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Evergreen Hill St. Joseph. Indiana Property Name County and State A4IInn( Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018 . 10-90) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES CONTINUATION SHEET, Section number 8 Page 2 corncrib or possibly a building used to boil the maple syrup that was harvested on the farm for a number of years. The English barn is largely unaltered. The back half of the barn that projects from an embankment has a new concrete block foundation. The building evolution at Evergreen Hill is indicative of rural construction on a family farm Often older, smaller structures were incorporated into new construction, as additional space became necessary. Not only are most of the buildings extant, they maintain a high degree of integrity. Settlement/ Exploration St. Joseph County, Indiana was organized by the state legislature of Indiana in January of 1830. South Bend was first Tatted by the county in March 1831, at which time it was deemed to be the county seat. At that time, only 128 white ople lived in the small settlement, with many Indians living in the surrounding area. Although the town government was anized in 1835, South Bend was not incorporated as a cityuntil 1865. The fust sale of public land in St. Joseph County took place in the spring of 1830. - The Rupel family had come to Indiana in 1830 from Somerset County, Pennsylvania. The property known as Evergreen Hill on the south side of South Bend has been in the family of Jacob Rupel (1764-1847) and his descendants ever since his son, Peter Rupel (1801-1839), received two land grants for eighty acres each at the Fort Wayne Land Office on March 1, 1831. One of the original land grants, signed by Andrew Jackson, is in the possession of the present owner of Evergreen Hill, the great -great -great grandson of Peter Rupel. In 1823, Peter Rupel married Christena (Nancy) Schumaker (1807-1858) in Turkeyfoot Township, Somerset County, Pennsylvania. In the summer of 1829, they began their trek west with their two small children, spending the first winter in Ohio. Their third child was born in Elkhart in November 1830. After obtaining the land grant in 1831, the family settled their new land near South Bend where they built a small log cabin and cleared the land for farming. The Rupel farm was one of the earliest settlements in St. Joseph County. Once settled, Peter and Nancy had four more children. A month before their last child was born, tragedy struck. On September 6, 1839, Peter Rupel died of erysipelas, an infectious skin disease. Peter's parents, Jacob Rupel and his wife Ann (Livengood) Rupel (1769-1861) came from Pennsylvania at this time to help with the farming and raising of the seven children. Jacob, Ann, Peter, and Christena are all buried in the small family plot in the woods behind the site of the original cabin, along with a granddaughter of Peter and Christena's who died at birth in May 1858. The cemetery has been well maintained by the family over the years, and the tombstones are still readable. y records do not show who occupied the log cabin after Christena's death in 1858. Peter's sixth child, Franklin (1837- 08), married schoolteacher Martha Jane Rockhill (1839-1917) on November 26, 1863. Theylived with his sister, Mary , and her family a mile away from the original family homestead. Franklin farmed the Rupel land for ten years, and had three children, before deciding to build a new home on his father's property in 1873. The family moved into the new home sometime before October 1875. An 1875 plat map of Centre Township shows the location of the home. Once in the home, Franklin and his sons planted 200 pine trees on the property and named it "Evergreen 1-0." The home was