The Sears Ashmore was not one of Sears most popular designs, but it surely was one of their prettiest, and it was a classic Arts and Crafts bungalow.

And it had a pergola, too!

According to the testimonies that appeared in the catalog, there are Sears Ashmores in Abilene, TX and Fargo, ND.

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According to the page above, there’s also a Sears Ashmore in Fargo, ND! I’d like a photo of that, too.

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To learn more about Sears Homes, click here.

To become fascinated by yet another old story that Rose is involved in, click here.

To read about how and why the bungalow became so popular so fast, read here.

If you’ve visited this site more than ten times in the last year, state law requires that you leave a detailed and thoughtful comment below.

Okay, not really, but I wish you would.

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Whilst in Wisconsin last week, I visited the Lake Mills Public Library, seeking information on Addie Hoyt Fargo. I read about 15 months of the Lake Mills Leader from November 1900 to February 1902 (when Enoch married Maddie). The Lake Mills Leader was a weekly, and I found this obituary published on June 20, 1901. The other Addie obit that I published earlier came from The Jefferson County Union.  Read it here.

I suspect both of these obits were penned by Oatway. He made a couple boo boos on this one.

This obit raises a lot of questions. First off, given that Oatway is the star of this obit, I think he wrote it in the wee hours. And the first obit (published here) said she got sick Tuesday late morning and died at 2:00 in the morning on Wednesday. Okay, so the midnight hour passed once. He defines that as two days. Huh.

And a second tidbit: Here he says there was a funeral. That’s not mentioned in the prior obit. But this was pre-telephone and pre-radio. How did they arrange a funeral? How did they notify mourners?  Did Enoch run door to door and say, “Addie’s dead - please come to our funeral? It’s being held in 45 minutes? And hurry!!”

Again - more questions than answers.

Now, about that obituary. Those of us spending time in the 21st Century have learned about the Heimlech Maneuver, and what’s the first thing we learned? If the person can talk, they are getting some air, and they’re not truly choking.

And what if they have the ability to actually “exclaim!”?

Hmmm.

Okay, so maybe her airway was restricted and she was in distress. That’s possible, but if those are the facts, she is NOT going to fall back on the bed and die.

That’s the first point.

Here’s the second.

Dr. Oatway was the county health officer and one of his duties was to file a report with the Wisconsin State Board of Health and report on the incidence of communicable disease in Lake Mills. This was a paid position (and he earned extra for epidemics), and it was a very important job.

In 1876, Wisconsin created a “State Board of Health” that compiled facts and stats on communicable diseases. “Health Officers” were appointed (and paid) by the state, and it was their job to help track, record and monitor the prevalence and severity of the dreaded scourges of the day such as diphtheria, small pox, consumption, cholera and typhoid.

Each year, these health officers filed a report with the state, wherein they answered several specific questions. Two of the most interesting questions they were asked were, “Are the laws regarding birth certificates and burial permits enforced in your community?” and “What’s the incidence of communicable disease in your community?”

In the report that Oatway filed with the state of Wisconsin for the period of time that included Addie’s death, Oatway stated, “the law requiring the report of dangerous contagious diseases is observed with regard to small pox, diphtheria and scarlet fever only.”

Reporting as the health officer, he mentions the deaths from a number of diseases but he says nothing about any cases of diphtheria in Lake Mills, or deaths from diphtheria in Lake Mills.

Okay, this is good news. There were no cases of diphtheria, and no one died from diphtheria in Lake Mills in 1901.

Okay, so maybe he forgot ALL about treating Lake Mills’ most famous socialite, married to Lake Mills’ most wealthy man, living in Lake Mills’ most grandiose castle. Okay. Maybe.

But this wasn’t just diphtheria! This was stealth, Ninja, Knock-off-your-socks (and Put-on-your-boots?), Diphtheria!

