Less than 30 miles from Philadelphia there’s an entire neighborhood of Sears Homes. According to the 1921 Sears Modern Homes catalog, they’re in Chester, PA.

The houses were built in the early 1920s by a company known as “Sun Ship Company.”

It’s possible that this entire neighborhood has long since been demolished, but if it’s still there, I’d love to find it. If you’re familiar with this area, please oh please leave a comment below!

To learn more about how identify Sears Homes, click here.

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And just on the other side of Philadelphia are these Sears Homes in Plymouth Meeting (Pennsylvania).

These homes were built by the American Magnesia Company.

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So, where are these houses now? I’d love to know! 

To learn more about Sears Homes, click here.

To read about the exhumation of Addie Hoyt, click here.

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Thus far,  my friend Dale and I have found more than 50 kit homes in Hampton! It’s a real surprise to find so many houses from Aladdin and Sears in one city here in Southeastern Virginia and they’re all clustered together in one neighborhood!

Not surprisingly, there are almost as many Aladdin Kit homes in Hampton as there are Sears kit homes. Aladdin (like Sears), sold their kit homes through a mail-order catalog. These were true kits - shipped in 12,000-piece kits - and arrived at the train station “some assembly required.” Each kit came with a 75-page instruction book that told the neophyte home builder how all those pieces and parts went together.

Take a look at some of our favorite finds!

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Hampton has too many kit homes to fit into one blog. To read part II, come back tomorrow and click here! 

To learn about the kit homes I found in Newport News (East End), click here.

To read about the kit homes of Norfolk, click here.

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During the last few days, David Spriggs and I have spent more than 50 hours reading “The Lake Mills Leader” (newspaper) from 1892 - 1902. The following information comes from stories contained in those old papers.

In October 1893, an unusually mild strain of diphtheria hit Lake Mills. According to a report made by Dr. F. H. Gordon (County Health Officer and town physician), twelve families (which included many children) “had the diphtheria at their house.”

As is typical of diphtheria, more children than adults were afflicted, and yet there was only one death during this outbreak in 1893, and that was Frankie Hubbs, a 10-year-old boy. He died when the virus hit his heart. (In 1893, they would not have performed an autopsy on a child with diphtheria, but the diphtheria toxin may have damaged Frankie’s heart or kidneys.)

All cases were attended by Dr. F. H. Gordon.

In response to the diphtheria epidemic (even this mild form), local officials closed down the town of Lake Mills. School was suspended, and all public meeting places, lodges, churches, etc were CLOSED until further notice. All public events were canceled.

There was a raging debate about shutting down the Woman’s Club. The ladies entered their protest, and then conferred with the Health Officer, explaining to him, “We have no children here.”

In early December, the city enacted a strongly worded ordinance giving “Health Officers” a tremendous amount of power. In the event of typhoid, diphtheria, Asiatic cholera, small pox, and other communicable diseases, Health Officers were empowered to enforce quarantines, and require fumigation of infected places and close down public areas. Any case of contagious disease was to be reported immediately to the Health Officer, who’d then report to the State Board of Health.

When the quarantine was lifted, and the fumigation of public places was complete, there was great rejoicing throughout the town.

Dr. F. H. Gordon wrote an article for the paper explaining that in Lake Mills, the cause of the disease had been - as it usually was - “unsanitary conditions, filth and imperfect disinfection” practices. Dr. Thorne (of London, which had suffered terribly from diphtheria) was another doctor who was quoted the Lake Mills Leader. He said that diphtheria was caused by “poor children…crowded living conditions…overcrowded schools” and “damp dwellings.”

This all happened in 1893, eight years before Addie’s death, and this was Lake Mills’ response to a very mild strain of diphtheria. And yet, when stealth, ninja, fast-acting, super-deadly diphtheria hit Addie in June 1901, there was no response from the local heath officer, who happened to be Addie’s attending physician, Dr. William H. Oatway.

After Addie’s death, the strongly worded ordinance enacted in November 1893 was completely ignored on all fronts. There were no fumigations. No quarantines. No burning of personal items. No disinfecting of the Fargo Mansion.

As the Health Officer, Dr. Oatway knew that the State Board of Health used burial permits to track contagious disease, and he knew that as long as there was no burial permit, the odds were good that the state would never learn about Addie’s stealth, ninja diphtheria.

At best, Oatway purposefully falsified a legal document and violated health laws. At worst, he was complicit in covering up a murder.

In January 1902, about six months after Addie’s death, Frank B. Fargo’s little boy came down with Smallpox, another dreaded scourge of the time. Frank Fargo (born 1845) was five years older  than his brother, Enoch James, and these two Fargo brothers lived side-by-side on Mulberry Street.

