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The Nurre-Royston house is one of the oldest in St. Bernard. Built in the mid-1850s, the original owners were J. B. Moorman and J. B. Stallo, Cincinnati attorneys. They used the property as a farm, and the house was occupied by tenant farmers. Upon Moorman’s death in 1859, the property was sold to Joseph Nurre, who lived in the house with his sister and her family. He purchased 27 acres along the south side of today’s Church Street, between Burnet Avenue and Rose Hill Lane, and south to Delmar Avenue.

The property passed through several generations of the Nurre family, commencing when John Joseph Nurre sold to his first cousin John Herman Henry Nurre, in 1862. He died in 1879, but his wife, Maria, later purchased twenty-two acres of land from the estate of Catherine Schroeder (1882). This was located on the north side of Church Street, east of Tower Avenue and south of Franklin Avenue.

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Next, Henry Aloys, their eldest son, inherited the farm and raised his family there. At the beginning of the 20th century, c.1908, he was the one who built streets that are part of the neighborhood today. The property was subdivided into lots to permit building of homes on what had been family farm land. Over the next eighteen years he began by removing the gate to his farm where today’s Burnet Avenue and Church Street are located. He built Meadow Avenue; a section of Greenlee Avenue, south and north of Church Street; Rose Hill Avenue and Rose Hill Lane. He also deeded part of the farm to the German Catholic Cemetery Society for an addition to St. Mary’s Cemetery.  Henry Aloys was also responsible for improving and surfacing the roads, and, in 1941, Errun Lane (Nurre spelled backward) was created with the house number 4330 assigned to it.

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The last of his children to live in the house was his daughter, Gertrude. Following her death, the house was sold to James B. and Mary Jo Royston in 1982.

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The house has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

 

Marjorie Niesen

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Sources: Dan Nurre and Mary Jo Royston; St. Bernard-Ludlow Grove Historical Society Archives.

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