Duffy, Michael, Farm

This farmstead on Quick Road in Boston Township, near Peninsula, Ohio, preserves the buildings of a small Cuyahoga Valley farm. Michael and Mary Duffy bought the land in 1861 and finished their Gabled Ell farmhouse in 1872, adding a three-bay bank barn in 1882. The surviving outbuildings include a fruit stand, a toolshed, a poultry house and two privies, set among fields and old fruit trees. Six buildings and one site contribute to the 23-acre district; a 1936 Cape Cod house built by later owners does not. The farm reflects the period when the Valley Railroad, opened in 1880, gave local farmers access to growing markets in Akron and Cleveland, encouraging orchards, truck farming and dairying. Architecturally, the house shows Folk Victorian spindlework on its porch, and the outbuildings use mass-produced drop siding typical of the late nineteenth century. Farming ended in 1960, and the National Park Service acquired the property in 1975.