Castle on the Hill

Local public-library institutional history of the Jackson Sanatorium / Our Home on the Hillside building ("Castle on the Hill"), fetched via Wayback Machine snapshots on 2026-08-04. States James Caleb Jackson was born in Onondaga County in 1811, was "at death's door" before a water cure produced his own recovery, then trained in medicine and operated a water cure in Cortland County before relocating to Dansville. Confirms the October 1858 takeover of the failing Dansville water-cure and its renaming as "Our Home on the Hillside"; Harriet Austin's role as Jackson's adopted daughter, fellow hydropathist, and inventor of the "American Costume" dress-reform garment; the introduction of Granula, credited as the first cold breakfast cereal, as "a lucrative sideline"; the 1877-1882 handover of daily operation to son James H. Jackson and daughter-in-law Kate J. Jackson; the June 1882 fire that destroyed the original wooden building; the October 1883 opening of the larger, fireproof brick Jackson Sanatorium; and the institution's eventual sale to physical-culture publisher Bernarr Macfadden, stating this did not occur "until the spring of 1929."