This month Esther H. M. Power has suggested I write about barns in Terrace Park.
In starting to do research in our archives and in the Terrace Park Building Survey I find that we have a great many references to barns, chicken coops and other agricultural buildings within Terrace Park. Of course, one remembers that the Iuen family had a dairy farm where Fieldstone Drive and Winding Brook Lane now are. However, as Ellis Rawnsley states in A Place Called Terrace Park, "Each homestead was a mini-farm with a horse or so almost a necessity, a cow a real asset, and chickens essential to sustain life if not the peace of the neighborhood, since council had to legislate against letting them run free.
Chicken-keeping later was common until well into the 1900s, so there understandably was a community uproar when a dog - widely believed to belong to John Robinson - ran wild and killed 176 chickens belonging to Frank McGhee, 18 among Russell Errett's flock, and others before McGhee and Hugh Galloway cornered and shot it in W. F Hermann's coop on Wooster Pike where it had killed 98. Robinson stoutly maintained it wasn't his dog." Council also found it necessary to restrict "the slaughter of the livestock some villagers raised".
What remains of this once much more rural lifestyle of Terrace Park residents? Virginia Marquett's house on Indian Hill Road was built where earlier there was a potato patch. Across the street on Indian Hill stands the brick home the Iuen family moved into around 1900. It's been somewhat expanded from when their large family lived there but still very much in keeping with the original house. Although nothing really remains of James Iuen's once 75-acre farm and Walnut Creek Dairy, we have many stories from Virginia's aunt, Evelyn, about all the farm activities in which the family was involved.
Evidently the original farmhouse was very near the entrance to present day Fieldstone Drive. Nearby was a barn and behind it a pigpen. The 30 cows were milked by hand and the late Bill Krummert remembers doing just that on his way to and from school. Virginia's mother, Edith, and no doubt other family members helped with the milking when they were short of hired hands. There was a springhouse where filled milk cans were submerged and animals worked churns for butter.
Some of the workers, including dairy employees and deliverymen, lived in cottages in that area. They drove horse and wagons "to area homes, delivering milk, which was dipped out of huge containers for the housewives". Where there are now trees and houses was once cleared land for grazing all the way up Indian Hill Road to Indian Ridge. Edith Iuen, later married to Matt Cook, had the job of rounding up the cows to bring them in for milking. When the family gave up the dairy farm, probably in the early 1950s, the cows were driven through Madisonville to the stockyards.
The large barn on the northwest corner of Wooster Pike and Indian Hill Road was built by James Iuen. His father, Joseph Iuen, ran the tavern just across the street. Farmers spent the night at the inn while their animals stayed in Iuen's big barn. In the morning the farmers continued walking their animals to markets and slaughterhouses downtown. Sometimes the barn was used as a livery stable for the inn housing horses and carriages. In the winter the John Robinson Circus performers practiced their acts in the barn, sometimes with cows as well as human spectators, Edith Iuen and her Uncle John often among them. Unfortunately the barn burned, perhaps as early as 1913.
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There were more barns along Wooster Pike with one prominent one still remaining at the Galloway/Cornish place (#725). The Galloways were general farmers like most of the early residents of the area until they started in1872 what became a very profitable nursery business. William and Elizabeth Highlands came to this area from Pennsylvania and bought land here in 1805. Their log home must have been very near James Iuen's barn. There was an addition on the back of the house for their animals, to protect them from any possible Indian attack.
Their son, Joseph, built what is now known as 6 Kris Circle. In 1904 Charles Meurer did a painting of that house showing cows, sheep and chickens along with their barn. Later across Wooster Pike Ted and Minnie (she was a Iuen) Kaiser owned a house and barn, part of their homestead called "Orchard Hill". They had an orchard on the hillside and Mr. Kaiser sold fruit at a roadside stand. He also raised hogs, sheep and chickens. Later in 1950 he had 9 cottages built below the orchard and ran what many will remember as "Orchard Hill Modern Motel".
Gradually in the 1970s and 80s a log cabin and 2 barns were destroyed followed by the motel cottages being burned by the Terrace Park Fire Department for practice. The Herrmann place (# 742 Wooster Pike) also had barns and outbuildings. We've been told that around 1925 the old barn was torn down and 2 similar buildings were built: one for a garage and the other a chicken house. This was one of the places where chicken dinners were served on Sundays. Where Marian Lane is today was their cow pasture. The Corey barn (address originally 722 Wooster Pike) was wrecked in 1969 and replaced with a detached garage.
Going east from the crossroads there were more barns at least on the north side of Wooster Pike. Mrs. McMullen (# 607 Wooster Pike) was another one who served chicken dinners after her husband's death. Her barn as well as pasture for horses and cows was across the street. Later that barn was owned by Harry Boone who lived at 601 Wooster Pike. He and his brother, Ed, must have kept their horses there. The Cook's home, next door to McMullin's, replaced an old barn. At least 3 barns on the north side of Wooster Pike were condemned and burned by the Terrace Park Fire Department in 1973.
(to be continued next month)
3 pictures: Iuen home on the hill before the addition was made on the east side of the house.
Galloway/Cornish barn
Meurer painting of the Highlands place