B. F. Artley

Our barn's granary.  The newly discovered name is on the door behind the black cabinet.

I made a discovery today, which has lead to some new and interesting revelations about our farm.  While cleaning up so that I could close the door on the granary in our barn, I noticed a barely visible name stenciled in red paint (probably the same as was used on the outside of the barn), "B. F. Artley".

I'd long wondered about the history of our farm. We've dug up a few artifacts, most of which add to the mystery rather than answer it.

Three artifacts from our farm museum: a broken clay pipe,
a sleigh bell,and arrowhead.  Unbeknownst to most people nowadays, sleigh
bells were a required safety device used to warn pedestrians who might not
otherwise hear them coming.  Electric cars are known to be similarly quiet.
Perhaps that new Tesla needs some sleigh bells?  Tesla Bells?

I found part of an old clay pipe manufactured by the Hendrix company in Montreal during the late 1800s. When putting in our well, I found a worn down grindstone, buried at a depth which suggests it was dumped into an old privy hole.  A black straw woman's hat from the 1800's fell from the ceiling of the living room when we remodeled.  

The fields and soil around the house have yielded old hand forged horse shoes, horse bits, a sleigh bell, and pieces of wagons and farm equipment. Cleaning the barn when we first moved in, I found an ancient tin of percussion caps, definitely pre-dating the modern resurgence of muzzle-loading firearms, and imagined it to have been left there by a farmer who used his civil-war surplus rifle for slaughtering livestock. 

We knew this farm was homesteaded sometime between the 1858 and 1872, as it first appears on the 1872 map.  The original barn is of a Pennsylvania Dutch (German) style, a two story bank barn. Had the person who built it come from Pennsylvania, I wondered? It's an excellent design, and a perfect fit for the type of farming I enjoy. You can drive into the hay loft upstairs for unloading via the overhead trolley, and then toss the hay downstairs to the livestock accommodations.  An overhang on the downhill side provides a nice covered outdoor loafing area

I went online with the name I found on the granary door, and soon found a slew of information about the man and family who homesteaded our farm -- Benjamin Artley, originally from Hughesville, Pennsylvania. He was born on September 7th, 1840.  Now I know how our Pennsylvania style barn came to Michigan.

The oldest of 12 children, Benjamin was a civil war veteran (perhaps lending credence to my theory of the tin of percussion caps found in our barn) who signed on with a Pennsylvania regiment. He was listed upon one military document as having the disability of "chronic diarrhea, and piles" (hemorroids). This was the dysentery which killed 95,000 of his fellow soldiers. Two of his younger brothers enlisted, one of whom survived the war and one whom was killed at Gettysburg.  

After the war, he moved west to Michigan, where other family members from the same part of Pennsylvania had become well established. He married Eliza Artley in the nearby town of Constantine in 1870, whom had three daughters and was a widow of another civil war soldier killed in January of 1865 near the end of the war. Eliza's maiden name was Wilson, and it appears as if her first marriage was to one of Benjamin's Artley relatives, so she was already an Artley when they married. They had three boys together, all born while living in this house. Benjamin was listed as a carpenter as well as a farmer, and presumably built this house himself, likely with the aid of his younger brother George (also a carpenter) who also lived here at the time of the 1880 census.

The original home was 700 square feet, two stories, and four bedrooms for eight people.  Though they built a fantastic barn, they skimped a bit on the house. I discovered that they only used sheathing on the west side of the house which faces the prevailing winds. The rest of the exterior had clap-boards nailed directly to the oak studs.

Benjamin died in 1908 of hepatitis at age 68. His wife appears to have moved in with her daughter Hattie in Kalamazoo, where she died in 1924 at age 84 of liver and stomach ailments. Hattie later died from smoke inhalation during a fire in that same home in 1940. The other two daughters appear to have moved to Iowa.