City appropriates funds for oldest log building
The David Deardurff House, 72 S. Gift Street in Franklinton, is an historically and architecturally significant 1807 log building – the oldest log building standing on its original foundation in Franklin County - and a former post office. Columbus Landmarks Foundation’s Advocacy Committee, a cause championed by volunteers Jim Beier, Mike Peppe and John York, has worked with the neighborhood, the owner, and the City for over thirty years toward the stabilization and preservation of this historic resource. The city’s involvement has included the support of Mayor Michael B. Coleman and City Council, City Attorney Rick Pfeiffer’s office, Boyce Safford’s Columbus Department of Development, and tireless efforts on behalf of Randy Black and the Columbus Historic Preservation Office.
We are proud to announce recent new developments regarding the preservation of this rare early 19th century remnant of central Ohio’s heritage. The City of Columbus recently passed legislation that appropriated $125,000 toward the project and approved a preservation easement agreement. This agreement, successfully negotiated between the City Attorney and the owner, transfers sufficient ownership of the property to the City, by means of the easement, to enable public funds to go toward the rehabilitation. Furthermore, the agreement stipulates that after completion of the restoration and upon the owner’s death, the property will transfer into the hands of the Franklinton Historical Society, a non-profit organization. As of June 1st, we celebrate the signing of this agreement by both parties, the City and the owner. Before any grant funds are released, the owner must first expend an equal amount on the building and the remainder of the budget for the restoration must be raised. The estimated budget to restore the exterior and interior, landscape the site and provide security and lighting is $475,000. There is an initiative afoot to raise additional private funds. The building is currently wrapped in black plastic as a protective measure.
The Deardurff House is an important part of Columbus history and deserves to be saved. Particularly as our city’s bicentennial approaches, places of our early history should be recognized for the important part they played in the city’s founding and development. We believe the Deardurff House is an appropriate priority as a 2012 project, one with lasting educational, cultural and historical impact that will leave a long-standing legacy. The City’s financial support will serve as a catalyst for moving this long-awaited and important preservation project forward and help protect the property in perpetuity as an educational site.
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History Of Deardurff House
By James Beier
In 1798 Abraham Deardurff, a nail-maker by trade, departed Pennsylvania with his son David, who was 13 years old, and arrived in the newly laid out village of Franklinton. Abraham traded goods he had brought with him from Pennsylvania and bartered for 10 acres of “bottoms” land (in the area where Veterans Memorial now stands) and was given a free building lot by Lucas Sullivant who was the surveyor who had founded and laid out the village of Franklinton. Franklinton was laid out along two streets: Washington Street (now Sandusky Street) and Franklin Street (now West Broad Street). Running off Franklin Street was a street called Gift Street. The street was named Gift Street because all the lots on that street were “gifts” from Lucas Sullivant to get settlers to locate to Franklinton. The Deardurff family land was at the southwest corner of Gift and Sixth Street (now Culbertson Street). In the late summer of 1798, after planting his 10 acres in corn, Abraham Deardurff left his son David behind to tend to the corn crop and returned to Pennsylvania to bring his family back to Franklinton. Although Franklinton at the time consisted only of 18 individuals and families, David stayed behind to tend the corn, cut trees and to hew logs. On October 5th, 1798, Abraham returned with his wife, Katherine, their two daughters, Polly and Elizabeth and their three younger sons, Samuel, Daniel and Joseph. Abraham also brought with him a wagon load of belongings: several walnut chests filled with homespun linen, bedding, brass candlesticks and the family’s china, building tools and a cow and a bulldog. The family used the logs that David had cut and hewed to build the family’s first home on Gift Street.
In 1807, David Deardurff, now 21, built a home for himself opposite the family home, and located it at 72 South Gift Street. The round hardwood walnut logs for the home were carefully hewed, fitted, chinked and daubed and covered inside with horse hair plaster walls. The log cabin was a two story structure with four rooms inside. The log structure measured 35’ x 17’ with the front entrance on Sixth (Culbertson) Street. The house had two bedrooms upstairs. The woodwork was of oak, dovetailed in with heavy doorways held up by huge wooden pins and fireplaces with high mantel pieces. The floors are of wide oak and ash planks. A cellar was built beneath the kitchen. A shed roof frame addition was built onto the east side of the house in 1860s and the kitchen relocated there; beneath the kitchen was dug a cellar which had a cool, sweet spring with a stone-lined pit that was built to hold milk crocks. In the 1870s the log house was sheathed over with clapboard.
