Based on studies and extensive historical research conducted in the 1960s, WRHS staff developed a concept for creating an early Western Reserve village on the open land across the road from the Hale House. To create the Village, WRHS launched a “Preservation through Relocation” program built on the concept of saving historic structures threatened by demolition by moving them from their original sites to Hale Farm. The relocated structures were restored to their original beauty and charm around a recreated village green, inspired by those still found in New England villages and towns, and throughout the Western Reserve.
Fritch Log Cabin
Pioneer Farm Smoke House
Sugar House
John A. McAlonan Carriage Manufactory
Jonathan Hale House
Hale Farm Barn
Hale Sheep Barn
Hale Carriage Barn, 1874
Hale Corn Crib c. 1920
Hale Sugar House c. 1910
Hale Summer Cottage, c. 1920
Hale Outhouse, c. 1850
The Stow House
The Saltbox House
The Jagger House
Schoolhouse
Jonathan Goldsmith House
The Land Office
The Mary Ann Sears Swetland Memorial Meetinghouse
The Wade Law Office
The Jonathan E. Herrick House
The Aten Log Barn
The Pottery Shed & Kiln
The Glassworks
The Blacksmith Forge
Fritch Log Cabin
Architecture | Log |
Building Date | 1805 |
Original Site | Suffield Township (Portage County) |
The original log cabin that was home to the Hales for seventeen years did not survive. However, the story of the Hales’ earliest years in the Western Reserve, from 1810 – 1825, is told at the Pioneer Farm, an early 19th-century farm site that features the Fritch Log Cabin, a log house originally from Wingfoot Lake in Portage County.
Jonathan Fritch built this one-room cabin in 1805. Its original site eventually became the property of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, and the company used the dwelling as a fishing and hunting cabin for executives and clients.
In 1995, the cabin was moved to Hale Farm and restored to interpret an early Western Reserve farm. The Pioneer Farm recreates the setting in which the Hale Family lived for many years while they worked the land and produced the bricks for the more permanent, three-story Hale Family House. The farm is where the early history of Jonathan Hale, and pioneers like him, is told through participatory experiences that include hearth cooking, soap making, gardening, maple sugaring, and other early domestic activities that characterized life on the frontier.
Pioneer Farm Smoke House
Constructed in 1999, the Pioneer Farm Smoke House is a replica of a log smoke house that would have been common on early farms in the Western Reserve. In early America, the smoke house was essential as the family’s primary source for the preservation of meat. During the 19th century, meat would be salted for several weeks to cure it by removing moisture. Next, the meat would be hung in the smoke house and smoked by the fire to enhance the flavor and to keep insects and vermin away. This process allowed pioneers to keep meat for longer periods of time.
Sugar House
The Sugar House (1910) is one of the seven original Hale Family structures. Located to the southwest of the Hale House at the edge of the maple sugar bush, the Sugar House was used by Jonathan Hale’s grandson, Charles Oviatt, or C. O. Hale, during the early 20th century. In 1983, Hale Farm & Village introduced a maple sugaring demonstration to the public. The Maple Sugar Festival is now an annual late winter tradition during which guests are invited to tap maple trees and haul sap to the sugar house where staff demonstrate the process of boiling tree sap into syrup using an evaporator.
John A. McAlonan Carriage Manufactory
Architecture | Barn |
Building Date | 1851 |
Original Site | Newton Falls (Portage County) |
The John A. McAlonan Carriage Manufactory was acquired and moved to Hale Farm & Village in 1969. Originally built as a gristmill on the Mahoning River, it was powered by a water wheel to grind corn and grain. By 1900, water-powered milling became impractical due to frequent river flooding and the arrival of a new power source – electricity. The building was later moved to the center of town where it served as a feed mill and lumberyard for many years. The building is interpreted as a 19th-century style carriage manufactory, where surreys, carriages, sleighs and other vehicles of this type were built. The building is named for John A. McAlonan, the owner of Universal Motor Company, Inc., a Ford Dealership in Akron. In 1958, McAlonan established a trust to benefit the local community and it was this trust, The John A. McAlonan Fund of the Akron Community Foundation, that funded the restoration of this important commercial building that now showcases a collection of 19th-century vehicles.
