The Walker farmhouse on Route 522, south of Shirleysburg

Three tenths of a mile south of the Shirleysburg borough line, on the west side of U.S. Route 522, the Historic American Buildings Survey recorded a white frame farmhouse in April 1996 as HABS PA-6086-A. Historian Scott D. Heberling of Heberling Associates wrote it up because the Federal Highway Administration and PennDOT proposed to widen Route 522 between Shirleysburg and Orbisonia, and the survey says the right of way would require demolishing the house and barns. The documentation was the agreed mitigation for that loss.

The survey dates the house to about 1883. On March 26, 1883, the heirs of William A. Fraker, a Shirleysburg merchant, conveyed Winfield A. Walker a twenty acre parcel that the survey says then held only an orchard, sold by the guardian of Fraker's children, and the style of the house suggests it went up soon after. Africa's 1883 county history lists William A. Fraker on the Shirleysburg town council in 1858 and 1872 and as a school director in 1873, and Welch's 1909 history of Shirley Township notes that W. A. Fraker's fruit orchard had become the site of W. A. Walker's residence and more extensive fruit growing.

The house is a frame I-house with a rear ell, two and a half stories, three bays wide and one room deep, built with balloon framing and cut nails; the main block measures 30 feet 6 inches by 20 feet 5 inches. The survey says the porches are its only formal detailing, and the showpiece is a full width Italianate front porch with boxed posts, curved corner brackets and a paneled frieze. There are no fireplaces. Stove pipe holes in the flues on both floors point to a stove in each room.

The 1900 census found Winfield, 49, his wife Margaret, 50, three of their children and a boarder, Newton McGill, a 24 year old Black man who may have been a farmhand. The 1910 census recorded that the Walkers had had ten children, four of them living. Winfield died in 1919 and Margaret in 1923; the homestead passed to their son Hayes in 1927. Hayes and his wife Mabel deeded it to Mabel alone in 1953, Hayes died in 1956, and Mabel, who later married Wiley C. Dobbins, lived there until 1991, when she sold to Dean E. Varner.

The survey reports an early photograph in Dean Varner's possession, taken between about 1900 and 1925, that shows the house already painted white, and reads it as showing shutters at every window. When Heberling walked the house in 1996, the only shutters left were the louvered ones under the front porch.

The property is known to have contained only an orchard when it was acquired by Winfield A. Walker in 1883, and the style of the house suggests that it probably was built soon afterward.Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record, Walker Farmstead, written data pages, HABS PA-6086-A data pages, page 2 · character 2,262 of the scanned text

Checked 2026-09-05 · Library of Congress survey record, read in full

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