173-year-old family farm, belongings up for sale

By Nick Malawskey

- nmalawsk@centredaily.com

GREGG TOWNSHIP — About a mile past the turnoff to Penns Cave, Brush Valley Road crests a small rise and dips into a tiny hollow.

CDT/Nabil K. Mark

The 244 acre Clarence Musser Estate located on Route 192 between Centre Hall and Madisonburg will be auctioned May 16, 2009. CDT/Nabil K. Mark

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At the bottom stands a white farmhouse, complete with a white picket fence in the backyard. Nearby is an old barn and several out buildings, holding antique farm machinery, unused for years.

The only sign of recent activity at the farm is the freshly cut grass around the house, and a sign in the front yard announcing a pending auction.

For 173 years the property has been farmed by members of the Musser family, which can trace its roots back to at least the mid-1800s in Brush Valley.

Now the farm, 244 acres of rolling land split by state Route 192 outside of Centre Hall, is up for sale to the highest bidder. The family, speaking through Donald Tressler, declined to discuss the upcoming sale.

“They’re private people,” he said. “We’re not happy about having to do it ... (but) it’s become a necessity.”

Tressler married into the Musser family. His wife’s uncle, Walter Barger, was the last to actively farm the property until his death in 2004.

Barger was known in the valley for his homemade cornmeal, which he made during the fall in an authentic turn-of-the-century cornmeal roaster. His wife, Pearl, was known for tending the flower garden around the farmhouse. It is the same garden where the two exchanged vows in 1952.

After Barger’s death, Pearl moved off of the property. No family members were left to mind the farm, and the family began leasing it out, Tressler said.

“We’re the last descendants,” Tressler said. “It’s just been kind of a burden for us to keep.”

“To maintain a piece of property like that is 24/7,” said Norm Lathbury, with the farmland preservation office in Centre County. “And that’s the dilemma. ... It’s too much for them to do.”

So the farm and its contents are going up for sale. The two homes on the property are full of history, evidenced by a collection of turn-of-the-century housewares — quilts by local artisans; books and papers related to local events; antique furniture — the mementos of 150 years of Brush Valley living.

Around the house and barn lay the fields the family tended. Fallow this planting season, but holding the promise of future harvests.

The farm is not in an agricultural security area, nor has an agricultural easement been purchased by the county. A year or two ago, during the housing boom, the land might have brought $12,000 an acre if sold to a residential developer.

“But I don’t think the market is going to support that at this time,” Lathbury said.

Instead, valley residents and other farmers say it will likely remain a farm, possibly in the hands of the local Amish, a community that has grown rapidly in the valley.

“Most of the farms are Amish out that way already,” said David Fetterolf, president of the Centre County Farm Bureau.

If so, it will be the start of another chapter in the property’s long history.

In recent years, the farm may have been known throughout the valley for its cornmeal. But it first gained notoriety 85 years earlier, as the center of a family murder.

The case against Harry Musser — alleged to have killed his uncle, William Musser, over the property’s ownership stake — was, as the Centre Democrat proclaimed, the “longest and most sensational case in some years.”

For days in the fall of 1924, the Bellefonte courtroom of Judge Henry Quigley was packed by onlookers as the prosecution presented its case against Harry. At the end of the trial, the jury returned the verdict — guilty of murder of the second degree.

Harry was sentenced to 10 years in prison. At the time, his older brother, Clarence, for whom the farm is now named, was 40 years old.

Clarence and his wife received the farm in 1942 and had three daughters, one of whom married Barger. After Clarence passed away in 1975, Barger and his wife stayed on the farm, tending to the crops and the cows, cooking the cornmeal in the fall.

According state to records, the farm is among 33 registered centennial and bicentennial farms in Centre County.

Families can register their farms with the state Department of Agriculture. Across the commonwealth, more than 1,900 farms have been recognized as centennial or bicentennial farms, said Stephanie Zimmerman, who manages the state program.

The state does not actively track the farms once they enter into the program, she said. Instead, it relies on the families to inform it when a farm changes hands.

“Unfortunately that doesn’t usually happen,” she said.

Still, she said, to hear of a century farm being sold is unusual.

“To be honest, I don’t see a lot of it,” she said. “It’s not too often that I hear of ones that are being sold out.”

The farm land will go to a public auction on Saturday. The goods and contents of the home will be sold beginning on Friday. The sale may continue through Sunday.

Auctioneer Ron Gilligan said that while it is unusual to see such a large farm go to auction, that was the family’s wish.

“That’s just the choice we made,” Tressler said, when asked why an auction and not a private sale. “We felt there was enough interest in it in the valley ... we thought that would be the best way to do it.”