Danielle’s journey
Foulk grew up in a historic home in Fairfield County. It may seem like no surprise, then, that she ended up in a 186-year-old house, but she says it wasn’t her intention.
“My dad gives me a hard time because I wasn’t really into history,” Foulk said. “There’s something about becoming an old house steward. I grew up in an 1850s house, and so I always wanted a newer house.”
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
When her family decided to relocate to Butler County’s Reily Twp. in 2018, though, she fell in love with the rustic farmhouse she now calls home. Constructed in 1837 by John Wehr, the house features two front doors, two staircases, five bedrooms and plenty of history. It stayed in the Wehr family for more than 12 decades until the 1960s.
John Wehr purchased the land for the house in 1819 and was one of the first to settle in Reily. Ohio had become a state less than two decades earlier, and U.S. President James Monroe’s name was on the deed for the land.
Foulk began looking into the history of her home soon after moving in. Through research online, she learned that it was a tavern for hog drivers on their way to Cincinnati, nicknamed Porkopolis at the time. Interested in learning more, she reached out to the Smith Library, located inside Oxford Lane Library, to get more information.
The library helped her find out more about the Wehr family in the book “Memoirs of the Miami Valley” and sent over a file of more information on the house. Foulk’s curiosity only grew, and so she went looking for primary sources: members of the Wehr family.
Connecting with the Wehrs
Suzanne Newcomb is the great-great-great-great granddaughter of John Wehr. Her father and aunts were part of the last generation of Wehrs to grow up in the Reily homestead. She was volunteering as the secretary for the Reily Township Historical Society in 2018 when Foulk reached out to her.
Newcomb shared some photos she had of the house, and the pair saw each other regularly at Historical Society meetings. Pretty soon, they became friends, and Foulk started connecting with more descendants of the Wehr family.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
“She’s reached out to even like my cousins and extended relatives that I haven’t kept in touch with,” Newcomb said.
In 2018, several members of the Wehr family returned to Reily Twp. for a wedding. Newcomb’s aunts who grew up in the house were live in Boston and Washington D.C., so it was a rare opportunity for them all to get together. Foulk invited the family over to see the house again and spent the day giving a tour to more than 20 Wehrs.
“It brings my aunt to tears. She’s in her mid-70s ... and she’s got early dementia, but we were there in 2018 and she was still doing really really well,” Newcomb said. “That was one of the highlights of the last 10 years of her life, walking around that house and talking about things.”
Today, Foulk is almost like a member of the family. Newcomb said Foulk calls herself the caretaker of the house, and her background in education as a teacher helps her share the history with others.
For Foulk, it’s important to make sure the Wehr knows their historic homestead is always open to them.
“The family has an open invitation to always come back home, but the house history here and that Wehr family from the early 1800s - they were one of the first settlers - there’s just so much that can be shared.”
A history worth sharing
Over the past five years, Foulk has collected binders full of information on the homestead and its history. She lines her walls with artifacts she find on the property, as well as photos shared with her from Newcomb and other Wehr family members. Through those binders and artifacts, she’s traced the story of the home and its residents.
Foulk discovered that the house was a “very prominent” tavern for hog farmers on the way to sell their pigs in Cincinnati. She found a memoir from a man in Indiana that described the stop, which was most popular during the fall months when it wasn’t too hot or cold. The owner of the tavern would ride out each night to look for hog drivers and offer the house as a place to stay.
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
“Then they would ride back and get things ready,” Foulk said. “They would get washbasins ready with water for them, they would get food ready for horses, they would get stuff ready for the hogs themselves. And don’t you know what is says [in the memoir] is oftentimes what was served was ham.”
The locals are invested in the history of the house, too. Foulk remembers her neighbor telling her it may have been a stop on the Underground Railroad shortly after moving in, but he couldn’t offer more information.
Foulk asked Newcomb about the possibility when the family visited. One of the upstairs bedrooms has a closet that locks from the inside, and the multiple entrances and staircases would make it ideal for getting people in and out without being seen.
“Now I know they were definitely not racist and definitely, I know their values would have supported that,” Newcomb said, but I didn’t hear that passed down to me, and neither did my sister.”
Still, Foulk looked into the claim and found a network of abolitionists throughout Butler County and Indiana with connections to the Wehrs.
Underground Railroad routes through Butler County primarily crossed from Cleves to Hamilton before moving on to Darrtown, Oxford or West Elkton, or through Middletown via the Miami-Erie Canal. While they didn’t directly cross through Reily Township, Foulk found several ties between John Wehr and his wife, Sarah, and prominent abolitionists at the time through a network of three churches run by Reverend Adam Baird Gilliland.
Gilliland was a member of the Indian Creek Abolition Society, an abolitionist organization with members related to the Wehrs by marriage like the Thompson family. While the family’s ties to other abolitionists and the homestead’s architecture can’t offer conclusive proof that it was used as a stop on the Underground Railroad, Foulk argues it can’t be ruled out.
“You’re never going to know their involvement, like how deep it goes,” Foulk said. “It could just be passing notes. It could be letting them take your carriage. It could be letting them pass through and not saying anything.”
Whether or not the homestead was truly a stop on the Underground Railroad, Foulk’s research led her to connect with the Wehrs and their family history in a way neither she nor the family will soon forget.
“[Foulk] looks at it as sharing the history for it to continue,” Newcomb said. “We’re so thrilled it’s going to continue ... This is our family. It means everything to us.”
More online
Visit journal-news.com for a photo gallery of the Wehr Homestead.
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