Name/Title
The Cahoon homestead house turns 200 years oldEntry/Object ID
NP.04.01.031Scope and Content
The Cahoon homestead house, Rose Hill Museum, turns 200 years old
Westlake/Bay Village Observer 5 June 2018
The house was built in 181 by Joseph Cahoon and his son, Joel, using a simple carpenter's manual. The house contained four rooms, up and down, with a double-sided lake stone fireplace in the middle of the four rooms down.
The walls were built of strong oak, and the floors of poplar. The stairs wrapped around the fireplace on the north side with steps to the upstairs. The basement, open to the east, housed a large stone fireplace for cooking and processing meats. The walls contained white oak lath sprung between the joists.
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The plaster was horsehair and the green tree plug, heated and pounded into the beams and then allowed to cool, replaced hard-to-find iron nails.
In 1845, Joel, having inherited the farm from his father, brought his family back to Dover Township. He added a south wing which contained a wood-burning stove and keeping room. In 1910, Ida, Laura and Lydia...built a room onto the east end of the house to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Cahoon family arriving in Dover Township.
...Mayor Walter Wright brought to the Cahoon Park Trustees the idea to give $100 to the Paul sisters to organize a library in the farmhouse. In 1921, new Mayor George Morgan asked the sisters, Emma Paul Pope and Olivia Paul Bailey, living in their Cahoon house on the corner of Wolf and Cahoon roads, if they would start a library in the house. Using the Cahoon and Pople book collections, the sisters opened the Dover By The Lake Library.
When Julia Osborn Scott became the librarian and lived upstairs above the library, the staircase was moved to the south wall of the east front room. This remained the Bay village Library until 1960 when the library moved to Dover Center and Wolf roads.
In 1960, the Bay Village Historical Society was organized...Members of the society placed artifacts from their own collections on the shelves and brought in furniture to decorate the rooms.
In 1968, the idea of making it into a museum was broached...architects from Hale Farm were contracted for advice. Windows were changed, doors removed and walls built to produce an easy walking tour on the first floor.
Rose Hill opened in 1975 with mostly Cahoon and Aldrich artifacts...Collection
Cahoon Family Collection, Rose Hill Museum
