Sanders House and Farmstead (c.1845)

This Greek Revival house is decorated to represent the period just before the Civil War. It was the home of Simon T. Sanders, who served as County Clerk of Hempstead County for thirty years from 1838-1868. The house is surrounded by an urban farmstead, as seen with a kitchen in back, grape vines in front, a barn, and space for horses and poultry. Guided tours are available of the building. Visit the Historic Washington State Park Visitor Center for more information.

Simon T. Sanders was born in Wake County, North Carolina in 1797. Simon T. Sanders married Zenobia Meredith in Madison County, Tennessee in June of 1830. By 1833, they moved closer to family of Zenobia in Columbus, Arkansas located around eight miles northwest of Washington. By 1838 the move to Washington and Simon T. Sanders is elected In 1838 to the office of County Clerk for Hempstead County. Her served in this position for 30 years. He also served as secretary to the board of the Washington Male and Female Academies and was heavily involved in the Mt. Horeb Masonic Lodge, No. 4 . As County Clerk, he was appointed commissioner to find a caretaker for James Black, the famous Blacksmith who made a knife for Jim Bowie. Sanders’ first wife Zenobia passed away on February 29, 1848, leaving him three daughters; Sarah, Isabella, and Zenobia. Sarah would go on to marry future governor of Arkansas and US Attorney General Augustus Garland. Sanders remarried in 1852 to Martha Williams who died not long after the birth of their son Simon T. Sanders, Jr. In his last few years, Sanders left Washington to live with Zenobia H. and her husband, John Bull, in St. Louis, where he passed away in 1882 at the age of 85 years old.

Notable for having two entrances on separate streets, the “L”-shaped building is decorated to the styles of 1850-1860. The first part of the house was constructed around c. 1845. Along the far street is the kitchen, reconstructed in 1995, where slaves like Betsy Carey (who would stay on as a paid servant following emancipation) would live and work. At the front of the house is a vinyard, and near the back is a vegetable garden. Domesticated fowl such as chickens or turkeys would be housed in the chicken coop along the western fence, and smaller birds like pigeons and doves would be housed in the dovecote in the small pasture. One or two horses would live in the pasture, with the Sanders’s vehicles and other husbandry equipment housed in the large barn.

Sometime before the turn of the twentieth century, an addition was added to the western side, giving the house an almost square shape. The Pioneer Washington Restoration Foundation opened it to touring in the 1960s and the transferred it over to Historic Washington Park around 1980. In the 1990s, the entire block was restored to its farmstead past, with fencing, a kitchen, and animal housing based on archeological study and historic photographs.

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