New history is being made in the mansions of Nuckolls and Thayer counties.
Here in Nuckolls County the owners of the Lyon mansion near the western edge of Nelson have responded to the many requests for tours by letting people stay in what some believe may be a haunted house.
In addition to serving as the Nuckolls County treasurer, Tami Sharp has a unique sideline. She owns and is now operating a haunted house. And it's not just any haunted house, but a real mansion with a storied history in Nelson.
Sharp recently purchased the Lyon-Meyers house which is located atop the hill in west Nelson Sharp owns the house next door so when the property became available it was a natural fit.
The house was built by a wealthy 19th century businessman as a wedding gift for his daughter.
Col. Thomas Harbine came by his rank honestly as an officer serving in the Union Army.
He was a prominent attorney and businessman who was associated with several railroads. He was also the owner of a private bank in Fairbury.
His daughter, Mary, married George Lyon, Jr., a resident of Nelson. Col. Harbine had the large home constructed for the couple as a wedding present.
Subsequent generations of the family resided in the house for decades.
A descendant, Cathereine, married Orval Meyers and they resided in the house for many years.
The house was lost to the family in 1981 because of a bank forclosure.
The house has gone through several owners. Maintenance was neglected as the cost of restoring, renovating or repairing the building became a dauting task.
Sharp is opening the house for tours and overnight stays through Halloween.
Because there were several deaths in the house, including those of young children over the years, there are reports the building is haunted by their spirits.
For those of a curious or adventurous spirit, overnight stays and one-hour self-guided day tours are offered.
Contact Tami Sharp through Messenger on her Facebook page for more information. And find a way to stream Ghostbusters during your stay.
In the Thayer County the Lake Mansion is being reborned and this week will be the site of the second annual fall festival. It is planned for Saturday.
The Hebron Journal-Register published a story last week updating Thayer County residents about what is happening at the mansion located east of Hebron.
Construction of the mansion was financed by Annie Borden, the wife of one of the men associationed with the Borden's evaporated milk company, for her sister, Mary Lake.
Ramona Kenning, purchased the mansion 23 years ago, not for the mansion but for the farm it was located on. Mrs. Kenning's daughter, Ranae Hintz, and her family assumed ownership in 2022 following the death of Mrs. Kenning.
Ranae told the Hebron newspaper reporter, "We want it to feel homey and be welcoming to everybody. This is a place to get together."
This Saturday there will be vendors on the main floor and weather permitting a large tent outside as well as animals, hamburger meals and elephant ear treats. Children will be invited to play yard games.
Last year the first festival was held on Oct. 1, the first anniversary of Reamona's passing.
The house contains nearly 9,000 square feet located on 160 acres which are farmed by Ranae's brother, Alan Kenning.
Ranae said, "Our dream is to share it with people, a place to have retreats, family reunions and weddings. A host of weddings have already been held at the mansion along with painting and sewing classes, an end of summer party and even a funeral.
The Hintz family has been repairing the neglected house and hunting for antique furniture with which to furnish it.
The home features interior windows in the upstairs hallway to create a cooling summer draft. Walk-in closets and four-foot wide entry doors that were built large enough for coffins. (When constructed it was customary to hold funerals in the homes of the deceased.)
The following information came from an internet web site known as WikiTree.
This is the story of a very immodest house that is far out of scale in its surroundings. This is also the story of how it came to be built and the people who lived in it.
The beginning of the story is about two half-sisters, Retta and Mary. Retta was born in Massachusetts in 1847 with the name of Bridgett and her mother was Mary Kelly. Her half-sister, Mary, was born in Wisconsin in 1854 and the daughter of Sarah Rogers. Their father, John McConnelogue, had two sons and two more daughters with his second wife, Sarah. Theresa Loretta left home, married a Civil War veteran, settled in Chicago, had two sons and became a widow before age 30. Mary stayed at home, moved with her family to Iowa, taught school and kept house for her father after her mother died, and finally married at age 30. Retta married her second husband in 1886. His name was Henry Lee Borden who was the oldest son of the founder of the famous condensed milk company of the same name. Mary married an Iowa dirt farmer named Joseph Henry Lake, three years her junior, who had a wanderlust.
Mary and Joe lived in at least three different counties in Iowa, plus North Dakota, before ending up in Nebraska by about 1902. Retta and Mary's father died in 1902 and so did Retta's husband, Henry Lee. These were pivotal events. Retta now had a fortune of more than a million dollars.
Mary had two children about to go out on their own and a husband who wanted to move again. Mary did not want to move again, ever. Retta and Mary came up with a plan. Retta would build a house on Joe's farm and put the deed in Mary's name.