Jonathan Hale House
During their first 15 years in the Western Reserve, the Hales lived in a one-room log house while Jonathan and his sons produced bricks made with materials found on site. The home was completed in 1827, the year that the Erie Canal was completed across the state of New York and in which work was begun on the Ohio and Erie Canal, which would connect Cleveland on Lake Erie to Portsmouth on the Ohio River. The canal reached Akron in 1827, giving the Hales the opportunity to manufacture bricks for sale, using the Canal as the means to move the goods. Built by Jonathan Hale between 1825 and 1827, this three-story brick house was one of only two all-brick buildings in the Cuyahoga Valley at the time of its construction. Jonathan’s father and grandfather built his ancestral home in Glastonbury with bricks shaped and burned on site; therefore, it is not surprising that Jonathan brought that family tradition to the Western Reserve.
Hale Farm Barn
Jonathan Hale’s son Andrew built this barn in 1854. Located on the east side of Oak Hill Road, this barn is significant in that it was built during Jonathan Hale’s lifetime, shortly before his death in 1854. The Farm Barn is the focal point of the farmyard, a venue where visitors can view early farm equipment and explore the facility, which was and is home to some of the livestock that live on the farm.
Hale Carriage Barn, 1874
Originally used to house the carriages and wagons owned by the Hale Family, the building is now used to house museum livestock and for various farm chores and activities.
Hale Corn Crib c. 1920
This is believed to have been built by C.O. Hale in the early 20th century, and used for storage of field corn.
Hale Summer Cottage, c. 1920
Andrew Hale began a modest “guest house” trade in the 1870s, and his son C.O. Hale expanded this further, filling the Hale House and its grounds with summer visitors every year, a side business that provided much-needed income for C.O. and his wife Pauline. There may have been as many as five cottages like this one on the property.
The Stow House
Architecture | Greek Revival |
Building Date | 1852 |
Original Site | Stow, Ohio (Summit County) |
This farm house was moved to Hale Farm to serve as a residence for the farmer and on-site security staff. In 1983, it became the venue for spinning and weaving demonstrations where wool, linen, and cotton are used to produce textiles similar to those made during the period. Today, the house is interpreted as the Village General Store and serving as a retail annex for the Gatehouse Visitor Center museum store and as a venue for special public programs.
The Saltbox House
Architecture | Federal |
Building Date | 1830 |
Original Site | Richfield, Ohio (Summit County) |
The Saltbox House represents the earliest dwelling in the Village. The house is furnished simply, fitting the income and taste of a country craftsman, possibly a blacksmith, who might have owned it. Its interpretive focus is on rural domestic life in the era (ca. 1830) when the Ohio and Erie Canal was being built. Outside, an extensive herb garden has been laid out with a variety of culinary, decorative, medicinal, dyeing and other herbs.
The Jagger House
Architecture | Greek Revival |
Building Date | 1845 |
Original Site | Bath, Ohio (Summit County) |
The Jagger House, named for its first owner, Clement Jagger, is furnished more elegantly than the Saltbox House. Mr. Jagger was a surrey maker and, consequently, wealthier than the owner of the Saltbox House. By the time the house was built in 1845, the Ohio and Erie Canal had transformed the local economy and raised the overall standard of living and the availability of goods and fine luxury items. The house is particularly remarkable for its lovely paneling and original stenciling.
Schoolhouse
Architecture | Log |
Building Date | 1816 |
Original Site | Summitville, Ohio (Columbiana County) |
Although Summitville is outside of the Western Reserve, this log building was accepted for display since architecturally, there is no difference in log structures in or outside of the Western Reserve, and there were no log structures available at the time from within the Reserve. The schoolhouse was originally built as a single-story farmhouse, with a second story added later. It was subsequently used as the first Catholic school in Columbiana County, a parsonage, and a grocery store. Later, it was moved about ½ mile to be used as a farmhouse again. The house had been abandoned for several years at the time it was given to WRHS for restoration. Since many early schoolhouses in the Reserve were abandoned log buildings, staff decided to use the structure as a schoolhouse. This one had actually been used for that purpose.
Log buildings such as this were usually the first structures on the frontier and abandoned when their owners could afford to replace them with a more modern frame building. The interior of the schoolhouse is based on the Connecticut school plan of the period, which undoubtedly was used by the Connecticut settlers of the Western Reserve.
