At the heart of the Cottonwood Ranch historic site is the beautifully preserved stone house completed in 1896.

Since becoming curator of Cottonwood in 1985, Don Rowlison has given thousands of tours of this house to people of all ages from across the country and around the world.

Today it's our turn.

Welcome to the Cottonwood Ranch.

John Fenton Pratt lived here.

This house was lived in until 1978.

But we have a photographic history of the place.

So the house wasn't built once.

It was built in three phases from 1885 to 1890 and 1896 is when they finished the house and we'll go through those and show you what modifications were made and how they changed and how they expanded.

But essentially by 1896 the house was finished and this is the oldest still standing basically unmodified house that we know of in northwestern Kansas.

A lot of the artifacts are original stuff that we have obtained through donations.

So this is a living room.

Now, that's what they called it.

But to us in today's culture we would call it the family room because all the activity took place mostly in this room.

They dined in here, they probably played cards, they probably had sewing club meetings in here.

They did have heat in later years with the fireplace which dates from 1896.

It was ordered from Montgomery Ward.

The rug on the floor dates from 1903.

It's a Wilton Velvet and you might notice you see seams about every two feet.

The looms to make those were only that wide, about two feet wide.

After the early 1900s or the turn of the 20th century.

If the rugs weren't too big and you could afford it, they would stitch them in the factory for you.

So this is one of the factory stitch rugs in the house behind me you see a telephone that's on the wall that telephone dates from 1923.

Is it the original.

No it isn't.

According to the Pratt family there was a telephone in the house as early as 1888 and that kind of mystifies people.

They say, "Well who did they call?"

Well they had set up, because Abraham Pratt, the father of Fent Pratt, lived a little over a quarter mile south of here on the south side of the river.

His brother lived a half mile west of here.

So what they did in 1988 is set up a private line that had the three households on it, this one, Fent Pratt's, his brother's, Tom Pratt's and Abraham Pratt's, and also the business.

You didn't have caller ID but you knew it probably had to be a relative or a friend at the other house that was calling you.

In this corner is a cabinet looking affair.

I can unfold it and spread it out.

And it is a sewing machine purchased in 1912 from Montgomery Ward and it has a lifetime warranty on it.

Well here we are the company Montgomery Ward isn't anymore but the sewing machine still works.

On this wall we have a friendship quilt but this is made by people within a least a half mile radius.

But maybe a mile, but not much more.

And there's a lot of names on this and they were part of a sewing club, but the sewing club called themselves the G and G Club, and G andG stood for Gab and Giggle and they did that a lot.

And it lasted clear up until through the 1970s.

But anyway, this quilt kind of covers up things because when we talk about the preservation and preserving any evidence we have, this is the east side of the original one room house which later was divided into three, basically three equal rooms, a living room where the table is, a bedroom and the kitchen.

But this is where the, the stud was to support the wall on the inside that ran across.

So it was living room over here or social room and kitchen here.

So we have to preserve an example of everything that happened.

We have the story, but this is the proof.

So we are preserving the part of the construction history by looking at this because we know what this was, and the Pratt's modified this.

It hasn't been done in modern times.

It was changed to this in 1896 when they built the east side of the house on which is behind me.

OK the dining room table set here.

So they use this for club meetings and stuff and put extra leaves in it.

But there are things like this which in old movies you'll see these in the westerns or so they were just a condiment tray in the middle, the spirals back and forth or turns.

So you don't have to ask people.

There are such things as salt and pepper shakers because there are perforated tops in these.

There's a one with a cruet in it for vinegar Want to illustrate the pressed tin ceiling and it is made of tin.

These all came from the Wheeling Steel and Corrugating Company out of Kansas City, Missouri, that was very famous for making tin ceilings.

A salesman would come out.

He would measure the ceiling of your room, and then he would give you or lend you an illustrated catalog with the pictures of the design in it so you could pick out the pictures.

These are still being made in some places, but are now very, very expensive.

They were inexpensive in the old days.

In fact, they were most of the time less expensive than putting a plain lathe and plaster ceiling in which was in most of old houses.

They put in these tin savings.

They were put up quick.

They added a lot of beauty to the room and are very durable.

We have moved into the what was the Western part or the western room of the original house.

Of course the house is built in 1885 is a one room structure, but probably as near as we can tell in 1889, shortly after he was married, he divided the original house into three rooms which consisted of a kitchen on the east side, the middle room and the western third which we are currently in was his and her bedroom and was as long as they lived here.

