When you go to visit Oak Hill Cottage in Mansfield, the most astonishing thing you will discover—aside from its charming appearance from the street—is that the last family who lived in the house left the place virtually intact with all its original Victorian-era furnishings.
It is all there: everything they had to outfit their lives. It makes for incredible documentation of a distant era because, not only is the furniture intact, but the drawers of the furniture—desks, cabinets, dressers—are all full of the paperwork, as direct evidence of the days of the Jones family.
So hunting through some yellowed envelopes, there turned up a small sheaf of old photographic negatives from more than a century ago. By these images of light etched in chemical film, we have a glimpse of Oak Hill as it was—as if through their own eyes.
Here are three snapshots taken one summer, of the front of the Cottage when the porch rose was at its most colossal prominence.
Oak Hill Cottage  310 Springmill Street  Mansfield OH  419-525-1765
Open Sundays April – December (except Easter) 2pm-5pm
Adults $5 Children (12 & under) $1, Carriage House open free during Sunday tour hours.
