Wednesday, July 14, 1999
Museum is one man's praise of past
Former mayor makes the most of an old house
BY KRISTINA GOETZ
The Cincinnati Enquirer
INDEPENDENCE — There's a house in Independence where memories are made.
They're created by the man next door whose love of antiques has turned into a passion for sharing history. And they're imagined by visitors who tour the refurbished 1847 Southern-style mansion that he calls the Oxley House.
“There's no running water,” said Marion Schadler, 78, the museum's curator of sorts. “There is a hand pump. There's no electric stove. That's a coal stove, coal and wood.
“People used to have to carry in the wood and carry out the ashes. There's no central heat. It was all fireplaces. You burned up facing the fire and froze facing away from it.
“If you wanted butter, you churned it. It's altogether a different lifestyle.”
That lifestyle is what Mr. Schadler wants people to know about when they visit the two-story home at 5234 Madison Pike, although visitors have been few these days.
“Generally, people are amazed that it's here,” he said. “I don't know why. When people have relatives or friends from out of state, they come.”
Independence schoolchildren used to take field trips there but haven't in a while.
That hasn't stopped Mr. Schadler, though, from telling stories of days gone by to the visitors who do stop in. He wants people to know about the way things used to be.
“What I'm finding is that for younger people, it's just amazing that people lived like that,” he said.
Mr. Schadler's granddaughter, Lesli Schadler, 23, said the house is his passion.
“He loves to take people over there and show them a bit of history that they don't get to see anymore,” she said. “He loves to tell stories and talk about it when people ask questions.
“I think he really likes the fact that I'm as interested in it as he is.”
Unlike other museums, though, patrons can pick up the old farm tools, open the drawers of antique dressers and read postcards that date to as early as 1903.
“A lot of those cards were sent to my mother before she was married,” he said, adding that each visitor seems to fancy something different.
“By and large, people pick out something they've had some relation with,” Mr. Schadler said. “People like the toy wagon if they had a wagon. A woodworker goes through there and he'll admire the furniture.
“A lot of people work on the farm and they'll admire a tool they used to work with.”
Mr. Schadler, who was Independence mayor from 1972 to 1989, named the home the Oxley House after the Louisiana family that built it. It stands next door to the Schadler home.
He and his wife, Rosella, bought the New Orleans-style brick-and-frame house in 1988 after watching it deteriorate for years.
Since then, Mr. Schadler has restored the house and filled it with antiques he's bought, traded for and found. He doesn't look too much anymore for additions to his collection, but if he comes across something at an estate sale, he might buy it.
“This is a way you get some of the stories out,” he said.
And just as Mr. Schadler tells stories of yesteryear, so do the pieces in the Oxley House, he said.
The story doesn't have to be about a particular person or place. It can just tell the way people lived. That's a story in itself, he said — like the old, industrial sewing machine that was patented in the 1860s, or the rope bed with a feather mattress, even a version of today's Crock-Pot.
“There's an old, slow cooker over there where you heated a firebrick, and you put your meat and vegetables in there,” Mr. Schadler said.
“The Crock-Pot is not such a new idea.”
Mr. Schadler doesn't charge admission and doesn't have hours of operation. He likes it that way.
“Just call before you come,” he said. “Make sure we're here.”
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