Joseph Scheel House
Typical story-and-a-half limestone farm house built with materials on or near the place, -all hand cut. Early history of the place has been difficult to ob-tain and is somewhat sketchy. The South (left) side, and the small one-room rock house on the North (right) side, were probably the first structures built by Bernhard Joseph Scheel and wife, Anna Barbara, in the late 1860s. As was the usual procedure in those times, the small rock house was probably lived in while the bigger house was being built. Note that it had a stove and that the interior was painted.
The left side - the original half - consisted of a bedroom with kitchen in rear, and a half-story attic, with a stairway to the attic on the north wall. The stairway has now been built on the outside of the south wall. When the right half was built, in the middle 18701 s, a central open breezeway was left between the two halves, ten feet wide and twenty-four feet deep. This "dog run" has been closed in at back and front to form the center hall. The right half consists of two rooms, with a cellar under the back part.
The unusually large attic was used for storage and as sleeping quarters for the children, a usual custom. The attic walls were plastered with caliche, which is still intact after 100 years. The barn was probably built at the same time as the original part of the house. It is part stone, part timber, as was often done in the early barns. By all evidence the house itself was built and lived in some years before Joseph received his grant from the state (Patent No. 549 dated January 4, 1878). This was not unusual, and has been the case with other pioneer homes.
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This is a Private Residence and Private Property.
Joseph Scheel House Narrative
