Paranormal Hotspots Homepage   Add a Paranormal Hotspot - Add Haunted Location   Contact Paranormal Hotspots
  Search Paranormal Locations and Haunted Houses   About Paranormal Hotspots  
         

Bryn Du Mansion

576 Jones Road, Granville, OH , 43023
740-891-4039     |      uppdr@yahoo.com
http://www.1upp.org/bryn-du-mansion.php
EVIDENCE CONTROL PANEL
Overview Photos Video Audio
 

Overview

John Sutphin Jones

(Birth: January 4th, 1849) - (Death: June 22nd, 1927)

Purchased the Mansion in 1905 when it was known as the McCune Villa. Jones added on and remodeled the mansion. Jones renamed the mansion to Bryn Du which stands for Dark (Black) Hills in Welsh, which was his heritage. The Jones family was the most prominent family to live in the 52 room Bryn Du Mansion with 12 fireplaces. John Jones was a coal and railroad magnate.

Sarah (Sallie) Jones

(Birth: July 16th, 1912) - (Death: November 13th, 1998)

Sallie was the oldest daughter of John Sutphin Jones and Alice Baxter Jones. After her father passed away in 1927 and her mother Alice Baxter Jones (2nd Wife of John Jones) in 1931 she inherited the Mansion and remained there until the 1976 when she lost the farm due to poor financial management. It is believed she still roams the halls and haunts the old mansion today. She had one sister who was 5 years younger, Alice Virginia.

History

New Englanders from Granville, Massachusetts and Granby, Connecticut, who sought more fertile farmland, founded Granville in 1805. Before leaving New England, the Village design was planned in great detail using the traditional New England town center. Advance parties came westward early in 1805 to plant corn for the fall harvest and to erect a mill for sawing lumber and grinding corn. They also laid out the farm and village plats.

The Village began to prosper and achieved early maturity in the first part of the 19th century. The Ohio Canal (Cleveland to Portsmouth) was begun in 1825 and passed through Licking County several miles east of Granville. A feeder canal was constructed and the commerce that resulted made Granville a thriving community.

Educational institutions have played an important role in the development of the Village of Granville. Academies and colleges were founded and flourished; eventually becoming an important business for the Village. The Granville Literary and Theological Institution (1831) later became Granville College (1845) and then Denison University (1856), one of the outstanding private liberal arts colleges in the country.

In 1880, the Ohio Central Railroad came to Granville with the interurban street railway ten years later connecting the Village to nearby Newark. In 1905, John Sutphin Jones, a coal and railroad magnate bought what is now Bryn Du Mansion and large tracts of surrounding land. He then commissioned Donald Ross to design and build the Granville Golf Course on part of his vast holdings. Ross, called a "virtuoso" in golf course design, designed over 500 golf courses during the early 1900's. Though he did not personally supervise the building of all of them, it is recorded that he was a frequent guest at Jones' Bryn Du manor during the construction of the Granville course.

In 1923 Jones commissioned the construction of The Granville Inn in the Jacobethan Revival style on the site of the Granville Female College, which had closed its doors in 1898. Frank L. Packard, a prominent Columbus architect, designed the stone and half-timber structure. All the sandstone was quarried at Jones' nearby estate, Bryn Du.

While most of the Granville Female College was torn down for the Inn, a gymnasium building with classrooms built by the college’s last president, Dr. William Kerr, was left standing, renovated, and is today a part of the Inn and connected to the main structure, housing a garage with guest rooms on the second floor. According to newspapers of the time period, the Inn’s opening on June 26, 1924 was attended by as many as five thousand people.

Jones died in 1927 and his daughter, Sallie Jones Sexton, inherited the property, living at Bryn Du while managing the farm and the Granville Inn. Sallie became a local legend, famous for breeding and training show horses, and for her vivid personality and colorful language. It was Sallie’s storied management style that led the estate into bankruptcy, and in 1976 Granville residents Bob and Joan Kent purchased the Inn and Golf Course at Sheriff's Sale. The Kent’s undertook a major renovation and modernization of the Inn's guest rooms, meeting and dining facilities.

Paranormal Claims

There are numerous Spirits who haunt the Bryn Du Mansion. Sallie Jones Sexton is no doubt the most prominent one. She called the Mansion her home for 64 years until watching a fortune and empire crumble to the ground and had to give up the Mansion and move to Virginia. Upon he death she indeed returned home and with a vengeance. She has knocked the hat off of a Paranormal Investigator, touched people, produced dozens of EVP's, and opened & closed doors.

John Sutphin Jones is also still at the Mansion along with his first wife Sarah Follett Jones who did die in inside the Mansion.

The Mansion was the site of numerous parties for the rich and famous. Three United States Presidents have been wined and dined and spent the night at this Mansion as guests of John Sutphin Jones. Star Actresses Katherine Cornell and Lillian Gish we also guests here. Ignace Paderewski and Sergei Rachmaninoff famous musical artists from abroad have also spent time at the Mansion.

 

 

Web Design and SEO by Wilkens Development
Get $100 off a website - Mention this ad!

HOME      |      SEARCH      |      ADD LOCATION      |      ABOUT      |      CONTACT US