On January 9, 1902, Frank published a notice in the paper - at his own expense - to assure the Lake Mills Community that (unlike his brother, Enoch), his family was abiding by all health laws of the city and state and honoring the state-mandated quarantine.

On January 16, 1902, a blurb appeared in the Lake Mills Leader stating that the fumigation on the Fargo Home was complete  (that’d be the Frank B. Fargo home), and that the quarantine had been lifted.

Frank’s decision to publish this notice in the paper might have been a response to the public outrage that ensued after Addie’s death from the stealth, ninja, super-virulent, fast-acting diphtheria. After Addie died, there had been no quarantine and no fumigation and no destroying of personal items. Life at the Enoch Fargo mansion just went on as usual.

Why were there no quarantines and no fumigations? Because there was no diphtheria in Lake Mills in 1901. When Dr. Oatway filed his report with the State Board of Health for the fiscal year that encompassed June 1901, his official report said that there was no diphtheria in Lake Mills in 1901.

The fact that there was no observation of the health laws after Addie’s death in June 1901 is just more confirmation that she did not die of diphtheria.

In 1901, in a small town like Lake Mills, I’m sure that many people still remembered the Diphtheria Epidemic of 1893.  People must have figured out pretty quickly that young Addie Hoyt - the wide-eyed beauty who was such an accomplished dancer, writer, elocutionist, and historian - had not died from disease.

When the rich, powerful, arrogant Enoch completely ignored all health laws regarding quarantine and fumigation - the townsfolk probably figured out that the diphtheria story was just a sloppy attempt to cover up foul play. In a small town like Lake Mills, folks would have remembered what happened to Enoch’s daughter “Myrtie” in 1887. They would have remembered that the nine-year-old girl died from Typhoid when a neighbor did not follow health laws fast enough, and Myrtie was exposed to the dread disease after playing with a doll from a neighbor’s burn pile.

But Addie did not die from a contagious disease, so Enoch was not worried about his two daughters. He wasn’t worried about anything. After Addie was dead, he tossed her body into a shallow grave, that had been hurriedly dug in the dark of night, and at 10:00 am the same morning, Enoch held a fast funeral before Addie’s brother in Milwaukee could arrive at the grave site.

Enoch wasn’t worried about getting caught. His arrogance was truly stunning. If he was worried about getting caught, he would have followed the game book and fumigated the mansion and burned Addie’s personal things and quarantined the house. But that was way too much trouble for Enoch. Besides, no one dared question the Mighty Enoch.

If only someone had questioned him. If only someone had confronted him. If only someone had stood up for Addie.

If only.

To learn more about Addie, click here.

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To read more about Addie’s murder, click here.

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I’m mighty happy to be in my new home, but one of the things I miss from the old place is my little 96-square-foot house.

David Strickland designed it and built it in September 2008, and it is a real beauty. It has more than 250 linear feet of crown molding, a floored attic (with a vertical staircase), and five wonderful windows. And it has 96 square feet of living area. And did I mention that it has a slate roof?

If you want a little house of your own, or if you need any type of contracting work, I highly recommend David. He is easily the finest contractor that I’ve ever worked with. In addition to his 30 years of experience, he’s incredibly talented. He’s more than just an experienced carpenter, he’s a true artisan, in every sense of the word.

If you’d like to see samples of his work, scroll on down. He’s done so much work for us, and I’ve never met another contractor who comes close to this level of quality.

His name is David Strickland and his number is 237-6492. I hope you’ll give him a call.

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Wednesday morning, about 8:00 am, Robert Fargo stops by the cemetery just to make sure the lawn was mowed yesterday afternoon. All that rain the week before, together with this week’s warm, sunny weather, was causing the grass to sprout up fast.

It’s June 19th, 1901, and hardly a day goes by that Robert, the sexton of Rock Lake Cemetery in Lake Mills, doesn’t swing by the cemetery to check on things. As the buggy bumps along, Robert notices something unusual over by the graves of Mary Rutherford (Enoch’s first wife) and her little girl, “Mertie” Fargo.

Robert Fargo stops the horse, hops off the buggy and walks over to inspect.

Sure enough, it’s a fresh grave in the Fargo family plot. It wasn’t there yesterday afternoon.

“What the hell happened out here last night?” he asks, looking around with a bewildered look on his face. “It looks like someone came out here in the middle of the night and dug a new grave.”

He stands over the fresh grave and shakes his head.

“Something’s very wrong here,” he says out loud.

As sexton, Robert’s signature is required on all burial permits. No exceptions. Every time a grave is opened, a burial permit is required. It’s the law.

