Samuel Brown Farmhouse a rare historic home

The Samuel Brown farmhouse was built in 1845 and is considered the oldest farmhouse in the county. It was placed on the Historic Register in 2006.

When Samuel Brown moved to Indiana from Tennessee in 1829, he arrived in Putnam County as a poor man. When he died in 1865 he was a successful farmer and one of the largest landowners in Putnam County, owning over 1,000 acres.

He built his farmhouse around 1845 making bricks on site out of clay from a nearby creek and cutting down oak trees for the home's wooden frame.

In 2006, the one-story nineteenth-century farmhouse was placed on the National Register of Historic Homes under the category of a settlement era farmhouse.

In fact, interior renovation at the home in 2000 uncovered timber joists with the bark intact and walls that are four bricks thick as well as limestone footers, buried three feet deep.

According to an article in the "Indiana Preservationist," Lora Scott, purchased the simplified Greek Revival structure with her brother and sister. Her ancestors constructed the farmhouse more than a century ago. Her great uncle, Paul Myers, bought the Brown House in 1927, and her grandmother was a descendant of Sam and Polly Brown.

"It's hard to describe how it feels to sit in one of the front rooms, rocking in an old rocker, listening to a thunderstorm outside, realizing that I am the seventh generation of my family to be in the very same place as those who have gone before me," Scott writes in the article.

"To know that the house was built by my ancestors' labors, out of materials --mostly taken from the land around them--that have lasted 160 years, is amazing and humbling, " she adds.

Considered the oldest farmhouse in the county, the Samuel Brown House also offers the only example of an intact brick settlement era house. The home is located southwest of Roachdale at 1558 E. C.R. 1100 North.

Only about two percent of Indiana properties in the National Register share the home's early construction date.

Tommy Kleckner, Historic Landmarks' western office director described the farmhouse in his 2006 Indiana Preservationist article as, "a wonderful rural setting of streams and wooded areas. It's notable that the house remains in the builder's family, and that they're committed to preserving it."

The state's Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology manage the entry of Indiana properties in the National Register of Historic Places

For information on how to list a property, call DHPA, 317-232-1646 or contact the Historic Landmarks Foundation office at 812-232-4534 or emailwst@historiclandmarks.org