A historic house inside George Rogers Clark Park is opening rooms that have been off-limits for decades, letting visitors climb to its third floor for the first time and walk through the bedrooms and archive room once used by the family of a man who was shot dead inside the home in 1867. The grand reopening at the Daniel Hertzler House runs from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, September 26, with free admission, refreshments, and a first look at family artifacts alongside the recently finished restoration work.
Built in 1854, the house at 930 S. Tecumseh Road is owned by the Clark County Park District and now operates as a museum offering, as the Springfield News-Sun reports, a glimpse into pre-Civil War domestic life. Kristina Kitchen, president of the Hertzler House Museum Advisory Committee, told the paper that the full house will be shown to the public for the first time, since the third floor had been off-limits for years. That floor includes two bedrooms once used by the Hertzler family and an archive room holding artifacts such as a family Bible, Mrs. Hertzler's picnic basket, and a whiskey decanter, according to the same report.
A Year of Repair Work, Funded a Room at a Time
The restoration took roughly a year to complete and was carried out in cooperation with Partners for the Parks. Fundraising helped cover the roughly $10,000 cost, the News-Sun's report notes, and the work included repairing a dilapidated staircase along with restoring a second-floor room back into Hertzler's original office. The committee brought in contractor Paul Meadows, who has also worked on Springfield's Pennsylvania House and State Theater, according to the same account.
Lorin Wear, vice president of the advisory committee, said generous donors helped make the restoration possible, though he cautioned that the 1854 house will always have something new to improve. Beyond the third-floor unveiling, the committee has more planned: a central area of the house may end up hosting tea parties and discussions on period social etiquette, per the report.
The Unsolved Killing That Still Draws Crowds
Daniel Hertzler was a prominent and wealthy businessman before he was murdered inside his own house, a case the museum leans into every October. A Halloween-themed tour focused on the unsolved killing is scheduled from 1 to 3 p.m. on October 10, the anniversary of the crime, the News-Sun reports. Historical newspaper accounts held by Digital Maine describe Hertzler as having been shot through the heart during an October 10, 1867 home robbery; four suspects were arrested, but two were later acquitted and two escaped from jail, leaving the case unresolved. That gap in justice helped seed decades of local folklore, and the Clark County Sheriff's Office still maintains an official list of the county's unresolved cold cases, according to the Clark County government website.
Hertzler's fortune came from mills and a distillery; he arrived in Clark County in 1834 as a Pennsylvania-born Mennonite pioneer before he co-founded the Old Clark County Bank in 1855. That wealth is part of why the house earned its place on the National Register of Historic Places on February 7, 1978, a designation that specifically recognized its distinct Pennsylvania “Bank Style” brick architecture, per Wikipedia.
A House Built on Older Ground
The Hertzler House sits on a hill inside George Rogers Clark Park overlooking the former site of the 1780 Battle of Piqua, where Kentuckians led by Col. George Rogers Clark defeated Shawnee forces, per Wikipedia's entry on the house. New Boston lost the Clark County seat to Springfield by two votes in 1818 and was dissolved in 1866. The annual Fair at New Boston also has events at or associated with the park.
Contractor Paul Meadows' résumé stretches across several of Springfield's other landmark restorations. He also worked on Springfield's Pennsylvania House. He also worked on the State Theater, which is undergoing restoration.
For now, the committee's focus is on Saturday's reopening and the calendar of events that follows. A regular open house is planned for November 21, and organizers are also preparing a holiday-decorated Christmas tour later in the season, according to the News-Sun's report. Donations at Saturday's event will go toward the ongoing preservation of the house, which Wear has said will never run out of projects.
