I think one of the most interesting and most historic places in Franklin Township is my house. It is 170 years old. John Brown owned it in 1842. He bought it for $5,000. It had 126 acres. Now it is called the Old Tinnes Farm because the Tinnes's, who are still alive, used to own it. Now it only has 5 acres.

The middle part of my house is the oldest. It is probably the part that is 170 years old. The walls are made out of horsehair and mud, kind of like adobe. The plaster wall was stuck to the mud. Down cellar there is the old fireplace where they cooked and baked bread. My brother's room is in the middle part of the house too. That is where they used to hang the smoked meat. My bedroom is Mr. Tinnes's old bedroom. My dad's closet is where they stored jams and jellies. On top of our house there are old lightning rods. If there was too much electricity in the air, they lit up so the farmers knew to come back into the house

Mr. Tinnes told us about farming. He planted the old apple trees in the orchard. Down cellar we have an old cider press, where we make cider. We have a really old apple orchard, and an old quince tree. Quince trees are scarce.

We have 2 barns and we have a stone wall, which is the remains of an old barn that burned down 60 years ago. Mr. Tinnes built a new barn and the other barn is really old. It has wooden pegs to hold it up instead of nails or bolts. We found a lot of cow bones where the cows used to graze.

There is also a springhouse near our house, which they used to pump water from. They didn't have a well until 30 or 40 years ago. Out by the sandbox there was a smokehouse and the outhouse. We find pottery down by the creek. We think we found Indian scrapers all over our yard and Mr. Tinnes's old boot

I found out a lot of this information from Mr. Tinnes and "Facts and Fantasies of Franklin." My house is really historic.