Parma’s first settlers were industrious New Englanders who either traveled on foot or came by wagon to settle in Township 6-range 13 in the Western Reserve. Benejah Fay arrived in 1816 and built a home as well as an inn. Slowly, others followed making their homes in what is now called Greenbrier.
Lyman and Rhoda Ann Stearns, originally from Walpole New Hampshire, traveled to Copley Ohio on their wedding trip to visit Lyman’s brother John Coolidge Stearns, a noted abolitionist, in 1834. Liking the area, they returned, first living in Copley and then purchasing land parcel number 17 in the Ely tract in June of 1854.
The Yankee style barn was built around 1849 and the Stearns home in 1855. The Stearns house is built in the Greek Revival style of architecture popular in the United States prior to the Civil War. The original farmhouse has symmetrical, evenly spaced multi paned windows, cornices that extend into gable ends and a roof with low pitched gable. It was and is painted in classic white. The Stearns home is one of the oldest wooden structures in Ohio.
On March 7, 1836 a resolution was passed creating a new township to be called Parma. During this time Parma remained mostly agricultural. By 1850 the US census listed Parma’s population at 1,329. Parma was designated a village on December 15, 1924 and a city on January 1, 1931.
West Side Cleveland meat processor Earl C. Gibbs and his family bought the Stearns farm in 1919 and built the newer house in 1920. The family continued to graze cattle here through the 1970s, by which point the Parma suburbs had completely surrounded them.
The City of Parma purchased the property from the Gibbs family in 1980 to preserve this unique remnant of Parma’s rural heritage. The farm is managed by the Parma Area Historical Society and consists of a Yankee style barn, several outbuildings, and two historic homes operated as museums with furnishings appropriate to their eras.
All are free and open to the public.