BLISSFIELD — The recent sale of the Hathaway House property in Blissfield promises to both revive a beloved historical landmark and bring a longtime dream to fruition.

The American Farm Museum and Education Center, a local nonprofit, announced in May that it has reached an agreement to lease the property from its new owner, and that the Hathaway House will be the new home of the Charles and Barbara Burkholder Farm Toy Collection.

That collection, which has been in storage for the past decade, was the original impetus for forming the American Farm Museum and Education Center.

Charles and Barbara Burkholder, who farmed near Onsted, had spent 40 years amassing a collection of about 13,000 farm toys and 350 pedal tractors. Near the end of their lives, they decided they wanted their collection to serve a larger purpose.

“It was their dream that the collection be housed in a museum, and a museum that told the story of agriculture,” said Melissa Tsuji, president of the AFMEC board.

Board member Pete Durbin said Charles Burkholder had received offers from people interested in buying the collection, but he knew they would have split it up.

“He said he spent 40 years building it — he didn’t want somebody to buy it just for the expensive pieces and sell everything off,” Durbin said.

With the help of Ellsworth Stout, who was then the president of Gleaner Life Insurance Agency, connections were made that led to the creation of a new organization, with the goal of building a museum to house and display the collection.

Barbara Burkholder died in 2014 and Charles in 2015, but before they died, they served as charter members of the museum board and had the satisfaction of knowing that plans were in the works for something that would outlive them.

The dream has been a long time in the making. The museum officially accepted ownership of the Burkholder collection in 2012, but had nowhere to put it. In 2017, an opportunity arose to buy the former Home Canning Company property at 400 E. Jefferson St., which by then had been cleared of all buildings from the former cannery. The museum board bought those 35 acres from the village of Blissfield, plus an adjacent 20 acres from a local family.

That property, board member Ted Mason noted, is already fulfilling the museum’s educational purpose by serving as a land lab for the Blissfield school district’s FFA program. The FFA program pays the cost of planting and also maintains the crop, and then the FFA and the museum share the income from the harvest, with FFA taking 65 percent and the museum taking 35 percent.

“That’s been a very good relationship,” Mason said. “It allows them to raise funds for their programs and activities, and it allows us to utilize the farmland that the museum owns.”

But still the Burkholder farm toy collection didn’t have a home where it could be seen and enjoyed by the public. The recent sale of the Hathaway House changed that.

Also known as the David Carpenter House, the stately Greek Revival mansion at 424 W. Adrian St. was built around 1851. In 1963 it was purchased by the Weeber family, who built it into one of the region’s premier fine dining establishments. It became a beloved destination for people from all over southeast Michigan and northwest Ohio, with many special occasions celebrated within its walls.

The Hathaway House closed at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and never reopened. The Main Street Stable, a more casual restaurant in what was once the mansion’s carriage house, closed a few years later.

So the museum’s lease agreement doesn’t just represent the fulfillment of Charles and Barbara Burkholder’s dream — it also means a new life for a cornerstone of the community.

“This has a lot of emotional value to a lot of families,” Durbin said of the Hathaway House building.

The museum board hopes to be up and running in the Hathaway House sometime in the late fall.

Not all of the 13,000-piece collection will be displayed at any one time — exhibits will be rotated in and out to keep things fresh.

And the farm toy museum will not be the organization’s only program. Board members also noted that they plan to continue using the Jefferson Street property. 

“Our goal has always been to build an education center, because that is the sustainable piece, and have the education center at the center of the toy collection and museum,” Tsuji said.

In addition, although these plans are still in the early stages, they hope that the Main Street Stable building will become a restaurant again.

The American Farm Museum and Education Center, BBQ at the Barn, is coming up on Aug. 1. It will take place at the Jefferson Street property and tickets will be $75 apiece.

For more information, go to afmecblissfield.org.