Former Eden Hall Farm has rich history in Richland Township

Each month, the Richland History Group will highlight notable aspects from the area’s past.

For some 350 years, the Richland Township rolling hills through which Ridge Road now passes have maintained their pristine rural beauty and been used for the noblest of purposes, despite numerous ownership changes.

The Delaware and several tribes that followed used this property as a “designated hunting ground” to ensure Indian families would not starve. One hundred years later, the cash-poor U.S. Government offered this “Depreciation Land” to its Revolutionary War soldiers, who won America’s freedom. John and David Dickson established farms there in the mid-1800s to feed non-farming area settlers. Several purchases of this land, starting in 1912 by a Bavarian immigrant, ultimately resulted in Eden Hall Farm, which became a retreat for 6,000 working women from 1951 to 2007.

In 2008, both the Pine-Richland School District and Chatham University obtained portions of the Farm property to establish educational facilities there.

Eden Hall Farm’s founder was Sebastian Mueller, who left today’s Germany in 1884 to help his cousin Henry Heinz with his Pittsburgh food processing business. Mueller settled in Glenshaw and became a senior vice-president at H. J. Heinz Co.

He married Henry’s sister. Their first two children, daughters Elsa and Alma, died as infants and scarlet fever took their only son in 1912. Mueller immediately began his philanthropy by purchasing Ridge Road property to raise horses and host Heinz recreational functions. In 1922, he opened the Glenshaw women’s convalescence home, Elsalma Terrace (named for both daughters).

By his 1938 death, Mueller had amassed 470 acres along Ridge Road. His estate went to Eden Hall Farm, established in 1939 as a non-profit corporation. In 1951, the farm opened to serve as a vacation and convalescent resort for Heinz female employees. After 1969, community nurses could join the “Heinz Girls” as guests.

Females from the Heinz factory on Pittsburgh’s North Side were bused to the Farm on Friday afternoons to enjoy a peaceful weekend. A bus returned them on Sunday afternoons.

Female employees also came from outside Pittsburgh. Many from Heinz’s ketchup factory in Fremont, Ohio, traveled by railroad. Richland resident Cecilia Morgan, a former Heinz employee, has very fond memories of her early 1980s getaway vacations. She praised “the whole Eden Hall Farm experience — the lodge, amenities, home-cooked meals, pool, ping-pong, duckpin bowling and my favorite, walking or horseback riding on those breath-taking trails. They were relaxing weekends in an idyllic setting – as if time had stopped.”

The 1983 Eden Hall Foundation continued to host women there into 2007, after which inadequate funds necessitated it selling 36 acres to the Pine-Richland School District for its 2010 Eden Hall Upper Elementary School and gifting 388 acres to Chatham University to establish the 2015 Eden Hall Campus for its Falk School of Sustainability and Environment. The campus includes such earth-conscious innovations as wastewater treatment, 400 solar panels, geothermal heating and the Elsalma organic garden.

Chatham will start construction there this year on the Rachel Carson EcoVillage, a living sustainable housing laboratory for up to 35 campus families.

While many older buildings did not survive, Chatham’s Eden Hall Campus is still graced by the presence of the 1912 main house, 1953 lodge, caretaker’s house, maintenance barn and the iconic white 1912 horse barn. Muller may have chosen “Eden” to name his farm since it sat on Richland’s highest ridge (closer to heaven than any other township property); its beauty compared to biblical Eden; and his intentions for his land’s charitable use were Garden of Eden-like.

Sebastian Mueller would no doubt be glad to know that 2022 finds these three factors still in place.

Paul R. White is the president of the Richland History Group.