented with crops, similar to George Washington in Virginia.
In 1779, Witherspoon moved to his estate at Tusculum. He continued managing his college, but by the end of his presidency his declining health and worsening eye injuries left him blind by 1792. In 1791, at age 68, he remarried a 24-year-old widow and had two more children. He died in 1794.
After his death, Tusculum—a 238-acre farm with diverse crops and livestock—was sold by his widow Anne in 1796. The estate changed hands until Richard Stockton acquired it in 1815; his father had signed the Declaration of Independence and helped bring Witherspoon to Princeton. Upon Richard's death in 1826, his son Samuel inherited Tusculum at age 25, while his older brother Robert served as a navy officer.
Samuel married Mary in 1833; they had two children, with the second born soon after Samuel died unexpectedly in 1836. The stone barn may have been built by Samuel or his older brother Robert, who took over the estate after Samuel’s death.
After turning 16, Robert joined the Navy during the War of 1812, became a lieutenant, and later commanded the Alligator, where he discarded flogging. As a senator, he sponsored legislation to end naval flogging. He also worked against slavery by negotiating a treaty to help found Liberia as a refuge for formerly enslaved Americans.
After many years at sea, he returned to Navy service in 1845, serving aboard the USS Princeton, the nation’s first steam-powered warship, a vessel that Stockton actively encouraged the Navy to construct.
In the 1850s, Robert appointed his son, John Porter Stockton, to oversee tenant farming operations at Tusculum. During this period, the Stocktons sold the estate, which subsequently changed ownership several times before being purchased in 1857 by Edward Jewel, who retained possession for nearly three decades.
The Pardee family owned the estate from 1924, living there for much of the 20th century and preserving 20 acres for historic purposes. Mrs. Ario Pardee nominated it for the National Register in 1978. The listing includes a stone barn and several stone buildings from the 1790s: a springhouse, icehouse, and farmhouse—constructed with locally quarried arillite, like Princeton University's Nassau Hall.
Built in the 1830s, this New Jersey stone barn reflects Dutch, English, and German influences that are rare for the region. Its large size—45 x 57 feet—and impressive masonry suggests its builders' wealth. With three stories on a bank, it originally housed up to 50 cattle and was used for crop storage. Unique features include a stone ledge below the front windows, five Dutch bays, two king posts upstairs, and evidence of a lost German-Swiss style forebay. The barn once had openings for ventilation on all sides, now fitted with windows, and tall Dutch doors on the north side. The mason may have chosen its stone after admiring Nassau Hall nearby.
Thomas and Avril Moore bought Tusculum and its 82 acres in 1996, restoring the deteriorated farmhouse by fixing the roof, support beams, and floors. They sold the estate in 2013 to Merideth Asplundh and Tim Gardner, both historical preservationists.

This barn is just one of 51 beautiful oil paintings offered by Robert Kroeger to 11 non-profit historical societies as fund raisers. Each barn is framed in barn wood and ready to hang.
See the complete list of barns at www.BiddiongOwl.com.