Going home

BELMONT — For centuries people have said there’s no place like home — and for Sarah Scott, “home” is the Dysart house at Dysart Woods.

Twenty-five years before Sarah was born, her grandparents Bill and Bernice Bartels moved from Athens, Ohio, to Belmont County as part of Bill’s job with Ohio University. He came to teach at the new OU “branch” campus that today is known as Ohio University Eastern. He also agreed to move his family into the old farmhouse that stood at the entrance to the university’s then-new land laboratory — Dysart Woods, a 455-acre tract that includes a central tract of 50 acres of old-growth white oak-beech-tuliptree forest surrounded by a mixture of second-growth forest, old fields and pastures, according to the Old-Growth Forest Network, to which it was inducted in 2018.

The forest and adjacent home and outbuildings had belonged to the Dysart family, and the last two surviving sisters, Margaret and Gladys, sold the property to the Nature Conservancy in 1962; it was transferred to OU in 1966 for the purpose of hosting botany studies. Sarah has a copy of the property’s first deed that notes Leonard Twinem and Mary McCollum came to the local region from Ireland in 1837. Those first settlers of the property paid $1 an acre for the plot at the Marietta Land Office. Their heirs owned the property until 1962, but in 1882 a daughter married a member of the Dysart family, who later became sole owner and namesake of the farm. Belmont County property tax records indicate the house was built in 1902, but Sarah believes it is older. She is doing research to try and confirm its year of construction.

When the Bartels family arrived in the 1960s, they rented a home in the village of Belmont while they waited for the university to renovate the old farmhouse for them. Bernice later returned to the house in the village after she was widowed, and granddaughter Sarah lives there today.

Sarah’s mother, Martha Scott, said squatters had occupied the Dysart house for a few years before her family moved in, and the university removed whiskey bottles and “loads of beer cans” from beneath the bunkhouse, which is also referred to as a summer kitchen. The Bartels family would soon move in and serve as caretakers of the property and as hosts for visiting students from the main campus in Athens and other guests of the university.

Martha recalled that she, her parents and brothers Mitch and Mike moved into the Dysart house during the spring while she was in kindergarten. Her younger sister, Mary Ann, was born after the family was settled on the farm.

“I loved it,” Martha said of moving to the farm about 5 miles south of Belmont off of Ohio 147. “It was a magical place to grow up. … We played in the creeks and took groups through the woods. Every group that visited I followed through the woods and listened. …

“We had a lot of visitors. Students would come from Athens, other countries,” Martha added. “It gave us … a unique perspective with diversity. College students stayed with us. We had a guy from Nigeria who was a botany student.”

She said her father, Bill, always told his kids that the work of maintaining the farm was worth it because they got to live there. She recalled her mother, Bernice, saying the site was “majestic.”

Martha said her parents always wanted to own the farm, but when they were alive the university was not interested in selling the property. Still, they considered it their family home. Later, their son Mitch and his wife Anne lived in the house and wanted to buy it before they moved to another home in Belmont in 2003. The Bartels family occupied the house for 35 consecutive years.

Bill died in 1984, and Bernice in 2018.

Born in 1993, Sarah never knew her grandfather, but she was well acquainted with the house and farm that he loved.

“I have been drawing that house since I was a little girl,” Sarah said, noting her sketches were born “out of pure love and infatuation.”

At age 17, she painted a picture of it on a piece of slate from one of the barns on the property.

The university leased the house to other area residents after 2003, and it eventually was abandoned. That’s when Sarah and her fiance, Bryce Cross, began watching for news about the structure.

“We set a goal for ourselves in 2021 to buy a farm,” Sarah said. “But every time we went to look at one, we read something in the news about Dysart. I even canceled an appointment with a realtor because on the day of, we would get something else about Dysart. People called to tell me what they heard and saw.”

On Oct. 1, 2021, The Athens News published an article stating that Ohio University planned to auction 13 surplus properties. Dysart Woods and the Dysart house were among them.

A deal was struck to allow Captina Conservancy, a nonprofit based in Barnesville that promotes, preserves and protects biodiversity, natural beauty and environmental health of regional land and watersheds, to take ownership of the old-growth forest. The land was transferred in December 2022, but the house and farm were not part of that arrangement. They instead would be sold at public auction through a sealed bid process.

After learning about the auction, Sarah and Bryce and their extended family members began doing research. They “consulted with a lot of people,” Sarah said, asking how much to offer for the property and how to give themselves the best chance to win the auction.

“A sealed bid is really tricky because you don’t get to know what anyone else bid,” Sarah said.

But they placed a bid and hoped for the best.

“Then the wait began,” Martha said, noting it was a stressful process.

On Nov. 27, 2023, Sarah got the call informing her that they had won the auction.

“She called me instantly,” Bryce said of receiving the news that the home would be theirs. “She was crying a little.”

“I was so overwhelmed with excitement,” Sarah said. “There were lots of tears and screaming. I called everyone in the family within six minutes.

“I can’t explain what it felt like to want something so bad from when you’re a little girl. … At 30 years old to be told it was ours was unbelievable!”

The couple purchased the house and 4.7 acres of land. They were able to sign the deed and take ownership on April 5. Then, on April 7, they invited family and friends to visit the property, tour the house and enjoy a picnic on the lawn.

Now Bryce and Sarah have plans to restore the home to its former beauty.

“We are not going to renovate it,” Sarah stressed. “We are going to restore it — the woodwork, the hardwood floors. My grandmother had strawberry wallpaper in the kitchen 50 years ago, and I was able to find it online. I’m going to put it back.”

Already, some bees have been removed from the bunkhouse and taken to local hives. The house has been cleaned up and the yard cut and trimmed. Sarah is pleased to note that irises planted by Bernice are still coming up on the bank out front, and her grandmother’s lilac bush bloomed this year. She added that her Aunt Anne’s hostas are all still there as well, though they are about five times the size they were when she and Mitch left in 2003.

Tool benches and canning shelves that Bill built are still fixtures in the basement, and some even had canned goods stored on them.

Sarah said the summer kitchen has a fireplace you can cook on to avoid heating up the inside of the house. The fireplace is built of bricks made by a Wheeling company and is complete with a kettle and swinging bar to hang it from.

The house itself has five bedrooms and five fireplaces.

“The Bartels family is restoring the property for the next generation to live there,” Sarah said. “Me and Bryce — we’re going back home for a third generation.”

Other family members are involved in the labor of love.

“Mom is going to restore her childhood bedroom for our future children, and Aunt Mary is going to do the same,” Sarah added.

“I think it’s a wonderful place to grow and raise children,” Martha said. “It’s a great community. Really good neighbors, really good people surrounding there — a lot of the same families when I grew up have another generation there. That makes it really special, too.”

And although he did not grow up on or around the property, Bryce is happy about making his future home there.

“I’m excited to be able to help restore it and make it our home but still have the history of their family there,” he said. “My parents love it out there. They think it’s a really great thing.

“I’m just so happy (Sarah) got something she always wanted. My grandma lived not too far from it — the next ridge — growing up.”

The Bartels family is partnering with the Captina Conservancy, sharing the archive of information Bernice compiled over the years. The conservancy is hosting its Dysart Woods Grand Re-opening at 1 p.m. Sunday, and members of the Bartels family will be on hand to share some of that information with the public.

Sarah is always searching for pieces to add to that archive. She asks that anyone who has articles, family photos or other memorabilia connected to the Dysart properties contact her via email at sarah.scott429@outlook.com or by mail at P.O. Box 38, Belmont, OH 43718.

“It’s a huge project, but I have a lot of ambition and a lot of love for it,” she concluded.