Dr. Daniel Schumaier, a Johnson City audiologist, spends time listening to the distant past when he isn't caring for patients in his office. For 30 years, he has been restoring the Stoney Creek ante-bellum Rueben Brooks mansion built in 1820 that is now his home and was once owned by a former Revolutionary War soldier.
  "We have restored it to what is called adaptive re-use, so that it has, of course, heat and plumbing," said Schumaier, who shares the home with his wife, Donna. "You wouldn't want to live in it without heat and modern conveniences," Donna said.
  Schumaier bought the house and property on July 3, 1976 from Dolly Gray. Since that time, he has filled the home with period antiques, replaced flooring and repaired brick work with the help of master brick mason Elwayne Williams.
  The first owner of the Rueben Brooks mansion was Revolutionary War soldier John Michael Smithpeters who married the widow of Arthur Johnston who was killed at the Battle of Brandywine outside Philadelphia in 1777. As a reward for his military service, Smithpeters received a large piece of property in Stoney Creek extending from Iron Mountain to Holston Mountain.
  But Smithpeters could not profit from the land and sold it at auction to Rueben Brooks. Brooks married Smithpeters' daughter, Mary.
  The property was then passed to Rueben Brooks Jr., born in 1814, who married Elizabeth Carriger in 1834. The head of the family and his eldest son did not survive the Civil War.
  Rueben Brooks was active in politics and supported slavery. The property where the mansion is located also has a canning house and slave quarters, where Brooks reportedly kept seven slaves.
  Brooks was also a secessionist. He died in 1862, but his son, William, followed in his footsteps and recruited a unit that he commanded.
  Brooks was eventually shot by Union sympathizers and was brought to an upstairs bedroom, called the keeping room where daughters typically slept, and died from his wounds. He was buried on July 4, 1863, and the floor in the room where he died is still stained with his blood.
  Now, Schumaier and his wife enjoy the home and use the canning house and slave quarters as guest homes when extended family visit. One of Schumaier's favorite characteristics of the main house are the original ceiling beams made of yellow poplar.
  "You couldn't find trees this large now, or this kind of wood, to make beams like this," he said.
  Schumaier said the last person who lived in the slave quarters was an old woman known as Molly. He now calls the building Molly's House in her memory.