Bartholomew
House Museum
The Riley Lucas Bartholomew House was built of
sawn lumber, and in 1852, when Fort Snelling would be downsized,
the area that would eventually become Richfield, Minnesota,
became available for settlement. General Riley Lucas Bartholomew
arrived in the area and filed a claim on the shores of Wood
Lake, and began to construct the two-story part of the house
with local lumber, using white pine for the flooring, and his
wife, Fanny and their two children would arrive in the spring of
1853. After the two story house was completed, two additions
would be brought here from nearby Minnehaha Falls and attaching
them to the existing house. Bartholomew would go on to become
influential in the local politics, becoming a member of the
Republican Constitutional Convention that would frame the
state's constitution in 1857. He would also go on to become the
representative of District Four to the Minnesota Senate. The
Richfield Historical Society operates the house currently.
Bartholomew was a native of Ohio, and held the lifetime rank of
General in the Ohio militia, and would become a local justice of
the peace and become active in the Richfield Methodist Church.
He would help construct the community's first schoolhouse, with
his brother-in-law, Cincinnatus Gregory, in 1854, and be called
the Wood Lake School. The original log schoolhouse served as the
city hall until 1874, and the school itself would operate until
1976. The general passed on in 1894, and his son, Winfield,
would continue to live on the homestead, and be passed on to
various families over the ensuing years until the school board
of Richfield would purchase it in 1962 for future use. The
society would start efforts in 1967 to have the house preserved
for future generations, and in 1979, it would be listed on the
National Register of Historic Places. The foundation stone is
Plattville limestone, quarried from the local river nearby, the
addition of the single story sections would make the ceilings of
different heights in the house, and in the cellar, it is
possible to see the quartered logs that they used for joints.
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