It was an especially virulent bout of diphtheria! In Oatway’s own words, “[the diphtheria] had advanced with unusual rapidity…it was the most stubborn, and rapidly developing case he has ever met with, and the result seems to justify the belief that no human power or skill could have furnished relief…”

And Oatway’s narrative also states that he “resorted to the most modern means in use for battling with the disease, and made every effort to check the disease…”

In 1894, a German doctor discovered an anti-diphtheria serum that was found to have excellent results. In 1895, it was manufactured (and available) in the United States. About that time, the mortality rate from this dread disease started to plummet. In Wisconsin’s small towns, the 1901 death rate for patients with diphtheria was 9.1%, and that includes children (who had a much higher death rate from the disease).

In one of these 1901 health reports, another doctor writes a short essay explaining that he’d lost a young child to diphtheria, and it never would have happened, had it not been for the family’s neglect to notify the doctor earlier. The doctor’s angst shone through his words, that even a child shouldn’t die in such a time as this, with the availability of modern serums.

Even if there was no serum in Lake Mills, couldn’t someone be sent (by train) to Milwaukee to fetch a vial for Mrs. Fargo?

But I don’t think there was any diphtheria that day (or that year) in Lake Mills. I think Dr. Oatway told the truth on the 1901 report to the State Board of Health. Oatway knew that the burial permit was a state document, checked by the state, and used specifically to track the incidence of communicable diseases, and that’s why he was willing to falsify the death certificate (making up a number for the burial permit), but not the burial permit. The burial permit was being watched by the state, and it might even trigger an investigation from the state. (Especially given that no diphtheria had been present in Lake Mills for some time.)

The death certificate could be safely forged. The burial permit could not. That’s why there was no burial permit for Addie.

And this obituary makes it much more difficult to believe that Oatway could have forgotten all about Addie’s death when he filed that report with the State Board of Health for 1901. After all, it was the most (fill in the blank with adjectives) Diphtheria he had ever seen! How does one forget such a thing?

They don’t.

As to Addie picking that up in Portage? The Lake Mills Leader said she traveled there around June 6th. The communicability period for diphtheria germs is less than six days. There’s that Ninja Stealth Diphtheria again.

And the best part? The Health Officer for Portage reported that there were no cases (and no deaths) of diphtheria in 1901.

It’s that stealth component.

So in conclusion, Addie got diphtheria and died. But there were no cases of diphtheria in Lake Mills in 1901. But she got it from her trip to Portage. But there were no cases of diphtheria in Portage, either.

As my daughter says, “Maybe Addie had that stealth, Ninja, reach-up-out-from-under-the-canoe-and-grab-you, throw-your-boots-on-your-feet-while-you-lay-sick-in-bed, jump-up-and-scream-while-choking, and then flop backwards on the bed and die” Diphtheria.

Best explanation I’ve heard yet.

To read about Addie’s exhumation, click here.

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Tens of thousands of homeowners turned to Plan Books for their housing needs in the early 1900s. It was similar to buying a kit home, but with a few important differences. After browsing the pages of a plan book (filled with pretty pictures of pretty homes), you’d pick a house that fit your budget and your needs, and then send off a few dollars.

Within a few days or weeks, you’d receive a full set of blue prints, plus a list of the building materials you’d need to build your dream home.

In other words, you were buying blue prints and a building materials list, nothing more.

Plan book houses are so ubiquitous and the designs are so varied that a person could drive themselves nuts trying to find and identify all the plan book houses in their neighborhood. I’ve got one book of plans from the late 1920s, and it must have more than 500 house designs. And that was one company.

That being said, I did go through a “plan book phase” in my house hunting career, and here are a few of the houses I found in Portsmouth (and surrounding areas).

To learn more about Sears Homes, click here.

To buy Rose’s book, click here.

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The Magnolia was Sears biggest and best kit home, but the Ivanhoe was a close second. In my travels, I’ve only seen a handful.

One of them was in Lewisburg, WV and the other was in Elmhurst, Illinois (see pictures of these homes below). I found a third in Northern Illinois but neglected to note the city. Carol Parish (Monmouth, IL) sent in a picture of an especially beautiful (and original) Ivanhoe in her city.

According to the testimonials found in the old Sears Modern Homes’ catalogs (and referenced in Rebecca Hunter’s book), there’s a Sears Ivanhoe in West Point, Virginia, but it faces the waterfront and despite letters written to the owners, I’ve not been able to get a photograph.

