Harrison County Historical Society
123 West Main Street PO Box 2074 Clarksburg, West Virginia 26301
Stealey-Goff-Vance House
Circa 1807 by Jacob Stealey
Oldest West Virginia Brick Home West of the Allegeheny Mountains*
By 1804 Jacob Stealey was so successful as a tanner of hides and a retailer of leather that he looked about him for a site to build a fine home. Lot No. 3 on West Main Street in Clarksburg appealed to him because it lay high enough above Elk Creek that chance of flooding was slight and the back of the lot joined the tanyard lot.
He may have started to gather materials for the house he would build as early as 1804 since one source states that his son John helped “carry bricks” for the new house when he was 12 years old. Whenever it was, the deed for four lots, land on which the brick house arose, was not recorded until Aug. 20, 1807, when George and Elizabeth Jackson sold to Jacob Stealey for $709 land on the “south side of Main Street to a lot the said Jackson formerly sold to said Stealey called the Tan Yard.”