This is the trunk that Mrs. Pratt brought forth from England and the J.

Place of course is her name.

She was Jenny Elizabeth place.

It was shipped to Leonora, which was the end of the railroad track 22 miles northeast of here on the Missouri Pacific Line were Fent Pratt met his Jenny up there.

She disembarked from a train December 30th, 1888, and they got married the next day.

And Leonora is in Norton County, and she crossed the Atlantic from Liverpool, England, to Buffalo, New York, on the S.S. Wyoming, which stands for Steamship Wyoming.

We're currently in the north western room of the Cottonwood Ranch house.

And this section of the house there's a bedroom which we're in now, and we'll see a parlor.

There were two rooms out in 1890.

Both girls slept in here and they have a double bed.

These girls did have a lot of clothes, but oddly enough, there's two closets in the house and this is one of them.

But in England, where Mr. and Mrs. Pratt lived, you were taxed in some areas on how many rooms were in the house and how deep the rooms were.

In England, where they came from in the Ripon area, anything deeper than eight inches was considered a room.

So rather than having big built in walk in closets, as we sometimes have in our homes now, they would use that for a closet.

And then they had the wardrobes, which are portable closets and a lot of older houses.

You do not see closets because they use these wardrobes as closets.

And so when they move, they move those with them.

On this dresser.

I saw these and I mentioned to somebody jewelry boxes and they said, no, those are handkerchief containers.

Because all the women carried hankies that might be fancy and laced and had their initials on them and stuff.

So it was very important to have a nice hankie.

So those are hankie compartments rather than jewelry boxes and they're built in.

You can see the thickness of maybe the window behind me.

These rock walls are basically two feet thick.

The carpet on the floor is from 1895.

It is the oldest carpet in the house and it's a Axminster weave.

This carpet came in two feet wide strips, so they would match the pattern on the carpet as you would on wallpaper.

And this is all hand stitched together.

This floor is a wooden floor now.

It's made out of yellow pine, tongue and groove, yellow pine, but it sets right on the ground basically.

Now the ceiling.

This is pressed tin as we had in in the living room and the same way with the other ceilings, a salesman would come in and measure your room.

Oddly enough, when I cleaned one of the buildings, I found the ceiling plan for this room.

It is a scale drawing and there's even a speck of paint on it, white paint.

Now, that was on it.

I don't know if that was the original color paint that was used, but we replicated that or if it was some time later out in a shed.

But I don't think so.

I think this speck of paint was to do this.

Because you could paint these these tin ceilings any color you wanted to bring out the wreath designs in the panels or the floral designs.

But these weren't multicolored.

This was all always this off white color.

We're in a parlor which is on the southwest corner of the house.

This was a part built in 1890, along with the bedroom where the girls slept.

But the parlor term comes around.

We don't use that term much anymore because what some historians say is a parlor was used.

If a member of your family passed away or maybe a close friend, you had a wake in the parlor before burial.

So in the early 1900s, according to historians, people started changing the name in their house of the parlor to the living room.

So they were contrasting it from what was considered a dead room to a living room.

We have furniture in here.

We have the couch, the horse hair cloth couch that matches three chairs and we also have a rocking chair.

These were purchased in 1896 by Mrs. Pratt.

They were parlor furniture, they were middle of the road quality so they weren't super expensive, but they were fairly durable.

This is Elsie, a photo of Elsie sitting in this rocking chair in 1896.

She is a toddler, and the chair is brand new.

This piece of furniture, which is originated in the 1890s, it's put together with square nails, but is a fine piece of furniture.

We can see it is used as bookshelves but is also considered a secretary.

What's kind of neat about this is the platform of the, this slides out.

Now there's glass on this writing service now, but it covers a blue leather top because there were soft top for writing and that's the way we preserve that.

But the rug on the floor is the 1895 Axminster weave rug, 100% wool.

So it's a very long wearing rug.

It was wool, they were very expensive then they are now.

The ceiling in the house in the parlor was the first one put it.

It was put in in 1893.

The ceiling in 1890 was a lathe and plaster ceiling.

Well three years later in 1893 maybe something happened, maybe the plaster ceiling cracked, maybe there was a storm and a roof leaked and it got wet and it started to fall.

We don't know.

Or the other thing, maybe they simply just changed their mind.

His letters show that $17.85 for the lathe and plaster.

