Readers fill in history of Lookout Mound Farm in Pleasant Twp.

MOUNT VERNON — Hats off to our History Knox readers, who were able to pitch in and flesh out the later history of Lookout Mound Farm, described in last week’s column.

Brian Skinner recognized the image of the house, though by many years later, it was showing its age.

“The house was at the top of the hill,” Skinner wrote. “I remember seeing it as a kid and it looked like the one in the picture but in disrepair. It is no longer standing.”

Kathy Gamble remembered visiting the house.

“Looks a lot like Carrie Rinehart’s house,” she posted. “Now on the east side of Newark Road, north or Sycamore there is a red house and the next house north is a big green house.

“Carrie’s house was just before the big green house. I think it was torn down when the green house was built years ago.

“As a child, in the 1960s, I would visit Carrie with my friend, Shirley. Carrie often gave gifts to Shirley.”

Jim Richards remembered the house and confirmed that Carrie Springer Rinehart once lived there.

“I lived on the SW corner of Sycamore and Newark Road during my high school years in the ’50s,” he said. “Our landlady, Carrie (Springer) Rinehart, owned and lived in that house.”

He added that she owned a lot of property around the intersection of Newark Road and Sycamore Road, including another structure that readers remember.

“Was the old brick house that was at the corner of Sycamore and 13 (supposedly a stagecoach stop) there at that time?” Debby Payne-Sisk asked.

Luann Noble McCauley also remembered seeing that building and wondered about its history.

Richards had a little more information about it.

“The black box on the map on the NW side of Newark Road and Sycamore Road was a two-story brick house that we were told was a stagecoach shop,” Richards said. “There were barns behind it.

“There is a similar style house on old Mansfield Road closer to Knox Lake.”

He also remembered that Carrie, the owner of the house from the original atlas illustration, is buried in Mound View Cemetery in Mount Vernon.

According to her headstone, Carrie B. Springer Rinehart was born in 1892. She died in 1982 at the age of 89.

Tracking her in records is confusing. She turns up on the 1930 census living on Newark Road, but as a housekeeper. The head of the household is Frank Shinaberry, 71, who lived in the house with his brother Charles, 69.

William S. Rinehart – one of the other names on the Rinehart plot headstone in Mound View Cemetery – is also listed as living at the house as a laborer, aged 67.

He is described on the census as a brother-in-law to the head of household, but it doesn’t specify any details.

Carrie is simply listed as “relative,” while her profession is “housekeeper.” She was 38 at the time.

This census also asked the question of each person what age they were when they were first married.

Carrie’s response was that she was 37 when first married. William Rinehart was 60 when first married, so it seems that although he had the same last name as Carrie, he was married to someone else.

The two Shinaberry brothers were bachelors who never married.

By the 1940 census report, Carrie’s husband – whoever he was – had died, and she was listed as a widow at age 47. She now lived with her parents, William and Miranda Springer, with her occupation still described as housekeeper.

This census was a detailed one, and it also tells us that Carrie was educated through her second year of college, that she currently worked 60 hours per week, and that she had some outside income (perhaps survivor benefits from her late husband?).

By 1950, Carrie is listed as the head-of-household taking care of her elderly parents.

The census, alas, does not identify the road. But it seems likely that as caretaker to her parents, she would have inherited their property.

But if she ended up owning a number of properties around Hunt’s Station, it isn’t clear which one was the family home.

Carrie’s obituary in the Newark Advocate in 1982 provides further information. It states that she was born in New Matamoras, Ohio, which is in Washington County, along the Ohio River near West Virginia.

Her parents William and Miranda (Cline) Springer later moved to Knox County. It says that Carrie was a schoolteacher and member of the Owl Creek Baptist Church. When she died, she was living in a nursing home in Utica.

The obituary finally provides her husband’s name. His name was Sherman Rinehart, and he died in 1932.

Further searches show that Carrie’s parents came to Pleasant Township in Knox County from Washington by 1905, when one of their sons was born here.

It is unknown if they purchased the Wood farm at this point, or if Carrie later ended up living there through some other transaction.

Interestingly, though, tracking down Carrie’s marriage license shows that the William S. Rinehart who also lived with her in the Shinaberry house was, in fact, the same William Sherman Rinehart that she married.

According to the paperwork, at the time of their marriage in 1929, he was 60 years old, and she was 37. The math must have been off on the census.

But if Sherman was the brother-in-law of the Shinaberry brothers, who were never married, they may have left their property to him.

If he then left it to Carrie, that might explain Carrie’s later source of outside income: She had already acquired property and was renting it out while taking care of her parents.

This begins to sketch out the properties and figures who lived around Hunt’s Station, and confirms that both the original Native American mound and the buildings of Lookout Mound Farm are long gone.

Now, does anyone have a photograph of the building said to have at one time been used as a stagecoach station?