"Sara Rose"

WrWritten by Joy Dun Shoemaker

The Sara Rose House as it looks today A view of the front entrance as it looks from inside the house

We know the house at 149 West Elm Street as the Sara Rose house, but at the turn of the 20th century, it was known as the Frank Haines house. The Queen Anne style residence was a showplace then, as it is now. In 1896, Frank and Rosenna Reed Haines hired Allen and Sons of Sabina to build the two-story, twelve room house with full basement. W. Lewis Kramer, architect of Findlay, Ohio, was hired to design the residence. His plans included an elaborate port-cochere at the east side and a round tower with a conical roof at the east corner. A spacious veranda curving around the tower and front portion of the house created an outstanding feature to the magnificent structure. In the front yard was a stately elm tree that was the inspiration for naming the street where the house stood, "Elm Street." Many houses at that time were built with double doors at the front entrance to accommodate the casket that would be brought in for the deceased family member who would lie in state at the residence. In June of 1913, Frank Haines died quite suddenly. He had suffered for years from inflammatory rheumatism, which eventually weakened his heart. He was a prominent farmer, a man of broad business ability and extensive interests. He had served on the Board of Public Affairs and Council and, at the time of his death, was a director of the First National Bank, which he helped organize. His casket was the first in the family to be carried through the double doors of the Haines residence.

Frank and Rosenna had four children: Clyde, Edith (Dakin), Arthur, and Martha (Gallaher). Martha married Herman Gallaher in 1912 and the couple was living with her parents at the time of Frank's death. They remained in the house with Rosenna Haines, who died in November of 1937, and continued to live there after her death. Martha Haines Gallaher died in October of 1954 after a long illness. She graduated from Sabina High School in 1904 and attended Ohio Wesleyan University at Delaware. Herman Gallaher was a descendant of a pioneer family who settled in Wayne Township and became extensive land owners. He was executive vice president and a director of the First National Bank of Sabina; assistant secretary of the Sabina Building and Loan Company for 43 years and served on the Board of Education and the Village Board of Public Affairs. He died in October of 1959.

Sara Rose Gallaher - 1936

Herman and Martha Haines Gallaher had one child, a daughter, Sara Rosenna, born October 9, 1918. Sara Rose, as she was called, attended all twelve of her school years at Sabina High School, graduating in 1936. While still in elementary school, she became friends with Virginia Morgan, whose parents, U. B. and Jesse Henderson Morgan were friends of Sara Rose's parents. In the 1930s, the two girls roomed together while attending church camp at the Sabina Methodist Campgrounds. Sara Rose and her parents attended the Methodist Episcopal Church on West Elm Street and Virginia and her parents attended the Methodist Protestant Church on East Washington Street. In 1939, the Sabina Methodist Protestant Church merged with the Sabina Methodist Episcopal Church and the two girls were then active in the same church. For the services, Virginia played the organ and Sara Rose sang in the choir and also taught Sunday school in the primary department for years.

Both girls loved music, with Sara Rose playing the flute and piano and Virginia playing the violin and organ. Sara Rose also loved art and later collected paintings for her home. She took art in school and had a talent for painting, as did her mother, her aunt and her grandmother before her. After graduating from high school, Sara Rose went to college at Ohio Wesleyan, where her mother had attended many years earlier. Although her parents were financially well off and Sara Rose would not have had to work a day of her life if she had chosen not to, she got a job soon after graduating from college in 1940 and worked in one capacity or another for the rest of her life. She was a secretary at the Haines Agency in Sabina, a demonstrator for the Chillicothe Gas Company and a guidance counselor at Ohio State University. When her father died in 1959, Sara Rose took over the maintenance of the house that she had lived in for most of her 41 years. She hired Lawrence Harris, a local skilled painter and repairman, to do needed repairs on the house. When Herb Wical moved in nearby, she had him take over the care of the nearly two acre lot behind the house. At that time the lot, which extended north to the railroad tracks, had not been tended, but allowed to grow up in head high weeds. For the next 42 years, Herb mowed and kept most of the lot looking like a golf course. Sara Rose told him to "Use it just as if it were your own." Herb's children played on the lot and Herb, as well as neighbors Harold Soale and Aaron Wright, planted gardens there. When the vegetables were ripe and ready to be harvested, Herb would let Sara Rose know so that she could walk back to the garden and pick a supply of vegetables that she was fond of. Herb took care of the lot back of the house and Sam Wilson mowed the grass around the house. When she was at home in Sabina, Sara Rose participated in local organizations, especially the Business and Professional Women's Club, which was active at that time. It was then, too, that she took an interest in agriculture. As a farm owner, she became fully aware of rising costs, market prices, and weather conditions. Her farms on Reed Road and Texas Corner were managed by her good friends Roger and Beverly Bentley, who kept her informed about the farm operations.

