Christian Oyer Jr. House

About three quarters of a mile from Saulsburg, on a gravel road in Barree Township, stands a two story stone farmhouse that the National Register nomination dates to about 1830 and calls the Christian Oyer, Jr., House, also known as the Harmon House. It measures 32 by 42 feet, five bays, with double stone chimneys joined by a parapet at each gable end, six dormers, and stucco scored to look like cut stone. The front and rear elevations are identical, a feature the nomination says is usually found only on high style houses facing both a road and a waterway.

Who built it, who painted it, and when are unknown. The nomination, prepared in January 1995 by the owner, Dr. Jean L. Murphy, says Christian Oyer, Sr. and Christian Oyer, Jr. were listed as yeomen in an 1825 article of agreement between father and son, made in the year the elder Oyer also wrote his will and died, and that soon after the son embarked on the improvements. Africa's 1883 county history says Christian Oyer came from Chester County and that his son Christian made the substantial improvement then on the farm before removing to Ohio. The nomination traces the trouble that followed: suits in 1837 for $3,000 and $1,000, and the loss of the farm in 1844 at the suit of Dr. Benjamin McMurtrie. Jackson Harmon bought it in 1880, and his family held it until 1968, when most of the 163 acres went to the neighboring Gibboney Dairy Farm. The house and 1.8 acres were sold in 1970, then stood empty for about twenty years. Wiring, plumbing, heating, kitchen and bathroom fixtures were installed in 1990, and the six dormers were rebuilt in 1994 to dimensions left in the attic rafters.

That neglect, the nomination argues, is in a sense what preserved the house. Nothing had been repainted except the kitchen and dining room graining. The doors facing the halls are painted to resemble figured maple, their parlor sides crotch mahogany, a bedroom cupboard bird's eye maple; baseboards are marbleized, and under layers of wallpaper in the rear parlor were six rows of red and green stencils on a blue ground, floor to ceiling on all four walls. Seven fireplaces survive.

The house was nominated in 1995 under Criterion C for architecture. The original locks, stamped L. Gotta, are still on both the front and rear doors.

The fine front and back exterior polychromed doors and the doorways with their elliptical fanlights and sidelights, the prominent double chimneys on both sides of the house, the six dormers, and the scoring of the stucco to resemble dressed stone, all testify to the effort made to produce an imposing house of unusual architectural value for a remote farmhouse.National Register of Historic Places nomination, Christian Oyer Jr. House (reference 95000882), Section 8 page 1 (PDF page 9) · character 21,105 of the scanned text

Checked 2026-09-05 · National Register of Historic Places nomination, read in full

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