Perhaps the most historic home in Jefferson City, the Parsons House at 105 Jackson St., has been named to Missouri's 2016 historic "Places in Peril."
The structure's age, architecture, location and former residents all lend to its importance.
The lack of caretaking and leaving it vacant, though, have placed the historic property in jeopardy.
"Our hope in listing this house on Missouri's historic Places in Peril is that the owner might be encouraged to finally fix up or sell it - and that the local government seek stronger and enhanced laws to protect buildings from owners who would practice demolition by neglect," the listing said.
The Missouri Alliance for Historic Preservation, formerly the Missouri Heritage Trust, has called attention to endangered statewide historic resources by announcing such a list since 2000.
Most identified properties are threatened by deterioration, lack of maintenance, insufficient funds, imminent demolition or inappropriate development, said Executive Director Bill Hart.
"Once the historic resource is gone, it's gone forever," Hart said. "By publicizing these places, we hope to build support toward each property's eventual preservation."
Last year, the Historic City of Jefferson featured 105 Jackson St. as its "This Place Matters" in the May Yesterday and Today newsletter.
Built about 1830, it is probably the oldest in the city, said the Missouri Department of Natural Resources September/October 1995 issue of "Preservation Issues."
The 1869 Birds Eye View map shows mostly one-story homes dotting the area of Capitol Avenue. However, most of the original, smaller homes built in the early Missouri-German style were replaced by owners of industries located with the nearby Missouri State Penitentiary with the grander homes of brick and stone seen today.
The city Historic Preservation Commission designated it a local Landmark in 1993, the first year for the designation program.
The property was part of a 25-count lawsuit against the property owner, Barbara Buescher, by the city to repay the debt to the city for work done on her properties by city staff to meet codes. The city won the suit in May, with Buescher being ordered to pay more than $24,000 for work on her properties. For the Parsons House, the city's costs were "$1,921.50 for installing and, later, reinstalling plywood coverings and cutting down a dead tree on four different dates."
The city has created an abandoned building registry in recent years, highlighting this building has stood vacant for too long. Buescher currently has 21 buildings on the city's Abandoned Properties list.
Efforts to reach Buescher about the nomination were unsuccesful.
Next door still stands the home of Gustavus and Patience Parsons' daughter Mildred, who lost her husband, Lt. Col. Austin Standish, soon after the Civil War, at 103 Jackson St. This Queen Anne-style home shares the same danger of loss by neglect.
The shadowed, blue home was built in the New Orleans French classic style with 16-inch limestone blocks for the first floor's base, topped with 12-inch oak board covered with solid walnut clapboards for the second. The interior woodwork was hand-carved mahogany, according to the Historic City of Jefferson's May 2015 Yesterday and Today.
Original log walls may be encased behind the clapboard, the National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Capitol Avenue Historic District said. And this structure may be the only example of French Colonial architecture in the city.
A historic resources survey in 1992 determined the house was individually eligible for the National Register, the district nomination said.
The only other contemporaries would be Lohman's Landing and the Bolton-Kelly Home, the Cole County Historical Society said in a 1970 Daily Capital News. In 1958, the society placed a historical marker at the home, with help from Adams Dairy.
"The home itself at 105 Jackson St. served as a hospital for both Union and Confederate soldiers during the war with six Parsons daughters serving as nurses after the 1864 skirmishes against Confederate Gen. Sterling Price's advances," according to a Sept. 22, 2011, News Tribune article.
The Parsons family also opened its home as a hospital during the cholera epidemic of 1851.
Gustavus Parsons served as Missouri adjutant general twice, where he personally settled Kansas border uprisings. He moved his wife, Patience, and seven children to Missouri in 1837. He served off and on as Cole County clerk, while also practicing law.
Gustavus Parsons bought the existing home at 105 Jackson St. in 1847 from state Treasurer John Walker, "recognized for his honesty, who kept the state treasury in his home's iron box," according to the Historic City of Jefferson May 2015 Yesterday and Today.
Gustavus and Patience lost a son, a grandson and a son-in-law in the War Between the States.
Their home was seized for use as a military hospital, according to Robert Hawkins. "That's a pretty complete loss; theirs is an example of what happened to many people in Jefferson City," Hawkins said in a 2009 News Tribune. "Next to losing their lives, I'm not sure you could pick a couple with more heartache. These were extraordinary people."
Gustavus Parsons studied law at Monticello, Virginia, and served as private secretary to Thomas Jefferson. Although historians disagree, local legend says Jefferson asked Parsons to go to Jefferson City, according to a paper by Mark Niekamp, held at the Missouri State Archives.
The idea is further supported by the marriage of Gustavus Parsons' daughter Mary Ann to Meriwether Lewis Jefferson, nephew of the president, in 1840 at 105 Jackson St.
Monroe Mosby (M.M.) Parsons, son of Gustavus and Patience Parsons, practiced law while living with his parents and younger siblings at 105 Jackson, with an interruption to serve with the Cole County Dragoons in the Mexican War, until the start of the Civil War.
M.M. Parsons became a highly praised Confederate officer, participating in most battles in Missouri and Arkansas. He had served as U.S. district attorney, in the Missouri House of Representatives and in the Missouri Senate, even running for lieutenant governor before the war.
Gustavus and Patience Parsons' youngest son, Gustavus Jr., joined the Confederate Army at age 17, dying of exhaustion and exposure in Arkansas the night before his 18th birthday.
At war's end, Gustavus and Patience Parsons' son-in-law Lt. Col Austin Standish followed brother-in-law M.M. - namesake of the local Sons of Confederate Veterans chapter - in an expedition to Mexico, where they were both killed in August 1865. This band's story was retold in the John Wayne movie "The Undefeated."
City Historic Preservation Commission Chairman Art Hernandez said he felt this recognition would help reinforce the home's unique standing among so many historic resources.
"The city already has taken steps toward attempting to see the area's older properties preserved," the Places in Peril nomination said. "This listing would endorse those efforts"
"It's unfortunate that we, as a community, find ourselves in this situation. This is just one historic property within an entire area full of endangered historic properties. It's part of our tangible past and can offer so many assets for our community's future.
"Simply put: It's really old, it's full of our history, and it's worth the trouble of saving," the nomination said.