The Doty Homestead

The Doty Homestead was a family farm for 125 years until it became part of the developing Hueston Woods State Park in the mid-1950's. As Acton Lake was being created the Ohio Division of Parks and Recreation renovated the old brick farmhouse for use as a park office. The house was made available to the Oxford Museum Association through a state lease and, in 1959, the Association opened it to the public.

The present site has a fascinating history. Only a few years after Indians hunted and camped in the area, this tract first was bought by William Pack of Hamilton, Ohio, at the original sale of land parcels by the trustees of Miami University on May 23, 181 0. Pack sold it to Gabriel Hutchins in 1814. When Hutchins in turn sold it to Joseph Morris in 1832, no structures had been built on the land.

Morris soon started his home, but construction progressed slowly. The house was to be of brick fashioned from clay dug and baked on the site. Inexperienced builders generally waited until itinerant brick makers arrived with their wooden molds to produce the bricks. Local legend says that until the house became available, Morris lived in the "cave" which eventually became the root cellar at the northwest corner of the house. Early construction included the well and the brick privy still to be seen just north of the house, plus a woodshed and smokehouse, now gone, along a path to the barn.

In 1837 depression struck southern Ohio and the nation. Morris had borrowed money from Wales Bonney of Oxford and was in debt also to James Ratliff, an Oxford merchant. In lean years, he couldn't repay. In 1842 the Morris farm passed to Bonney and Ratliff at a collector's sale. In the spring of1844 they sold it to Samuel Doty. Soon the neighborhood became known as the Doty Community - from the Doty Homestead south a quarter mile to Doty School, with the Doty Road leading west from the farmhouse to Todd Road. For nearly half a century the Doty family kindled fires in the four chimney hearths. Jesse Doty inherited the farm on the death of his father in 1859. In 1890 Mary Doty transferred the house and land toCarolton Paris. He owned the property for 22 years, selling it to George Van Ausdall. In 1950, the State of Ohio as part of the recreation area purchased it from Van Ausdall, which was to become Hueston Woods State Park.

Over the years, the Museum Association and the Park administration have cooperated in the kind of repairs, which might be expected for any house in its second century. The museum house got a new shake roof and new wooden gutters. Oak flooring was replaced, with some joist repairs. Shutters were added and some new windows and doors were installed. For these and other improvements, the Park often provided manpower or materials. Continuing maintenance and renovation costs are paid for from Association funds raised through visitor donations and through proceeds from a variety of annual fund raising events.





The Pioneer Barn

The present barn is not an original fixture of the Doty Homestead, but it is an authentic representation of the period. A big red barn was on the property when the Ohio Department of Parks and Recreation turned the Doty Homestead over to the Oxford Museum Association. Through the generosity of many friends who searched out their own barns and storage spaces, that barn became filled with relics of frontier country life. The Oxford Museum Association even had expanded it by building an addition to accommodate farm machinery of the early 1900's. The old barn was a collection of collections, including: aged carpentry tools, most of a blacksmith shop, harness, some buggies and wagons, and numerous plows. The collection also contained, Indian relics, several guns and swords, a tractor, a threshing machine, even such curiosities as a hollow-log grain bin, a doll carriage, a cream separator, and a quaint shower stall
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On the night of July 11, 1980, a biker raced to a nearby farmhouse to report that the museum barn was aflame. Before equipment could arrive from the park and from town, the barn was gone. So was everything in it except a few iron articles and most of them were hopelessly twisted...useless, no longer authentic examples of anything except the effects of intense heat. Conversations about ways to replace the museum barn were begun almost immediately and the decision evolved to move another pioneer barn to the site, if possible, rather than construct a new barn.

The present barn is a relocated structure believed to be of 1840's vintage. The Parks and Recreation Division of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources offered the Museum Association its pick of old barns scheduled for destruction at the undeveloped Sycamore State Park tract near Trotwood, Ohio. The barn selected was dismantled, its members tagged, and reassembled here, with such modifications as would be necessary to serve museum display purposes. lt demonstrates the old-time method of fitting hand- hewn timbers with mortise-and-tenon joints, all handmade and secured with the wooden pegs called trunnels, as in "tree nails".
When this barn was built, the builders used whatever wood was at hand in forests including beech, oak, cherry, ash, hickory, walnut and poplar. Consequently, It was reasoned that the barn restoration also could use whatever was at hand. Some wood came from timber felled in clearing a valley to create Acton Lake and stored by the Hueston Woods Park for some thirty years. The new barn exhibits some cherry framing and some beautiful walnut in the lower-level doors, which are replacements, and in the stairway, a modern concession to museum visitors.

The structure is known as a "Pennsylvania Barn", also called a "bank barn" because of the earthen ramp providing second-level access for wagons and other farm equipment. It was a dairy barn through most of its life. Veteran farmers have been quick to suggest that the barn has been set a quarter-turn out of phase; it should be facing south, giving the warmest exposure to the overhang and stall doors.

The Pioneer Barn is owned by the State of Ohio but managed under lease by the Oxford Museum Association. The Hueston Woods Park and the Oxford Museum Association share maintenance responsibility.