By T. Rob Brown and Andy Ostmeyer

news@joplinglobe.com

NEWTONIA, Mo. — The Ritchey Mansion is a survivor.

And it will survive last Saturday’s tornado.

“We can fix it. We’ll come back,” said Kay Hively, a member of the Newtonia Battlefields Protection Association and one of the leading advocates for preserving the house and nearby grounds. The tornado caused extensive damage.

“It ripped off all three chimneys, ripped off part of the brick in the front and ripped off the roof in about four major pieces,” said Russ Hively, mansion caretaker. He also is a member of the association, which owns and operates the home.

In addition to the exterior damage, Russ Hively reported minimal damage to the mansion’s “soft contents” such as bedding, carpets, rugs, curtains and blinds.

Kay Hively said the two-story house was built around 1851-52 by Matthew Ritchey and his slaves. The red bricks were made of clay taken from a nearby spring.

Its age alone would make it a historic treasure for the area.

The house also survived two Civil War battles, one in 1862 and one in 1864, and it was used as both a hospital and a headquarters during the war.

“It took a lot of hits,” Kay Hively said. “There have been a lot of slugs dug out of the brick over the years.

“There’s a chip out of the northeast corner of the house where supposedly a cannonball hit. This is all just hearsay. The chip is there. It is as big as a cannonball.”

Just two days before the tornado struck, President Bush signed a bill calling for a study of the two Civil War battles at Newtonia to determine whether the land and the home should be candidates for National Park Service protection and how that could best be accomplished.

The house also survived a long period of neglect and abandonment during the 1920s and 1930s, and a previous tornado stripped away the front porch, Kay Hively said. And in January 2007, an ice storm toppled an old pecan tree that landed on the northwest corner of the house, doing minor damage.

“It has survived an awful lot of abuse,” Kay Hively said.