Donald, John Sweet, Farmstead

About this property

The John Sweet Donald Farmstead is a historic farm in Springdale, Wisconsin with surviving structures built as early as 1858. It is significant as the home and testing grounds of John Sweet Donald, a farmer, statesman, and educator of the Progressive Era. Settlement of the Springdale area began around 1845. By the 1850s about 100 Scotch families were settled among other immigrants along the Sugar River. The Rev. James Donald, an immigrant from Scotland, came to serve the Presbyterian parishes at Mount Horeb and Mt. Vernon, and in 1855 he bought 80 acres in the country between the two churches, at the southwest edge of the Scotch settlement. He brought his wife Margaret Strong and three sons. For the first few years they lived in a temporary shelter northwest of the current house, which no longer exists. They dug the well west of the house about 1858, lining it with limestone they quarried, probably right on the farm. They built some log out-buildings, and around 1859 built the first section of the current farmhouse. That first section is now the southernmost 2-story cube with the hip roof - the white structure in the photo. It sits on a limestone rubble foundation. Some of the beams in the basement are rough-hewn, still bearing the marks of an adze. The walls are of wood, filled with brick nogging for insulation. The current wide front porch and the additions to the north were added later, but the library on the second floor was there from the start. Holding Rev. Donald's classical and religious texts, it was where he prepared his sermons. The farm was run mainly by the son John Strong Donald at that time. The main cash crop was wheat - in 1860, the farm produced 245 bushels. In that year the family had six meat cattle, five pigs, and six milk cows. The cows produced 200 pounds of butter, some of which was sold. Rev. James died in 1866 at 76 years. His son John died just two years later - only 26 years old. A few months later his new wife Ellen Sweet Donald gave birth to John Sweet Donald. Ellen managed the farm with help from her father next door until 1882 when she married John Jones, who ran the gristmill in Mount Vernon. They gradually bought adjacent farms, expanding the whole to 407 acres by the 1890s. During this period the Donald farm transitioned from wheat to dairy, and added buildings. They added a 51-foot "cow barn" in 1875; only its foundation remains. They built the buggy shed around 1887, a tall building with walls of vertical board and batten. A second well was drilled in 1889, and a wood windmill was erected over it. In 1892 they added the horse barn, sixty feet long with timbers joined by mortise and tenon, walls of vertical board, and a gambrel roof topped with a tall wooden ventilator - at right in the photo. Around 1890 they expanded the house with the addition of the rear kitchen wing. The front and side porches were added around the same time, with the scroll-sawn pickets and the quatrefoil decoration in the upper brackets. The washroom beyond the kitchen was added ca. 1892, clad in vertical board and batten.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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