Recently I was scanning some old paperwork and stumbled across the Sears Ivanhoe (LaGrange, IL) featured in a Sears roofing brochure. I’d love to get a current photo of this BRICK Ivanhoe! 

Below are the Ivanhoes in Lewiston, West Virginia, Elmhurst, Illinois, and an unknown city in northern Illinois.

First, the original catalog image.

If you know of the location of an Ivanhoe, please leave a comment below. And if you own an Ivanhoe and would like to send me a picture, please do!  Leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you!

If you’ d like to read more about Sears Homes, click here.

To buy Rose’s book, click here.

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Carlinville is a small city in central Illinois (population 5,400) with 152 Sears Homes in a 12-block area in a neighborhood known as Standard Addition. It is NOT the largest collection of Sears Homes in this country (as is often reported), but it does have the largest collection of contiguous Sears Homes.

Elgin, Illinois has the largest collection of Sears Homes, with more than 210 houses within its borders! (Thanks to Rebecca Hunter for this information!)

When I visit the Midwest every year or so, I stop in and say hello to Carlinville and Standard Addition. After all, it was this community of Sears Homes that launched my career and inspired me to start writing books on this topic! In 1999, I wrote an article for my editor (at Old House Web) about Sears Homes and that one article turned into a career, and what a blessing that career has been in my life.

And yet, with each visit, I see this neighborhood slip-sliding downward. It’s very sad to see, and I wish something could be done to preserve and protect this unique collection of Sears Homes. It’s an amazing piece of our architectural history, and is worthy of preservation.

To buy Rose’s book, click here.

To read another article on Carlinville, click here.

To read another article on Sears Homes, click here.

To buy Rose’s book, click here.

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I love ghost towns. All ghost towns have a fascinating history, and this one in Schoper, Illinois is no different. It’s the real deal - a boom town that went bust and literally disappeared off the map.

It started in 1918, when Standard Oil of Indiana placed a $1 million order with Sears Roebuck and Company for 192 Honor-Bilt homes. Standard Oil purchased the houses for their workers in Carlinville, Wood River and Schoper, Illinois. Of those 192 houses, 156 landed in Carlinville, 12 were built in Schoper and 24 went to Wood River.

Standard Oil was grateful for the dandy little houses, as is evidenced by this thank-you note that they wrote to Sears.

In Schoper, Illinois (about 8 miles from Carlinville), the 12 houses were built for the coal miners at a colliery that would become known as “Schoper Mine.”

Prior to the arrival of Standard Oil, this site had been a typical early 20th Century farm with one old house and a few outbuildings. By the late 1910s, more than 1000 people were living in “Schoper” and in 1920, the 500-acre farm was incorporated as a village and named Standard City.

Standard Oil needed a steady supply of coal to fuel the stills that refined the crude oil into gasoline. Carlinville and Schoper were ideal locations because of the seven-foot thick vein of coal, and also because of its location. The Chicago and Alton rail line ran between Standard Oil’s refineries in Wood River (near St. Louis) and Whiting, Indiana (near Chicago).

Providing homes to workers was a proven tact for creating a more stable workforce, and also attracted “family men,” who were more desirable employees for a plethora of reasons. And in these pre-OSHA days, it was a nice bonus. Mining was horribly dangerous, and an article in the Macoupin County Enquirer (dated September 19, 1923) said that 18 miners died that year in Macoupin County, which was in line with the national average of “one [miner] fatality per 279,354 tons of coal produced.”

Schoper was - at its peak - the largest coal mine in the state of Illinois, employing 650 men and hoisting up to 4,000 tones of coal each day. About 450 men worked at the Berry Mine (Carlinville), producing about 2,000 tons of coal per day.

Times were good. In the early 1920s, Schoper miners worked about 298 days per year, while nationwide, most coal miners were working about 200 days per year.

By the mid-1920s, the boom had gone bust. The price of coal dropped precipitously after The Great War (1918), and Standard Oil could now buy their coal from non-union Kentucky mines far cheaper than they could mine it in Macoupin County.

