Our farm was given to Frederick Padden as a land grant in the 1850’s.  Frederick was the founder of Fredericksburg and built the first of everything in the town. In the 1860’s he served in the Civil War.  He returned home from the Civil War with injuries from which he never recovered. Padden is buried in the local Pioneer Cemetery located on the Plum Creek Bike and Nature Trail in Fredericksburg.  His son, John Padden, built our house and some of the farm buildings around 1911.  In the 1920’s John lost the farm through foreclosure by another neighbor who had loaned him the money to build the house and barns.  He supposedly left Fredericksburg with a buck wagon, his mules, and his family.  No one seems to know where the family went.

The farmer who loaned the money then moved his family into the Padden farm home and the farm remained in their family for 40 years.  The family was very eccentric and stories abound in the community about them.  In fact, a book needs to be written about the family and the house.  It is said the bachelor son who later inherited the farm and house farrowed hogs in the dining room, cleaned grain in the living room blowing the chaff out the front door, changed his clothes once a season, had jars and jars of silver dollars in the pantry, and eventually died along a creek in Denver, Iowa when he became disoriented.

Eventually, the farm was sold after all the family members had died.  From the 1970’s until 1993 when we purchased the farm, the home had many different owners and renters.  Fortunately, all the original woodwork was not painted and damaged and none of the architectural features of the home were destroyed.  In 1993, we purchased the home and spent the next 5 years restoring the home and making it into the Farm House B&B.  We hosted our first B&B customers in September 1998.