Malabar Farm

At a glance

Overview

Malabar Farm is the Pleasant Valley estate near Lucas in Monroe Township, Richland County, that the Mansfield-born novelist Louis Bromfield assembled from worn-out farms in 1938 and 1939 and named for the Malabar Coast of India, the setting of his bestseller The Rains Came. Bromfield, who had won the 1927 Pulitzer Prize for Early Autumn, built a Greek Revival Big House designed to look a century old and turned the farm into a showcase for soil conservation, contour plowing and grass farming that drew thousands of visitors. On May 21, 1945, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall were married in the Big House with Bromfield as best man. The land already had a history: Switzer's Run, which crosses the farm, joins the Clear Fork beside the site of the Delaware village of Helltown, and the Schrack mill on the creek was the scene of the 1896 Ceely Rose poisonings. After Bromfield died in 1956, friends and Doris Duke bought the farm back from developers, the state accepted it in 1972, and it opened as a state park in 1976.

The name

Bromfield named the estate for the Malabar Coast of southwestern India, the setting of his 1937 novel The Rains Came, whose proceeds he used to finance the farm. He wrote that nothing could be more appropriate than an Indian name because India made the farm possible. (source)

Native American history

Switzer's Run, the creek that runs through Malabar Farm, empties into the Clear Fork of the Mohican from the opposite bank, a few hundred yards above the site of Helltown, a Delaware (Lenape) village a mile and a half below Newville that was occupied from about 1745 until 1782 and used as a hunting camp until 1812. Richland County's 1880 history says the Switzer's Run valley and the Clear and Black Fork valleys were well known to Native people. It also records a tradition that Pipe's Cliff, a sandstone ledge in the southern part of Monroe Township overlooking the Switzer's Run valley, took its name from the Delaware leader Captain Pipe, whose sister was said to have been shot there by frontier scouts; the history itself doubts the story. At the Pugh cabin, now part of the park, builder Jim Pugh found human bones under a sandstone boulder that a doctor thought, from the manner of burial, were those of a Native person; he reburied them and built his picnic shelter around the rock. No treaty specific to this land was found.

• Helltown: village, right bank of the Clear Fork, 1.5 miles below Newville, a few hundred yards below the mouth of Switzer's Run, which enters from the opposite bank, c. 1745 to 1782; hunting camp until 1812
• Pipe's Cliff: other, near the center of section 28, southern Monroe Township, above the Switzer's Run valley, tradition, 18th century
• Burial under the boulder at the Pugh cabin picnic shelter: burial, sugar bush area, Malabar Farm State Park, undated; found c. 1938-1948

Stories

The Bogart-Bacall wedding

Louis Bromfield and Humphrey Bogart met in 1923, when Bromfield, then a young magazine writer, saw Bogart in a Broadway comedy and went backstage; they spent the night drinking along 45th Street. Bromfield later used their Manhattan outings in his stories, helped Bogart settle in Hollywood in 1936, and gave him a guest room, and even an acre of land, at Malabar. When Bogart's marriage to Mayo Methot ended and his romance with Lauren Bacall was front-page news, the couple met at the farm to avoid photographers. The wedding took place at the Big House in May 1945, with Bromfield as best man. Word leaked, and nearly 300 cars were held back on the road by a company of Richland County sheriff's deputies while at least sixteen fan magazines sent photographers. Bromfield's boxer Prince walked into the ceremony and lay down at the judge's feet, and the couple went home with one of Prince's puppies as a wedding gift. (source)

A new house built to look old

Bromfield wanted a house like his grandfather's Mansfield farmhouse, which had grown by additions over generations and which he had written about in his 1933 novel The Farm. His architect, Louis Lamoreaux of Mansfield, had worked on the Historic American Buildings Survey and drove around Ohio studying old houses, borrowing the dormers from the 1833 inn at Zoar, a sunburst fanlight from Twinsburg and interior trim from the Peter Allen house in Kinsman. To make the Big House look as if it had been built in stages, the rear wings got three different kinds of siding, and trim that could not be bought in 1939 was milled by a craftsman in Lucas. Bromfield wrote in Pleasant Valley that architects centuries later would believe the house was built a hundred years before 1939. Sources describe the house as having 19 rooms or 32 rooms. (source)

The Schrack mill and Ceely Rose

Long before Bromfield, the heart of Pleasant Valley was a water mill on Switzer's Run. Richland County's 1880 history records that David Schrack came from Centre County, Pennsylvania, in 1819, cleared a heavily timbered farm in southeastern Monroe Township and raised fourteen children, and that his son Charles ran a saw and grist mill on the creek; the county's 1908 history says it was later known as the Rose Mills. The mill pond was the valley's picnic ground and skating rink. In 1880 the miller David Rose moved into the small house across the creek. In 1896 his daughter Ceely poisoned him, a crime reported in newspapers from New York to San Francisco. Bromfield retold the story in Pleasant Valley in 1945. (source)

The New Agriculture

Bromfield came home from France in 1938, after a decade of drought and dust storms had left the nation's soil washing away. He first hoped to recreate the self-sufficient farm of his grandfather's day that he had written about in his 1933 novel The Farm, but working with Max Drake, a young man trained in modern farming, he soon dropped that plan and set out instead to restore fertility to worn-out, nearly barren fields with what was called the New Agriculture. Among its methods was contour planting, to keep soil from washing away in the rain. He gave personal tours to untold thousands of visitors, with scheduled tour times on Fridays and Sundays in the 1940s, and the high hill where he held forth became Mount Jeez after his secretary George Hawkins said Louis was up there delivering his Sermon on the Mount. Bromfield carried the message through books, a weekly syndicated newspaper column and a weekly radio show. (source)

