Lake Ariel Highway In 1822 Lawrence and Hannah Tisdel purchased 115 acres in Salem Township, which became known as the Maplegrove Stock Farm. In 1867 their son George (the fourteenth of their fifteen children) purchased the farm from his aging parents. His parents continued to live in the house they had built in 1822, and George built his home close to their residence. Besides operating the farm, the Tisdels were dealers in bicycles, sewing machines and farm machinery. Their cider mill business sold both cider and vinegar to the public. (Vinegar is often made from apples.) Some customers brought apples and had the Tisdels make cider for them. Cider is made from washed ground apples. Layers of the mash are wrapped in burlap and put into wooden racks. A large press squeezes juice from the apple mash. The drovers' road from Bethany to Stroudsburg ran through the property. Stock pens along the road allowed drovers to rest their stock for the night, and they housed their oxen in the Tisdel barn. These stalls are wider than stalls in a horse barn. In 1958, after the death of Viola Coover (a Tisdel heir), the superintendent of Wayne County schools, Homer B. Ammerman, became the owner of the farm. Pete Snyder and Kathy Dodge, in 1976, purchased thirty-two acres, the two historic houses, the cider and oxen barns, and other buildings from the Homer B. Ammerman estate. Pete and Kathy live in the house Lawrence Tisdel built in 1822. The house had three down-stairs rooms when it was first built. These rooms have floors, walls and ceilings made entirely from wooden hand-planed wide boards. Some of the old red buttermilk paint on the upstairs walls has lasted all these years. Kathy and Pete used their artistic and carpentry skills to remodel what was necessary, but they carefully preserved the historic details of the house.

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.