Daniel Webster Smith house Williamsport PA
This is our family photo that has been handed down of the Daniel Webster Smith home in Williamsport, PA. We've always been told that this my DW new home and new carriage and that my great- grandfather Isaac Smith on the pony and the 2nd Mrs DW Smith on porch. We now believe instead it might be Charles on the pony. Thanks to cousin Tom, my fellow Smith family researcher we've discovered lots of great information about the family and the houses and businesses of this once important lumber mill family of Williamsport. The home no longer exists. 236 East Third corner of Basin
The house was built in approx 1874 on the corner of East Third and Basin.
Tom wrote ....
Daniel Webster's house was valued at $30,000 in the 1870 census (about
$600,000 today), but that sounds low to me. I have a construction
background, and I know we couldn't build that for $600,00 today. Of
course, labor costs relative to the final value were not what they are today,
so $30,000 is probably ok. It's interesting that Daniel's house stood in
a row of homes where the values were $3,000, (unknown), $10,000, $30,000
(Daniel's), $30,000, and then back down to $6,000. My guess is those
lower valued homes were probably purchased and replaced with much costlier
mansions.The photo may have been around 1874, but some sources question when the house was built. I found both 1870 and 1889 as construction years, but I believe the $30,000 value of Daniel's residence in the 1870 census eliminates the 1889 date, and - besides - he died in 1888. So, 1874 for your photo date would be logical. However, Daniel's wife at that time would have been Hilinda (Riant), not Harriet. Also, if the photo was in 1874, the boy on the pony could have been 14-year-old Charles. It certainly wasn't 24-year-old Isaac Newton.
Here is deed for purchase of land on April 1st 1868
When I visited Williamsport many years ago I brought a bad xerox of the photo and some one suggested it may may be the LL Stern house -many , many years later we find that to be true.
Last year, Tom got in touch and since then we have done considerable research on the Smith family together and this is his excellent analysis of the address of the house:
Williamsport Smith house address
issues
Now, regarding the confusion over
what street DWS's residence was on and what the house number was, I've received
the following from Scott Sagar, Curator of Collections, Lycoming County
Historical Society.
The
question of which street is easy to answer: Meckley's book is incorrect.
The building in question was definitely on East Third Street, at the (southwest) corner of
Basin Street. This was probably a simple typo; Third and Fourth Streets
are often accidentally substituted for each other.The house number issue is a little more complicated, but basically both 236 and 228 are correct. In our city directories, prior to 1888 they give L. L. Stearns' residence as East Third, corner of Basin, similar to what your research said. Starting in the 1888 directory, the residence is numbered 236. It remains thus until 1931 (by which time it is the VFW post), and then in the 1932 directory it switches to 228 (still as the VFW post). We unfortunately do not have a 1933 directory, but in the 1934 and 1935 directories it is still 228, but is listed as "Vacant". In the 1936 directory, the property has been split into 234 (a diner/restaurant) and 236 (a filling station). I have no explanation for why the address would change from 236 to 228 (and then back to 234/236), but it was not unusual for numbers to shift in that way. We also have a few city atlases and insurance maps that confirm the 236 address prior to 1932, and the 234/236 address after 1936, but have no maps for the brief period when it was 228.
As
for your final question, when the building was demolished, I'm afraid I can't
pinpoint it exactly. As mentioned above, the VFW post is listed until
1932, then in 1934 and 1935 it is vacant, and in 1936 it is the diner and
filling station. The Grit article you supplied did mention that the
building stood vacant after the VFW moved, so it could be that it was still
standing in 1935, right before the filling station went in. Also, city
directories are often a little slow to pick up on changes, so that makes it
difficult to know exactly when such a change occurred. It appears that
the answer is somewhere between 1932 and 1936.
Here is the home when it was known as the L.L. Stearns home
Here is the Stearns family living in the home in the 1880 census
Here is the home in the 1912 Sanborn Insurance maps
Here is the home when it served as the VFW post in the 1930s
and when it was announced it was to be demolished
This was the view across the street
