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Doors to the past open at Barnhisel House
GIRARD
In the farm- house on U.S. Route 422 that is now 174 years old, the original owners raised several children.
Their lives, as the St. Rose School fourth- and fifth-graders who toured the Barnhisel House on Friday were about to learn, were quite different from their own.
But that was the point, as the weeklong tours of the house for area school kids finished up. Girard and Liberty intermediate schools toured Monday through Thursday.
“In fourth grade, they have to take Ohio history,” said Ray O’Neill of Vienna, a Barnhisel House docent who was stationed outside the house at his blacksmith forge. “This is one of the better things we do for the community.”
The tours were as efficient as they were informative. Seven groups of kids came through every 20 minutes, stopping in their turn to watch O’Neill at his anvil, pounding molten hooks from small metal rods he’d melted in hot coals.
With him was Ken Miller, who pumped air into an old bellows behind the bed of coals in the portable forge.
“I’m the handyman — the indentured servant,” Miller said.
O’Neill wanted to know if they believed he was going to give the hooks to teachers so they could hang up bad kids on the classroom walls.
They did not.
He told them that when they went inside the house, they were going to have to wash his dirty shirts by hand. If they didn’t believe that, they were disappointed.
Waiting for them in one of the house’s two kitchens, the summer kitchen, were two washtubs of water, a washboard and several clothes baskets. There was also some dirty laundry that included at least one of
O’Neill’s shirts.
Every day of the week was set aside for a different chore, explained museum volunteer Anka Krakora of Girard, and Monday was wash day. The girls were responsible for doing it, but the boys had their responsibilities, too.
“Go get the water from the water pump, and get the logs for the fire to heat it up, all before school starts,” said Krakora.
There were two materials — linen and wool. People would use the same linen napkin all week long, and into the wash it would go on Monday. Socks would be rinsed by hand and put on a wooden sock form. Wool couldn’t be used on a washboard.
Then there was the soap — toxic lye mixed with bacon fat. Shave a few pieces off onto the washboard, and start scrubbing the shirt. But be careful of the buttons. Don’t crack one, because the button man only comes around a few times a month.
In the house’s main kitchen, the children would learn how the Barnhisels lived with no running water or electricity during what was at that time a large farm, said Colette Chuey, vice president of the Girard Historical Society.
They chopped wood for the large black stove, not only for cooking, but to heat water for face-, hand- and dish-washing. They got their water from a pump on the side porch. Mrs. Barnhisel kept two or three irons on the stove for clothes, and the family got ice in the summer from an ice house by the McDonald bridge. Ice was cut from the Mahoning River in the winter and stored there.
The house also has a sewing room, a parlor and upstairs rooms, all appointed with period pieces and furniture, which the kids got to see during their “trip” back to the 19th century.
The public can take that trip as well. From May to December, the Barnhisel House, at 1101 N. State St., is open to the public from 1 to 4 p.m. the second and fourth Sundays of each month.