Researching Squankum House, Part I

My work as a historian is deeply shaped by my personal experience of living in, researching, and restoring a historic home over the past seven years. This experience gives me a unique connection to the work I do for my clients. I channel the passion I have for my own home into the research I conduct for others, whether I’m writing a narrative history of a property or preparing a nomination for the National Register of Historic Places. In this blog post, I’d like to briefly introduce my home and share the first part of its history. A second post exploring the rest of its history, along with another focused on its restoration, will follow soon.

Why the name Squankum House?

I named the house Squankum House after the small, unplatted 19th-century community that once existed at the crossroads down the street. Although there used to be a church, schoolhouse, blacksmith shop, and multiple other farms and residences, the house is one of only two extant structures from Squankum still standing. When past owners of the house are mentioned in historic newspapers, they are often referred to as being "of Squankum."

The origin of the word “Squankum” is murky, but it likely comes from the Lenape language. The Lenape—Indigenous people also known as the Delaware, originally from the Mid-Atlantic—were displaced into Indiana in the early 1800s. It may have described an unhealthy, swampy, and mosquito-ridden area, later misinterpreted by settlers as meaning “place where evil spirits dwell.” Brown Township, where the house is located, was verifiably the swampiest part of Hendricks County. I chose to call the home Squankum House to keep the old name rooted to the land, so it does not fade into a forgotten past.

Buying Squankum House

Although I grew up just a mile down the road from the house, I hardly remember ever noticing it. It sat on a county road I had no real reason to drive on, and at the time, I didn’t pay much attention to historic homes. My interest in history didn’t take shape until I was an undergraduate studying anthropology and historical archaeology. I trace the roots of my passion back to the summer of 2011, when I participated in excavations at the historic Boxley Cabin site in Sheridan, Indiana. While uncovering artifacts and connecting with the past was exciting, I quickly realized that what I enjoyed most about historical archaeology was the archival research into the sites themselves.

Studying archaeology also made me more acutely aware of the landscape and built environment I passed through every day—things I had previously considered just an ordinary part of life. I began noticing the layers of history all around me: road grids, tree lines, farm fields, and the structures scattered among them. It wasn’t until 2017 that I truly took notice of the old brick farmhouse just down the road from where I grew up. One rainy day in November, I drove by and snapped a photo from my car window.

The first photograph I took of the home in 2017 when I first had the idea of purchasing it.

Even though it sat close to the road, the house was easy to miss—unassuming, and a bit neglected. I drove past it two or three more times, and then I got an itch. I started wondering about its history. I wondered about the people who had called it home in the past, about what it looked like inside, and most of all, I wondered if I was insane for thinking I might buy it someday.

I soon found out that the house was being rented, and the owner was living in Tennessee. So I did what any normal person would do: I wrote a letter to a complete stranger, asking if he’d ever consider selling me his house. I remember keeping my expectations incredibly low. I figured I’d mail the letter and never hear back.

I was wrong. A couple of weeks later, I received a somewhat hesitant voicemail from the owner. He explained that he wasn’t sure who I was or whether my offer was legitimate, but he was willing to entertain the idea for now.

The first step was to gain access to the house so I could at least see it, which meant I needed to work with the current tenants to arrange a visit. I remember calling them and leaving a voicemail, explaining that I was just a local historian interested in the property. This was, of course, only partly true, but the owner didn’t want to alarm the tenants. I tried for several months to schedule a visit, with no success. Eventually, growing impatient, I told the owner that I needed to know whether he was truly interested in selling the house—and if so, I would need access to the property. That did the trick. He quickly let me know he’d make the five-hour drive from Tennessee the following day to let me into the home.

I think if any other prospective buyer had walked into the home besides me, they would have immediately turned around and left. The current tenants were clearly not taking care of it. Dog and cat excrement was on the floor, and chickens were being raised in the enclosed front porch. It was also clear that the last major update to the home had not taken place since at least the 1970s. The owner probably left our meeting that day thinking he would never hear from me again. But I actually left that meeting with a newfound drive to save the home. About seven months later, the owner and I came to an agreement, and I purchased it.

The early history of Squankum House

The house's official build date on file with the county assessor’s office is 1860. Although this date technically aligns with its Italianate style, it still felt a little too early. What’s more, the assessor’s office confirmed that they could not verify which historic record the build date came from. I relied on tax records to help me determine the real build date, which turned out to be 1880.

William T. Irwin, c. 1880, around the time he and his wife Sarah (Sandusky) Irwin built their brick farmhouse. No photographs of Sarah have been discovered to date. Photo courtesy of the Hendricks County Museum Collections.

The home was built by William T. Irwin (1840–1923) and his first wife, Sarah E. (Sandusky) Irwin (1840–1903). William, born in Lewis County, Kentucky, moved to Indiana in 1861. He followed his uncles, John and Edward Doyal, who had come to Hendricks County much earlier, in 1838 and 1840. Their farms were located on the Boone-Hendricks County line, approximately six miles north of where the house stands today.

After William relocated to Indiana, he married Sarah Sandusky in Boone County on January 2, 1870. Unlike William, Sarah was born and raised in Indiana and came from one of the first families to settle in northeastern Hendricks County. She grew up on several farms just south of the Boone County line, in the same area where William’s uncles had settled. It is likely that Sarah was well acquainted with William’s extended family. The two were perhaps introduced by his Doyal relatives after William arrived from Kentucky in the 1860s.

