As a 165-year-old Michigan farmhouse comes down, its owner ensures it won’t be lost

As a 165-year-old Michigan farmhouse comes down, its ensures it won’t  lost

One day soon, if all goes as planned, wildflowers will grow where the home’s fieldstone foundations once stood, open to all as part of a new nature preserve.

The Sutton/Kolongowski farmhouse on Noggles Road in Manchester Township, pictured in about 1960.Provided by Sybil Kolon

That’s thanks in large part to Sybil Kolon, who grew up spending summer weekends at the house and the surrounding farm, purchased and remodeled by her grandfather Louis Kolongowski, a Detroit electrical contractor, in 1948.

She and her husband still live down the road and are planning to donate the 76-acre property some 30 miles from Ann Arbor to Legacy Land Conservancy, Michigan’s first local land trust.

It will become the Iron Creek Preserve.

“My thing was always trying to connect people to nature because people are not going to take care of it, unless they know and care about it,” Kolon said.Kolon stands in the fieldstone foundation of the Sutton/Kolongowski farmhouse on Noggles Road in Manchester Township on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024. Kolon's grandfather purchased the farmhouse in 1948, and now she and her husband are donating the property to the Legacy Land Conservancy for a new nature preserve, following the deconstruction of the farmhouse.Lucas Smolcic Larson | MLive.comWASHTENAW COUNTY, MI – The farmhouse had secrets within its walls.

As crowbars gutted its plaster down to the studs, the home revealed traces of its 165-year history on a dirt road in southwestern Washtenaw County.

There was a scrap of an 1873 newspaper, likely read by the Methodist minister who built the house with his fifth wife after returning from the California gold rush. There were charred clapboards from a fire that nearly claimed the home several years later, were it not for the timely arrival of a neighbor and a troupe of schoolboys. There were generations of hidden wallpaper.

All those secrets are now documented and preserved as part of a unique project meant to honor the two families who called the farmhouse in Manchester Township home for generations. Their story on the land has come to an end, but another is beginning.

One day soon, if all goes as planned, wildflowers will grow where the home’s fieldstone foundations once stood, open to all as part of a new nature preserve.

The Sutton/Kolongowski farmhouse on Noggles Road in Manchester Township, pictured in about 1960.Provided by Sybil Kolon

That’s thanks in large part to Sybil Kolon, who grew up spending summer weekends at the house and the surrounding farm, purchased and remodeled by her grandfather Louis Kolongowski, a Detroit electrical contractor, in 1948.

She and her husband still live down the road and are planning to donate the 76-acre property some 30 miles from Ann Arbor to Legacy Land Conservancy, Michigan’s first local land trust.

It will become the Iron Creek Preserve.

“My thing was always trying to connect people to nature because people are not going to take care of it, unless they know and care about it,” Kolon said.

Sybil Kolon stands in the fieldstone foundation of the Sutton/Kolongowski farmhouse on Noggles Road in Manchester Township on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024. Kolon's grandfather purchased the farmhouse in 1948, and now she and her husband are donating the property to the Legacy Land Conservancy for a new nature preserve, following the deconstruction of the farmhouse.Lucas Smolcic Larson | MLive.com

The ‘layers of the onion’ tell decades of history

Kolon at first planned to preserve the farmhouse, a modest family abode she hoped could become a museum. But it was in rough shape after more than a decade without occupants, with mold growing inside, and its well and septic system failed.

So she found an alternative that didn’t involve bringing in the wrecking machines — deconstruction.

“What better way to connect people to the land than to connect them to the stories of people who were out here and the indigenous people before them,” she said.

Beginning in October, contractors with the Architectural Salvage Warehouse of Detroit began disassembling the house by hand, saving everything they could, from doors to light fixtures and timber.

On Dec. 12, 2023, crews with the Architectural Salvage Warehouse of Detroit stand on hand-hewn wooden beams dating back to the original construction of the Sutton/Kolongowski farmhouse on Noggles Road in Manchester Township in about 1859.Provided by Sybil Kolon

The Detroit nonprofit aims to create jobs, while offering low-cost building materials for reuse, keeping them out of a landfill.

Antique lumber like that taken from the farmhouse has been repurposed in Meijer fresh market displays, according to Chris Rutherford, the organization’s executive director. The home’s 165-year-old hand-hewn oak beams could take on new life as mantle pieces or tables, Kolon added.

