2. A Suitable Arrangement

Eli is one of those people who fill the room when they enter it. His beard bounces jovially against his chest when he laughs, and his eyes sparkle with mischief behind his glasses. He has a habit of tugging on his suspenders when he brings up a big idea, of which he has many.

Eli is Amish, well-known and highly respected in both the Amish and English communities. A serial entrepreneur, he began buying up the old homes along Winesburg's Main Street years ago and restoring them to their former splendor. His cabinet shop is pristine, the showroom full of exceptionally crafted samples set among the wide hand-scraped logs that form the walls. This building is just one of many that were originally built using large logs but covered up with siding to keep up with the trends of the times. Eli tells me that logs were a marker of poverty at one time, and most people went to great lengths to conceal them.

The only reason Eli and I were introduced was because I bought a historic property in Winesburg from my parents in early 2021. The Stone Cottage Inn, circa 1834, was an eyesore when my husband Tim and I were growing up in the area in the 1980s and early 1990s. At some point in the nineties a woman with a grand vision, Pauline Fair Kasserman, renovated the stone cottage with precise historical accuracy. Far from the mint-green vinyl siding it used to sport when we were young, it now draws visitors from near and far with its unique charm. It's turned out to be the ideal home base for our family—kids and dogs alike—when we come to visit our parents and siblings and their families, as we are based in Texas these days.

Pauline handled the Stone Cottage Inn's restoration with exquisite attention to detail. Ownership passed initially to my sister and brother-in-law, who own one of the other three stone houses in Winesburg, then to my parents, and on to us. My parents turned the basement garage into additional living space but, aside from that, Pauline's transformation of the Cottage back to its former glory remains intact. She passed away a few years ago, and a banker's box full of paint samples, room layouts, and construction receipts (she kept them all) made its way to us after her estate was auctioned off.

Even though I have not lived in Ohio for more than 20 years, I suppose it was a combination of the fact that Tim and I both were born and raised in that tight-knit community and the way we have handled the Stone Cottage Inn since purchasing it that built trust and credibility with Eli. Ohio's Amish country is wary of outsiders, but both my mom and Tim's dad had businesses in Berlin. Tim's family ran one of the longest-lasting wool mills in the country, Rastetter Woolen Mill, up until the mid-1990s when it was sold. My mom still runs the business she started almost 40 years ago, which now goes by Plaid Sheep Company.

When the elderly woman in her 90s who was living in the former Winesburg Provision passed on, her family approached Eli to buy it from them. He did, contents and all, to prevent it from being torn down. He suspected it had great bones, like so many other structures in town. Eli is in his sixties and, as he told me, his wife is tired of his renovation shenanigans. And so, he needed to turn it over to someone else who would oversee the transformation from the "Pink Elephant", as it's commonly referred to now, back to its former self. The Pink Elephant got its nickname from its crumbling pink-hued wooden facade with layers of baked and rotting paint.

I may yet come to regret this decision, but every ounce of me wanted that house as soon as I saw the first photo. My mom texted it to me with the note that she was approached by her neighbor, the lawyer handling the estate. He thought she might want it in the family, seeing as the Stone Cottage Inn is just a few doors down. That's the way things work in Holmes County, Ohio. It's an antiquated form of telephone, with the latest news passed from ear to ear. Just like that thoughtful neighbor who snapped up that banker's box full of history from the Stone Cottage Inn, people watch out for one another. It's one of the best things about the area, and hard to replicate to that extent elsewhere.

In the end, it was her bones that sold us. I bought it from Eli, who made sure to put in our contract that we would restore it, not tear it down. Once we laid eyes upon the first giant hand-hewn beam inside, well before we bought it, erasing that kind of handiwork by tearing it all out was never going to be an option. In the next installment of this story, we'll show you what it was like when we first stepped foot inside that creaky storm door. And, we'll start to bring out some of the treasures and historical gems we found once we started sifting through the contents.

Thanks for joining us on this ride.
~Julie