At the time of her marriage to William in 1870, Sarah was a land-owning woman. In 1843, when she was just three years old, her father, John Sandusky, deeded 80 acres in Brown Township to a trust for the benefit of Sarah and her mother, Harriet. The trustee was Isaac McDaniel, Harriet’s brother and Sarah’s uncle. The timing of this deed—executed in March 1843—is notable given the state of Harriet and John’s marriage. Just two weeks later, in April 1843, Harriet filed for divorce, though the case was mutually dismissed. In 1846, however, John filed for divorce himself, claiming Harriet had abandoned him in December 1842 and never returned or explained her absence. When Harriet failed to appear in court after being subpoenaed, the court granted the divorce.

After the divorce, Harriet and Sarah moved in with Harriet’s parents, who owned a farm in the same area. In 1854, Harriet remarried a widowed lawyer thirty years her senior. Harriet and her new husband eventually moved to Cartersburg, in the southern part of Hendricks County, but Sarah did not follow them. By 1865, she was working as a milliner in Fayette, a small town in Boone County just north of the Boone-Hendricks line. In 1866, following her mother’s death, Sarah’s uncle dissolved the trust established in 1843 and transferred the 80 acres into Sarah’s sole ownership.

By 1871, William and Sarah had moved south across the county line into Hendricks County. William still owned no land of his own, but tax records indicate they had settled on Sarah’s 80 acres. That same year, William and Sarah experienced the loss of what was likely their first child. Sarah’s gravestone is the only record of this event. Along with her name, birth date, and death date, the stone reads: “Infant son of W.T. & S.E. Irwin Apr 1871.”

Their second child, a daughter named Susan, was born in July 1873. The new family of three, living on and farming Sarah’s land, were located across the road from the 40-acre farm of the Jones family. In 1874, both the patriarch and matriarch of the Jones family died. An estate sale was held on the property in January 1875, and William purchased a two-year-old colt from the estate for $26. With an eye toward expanding their farm, William began acquiring the Jones property. Between 1876 and 1877, he purchased all eleven shares of the 40-acre farm from the Jones children for a total of $1,402.50.

While planting trees in front of the house, this 1874 Indian Head cent was found. It is tempting to conclude it came from the 1875 Jones estate sale that took place on the property.

Three years after purchasing the 40-acre Jones farm, William and Sarah constructed a stately brick Italianate farmhouse. William manufactured the brick himself, as noted in the May 13, 1880, issue of the Hendricks County Union:

Newspaper item detailing the construction of the Irwin's house. The text is a bit difficult to decipher due to the physical state of the digitized page, but it reads, “Mr. Irwin, of Brown [township], and Frank Hufford, of this township [Lincoln], have begun the manufacture of brick, out of which they will erect new residences this summer.” 

William, Sarah, and Susan lived in the house and farmed their 120 acres for about 15 years. In 1893, William and Sarah's marriage began to fall apart. For unknown reasons, Sarah filed for divorce in 1894, but the case was denied. A year later, in 1895, William filed for divorce, and this time it was granted. He was ordered to pay $3,000 in alimony to Sarah—an amount that represented the vast majority of his net worth.

Just months before his divorce, William swore before a notary that he was worth $4,000 beyond his debts—this affidavit likely played a role in the court's decision to award Sarah $3,000 in alimony. The timing and financial figures suggest this document was part of the legal proceedings leading to the dissolution of his first marriage. Courtesy of the Plainfield-Guilford Township Public Library Archives.

Sarah and Susan, who also appeared to be estranged from her father, moved to Danville together after the divorce was finalized. Sarah still owned the 80 acres she had inherited from her mother and father. With the $3,000 she was awarded in the divorce, she purchased another 80-acre parcel just north of her former home, bringing her total land holdings to 160 acres—80 more than her ex-husband. At a time when land ownership was overwhelmingly concentrated in the hands of men, Sarah’s sole ownership of 160 acres in the 1890s was noteworthy. Although Indiana law allowed women to hold property by then, cultural norms still made such ownership unusual—especially for a divorced woman in a rural farming community.

Not long after his divorce, William remarried on March 29, 1896. His new wife, Zerelda (Ballard) Hogan, was also divorced and brought her four children to live with him. Eleven months after their marriage, Zerelda died on February 21, 1897. Her four children continued to live with William until he began courting his third wife, Mary Denny, whom he married on March 22, 1898. After that, William’s stepchildren were sent to live with their maternal aunts and uncles.

Zerelda (Ballard) Hogan Irwin, William Irwin's second wife who lived in the house for only 11 months before her death in 1897. Photo obtained from Findagrave.com

Mary (Denny) Irwin, William Irwin's third wife who lived in the house for just over a year before it was sold in 1899. Photo courtesy of the Hendricks County Museum Collections.

Following a tumultuous few years in the 1890s, William—perhaps financially exhausted from his divorce and ready to start fresh with Mary—sold his house and farm on July 28, 1899.

Stay tuned for future blog posts regarding the next chapter in Squankum House's history, in addition to an overview of the restoration that has taken place to date.