The South Salem Stone School was built here in 1857 on land deeded to the school district by Welcome J. Partelo, replacing an earlier log cabin structure with an unusual fieldstone schoolhouse. It was temporarily named Jarvis School for William Jarvis, an early board member, and enrolled fifteen to thirty-five students in grades one through eight. A 1941 addition provided bathrooms, coatracks, and storage. It was the oldest school still operating in Washtenaw County when it closed in 1967, then sat vacant and deteriorating until 1978, when the Salem Area Historical Society bought and restored it as the society's headquarters. Its 1887 out building was re-created in 2005 from historical photographs. John Dickerson, who settled in the area around 1825 with his cousin Joseph and his wife Amy among Salem's first European-American settlers, became a prosperous farmer and owned 270 acres by 1880. Around 1830 he built this timber-frame swing-beam barn, a New England form with a large unobstructed wagon opening created by a beam tapered on both ends that runs the width of the structure. The barn was rebuilt here between 2006 and 2007 after being moved from its original location at Six Mile near Chubb Road; much of the framing was retained, the chestnut swing beam was replaced with a like-kind white oak beam, the cladding and barn door were re-created, and a side door and battens between the joints were added during reconstruction.