Hi Dave -

So nice of you to share a few personal insights. What a wonderful heritage you have in that homestead! My wife and I have had a similar experience, in sharing the heritage of our old home with former owners - but we often wish it could have been with family, as in your case. Our original land deed dates back to 1843, when it was a 10-acre plot owned by one of the early Irish/German families that settled in the area. The current house was built after the civil war - we can't peg it down beyond an approximate date of 1865 - 1870. It was built for one of the Irish "gentlemen farmers", in the typical Victorian Farmhouse architecture of the time. Nice goodies - big old fancy moldings, stained glass windows, 10' ceilings downstairs and 9' upstairs, big old walk-around attic with about a 12' peak inside, plant room facing the morning sun, classic field-stone foundation. Even had a detached little carriage house with room for 1 buggy and a horse or two. The foundation still exists, and I have an old photo of the buggy house taken back in the 1930's, but the structure itself bit the dust a long time ago.

Over the years some of the property was sold off, but when my wife and I bought it as a fix-me-upper in 1986, we got the remaining 3 acres with it - just enough for a little privacy (in my younger days, I used to enjoy skinny-dipping in the little pool we installed - but only after dark). In looking back on the sweat equity I have poured into this house, I sometimes regret not opting for that new little house in the suburbs we were looking at. But, there is something about the history of old houses that makes you fall in love with them. And we're not the only ones! Every now and then we get a call from someone that used to live here, asking if they can stop in and see the old place. And the stories they have to tell! One lady, who was a young girl here back in the 1930's, finally told us how she destroyed the plaster in our dining room ceiling (it had been covered with a drop ceiling). Something about leaving water running in the overhead bathroom as the family left for a day-long picnic.

We also found out that during the Prohibition Era, our house was the local out-of-the-way "speak-easy". Our front parlor and living room housed the illegal gambling and drinking activities, and the front 3 upstairs bedrooms were a make-shift cat house on weekends (the resident family used the back 4 bedrooms, with their separate stairway). And, of course, many other stories from visitors who had grown up here over the years. We really look forward to those visits!

There are a lot of trees on our 3 acres, but unfortunately, some of the best shade trees in our yard were destroyed during 3 successive years of severe thunderstorms (gusts of 60-70 MPH) and 2 major ice storms that broke so many limbs that the trees had to be cut down. That's the kind of weather we face here in Michigan. No hurricanes, no floods or mudslides, no tornadoes - but those spring and winter storms can be pretty hard on things. Fortunately, we have never suffered any roof damage, even when houses and garages within a mile had roofing blown away.

By the way, I read on the news about that snowstorm you experienced recently. From the sounds of it, you were lucky you only had 14" to clear away!

The area we live in is getting more developed all the time, especially since we are only 1/4 mile away from an expressway interchange, close to schools and shopping, and 5 golf courses within about a 10-mile radius. It sure was a wonderful place to raise the kids. They had plenty of room to run and play with that big old Golden Retriever that was a part of our family for 14 years (finally expired of old age, and is entombed in back of our vegetable garden).
We've got 3300 sq.ft. of space on 2 floors, and now that the kids are gone my wife and I really SHOULD get something smaller. It's just that we're so ATTACHED to this home. Well, we'll see what the future brings.

By the way, you have probably done fix-it-up projects over the years. Have you ever stripped layers of old wallpaper? It was traditional in our area in years past that whenever a family was going to paper-over a room with new wallcovering, they would let family members write messages on the old paper and then cover them with the new. We've uncovered some of these ancient scribblings - part of the fun of working on an old place.

One final note regarding wallpaper, and then I'll leave you in peace. During our recent kitchen project we had to dig under a few layers. Attached is a color scheme we uncovered that dates back to the 1940's - really different tastes in those days.

Oops! One more note! When my wife was a nurse in the Naval Reserve, her billet was Philadelphia Naval Hospital. Is that near you? She also spent a few weeks occasionally at Bethesda. She shore was a dang' pretty Navy nurse!!

Well, that's all for now - in closing, here's the picture I mentioned.

Regards,

Joe