Brick Columns in Warren County

It's not difficult to spot similarities between, say, the boxy braced-frame (and log) farmhouses of Wayne County and dwellings in southeastern Pennsylvania's Amish heartland, but finding direct connections between Ohio buildings and their East-Coast antecedents is a more arduous task. Still, some have managed it. Frary traces floral woodwork in one Western Reserve farmhouse to a home in rural Maine, and Asher Benjamin's designs are duplicated in countless structures — residential, commercial, and public alike. I suspect that most comparisons between individual buildings are, in all likelihood, mistaken, but the temptation remains.

In suburbanizing Hamilton Township, Warren County (one of Ohio's finest counties, if I may say so), are two Federal-era residences with peculiar similarities to at least one Virginia plantation home. One stands on Schlottman Road, just north of the township's southern boundary and a stone's throw from Benjamin Butterworth's hillside farmhouse (1815); the other sits on a sloping, stream-side lot, south of Maineville (a community founded, as its name suggests, by ex-citizens of New England's northeasternmost state).

The Schlottman Road house was owned, during the nineteenth century's second quarter, by members of the Hill family, but its exact history is murky. The building's facade is standard transitional Federal–Grecian fare — five bays in width, with a narrow frieze board, trabeated doorway, and rectangular stone lintels and sills. What lies behind the facade is a bit odder. Unlike most "I" houses (dwellings multiple rooms in width, but only one in depth), the Hill House features an additional row of rooms, which allow for extra fireplaces and a two-story inset porch (now enclosed), and which lend the house a "saltbox" roofline.

The Hill House (WAR-631-11), supposedly constructed in 1817; expanded circa 1845. Photo from the Warren County Auditor's website.

At the home's rear, though, is its truly intriguing feature. Extending from the two-story section is a one-and-a-half-story wing (not an oddity in itself), constructed of Flemish-bond brick. According to local lore, this wing predates the "I" portion by several decades — a claim I'm more than willing to believe. A two-bay section of this wing is recessed, and the resulting porch is supported by polygonal brick columns with blocky capitals and plinths. Clunky though they may be, these columns are distinctive. Ohio has a plethora of recessed porches, but few — if any — use brick as a supporting material (though I know of two arcaded porches in Lawrence County).

The home's rear (more interesting, I think, than its facade). The 1817 section lies to the right. Note the fieldstone springhouse. Photo from the Warren County Auditor's website.

Campbell County, Virginia's Green Hill Plantation, built about 1800, features a similar porch. As might be expected, Green Hill's columns are more sensitively handled; they're round, rather than polygonal, and they're topped with more typologically accurate capitals and plinths. Unfortunately, some of the many outbuildings and dependencies which once encircled Green Hill have disappeared, but the house remains, thank goodness.

Porch, Green Hill (circa 1800); Long Island vicinity, Campbell County, Virginia. Photo from the Historic American Buildings Survey collection. Photographer and date unknown.

A few miles northeast of the Hill House; in Warren County, Ohio; stands a second dwelling — this one omitted from the Ohio History Inventory — with a brick-columned porch. In this case, the porch is two stories in height, and, instead of being tucked into a rear wing, it boldly graces the facade. The columns are circular (rather than polygonal), but their capitals are no more elegant than the Hill House's. An 1875 property atlas lists a J.E. Murdock as the farm's owner. Murdock's family lent its name to a crossroads community just south of the residence.

Murdock House; circa 1835 (?). Photo from the Warren County Auditor's website.

Ross County: A Peculiar Place (Part I)

Taken from Wikipedia.

Of Ohio's 88 counties, Ross may be my favorite (with Warren vying for a close second place). No Ohio county is quite so well-studied, yet simultaneously so mysterious. Though I've scoured its valleys and searched its hills, there remain buildings which, while I know exist, I've yet to locate. It's a well-stocked candy store, and I'm but a child. Why is Ross County so delightful? For two reasons, I believe.

First, its settlement commenced late in the 18th century. In 1795, William Kent, contracted by one Nathaniel Reeves, cleared a forty-acre plot in the Paint Creek valley in present Paxton Township. (The 1805 Reeves-Seymour House, constructed of stone, now occupies this land.) One year later, Nathaniel Massie and his party founded Chillicothe; Massie eventually platted Bainbridge (in 1805), and, in 1800, built a frame farmhouse in Paxton Township (this structure remains standing). All of Ross County's townships, bar one (Deerfield, which remained uninhabited until 1801), were populated before 1800. (1) As a rule, the oldest (and wealthiest) settlements tend to contain the greatest assortment of buildings.

