Download John Marsh Newsletter – January, 2005 here.

For generations the Stone House, as it has come to be known, has cast its spell over far East Contra Costa County, an area of farms, vineyards and subdivisions where the Bay Area blends into the Delta and Central Valley.

It's been a hard-luck house. The woman for whom it was built died two years before it was finished in 1856. The man who built it, pioneering "doctor," Indian fighter, cattleman and gold miner John Marsh, was murdered weeks after moving in.