Barbara Piatt (above), docent at Mansfield’s Oak Hill Cottage, played the Grand Orchestral pump organ at Oak Hill’s opening of the holiday season one recent Sunday.
OAK HILL COTTAGE—
“One of the most perfect Gothic houses in the US”
The cottage was built in 1847 by John R. Robinson, a local railroad tycoon. It has seven gables, five double chimneys and seven Italian marble fireplaces. Later that century it was acquired by Dr. Johannes A. Jones and remained in his family for 101 years.
Mansfield native and Pulitizer Prize winning author, Louis Bromfield, played at Oak Hill as a child. His memories of the home were the basis for his first published novel “The Green Bay Tree” in 1924.
The house was acquired by the Richland County Historical Society in 1965, is on the National Register of Historic Places and was designated a Literary Landmark by Friends of the Libraries USA in 2000.
Anka Hall, a volunteer in the Oak Hill Cottage Guild has given tours there since it opened to the public in 1983. “The house is fully restored with the original furnishings, not simply collected pieces from the period,” she amplified.
Seldom does a house with all the furnishings and artifacts of one family’s life come down to the present intact. This one has!
In the library you will see Dr. Jones’ medical tools and a very early inhaling appliance. Over on the hearth of the room’s fireplace are musical instruments of the period favored by the Jones’ daughters.
Tour guides smile when they point out initials carved in some room’s window glass by Dr. Jones’ bride with her new diamond ring; a demonstration of the relative hardness of those elements that has survived through the past centuries.
Resplendent in its holiday attire, the cottage will be open Sundays, 2 to 5 p.m. through the end of December. Admission is $3.
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It is among the most densely populated countries in the world and officials there predict 50 per cent of the country would flood with a mere three foot rise in sea level; a scenario sometimes predicted to result from global warming.
WHERE IN THE WORLD IS—
Bangladesh
In the news recently after a typhoon hit the country, Bangladesh is located in South Asia surrounded on three sides by India except for a small stretch of border shared with Myanmar. The Bay of Bengal is on its south border.
These borders were established in the 1947 partition of India when the region became the eastern wing of the newly formed Pakistan. They declared their independence and became Bangladesh in 1971.
The Islamic country has been mired in political turmoil ever since with 14 different heads of government and at least four military coups.
The recent cyclone (known as a hurricane in the northern hemisphere) claimed a reported 3,167 lives with 1,724 people missing. Officials there feared the toll could go much higher.
Three similar storms have hit the country in the past 40 years. One in 1970 killed 300,000 people and another in 1991 left 140,000 dead. Advances in disaster preparedness are credited with the lower casualty figures from this storm.
Bangladesh
In the news recently after a typhoon hit the country, Bangladesh is located in South Asia surrounded on three sides by India except for a small stretch of border shared with Myanmar. The Bay of Bengal is on its south border.
These borders were established in the 1947 partition of India when the region became the eastern wing of the newly formed Pakistan. They declared their independence and became Bangladesh in 1971.
The Islamic country has been mired in political turmoil ever since with 14 different heads of government and at least four military coups.
The recent cyclone (known as a hurricane in the northern hemisphere) claimed a reported 3,167 lives with 1,724 people missing. Officials there feared the toll could go much higher.
Three similar storms have hit the country in the past 40 years. One in 1970 killed 300,000 people and another in 1991 left 140,000 dead. Advances in disaster preparedness are credited with the lower casualty figures from this storm.
It is among the most densely populated countries in the world and officials there predict 50 per cent of the country would flood with a mere three foot rise in sea level; a scenario sometimes predicted to result from global warming.
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