|
Haunted houses?
Every community has one. They're the places children whisper
about when they gaze on their ghostly structures silhouetted against
an autumn evening sky. They're also the places daring
adolescents explore for club initiations or just for kicks.
Carroll County's legendary haunted house is the Cox Mansion in East
Township. It is the subject of a number of written and retold
tales, most of them eerie and all supposedly explained through a
curious combination of scientific phenomena and coincidence --
spiced, of course, with some native imagination.
Many descendents of the Cox family are alive today, but as far as is
known, only two of them actually lived in the mansion. They
are
Mrs. Frank (Katherine) Cox, now 92, who took up housekeeping
there as a bride in 1901 at the time of the "big snow," and
William
E. Cox of Washingtonville, now 70. William is the son of
Seymour, and a nephew of Mrs. Cox.
AMONG THE MOST fantastic of the legends about the Cox Mansion are
the following:
-
Isaac W. Cox built the mansion in 1886 to please
his wife, whose father felt that she was marrying beneath her
station. The day he completed the house, he told her:
"Here is your house, Dear." When he completed his
statement, he dropped dead, according to one legend. In
another, he committed suicide.
-
A young girl committed suicide in one of the
many upstairs rooms, and her figure has floated down the
circular stairway playing a violin.
-
A man slashed his throat in another upstairs
room, leaving a blood stain on the floor which could not be
eradicated.
-
Doors opened when no one was near them.
-
A baby could be heard crying from time to time
in the lower room, also the source of occasional organ music.
-
A headless horseman rode through the orchard.
-
A mysterious tunnel led from the house to the
barn, a 60-by 90-foot structure with a full basement that at one
time was the scene of Cox family reunions.
THE FACTS, garnered in numerous interviews with Mrs.
Cox and her nephew, and Earl A. Fox of Dellroy, who lived there for
two years in the early 20's, belie the legends. Family records
show that
Isaac Cox was born in East Township in 1839. His
grandfather had come from Ireland in 1789 and "entered" 276 acres of
land. Isaac married
Lydia Pottorf in 1859. They had
eight children among whom were
Frank and
Seymour.
The Coxes were well-to-do but their home was not as elaborate as the
Pottorf home when Isaac married Lydia. Someone is said to have
remarked that "Miss Lydia would not be going to as fine a home as
she was leaving," and Isaac overheard it. He then and there
resolved to build his wife the finest home in Carroll County.
This he did -- but it was not until almost 27 years later when their
family was nearly all grown up.
Bricks to build the house were burned on the premises from a vein of
clay particularly well suited for the purpose. The carved
stone window arches and the circular window in the tower were the
work of an English artisan in stone. One hundred men were
hired at $1 per day to do the job which took almost a year from the
time they began to prepare the material until the house was
completed.
ISAAC GRUMM of Hanoverton was the architect and
Owen Stackhouse
of Minerva was the contractor. The number of rooms in the
house, varied according to rumor from 11 to 20.
William says there
were 14, all large. He says the master bedroom was 20 feet by
20 feet and most of the others almost as large. The living
room was 15 feet by 35 feet, and each room had a fireplace, he
recalls.
All the finishing lumber came from the farm with a different type of
wood being used for each room. These woods included walnut,
cherry, white ash, chestnut, oak and red elm. The house stood
at the top of a high hill and had a tower on the southwest corner 60
feet high with a circular staircase leading from the front hall to
the tower constructed without visible supports. Niches
recessed into the walls along the staircase held beautiful statuary,
and elaborate hand carving ornamented not only the stairs but the
door and window trims throughout the house.
Contrary to tales that central heating was installed when the house
was built, it was not added until the early 20's when Joseph Hunter
of Detroit, inventor of the insulated wire, acquired the property.
It was reported that Hunter was worth $20 million when he was 21,
and since money was no object, he set about making the mansion the
showplace of the county.
It was during this time that Fox was employed there as a part-time
chauffeur for Anson B. McVay, who managed the farm, and such other
services as were required. A Delco lighting system was
installed as well as central heating and inside plumbing.
Mrs. Katherine Cox recalled that when she lived there the house was
extremely hard to heat because of the high ceilings, and while the
fireplaces were large, they were not adequate for the job.
IT WAS DURING this period of completely refurnishing the house that
most of the ghost stories were debunked. The tunnel which was
supposed to have led from the house to the barn turned out to be
long coal bins which were filled in the summer when the winding dirt
road up the steep hill was passable.
William
Cox recalled hearing his father tell about a team of oxen
hauling a load of sand for mortar up the hill when the house was
being built. They could not make the grade, and the wagon was
stopped and some of the sand thrown off. Thereafter, when the
team came to that spot in the road the oxen stopped to have some
sand unloaded.
The stubborn blood stains were found to be the result of the
careless handling of vermilion red paint. The doors that
opened when no one was near them probably did so because they were
three inches thick, hung on three heavy hinges, while the latches
were the ordinary hand-forged type in use at that time. It is
possible that the weight of the heavy door might cause the light
spring in the lock to release gradually and the door would swing
open.
