SHIRLEY — A room in the Octagon House was an unusual gift, but that’s what Cheryl Wright received as a combination birthday-Christmas-anniversary present from her husband in 1998.
The Jane Ross Reeves Octagon House had just been relocated from Willow Branch to Shirley, and the Indiana Octagon House Foundation board of directors had hit upon the idea of selling room sponsorships as a way to fund the renovation.
“He told me to go on out to the house and pick out a room,” Wright said. “I had to climb in through a window propped open with a stick because the doors were all nailed shut. There were holes in the floor and steps missing from the stairs.”
Wright chose a second-floor room that today is decorated with three Christmas trees for the Octagon House Christmas Tree Walk Friday and Saturday from 4 to 8 p.m.
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The 16 rooms of the house open to the public are adorned with 25 Christmas trees, and visitors are invited to stroll through at their leisure. Admission to the Octagon House, 400 S. Railroad St., is free, but guests are asked to vote for their favorite trees by dropping money into a can at the base of each tree. The trees that raise the most money are declared the winners.
Individuals or organizations who sponsor a tree have the option of decorating the trees themselves or having Octagon House volunteers do the honors, explains Octagon House Foundation board member Virginia Harrell.
Harrell remembers the first tree walk 17 years ago. They had no trees, so a community member offered to let the committee come out and cut down the evergreens on his property. They went out, cut the trees down, stuck them in five-gallon buckets filled with sand and brought them back to the Octagon House where Harrell was waiting.
“It wasn’t what we expected,” she said, laughing so hard she could barely relate the story. “They were 10 feet tall.”
“But we said we needed trees, and we got them,” Wright added.
The community donated ornaments to decorate the trees, Harrell continued.
“We used all kinds of things that people brought us,” she said, “tea cups, big bulbs that people dropped off on the front porch.”
One business donated strings of Christmas lights that no longer worked, and the committee spent hours replacing bulbs to get them on the trees.
The trees in the current exhibit are all artificial and of every size and variety; each tree sports a theme or a color scheme.
A tall tree in the Armstrong Game Room, sponsored by A Step Ahead Family Hair Care, is garnished with old-style curling irons, hair clips and rollers. A tree sponsored and decorated by the Hancock County Community Foundation is adorned with neatly-mounted photos of Hancock County images, including the Octagon House and the Littleton/Kingen Round Barn.
In keeping with a tradition started back when the Octagon House had no heat, the foundation will be serving hot meals of soup and a sandwich, a dessert and a drink for $10 per person.
Remembering her husband’s long-ago gift, Wright thinks a visit to the Octagon House would make a nice Christmas present.
“You might give a purse or a wallet,” Wright said, “but if you bring them here and tour the trees and sit down and have a farm house dinner here in this 1879 farm house, that makes a memory that they’ll remember.”
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What: The Octagon House Christmas Tree Walk
Where: The Jane Ross Reeves Octagon House, 400 S. Railroad St., Shirley
When: Friday and Saturday from 4 to 8 p.m.
Admission is free. A farmhouse dinner of soup, sandwich, dessert and drink is available for $10.
For more information visit reevesoctagonhouse.com or call 765-738-6737.
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