The stone house

I love history and antiques so when we moved to this place it was a real bonus to have this old stone house on the property!  There are several old abandoned houses made of limestone like this one in our area, but most don't have the roof anymore.  Ours barely has a roof.  In the 1980's someone remodeled the interior but failed to repair the roof so all the interior work was wasted.  The kids and I started ripping out the drywall in the upstairs last fall but haven't worked on it much since.

There is even a cellar under the house.  It's not very big, probably about 12 ft. x 24 ft. on the inside.  I would love to fix it up someday but I'm not sure what we would do with it then...  

Now for the history part- in the top of the front gable there is this stone with the date 1882 and the name Cox.  There's a country cemetery a mile and a half from here so we went over there to see if we could find this Mr. Cox, and sure enough there he was, he fought in the Civil War, and afterwards he homesteaded here and got his quarter section of land like everyone else who settled here.  His brother got the quarter section catty-corner across the section.  I did a little research and found out that he wasn't married in 1882, but in 1885, when he was 50 years old, he married a girl from Ohio, and she was only 19.  At least he had a nice house to bring her to.  I wonder what she thought, coming across the country to live with a 50 year old stranger?  Her mother had died 5 years before, and her 16 year old sister died the year she left home to get married, so maybe she was ready for a change of scenery.  Life was so different back then.  Mr. and Mrs. Cox had one daughter and she and her husband did not have any children, as far as I know.  I enjoy sitting over there, imagining what life might have been like back then.  I wonder if Mr. and Mrs. Cox got along, being from different generations.  It's fun to imagine wagons and buggies pulling up to the house.  A lot has changed in 130 years.