Last year, the cemetery board voted unanimously to require burial permits be obtained before any burial took place in Rock Lake Cemetery. The notice was published on page one of the Lake Mills Leader the next week. The new rule was a reflection of the existing state law, as written by Wisconsin’s State Board of Health, requiring that no burials take place without a properly executed burial permit. The handful of funeral directors in the area already knew about the state law, and honored it faithfully.

Robert knew that it was the desperately poor families that he needed to worry about. The poorest of the poor that would sometimes sneak into the cemetery under cover of darkness, in a desperate attempt to give a dead child a proper burial in a proper cemetery.

And Robert knows that no burial permits have been issued in the last six weeks. The most recent burial permit was issued May 1st, 1901 for Nellie Smith, the 49-year-old woman who lived on Milwaukee Street.

Robert Fargo takes his job as cemetery sexton very seriously. From time to time, he makes sure that important notices about the cemetery are published in the Lake Mills Leader, such as the new windmill that was installed to power a pump to provide water, or the budgeted repairs to the fence.

And then in July 1900, Robert arranged to have the notice about burial permits published on the front page of the Lake Mills Leader. It said that “all persons will be required to obtain a burial permit before burial.”

Front page.

Above the fold.

No one could have missed it. No one.

Robert returns to town, still trying to sort out what in the world is going on. He runs into a shopkeeper on Main Street, who approaches the buggy, and tips his hat at Robert.

“My sympathies on the loss of your nephew’s wife,” the merchant says.

“What?” Robert asks, more irritated than anything. “What are you talking about?”

“Miss Addie,” he replies softly. “I understand she died early this morning. She sure was a pretty lady. Smart, too.”

Robert, too stunned to speak, thanks the merchant and goes on his way.

“Good grief, Enoch,” he whispers under his breath as he shakes his head. “What in the world have you gotten yourself into now.”

“What in the world…”

Addie Hoyt was exhumed on November 3, 2011. To ready more about that, click here.

To learn more about Addie, click here.

To learn about Victorian burial customs, click here.

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In 1918, Penniman was a real boom town, with 10,000 living in the village and another 10,000 to 20,000 people living in the outlying areas. By 1920, it was all over, and the 250+ houses in the village were boarded up and moved to other places.

Penniman, Virginia, sat on the land now occupied by Cheatham Annex (near Williamsburg) and started - quite literally - as a Boom Town.

In all started in late 1916, when DuPont selected Penniman as the site of their 37th munitions plant, probably because of its location:  It bordered the broad York River, had good rail access, and it was safely away from population centers. When you’re manufacturing explosives, sometimes things go BOOM.  (Google “DuPont Munitions Plant Explosions” to find a dozen pre-WW1 examples.)

To learn more about Penniman, read Part I here.

Recently, David Spriggs and I drove to Williamsburg, trying to find any original Penniman houses that had been moved there.

An aside: If you’re a person who adores early 20th Century architecture, Williamsburg is bad news. Due to the incredible expansion of the college (W&M), and the massive re-creation of Colonial Williamsburg in the 1920s and 30s, most of the early 1900s housing is gone. In 1926, Standard Oil philanthropist John D. Rockefeller donated more than $50 million to restore and re-create Virginia’s colonial capitol. To make way for the reproduced village of Williamsburg, many “crummy little bungalows” were sent to their reward.

Thanks to an old article in the Richmond News Leader in June 1938, we knew that some of the houses from Penniman had been moved to Williamsburg, and in fact, we had a street name: South England.

The house(s) on Scotland are gone, and I suspect the “temporary dormitories” are long gone, too. We didn’t find anything on North Henry Street.

When David turned his dark blue Volvo down South England Street, we weren’t expecting much. It was a dead-end street and despite a lot of driving around, we hadn’t found a single Penniman house anywhere in town.

But when we rolled down to the corner of South England and Williamsburg, I recognized a house that I’d seen before. Actually, I’d seen a picture of it before. Mark Hardin had emailed the photo a few weeks prior, asking if it was a Penniman house. Looking at the picture, I’d said, “No, I don’t think it is.”

Seeing the house in the flesh changed my mind. It was most certainly a Penniman “Georgia.”

Thanks to Mark Hardin and David Spriggs for finding these little jewels in Williamsburg!  :)  It was Mark Hardin who first found this house on S. England, via Google!

To learn more about Virginia’s own ghost town, click here.

To learn about Sears Homes, click here.

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When I visited Lake Mills in September 2011, one of the first things I heard about the Fargo clan was that Enoch James and his three uncles (Frank, Robert and Lorenzo Dow) were highly competitive with one another. When one of them built a fine home, another Fargo would build a bigger house, or add on to their existing home. According to long-time Lake Mills’ residents, the four Fargos were forever trying to outdo one another.