Saving Malabar, 1957

After Bromfield died in March 1956, developers with cash in hand wanted to turn the farm into a dude ranch and golf course; loggers had already blazed its old-growth trees. The Friends of the Land, the national conservation group Bromfield had helped found, asked his friends for money to meet the $145,000 price. Walt Disney spoke up, James Cagney and Lauren Bacall gave $1,000 each, and schoolchildren in four states collected pennies. The account was still short as the May 1957 deadline neared, until the heiress Doris Duke, a longtime friend of Bromfield, sent $30,000. The farm put up a sign naming the Doris Duke Woods in her honor. Wikipedia's account says instead that Bromfield's children gave the farm to the Friends of the Land in 1958 to settle his debts. (source)

Pipe's Cliff

Richland County's 1880 history describes Pipe's Cliff, a ledge of sandstone rising about 100 feet in the southern part of Monroe Township, with the valley of Switzer's Run below it. According to local tradition as that history tells it, scouts from Captain Broadhead's expedition (as the history names him) came upon a group of Native people resting on the rocks and shot a sister of the Delaware leader Captain Pipe, and afterward Pipe came every year to offer a sacrifice on an altar-like stone on the summit. A detached rock pillar nearby was called Onalaska's Tower in the sister's memory, and a cave at the west end was called the Dragon's Mouth. The same history says there is doubt as to whether the story is true. (source)

Timeline

• c. 1745: Delaware people from Pennsylvania founded Helltown on the Clear Fork near the mouth of Switzer's Run. (source)
• 1817: Monroe Township, which contains Pleasant Valley and Malabar Farm, was organized on February 11. (source)
• 1819: David Schrack of Centre County, Pennsylvania, bought a quarter-section in southeastern Monroe Township with about four acres cleared and a rough cabin. (source)
• 1820: The two-story brick stagecoach inn now called the Malabar Farm Inn was built. (source)
• 1880: Miller David Rose took over the Schrack grist mill on Switzer's Run and moved into the house across the creek. (source)
• 1896: Ceely Rose poisoned her father, the miller David Rose; the case was headlined in the Chicago Daily Tribune on August 17. (source)
• 1896: Louis Bromfield was born Lewis Brumfield in Mansfield on December 27. (source)
• 1914: Bromfield entered Cornell University to study agriculture but left in 1915 to help run the family farm, then studied journalism at Columbia in 1916. (source)
• 1917: Bromfield enlisted in the U.S. Army Ambulance Service and saw action in seven major battles in Europe. (source)
• 1923: On November 26 Bromfield saw Humphrey Bogart in the comedy Meet the Wife in New York and met him backstage, beginning a lifelong friendship. (source)
• 1927: Bromfield's third novel, Early Autumn, won the Pulitzer Prize; he was then living in France. (source)
• 1936: Pleasant Hill Dam was completed on the Clear Fork, and nearby Newville was vacated for fear of flooding, though the village never flooded. (source)
• 1937: Bromfield published The Rains Came, set in India; he later used its proceeds to finance Malabar Farm. (source)
• 1938: In December Bromfield bought his first Pleasant Valley farm from Clement Herring; he added adjoining farms in 1940 and 1941. (source)
• 1939: Bromfield moved to Pleasant Valley and built the Big House, using the old Schrack mill's sandstone foundation for its great chimney. (source)
• 1940: Bromfield helped found the Friends of the Land, a national conservation group, and served on its governing board. (source)
• 1945: On May 21 Humphrey Bogart married Lauren Bacall at Malabar Farm, the country home of his close friend Louis Bromfield. (source)
• 1945: Bromfield published Pleasant Valley, the first of his best-selling farm books. (source)
• 1948: Bromfield published Malabar Farm and hosted a fundraiser at the farm for Senator Robert A. Taft's presidential campaign. (source)
• 1952: Mary Appleton Wood Bromfield, Louis's wife since 1921, died. (source)
• 1956: Louis Bromfield died of multiple myeloma at University Hospital in Columbus on March 18. (source)
• 1957: The Friends of the Land raised the $145,000 price to keep Malabar from developers, sealed in May by a $30,000 gift from Doris Duke, for whom the Doris Duke Woods are named. (source)
• 1972: In August the State of Ohio accepted the deed after the Louis Bromfield Malabar Farm Foundation, which had run the farm, faced foreclosure. (source)
• 1973: Malabar Farm was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 11 as a district significant in conservation, education and agriculture. (source)
• 1976: Malabar Farm opened as a state park demonstrating Bromfield's farming methods. (source)
• 1977: The state bought the neighboring Pugh cabins from Georgia Pugh and added them to the park. (source)
• 1993: Fire destroyed the main barn on April 4; in September 1994 about 150 volunteers of the Timber Framers Guild raised a replacement. (source)

Sources

• en.wikipedia.org: Malabar Farm State Park
• en.wikipedia.org: Louis Bromfield
• en.wikipedia.org: Humphrey Bogart
• en.wikipedia.org: Lauren Bacall
• remarkableohio.org: 8 70 louis bromfield malabar farm
• npgallery.nps.gov
• richlandcountyhistory.com: why bogart had his wedding at bromfields 1945
• richlandcountyhistory.com: finding the schrack mill at malabar farm
• richlandcountyhistory.com: the big house at malabar farm in time history concept and design
• richlandcountyhistory.com: how malabar farm got its name india and the rains came
• richlandcountyhistory.com: bromfield malabar farm 1939 1956
• richlandcountyhistory.com: saving the trees at malabar farm 1957
• malabarfarm.org: history
• archive.org: historyofrichlan00grah djvu.txt
• archive.org: historyofrichlan01baug djvu.txt