After Virginia Morgan married Curtis Jones, the couple lived on the Morgan homeplace on Hornbeam Road. Virginia's sister Alice had married Reynold Kittle, an electrical engineer from Toledo, where the couple lived. When Alice died of cancer in 1967, Reynold continued to visit Virginia and Curtis, driving down from Toledo almost every weekend. Virginia realized that he was lonely and mentioned to him one day that whenever the time was right, she would like to introduce him to someone. She took him to see Sara Rose and they liked one another from the first meeting. In June of 1968, they were married in the United Methodist Church in Sabina. Virginia played the organ and her son Philip lit the candles. For the next nineteen years, Sara Rose would know great happiness and contentment. Reynold was a man who enjoyed life. He liked to travel and they did visit all the states, but he especially liked the West, where he bought cowboy outfits for Sara Rose and himself. They had glorious fun wearing their western-style clothes. Reynold called Sara Rose his "yellow Rose of Texas." He also liked to buy things for their house in Sabina. He bought Oriental rugs for most of the floors in the downstairs rooms, including the kitchen. He also brought antique upholstered chairs, tables and lamps from his home in Toledo.

The couple divided their time between their home in Toledo and their home in Sabina. While they were in Toledo, Sara Rose served on a hospital guild and taught immigrants to read and write. During one of their visits to Sabina, Reynold was sitting in his favorite chair reading the newspaper, while Sara Rose sat across from him on the couch. When she looked up from reading her book, he was slumped over in his chair. He had died of a heart attack at the age of 73. Sara Rose was devastated. In the casket beside her beloved husband, she placed his favorite cowboy hat with a yellow rose across the brim. She continued to go to her home in Toledo, but resigned from all her extra activities there and spent more time at her home in Sabina. Before she would leave for Sabina, she would call Virginia and tell her she was on her way. Virginia would have a bag packed and would accompany Sara Rose to her home, a place that was difficult to enter since the death of her dear husband. Sara Rose, with Virginia's input, set about refurbishing the rooms. They began with the kitchen, selecting blue wallpaper trimmed in red (purchased from Adair's Furniture) to match the Oriental rug that Reynold had selected earlier. For the better part of eight years, the two women looked at wallpaper swatches and made decisions together about needed repairs and changes in the beautifully appointed rooms. When she wasn't seeing to the upkeep of her house, Sara Rose was traveling. She was in Germany when the Berlin Wall came down and she traveled extensively in Russia. She liked the people there and considered them kind and good-hearted. She went to China and many other countries, as well as Alaska. On her final trip, when she was very ill, she went to Hawaii, but had to be pushed in a wheelchair to the points of interest. In 1982, while Reynold was still living, Sara Rose applied to the Ohio Historic Site Preservation Advisory Board to have her palatial house added to the National Register of Historic Homes. The house qualified and was accepted as an important landmark. A plaque was erected near the steps at the front entrance. Although she never had children of her own, Sara Rose loved little ones and, at one time, opened a kindergarten class in her home. She also loved animals and had cats and dogs as pets all her life. When one very pregnant cat was about to deliver, Sara Rose pulled out the bottom drawer of her dresser and made a birthing bed for her expectant kitty cat. While Sara Rose was at choir practice, the cat gave birth in the drawer and mother and kittens did very well. In 1996, Sara Rose had a 100th anniversary party for her relatives to commemorate the building of the Frank Haines house. The house was decorated in balloons and flowers and in the backyard was a pig roast and other party foods and drinks. Besides local relatives who attended, several relatives traveled a distance to be at the special party. When Sara Rose became ill and knew she would not recover, she made arrangements in her will to bequeath her house and furnishings to the Clinton County Historical Society. She also left the Society the farm at Texas Corner and $300,000 in cash. The money and cash rent from the farm, managed by Roger and Beverly Bentley, were to be used to maintain the house. She wanted the house to be available for tours by the public. Not knowing about the provisions for the house in the will, one of Sara Rose's friends said to her, "Oh, Sara Rose, I hope this lovely house is never sold to become apartments or a nursing home." Sara Rose replied, "It will never happen. I've taken care of that." Sara Rose was in Toledo when she realized she was close to the end. She told Bev Bentley, who was with her at the time, to please make arrangements to take her home to Sabina. Before the arrangements were completed, Sara Rose was gone. Throughout her life, Sara Rose was a private person who seldom talked about herself. She was kind, unbiased, and gracious to everyone. She was a lady in the true sense of the word. She had a love of nature, of animals and of the preservation of all good things. She had no children, but her house became her children, and she showered her love on its beauty and spaciousness.