The first home in Crothersville—a log cabin—built by the town’s founder, John Hamacher, in 1858 was torn down and removed on Labor Day.
The cabin logs are believed to have been taken to a location in Switzerland County.
The derelict and abandoned property at 301 E. Main Street, owned by Mary K. Kelly of west Ten Cent Road in Hanover, had been the target of the town’s unsafe building committee since October 2020.
At some point in early 1900’s, additions had been built around the log cabin and it had been clad with aluminum siding.
During last week’s Crothersville Town Council meeting, town attorney Matt Lorenzo said the property owner, Mary Kelly, said during a recent court hearing that she was going to give the cabin to someone for $1.
A week before that hearing, the council approved making an opening $10,000 offer up to a maximum of $15,000.
“She turned down the town’s offer, but on the plus side, the town does not have to spend any money to make it safe now,” Lorenzo said.
Lorenzo and Clerk-Treasurer Danieta Foster had made three court appearances in regards to the property because the home had been determined unsafe and the property was unkempt for several years.
During the most recent court date on Aug. 30, Superior Court 1 Judge Amymarie Travis gave Kelly until November 30 to clean up the property. Since the cabin has been moved and the house around it has been torn down, Foster said the next step is to order an inspection by the town’s unsafe building committee.
“If the property meets what it needs to meet, then we cannot go back to court. We’ll just dismiss it,” she said.
Lorenzo said the property would need to be properly cleaned up and made safe and the basement would need to be filled in for the case to be dismissed and the December court hearing to be canceled.
“It’s too bad it worked out the way it worked out,” council Vice President Terry Richey said. “The log cabin really neat to see. The cabin was in remarkable shape, so much better than the house built around it had become.”
No one had lived in the home in recent years. Trees had grown to the point of covering up the front of the home, and the back was grown up, too. Council President Jason Hillenburg said the original four-wall cabin structure was “solid as a rock,” but the drop ceiling in the second-story portion had fallen on the floor.
The council told Kelly the town would pay for two appraisals and come up with an offer for the property before the July 19 court hearing, but that had to be continued so two appraisals could be obtained.
The average of the two appraisals for the 0.35-acre property came in at $31,375. Foster said the council previously approved using $21,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds to put toward tearing down neglected properties in town.
Foster said Kelly had posted the property for sale online for a while at $54,000, and it had
an assessed value by the county of $89,000. Those numbers are well higher than the average of the two assessments the town received.
Kelly was enjoying a $45,000 homestead exemption and a $3,000 mortgage exemption on the property. To be eligible for both, the property owner must reside in the home.
The town learned it would cost $18,000 to get the historic cabin out of the two-story portion of the home. The unsafe building committee had been going through the legal process to tear down the portion of the house on each side of the cabin and preserve the log cabin as a local historical site.