Valentine Kinder Farm

Valentine Kinder Farm

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c. 1769, 1785, 1975. 113 Barnard Rd., 5.6 miles northeast of Marianna

One of the oldest structures in western Pennsylvania, the Kinder house has grown in three sections from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. The small original section, said to date from the late 1760s, is a rectangular gable-roofed room with a door on the south elevation and a single window on the north elevation, smaller than many log houses of that period. The second section, built in 1785, is two stories in height and four bays wide, with a gable roof and two attic windows in the upper west-facing gable; its peaked wooden window surrounds appear to date from a later era. The large rear addition dates from 1975, but was built in the style of the 1785 addition, using stone from the same quarry on the farm. The three sections form an ell, and the two older sections were restored in the 1970s. The earliest portion has an original three-layer door, composed of finely detailed wooden sections sandwiching an inner layer of lead. On the interior are a walk-in hearth and a sleeping loft. This working farm has several large outbuildings, including a gable-roofed frame c. 1840 barn with a stone foundation. The family's gristmill (c. 1790) half a mile to the southwest on PA 2011 has similar rubble stonework and corner quoins, is three stories and gable-roofed, and is adjacent to Plum Run, which supplied the waterpower.

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