Dean-Hey Heritage

Proud owners of a very old house.

Our House
1805 Freeport Road
Constructed, 1861
Sandstone Basement

Grandpa Abram Hey bought this 80 acre farm in the 1930's. Coincidentally, when she was young, Grandma Ruth Holtzman Hey worked on a truck farm at this very farm. By the late 1940's, the house was so dilapidated that Grandpa wanted to demolish it. Grandma Hey prevailed on him not to raze it because it was the only "salt box architecture" in the area. Grandma and her daughter, Sue, began remodeling. Plumbing was installed sometime in the late 1940's. They gutted the main bedroom and hired a carpenter to install the present knotty pine paneling. Housing was scarce after the war, and a serviceman, Howard Clayton, told grandpa that he would rent and make the house livable if grandpa would purchase materials. Howard painted and wall-papered.

Porch showing signs of wear

My parents bought this farm house and 2 acres from Grandpa Hey and moved in on Pearl Habor Day, 1954. We still had a coal furnace, and the coal man still delivered coal. Mom built a fire to heat water for baths, dishes, and wash.

The house was quite porous for rodents. One morning Mom opened the bread box drawer and was greeted by a rat. Dad went to the basement with his shotgun and peered into the porch cellar to see a pair of shining eyes. After a single shot, Dad came upstairs and announced he'd killed the rat and buried him in a single shot.

Dad had put d-Con on a beam in plain view underneath a cold air grate. Mom was fearful of rotting mice and odor, so one night's entertainment consisted of sitting in the kitchen, waiting for a mouse to come along for a tasty meal, and watching Dad pick him off with a single shot of popcorn from his pellet gun. Yes, popcorn for pellets. The grill on the grate had openings of about 1/2" x 2". Growing up with a gun, Dad was a good shot. We'd holler, "You got another one," yank the grate, and throw the victim outside. Dad killed 13 mice that time. Great, great entertainment.

In 1959, Dad and Mom wanted a cement basement instead of sandstone, so Dad hired an excavator, Yeager, to dig out basement. Yeager didn't show up one night, so dad, in characteristic form, decided that the project would not be held for lack of an excavator. All night Dad dug while Mom hauled out debris with a wheel barrow. And the opening was ready for Warren Sharp to lay his forms by the morning. Our main remodeling came in 1967 when he hired Bill Pratt and his father to remodel the house. They worked from June to September. The Pratts added the back porch. A neighbor, D.C. Bend built the new garage.

Antique Bathroom

Antique Kitchen

We did tear the garage down
before it fell down.

Sooty faced from gutting attic

Back porch addition.