(keyboard clacking) (mouse clicking) (mellow orchestral music) - This is Spiegel Grove, this was the home of President and First Lady Hayes, so we're in the historic Hayes' home at the moment, and across the way is the museum, which was built by Webb Cook Hayes, the first, the son of Rutherford and Lucy, actually, the second son.

Rutherford Hayes was born October 4th, 1822, in Delaware, Ohio, his family is ancestrally from Vermont, So he was raised there along with his sister, Fanny Arabella, there were some other Hayes siblings, but they died fairly young.

Hayes moved to Cincinnati where he practiced law, and he rekindled a friendship with Lucy Ware Webb who he had met in Delaware, Ohio some years back.

She would become his wife, they would marry there in the city on December 30th, 1852.

But he did take his seat after the war was over in 1865, he served one term as a Congressman until 1867, and then he was elected Governor of Ohio.

1868, he started serving his term, and he was elected to another term and so, he serves two from 1868 to 1872.

His party convinced him to run again for Governor, and so, he's elected to, an unprecedented at the time, third term in 1876.

But, of course, in 1876, he's also then nominated for President of the United States.

He serves one term in the White House from 1877 to 1881, and then he retires here to Spiegel Grove.

Rutherford and Lucy had eight children total, only five survived into adulthood.

Birchard was their oldest son, he follows his father into law.

Their second son was Webb Cook Hayes, the first, who's really important to the family, because he's the one, of course, that really preserves this house, and he's the one that builts the Presidential Library and Museum later.

Rutherford Platt was their third child, he was a librarian.

Fanny Hayes was the President's and First Lady's only daughter, she was born in 1867, and she's, of course, much beloved of her father, she actually took care of him the last four years of his life.

Scott Russell Hayes was the last surviving child, and he became a businessman.

(mellow orchestral music) (birds chirping) It all stems from the word Spiegel, which is a German word for image.

What we really believe it was is that it has to do with this idea of image, and sort of an enchanted scene where it reminded Sardis Birchard, who was Rutherford's maternal uncle who built this house, of sort of the enchanted fairy stories of his youth.

But there's also a second definition for that where he liked to always have good spirits on hand as in ciders and things.

And so, that's why we usually like to think of it as Spiegel Grove, the place of good spirits.

He built this actually as a summer house for Rutherford and Lucy in 1859.

So the house was much smaller at the time, it was only about 4,000 or so square feet.

Rutherford actually acquired it around 1873 when Sardis moved out, and then Sardis died a year later in 1874.

The house was built in several different sections at different times.

So the original part of the house, which is the left-hand portion that you'll see if you're looking at the house straight on from the grounds, was built between 1859 and 1863 by Sardis Birchard.

The second part of the house, I guess we could call it, that is to the right, or to the north of the original part of the house, was added between 1880 and '81 when Rutherford and Lucy knew they were gonna be retiring here after the White House, and they wanted a larger living space.

There's a staircase at the center of the house that was actually added around '80-'81 as well.

So that room that it's now in was reconfigured to become a stair hall.

And then at the back of the house, they removed an L, and they also removed a Carpenter Gothic structure that was back there, and they put on the 1889 addition, which has a kitchen, which has a dining room, some bedrooms upstairs.

But later on after the veranda is added, and then the cupola on top of the house, which is actually a belvedere, those are Italian elements.

And then the Queen Anne, really the dining room in the back section is all Queen Anne style, that's the 1889, that was the high style at the time.

So, at the end, you could really call this a Victorian eclectic house.

Rutherford in particular loved the veranda of the house.

He used to say that he wished he had a veranda with a house attached to it.

He liked to spend so much of his time out there, he and Lucy.

It actually takes 66 laps to make a mile.

So he used to walk out there, and just pace when it was cold weather back and forth, back and forth, he liked to get his roughly six miles a day in walking.

(mellow tranquil orchestral music) Rutherford and Lucy loved Spiegel Grove, they loved working the grounds, they loved the house itself, they felt very at home here.

They really enjoyed using the library, of course, the written word is everything to the Victorians then.

So according to his cousin, Lucy Keeler, they spent many, many hours in the library together reading.

The Spiegel Grove was a very important place for them, for their family, for their children.

The children loved to spend time playing tennis on the lawns.

They all felt very much that this place was in their blood.

(tranquil mellow orchestral music) So Webb gave the grounds to the state of Ohio via two separate land deeds starting in 1909.

And so, he essentially opened this up as a public space, so the public could enjoy the grounds.

In 1912, he broke ground for what would become the museum and the library building, and that was completed in May of 1916.

This property today is about 25 acres, it was much larger at one point.

The property itself, of course, we use today to give tours for our historic Hayes home here, also tours of the museum, and then the public can access the library not only for Hayes's presidential papers, but also for local history.

They can also visit though the Hayes' tomb.

Rutherford and Lucy are buried on the knoll, sort of off here, the side of the house to the south.

And Webb and his wife, Mary Miller Hayes, are also buried behind them.

(tranquil orchestral music) What I think makes this property unique is that you have a combination of a lot of elements that are really exclusive for northwest Ohio.

So you have a setting where you can come and see a presidential home, you can access Rutherford's presidential papers, you can see the collections that belong to his family, you can walk the historic grounds where he did.

So I think it's just a nice combination of all these historic elements.

So you get the period aspect, if you're just interested in Victorian history to say.

If you're interested in early 20th century history, this will be appealing to you.

It can offer a lot of different elements to a lot of different people, and I think that's one of the great strengths of this place.

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