Harriet Wibur's Passing and the Swift Mansion

Anyone who's lived in Lorain County for a while has heard all the legends and stories about Gore Orphanage. It's the legend that never dies.

And it all started with the mansion (above) built by Joseph Swift in the early 1840s along the Vermilion River.

As explained in an article by Staff Writer Jeff Hamill that appeared in the Journal on August 8, 1968, "The common belief that the area is haunted by the spirits of dead children stems from a separate story, that of the Swift Hollow House. Joseph Swift, a former Connecticut soldier during the War of 1812, came to ’New Connecticut,’ a parcel of land set aside in Ohio for war veterans. He was given 150 acres by the federal government on the Vermilion River and added to it. 

"His farm prospered and by 1840 he was wealthy enough to build a house. He engaged Oziah Long, an Elyria judge, to build a “Greek Revival” style house. The home when completed had columns, French windows, fourteen rooms and six fireplaces. 

"In 1865, Rosedale, as it was called, was sold. The Nicklaus Wilbur family bought the house and lived there a number of years. Being spiritualists, these people often claimed to have been able to raise the spirits of some children who had been buried along the river. This led to the belief that the home was haunted. 

"Eventually, the home was vacated and finally in 1923, it burned to the ground. Because the Swift House was located at the bottom of the hill that the orphanage that the orphanage was later to be built on, the stories of the two places mixed, resulting in the rumors of ghosts and children screaming."

Why am I writing about this now? Because it was 95 years ago this month that the funeral for Harriet Wilbur was held on on November 19, 1930. The notices below appeared in the Lorain Journal on the 19th and the 20th, respectively.

Harriet Wilbur had married into the Wilbur family (spelled 'Wilber' in her obituary) and lived in the former Swift mansion during her early married years. The sad occasion of her passing resulted in the old stories told again about the Wilburs (who were Spiritualists) and Harriet's four children who died during a diptheria epidemic. (I wrote about the Wilburs in Part 4 of my series about Gore Orphanage.)

On Nov. 25, 1930 the article below appeared in the Lorain Journal about Harriet Wilbur's will. The loss of her four children no doubt affected her deeply and led her to generously provide for the poor and crippled children of Vermilion and the surrounding area.

The Gore Orphanage legend has been a popular topic of this blog, with twelve posts dedicated to it.