John Keifer built a cabin here in 1824 on a 100 acre tract that had once been part of his father George Keifer’s much larger farm, which encompassed most of the 1780 Peckewe (Piqua) Battlefield. John Keifer (1802-1863) and his wife Elizabeth Donnel (1805-1865), daughter of surveyor Jonathan Donnel, lived here until 1830, and their daughter Caroline was born in the cabin in 1829. Jonathan Donnel came from Pennsylvania and may have settled in Bethel Township as early as 1795, while George Keifer, originally from Maryland, settled in the township in 1812. In 1830 John and Elizabeth moved to another farm closer to Springfield, and from 1831 until 1835 the cabin became the home of Frederick Mennert, his wife Elizabeth Bachman, and their five children; their son Frederick Jr. was born in the cabin in 1833. Mennert, who had owned a grist mill in Blair County, Pennsylvania, moved to Ohio in 1830 and in 1831 bought both the cabin and the old Leffel Mill along the Mad River just downstream. After going bankrupt in 1835, he moved with his family to Tazewell County, Illinois, where he opened a tavern and later bought another grist mill. When George Keifer died in 1845, John and Elizabeth returned to Bethel Township and lived for the rest of their lives on what remained of his original farm along the west side of Tecumseh Road. John Keifer was a farmer, U.S. Marshal, federal census taker, and a cousin of Civil War general Joseph Warren Keifer. After the Mennert family left, the cabin and surrounding acreage passed through several owners, and by the time Daniel Hertzler bought the property in 1853 the cabin had long been abandoned and was probably in disrepair. Any remaining foundation stones and bricks from the chimney and a nearby smokehouse were probably reused in constructing the Hertzler mansion. All that remains of the cabin is its stone hearth foundation, discovered during an archaeological excavation in the spring of 2012.