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Loghurst farm museum event showcases the 1805 home
By Sean Barron
CANFIELD
If you need a slow-paced, laid-back break from holiday shopping and bustle, and your Christmas mood extends to seeing a blacksmith at work, enjoying decorative quilting and partaking of a taste of local history, you might do well to include a 210-year-old historic home on your itinerary.
“This was also a stop on the Underground Railroad,” Ann Kurz explained Saturday, referring to the Loghurst Farm Museum, which was built in 1805 and was home to several prominent Mahoning Valley families, including Jacob and Nancy Barnes, who were abolitionists.
Kurz was conducting tours of the historic three-story home, which also has been decorated for the holidays. The tours are a major part of the first Old Traditions, New Dimensions gathering at the farm, 3967 Boardman-Canfield Road.
The two-day event, which kicked off Saturday and continues from 1 to 5 p.m. today, is a Christmas-themed gathering that features blacksmith demonstrations, quilting and tours of the house, which the Western Reserve Historical Society owns.
The gathering also is to showcase the home to a greater number of people, Kurz noted. She added that the Canfield Heritage Foundation, which operates the home, has plans that include adding a visitors’ center, an orchard and a garden containing native plants.
On Saturday, several attendees enjoyed demonstrations given by Robert H. Kurz of Canfield, a 40-year blacksmith and Ann’s husband.
“It’s a crowd-pleaser,” Robert said about his outdoor blacksmith demonstrations with a forge and an anvil.
Kurz spent much of the time heating horseshoes made from low-carbon scrap and other types of steel in a forge. Then he stamped the horseshoes with people’s names.
Kurz recalled having learned a few tricks of the trade on the back of a pickup truck before he began an apprenticeship and eight-year career with the former Republic Steel in the 1970s. His abilities accelerated when he became part of the Artist-Blacksmith’s Association of North America, he explained.
“When I joined ABANA, that’s when things really took off,” said Kurz, who works for Forged Accents in Canton.
The Christmas gathering also features numerous examples of his blacksmith work that sell for $4 to $250. They include steel railroad spikes and knives, hooks, a replica of a large salmon, candlesticks and holders, fireplace sets, key chains for $5 apiece and cattail motifs.
In 1999, Kurz was a recipient of the Great Britain-based Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths Viscount Tonypandy Award, which he received for having designed a flora-or-fauna motif, based on Shakespeare’s works, that is part of the front gate to the redesigned Globe Theatre in London. The theater is associated with Shakespeare and was built in 1599.
Also part of Saturday’s festivities were quilting demonstrations, courtesy of Clare Neff, who owns Canfield-based Village Quilts. She had a variety of colorful quilts on hand, a few of which were for sale.
Neff’s husband, Bruce, who serves on the Canfield Heritage Foundation’s Board of Directors, is a descendent of Conrad Naff, who built the Loghurst House. The home is said to be the oldest surviving log house in the Western Reserve of Ohio.
The Naff family later changed the spelling of its name to “Neff.”