Aunt Margaret's House Spring Green, Wisconsin
The background of this page is a 1901 Township and Range map. It shows the ownership of land in the Wyoming Valley. Aunt Margaret;s House is shown as a small black square at the north end of Section 36. Immediately to the east is another black square showing where her Brother, Enos, and step daughter, Eleanor, lived. The road that is now Highway 23 takes a sharp turn to the south at about the location of the current road to Hilltop (the farm of Aunt Mary and her husband James Phillips). The Cheese Factory just to the north was started by the eldest brother, Thomas, but, by the time of this map, was run by Enos. to the East of the cheese factory is the Hillside School, run by Aunt Nell and Aunt Jen, and is now the home of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. Still farther east are the homes of Uncle John and Uncle James (now called Aldebaran), and between those two homes is Unity Chapel.
The house was built in 1892 when Margaret's second husband, Uncle Jones, died. Enos and Eleanor carved an acre from their farm to give to Margaret for a house. It is believed that the house was designed by eldest brother Thomas. An entry in Thomas' diary for July of 1892 indicated that he and stone mason David Timothy measured out the area that would be the root cellar. Presumably, the rest of the family pitched in to dig and build the house. The local newspaper, The Home News, reported that Margaret moved into her "pretty brown cottage" in December. The fireplace mantle was carved by David Timothy and installed in February of 1893. She shared the house with Eleanor's sister, who was also Margaret's other step-daughter, Annie, who was a widow by then too. Margaret died in 1914 leaving the house to Annie. Annie had a widow-friend move in with her and the house was passed down through a succession of widows for many years.
This photograph is from the early 1950s. The original chimney is visible and the porch opens to the north with stairs to the yard. The porch is now screened and the stairs are gone.