Oldest house in Harrisburg demolished

The house at 203 E. Walnut St. - believed to be the oldest home in Harrisburg, was demolished Tuesday.

The house at the corner of Walnut and Cherry streets had been bought by Harrisburg First Baptist Church to make for an expanded parking area.

Virginia Mitchell had last lived in the house. She died at age 88 Nov. 18, 2008. Her husband, Edward, died Dec. 31, 1991. They loved to tell the history of their home, according to The Daily Register published September of 2003. Virginia Mitchell took The Daily Register on a tour of the home prior to the Saline County Sesquicentennial celebration open house in September of 2003. Mitchell said the house was built during 1856 which would make it 158 years old this year. Attorney Green Berry Raum hired carpenters to build the home that year.

Raum was a Union Army officer in the Civil War under Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. He participated in the Battle of Vicksburg. Raum moved his family into the house in 1857 then later went to war. He was awarded the rank of general in 1865 the same year he moved back to Harrisburg after the war, according to Mitchell.

Raum and wife, Maria, raised their seven children, Effie, Daniel, Manda, Ina, Green Berry, Maria and Mabel in the four-room house and, in 1885, sold the house to Judge A.W. Lewis.

Raum went on to be appointed by President Grant to the Internal Revenue Service in Washington, D.C., and served in various appointed positions under Grant and President William Henry Harrison. He was a U.S. Representative, author and lawyer, dying in Chicago Dec. 18, 1909, at age 81. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Mitchell's father-in-law, Charles A. Mitchell, bought the house in 1946 from First Presbyterian Church in Harrisburg. Mary Board had willed the house to the church with instructions for it to sell it within 20 years.

Charles Mitchell divided the four large rooms into smaller ones, added extra rooms and a garage.

The house had national attention.

"People from California, Indiana, Michigan and different places have come to see the Old Raum House," Mitchell said in 2003.