September 26, continued.
My last stop on Houston Road was the place where John Wilson had come to build a farm. He and his wife Anna came here in 1807, at a time when there had very few Euro-American neighbors. During the War of 1812 they felt too exposed here and went back south to Piqua, but then returned. Their young son Jesse (born in 1800) was supposed to stay behind for safety when his parents returned to their home place, but he took it upon himself to get away from his caregiver and come back home, too, traveling by himself.
After the war, the Wilsons built the brick house peeking out from behind the machine shed in the photo. During the war the Wilsons and some of their neighbors built a blockhouse here for protection, but never had to use it. This information is all from the 1883 Shelby County history, and was presumably provided by the Wilson family. The farm here was still in the family at the time when the history was written. A son-in-law had bought it.
The home was built near Turkey Creek. At the time I took these photos I didn’t yet appreciate the significance of Turkey Creek as a magnet for the first settlers. That realization came on a bike ride further up the valley a couple of days later.
The house is now being used as a farm outbuilding, it looks like. I believe the style is called Dutch Colonial. The roofline and proportions look similar to that of the house near Piqua that was built by Indian agent John Johnston a few years earlier. Johnston’s house is referred to as Dutch Colonial. (I had visited that house a month earlier, and told about it here.)
An old portrait of the house is reproduced here on a Shelby County history site.
Here’s the googlemap.
