The Oviatt Farmhouse

The Oviatt farmhouse - aka Julia Crowell Camp Manager House - was built in 1836.  The saw mill on site was built in 1833. 

- per Medina County tax records and Ohio Historical Society Archives, Columbus, Ohio

The following information comes from the Oviatt family chronology compiled by Leah & Lynn Krulik, which is in several volumes of binders in the Richfield Historical Society.  The stories are recollections of assorted granddaughters of Mason & Fanny Oviatt.

The caretaker's house on the Crowell side has been there since the early half of the 1800's.  Its first family was Mason and Fanny Oviatt and their eleven children: Salmon, Sarah, Amanda, Fanny, Miles, Electa (who died young), Mason, Seth, Electa Adelia, Helen, and Chloe. 

Mason was born in 1809 in Connecticut.  His grandfather, Benjamin Oviatt, had been a Minuteman in the Revolutionary War, and so was entitled to land in Connecticut's Western Reserve.  But it was Mason's uncle, Herman Oviatt, who actually claimed land from the entitlement.  He arrived in Ohio in the late 1790's with other prospective farmers to develop the townships of Hudson, Boston MIlls, and Richfield.

Mason married Fanny Abia Carter, also from Connecticut.  "Fanny taught school where the Bath school now stands.  It was a log house of one room and stood right on the road at the corner.  She taught for twenty five cents a month for ten months a year.  She boarded around two weeks to a pupil...  She was her own janitoress, cleaning the schoolroom each night and caring for the fire.  The school directors furnished the wood.  Wherever she went, she took her flax wheel with her.  It was with money earned from her spinning that she bought her clothes and other incidentals.  The school directors called on her to claim her earnings from this source.  Grandma drew herself up in indignation and told them what she did after four o'clock in the afternoon and before nine in the morning was her business.  This was considered a very brave thing to do.  Jennie [the granddaughter telling the story] asked her what the directors did then.  Grandmother twinkled and said, 'They drew their hands down over their noses and left.'  That winter her father's oxen died and she took the money earned from her spinning and bought him a new yoke of oxen.

"John Brown, the famous abolitionist, lived in three different houses in Richfield.  The first home was in the vicinity of Fountain Rd or Boston Mills Rd as it's now called.  It was there that four of his children fell ill with diptheria, a potentially fatal bacterial infection. Sophie Sheldon, a neighbor to the Brown family who had helped to nurse the children, became worn out.  A buggy pulled up to the front door and Fanny Oviatt stepped out. 

" 'Go away, Aunt Fanny. You can't come in here. It's a house of death. '

" 'Of course I can,' Fanny replied.  'You don't suppose I am afraid of sickness, do you?  How is the little boy?'

" 'Dead.  Dead, I tell you!  And Sarah doesn't know us anymore when we talk to her.  Go home before your children get it too.'

" 'Sophie, your father is waiting for you outside and you are to go home with him.  When you get there, take off your clothes in the woodshed and burn them, every one.  Then wash yourself all over with lots of soft soap and water before you go into the house.  You'll not get it or give it to anyone else'.

"Fanny turned to Mrs Brown and said, 'My husband Mason didn't want me to come but I said to him, "Mason Oviatt, what would you think if it was our children sick and no one to help?".  He was ashamed of himself then and said of course I should come.'  Later, two children, Austen and Peter, lay dead.  And the third, Sarah, which she cared for, died during the night.  They were buried the next day in one grave beside their brother Charles, who had died ten days before. They are buried in the East Richfield cemetery. Due to the precautions taken by Fanny, none of her eleven children contracted the deadly disease."

According to the first Wikipedia entry on John Brown, four of his children died of dysentery in 1843. The dates match up with the time the Brown family lived in Richfield.  In 1843, Fanny was 33 years old.

John Brown worked for Herman Oviatt.  But there is a story that it was Mason who picked up some escaping slaves at John Brown's house and smuggled them to Oberlin in the bottom of a hay wagon.

Mason eventually went out to California during the gold rush, but died there in the summer of 1850. 

Fanny lived on until 1886. She passed away on Halloween night and is buried next to Mason and some of their children in the Richfield cemetery

The following information was gathered from the Summit County recorder's office. The recorder's office keeps track of property ownership.

In 1853, the title for the house and the farm passed from Mason Oviatt's estate into Fanny's possession.  A year later, in 1854, Fanny signed the title over to Uri Oviatt, Mason's brother who owned the adjacent land.  But taxes continued to be paid under Mason's name until 1870.  It's not clear why Fanny signed the house over to her brother in law.  Other women at the time bought and held property in their own right.

Whatever the reason, Uri could have used his legal possession of the land for his own advantage.  There is no further record of the land changing hands until 1919, when Raymond and Mamie Oviatt sold the farm to the Kirbys.

So who was Raymond Oviatt?  Technically the land belonged to Uri, so he could have bequeathed it to his heirs.  But instead, the land went to the first son of Miles and Fanny's surviving son, Miles. Ray and Mamie did not sell out under duress, according to their grandson, also named Raymond (Raymond Oviatt, Sr., 2010).  They just wanted a more modern house closer in to town. 

When the Kirbys built a new house, the old Oviatt house was used for the caretaker of their estate.

Early Summit county tax records are housed at the University of Akron's special collections.  Prior to 1840, the land was part of Medina County.  Tax records are stored on microfilm at the Ohio Historiocal Society in Columbus.

Tax records show that the house was finished in 1836. There was also a sawmill on the property which was first partially shared with Mason's brother Erastus.

Consultation with Dr. Al Lee, archeologist, spring 2010

According to Dr Lee, the house is an example of early Greek revival style architecture.  Notice the "shotgun" window in the back of the second floor.