Jacob Suiter's House in Ohio

I got an email from a distant cousin who found mention of Jacob Suiter on this blog and had some questions about the house he built in Chesapeake, Ohio. That sent me to a box of genealogical material that my dad's sister gave me some years back. I retrieved two old articles that mentioned the house; one from a 1984 Suiter Family Newsletter (Issue #2) and the other a 1925 newspaper article, part of which you see here. It was in the Herald Dispatch of Huntington, West Virginia, dated September 27, 1925.

Log House Built 100 Years Ago is Now Modern Home
Conveniences of Present Day Replace Pioneer Equipment in Old Egerton Home
House was Erected by Jacob Suiter in 1825
Historic Chesapeake Property Has Been in Possession of Egertons Sixty Years

The other source estimates that the home was built in 1808. The above article admits that the 1825 date is not exact; it is based on the recollection of one William Eaton, who attended the log raising of the house as a child. Also, the abstract [of title] "shows that the original grant was recorded in 1825."

The newspaper article by Wiatt Smith begins with a fanciful account of the "log raising" (a term synonymous with house raising, a pioneer custom of neighbors getting together and erecting the frame of a log home in a day). Smith wrote:

One hundred years ago in the year 1825, the date and even the season having now been forgotten, Jacob Suiter had a house raising at his place on the Ohio River, approximately a mile above Symmes Creek in Lawrence County Ohio. Came his neighbors from miles around the sparsely settled country — not only from Ohio but from the farms and villages on the Virginia side, to help him swing the hewn-oak logs and heavy beams into place. How merriment and toil intermingled and how bravely the laborers ate of the dinner spread by the women can only be imagined now....

Smith then describes an imagined meal of venison and other game. He goes on to state that the structure still stands firm and solid. He then tells of improvements made over the years: new woodwork, plaster walls, a telephone... (remember he wrote this in 1925).

And at the door stands the high powered sedan, ready at the will of the tenant to whisk her to the ferry and over into Huntington. The present tenant is one of the owners, Mrs. Elizabeth Egerton Shaw, until recently a resident of Huntington. For 60 years the house and the big acreage to which it is attached has been known as the Egerton property. It was long the seat of the well known Egerton family, of which the late Judge C. B. Egerton was the head and which has since been prominent both in Huntington and Ironton.

An abstract of the title shows that from Jacob Suiter, the builder of the house, the property passed to Israel Suiter, who in turn conveyed it to Martin Frampton...

Certain small sections of the land have been sold... one of the tracts disposed is now the site of the Chesapeake Hight School, which stands just a little above the new old home of Mrs. Shaw. Tradition says that Jacob Suiter, the stout old Pennsylvania Dutchman who built the house and who held patent to the land from the United States government, planted an orchard in the field which included the present site of the school building.

See all my Jacob Suiter posts.
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