Granduer Lost

Grandeur Lost

As I made my way back to the Chicken Ranch recently I took a route that led me past a deserted, grand old farm and its mansion. I have watched this place since the late 1970’s The mansion has fascinated me for 30 years. Even in its frightful state, something about this farm site calls out to you.

When I first saw the place, it still bore some resemblance of it’s former glory. The porches were intact. Roofs on the mansion and out buildings had not yet fully succumbed to the neglect. The summer kitchen and ice house, with 10 foot deep cellar, were still in a stable state. But it was obvious no one had lived on this once glorious property for some time. The barns and sheds were all but gone. I pulled off the road and walked up to have a look around.

The place was vacant and deteriorating. I was impressed nevertheless by its spaciousness. Five bedrooms, parlor, great rooms and more. Three floors and approximately four thousand square feet of floor space. Beautiful ornate woodwork, rails and banisters. Incredible fireplace. It even boasted of a southern facing glass sun room. Outside there was one outbuilding that had clearly been a boiler room. This house had had radiant heat throughout! Someone very rich had lived here in the late 19^th century.

In the 1990’s when I saw it now and again, it was in such a state of deterioration that it was nearly time for the bulldozer. It always made me sad to see it. But now in 2012, as I stopped to look at the farm again, it seemed someone had made an effort to at least restore the house. New roof, new windows, (although the sun room is totally gone) and rebuilt back porches. Glorious, abandoned, dilapidated, semi-restored. Now today it had a for sale sign out front. What stories lay within these walls.? What elegance and grandeur had come and gone here? What terrible thing had befallen so magnificent a plantation ? I dialed the number on the realtors sign. Time to investigate.

I discovered that the original house, called Elmwood, was built in 1850 by one Johann H. Wernsing , a German immigrant from a Province of Hanover, Germany. In order to inherit a family estate he had been required to change his name to Marbold, John Marbold. At the behest of his American family members he immigrated to America and bought 200 acres of promising farm ground. He then began to build the estate he would call Elmwood.

John was an excellent business man and eventually built his estate to 4,000 acres of pristine farm ground. After he died, the farm continued to prosper and the family house was enlarged and upgraded in the 1880s by his son, H. H. Marbold. The house was one of the first have electric lighting. H.H. was quite successful, thanks to the profits from the Elmwood Farmstead, cattle trading and shrewd investments. But it seems the family good fortune ended, as did so many others, when the Great Depression hit the United States. .

The house was bought and sold and with each decade faded more. One person bought it, raising hopes of many of the farms admirers that this place would be saved. But the owner only raped it of its beautiful woodwork, fireplace, and more and left the remainder to ruin. A group was formed a few years ago to save what they call “The Marbold Mansion”. But, despite their valiant efforts, not enough money has been raised to fully restore Elmwood. It is for sale, the gutted house on ten acres, for 80,000 dollars. One can only hope that this is not the end of this farms story. Will someone finally invest in it’s restoration. Or is this the last prolonging of an inglorious end to a once glorious farm called Elmwood.