GREEN: Evan Beese is only 22 months old, but he will never doubt his place in the world. Evan and his younger sister, Taylor, 6 months, are the sixth generation of the Beese family to make their home on their family’s East Turkeyfoot Lake Road property known as Merestead Farms.
Lee Beese proudly displays photos of her grandson as he toddles in his bib overalls after his father, Matthew Beese, 39, who took over the day-to-day operation 10 years ago of the farm that today yields corn and soybeans. Matthew and his wife, Laura, and his parents, Lee and John Beese, live in separate homes on the 220-acre former dairy farm that now boards 21 horses.
It’s taken the Green Historical Society a hundred hours to document each step of the property’s 200-year history which was awarded local landmark status to the homestead July 24. At 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, the city will hold a program to celebrate the designation and the Beese family, which has owned and operated the farm for 100 years.
“This is a dual celebration of 200 years of farming the land that is now Merestead Farms and the 100th anniversary of the Beese family farm,” Green Mayor Dick Norton said.
“The property, the farm and the Beese family are an important part of the history of Green and we are proud to celebrate them,” he said.
The event, to be held at the Central Administration Building, will include a presentation on the history of the farm by Lee and John Beese, who live in the family’s 1856 Greek revival homestead where John, 78, grew up.
The word “merestead” is Old English for farm or garden plot, said John Beese, the name given to the property by his father, who was also named John Beese.
“Head down, butt up, sun up to sun down,” could be the family’s motto, quipped Beese, who is a manufacturer’s representative for power transmission equipment while still helping around the farm.
“I’m a member of the work till you die club. Any farmer you know is in the club,” he said.
Beese, who began farming the land at the age of 25, is named for his ancestor who immigrated from Wales. As a matter of fact, the name has been shared by every firstborn son since the first John arrived in America. Beese doesn’t know the exact date, but knows his ancestor became a naturalized citizen in 1856.
“The lore in the family is that his parents didn’t realize he left. With 27 kids, they didn’t even miss him,” Beese joked.
Matthew’s older brother, Andrew, lives in Mississippi but travels to Green twice each year to help with planting in the spring and harvesting in the fall. Their older brother John, who lives in Mason, Ohio, also has a son named John, 6, who goes by Jack. By chance, the men have another brother named John who lives in Green. He joined the family with Lee when she and John married in 1972. He goes by the name Ivor to help prevent confusion.
In this family, boy children are the norm. Baby Taylor is the only girl born in the family in 92 years, said Lee Beese.
The Beeses are the third family to own the property, located on what was known as Congress lands at the time it was patented to federal agent Christopher Johnson on June 2, 1814, with a document signed by President James Madison. It was just one mile south of the Western Reserve’s border.
“It’s fantastically preserved,” Staci Schweikert, a member of the historical society who “took point” on the project, said of the farmland. “When you walk this property, you get the same feel of an 1850s farm.”
Johnson, who probably never stepped foot in Ohio, sold it to Samuel Stover in 1818 for $7,000. Stover, who cleared the land and farmed it for 34 years before he died in 1845, built the original barn on the property around 1844, according to a Historic Commission report. A fire destroyed the barn in 1980, but part of the stone foundation was used for the new barn, put up in one day by 200 Amish and Mennonite volunteer craftsmen, according to a Beacon Journal story dated June 7, 1981.
Abraham Foust bought the property for just over $3,000 in 1849. It was Foust who built the original, brick section of the house in 1858. His initials and the date are carved in stone on the home’s brick chimney.
In the 1870s, Foust leased the property to a mining operation, charging the owners of Lake View #2 Coal Mine 20 cents for each ton of coal mined under his land with a guaranteed 500 tons of coal a year.
“In three years, the deal paid for the farm,” Beese relates.
The mine, which operated from 1879 to 1897, brought Welsh miner John Beese to the area to run the enterprise. That makes six generations of the family to be associated with the property, his great-grandson said. The miner’s son, and current owner’s grandfather, also John Beese, broke his leg in the mine and subsequently opened a butcher shop in Akron, only to return to purchase the farm in 1914.
With all its improvement, the homestead retains its architectural characteristics, the Historical Society concluded in its report to the city.
“We’ve done a lot to this house,” said Lee Beese, a native Australian and avid gardener. “I try very hard to keep it the period it should be.”
Kathy Antoniotti can be reached at 330-996-3565 or kantoniotti@thebeaconjournal.com.