Prospect Place, also known as Trinway Mansion and Prospect Place Mansion, is a 29-room mansion built by abolitionist George Willison Adams (G. W. Adams) in

Trinway, Ohio Trinway is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in northern Cass Township, Muskingum County, Ohio, United States, in the east-central part of the state. The village is 52 miles east of the state capital of Columbus and near t ...

, just north of

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

in 1856. Today, it is the home of the non-profit G. W. Adams Educational Center, Inc. The mansion is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

and the Ohio Underground Railroad Association's list of

Underground Railroad The Underground Railroad was a network of clandestine routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early- to mid-19th century. It was used by enslaved African Americans primarily to escape into free states and Canada. ...

sites. This home featured many new and, for the time, revolutionary innovations. It had indoor plumbing which included a copper tank cistern on the second floor which pressurized water throughout the house. Two coal stoves had copper tanks (under pressure from the cistern system) which heated water and allowed the home to have both hot and cold running water service. This is the second house to stand on the same foundation. The first house was destroyed by an arson-related fire shortly after its completion. The mansion was rebuilt after the fire, with modern fire stopping added to it. The interior walls of the current house are solid brick, and there is a two-inch layer of mortar between the first and second floors of the house to block fire. Prospect Place also featured a unique refrigeration system to cool milk, cheese, butter, etc. A primitive form of "air conditioning" was created by bringing cool basement air into the living quarters during the summer months via ducts in the outside walls.

George Willison Adams

Born in

Fauquier County, Virginia Fauquier is a county in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 72,972. The county seat is Warrenton. Fauquier County is in Northern Virginia and is a part of the Washington metropolitan area. History In 160 ...

, in 1800 to George Beal Adams and his wife Anna Turner, George Willison Adams (or G.W. as he was called) was one of thirteen children. His father was a plantation owner who gave up his land and home to move away from the slaveholding South. The family migrated to southeastern Ohio in 1808, freed their slaves and settled in Madison Township, Muskingum County near the town of

Dresden, Ohio Dresden is a village in Jefferson and Cass townships in Muskingum County, Ohio, United States, along the Muskingum River at the mouth of Wakatomika Creek. It was incorporated on March 9, 1835. The population was 1,529 at the 2010 census. Hist ...

. Like his father, G. W. Adams became a strong abolitionist. He and his brother, Edward, ran an

"station" from their mill at what later became known as Adams Mills, Ohio. G. W. Adams was once a member of the Ohio General Assembly. Together with several other prominent citizens he formed a stock company to build a suspension bridge across the

Muskingum river The Muskingum River (Shawnee: ') is a tributary of the Ohio River, approximately long, in southeastern Ohio in the United States. An important commercial route in the 19th century, it flows generally southward through the eastern hill country o ...

near

. When the other members of the company became fearful that the plan was not feasible and that they would lose their money, Adams built the bridge at his own expense, his nephew, George Copeland, being the engineer. The bridge was conducted as a toll bridge for several years before Adams eventually sold the bridge to the county commissioners for one-third of the original building cost of the bridge. Later in life, Adams was the President of the Steubenville and Indiana Railroad. He directed construction of the

Cincinnati and Muskingum Valley Railroad Cincinnati and Muskingum Valley Railroad was a railway line which ran from Trinway, Ohio, to Morrow, Ohio, and connected with the Steubenville and Indiana Railway at Trinway. The railroad depended on trackage rights with the Little Miami Railroad ...

. His land holdings totaled with the Prospect Place Mansion in the center of his plantation. G. W. Adams was an important figure in Ohio politics, the Underground Railroad and regional development of the southeastern Ohio area. His importance in these areas was a criterion used to include the Prospect Place Mansion on the

. G. W. Adams was married twice. He married Clarissa Hopkins Shaff (1824–1853) in 1845. They had four children together—Edward Adams, Anna T. Adams Cox, Mary Adams and Elizabeth Adams Endicott. After the death of his first wife, he married Mary Jane Robinson (1832–1915) in 1855. They had six children together—Sophia Adams, James R. Adams, John J. Adams, Charles W. Adams, Jessie Adams Huggins and Florence Adams. G. W. Adams died on August 31, 1879, at the age of 79. He is buried in Dresden Cemetery in Dresden, Muskingum County, Ohio.

