EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published in Heart of Ohio, a lifestyle magazine, that has agreed to share content with Richland Source.com.
LUCAS — People come from all over to see Malabar Farm. They are intrigued by the beauty of the area and the story of the famous author who created a working farm where movie stars were welcome, and perfectly at home. Tourists walk the trails, and some visit Pugh Cabin; most do not know the story of how the cabin came to be there.
Jim Pugh was born in 1892 in Gretna, Virginia. He left school in the 8th grade, was living on his own and driving a taxi in Roanoke, Virginia by the age of 14. He served in France during World War I. After the war he returned to Mansfield Ohio and married Georgia Mowery (named after George Washington because of their shared birth dates) of Newville, Ohio.
A self-taught man who would tackle any project, Jim eventually rose to the position of Line Superintendent for Ohio Public Service in Mansfield; the company later became Ohio Edison.
In 1938, before Louis Bromfield came to Pleasant Valley, Jim Pugh owned a piece of property that was formerly part of the Beck farm; it was to be the site of a year round weekend retreat for the family to enjoy. He set to work to collect the materials to build it.
The land that was to become Malabar Farm, formerly the Haring and Beck farms, surrounded the Pugh property. The Big House at Malabar was constructed from 1939 to 1941 by building 28 rooms to the four rooms kept from the original 8-room farmhouse. Louis and Mary Bromfield were to become good friends with Jim and Georgia Pugh.
Betty (Pugh) Berry (now 86) was 12 the summer of 1938 when her father started constructing the cabin, “For over a year Dad had been collecting discarded decommissioned utility poles and bringing them to the site. They were in rough shape, and Dad and my brother, Bob, shaved every one of those poles by hand, then coated them with varnish to seal them. They were beautiful after they were cleaned up. My job was to burn all the shavings.”
During the early 30’s the Pleasant Hill Dam was under construction. Believing the surrounding land would be flooded, the Army Corp of Engineers felt it necessary to vacate the town of Newville (near the corner of St. Rt. 95 and St. Rt. 603). Jim Pugh was given permission to remove the sandstone foundation from the basements of the homes after the buildings were relocated. The huge stones were moved, cut and faceted by hand to be used as walls, sidewalks, pillars, floors and fireplaces at the cabin. Using a block and tackle and an old truck, he painstakingly moved each enormous piece to his land. Ironically, when the Pleasant Hill Lake was completed in 1936 the land did not flood; the town had been relocated without reason.
The 60 by 30 foot cabin was built in the woods, without benefit of electricity; but that doesn’t mean it didn’t have its own conveniences. Jim Pugh built a spring fed pond just below the cabin, complete with white sand beach. Constructing a water wheel to take advantage of the pond overflow, he installed a generator that provided enough electricity for a couple of lights in the cabin. When that proved to be impractical he bought an old Buick engine to run a generator that provided plenty of electricity. A spring above the cabin provided water via gravity to the sink and toilet.
Just above the cabin Jim built a picnic shelter. Initially planned as an open air covered shelter, the site had a huge sandstone boulder on it. To clear the area Jim planned to put dynamite under the boulder, then remove the smaller stones. As he dug under the huge rock to place the explosives he unearthed human remains. Examining the bones with a doctor friend, they determined these were very likely an Indian burial; he returned the remains to their resting place and built the picnic shelter around the boulder. The boulder became the eastern end of the shelter and the shelter was where many family celebrations were held and where Jim mounted his collection of steam locomotive bronze and brass bells, steam engine emblems, gauges, and a brass steam whistle on and around the huge stone.
In 1948 Jim Pugh added the kitchen, two bedrooms, bathroom, basement, side porch enclosure, and covered patio to the original cabin; he and his wife Georgia made Pugh cabin their permanent home.
Betty (Pugh) Berry remembers the cabin as being a wonderful place to grow up. “There were parties, I played the piano and people sang. I remember James Cagney and the Bogarts being there. In 1948 Senator Robert Taft visited the cabin. It was always great fun. In the summer my girlfriend Zalene and I would visit the caves above the cabin. They had ice in them right up through June, and we’d go there and play board games where it was cool.” She laughed as she remembered their playing tricks on people, “Louis (Bromfield) would bring people up to the caves to explore. My girlfriend and I would sneak up there and make noises to scare them; they thought those caves were haunted.”
One night Betty recalls playing the piano for a party her parents were having and “I was playing Deep in the Heart of Texas. My Dad took a pistol outside and shot ‘bam-bam-bam-bam’ when the song got to the ‘the stars at night are big and bright’ part. Everyone laughed and clapped, and the next day we went outside to find he had shot holes in the spouting,” she chuckled.
When she grew up Betty met and married her husband, Duane Berry, and they settled on a farm in the Lucas area. “Every week Bromfield’s chauffeur, Garth Forte, would stop by our farm to buy fresh chickens and 30 dozen eggs. Louis (Bromfield) always had a house full of people. In the summer young men would come there and stay in the Quonset hut or the Youth Hostel (which was built by Duane Berry’s father and grandfather); the young men worked on the farm for their keep. And of course Bromfield always had his famous friends there.”
Jim Pugh was the master of barter and salvage. He traded his services for many items that still grace the cabins, including an ornate iron scrollwork stair railing from the Jones sisters at Oak Hill Cottage; payment for his electrical work. Windows from retired street cars found a home at the picnic shelter, and the solid brass chandeliers that grace the cabin are from the former Farmers Bank building in downtown Mansfield. When you add the highly polished ornate silver candelabras and punch set, deep burgundy oriental rugs, an ebony baby grand piano, and a wagon wheel coffee table, the cabin looked beautiful, almost magical.
In 1956, at the age of 67, Jim started a second cabin on the land. The marquee from the old Ritz Theatre hangs over a handmade bar, and the sinks, sunken bathtub, toilets and architectural pieces that he purchased from mansions that were to be demolished in Cleveland. The two cabins were to be his legacy to his children; the first was for Betty and the second cabin was for son Bob.
Jim Pugh, an amazing self-educated inventor and builder, died in 1974 at the age of 82. In 1977 Georgia Pugh, after pressure from the state of Ohio, reluctantly sold the cabins and property to become part of Malabar Farm State Park. She moved to Mansfield where she resided until her death in 1989. Betty (Pugh) Berry still lives in the house she moved to from the cabin when she married Duane Berry in 1948; they were married for 62 years until Duane passed away in 2010. Their daughter, Joan Berry Kalamas, teaches for the College of Business and Economics at Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio, and their son Dr. Robert Berry, has his own Chiropractic business, Berry Chiropractic, in Loudonville, Ohio. They too, have many fond memories of family gatherings at the cabin, lake, and picnic shelter.
Recently, thanks to the generosity of the Berry family (Pugh descendants), the Pugh cabin and the bell collection have been restored and opened to the public; the second cabin remains closed. The site is available for special event rental. Visit www.malabarfarm.org for complete site information.
