“The mother’s heart was broken. She wanted her child still to be near her, even though death had come between. Thus was conceived the idea of building a family vault on the lawn near by the house. The remains were temporarily interred in the garden and the vault was constructed, the designs being furnished by Dr. Robinson.
The entire vault is covered with earth, thus forming an immense mound back of the ornamental front. The vault is built of massive stonework. Benches are at either side of the interior, an especially large one being in the rear end….. The great mound is a bead (sic) of myrtle and violets. Arbor vitae trees form a perfect circle around the vault. An iron fence, the double gate being hung on stone pillars, incloses (sic) the front… On the urn, surmounting the whole are two beautiful figures. One is that of a kneeling woman, wringing her hands in sorrow for her dead. The other, in the guise of a woman, is an angel of light hovering over the sorrowing one with a message of comfort.”
With the death of Leonora, the Robinsons’ only surviving child, Anna M.V. Robinson inherited the mansion in 1880. Following the untimely death of her first husband Tobias Hetchie, Anna married and shared the mansion with James Harvey. As with their predecessors, the Harveys also made some changes and additions to the mansion. These changes included: adding the large front porch that is still visible today, adding a smaller side porch, removing a large stone wall from the yard, and placing glass in the large oak entrance door.
Mansion circa 1900
Sometime around 1912, the Harvey family packed their belongings and moved to Los Angeles, California. The empty mansion was rented to a prominent Freedom family named Bischoffberger. In a letter written to Mrs. Alton Bonzo by Margaret Schuldt, a daughter of the Bischoffbergers, in 1979, Mrs. Schuldt talks about some of the changes made by her family:
“…Papa fixed the large room in the attic as our party room. He had a beautiful hardwood floor laid. There were two good sized bedrooms off the large room. …Papa had made an apartment above the kitchen & laundry. There was an outside stairway going from the apartment over the kitchen.”
Surprisingly, even though they were renters, the Bischoffbergers made changes to the house and must have expected to buy it at some point. One of the true enduring mysteries of the mansion is why it was never sold to them. According to Mrs. Schuldt:
“You see my Dad wanted to buy the house & was told he could have first chance on it when we lived in it but it was sold, you might say, right out from under him& that was their reason for moving out to one of our own houses on Eighth Street ….Which made them quite unhappy….”
During the Bischoffbergers’ residence, the mansion was nearly lost to a fire. Apparently Mr. and Mrs. Bischoffberger were away in Erie attending a funeral of Mr. Gottlieb Walters, an uncle of Mr. Bischoffberger, and the children had walked into town. According to an article in the Daily Times dated Tuesday, December 19, 1916 titled Big Fire Damage: