Brief history of the Hendershot house

This picture is of the Hendershot House as it was in 1950.

This was the house that the Crosby Hendershot family lived in until his health failed and he moved to live with Laura, his daughter and her husband Jim, in roughly 2005. Crosby died in 2009.

According to a conversation Crosby had with Laura after he had moved out of Stevensville, the house on Main St. W. was built around 1912 by his grandfather Michael Detenbeck. The Detenbecks (Michael and wife Esther) lived there with their daughter Ada Alice.

According to a family tree in Ancestry, Michael Detenbeck died in 1913 leaving Esther to live in the house with her children – in particular, Ada Alice. According to this information Esther lived (alone) in the house until around 1930 when Ada and her husband Fred Hendershot (my grandfather) moved in with her. They brought along their son Crosby who would have been 10 years old at that time.

I looked for confirmation that Michael Detenbeck actually did die in 1913 because this seemed a bit odd to me. But as of yet have not been able to confirm his death.

The “Apartment” and the “Store”
Another interesting tidbit gleaned from Laura’s letter is that before building the house across from the store the Detenbecks (Michael and family) lived in the house beside the store. If I understand this correctly this was the building that I knew as an “apartment” building which had been passed down eventually to my dad, Crosby, and which I had helped do basic renovations on when I was in my early teens.

Michael Detenbeck is also identified as the proprietor of the original store in that location. According to ChatGPT, “I found evidence that M. R. Detenbeck was indeed a general-store proprietor in Stevensville—a historical business directory lists “Detenbeck M R, general store.”

Presumably this was the store that eventually was passed down to my parents, where I worked in my early teens, and which my parents sold around 1970. In this picture I am painting the wooden letters my dad created and attached to the brick wall. This picture was taken around 1965 when I was 17.

The Detenbeck House becomes The Hendershot House
So, in other words, the house changed from the “Detenbeck House” to the “Hendershot House” in 1930. And it looks like Michael Detenbeck also built the store and operated it until it was passed down to, presumably, Fred and Ada (although I do not have confirmation yet for this).

Something else gathered from the letter is that our parents (Crosby and Irene) lived for a short time after they were married in the upstairs of the Trixie Durham house just over the bridge on the west side of Victoria St. (Stevensville Rd.) Trixie was well known to residents of Stevensville of that era because she was the piano teacher that every aspiring child went to for lessons. (I was one of them, but unfortunately quit after a few lessons.)

When Dave and I joined the family (in the late 1940s) our family moved to the apartment above the store. I have a vague memory of one day having to rush out of the place because it started filling with smoke. I’m not sure what caused that, but apparently we survived unscathed.

The next big change came when our family joined grandpa Fred across the street into the “Hendershot House” after grandmother Ada died in 1951. Fred eventually died in 1954 and the new generation took over.

The Hendershot/Detenbeck Connection
Over the years, as far as I know, there was very little contact between the Hendershots and the Detenbecks, even though we were quite closely related. When Judy and I eventually got established in Waterloo around 1970 we made contact with one fairly close Detenbeck who we had heard of but never met: Aunt Zue who lived on Euclid Ave. in Waterloo and who lovingly referred to Roy, her then deceased husband.

My reseasrch (using ChatGPT) makes it very close to a certainty that Roy was Ada’s (my grandmother’s) brother. If so that makes Roy my great uncle and Zue my great aunt. So I guess calling her “Aunt Zue” was pretty accurate.