INHERITANCE
Finding themselves in possession of a large, important, whimsical, and historic house with outbuildings on 19 acres, a couple did the right thing—preserving its essence, restoring the grounds, and updating the essentials with sensitivity.
Sometimes dubious fortune is thrust upon you while you are busy making other plans. Jayme and Barbara Kuhn learned they had inherited Do Nothing Farm—a historic property in the hamlet of Cornwallville, New York—just after they’d begun major restoration of a different property nearby.
So they didn’t move into Do Nothing Farm right away. What finally pushed the timeline was when, after selling that restored property, called Butterfly Farm, the buyer emailed them to say they were two days’ drive away. As luck would have it, Jayme, a restoration contractor, and Barbara, a third-grade teacher, had employed various family members skilled in carpentry and construction to ready a usable kitchen at Dunix—the house’s shortcut name for Do Nothing. They just made that deadline.
The rambling, three-storey house and its 19 acres had spent most of its early life as the property of John Matthews and his family. Matthews, the “Soda Fountain King,” had used marble chips from the construction of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City to make carbonated soda water. After the family’s arrival in 1859, several renovations of the house ensued. (The house had started as a modest farmhouse, built in the 1830s.) After she found a family journal in the house, Barbara would discover archival Matthews-family photos on eBay, many taken on the vine-covered porch added in the late-Victorian era.
A search alert on eBay led her to a collector and Matthews friend: “I told him I owned the family home in New York. He said, ‘Not Dunix?’ and I said ‘Yes’.” The journal helped her create