Lightning claimed Liberty’s oldest wood-frame home, but its 182-year story endures.

Story by Ann Butenas / Photography by Matt Kocourek

Some houses provide more than shelter. They become living records of the people who built them, loved them, and left their mark within their walls. The Stone-Corbin House at 430 E. Franklin Street in Liberty, Missouri, is just that kind of house. Built around 1842, it is the oldest wood-frame house in Liberty, and for nearly 182 years it has stood on that corner while the city grew up around it, with its walnut lap siding, Ponderosa pine plank floors, 16-inch baseboards, three fireplaces, and a staircase that has seen it all. It survived the Civil War era, multiple owners, and the kind of slow wear that comes with a very long and meaningful life. What it nearly didn’t survive was a bolt of lightning. On April 26, 2024, a strike ignited a fire deep inside the home’s layered attics. By the time neighbors realized what was happening, it had been burning for close to an hour. What the flames left behind was ash, memories, and a community that wasn’t ready to let the story end there, and, thankfully, it didn’t.

Enter Karen O’Dell-Gerhardt, who was born and raised in Liberty, to a family with roots stretching back to the early 1800s. She grew up attending church one block from the Stone-Corbin House, wandering downtown during fall festivals, and absorbing the rhythms of a small Missouri city she would eventually leave behind. After high school, she headed first to Arizona, then to the Bay Area, where she built a decade-long career in tech. Her family half-jokingly worried they had lost her for good.

Then the pandemic changed the trajectory for many people, Karen included. Remote work made the geography of where one lived negotiable, and with her family still deeply rooted in Liberty (her grandfather was still farming at 95), she started browsing the local real estate market. What she found stopped her in her tracks. The Stone-Corbin House was for sale, stately and historic, a Clay County landmark that had graced postcards and preservation posters for generations. The kitchen was badly outdated, which had kept other buyers away. Karen saw past that immediately.

“I grew up two miles from that house,” she said. “I just knew this was for me.”

She purchased the property at the end of 2021, single and entrepreneurial, with plans to renovate the kitchen and operate it as an Airbnb when she wasn’t living there. What followed was a substantial kitchen overhaul that, in retrospect, carried a certain heartbreaking irony, as she had barely finished the renovation when that fire took everything. But before that, she met Paul, a software and electrical engineer who shared her passion for creative projects and her desire to trade the relentless pace of Silicon Valley for something more meaningful and intentional. The two married in the summer of 2023, hit ten national parks on a cross-country Airstream honeymoon, and settled into a life happily divided between their residences in Liberty and Colorado.

The morning of April 25, 2024, began as an ordinary day on a hiking trail in New Mexico. Karen had deliberately left her phone behind, a rare act of digital detachment for someone who describes herself as “chronically online.” While she and Paul walked among ancient native ruins, a lightning strike cracked so loudly over Liberty that neighbors a quarter mile away on the square heard the boom. The Stone-Corbin House was burning from the inside, deep in its layered attics, before anyone realized it. By the time neighbors called it in, it had been burning for close to an hour, Karen recalled.

The couple got the news when they finally found cell service, and Paul’s phone was blowing up with missed-call notifications. Interestingly, that same morning, they had learned they were expecting twins.

“It was the most high-low day of my life,” she emphasized.

The insurance company declared a total loss almost immediately. But the town of Liberty had other ideas. Neighbors approached them on the street. The fire marshal showed up to their insurance meeting and advocated for saving the structure. It became clear that the Stone-Corbin House did not belong only to its owners. It also belonged to the town.

“We realized pretty quickly that we were carrying a responsibility,” Karen reflected.

So, they took the house down to the studs and rebuilt it with fierce attention to authenticity, working closely with the Liberty Historic Preservation Board on every exterior change. Their general contractor, Ken Personett, a Liberty homebuilder who had gone to college with Karen’s father, guided the work, sourcing craftspeople to recreate the original Greek Revival millwork, including the signature 16-inch baseboards. Old-growth heart pine flooring was tracked down through specialty mills in Georgia. The original staircase, largely intact after the fire, became the emotional anchor of the entire restoration. The Gerhardts’ design philosophy was elegantly simple: improve everything, change nothing.

Karen took on much of the interior design herself, a deeply personal creative project she tackled while postpartum with newborn twins. The results speak for themselves. The living room is painted in a warm, pink-undertoned white, representing her careful approximation of what a wall painted white in the 1800s would look like after two centuries of settling.

Upstairs, the children’s room features Alice in Wonderland wallpaper, a nod to the fact that Lewis Carroll’s beloved story was written right around the same time the house was built. The primary suite now boasts a dream bathroom complete with a claw-foot tub, marble shower, and chandelier. The charming side porch, which miraculously survived the fire, was lovingly restored as well.

Today, the house has been expanded to three bedrooms and four bathrooms, with a guest house above the detached garage, all designed to match the original architecture so seamlessly that it looks as though it has always been there. At Christmas, the Gerhardts hosted an open house for the community. Liberty showed up. A previous owner recently left a bundle of old newspaper clippings on the porch with a handwritten note. We love this house, she wrote. We’re so glad you saved it.

Paul has his own way of framing what happened. He believes the fire may have been the house calling out for help, a necessary rebirth after years of well-meaning but imperfect additions. Karen doesn’t disagree.

“We feel like caretakers of something bigger than ourselves,” she said.

Originally known as the Stone-Corbin House, Karen and Paul affectionately call it the Franklin Historic House. Their twins, just over a year old, will grow up inside its walls.

“Whether they like it or not,” Karen amusingly reflected, “this is their legacy.”