This ceiling cost him $3 and a dime less than the lathe and plaster.

This is a parlor door so people wouldn't have to walk through the two bedrooms to get to the parlor.

Most of the local people had never been in this.

They came into the living room.

They were always welcome, but very few ever came into the parlor.

We're In the bathroom in the 1896 section of the house.

This is the last edition.

This finished it with the bathroom.

A guest bedroom and also the kitchen.

It was always thought by the Pratts that they had the first indoor bathroom in a residence in Sheridan County.

Many people out here didn't have indoor bathrooms until the 1950s or even the early 1960s on some of the farms.

So this was way ahead of its time.

It may have been the first bathroom in the county period.

There was a bathroom I saw in the newspaper articles was put in a hotel in Haoxie 1996, but it was maybe a week earlier or a week later than what this is.

The window it was a pattern called buttons and bows.

It was ordered from the Studley Lumber Yard and it cost less than $10.

Now the bathtub is very unique.

This is the original bathtub that they put in the house in 1896.

John Fenton Pratt purchased it from a Montgomery Ward catalog for $5.75.

It had been off the site for probably 70 years, maybe even more than that.

I was able to track it down.

It was just by luck.

It wasn't anything planned.

But I'd heard that the bathtub was originally used as a planter in the White's Yard, Bobby and Elsie White.

So I went over where the Whites had lived and asked the people that were living there at that time if I could kind of snoop around.

No clue to a bath tub, and I'd pretty much given up on it.

Years later, a woman who lived across the river by the name of Thelma Jones, she called me up and said, "Rowlison, I'm moving.

"Anything you want for that ranch, come over and look at."

So I went over and looked at that.

And I was about ready to leave and I walked by a horse corral and here was this bathtub, and I was kind of thinking out loud and I said, "Well, I don't think there's anything I need here."

And I walked by this and I go, "Hey, by the way, I've been looking for a bathtub."

And she said, "Rowlison, I've been meaning to tell you that bath tub came from that place."

And I said, "Really?"

I said, "Thelma, "I thought Bobby White had it and used it as a planter."

She said, "He did."

Said, "That's where I got it."

And she had used it as a bathtub for she said, 17 or 18 years.

And the last 25 years she had been using it as a horse tank.

Now I know it was a tub because she said so.

But also when I took out a 1959 cast porcelain tub, a regular looking bathroom tub below that were what we call the footprints, the actual place were this tub set.

So it is the tub.

It does work when it is turned on, it is water tight the reason we aren't going to paint it is because it has such a story behind it being used as a planner in someone's yard, being used as a bathtub away from here, used a horse tank.

And now it's home at the Cottonwood Ranch where it was put in in 1896.

This is the Southeastern Room which was used as guest bedroom almost exclusively.

In fact it was set up to be a guest bedroom and there is a sink in the guest bedroom, that dates from 1896, so the guests could actually clean up in the privacy of their own room, although the bathroom is just next door.

But also the oval glass window is a highlight kind of of the house, but also the guest bedroom.

the oval glass window was put in at 1896.

You can see that the window is deep because this is the thickness of the walls in here.

But the outside, six inches of this window was, we'll call it store bought.

It was manufactured in the store.

So to compensate for these thick stone walls, these are pieces of two by six boards laid on edge and hand carved out.

It is a very attractive window.

There is a hook at the top, I think there may be two possibilities.

One is that a plant may have been hung or it may have been a hook to put a lantern in.

Because at night from the outside, if this is illuminated with light, this window is very, very pretty at night.

This is the newest carpet or newest rug in the house.

This is a Wilton Velvet of the fern pattern and dates 1928, 1929.

But something kind of unique about, well, not really unique.

Other people had done it, but I will step back and I'll turn up this corner of the rug and you will see that Mr. Pratt didn't want to waste any stain.

You couldn't see the finished product or the stain of the floor under the rug.

So why do it?

I do remember the price for this wing of the house.

We will call it the East Wing.

It's only three rooms.

The kitchen the bathroom and a guest bedroom.

And with the stained glass windows in his ledgers, he said it cost $198.75 to build these three rooms.

Or the addition on the house So the kitchen was a very active place in any household because you had to feed the workers, the people and the family.

But this room was never wallpapered.

This kind of ugly green is the original color of the kitchen, because in the kitchens you didn't paper your kitchens, because if you put wallpaper on the walls, you used a paste made out of flour and water.

