Townsend Homestead: A Home for the Ages

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Bill Townsend has almost daily reminders of the generations of his family who have lived on his farm.

Every day he passes receipts his grandfather tacked to the wall of the barn he built. The pear tree in the yard was planted there the day his mother started first grade. And the rough patches in the field when he's mowing are ruts made by the wheels of his great-grandfather's buggies.

“It's just constant reminders of my mom and my mom's family,” he said.

Townsend's home, Hilpert Farm off Bucoda Highway in northern Centralia, has been continuously owned and occupied by members of his family for more than 150 years. The land is named for Bill's great-grandfather David Hilpert, who filed the first claim on the land in September of 1858, 31 years before Washington reached statehood. David Hilpert purchased the land from the widow of a veteran of the Mexican-American War. Among their family heirlooms is the original purchase documents for the land, which were signed by President Abraham Lincoln.

The farm's original home, built by David Hilpert in 1969 for his new bride, Magdalena, burned down just a few years ago. The home where the Townsends live today is a mixture of the second farmhouse home, which was built in 1916, and a 3,000-square-foot addition that started two years ago and is still continuing. Bill's mother, Eileen (Hilpert) Townsend, was born in the 1916 home and Bill also grew up there.  

For nearly 30 years, the Townsends lived in the 1,400-square-foot older home, which features many old fashioned touches such as the original porcelain sink and wood box.

The newer addition adds a significantly larger open kitchen and family room with a bathroom and three upstairs bedrooms and a Juliet balcony looking onto the downstairs areas. But great pains were taken to make sure the newer part of the home would mesh with the older section, as well as the historical significance of the place. The wainscoting and wooden surround for the new modern kitchen is from wood logged from the farm and milled at a local mill. The Townsends said they are looking forward to using the new part of their home but still cherish the historic part.

“Several people have come over and seen  the new part and said, 'Are you going to tear the old piece down?' Like they expect that's what we'll do,” said Bill's wife, Cassie. “I don't think we could do that because it's part of this place.”

“Part of the story,” Bill added.



The farm's barn, still in use, was built by Bill's grandfather, Otto F. Hilpert, in 1920. The outbuildings still contain some of the old buggies, tack items, steamer trunks and other small reminders of the family members that once lived there. Walking through  the barn, Bill tells stories of playing in the barn's hay loft and using old-fashioned machinery to thresh grain.

“When I was a kid it wasn't this neat but it was kind of a treasure trove,” Bill said of the barn.

Bill's education is in engineering. As a young man, he lived for a number of years in Texas but said it was his love for his family and the history of the farm that eventually drew him back.

In 1987, when he married Cassie, they sat down to think about where they would live as a couple. Cassie is from Louisiana and at the time, Bill was working in Texas. They said they wrote down on paper the pros and cons of living in either Louisiana, Texas or Centralia. The family homestead in Centralia lost: neither of them had jobs here; Cassie's family would be too far away; and they were unsure if they were ready for rural life. But Bill's family wanted to see someone to care for the farm and in the end, it was Bill's fondness for the place that led them to choose Centralia anyway.

“It didn't win out on paper but it won out in our hearts and it's been a great decision,” Cassie said.

The Townsends raised three children at the family farm: Carmelita, 23, Elliot, 18, and Nadia, 11. For many years, they lived in the farmhouse and Bill's parents lived in the home next door. When Bill's parents died a few years ago, the farm became theirs as part of the settlement of the estate.

The family raises cows for beef and grows fields of grain for feeding the cattle. And they've done their best to make their own mark on the farm for future generations to see. For example, pieced wooden decorations filling the walls and ceiling of the older home's kitchen are from the crate Bill and Cassie built to move their possessions from the South to Washington in 1987. Bill said his hope is that one day one of their children will show enough interest in the farm to become the fifth generation to be caretakers of the land and will appreciate the history of it as much as he does.

“They all kind of know kind of like I knew when I was a kid,” Bill said of the farm's heritage. “But it's something that I'm still learning about. It doesn't happen all at once.”