Peter Hetzel was a carpenter and manufactured fanning mills, hand-looms, and furniture. He was a co-founder of Zion Memorial Church on South Dixie Drive. His wooden frame farmhouse was built in 1817 and was located a mile east of the church just off West Stroop Road.
For about a year while the farmhouse was being built, Hetzel, his wife Catherine and their five children lived on site in a very small, white wooden frame building called a summer kitchen. A summer kitchen was used to keep heat out of the main house during hot weather. Pots were suspended from a crane for cooking or heating water. A bake oven was used to make bread, pies, and other baked goods. The Hetzel Summer Kitchen Building still exists today at Carillon Historical Park. The building is so small that you are amazed that seven people had enough space to live in it.
Outside beside the summer kitchen building is a garden where park staff grow vegetables that the Hetzels would have planted including a special plant called broomcorn. Broomcorn is not edible but once dried, its stiffer bristles are used to make brooms for dry sweeping only.