In March 1899, Mr. and Mrs. Lorenzo Dow Fargo donated $6,000 to build a beautiful, capacious public library for Lake Mills.  From Spring 1899 and into Spring 1900, Lorenzo Dow Fargo’s philanthropy and the building of this library was headline news in the Lake Mills Leader. The articles extolled Lorenzo’s goodness and generosity.

For a solid year, every time Enoch James Fargo opened the newspaper, he couldn’t help but see another story about Lorenzo’s library and Lorenzo’s generous donation and Lorenzo’s dream of giving his home town something that would endure and inspire, for generations to come.

In the first 21 days of February 1900, Enoch went on a spending spree. Given the competitive leanings of the Fargos, it does make one wonder, was this a response to Lorenzo’s non-stop prominence in the local limelight?

Look at what Enoch bought those first three weeks of February 1900.

First, he bought some horsies. Four of them, to be precise, and these were fine, fine animals.  In fact, it was 5,200 pounds of the finest horse flesh in the area.  The article about the horses appeared on February 1st.

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On February 8th, he bought 14 cows, 15 heifers, one bull and 12 “choice” hogs.

And he bought a farm, too.

He bought the farm from his brother Corydon (”Don”).

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And on February 15, 1900, the Lake Mills Leader reported that Enoch bought 28 acres of land from his sister, Mrs. Larison.

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And on February 22nd, the newspaper reported that Enoch was building another house on Reed Street.

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But Enoch wasn’t ready to put the checkbook away yet. In the first days of March, he and Addie embarked on a five-week trip to Cuba, by way of Florida. Five weeks of fun and sun.

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I don’t know what this cost in 1900-era dollars, but it must have been a fantastic sum.

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How did Enoch finance these many significant expenditures? Did he take on debt, or pay cash? And what happened to the house that Addie built? Had it been sold by this point? Seems like old Enoch was stretching himself mighty thin.

To learn more about Addie, click here.

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“It would have been totally unacceptable for a community to wake up the next the day and find out, ‘Enoch’s wife died last night and Addie’s already in the ground,’” said Marty Mitchell, Funeral Director of Mitchell Funeral Home in Marshalltown, Iowa.

Marty has extensive knowledge of turn-of-the-century burial customs, and has an amazing collection of artifacts from that period.

“Addie’s immediate burial - dead at 2:00 a.m., and buried by 10:00 a.m. - would have been quite a scandal,” he told me. “People in town would have been wondering what in the world was going on.”

Based on my reading of more than 75 obituaries from that time period, Marty is (pardon the pun), “dead on.”

For the last few days, I’ve been methodically reading the Lake Mills Leader newspaper on microfilm. Thus far, I’ve read from 1894-1898. And how many of those 75+ obituaries had same-day burials (as in, within 24 hours)?

NONE.

Not one.

Although I’ve not yet sat down and tallied up the precise numbers, there were a few deaths from typhoid, pneumonia, grippe (flu), and consumption (TB), all of which were considered communicable diseases. All of those folks - rich and poor - had proper funeral services, spanning a period of two, three or four days (from death to burial).

Not one of these obituaries tell a bizarre story like Addie’s, of dying in the wee hours and being buried the same morning. Then again, none of these people were married to Enoch James Fargo.

To learn more about Victorian-era funeral customs, click here.

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To read more about Addie, click here.

To read more about what Elsie Fargo told her daughter, click here.

To learn more about Victorian-era funeral customs, click here.

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Shortly after Addie’s marriage to Enoch, she built a house on Reed Street, but where is it?

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I’d be grateful for any insights as to which house this might be!

If you’ve any ideas, please leave a comment below.

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In the early 1980s, the Fargo Mansion Inn was slated for demolition. The two men who purchased it and saved it (Tom Boycks and Barry Luce) have done a remarkable job of restoring it.

This weekend, this wonderful house (and one of the Innkeepers, Tom Boycks) were featured in the news.

And it’s a very photogenic house. I’ve given 200 lectures in 25 states, and I’ve stayed in a lot of B&Bs, and I can honestly say that the Fargo Mansion Inn was my favorite. Perhaps part of the reason is my family connection. The house belonged to my great, great Aunt Addie and her husband, Enoch J. Fargo. As mentioned in other blogs, the current owners have done a first-class job of restoring this beautiful 7,500-square-foot Queen Anne manse.

In the last few days, David Spriggs and I have been slowly working our way through old editions of the Lake Mills Leader (newspaper) and in the process, we found some fascinating historical tidbits about the grand old house. On a personal note, one of the most interesting tidbits was discovering that my grandmother visited “Aunt Addie’s house” when she was six years old.

To read about the murder of Addie Hoyt, click here.

To learn more about the Fargo Mansion, click here.

To book a room at this magnificent B&B, click here.

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To learn more about Addie, click here.

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