Group vows to rebuild historic Ritchey Mansion

May 16, 2008 12:02 am

— 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.
While many Newtonia homes need drastic repairs or even complete replacement, Russ Hively said historic homes must be handled with more delicacy.
“It’s a very different treatment,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is as little change as possible. There’s a pile of bricks there that will be put back on. You need a good mason who knows how to do it, to match the mortar color and consistency. They’re not a current standard brick — they were hand-made 150 years ago. They’re more fragile and look like the red clay found here.
“Then there are the shingles. What would look similar to (the) period and what we can afford? That’s what you have to balance.”
The Newtonia Battlefields Protection Association had just in the past year paid off a $300,000 loan it had taken out to buy the house and begin restoration.
“We’ve got to pick up from here and get ourselves back on track,” Kay Hively said, with a job she figures will run into six figures. The group has hired a contractor to oversee the restoration and recently completed emergency repairs to keep out the wind and rain.
Not all the news is glum, either. The home is insured, and the group has been talking to the adjuster.
There was no damage to the slave cemetery near the house or the old Civil War cemetery in Newtonia where an unknown number of Confederate dead are buried, and where at least one Union soldier remained although other federal dead were taken to the national cemetery in Springfield after the war.
And Russ Hively said much has been accomplished since the tornado.
“We can get in and out, through the trees,” he said. “We can get access to all sides of the house now, and all of the broken windows are covered. We have a mason. ... We’ve salvaged most of the bricks and parts.”
“I am so grateful we have something to go back to,” Kay Hively said. “We have been at this 12 years now. We are finally getting this to something we can really be proud of. It has been such a wonderful grass-roots effort. We’re just going to start all over.”


Electricity

One initial concern was how to supply electricity to the historic home in Newtonia. The corner of a nearby barn that fed an electrical line to the home was destroyed during the storm. Along with it went the electrical box.
Kay Hively said the Newtonia Battlefields Protection Association is working with a utility company to run a line underground. Wires and poles would be removed, preserving the home’s historic appearance.

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