Sometimes historians uncover sad events: Death at Medina’s McDowell homestead Mary Jane Brewer, cleveland.com
MEDINA, Ohio The McDowell-Phillips house has provided the Medina County Historical Society with a collection of antique furniture, a mysterious bullet hole, a trove of family correspondence covering more than 100 years, and some interesting hints of unusual events.
While reading one of the letters left behind at the historic homestead, it was discovered that a stablehand had died in a barn behind the house.
In Betsy Whitmore’s Christmas memories, she referred to a handyman, Abner Baish, “who cared for the horses and the buggies in the barn and was on hand to run errands. My cousin remembers how embarrassed he was as a little boy when Ab would bring the (waterproof shoe coverings) to school that he and his brother Tom and Ted McDowell had forgotten to wear.” (Probably on purpose.)