The Garage, c. 1915
By Cathy Callopy
Next to the smokehouse is a garage. Somewhere around 1915, Julia and/or her niece, Patty Selmes purchased a Ford Model T touring car. That is probably when this structure was built. Although Patty learned to drive (having no husband to drive her around), Julia had Harry Roseberry drive her around. Harry was responsible for keeping the Ford in running order and he became quite a mechanic. Before the garage was built, there were two slave cabins on this spot. Sally Taylor, one of the enslaved women brought from Louisiana, may have been the mother of all of the seven children that came up with the Dinsmore family from Louisiana. In that case she would have needed both of the small buildings that were located here. Or, it is possible that she lived in another cabin. Silas Dinsmoor wrote that there were several cabins on the property when James Dinsmore purchased the farm in 1842. There were also two adult male slaves, Coah and John (perhaps Ebberson or Everson). These small cabins may have been where they lived. The one photograph we have of the structure indicates there were no windows in the buildings, but the “dogtrot” or breezeway would have made the summers slightly more comfortable. After the Civil War, these buildings would have slipped into disuse as Sally and her family left to live in Rising Sun, Indiana, and the other family that was then on the property, Jilson and Eliza Hawkins, followed her in 1874. Coah had died in 1862, during the war, and John had married and moved to Indiana. Nancy Mcgruder had moved away to Oxford, Ohio, and though she did return later, the cabin she lived in was probably located on the eastern end of the Roseberry house. Her house burned down in the late 1880s, consuming all her worldly goods she could not fit in her arms.