I love the old houses and the stories they can tell about the past.
I have always wanted to live in an old house and learn its history, but so far I have not fulfilled this dream. My house was built by my parents in the 80’s, and they built my grandfather’s houses in the 50’s. These homes have a history now too to be sure, but it’s not like a Queen Anne style house, a colonial, federal, gothic or Italianate structure. Despite this, most of us are not fortunate enough to live in a high-fashion example of an earlier trend in architecture.
After watching a lot of HGTV, I’m not sure many would like it either. Most of us live in slang patterns that remind us of those patterns and that’s a cool thing too.
My wife and I take great pride in defining vernacular architecture, and it has kind of become a game for us. As we travel, we often point to old houses and buildings and see who is the first to identify the correct style. And if we don’t agree, we can defend our different platforms. Driving slowly and looking around buildings can potentially be dangerous for other drivers, so we thought we’d get a bumper sticker with it written on it. “It will brake for architecture.” Let’s just say I’m very fortunate to have a wife and a life mate who share strange and similar interests in history.
It is correct to say that we have lost more than a few unique buildings in our area. There are fewer left that can be identified as stunning examples of certain types of architecture. And when you find one that still stands, it’s exciting. Looking into downtown Steubenville, many stately homes from the early 19th century are long gone. One of the things that I came across a lot in my research that played such an important role in the early history of our town was that it was built by our town’s founder, Bezalel Wells, and named The Grove.
The Grove was a stately, Federal-style brick home on a large plot at the south end of Steubenville. Today the site is located south of the intersection of Slack Street and South High, very close to the disused Weirton steel office, and east of the intersection of South Third Street with State Road 7. And when Bezaleel began building his house in 1798, he had already finished planning much of the city’s streets. which will become the city of Steubenville. For his own property, he settled on 412 acres south of his settlement.
The building consists of three parts. Although there aren’t any floor plans or prints that I know are still in place, using the basic source guide and photos found for the mansion we can get a good idea of the layout. Anyway, this is my best guess. The central core of the house was two and a half stories and likely consisted of the home’s main formal and leisure spaces. There was a central hall with a large sweeping iron staircase and a unique curve that led to the bedrooms upstairs. The staircase was located in a circular hall behind the building at the end of the central hall. Some homes of this time period had a private bedroom on the first floor that was reserved for important guests or important events in a family’s life, such as births, wedding nights, and sadly deaths. I’m not sure there was such a room in Grove, at least in this section of the house.
The other two wings of the Great House, to the left and right of the main section, were two-story brick buildings connected to the main section by short one-story corridors. Each corridor had an outside door and window for ventilation in the days before the air conditioning. The left wing of the house likely housed the dining room, because after checking the existing fire insurance maps of Sanborn, an outbuilding is located immediately behind this section and is separate from the main structure. This would almost certainly be a summer kitchen. The summer kitchen was a separate structure due to the fact that in the summer one would not want the kitchen to be near their living place to add the heat of the cooking stove to their dwelling. The risk of fire is also reduced if the buildings are separated.
Just like today, the kitchen is located near the dining room, so it makes sense that this suite would house that room. There may have been a winter kitchen under this suite, in a cellar, but that’s just speculation. In the suite there may also be another sitting room and on the upper floors, rooms for live assistance. I think the right wing houses the less formal everyday living spaces in the house. Perhaps a few bedrooms, a nursery, a living room, or a second dining room where less formal meals are eaten. In general, the house was a palace, since many houses in the area at the time were timber or log structures at best.
Bezalel moved into his home in 1800 and stayed there for 30 years or so. He was widowed in 1797 and also lost two daughters before his wife died, but remarried in 1798 to Sarah Griffith Wells and they had six sons and five daughters. The Grove had plenty of room for this big family. It was the social center of the city and it has been reported in a number of publications that many notable visitors were guests such as Henry Clay and, in 1821, Chief Justice Salmon Chase, who “He stopped at the hospitable mansion of Mr. Wells… his sweet spot on the banks of the Ohio… he and his good family spent some pleasant days.”
Unfortunately hard times fell upon the Wells family, and The Grove was eventually sold around 1830 to General Samuel Stockley. Here the Stokely family and their descendants passed the next sixty years. The house was then known as Stokely’s Grove and was still the center of social gatherings in our city. Stokely was the ground receiver in the Steubenville Land office in 1827, state senator in 1837 and finally a US congressman from 1841 to 1843. In 1861, Stokely died and sent home to his daughter Jane and her husband, Colonel William R. Lloyd. Lloyd fought in the Civil War with the Ohio 6th Cavalry he commanded until he resigned shortly before seeing the regiment at Gettysburg in 1863. I can only imagine the conversations that took place in the Grove during that time.
In 1877, Lloyd died and left the house to his wife and remaining children. By 1902, the property had been sold and the site was to be redeveloped into the Pope Tin Mill and later Weirton Steel’s Steubenville factory. According to a Herald Star article in March 1902, “The workers started demolishing the old Be’er Bezalel dwelling…large steam shovels cut the hills near each side of the historic old manor house and now had to go…up to the hill that had to disappear.”
During the demolition of the house, according to another article in April 1902, traces of the past were found in the ruins such as a land grant signed in 1785 by Virginia Governor Patrick Henry, legal land ownership documents from the 18th century and a letter written by President William Henry Harrison in 1836 Several books and newspapers from the 1820s and 1830s have also been found. By June 1902, the entire site was converted into an industrial site and to this day it bears no resemblance to its former history.
The Grove is gone from our landscape in 1902, but the history of the fascinating place still resonates in our town’s story. In Joseph Doyle’s book, “The History of Jefferson County,” He narrated a poem about the ancient place that appeared in the Herald on April 8, 1820: “Near where Ohio’s gushing waters gush, nature counts the twinkling sunshine, the enchanting castle, well of man’s pride, arrests the melancholy gaze of the passing stranger. Here luxury and simplicity unite, taste and culture happily combine, a delightful spot, where fruits and flowers invite , where groups entice, and fruitful vines intertwine.
Even though the old house is gone, we can still hear its story.
(Zoros is the CEO of Historic Fort Steuben.)
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