Underground Railroad operation

The

operation conducted by G. W. Adams and his brother, Edward, was a huge undertaking. The brothers operated a flouring mill on the

Ohio and Erie Canal The Ohio and Erie Canal was a canal constructed during the 1820s and early 1830s in Ohio. It connected Akron with the Cuyahoga River near its outlet on Lake Erie in Cleveland, and a few years later, with the Ohio River near Portsmouth. It also ...

and owned warehouses, a boat yard and cooper shops in

. When men from the Adams company would take flour to

New Orleans, Louisiana New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

, they would return with refugees (runaway slaves) beneath the decks of their boats. It is also known that in 1856 Adams donated money to the

American Colonization Society The American Colonization Society (ACS), initially the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America until 1837, was an American organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to encourage and support the migration of freebor ...

Recent history

The mansion passed through the Adams-Cox family to George Cox, a grandson of G. W. Adams, who owned the property until the 1960s. In 1969 the home was sold to a distant relative of George Cox, Eugene Cox. Eugene operated a gravel mining company, the Cox Gravel Company, which proceeded to mine the remaining associated with the estate. Cox's wife Peggy convinced him to purchase the Edward Adams home in Adams Mills, Ohio, as well. The Cox family lived at the Adams Mills home until Eugene's death in the 1990s. While the Cox Gravel Company owned the Prospect Place mansion, it was listed on the

. The deterioration of the mansion increased due to lack of maintenance and vandalism. The interior of the building was all but gutted by thieves and vandals. The estate was scheduled to be demolished in 1988. Local businessman

Dave Longaberger Dave W. Longaberger (1934–1999) was an American businessman who founded the now-defunct Longaberger Company, which made handcrafted maple wood baskets and accessories and became notable in the Newark, Ohio area for the The_Longaberger_Comp ...

purchased the house to prevent its destruction. Dave Longaberger installed a new roof on the structure and increased security with the intention of restoring the home as a future Longaberger Company headquarters building. Upon choosing to construct the current headquarters of the Longaberger Basket Company in

Newark, Ohio Newark ( ) is a city serving as the county seat of Licking County, Ohio, United States, east of Columbus, at the junction of the forks of the Licking River. The population was 49,934 at the 2020 census, which makes it the 15th largest city in O ...

, he placed the mansion restoration project on hold. Dave Longaberger died of cancer in the 1990s. The Longaberger Company continued to maintain security on the property until 2001 when the great-great-grandson of G. W. Adams and Longaberger relative, George J. Adams, purchased the home with the goal of finishing the restoration. George J. Adams had investors for the project, to include adaptive reuse with a restaurant in the building. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the investors backed out. Adams created a non-profit, the G. W. Adams Education Center, Inc., which has owned the building since 2005. The educational center has continued the restoration. The building is allegedly haunted and was featured in an episode of '' Ghost Hunters'' on the

SyFy Channel Syfy (formerly Sci-Fi Channel, later shortened to Sci Fi; stylized as SYFY) is an American basic cable channel owned by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming division of Comcast's NBCUniversal through NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. Lau ...

in April 2008. It was also featured on ''

Ghost Adventures ''Ghost Adventures'' is an American paranormal and reality television series that premiered on October 17, 2008, on the Travel Channel before moving to Discovery+ in 2021. An independent film of the same name originally aired on the Sci-Fi Cha ...

'' on the

Travel Channel Travel Channel (stylized as Trvl Channel since 2018) is an American pay television channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, which had previously owned the channel from 1997 to 2007. The channel is headquartered in New York, New York, United S ...

on January 1, 2010, and ''

Ghost Brothers ''Ghost Brothers'' is an American television series about the paranormal that premiered on April 15, 2016 on Destination America, which is part of Discovery Communications. Produced by Pilgrim Media Group in association with Crybaby Media, the pro ...

'' on the

on April 26, 2016. 2017: Citing failing health, George J. Adams retired as chairman of the Board of the G.W. Adams Educational Center.G.W. Adams Educational Center https://www.gwacenter.org/anewchapter A new board of trustees was immediately installed and repairs and restoration work were resumed.

G. W. Adams Educational Center

Headquartered at Prospect Place Mansion (aka the Trinway Mansion), the G. W. Adams Educational Center, Inc., was founded in 2003 by George Jeffrey Adams, a descendant of G.W. Adams. The center operates as a historical and educational resource center for the southeastern

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

area. The primary focus of the center is the history and restoration of the mansion, George W. Adams and his impact on local/regional communities, and Underground Railroad activities that took place at the mansion.

References

External links