Working alongside the home disassemblers was Marian Feinberg, an Eastern Michigan University graduate student in historic preservation who documented the entire process.

She also helped organize weekly public workshops at the site as the farmhouse was stripped bare, working with the Manchester Area Historical Society on the “Deconstructing the Past” project that reframed the home’s demise as a learning opportunity.

“As we began to peel away the layers of the onion, we were able to tell the story about the types of building materials that were used, the various types of building methods that went into the structure,” she said.

Taking each piece apart by hand revealed some unpleasant surprises, like a mass of black ants that poured out when one section of wall was removed, Feinberg said.

But other secrets were more historically interesting, like the fire, corroborated by historic newspaper clippings. “The house told us the story,” Feinberg said.

Crews also found a belt hanging inside the home’s walls, potentially left as a spiritual offering by its earliest inhabitants, the Suttons.

Nearby was the more than 150-year-old scrap of the American Wesleyan, a weekly religious publication, likely from Richard Sutton, a Methodist minister born in England who built the home in around 1859.

Scraps of the American Wesleyan, a weekly religious publication, dated 1873 found during the deconstruction of the Sutton/Kolongowski farmhouse on Noggles Road in Manchester Township, pictured on salvaged materials on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024.Lucas Smolcic Larson | MLive.com

His descendants still live in the Manchester area.

Much about Sutton’s life is known, in part because his trip on a wagon train to California in 1853 was documented in near-daily letters sent home and later compiled into a family chronicle, said Laura Sutton, his great-great-granddaughter.

There were stories of panning for gold and preaching to miners in the Oregon territory. And, after his third wife died back in Michigan, a grief-stricken union with a woman identified as Sister Houghton, who became his fourth bride.

All was well with the marriage until a man recently released from prison showed up claiming to be Houghton’s wife. Two separate trials failed to substantiate his bigamy allegations, but Sutton soon had the marriage annulled and returned to Michigan, Laura Sutton said.

It was there that he met Ann Mathews, a woman 25 years his junior from the Irish Hills. Together, they built the farmhouse on Noggles Road on land her family owned, and had seven children.

One of them was Laura Sutton’s great-grandfather, Grant Sutton, who stayed on the family farm and raised her grandfather Harry Grant Sutton there. It was only after Grant Sutton’s death in 1937 that the family left the farm, finally selling it in 1947.

Grant Sutton and his family at the Sutton/Kolongowski farmhouse in a photo taken around 1902. Grant Sutton was the son of Richard Sutton, an English immigrant and minister who with his fifth wife originally built the farmhouse in about 1859 on Noggles Road in Manchester Township.Provided by Sybil Kolon

Soon after, the Kolongowskis purchased the property, and moved from Detroit. There, Kolon can remember her grandfather growing corn and raising chickens, ducks and geese, while hosting Sunday visits from her and her 26 cousins.

“There’s really been only two families that have actually lived on that farm,” Laura Sutton said. “I think my ancestors would be pleased that it’s going to stay a preserve, because parts of it are quite beautiful.”

From farm to nature area

In early February, all that was left of the Sutton/Kolongowski farmhouse was its foundation, chunky stone walls built into the earth.

They will be removed, the hole filled in and an area nearby fashioned into a small parking lot for guests of the eventual Iron Creek Preserve, named for the brook that runs through the land, Kolon said.

The fieldstone foundation of the Sutton/Kolongowski farmhouse on Noggles Road in Manchester Township on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024. The deconstruction of the farmhouse, dating to roughly 1859, will pave the way for the surrounding property to become a nature preserve.Lucas Smolcic Larson | MLive.com

The Legacy Land Conservancy plans to erect a small monument with signage honoring the history of the Suttons and Kolon’s ancestors, said Kyler Moran, preserve stewardship manager with the conservancy.

“In our management of the property, we will really be standing on the shoulders of giants in that (Kolon) has worked with local community members and her family a long time and put in countless hours of effort into getting the property to the state that it is in now of ecological health and significance,” he said.

The nature area will take advantage of existing trails, winding through fields and forest that covers the property. More may be developed in the future, Moran said.

