On the south side of Columbus along Route 23, a man by the name of Dr. Samuel B. Hartman owned what was once the largest farm in the United States. He grew grapes and processed them for his invention...the "Cure-All" for anything. From measles to blindness to arthritis to the common cold, Hartman's Peruna, or as he spelled it PE-RU-NA, was the cure for everyday Catarrhal illnesses. Perhaps this was due to the large amount of alcohol, nearly 25% alcohol, that the so called cure-all drug contained. When doctors finally convinced some medicine associations that Peruna was nothing more than a strong whiskey, the drug was discontinued. Harman's empire came to an end in the 1940s.

The Hartman Farms was much more than just a place to raise grapes for the defunct medicine, however. One of the uses was a large dairy farm. Many say that Columbus became known as "Cow Town" when southerners traveled north along Route 23 to look for work. When they passed through Hartman Farm and saw the massive dairy farm, they knew they had arrived in Columbus. Hartman Farms also included a horse stable near the present-day Scioto Downs racetrack.

Today the land that the Hartman Farms once occupied is a huge quarry (one of the largest in the Columbus area). Parts of I-270 were also built atop the old farm land. Only a few of the original buildings have survived, including one of the dairy barns (now a storage building for the quarry), a house that sits next to a modern barn that is still occupied, a lonely one room school house that's been abandoned since the 1960s, and home along Parson's Avenue. There rumors that once the quarry has finished it's excavating, they're going to turn the place into a park called Hartman Lake.

The photos below are what we have been able to gather so far. The OES has ordered and received some of the original Peruna almanacs from the late 1800s and early 1900s. We plan on scanning the entire booklets and putting them here for anyone to enjoy. We've also received an old tin can that used to hold the pill form of Peruna, Man-a-lin. We are now in search of a bottle of Peruna, presumably full, to add to our collection. If you have further information, pictures, or experiences of the Harman empire or Peruna that you would like to share, please send an email to with that information. You will be credited on the site for anything you may contribute. Below are the pictures that we have gathered so far.