Dole Estate

12/16/2021

Merry Christmas from our home to yours!

09/24/2021

Very cool story about the house 🍂🍁

A ghost town in Harrison? Listed in the records of the State of Ohio is a Ghost town. The name of the town is Simonson. At the corners of Kilby, Campbell and Simonson Rd, lies a building and farm historically known as "Sand Hill" farm. The town was founded by the Simonson family, who owned most of the land in the 1800s. It had a school and the former school in the northwest corner of the intersection is currently a private residence. In those records there is no official date of construction for the school but it does note that a map drawn in 1847 shows the building in existence. The residence on Kilby (pictured) was built by Hamman H. Roudebush (1830 – 1914) from Pennsylvania and Emaline (Simonson) Roudebush (1841 – 1914) purchased a 68-acre farm from Emaline’s family in the late 1850s. They started with the building of a small frame house. With the success of the farm, the house was extensively expanded with a brick structure and renovated in 1870 – 1875 (pictured). The farm, including 9 acres containing the house, barn, and school, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. The Simonson family donated land for a train station on the Whitewater Valley Railroad (later the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, & St. Louis Railroad) just west of the of the farm on the south side of Campbell Rd. Simonson was a thriving town with the large farm house, a school, and its own train station. Many in the Simonson and Roudebush families have been laid to rest in Glen Haven Cemetery. Simonson had a rich history including writings of a run in with Morgan's Raiders just like the city of Harrison . It is unclear if the status of the town was changed by the surge in population of the Village of Harrison or the lack of growth of the town of Simonson. Today the town of Simonson rest silently in the care of Mike and Risa Dole, on the old Roudebush farm, on Kilby Road.

08/30/2021

Happy Sunday! We hope everyone had a great weekend. We spent the day capturing some sights from around the house.

The current owners, Mike and Risa Dole, also celebrated their 34th wedding anniversary today. They do a great job at maintaining the historical integrity of the house and keeping it in tip top shape!

~Lexis, daughter

05/21/2020

What's been going on at Dole Estates during all of our stay at home time?

House repairs of course.

Several of the corbels on the roofline were rotting and needed replaced. Due to the time period, you can't just go to Home Depot and buy these. Thank goodness Mike is so handy. He’s handmade and replaced 8 of the corbels to match the originals.

Fun fact: there are 50 total corbels on the house.

03/27/2020

Some sights from around the house today! 🏡

11/04/2019

Happy 1st Anniversary to Ethan Dole and Rebecca Dole! ♥️

10/27/2019

Happy Fall 🧡

02/08/2018

All this snow is making us miss the Christmas decorations.

01/02/2018

From our home to yours, warmest wishes for a happy and healthy 2018!

12/30/2017

We’re enjoying the pretty scenes the snow brought!

11/05/2017

Today we remember our favorite frequent visitor, our dad, our Papa, & the one person who loved this house more than anyone - Bill Baird. He would have been 87 today.

We also ask that you consider voting for Ethan Dole for Harrison City Council on Tuesday. He will do an excellent job guiding our city the next 4 years!

08/23/2017

Doing a little demolition in the backyard making room for a stone patio. Found some interesting artifacts along the way from when the back room was actually used as a tool shed.