A couple who fell in love with a historic manor when they first moved to Leavenworth, Kansas, 12 years ago, made a dream come true when they bought the property. As it turned out, the house of their dreams was also a trove of hidden treasures.
Thad Krasnesky and his wife Robin Krasnesky were captivated by their 140-year-old Victorian mansion that spans 7 acres (2.8 hectares) when Mr. Krasnesky was attending military school.
“That’s what the manor does for people,” Mr. Krasnesky, who now works as a financial advisor and children’s book author, told The Epoch Times. “It says, ‘Hey, remind that little kid in you that there is a place where you can step away, where magic things happen.’”
A Dream Come True
Mr. and Ms. Krasnesky moved to Leavenworth in 2011 and initially rented a space. It was when they were driving down Broadway, a street lined up with historic houses, that they found their mansion. They were quickly smitten but never dreamed the house would be listed for sale.In 2021, they were gobsmacked when a friend’s aunt saw the manor listed on a Facebook page for vintage homes.
“Robin and I were having breakfast,” Mr. Krasnesky said. “Robin pulled up the pictures on her laptop, and she turned her laptop around to me at the breakfast table and said, ‘Please buy me this house!’ ... she was mostly joking.”
Mr. Krasnesky called his wife’s bluff. He spoke to his bank to get approval for a mortgage, then called the realtor to arrange a viewing. There were a lot of renovations needed, but he believed it could work.
He surprised his wife with the good news, and the couple put in their first offer, a little below the asking price, however, it was rejected. By now emotionally invested, they would make five more offers and beat numerous other bidders to the finish line before closing on their dream home five days ahead of Christmas that year. Since they had guests visiting for the holiday season, everyone slept on mattresses on the floor, surrounded by moving boxes.
A Lot of Room
The magical mansion had documentation tracing back to the original owners from 1885, a man named AJ Angell and his wife, Mary Angell. Mr. Angell passed away just three months after moving in, and the house stayed in the Angell family until 1975 when the couple’s granddaughters vacated the home.The deeds passed through the hands of a doctor, and then another owner. Mr. and Ms. Krasnesky are the fourth owners of the home.
“There are 25 rooms in the house. ... between 9,000 and 10,000 square feet [2743 and 3048 square meters],” Mr.Krasnesky said. “We have a carriage house, and that’s another 3,000 square feet [914 square meters], then there’s attic space. It’s a lot of room.”
With deer, coyote, foxes, and possums frequenting the backyard, an abandoned 1930s railroad behind the house, and even records of two murders on the property, the Krasneskys’ new home was brimming with history. Then came the treasures.
“The very first thing that we would call treasure, I guess, was in the first couple of weeks we were there,” Mr. Krasnesky said.
One day as Mr. Krasnesky was in the library—which has a ceiling measuring 14 feet (4.2 meters) tall—dusting the shelves, he found three items laying on top of the bookshelf.
He found a Civil War presentation cane, a gold watch, and a box containing ribbons from equestrian events. Mr. Krasnesky located the surviving family and passed on the heirlooms.
A Huge Surprise
Then, while dealing with raccoons in the attic and trying to fix the damage that was caused by them, Mr. Krasnesky stumbled on the next interesting thing.“I stepped on this loose board ... there was an old carpet covering part of it. I moved that aside, pulled the board up, and I see something metallic under the fiberglass,” he said.
Mr. Krasnesky pulled out two jars of silver coins. Under another floorboard, he found a quarter from 1916 and a dime from the 1890s.
During Thanksgiving in 2022, elsewhere in the house, the couple, and their kids, who were growing increasingly interested in the magical mansion, found an ornate ring and gold jewelry.
Next came a huge surprise: a hidden room. The couple and their friends found a room when they moved some shelves in the basement.
“There was this piece of metal that’s bolted to one of the stones,” Mr. Krasnesky said. “We suspected that it probably went into a crawl space ... we pulled the metal off, and it turned out to be an entire room.”
Mr. Krasnesky and his friends have since sifted through 6 inches (15 centimeters) of the room’s 3 to 4 feet (0.9 to 1.2 meters) of dirt, using a homemade motorized sifter, to make sure no treasure goes undetected.
One of Mr. Krasnesky’s most recent discoveries came after one of the couple’s foster cats led them to a scattering of pennies under the floor after losing a toy mouse.
“Probably it was some little kid, 100 years ago, dropping pennies down through the floor,” he said.
As Mr. Krasnesky continues to unearth treasures, he replaces them with current newspaper clippings and items of interest, so that other future owners can share in the same joy when they explore the house in their turn.
Mr. Krasnesky admits that although nothing is going to pay for the whopping costs of the renovation of the house: “There’s that little kid in me that just gets so incredibly excited every time I find something.
A Treasure Shared
Mr. and Ms. Krasnesky have grown used to people parking outside their home and walking through the yard and up to the windows to peek inside. The gracious couple sometimes accommodates house tours and has created a Facebook page–Krasnesky Manor for Wayward Cats–to share their fascinating historic home and cat-fostering venture with the world.The page started out as a way to keep friends and family updated on renovations but quickly grew.
“At this point in time we’ve got, like, 20,000 people on the page,” Mr. Krasnesky told The Epoch Times. “The only thing that makes finding things better is to share that finding-of-a-thing with other people. ... and that’s so cool, you know? Somebody’s able to look at our page, and just for a minute, no matter how crappy their day is ... they can log onto our Facebook page and go, ‘Here’s a fun thing!’”
The couple also uses social media to advocate for animal welfare, a cause close to Mr. Krasnesky’s heart, since during his five combat deployments he found comfort in helping feed and care for stray animals.
The mansion is also home to a rescue cat that Mr. Krasnesky bonded with during his last deployment in Afghanistan in 2015.
Operating as a privately-funded charity, Krasnesky Manor for Wayward Cats works with animal rescue groups, local youth, and education, and gave out its first scholarship in May 2023. Their motto is, “Reducing suffering by increasing empathy.”
While the manor has brought much magic into the couple’s lives, Mr. Krasnesky knows they are only playing a bit part in the manor’s epic story.
“I tell people all the time that owning an old house is one of the best, most humbling things that you can do,” he said. “This house has been here for 140 years before we were there, and it’s going to be here 140 years after we’re gone. It really helps remind you of what your place in history is, you know?”