The 76-acre wooded property surrounding the Sutton/Kolongowski farmhouse on Noggles Road in Manchester Township on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024. The land, on the Iron Creek, is being donated to Legacy Land Conservancy by Sybil Kolon and her husband to become a nature preserve.Lucas Smolcic Larson | MLive.com

There’s currently no timeline for the opening of the property to the public. After the land donation, Legacy still needs to raise roughly $476,000 to fully open the preserve, and reaching that goal will dictate when exactly it opens, Moran said.

Kolon hopes that time will come this fall. In the meantime, she’s staying busy, working with Feinberg, the historical society and Legacy to highlight the historic aspects of the farmhouse and the property.

In her home, she has mason jars filled with century-old nails, wallpaper samples and sheep shears recovered from the farmhouse.

Nails collected during the deconstruction of the Sutton/Kolongowski farmhouse on Noggles Road in Manchester Township, pictured on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024, are sorted by the date they were used, with some dating back to the home's original construction in about 1859.Lucas Smolcic Larson | MLive.com

Some of the materials from the family home may end up in a small museum in Manchester run by the local historical society, she said.

A wrap-up presentation on the deconstruction is also planned in late February or early March, Feinberg said, adding she hopes to put together a how-to manual for similar historical work.

“I hope that this is a case study for the types of work that can be done in the future for houses, trying to slow projects down just a little bit in order to use them as an opportunity rather than just demolishing them,” she said.

In that way, a particular slice of history won’t be lost.

“This project could live for a long time,” Kolon said.

Want more Ann Arbor-area news? Bookmark the local Ann Arbor news page, the Ypsilanti-area news page or sign up for the free “3@3 Ann Arbor” daily newsletter.

The ‘layers of the onion’ tell decades of history

Kolon at first planned to preserve the farmhouse, a modest family abode she hoped could become a museum. But it was in rough shape after more than a decade without occupants, with mold growing inside, and its well and septic system failed.

So she found an alternative that didn’t involve bringing in the wrecking machines — deconstruction.

“What better way to connect people to the land than to connect them to the stories of people who were out here and the indigenous people before them,” she said.

Beginning in October, contractors with the Architectural Salvage Warehouse of Detroit began disassembling the house by hand, saving everything they could, from doors to light fixtures and timber.

On Dec. 12, 2023, crews with the Architectural Salvage Warehouse of Detroit stand on hand-hewn wooden beams dating back to the original construction of the Sutton/Kolongowski farmhouse on Noggles Road in Manchester Township in about 1859.Provided by Sybil Kolon

The Detroit nonprofit aims to create jobs, while offering low-cost building materials for reuse, keeping them out of a landfill.

Antique lumber like that taken from the farmhouse has been repurposed in Meijer fresh market displays, according to Chris Rutherford, the organization’s executive director. The home’s 165-year-old hand-hewn oak beams could take on new life as mantle pieces or tables, Kolon added.

Working alongside the home disassemblers was Marian Feinberg, an Eastern Michigan University graduate student in historic preservation who documented the entire process.

She also helped organize weekly public workshops at the site as the farmhouse was stripped bare, working with the Manchester Area Historical Society on the “Deconstructing the Past” project that reframed the home’s demise as a learning opportunity.

“As we began to peel away the layers of the onion, we were able to tell the story about the types of building materials that were used, the various types of building methods that went into the structure,” she said.

Taking each piece apart by hand revealed some unpleasant surprises, like a mass of black ants that poured out when one section of wall was removed, Feinberg said.

But other secrets were more historically interesting, like the fire, corroborated by historic newspaper clippings. “The house told us the story,” Feinberg said.

Crews also found a belt hanging inside the home’s walls, potentially left as a spiritual offering by its earliest inhabitants, the Suttons.

Nearby was the more than 150-year-old scrap of the American Wesleyan, a weekly religious publication, likely from Richard Sutton, a Methodist minister born in England who built the home in around 1859.

Scraps of the American Wesleyan, a weekly religious publication, dated 1873 found during the deconstruction of the Sutton/Kolongowski farmhouse on Noggles Road in Manchester Township, pictured on salvaged materials on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024.Lucas Smolcic Larson | MLive.com

His descendants still live in the Manchester area.

Much about Sutton’s life is known, in part because his trip on a wagon train to California in 1853 was documented in near-daily letters sent home and later compiled into a family chronicle, said Laura Sutton, his great-great-granddaughter.

