Leanne Pluthero celebrates Auchmar with her tattoos and a new book
Leanne Pluthero has so many tattoos that she has lost count of them.
But, her favourite runs along the inside of her right forearm.
It's a rendering of a late 1800s sketch of the historic Auchmar mansion at West 5th Street and Fennell Avenue, showing the Victorian splendour of gables and chimneys nestled among the flowing leaves of mature trees.
On the other side of her arm is a drawing of a grandfather clock that used to be in the home. She plans to someday connect the pictures with a design pattern inspired by wallpaper in the dining room.
To say Pluthero, 35, is passionate about Auchmar would be an understatement. It not only decorates her skin but the vacant estate - that is currently owned by the City of Hamilton - fills her thoughts and conversation.
Over the past several years, she's spent a fantastic amount of time collecting research about the house on the hill, and this month she has put out a new 48-page book, Auchmar - Portrait of Home."
There is something about that building and I don't even know what it is," says Pluthero, a mother of three who currently works as a cleaner at a COVID-19 assessment centre.
I just love the place."
Auchmar was built in the early 1850s by Isaac Buchanan (1810-1883), one of the city's most famous and wealthy citizens of his day who had his fingers in politics, industry, railways, and the military, among other things. He formed the regiment that later became the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry (RHLI), and he was the first president of The Hamilton Club.
Fast forward to 1999 - 116 years after Buchanan's death - and his former homestead was slated for demolition to make way for a housing survey. But the city stepped in, and after a land swap with the developer, ended up owning the property.
Recent years have seen various ideas about adaptive reuse, but nothing stuck. Auchmar remains vacant, with the city managing its costly maintenance bills amid frequent movie shoots.
In 2018, local historian Bill King published his thoroughly researched book Buchanan of Auchmar. It was a 232-page work that was heavy on words but light on photos.
So, King thought a sequel should focus more on pictures, but tell a story at the same time. He believed Pluthero would be the perfect person to handle the project under the banner of his book publishing company, Attawandaron.
She didn't have much experience as a published writer. But he liked the enthusiasm she showed for Auchmar on social media.
Pluthero was particularly interested in a little-known era from about 1914 until the late 1920s when the mansion was used as a home for unwed mothers.
It was a surprising turn in the saga of the Buchanan family.
Buchanan and his wife, Agnes, raised nine children, but financial difficulties forced the family to vacate the house in the 1870s. Then, in 1901, son James, who went on to become rich in the U.S., reclaimed the family homestead and allowed his sister Elsie to live there.
But through time, Elsie found it difficult to make ends meet and created the refuge for single mothers with her friend, Marie Ratte, to help pay the bills.
Pluthero pieced together the story through two unpublished books: One by Elsie's niece, Evelyn Buchanan - who frequently visited the estate - and the second from a Deborah Darcy who was raised by Elsie Buchanan and Ratte at Auchmar.
The book juxtaposes quotes from the two manuscripts along with historic and recent photos.
King, 58, says another reason he published the book is that I wanted to encourage Leanne as an up-and-coming heritage activist."
Pluthero was involved in an unsuccessful plan to turn Auchmar into a RHLI museum along with other amenities. She also worked on the campaign that restored the 1830 Hermitage ruins in Ancaster a few years back and she continues a quest to keep the 1884 Century Manor from demolition.
The boarded-up Century Manor is the last surviving building from the former Hamilton Asylum for the Insane on the Mountain and is facing development pressure. Hermitage was saved in 2015 by a painstaking process of reinforcing its foundation and removing and refitting its stones.
Leanne is part of the new generation. She is a little different than those before her and she probably rubs folks the wrong way sometimes," says King.
Pluthero sees herself in a similar light, part of a group of up-and-coming history buffs who have discovered wonderful resources on the internet for research.
We do things differently. We don't have to go to the library to find information. It's easier for us now because so much is digitized," she says. We don't have bachelor's degrees in history. We do it because we are passionate about it."
It's an approach that can raise the eyebrows of traditional historians who are more used to musty documents and listing copious footnotes.
There are quite a few of the older historians in Hamilton who have told me to my face how much they dislike me ... They say you got tattoos. You're a girl. You can't do anything.'"
But, she says she is undeterred and feels her work is important.
History is not just dinner parties and fancy dresses. There are other histories that need to be told."