Jonathan Goldsmith House
Architecture | Greek Revival |
Building Date | ca. 1830-1832 |
Original Site | Willoughby, Ohio (Lake County) |
The Jonathan Goldsmith House was built for the William Peck Robinson family, ca. 1830 in Willoughby, Ohio. Robinson, his wife Caroline, and their four children left New Haven, Connecticut, in 1820 for the Western Reserve. According to available records preserved in the WRHS Research Library, Robinson, who owned several mills and a sizable farm, was a man of considerable means. Robinson died in 1832 just prior to the completion of the house. Letters between his widow Caroline and her son at Yale University provide exceptional detail regarding their lifestyles as well as the layout and style of the home. Those letters also provide insight into contemporary issues surrounding property ownership and the legal rights of women to oversee the guardianship of their own children. The house was donated to the WRHS in 1972 by Mrs. Paul Roesch in memory of her late husband. The Goldsmith House is most accurately described as a Classical Revival home in that it features elements of both Federal and Greek Revival styles of architecture.
The building is named for its builder and architect Jonathan Goldsmith. Goldsmith is recognized as one of the finest architects in the Reserve. His structures featured elaborate carvings and high quality construction. This house is an excellent example of his work. Because of the size and quality of the craftsmanship, the Goldsmith House stands today as the finest and most luxurious house in the Village.
The Land Office
Architecture | Federal |
Building Date | 1832 |
Original Site | North Bloomfield, Ohio (Trumbull County) |
Ephraim Brown bought the entire town of North Bloomfield (16,000 acres) and built an elegant home known as “Brownwood.” Later, he built this small office to support his land business and other commercial pursuits. This building opened to the public at Hale Farm in 1983, is used to interpret the history, survey, and settlement of the Western Reserve.
The Mary Ann Sears Swetland Memorial Meetinghouse
Architecture | Greek Revival |
Building Date | 1852 |
Original Site | Streetsboro, Ohio (Portage County) |
The church was originally a Baptist meetinghouse and was later occupied by a Methodist congregation that continued to use it until 1969. The church was threatened with demolition when the property on which it was located was sold for construction of a clinic. Its move to Hale Farm was complex. The roof was in poor condition and had to be removed. Then, the building was split into two sections to allow it to be transported over the highways and roads between Streetsboro and Hale Farm.
The original steeple was destroyed by a severe wind storm in 1957. Fortunately, in the 1930s, the steeple was documented by the Historic American Building Survey with detailed drawings and photographs. These materials were used by the Hale Farm restoration crew to rebuild it. The interior of the building is restored to the time of its use as a Baptist Church. All pews and wainscoting are original. The altar section had to be totally reconstructed.
Typically, meetinghouses were centrally located on the village green and served as a town hall, public works building, and a place of worship. The Puritans, who originally established meetinghouses, believed in no ornamentation. Often the only ornamental feature was a cushion with corner tassels for the pulpit Bible, produced by local women with as many as four yards of velvet or silk. Originally, the church did not have a basement. However, a modern foundation and basement were installed at the time of restoration to serve as a community meeting room with modern public restrooms. The Meetinghouse is a popular venue for wedding ceremonies as well as public and educational programs.
Since 2016 extensive preservation work has been performed on interior and exterior components of the Meetinghouse, including a new ADA accessible entrance. The preservation and ongoing stewardship of the Meetinghouse is generously funded by The Howland Memorial Fund and The A.W and J. Belle Bowman Charitable Trust.
The Wade Law Office
Architecture | Federal |
Building Date | 1825 |
Original Site | Jefferson, Ohio (Ashtabula County) |
This small, Federal-style building was built in 1825 as the law office of Benjamin Franklin Wade, an abolitionist and Senator from Ohio from 1851-1869. Its association with U.S. Senator Wade is significant. Wade missed becoming President of the United States by one vote during the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson in 1868. As president “pro tempore” of the U.S. Senate, Wade would have ascended to the Presidency had Johnson been convicted. The office is furnished in a style appropriate to the mid-19th century, and many of the artifacts are related directly to Wade. The building serves as an appropriate forum for the discussion of 19th-century law, politics, and abolitionism in the Western Reserve.