By 1807, mail began to arrive in Franklinton from Chillicothe and David Deardurff allowed the west room in the front of his house to serve as Franklinton’s Post Office. Mail was brought by horseback from Chillicothe once a week by 13 year old Andrew McElvain who followed a forest trail with the Darby and Deer Creek streams having to be crossed by either swimming or wading across with David having to hold the mail bags above his head. It was a three day journey by horseback but the mail was delivered to the Franklinton Post Office in the Deardurff home every week. The house served as the Franklinton Post Office for many years.
In 1815, Abraham Deardurff returned to Pennsylvania to finish some family business and sell the remaining farm land that he owed there, having decided to remain in Franklinton, and was robbed and murdered. Settlers in the area buried him in the woods along the mud road and travelers returned his horse to Franklinton with its saddle bags slashed with all the gold from the sale of his land in Pennsylvania gone.
David Deardurff, born February 6th, 1785, died on February 12th, 1844. In 1815 Lucas Sullivant deeded the log cabin on Gift Street to George Sizemore. David Deardurff’s house was lived in by many families, including the “Cloud” family for which the house is sometimes known, until the 1950s when the City declared it to be un-inhabitable. The house has not been lived in since. On March 20th, 1973 the Deardurff House, located on North ½ of in lot number 167, 72 South Gift Street, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. On September 17th, 2001 the Columbus City Council placed the Deardurff House on the Columbus Register of Historic Properties.
In the 1950s, the Deardurff House was purchased by Harry Sells who lived in a house on the northwest side of Gift and Sixth Street (Culbertson) because he felt that a house this valuable to Columbus history should not be lost. In 1979, the Deardurff House was purchased by Walt Reiner to save it from being torn down. Mr. Reiner still owns the Deardurff House today and has pledged to restore it. The City of Columbus has appropriated $125,000 for the restoration of this historic property from capital improvement dollars. Since the City is not allowed to use capital improvement dollars on property the city does not own, City Attorney Rick Pfeiffer accepted Columbus Landmarks’ proposal to place a Preservation Easement on the Deardurff House that keeps the property in Mr. Reiner’s ownership but does not allow him to make any changes to the property, alter or sell the property without City approval. Because the Deardurff House is on the Columbus Register, all plans for the restoration of the property must be approved by the City’s Office of Historic Preservation and the Columbus Historic Resources Commission. The Historic Resources Commission has adopted the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Treatment of Historic Properties and the National Park Service’s Preservation Brief 26: The Preservation and Repair of Historic Log Buildings.
Some of the Deardurff family, living today maintain that a portion of David Deardurff’s house was first constructed in 1798 when the family first arrived in Franklinton and enlarged in 1807 to the size it is today. The “lean to shed” portion of the cabin was added on in the 1860s and the clapboard siding in the 1870s. The claim by Deardurff relatives has not been substantiated but there is a cut line in the eastern portion of the house in both the north and south wall of the log building that indicates that at some point in time the house was expanded. The end of the logs at the point of the cut line were cut off and “newer” logs butted into the original logs. Some believe that the log house built in 1807 was a two story, two room house and that sometime after 1807 as David Deardurff’s family expanded; the log house was enlarged to be a four room house with two bedrooms upstairs and two rooms, including the Franklinton Post Office, downstairs. Mr. Reiner has agreed to hire a log building consultant to determine what the log house consisted of in 1807 and later years to the 1900s. Mr. Reiner, working with the Historic Resources Commission, will then have to agree upon a year and the Deardurff House will be restored to that time period.
The David Beers log cabin is generally believed to have been built in 1804 and would therefore pre-date the Deardurff House. The Beers cabin was moved from its original location near the intersection of Dodridge and North High Streets near the banks of the Olentangy River. The Beers cabin was moved to what is now Norwich Avenue in the University District in 1904 due to constant flooding in that area. If the Deardurff House was enlarged and partially built in 1798 that would make it the oldest house in Columbus and Franklin County. If it was first built in 1807 that would make the log house the second oldest in Columbus and Franklin County and the only one still located where the pioneer family built it.