The music from the tower came from horsehairs stretched from a
knothole in the tower woodwork to bird's nests which were numerous.
When the wind came from the northeast, the hairs vibrated like
violin strings.
It is true that the death of
Mr. Cox on Oct. 27, 1895, was quite
sudden, but it was due to peritonitis from a ruptured appendix.
By the time his case was diagnosed and a surgeon was summoned from
Pittsburgh, it was too late to save his life.
Mrs. Cox
continued to live in the mansion until her death in 1915. The
last Cox to own it was
Frank, until
William purchased the three and
a half acre plot after the house was destroyed by fire in 1969.
It is true that many of the subsequent owners have died suddenly,
but none from unnatural causes.
During the Hunter-McVay tenure, house parties lasted for days with
from 10 to 12 servants in residence. An additional six-room
building was erected at the rear of the mansion for their use, which
probably accounted for the "20 rooms." This building was
destroyed by fire sometime before the main house burned.
FOX SAYS THESE house parties were by no means "wild affairs," but
simply a gathering of friends from Detroit and Pittsburgh.
No expense had been spared in furnishing the house. Fine
Persian rugs, furniture and related housewares were shipped from
Detroit and an interior decorator from Philadelphia oversaw the
arrangement of the furnishings. The house was not closed to
local guests and many friends from the Salem area and the immediate
vicinity also were entertained and invited to ride the fine horses
stabled there.
Oddly enough, the weirdest mystery of all in connection with the
house has rarely been mentioned. It was told by Joe Koches,
73, or Washingtonville, with whom William Cox resides. He said
his grandfather had come from Czechoslovakia in 1885, bringing his
12-year-old son with him. Neither could speak any English, and
when an agent came to Cleveland to hire the 100 men for the Cox job,
Mr. Koches was hired and given permission to bring his son with him.
The boy carried water to pay for his board. The workers slept
in the barn, in haymows or on the ground when the weather permitted.
A teller counted the men as they went to work in the morning and as
they left the job in the evening. One morning, Mr. Koches was
missing. He had been there when they finished work the
previous evening, but apparently had "vanished" overnight.
The entire countryside was scoured but no trace of him ever was
found. The son was taken back to Cleveland and placed in a
home, but when he grew up, he returned to the area where his father
had disappeared. It was this son who was Joe Koches' father.
The mystery, he says, never was solved.
THERE ALSO IS a fairly well authenticated story of an adult member
of the family who was bitten by a mad dog and died of rabies.
Before the development of rabies vaccine, when a person was bitten
by an infected animal, death was certain, and it was not uncommon
for the patient to be locked up like a wild animal and left until
death mercifully relieved him. This person, however was cared
for in the home until death came, which might have given rise to
some of the "spook" stories, according to
William.
T he brick in the tower which bore the print of a woman's foot burned
into it was, no doubt, caused by one of the cooks stepping on the
brick before it was fired.
During the early 30's when the house stood vacant, vandals tore away
most of the beautiful hand-carved woodwork, and carried off
practically everything of value. When William E. Hibbetts of
Minerva bought the place, former tenants had covered what was left
of the original finish with enamel which he remove and began the
restoration of the house to its original grandeur, but his
unexpected death brought his work to a standstill.
The house then was owned by Millers, then sold to Andrew McKinnon,
who still owns all of the land except three and a half acres
surrounding the burned out ruins. As late as 1964, David Scott
had plans to restore the house as a museum, but unfortunately, they
never materialized.
While it was vacant it became a hangout for groups of young people
who kept the Carroll County sheriff's department busy chasing them
away on several occasions.
ONE THING ON which both the Coxes and Fox agree was that none of
them ever saw anything that looked like a real haunt, nor had they
ever talked with anyone else who had. Naturally, they heard
the tales, but when they were checked out they were not
substantiated by facts.
William says that the Coxes were good Christians, and that of the
five male members of the family -- including himself -- none had
ever used either tobacco or liquor.
Today, all that remains of the once beautiful structure is a shell,
with the walls as true and straight as the day they were laid up.
The stone arches over the windows still are firmly in place, and the
gaping windows offer easy access for the mud swallows that have
built numerous nests inside the gutted structure, flying in and out
during the day until the bats take over at night.
On a recent visit to the area, a proud cock pheasant in full fall
plumage strolled nearby across what had once been the well-manicured
lawn surrounding the mansion.
So, as far as the surviving members of the family who actually lived
there are concerned, it would seem that if any ghosts lurk in the
mansion they are the memories of other, happier days.
Thomas Wolfe believed, "You can never go back home again," but there
is here a tie strong enough to impel
William
Cox to want to own the
ground that surrounds the spot where he was happy as a child, even
though the once magnificent home is now only a ruin.
What is the nature of this mysterious lodestone that draws him back
in the spot? Who knows?
Of all the mysteries attributed to the old mansion, it is probably
the most unfathomable.
|
