Willcoxson-Easton House, late 1820s
Year
c.1820
511 East Ann Street
Willcoxson-Easton House, late 1820s
This simple white clapboard house has several aspects commonly found in the Eastern U.S.: its orientation with the long side of the house facing the street, the symmetrical arrangement of windows around a center door, and the general massing.
Its exact age and origin cannot be documented since the house was moved to this location by 1866. It may be the house built by attorney Gideon Willcoxson who arrived in Ann Arbor in 1824 and purchased ten acres from John Allen ???_ what is now the area bounded by Huron, State, Catherine, and Division Streets. Willcoxson went back East but then returned to Ann Arbor in 1827 to practice law and accept an appointment as Washtenaw County Prosecuting Attorney from Governor Cass.
Willcoxson died three years later, leaving the property to fellow attorney George Jewett to administer for his children until they came of age. Jewett occupied the house for a number of years until the heirs ???_ John and James Willcoxson, Amelia Ormsby, Sarah Pease, and Mary Jane Maynard ???_sold the property to George Sedgewick who then sold it to Mary Jane's husband, John W. Maynard. Maynard platted and subdivided the property in 1858 and named this part of it Willcoxson's Addition. Dr. Ebenezer Wells and his wife Margaret purchased four of the lots to build their magnificent brick house on Division Street (see 30). The $1,700 Charles Easton paid for the lot (compared to the $325 price of the lot next door) hints that the house may have already been on the lot.
The low picket fence, designed and built by the current owners, and the small front garden of perennials, rose bushes, and peonies accentuate the simple lines and original six-over-six windows of the house. The rear addition may have been moved from a larger house of similar design that stood to the east until after 1900.
Widdicombe and Martha Schmidt purchased the house in 1975, and have restored much of it inside and out, using great care in replacing rotted siding with poplar and in preserving the original hand-blown glass of the windows.