Historic Pendarvis

An old stone house was picked for a reclamation project by two men in 1934 with a planned future as an antique shop.

Instead, it became home to one of American's top restaurants; but that's getting ahead of the story.

Pendarvis (on left side of photo) was named for a family and estate in Cornwall (in southwest Great Britain).

Folks from Cornwall settled in Mineral Point starting in the 1830's because of lead ore.

The ore was abundant just under the surface of the earth in what became southwest Wisconsin in 1848.  The glacier didn't cover that area or leave behind tons of debris, so the ore was easy to access.

As the shallow ore was mined, the workers needed to dig deeper, a specialty of miners in Cornwall who came to the land of opportunity.

Pendarvis House as it looked in the 1940's

The small granite home purchased Robert Neal and Edgar Hellum was restored and became a social hub.  They invited guests to tea.  Teas led to dinners.  One particular dinner was written up in the Wisconsin State Journal and voila' Pendarvis House became a restaurant named by the Saturday Evening Post in as one of the United State's seven best restaurants.

One old structure led to another until 12 buildings from the early settlers were gathered on the corner of Spruce and Shake Rag Streets.

In 1970, the Wisconsin History Foundation purchased the land for the Wisconsin Historical Society and today it serves as a mini-neighborhood of living history from the early Nineteenth century immigration through the rush to the area in search of lead and later zinc and eventually the private preservation efforts which have kept Mineral Point on the map.

The two level building (left) shows off the tools and techniques used in early days of mining while upstairs a typical home is depicted, complete with root cellar.

In case you're wondering why there was so much excitement over lead, which most of us know for the toxic dangers it poses, the answer is the mineral was vital.

Lead was used in printer's type, weight, shot, pipes, and paint.  Dug up and smelted into its purest form, lead was quite useful for many of the things society valued.

It was a rough and tumble time for those early non-native people who came here.  From the land they carved out a living and a way of life.  A life we can still glimpse thanks to the Pendarvis House site.