Fuel tanks - Blue for Diesel fuel for Blue Ford 5000 tractor. Orange for gasoline for same-color Case 200 1950's tractor.
View from front porch of house. Firewood stacked up in front of maple tree. Tractor shed ahead on left. Pine tree on right.
Open Shed, used for farm equipment.
Manure spreader. Every old farm has the same one. Same one at James Chapel house connected to Stone Church in Finleyville.
Farm outbuilding with corn-husker inside. Powered by a tractor with a remote Power-Take-Off and a long belt pulley.
Benjamin and his wife Ruth had ten children. In 1797, he sold approx 53 acres to his son-in-law Sampson Piersall, who was married to his daughter Susannah. This 53 acre piece is the nicest, and is the piece that came to carry forward, in history books, the name Custard's Delight. The remaining Custard family kept most of the rest (later to be divided equally among 7 descendants), and located on and around the intersection of Ridge Road and Gill Hall Road. Piersall's 50-some acres grew and remained more or less intact, with numerous small parcels added and sold off. (A survey in 1910 measured 92.29 acres.)
The land has had several long-time owners, with occasional periods when it changed hands rapidly. To understand everything about the history would be to know more about Jefferson Hills' history. This may come out of people trading their information.
Briefly, the history of ownership
is:
Custard was the original owner of the larger piece. Piersall was
the first owner of Custard's Delight, which was carved out of the original
piece. It changed hands several times, until Huffman owned it. Huffman put
on the second floor of the house, and Huffman probably was the
school-teacher at Huffman school, just over the hill from the farm, back
on Ridge Road. Those early days were happy days. He was probably able to
get local kids to help him work the farm, and he would have had summers
off.
Eventually AW Bedell, a stonemason, owned it, and did a lot of the stonework.
Then Aber. Aber put on the addition in the back of the house, and the front and side porches. He spent a lot of money fixing it up, and ended up giving title of the place to his wife, in consideration for money he borrowed from her. In 1882 they bought a piece from neighboring Samuel Heath, apparently to get more access to the stream. Heath was an original Virginia patent-holder, and his descendants kept the place intact for a long time. Everyone still knows it as the Old Heath place. Custard's Delight is now known to old-timers either as Greenwald's, or as Haines' farm.
Beisel bought it in 1910, and had the 92.29 acre survey done. He lost it in taxes a few years later.
They took in boarders in the 1920's. The house was divided into two living areas.
The barn burnt down about 1930, and the owner lost it in a sheriff's sale. Not happy times at all.
Greenwald, in 1939, picked it up, and made a lot of improvements.
Then Haines in 1969. It was used as a farm to supply the corn and tomatoes at Haines' Supermarkets in the 1970's. People still remember Andrew Haines' sweet corn.
What remains today of Custard's delight are the original farmhouse, a barn, a springhouse, some outbuildings, and the surrounding acreage of orchards, pasture, and farmland.
This is the story of the residence, and the surrounding farmland, of Custard's delight.