NOW	THEN

The Hermitage, an old attractive residence in Brookville, Indiana, stands on the banks of the east fork of the Whitewater River at the end of 8th Street.  The home includes 19 rooms with a 112 foot long veranda surrounded by 6 acres of grounds.  It was once the home of famous Indiana painters, J. Ottis Adams and T. C. Steele.

    Amos Butler, one of the founders of Brookville in 1804, built a log cabin on the site and nearby the first saw mill and grist mill.  His son, William Wallace Butler, was the first white child born in Brookville in the year 1810.

    In 1835, James Speer bought the property and  built the original part of the house and also a paper mill.  the mill was the first dry roll paper mill west of the Allegheny Mountains.  the property returned to the Butler family in 1882.

    J. Ottis Adams was born in Amity, Indiana in 1851, graduated from Martinsville High School, and attended Wabash College where in 1898, he was later granted an honorary degree of Master of Arts in recognition of his ability as an artist.

    In 1872, Adams studied art at the South Kensington School in London and returned home to Indiana in 1874, where he specialized in portraiture.

    In 1880-1887, Adams along with T. C. Steele and Williams Forsyth studied at the Royal Academy in Munich.  The men later helped to establish the Society of Western Artists.

    One fall day in 1897, Adams and Steele ventured out from Metamora, where they had settled for  summer landscape work.  They had decided to forego their painting in favor of a long horseback ride.  This was the day they discovered the rambling old house and the scenic river valley in Brookville.

    Early in 1898, they bought the Butler house for $1200 plus painting commissions.  By late summer the rennovation was completed giving each painter separate living quarters and a studio as well as a porch veranda connecting both sides of the house.

    On October 1, 1898, Adams married Winifred Brady and brought her to Brookville on their honeymoon.  A talented artist in her own right, who reveled in still-life paintings, Mrs. Adams had studied at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia as well as in New York at the Art Students League under William Merritt Chase.  She also was a student of Mr. Adams.

    Adams established the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis in 1902, was one of its faculty members resigning in 1906.  He was hoping to work year round at the Hermitage and raise his three sons in the country.  In 1910, he opened a small art school at the Hermitage and continued for four years.  

    In 1913, a terrible flood hit the River Valley destroying a major portion of the Hermitage.  They decided to stay and rebuild;  the Hermitage was their home.  It was a place for his friends, among them Otto Stark, William Forsyth, L. H. Meakin, T. C. Steele, and George Jo Mess, to gather and a spot where he could putter as well as paint.

    Mr. Adams died in 1927.  Mrs Adams continued to come to Brookville in the summers until she sold the property to Edward and Mary Rusterholz in 1945.

    The Hermitage today is owned by Martha She who purchased and rennovated it in 1978.  Today it is a Bed and Breakfast and Food Service.

    In 1989, a wind storm knocked down 192 trees, including a 287 year old oak tree, and changed the scene around the property. 

    Mrs. Steele is given credit for naming the Hermitage because of its loction in the town.  Mr. T. C. Steele and his family lived here for only a short time, due to the death of his wife in 1899.  He sold out to the Adams in 1907.  Mr. Steele remarried and built a home near Nashville, Indiana that they named The House of the Singing Winds. 

    This is one of the properties in the town that qualified Brookville to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places.   

    The Twin Forks Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution has placed a historic marker on the property. 

-Don Dunaway