Hess Homestead Restoration

 

Beginning in 1985, the log farmhouse and stone farmhouse were purchased and restored by Clarke Hess, a great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson of the immigrants Hans and Magdalena Hess. 

Clarke Hess also relocated several historic outbuildings to the homestead. Those outbuildings had been threatened with demolition at their previous sites, including a stone spring house, a pigsty with hand-hewn timbers, and a ca. 1785 Germanic log cabin with an interior squirrel-tail bake oven.

 

 

 

 

 Above: Clarke Hess during restoration and renovation of log farmhouse, 1985 to 1987.

 

Above: Rescue and relocation: Moving a historic pigsty to the log farmhouse in 1988.

 

Above: Another relocation project. 

Moving the 1829 spring house from the Bucher farm to the Hess farm in 1989.

 

Above: Nancy Long and Tom Martin:

Volunteer guides during a 1988 tour of the Hess Homestead for the Bomberger family.

 

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