Plummer House

Abraham Plummer, the fourth settler and the first Quaker to settle in Warren Township, purchased this land and moved here with his son and his son’s family including three small children in 1801. They came from Frederick County, MD and hired a teamster to carry their goods to the wilderness, but they rode on horseback all the way. It took them three days to cut their way through the forest to their property from the only wilderness road at Morristown. A log cabin was built that year. That building was removed in the 1960’s. The oldest part of the house is said to have been built by Robert Sr. who died in 1814. The end of the house with the small front porch was added by Robert, Jr. in 1836. In the years before the railroad came through, animals were driven to market in Baltimore MD on the “Clay Pike” or “Drove Road” which went past the house. The drovers stopped and spent the night, turning their animals out into pastures. This was an important source of income for early settlers and this house was built with arrangements to house drovers. A room in the upstairs hallway, with a door that locked on the inside, was where drovers (and later “tramps”) would spend the night. The property remained in the Plummer family until 1940 when the property was purchased by Charles Morlan and given to Ohio Yearly Meeting to be used by Olney Friends School. The house had major renovation done in the late 1950’s and has been used for Olney staff housing up until 2005 when it became too expensive to heat and required considerable maintenance to continue its use as staff housing.