In July 1925, a small column on the bottom page of the Macoupin County Enquirer said the mine was closed for good.

Nine of the 12 little Sears Houses went out the way they came in:  In pieces and loaded on a boxcar. They were disassembled (which must have been a massive project, but probably provided work for a few idle coal miners), and shipped by train to destinations unknown. Two of the Sears Homes were moved intact, to sites just outside of Standard City. The last Sears House at Schoper (The Sears Gladstone) was home to John McMillan and his wife, a supervisor with the mine. After the mine closed, he became a caretaker making sure the powerful fans kept the methane down to acceptable levels.

McMillan’s little Gladstone eventually became rental property and burned down sometime in the mid-1990s.  The last remnant at the site was the Schoper Powerhouse and Mine Offices, a massive concrete structure which was torn down in Summer 2003.

There’s something about this former boom town that is compelling and even haunting. Driving into Standard City, you turn onto Mine Road to reach the site of the old mine, or hang a left for Cinder Road (made from old cinders). And then there’s Pershing Street, undoubtedly named for General John “Black Jack” Pershing, WW1 hero and commander of the American Expeditionary Force. Another street is Rice Street, probably named for Charles Rice, who handled real estate acquisitions for Standard Oil.

Standing on the plat land beside the abandoned, vandalized powerhouse, gazing out at Schoper Lake, you can close your eyes and almost hear the steam whistle signaling the end of a shift. Listen, really listen, and maybe you’ll hear the metal cables of the hoist groan and creak as a steel cage raises three dozen coal-blackened minders from 440 feet below grade.

Einstein said, “To those of us who are committed physicists, the  past, present and future are only illusion, however persistent.”

Nowhere in my experiences have I intuitively felt that this illusion of time is more fragile and ethereal than at the site of Schoper Mine. And you if you’re not a romantic/tangential/historical fanatic dream (as I am), but just someone who enjoys visiting towns that boomed and busted, it’s still worth the trip.

Just don’t speed and don’t litter and don’t tromp on the crops. Standard City is still home to about 100 folks, and they (rightfully so) love their community.

To read more about Carlinville’s kit homes, click here.

The above was excerpted from The Houses That Sears Built. To buy the book, click here.

Enjoy the photos below!

To read more about the largest order in the history of Sears homes, click here.

To buy Rose’s book, click here.

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If you could go back in time 100 years, you might find it a little challenging to understand exactly what people were talking about. In the early 1900s, some words had radically different meanings.

For instance, there’s the word “slacker.” A slacker was any able-bodied young man who did not volunteer to serve in the military (and subsequently become part of the American Expeditionary Force).

Wanting to learn more about this time period in American history, I also studied World War 1. It wasn’t called WW1 until the late 1930s, when WW2 broke out. In the late 1910s, it was known as “The Great War.” When the American government was selling the citizens on the idea of another war, we were promised that this would be “The War to End All Wars.” (Turned out, they were wrong about that.)

One of the most chilling definitions I learned was the etymology of the term “basket-case.” During the The Great War, when a soldier lost his limbs in battle, a wicker basket was used to carry the limbless figure off the battlefield. One can only imagine the mental state of such a soldier. The fellow soldiers described him as “a real basket-case.”

“Smut” was another interesting term. It was a disease of the wheat crop, and in the early 1900s, smut damaged so much wheat that it caused a nation-wide shortage of wheat.

An article in the 1920 Stanolind Record (employee newsletter of Standard Oil) said that soon Carlinville residents would be “coming out of the mud.” (Carlinville’s “Standard Addition” neighborhood has 152 Sears Homes in a 12-block area. Carlinville is in central Illinois.) For several months, I could not glean the meaning of this unusual phrase. Finally, I found a clipping that said a neighborhood had just “come out of the mud.” It showed freshly paved streets and sidewalks. “Coming out of the mud” meant the subdivision now had proper sidewalks and city streets.

To read about Carlinville today, click here.

To buy Rose’s book on Sears Homes, click here.

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The number one question I’m asked again and again - How do you identify a Sears Kit Home?

First, begin by eliminating the obvious. Sears sold these homes between 1908-1940. If your home was built outside of that time frame, it can not be a Sears catalog home. Period. Exclamation mark!

