Despite celebrating its 215th birthday this year, the John Hall House has only had 6 owners. Alexander Whitaker, a wealthy landowner, owned a large tract of land called “Difficulty” that was located on the western side of town (today it would be the Pool, the Stoney Springs Development, and everything in that vicinity). It’s on this tract of land that Alexander built a log cabin in 1804.
Craven Beeding, the next owner of the property, added to the log cabin in 1831 (we know this based on tax records showing a difference in the dwelling state between the two years). After falling on difficult financial times (and despite some legally ambiguous efforts to fight off his creditors), Beeding sold the home in 1850 to William Dennis Poole.
The home remained in the Poole family until 1903, when the home was sold to the Halls. Occupying the home for nearly 90 years before selling in the early 1990s, the Halls were the longest owners to date (I guess that’s why we refer to it as the John Hall House and not the Alexander Whitaker, Craven Beeding, or William Poole House). They completed the third section of the home in the 1930s when they used the residence as a boarding house for teachers.
Huge thanks to the current owners who were awesome hosts and gave me the full tour. As one of them said to me, “although we are the current owners, we really just consider ourselves the caretakers of the home until it is passed on. We want to take as good care of it as possible.” That’s a pretty awesome mindset. The Ag Reserve is lucky they live here! These incredible old homes were here long before us, and with some care, they will be here long after, helping future generations understand our part of the Ag Reserve’s long story.
