IF THIS HOUSE COULD TALK - #3

---

Humble Beginnings -- I started out as a two-room house 152 years ago.  Charles, a 32-year-old bachelor, began me, his own house, in April,1873, by having the cellar dug. 

My original structure consisted of a kitchen and a sitting room that also was used for dining and sleeping.  In a full cellar below, Charles stored food over the winter to keep it from perishing and wintered his flower bulbs and some of his potted plants.

Charles and his mother moved in that fall.  Only, it wasn’t just the two of them who lived here at first.  His mother helped with daughter Jane Schmidt’s eight (at the time) children by day and brought several of the younger ones to sleep here under our roof at night.