March 2026
How Wolcottville's oldest home became a bed and breakfast, and what was found buried in the front yard
The Wolcott House at 105 E. Wolcott Street has been standing since around 1838. George Wolcott built it shortly after arriving from Ohio with his wife Margaret, and it remained in the Wolcott family until 1918, when his daughter Abby passed away and left the home to a family she had taken in late in her life. It passed through one more family before decades of vacancy nearly ended its story entirely. That part of the story has been told. What happened next is worth telling too.
When Indiana Landmarks acquired the deteriorating property and stabilized it, they did something unusual. They submitted the home to "This Old House" magazine for its "Save This Old House" feature, a column highlighting historic properties in need of a buyer willing to take on a serious restoration. The story ran. A physician from Goshen named Daniel Kragt was reading the magazine and saw it. He and his wife Anna bought the house from Indiana Landmarks in 2017.
What the Kragts found when they took ownership was a property in serious disrepair. Overgrown trees and shrubs blocked the view of the house. A cinder block garage clashed with the historic architecture. An old addition was too deteriorated to save. Inside, some floor boards were rotten and parts of the house were unsafe to walk through. But the stone foundation was solid, the timber frame was holding, and the built-in cabinets around the fireplace mantels on both sides of the chimney were intact. The Kragts spent four years on the restoration, gutting the original structure in the first year and working carefully to preserve what could be saved, including original windows with 1837 hand-rolled glass panes.
To add livable space without altering the historic structure, the Kragts did something extraordinary. They located an 18th-century home built in Connecticut in the 1760s that had been carefully disassembled, numbered piece by piece, and stored in a pair of semi-trailers waiting for the right buyer. They purchased it, transported it to Wolcottville, and worked with Amish craftsmen to reassemble it as a rear addition to the Wolcott House. Original beams and hand-hewn rafters were retained throughout. The result is a home that contains timber from two different centuries and two different states, joined together on a quiet street in Wolcottville.
Today the property operates as the Wolcott Yale Bed and Breakfast, welcoming guests to stay in a home that connects directly to the founding of the town. The Wolcott House is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, one of about a dozen structures in LaGrange County to earn that recognition. It was the effort of many people, including Tim Hudson, George Wolcott's great-great-great-grandson, who helped compile the historical record for the application.
There is one more detail worth mentioning. For generations, Wolcottville residents referred casually to a raised area of ground in front of the Wolcott House as the "Indian Mound." Most assumed it was an old tree stump or a quirk of the landscape. Indiana Landmarks, curious enough to check, brought in researchers from Ball State University's Applied Anthropology Laboratory. Using ground-penetrating radar, they determined the mound is almost certainly a ceremonial site used by pre-historic people more than 1,000 years ago, and appears to have been used across multiple eras. The site has since been named Wolcott Mound. George Wolcott built his house on ground that people had considered sacred for a thousand years before he arrived.
The Wolcott House is located at 105 E. Wolcott Street, across from Wolcott Park. If you look carefully at the front yard, you will know what you are standing near.