The House
Our house has been standing here since the 1850s, and it’s seen a lot.
The Hollingsworth family came to Little Eagle Creek in the late 1820s, when this corner of Marion County was still mostly woods. George Hollingsworth built a log cabin and one of the township’s first sawmills. Then, in the 1850s, he built the house we live in now: two stories of brick on a rubble-stone foundation, with a chimney at each end.
His youngest son, Sylvanus, was born here and spent his life working this land. By the 1880s he was known as one of the leading farmers in the township. Over the years the house grew with the family, and you can still read that history in how it fits together.
Details to love
- The front door. An oval transom, little round windows on either side, and sidelights with rounded ends. The 1975 historic survey called it “unique.”
- The floors. Poplar, probably cut at the family’s own sawmill.
- The doors. Pegged four-panel doors topped with small pediments, and plaster detail along the ceilings.
- The summer kitchen. A one-story kitchen with its own chimney, built so the cooking heat stayed out of the main house.
- The porch. The two-story pillared porch that runs across the whole front was a later addition.
On the National Register. In 1977 the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places for its architecture and its place in the early settlement and farming history of Marion County. Native American artifacts have also turned up on the land, a reminder that people were here long before the Hollingsworths.
Sources: National Register nomination (1976); B.R. Sulgrove, History of Indianapolis and Marion County (1884).