The Nash House Museum – on East William Street

The NASH HOUSE MUSEUM, a historic home located at 157 E. William Street (lot # 635 old lot #18) was built for Thomas and Mina Slattery in 1878.

The Nash House Today – A Historic Home

The Nash House remains much the same as it was when the young Slattery family first lived here in 1878. There have been the obvious electrical, heating and plumbing upgrades over the years, but the “bones” of the house remain original. The front porch was added after 1916 and a bathroom addition and a kitchen remodel were completed in the 1930’s. The house does show signs of normal wear and tear. If you look closely, you can see the scars in the doorways made by Linnie Nash’s wheelchair (Linnie was left an invalid after a severe bout with scarlet fever). The Nash House is furnished with period pieces and accessories donated to the Historical Society by Delaware County families. These furnishings and the reproduction wall paper make the house a showcase of the Victorian period.

History of Slattery / Nash Families

Thomas worked as a clerk for the railroad and Mina was a seamstress. The young couple moved into their new seven room brick Italianate home in 1878 with their two year old daughter Minnie Angeline. The following year their son William Henry was born and two years later they had another son, John Thomas. The house must have been a lively place with a young family with three children under the age of five! In 1882 Mina gave birth to her fourth child, a daughter, Sarah Mariah. Sadly, two weeks later Mina died. Baby Sarah lived for seventeen days. The funerals took place in the parlor of the house. Heartbroken, Thomas Slattery sold the house (for $2800). The next year his two year old son, John Thomas, died. Thomas Slattery died one year later of consumption, leaving his two young children, Minnie and Willie parentless. The children grew up with their grandparents, John and Mary Slattery in Lewis Center. Willie eventually moved to Kansas and Minnie married Robert Parker. Many people in Delaware remember Dr. George Parker, a well loved Delaware physician who died in 1996. He was one of ten children of Minnie and Robert Parker. In 1885 William Henry Nash acquired the house at 157 E. William for $2400. Henry Nash worked, as so many people in Delaware did, for the railroad. Henry and Emiline Nash had five children: Frank, Charles, Linnie, Eugene and Dora, ages 11 to 22. The Nash House must have been a very busy household! Frank, the eldest child also worked for the railroad. He was killed at Springfield, OH when a huge icicle fell from a water tank stabbing him in the chest. He died instantly. His funeral was also held in the parlor of the Nash House. He left a wife and a seven month old daughter. After the deaths of Henry and Emiline, the house passed to Eugene Nash and his wife Lois. Eugene Nash was a grocer and a well known active Delaware citizen. Lois was a well known seamstress. They had one child, a daughter Pauline who was recognized for her weaving and quilting skills. Her grade school water colors are displayed throughout the house. Pauline was active with the Red Cross. After the death of her parents, Pauline Nash donated her family home and many family artifacts to The Delaware County Historical Society. Although Pauline had never married or had children, she loved children and hoped her family home could be used for educational purposes. The Nash family had lived in the house for nearly 70 years.

• Sundays  & Wednesdays by appointment only
• Make appointments:
  • by Email librarian@delawareohiohistory.org
  • by Phone 740-369-3831 ext. 2

CLICK HERE to get directions

The Meeker Homestead Museum

The Meeker Homestead Museum is a museum in a house that is located at 2690 Stratford Road. The Forrest Meeker House is one of the oldest, built in 1823, and is a prominent historic homestead in Delaware County. This historic home has been transformed into a fine educational museum of the early settlement of the Ohio country.

The Forrest Meeker Farm, including the 1823 house and 1848 barn, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Delaware County Historical Society is proud to share this wonderful piece of our heritage with the community.

About The Museum

• Open to the Public
• Free Admission (suggested donation $5)
• Free Parking

The Meeker Homestead Museum is Open

• Open to the Public: the 1st Sunday of each Month from 1pm to 4pm
• Also by Appointment
  
• Make appointments:
  • by Email meekermuseum@delawareohiohistory.org
  • by Phone 740-369-3831 ext. 3

Current Museum Exhibits

The Garth Oberlander/The Barn at Stratford

The Garth Oberlander / Barn at Stratford was built in 1848 and is located at 2690 Stratford Road and it has a rich history including Garth’s Auctions for decades. It is now The Barn at Stratford a historic barn event venue.

A storytelling video of the barn

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNvEwE7RmWg[/embedyt]

Features of The Barn

• This historic barn is a Pennsylvania style bank barn
• The barn is a stone-end barn
• The foundation is of local stones
• The framing is of hand-hewn beams. You can still see the nails and notches of the horse stalls in the barn’s lower level.

History of the Barn

Forrest Meeker left Vermont in 1797, tried settling in in Pennsylvania, Southern Ohio, and Kentucky before buying 624 partially-cleared acres along the Olentangy River, including a wooden grist mill on the river, from John Beard in 1811.  The original log house he likely built for his family has disappeared from the landscape, and the early years of settlement were surely complicated by the War of 1812-14, when American forces used the road along the Olentangy as a major supply route for the effort to defeat the British at Lake Erie.  Colonel Meeker served as a private during the war, and with profits from supplying the army with provisions from the day and night operations of his mill, he was able to build a fine brick home in 1823. He added the west wing to the rear of the house several years later as the family grew.  The milling operation on the river also grew, as did the settlement of the Stratford and Delaware areas and, in 1829, Meeker added facilities for the carding and fulling of wool from surrounding sheep farms.  In 1838, the mill was sold to Judge Hosea Williams and Caleb Howard, who established a paper mill on the river.

George Bieber builds the Barn

Colonel Meeker died in 1845, and the entire 624 acre farm was acquired by George Bieber, a neighboring farmer, and in 1848 he built the fine stone-end barn we see today, as well as a similar barn he built a half mile to the north.  Bieber died in 1855, and the property went through several splits and changes in ownership among his heirs and others until the homestead was acquired by the A. C. Miller Co. (which later became Union Fork and Hoe, Inc.) in 1920.

Garth Oberlander Barn and Garth’s Auctions

Records show that the homestead was operated as a farm by tenants until Garth Oberlander, a recent Ohio Wesleyan University graduate, bought the property in 1941, farmed it for several years, and began his antique business, Garth’s Antique Auction, in the 1950s. Tom and Carolyn Porter joined the firm in the 1960s, were mentored by Oberlander, eventually took over and expanded the antique auction business in the 1970s, and raised their family in the Meeker House, as Oberlander had done before them. When the Porters retired in the early 2000s, the auction business continued under the ownership of Jeff and Amelia Jeffers, and remains a nationally known antique auction house. In 2010 the Porters, who had retained ownership of the real estate, sold the corner to Turkey Hill, and donated the remainder, with all of the historic buildings, to the Delaware County Historical Society.

Garth Oberlander Barn becomes The Barn at Stratford

This historic property and 1848 barn have been transformed into The Barn at Stratford, a Historic Barn Event Venue.  The Delaware County Historical Society operates The Barn at Stratford to make it available to the community and to generate the funds needed to restore, maintain, and improve this magnificent piece of Delaware County History.  The barn and grounds are available for weddings, special occasions, business or corporate events, or community events.