Second, its myriad landscapes and diverse population demand variety in architecture. Geologists tend to love those localities which exist at the collision of physiographic regions; likewise, architectural historians flock to boundaries between ethnic settlements. Ross County is bisected by the Scioto River. West of the river exists the Virginia Military District, with its irregular tracts (a legacy of the "metes-and-bounds" survey system) and distinctively "southern" architecture. East of the river are Congress Lands, settled, primarily, by Pennsylvanians of German descent. In Ross County, and elsewhere along the Scioto River, the two populations mingled. (2)

What did 19th century Americans think of this veritable Eden? John Kilbourn, in the 1819 edition of his Ohio Gazetteer, describes Ross County thus:

Ross [is] a populous and wealthy interior county[.] . . . It includes a population exceeding 16,000 inhabitants, and valuation of 3,681,639 dollars. . . . The land is generally fertile and suitably diversified with meadow and upland; the latter of which is peculiarly well adapted to the production of grain. . . . In many parts the farms are beginning to have the appearance of an old settled country.

Half a decade later, Prince Carl Bernhard, during a tour of the United States, visited Chillicothe, among other Ohio cities:

The 10th of May we rode nineteen miles, from Circleville to Chillicothe, formerly the capital of Ohio, situated on the right shore of the Sciota [sic]. Our way led us through a handsome and very well cultivated country; we saw fine fields, good dwelling-houses, orchards, and gardens; also several mills, turned by the water of the Sciota [sic], and several other little creeks; some of these mills are at the same time fulling, flour, and saw-mills.

The city of Chillicothe deserves its own post (or ten), but I'll confine my ramblings to Ross County's rural portions. (For a good description of early Chillicothe, see Christopher Busta-Peck's piece "Earthworks and Cows and Hills, Oh My!")

Stone Houses

Between Chillicothe and Bainbridge lies a range of flat-topped plateaus, interspersed with narrow valleys and hummocky benches. Split into two sections by the fertile Paint Valley, these hills are, according to the 2003 Soil Survey of Ross County, Ohio, composed largely of Berea sandstone. The section north of the Paint Valley — encompassing portions of Buckskin, Concord, Paint, Paxton, and Twin townships — contains a plethora of stone houses.

This cluster of homes is the subject of Ralph Cokonougher's 1978 book, Vernacular Stone Structures in Southwestern Ross County, Ohio. (Because the book's text is freely available, I won't belabor its findings here.) Cokonougher mentions twenty stone buildings. Of these, six (including the Hays and Gray residences) have been razed. One is now abandoned. Interestingly, Cokonougher omits the aforementioned Reeves-Seymour House, perhaps the grandest of western Ross County's stone homes.

The house built by Daniel Pricer, a Pennsylvanian, in 1816 (in Paint Township) collapsed about 1960, long before Cokonougher published his book. The stone cottage on Tong Hollow Road — truly an anomaly in Ohio — remains standing, as does Buckskin Township's Dolphin dwelling. Most of this region's stone houses, it seems, were erected in the first quarter of the 19th century by natives of Pennsylvania. (3)

Rear, Christian Benner House (1805), Paxton Township. Benner's home is constructed of a colorful sandstone unique to the region.

John Benner House (circa 1833), Bainbridge.

1) A list of Ross County's townships, with years of first settlement: Paxton, 1795; Concord, 1796; Scioto, 1796; Springfield, 1796; Union, circa 1796; Colerain, 1797; Twin, 1797; Franklin, 1798; Green, 1798; Harrison, 1798; Jefferson, 1798; Liberty, 1798; Paint, circa 1798; Buckskin, 1799; Huntington, before 1800; Deerfield, 1801. Sourced from The County of Ross (1902).

2) The differences between Pennsylvanian- and Virginian-settled communities are not so noticeable as books tend to suggest. In most Virginia Military District townships, there lived a significant minority of Pennsylvanians, and vice versa.

3) The construction dates Cokonougher provides in Vernacular Stone Structures are, in a few cases, simply inaccurate. Carved into one house's woodwork, apparently, is "1795." This must be a misreading, or else some carpenter's joke. If not — and landowners were building (relatively) grand homes in the unsettled wilds of Ohio before the Treaty of Greenville — our history books need a bit of revision.

Hopkins House

Union Township, Union County, Ohio

This building is unusual for the upper Virginia Military District, an area largely defined by simple brick "I" houses and late 19th century structures. The house has been abandoned since at least 1973 — probably a bit earlier, even — and severe deterioration has exposed construction details not visible in occupied homes. Unfortunately, the many years of abandonment have resulted in a complete loss of its most notable features, as well.

The front (southeast) facade.

In 1986, David Simmons photographed the house for the Ohio Historic Inventory. At the time, it featured a strange, somewhat out-of-proportion window flanked by sidelights and topped by sunburst decoration. Simmons also noted a "simple mantel with built-in cupboards" and a "ca. 1850 newel post." None of these remain, of course.

Photos and drawing by David Simmons, 1986. Taken from the Ohio Historic Inventory form.

The remaining interior woodwork is typical of mid-19th century buildings. I've noticed that many structures of the era have blue-painted woodwork.

The staircase, sans newel post, is just visible through the doorway. Portions of the home's braced frame construction are revealed where siding is missing.

The closest I could get to an interior shot. The mantel and cupboards are long-gone.

The barn, also abandoned. Portions of its sheet metal roof were banging violently in the wind as I took this photo.

Finally, a rough floor plan: