One of my maternal 2nd great-grandfathers was Edward Gottlieb Geyer (1834-1911). He was my maternal grandmother Elsie Almeta Seibel Jordan’s grandfather, through Elsie’s mother Jenny Cecilia Geyer Seibel. Edward Geyer was born in Saxony, Germany and came to the United States at the age of 8 in 1842, when he and his family settled in Sherman Township, Ohio. As a boy, he worked in his father’s tannery, but went into farming at age fourteen. The story was that Edward did so well for himself that he became a large landholder and built a home that stood out amongst county residences. A Huron County biography from the 1890s stated that Edward was …”the owner of 500 acres of land, and one of the finest residences in Huron county, if not the finest, being quite palatial in its design and equipment.”
An article in the Bellevue Gazette of October 1880 offered a very detailed description of the house, down to individual rooms and construction costs.
“Edward Geyer, living six or seven miles south of town, in Sherman tp., has just erected a dwelling house on his large farm, which for magnificence, elegance and comfort is not excelled in Huron county. One can judge of its dimensions when we say that upwards of two hundred thousand brick were used in its construction. It is three stories in height with the mansard roof, and no pains have been spared in the erection of the building to have it first-class in every respect. The window caps are of fine cut stone and the workmanship everywhere shows labor of skilled hands. A large and commodious hall runs through the center of the building on the first-floor, leaving two magnificent front parlors, one on each side of the hall. In the rear of the east parlor is a large dining room and back of this is the kitchen and other rooms.”
The basement contained a number of storage rooms off a center hallway, including a “milk room” which took advantage of cooler temperatures below ground to store milk and dairy products like butter. There was also a “heating apparatus” that sent warm air to the upper stories using “air chambers running up through the building”.
Near the kitchen was a room to be used for storage of wood. Above that was a bedroom that “Mr. Geyer says he intends for tramps, as it is entirely disconnected from the main building excepting the entrance through the kitchen door”. From what my mother told me, the Geyers did use that room for men who stopped by for something to eat or a place to sleep (an unusual gesture in this day and age).
The newspaper article concluded with the information that the house had already cost $13,000, and would require two or three thousand more to put on the “finishing touches”. The writer stated that Edward Geyer had a home to be proud of, that displayed “good taste in its arrangement, for the convenience and comfort everywhere about the building”.
What happened to the Geyer mansion since? Edward Geyer died in 1911, and his wife Eliza Sourwine Geyer died in 1920 after leaving the house to live with one of her married daughters. During that decade a number of lawsuits were brought by the various daughters, all fighting over their father’s substantial estate, even though his wishes were clearly stated in his will. But that’s another blog post in itself. In a legal action of 1918 that questioned Eliza’s competence to oversee her husband’s estate, it was alleged that the farm was already in “a run down condition, the buildings in great need of repair and the timber on the farm is going to decay and being wasted”.
In a 1942 write up in the Norwalk Reflector, it was reported that although the house was probably still the largest home in the county (“into its basement … a team of horses and a wagon could be driven”), the house was falling into ruin with many broken windows. Happily, as of an online photo taken in 2019, the house and grounds look inhabited and beautifully well kept. Many thanks to whomever is taking such good care of the Geyer mansion.
Sources
- Commemorative biographical record of the counties of Huron and Lorain, Ohio, J. H. Beers and Co., 1894 – biography of Edward Geyer
- Researching Food History, Milk Cellars in 1840s Delaware and 1870s NC, 2018
- Flickr, Edward Geyer House — Sherman Township, Huron County, Ohio, photo taken May 9, 2019 by Christopher Riley
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