Audwoman
March 21st, 2007, 07:55 PM
It is Old.....:lol: The realtor thinks I will love this one I am going tomorrow to check it out.
Boy does this one have some history. Also, I want to know if old Ryan is buried under the house. Read paragraph #4 :blush:
Sorry it is so long but it is interesting. I have never known the history of a house I have purchased.
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James Ryan was about two years shy of 60 when he applied to purchase land in Western Pennsylvania in 1785. When the patent was issued 22 years later, he became the first owner of a 256-acre tract he called Peleponesus.
The name was an odd choice for an Irish immigrant, whose land was surrounded by tracts with obvious monikers like "Hamilton's Choice" and "Martinsville." Maybe it was Peleponesus' hilly topography, not unlike the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece.
What is known is that Mr. Ryan cleared the land on one of the hilltops and built a log house. In 1820, eight years after his death, the log house was replaced by a brick house as the family grew and prospered. Bricks from that dwelling were used to build the existing Ryan homestead, a remarkable 19th-century survivor amid the bungalows, ranches and 1950s Colonials of suburban.
In his will, recorded in 1812, Mr. Ryan requested that his body -- "the house of clay wherein my soul inhabiteth" -- be buried "on my own Plantation in a plain decent, but becoming manner, and in so doing to avoid unnecessary expense."
From father to son He left his estate to his second son, Ambrose; cash bequests to his other children; and a 6-month-old "horse Colt" to Ambrose's first son, James.
In 1838, 112 acres of the Peleponesus tract were divided evenly between James and his brother Ambrose. The present brick house, it has long been thought, was erected by Ambrose around the same time. But Ambrose was only about 9 in 1838. If he built the house, it likely had a later construction date, probably the mid- to late 1840s. Ambrose died young, at 18 or 19 in 1848, leaving a widow and a 1-year-old son, also named Ambrose.
This Ambrose inherited his father's estate and became a farmer and the husband of Mary Jane Bigley, with whom he had nine children. Their daughter Elvira inherited the house and passed it to her daughter, Olive Mary Toy. She passed it to her daughter, Mary Jane McIlrath, who moved in with her husband, Kingsley Evarts, in the early 1970s.
By that time the house, occupied continuously by Ryan descendants, was in need of updating. The Evartses enthusiastically embraced a renovation in 1978, with an eye to creating a comfortable, high-style home rather than authentically restoring what had been a somewhat modest house. They removed horsehair plaster and lath and stripped walls to the studs; they rewired, replumbed, installed wide-plank oak floors and cast-stone mantels. They added storms and screens to the six-over-six windows, many of which still have the old glass.
They decorated with wallpaper and with matching draperies and valences made by Mrs. Evarts, and in the living room used molding to create the look of paneled walls. They put in a modern kitchen with its own brick fireplace, and converted the upstairs nursery to a large, second bathroom.
Maintaining the original Greek Revival-style entrance with sidelights and transom, the Evartses installed a new front door and broken-pediment surround, and they built a brick terrace off the entrance, all of which gave the house a grander appearance from the outside, too.
Greenhouse and garden
To the attached two-car garage they added a small greenhouse, where Mr. Evarts wintered over his many bonsai trees. The greenhouse and the garden were the special province of Mr. Evarts, who introduced a variety of specimen trees and shrubs on Peleponesus' lush, surviving 3/4-acre landscape. He designed the boxwood parterre centered on the front door and grew espaliered pear trees against the house, on trellises flanking the door.
A boxwood parterre, meticulously groomed, creates a formal garden in front of the mid-19th-century Ryan homestead, situated on a 3/4-acre lot that once was part of the 256-acre Peleponesus patent..
Boy does this one have some history. Also, I want to know if old Ryan is buried under the house. Read paragraph #4 :blush:
Sorry it is so long but it is interesting. I have never known the history of a house I have purchased.
---------------------------------------------------------------
James Ryan was about two years shy of 60 when he applied to purchase land in Western Pennsylvania in 1785. When the patent was issued 22 years later, he became the first owner of a 256-acre tract he called Peleponesus.
The name was an odd choice for an Irish immigrant, whose land was surrounded by tracts with obvious monikers like "Hamilton's Choice" and "Martinsville." Maybe it was Peleponesus' hilly topography, not unlike the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece.
What is known is that Mr. Ryan cleared the land on one of the hilltops and built a log house. In 1820, eight years after his death, the log house was replaced by a brick house as the family grew and prospered. Bricks from that dwelling were used to build the existing Ryan homestead, a remarkable 19th-century survivor amid the bungalows, ranches and 1950s Colonials of suburban.
In his will, recorded in 1812, Mr. Ryan requested that his body -- "the house of clay wherein my soul inhabiteth" -- be buried "on my own Plantation in a plain decent, but becoming manner, and in so doing to avoid unnecessary expense."
From father to son He left his estate to his second son, Ambrose; cash bequests to his other children; and a 6-month-old "horse Colt" to Ambrose's first son, James.
In 1838, 112 acres of the Peleponesus tract were divided evenly between James and his brother Ambrose. The present brick house, it has long been thought, was erected by Ambrose around the same time. But Ambrose was only about 9 in 1838. If he built the house, it likely had a later construction date, probably the mid- to late 1840s. Ambrose died young, at 18 or 19 in 1848, leaving a widow and a 1-year-old son, also named Ambrose.
This Ambrose inherited his father's estate and became a farmer and the husband of Mary Jane Bigley, with whom he had nine children. Their daughter Elvira inherited the house and passed it to her daughter, Olive Mary Toy. She passed it to her daughter, Mary Jane McIlrath, who moved in with her husband, Kingsley Evarts, in the early 1970s.
By that time the house, occupied continuously by Ryan descendants, was in need of updating. The Evartses enthusiastically embraced a renovation in 1978, with an eye to creating a comfortable, high-style home rather than authentically restoring what had been a somewhat modest house. They removed horsehair plaster and lath and stripped walls to the studs; they rewired, replumbed, installed wide-plank oak floors and cast-stone mantels. They added storms and screens to the six-over-six windows, many of which still have the old glass.
They decorated with wallpaper and with matching draperies and valences made by Mrs. Evarts, and in the living room used molding to create the look of paneled walls. They put in a modern kitchen with its own brick fireplace, and converted the upstairs nursery to a large, second bathroom.
Maintaining the original Greek Revival-style entrance with sidelights and transom, the Evartses installed a new front door and broken-pediment surround, and they built a brick terrace off the entrance, all of which gave the house a grander appearance from the outside, too.
Greenhouse and garden
To the attached two-car garage they added a small greenhouse, where Mr. Evarts wintered over his many bonsai trees. The greenhouse and the garden were the special province of Mr. Evarts, who introduced a variety of specimen trees and shrubs on Peleponesus' lush, surviving 3/4-acre landscape. He designed the boxwood parterre centered on the front door and grew espaliered pear trees against the house, on trellises flanking the door.
A boxwood parterre, meticulously groomed, creates a formal garden in front of the mid-19th-century Ryan homestead, situated on a 3/4-acre lot that once was part of the 256-acre Peleponesus patent..