Their plan was successful, but not at all practical. Retta was used to the mansions of the wealthy and besides that, she already had at least five residences in Chicago, New York, St. Clair, Michigan, Houston, Texas and Tonti, Illinois, all probably with a resident staff. Retta would build a similar house for her dear sister Mary. Instead of a structure sized for two middle-aged empty-nesters supporting themselves meagerly on only 80 acres, Retta built a place big enough for a family of at least six with a staff of at least two, who would be able to entertain on a grand scale of at least 20, and as many as 100, guests. Joe was never happy there and was so resentful of the house that he never maintained it, never repaired it and never painted it.
It was a good thing it was built without running water or electricity because just the utilities would have put them in the poor house, they could barely afford to heat one or two rooms and only lived in three, the kitchen, dining room and one bedroom, all on the main floor.
In the kitchen, by the sink was a pump that drew rainwater from a cistern. Next to the kitchen was a small room with a bathtub and they heated water for bathing on the kitchen wood stove. One "advanced" convenience of the house was that it had an indoor privy and it was a two hole-er. In the winter it was just as cold as an outhouse. Instead of a pit next to the foundation, there was a tile gutter that directed the waste into a cesspool down the hill. There was a waiting room next to the indoor privy that had a door to the outside. Mary used that waiting room to house her chickens in the winter.
Mary and Joe died in the 1940s, making way for the second generation of Lake occupants.
Frank Lake was the son of Joe and Mary. Frank's wife, Nell Corliss, had grown up just down the road from the big house, but they were married in Hebron in 1910, took their honeymoon in Iowa, and then homesteaded on one section in the Sandhills of northwest Nebraska. Frank had lived in the big house after it was built, but he was also attending high school in Chicago and living with his Auntie Retta for part of that time. His sister, Alta, was about 16 when the house was built, and was probably the youngest occupant.
After 30 years of raising cattle, Frank, Nell and their youngest son, Wallace, moved across the state, from Hooker County to Thayer County to raise corn for a living. Frank had running water and electricity installed in the house. Their youngest son, Wallace, trained as a pilot and died in World War II, but the short time he lived in the mansion, he was probably the third person to live upstairs.
Frank and Nell continued to live in three rooms on the main floor. They did, however, replace the wood stoves with gas stoves, stopped using the indoor privy in preference to a flush toilet, but did not evict the chickens. Nell had a chicken-raising operation where she had the chicks in the privy waiting room and the older chickens on the front enclosed porch.
Nell died in 1969. Her death signaled the ending of the second generation's time in the house.
Gene was the middle son of Frank and Nell. Gene and his wife, Irene Folk, were both born on Nebraska Sandhill homesteads and were married in 1934 in Hooker County. They managed to raise a family of five on two sections of grassland bordering the Dismal River. After all their children were married and living on their own, it came time to take their turn of residing in the Lake Mansion. They probably had some regrets for leaving the Sandhills they loved.
This would not be the first time they had had to leave. They had moved to Lincoln two different times when their children were in college. But those times were temporary and this move was permanent.
Irene said she did not want to move to a house where she would probably die, but there were other more important practical considerations. It was another career change for Gene, which he probably did not look forward to doing. So they made the best of it and really had an attitude that they were on an educational adventure.
They learned about house remodeling and landscaping. They learned about antique collecting. They made new friends. When their 30 years were nearly up, their poor health made it impossible for them to care for themselves and they had to move into a nursing home in Hebron.
Their time there was pleasant enough, for Irene had worked there as a nurse not long before, but mercifully their time was brief. Irene died in May of 1998 and Gene died five months later.
Gene and Irene's children had many happy memories of their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents living in the big house. But none of them wanted to live in it. They mutually decided to sell the house and the farm it sat on. It was a monumental job to clean it out to get it ready to sell. It was so big no one had had to throw anything away, each generation had moved the previous occupants' belongings upstairs to make room for their own. Gene and Irene had worked on getting rid of a lot of trash, but their antique collecting had taught them what was not junk and they added quite a bit to what was already there including much of the original furniture Retta had bought for the house. All of this made for a large estate sale and auction.
The wood frame house was built on a brick and mortar foundation, with a cedar shingle roof. It had an attic that was a full story high, so its five chimneys were three stories tall. It was often said, and always with pride, that each chimney contained a carload of bricks.
There was no running water in the original house. The only bath room in the house had a bath tub but the hot water for it was carried in buckets from the kitchen stove.
The kitchen had its own entrance from the outside, its own stairs leading to staff quarters, a hallway leading to the bathing room and another passage through a "butler's pantry" leading to the dining room. This kept the work areas hidden from the living space of the family. The butler's pantry had floor-to-ceiling open built-in shelves for storing china, crystal and serving dishes, with drawers below for storing table linens, silverware and other eating utensils and accessories.
The Hebron Journal-Register story didn't give the location of the house, but a few years ago Editor Bill Blauvelt consulted a high school friend and former Thayer County resident about the location of the mansion. If Bill remembers correctly David Messing said to go one mile east of old Highway 81 on Highway 136 to county road 6300 and then one half mile south to find the house.
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