Kendal House History Class

Karen Rohr, Rose Hallett and Katie Woods
review Rohr's history of Seneca Street.

Current residents of the original town plat of Kendal gathered at the library on Saturday, February 4 for a house history class led by genealogy specialist, Jean Adkins.

Among those present was Karen Rohr who grew up on 11th Street NE, but now lives on Seneca. She has been researching the houses on Seneca for several years now, and brought with her a impeccably organized binder of her findings to date.

Sisters Rose Hallett and Katie Woods were there too. Rose lives in the house where she was born. She believes the house was once located on State Street but moved to its current location. Her parents bought it in 1923.

Katie lives near the Quaker Cemetery on Seneca. She said she used to be well known in the neighborhood for chasing children away from the cemetery. "My husband told me not to do that," she said. "He said the children would remember us at Halloween and not in a nice way, either." But he was wrong - her house never suffered the insult of broken eggs or other "opinions."

Cindy Clark and her Aunt Ann learn how to research
the history of their early Kendal house from
genealogy specialist Jean Adkins.

Cindy Clark came with her Aunt Ann. Their residence, in which Ann has lived since 1979, was discovered during the class to be a very early Kendal house. Over a decade ago, a man had told Ann that her house was "one of the two original houses in Kendal." While this may not be entirely true - it is probably close to it. She describes the main portion of her home as containing two large rooms, separated by an archway. The wood framing the arch and windows is extremely hard.  She recently renovated one of these rooms and discovered the walls were constructed of timber logs.

One of the tools used during the class was a map made by Frank Harrison Jr. (1910-1944). This map was recently photographed by the Massillon Museum and made available online at kendalohio.com. Harrison was one of the Museum's first employees and hoped one day to make a scale replica of Kendal. This map contains a wealth of information he gathered while conducting research on the town.

The map below is the modern equivalent to Harrison's map. It contains information on past, present and possible Kendal historic locations. A work in progress, new information is added as it is gained. Thanks to Ann's participation in the house history class, another early Kendal house has been identified.

View Historic Locations in Kendal in a larger map

February is Black History Month

View the entire program at http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/MuseumofAfri