And steam from the stove, the paper would loosen and roll off.

So most of the kitchens in the early days were painted dark so they wouldn't show the soot and the smoke so bad from the wood burning range.

Now I say wood burning, but they didn't always burn wood.

They burned coal, they burned corncobs, and some people even burned sunflower stalks and also cow chips, and all of those smoke quite a bit and would cause a lot of staining on the wall.

The linoleum on the floor dates from 1903 but according to the family, the women never waxed it.

But rather than waxing it, the women would get it really clean and then use whole milk on it to polish it because the butterfat in the milk would leave a transparent sheen on the floor.

May have been two reasons.

Maybe they couldn't obtain store bought wax, maybe Fent Pratt didn't want to buy store bought wax because it's too expensive.

But also the floor bought waxes that you'd get commercially had a lot of petroleum distillants in it to leave the sheen.

That's what they were all about.

And the petroleum distillants would eventually deteriorate the linseed oil base of the linoleum.

That's why it's called linoleum, because it's made out of linseed oil.

To my right is an icebox.

It's not a refrigerator.

It was an icebox because actually ice was cut out of the streams in the winter.

But the ice box, you put the ice in the top because we know from our science class in grade school that cold goes down.

So the cold would go down into the storage place in the bottom.

And the ice that was cut out of the stream was put in an ice house west of the house.

So the ice box is very important for the preservation of food, except they were doing a lot of canning in glass jars, which they call canning and other ways to preserve the both meat and vegetables.

For company and stuff and more formal things they set the table in the living room, but a lot of times they just simply ate in the kitchen.

There's a small table here and there was room, but they did do a lot of cooking in here.

The Hoosier cabinets were very instrumental in the kitchens because they're a compact thing.

In fact, they're for storage they have all sorts of things, so they didn't have kitchens big enough for mixers, all the pots and pans and things to do.

But it's very good because with the Hoosier cupboard there is places where you would store your sugar and measure it out.

You did a lot of baking, so the flour bin is over here with a sifter on it.

That was good.

We talked about the storage.

You could close it up to keep things out.

You could keep things to work the butter and then including a butter mold in there.

So you would want to the butter fancy and even with a design on it, if you traded at the store because the storekeeper would give you credit for bringing butter in and you could trade the butter you brought in for other groceries, whether they were canned goods or anything you needed dried fruit that you didn't have at home.

So there's a stained glass window in the kitchen also, and it's a cottage window.

It's one of those small ones that's on top of a larger window.

And that particular pattern is called lavender and lace.

Well, behind me is the kitchen door, the kitchen door was used a lot because you a lot of times you entered here.

If you were working outside from the back.

The stove in the house dates from the 1920s but these stoves were designed so the fires go both over the top of the oven and also below the oven.

The top of the stove are warming ovens.

So the heat from the stove would come up and that would keep the the things warm at the top.

And this particular stove was primarily used to heat up the whole east side of the house.

And to my right and behind me is a pantry.

According to the family, Mrs. Pratt really had to talk her husband into putting in a pantry.

Because he said the cellar is right out the back door.

So why do you need a pantry on the inside of the house?

Well, she convinced him that he did and the pantry was so handy to him that later he kept his safe in the pantry.

He had a small safe in there.

And oddly enough, the family still has the chair that set by the the table that's in the house.

Mrs. Pratt would sit in that chair, but on the bottom of the chair.

In Mrs. Pratt's writing was the combination of the safe.

So a lot of activity was in here, and the kitchen was used probably more than any other room in the house, because you were fixing at least three meals a day.

And during the growing season, you were canning fruits and vegetables.

A lot of people will come into the ranch and they will look around.

And in today's standards, a lot of them will say, Well, this is a cute little cottage.

Little cottage, holy cow.

As late as the 1930s here in western Kansas and Sheridan County, where we are now, people were still building and living in sod houses.

This house was complete, rugs on the floor, telephone, an indoor bathroom, this was a mansion in it's own scale.

And I kind of tongue in cheek when people say, what style is this?

I say it's original ranch style.

Because ranch style homes are usually one story buildings that kind of spread out.

Well, this certainly is both literally and figuratively a ranch style home.

It was a ranch, the Cottonwood Ranch and their home worked and it was lived in until 1978.

You can't get a feeling of it until you're actually here.

And see the sights and the smells and get the feeling of what it was like.

Please feel free to come and visit and get the experience, a personal experience with you and your family.