The nine easy signs follow:

1) Look for stamped lumber in the basement or attic.  Sears Modern Homes were kit homes and the framing members were stamped with a letter and a number to help facilitate construction. Today, those marks can help prove that you have a kit home.

2) Look for shipping labels. These are often found on the back of millwork (baseboard molding, door and window trim, etc).

3) Check house design using a book with good quality photos and original catalog images. For Sears, I recommend, “The Sears Homes of Illinois” (all color photos). For Wardway, there’s “The Mail-Order Homes of Montgomery Ward.”

4) Look in the attic and basement for any paperwork (original blueprints, letters, etc). that might reveal that you have a Sears home.

5) Courthouse records. From 1911 to 1933, Sears offered home mortgages. Using grantor records, you may find a few Sears mortgages and thus, a few Sears homes.

6) Hardware fixtures. Sears homes built during the 1930s often have a small circled “SR” cast into the bathtub in the lower corner (furthest from the tub spout and near the floor) and on the underside of the kitchen or bathroom sink.

7) Goodwall sheet plaster. This was an early quasi-sheetrock product offered by Sears, and can be a clue that you have a kit home.

8 ) Unique column arrangement on front porch and five-piece eave brackets (see pictures below).

9) Original building permits. In cities that have retained original building permits, you’ll often find “Sears” listed as the home’s original architect.

To buy Rose’s book, click here.

To read another article, click here.

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To buy Rose’s book, click here.

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Send Rose an email at thorntonrose@hotmail.com

To read more about Sears Homes, click here.

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Carlinville, Illinois has 152 Sears Homes in a 12-block area. The neighborhood with all these Sears Homes is known as Standard Addition. To read more about the history of this enclave of kit homes, click here. Part of a $1 million order placed by Standard Oil of Indiana, Standard Addition features eight designs of Sears Homes. (An aside: Carlinville does not have the largest collection of Sears Homes, as is often reported. That honor goes to Elgin, Illinois - with 210 Sears Homes.)

Interestingly, the houses in Standard Addtion are all two-story homes and they’re all modest homes, averaging about 1000 square feet (and less). The eight models are:

1)  The Warrenton

2) The Roseberry

3) The Whitehall

4) The Lebanon

5) The Langston

6) The Windsor

7) The Madelia

8 ) The Gladstone

Below, I’ve posted pictures of the original catalog page, followed by extant houses in Carlinville.

To learn more about Sears Homes, click here.

To buy Rose’s book, click here.

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If you’re a frequent visitor to my site, you’ll notice that I have not posted much about Carlinville, IL. This small city in central Illinois (population 5,400) has 152 Sears Homes in a 12-block area. It is NOT the largest collection of Sears Homes in this country (as is often reported). That honor falls to Elgin, Illinois which has more than 210 Sears Homes within the city borders. (Thanks to Rebecca Hunter for this information!)

However, Carlinville does have the largest contiguous collection of Sears Homes.  Those 152 Sears Homes are all in one neighborhood - Standard Addition.

Every time I visit the Midwest (which is once a year or more), I visit Carlinville and Standard Addition. After all, it was this community of Sears Homes that launched my career and inspired me to start writing books on this topic!

In 1999, I wrote an article for my editor (at Old House Web) about Sears Homes and that one article turned into a career, and what a blessing that career has been in my life.

When I visit Standard Addition, I’m saddened to see that so many of these homes are in poor condition.

And as of Spring 2013, I hear it’s just getting worse and worse. It’s time for the city of Carlinville to get serious about saving this unique collection of Sears Homes, because if they continue on the path they’ve been on thus far, there won’t be much left to save.

Want to learn more? Join us on Facebook! We’re listed under “Sears Homes.”

To read about a whole bunch of Sears Homes in other parts of Illinois, click. here.
To buy Rose’s book (and get it inscribed!), click here.

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See more photos of the St. Louis area Sears Homes by clicking here.

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To read another article on Sears Homes, click here.

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To buy Rose’s book, click here.

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To contact Rose, send an email to thorntonrose@hotmail.com.

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