Route 191. Sterling Township Richard Simons was born in Ireland and came to America at age five. He married Hannah Smith of Philadelphia about 1811. They settled in Pike County and then removed to Sterling Township where they cleared a farm and raised 15 children. His son Lewis Simons was born in 1825 and at one time owned 246 acres in Sterling. He married Catherine Heller and they had nine children. After her death Lewis married her sister Maria and fathered two more children. An 1851 deed transferred this property from Richard to Lewis and the fifteen heirs of Lewis deeded the property to Horace Simons in 1902. It stayed in the Simons family until 2002 when Joy Simons sold it to Jovan and Erzi Bizik. The beautiful frame farmhouse has a front facing wing with a covered porch. The main entrance has a paneled door with simple fluted flat columns and pediment. Six-over-nine windows on the main house repeat the simple entablature. The house has twelve rooms with the old wood floors and ten-foot ceilings. The first floor has a parlor (once used mostly for funerals), a huge living room, a dining room, a large kitchen, pantry. and two bedrooms. Over the main part of the house on the second floor are four bedrooms and a bath. Over the wing are a very large bedroom and a room called the cheese room that was used for curing cheese many years ago. The barn and many out buildings across the road recall the days when the Simons property was a successful dairy farm.

From 1993 through 2008 the Honesdale National Bank published an annual wall calendar, each featured 13 historic sites. The sites were chosen and researched by a committee of the historical society and artwork was commissioned to Judy Hunt and William Amptman by the bank.

This page was one month of the calendar and was made possible through the Wayne County Commissioners and a Tourism Promotion Committee’s Tourism Grant.