The Jonathan E. Herrick House
Architecture | Greek Revival |
Building Date | 1845 |
Original Site | Twinsburg, Ohio (Summit County) |
The Herrick House was built in 1845 by Jonathan Herrick, an early settler of Twinsburg who followed his brothers to the Western Reserve from Massachusetts in the 1820s. He purchased farmland in Twinsburg, where he married and raised a family. The Herrick House is an outstanding example of a Greek Revival stone structure. Of the more than 7,500 Western Reserve houses listed on the Ohio Historic Inventory, less than one half percent are square-cut, stone structures built in the style of the Herrick House. The Herricks lived in the house, originally located on Route 91 in Twinsburg, until 1898. In 1974, the house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and offered to WRHS in 1975 by Myrtle Simonds Ross, a Herrick family descendant.
When plans were announced to demolish the house in 1981 for an industrial parkway, Ms. Ross offered the house on the condition that it be fully restored at Hale Farm & Village. Due to the extreme weight of the house – about 144 tons – the house was completely disassembled and each stone block carefully numbered so that it could be accurately reconstructed. The Herrick House is the centerpiece of the 1850s Village Farm. The Herrick Farm, or Village Farm, featuring the house, farm barn, fenced animal paddocks, and sufficient land for gardens and additional barnyard animals and activities, is interpreted as a working dairy farm. The prevalence of quality pasture land in Northeast Ohio resulted in commercial dairying throughout the region and cheese making developed as a specialized industry, earning the Western Reserve the nickname, “Cheesedom.”
The Aten Log Barn
Architecture | Log |
Building Date | 1812 |
Original Site | Wellsville, Ohio (Columbiana County) |
The building is a large, three-bay log structure in excellent condition. No evidence of chinking, a method of sealing log buildings, could be found. Therefore the barn would have been well ventilated but also open to extremes of temperature and weather. In order not to interfere with the exterior integrity of the building, Hale staff installed siding on the inside, thus preserving its original exterior look, but making it reasonably weather-tight.
The Pottery Shed & Kiln
The pottery trade, an early industry in Summit County during the 19th century, is demonstrated in a production shed using early 19th-century techniques. The brick, bottle-shaped kiln houses a furnace that fires the salt glazed pottery produced on site. In 1828, an extensive bed of high quality stoneware clay was discovered near Akron in Springfield Township. Within a year, news of the clay bed and the settlers’ needs spread. By 1841, eight pottery shops were in operation, and the industry continued to grow throughout the 19th century, making Summit County the second largest stoneware production area in Ohio. Nineteenth-century potters manufactured redware, a common utilitarian earthenware used for chamber pots, pitchers, butter churns, and mixing bowls.
The Glassworks
The Glassworks Demonstration Barn is a reproduction of a 19th-century barn, constructed using the skeletal remains of a mid-19th-century barn from Stow. Hale Farm’s glassblowers (called “gaffers” during that era), use historically appropriate techniques to demonstrate the manufacture of glass, an important emerging industry in Ohio during the 1820s and 1830s. There were several glass factories in operation in northeastern Ohio during those decades, including those in Mantua (1822), the Franklin Glassworks in Kent (1825), and Hopkins, Woodward, and Ladd (ca. 1825), also located in Kent. A rich supply of fuel (charcoal created from abundant timber), raw materials, a rapidly increasing population, and relative isolation from competitive Eastern glass sources, made Ohio a choice market for glass. Pieces produced by the Hale Farm & Village glassblowers represent styles appropriate to the early 19th-century Western Reserve. The glassworks operation at Hale Farm & Village represents the beginning of an important regional industry – a link from our social and industrial past to the present day. Glass manufacturing remains a key industry in Toledo and western Ohio where natural gas is abundant.
The Blacksmith Forge
Formerly located on Medina Line Road, the barn that houses the forge was originally a larger building with three bays. Only one bay from that structure was moved to Hale Farm in 1962. Early Western Reserve blacksmiths manufactured and repaired household equipment and farming implements used by settlers, such as gates, grilles, farm implements, cooking utensils, weapons, and tools. The blacksmith’s skill was in demand by most citizens of the village. The blacksmith at Hale Farm both demonstrates the craftsmanship of smithing and, like his historical predecessors, produces hardware and other implements critical to the operation of the farm.
