WINDOW TO THE PAST Owner kept 1830s home as it was built

Despite pleas from friends, Evelyn Minor refused to have a bathroom installed.
WAYNESBURG, Pa. (AP) -- Evelyn Minor liked to keep things simple in the old farmhouse she called home for 53 years.
Only a few rooms in the red brick house with views of the countryside had electricity, and a sink in a corner of a first-floor room provided the only running water. Minor kept the furnishings sparse and plain, in the style of when the home was built in the 1830s.
This weekend, the house and surrounding 42 acres will be sold at auction. Authorities say it's rare to find a house from the 1800s that hasn't been updated at all.
"This is a totally unique property. You don't often run into a property with this much acreage, and an old original farmhouse," said Alan Heldreth, general manager of Joe R. Pyle Complete Auction, the firm handling Saturday's sale.
With a white covered porch, the house sits alone on a small hill nestled between larger ones in a rural community about 40 miles southwest of Pittsburgh. Visitors follow a tangled path of narrow roads to find the house that overlooks two smaller brick and stone structures and a tiny creek. The interior walls are still covered in the original horsehair plaster, and an active spring still runs in the basement.
Brenda Giles, administrator at the Greene County Historical Society, said there are still some houses that have those original details, mostly in the western part of the county, though many have been updated or changed. She said there is great interest in the old homes.
"They don't build them that way anymore," Giles said.
Was history teacher
Minor, who died in October at 93, was a history teacher for 42 years, a fact that spoke to her love of the old farmhouse, said Bob Morris, her neighbor and friend to whom she left the property when she died. Her closest family were two elderly cousins who lived in California.
"She did without practically everything because that's the way she lived. It's not because she couldn't afford it," Morris said.
Minor, who was divorced, lived alone in the house since the 1960s. She filled it with simple antiques, and asked Morris to make sure a porch swing and golden mirror stayed with the house. Many of her belongings have been sold; some have been sent to a Philadelphia auction house.
Minor was Morris' closest neighbor. Morris mowed her lawn and, though she was still driving until she broke her hip just months before her death, he also drove her to the doctor's office and grocery store. He got a cell phone so she could reach him anytime she needed him.
And despite her shunning of modern conveniences, Minor had a television and loved to watch it late into the night, Morris said. Her favorites were shows about politics and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
"She called me at 3:30 in the morning once because she couldn't find the remote control," Morris remembered.
Preferred outhouse
Morris and others begged Minor to let them put a bathroom in her house, but she refused, preferring instead to use an outhouse. She was incensed, Morris said, when her former husband put electricity in an upstairs room.
So when Minor approached Morris about leaving her house to him, he thought about it a few days, but eventually said yes.
"It needs too much work for the money that I could put into it. It needs to be restored. I would like to see it done like she would love it done," Morris said.
The house is being auctioned without a reserve, meaning that Morris can refuse a bid, accept it or challenge it, Heldreth said. The auction company has gotten many serious inquiries and shown it about 30 times.
"This is way more than your typical residential property," Heldreth said. "A lot of people just want to see it."