There were stories of panning for gold and preaching to miners in the Oregon territory. And, after his third wife died back in Michigan, a grief-stricken union with a woman identified as Sister Houghton, who became his fourth bride.

All was well with the marriage until a man recently released from prison showed up claiming to be Houghton’s wife. Two separate trials failed to substantiate his bigamy allegations, but Sutton soon had the marriage annulled and returned to Michigan, Laura Sutton said.

It was there that he met Ann Mathews, a woman 25 years his junior from the Irish Hills. Together, they built the farmhouse on Noggles Road on land her family owned, and had seven children.

One of them was Laura Sutton’s great-grandfather, Grant Sutton, who stayed on the family farm and raised her grandfather Harry Grant Sutton there. It was only after Grant Sutton’s death in 1937 that the family left the farm, finally selling it in 1947.

Grant Sutton and his family at the Sutton/Kolongowski farmhouse in a photo taken around 1902. Grant Sutton was the son of Richard Sutton, an English immigrant and minister who with his fifth wife originally built the farmhouse in about 1859 on Noggles Road in Manchester Township.Provided by Sybil Kolon

Soon after, the Kolongowskis purchased the property, and moved from Detroit. There, Kolon can remember her grandfather growing corn and raising chickens, ducks and geese, while hosting Sunday visits from her and her 26 cousins.

“There’s really been only two families that have actually lived on that farm,” Laura Sutton said. “I think my ancestors would be pleased that it’s going to stay a preserve, because parts of it are quite beautiful.”

From farm to nature area

In early February, all that was left of the Sutton/Kolongowski farmhouse was its foundation, chunky stone walls built into the earth.

They will be removed, the hole filled in and an area nearby fashioned into a small parking lot for guests of the eventual Iron Creek Preserve, named for the brook that runs through the land, Kolon said.

The fieldstone foundation of the Sutton/Kolongowski farmhouse on Noggles Road in Manchester Township on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024. The deconstruction of the farmhouse, dating to roughly 1859, will pave the way for the surrounding property to become a nature preserve.Lucas Smolcic Larson | MLive.com

The Legacy Land Conservancy plans to erect a small monument with signage honoring the history of the Suttons and Kolon’s ancestors, said Kyler Moran, preserve stewardship manager with the conservancy.

“In our management of the property, we will really be standing on the shoulders of giants in that (Kolon) has worked with local community members and her family a long time and put in countless hours of effort into getting the property to the state that it is in now of ecological health and significance,” he said.

The nature area will take advantage of existing trails, winding through fields and forest that covers the property. More may be developed in the future, Moran said.

The 76-acre wooded property surrounding the Sutton/Kolongowski farmhouse on Noggles Road in Manchester Township on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024. The land, on the Iron Creek, is being donated to Legacy Land Conservancy by Sybil Kolon and her husband to become a nature preserve.Lucas Smolcic Larson | MLive.com

There’s currently no timeline for the opening of the property to the public. After the land donation, Legacy still needs to raise roughly $476,000 to fully open the preserve, and reaching that goal will dictate when exactly it opens, Moran said.

Kolon hopes that time will come this fall. In the meantime, she’s staying busy, working with Feinberg, the historical society and Legacy to highlight the historic aspects of the farmhouse and the property.

In her home, she has mason jars filled with century-old nails, wallpaper samples and sheep shears recovered from the farmhouse.

Nails collected during the deconstruction of the Sutton/Kolongowski farmhouse on Noggles Road in Manchester Township, pictured on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024, are sorted by the date they were used, with some dating back to the home's original construction in about 1859.Lucas Smolcic Larson | MLive.com

Some of the materials from the family home may end up in a small museum in Manchester run by the local historical society, she said.

A wrap-up presentation on the deconstruction is also planned in late February or early March, Feinberg said, adding she hopes to put together a how-to manual for similar historical work.

“I hope that this is a case study for the types of work that can be done in the future for houses, trying to slow projects down just a little bit in order to use them as an opportunity rather than just demolishing them,” she said.

In that way, a particular slice of history won’t be lost.

“This project could live for a long time,” Kolon said.

Want more Ann Arbor-area news? Bookmark the local Ann Arbor news page, the Ypsilanti-area news page or sign up for the free “3@3 Ann Arbor” daily newsletter.