By John Kiesewetter
The Cincinnati Enquirer

WEST CHESTER TWP. - After her mother died six years ago, Jill Vaught Dunlap began investigating tales about their stately red-brick home on U.S. 42 being a carriage stop midway between Lebanon and Cincinnati - and maybe something more.

Her research paid off. Today the National Park Service is announcing that the family home - built as the Spread Eagle Tavern in 1840 and used as an Underground Railroad stop mentioned in Uncle Tom's Cabin - has been added to the National Register of Historic Places.

"I just wanted to finish what my mother had started," says Dunlap. She moved into the house with her parents, Roy and Edeena Vaught, when she was a Hopewell Elementary School student in 1974.The structure at 9797 Cincinnati-Columbus Road - also known as the Colonial Farm Restaurant during World War II, Shenstone Farm and Seven Chimneys - received the designation for being a rare Ohio example of Jeffersonian Classicism architecture.

The original U-shaped building has Monticello-like front columns; a recessed front porch; twin parlors on either side of the front hall; and narrow winding staircases popularized by Thomas Jefferson in Virginia, according to Dunlap's research.

"There are lots of homes like this in Virginia and the South, but it's definitely unique in Ohio," says Edson Beall, National Park Service historian in Washington, D.C.

Dunlap's parents had heard that the Spread Eagle was built by James D. Conrey. His brother operated the stage in Lebanon, and changed horses at the Spread Eagle, two miles north of Sharonville.

Dunlap also discovered that Conrey was a Methodist minister and abolitionist.

"Evidence supports the oral tradition that Spread Eagle Tavern was a stop on the Underground Railroad, and is said to be the stagecoach stop mentioned in chapter nine of Uncle Tom's Cabin written by Harriet Beecher Stowe (in 1851-52)," says Dunlap, coordinator for the Ohio Underground Railroad Association in Butler and Brown counties.

In Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853), Stowe's follow-up book documenting her sources, she says the chapter was based on her husband, Calvin, and Underground Railroad conductor John Van Zandt.

Dunlap says the family is restoring the home, and wants to "make it available for education purposes." She also hopes the designation will help protect it from redevelopment along U.S. 42.

A protest by a group called West Chester 42 Residents forced trustees to shelve a $10-million revitalization plan for the Pisgah corridor earlier this year.

If you have information about the old Spread Eagle Tavern, also known as Shenstone Farm, the Colonial Farm Restaurant or Seven Chimneys, contact Jill Vaught Dunlap at 1249 Eifel Cove, Fayetteville, Ohio, 45118.

E-mail jkiesewetter@enquirer.com