Now Lowell Damon, the individual whom we are primarily concerned about was born in January 1809 in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire. He married a woman by the name of Amy Howe in 1831 when he was only 22 years old, and then in 1846 came to join his father and mother and sister Lavinia here in Wauwatosa. The Lowell Family was two weeks in route from New Hampshire to Wisconsin. They arrived in the territory with $300 to their name, and a household that consisted of, in addition to the husband and wife, two daughters and two sons.

The children are important because of subsequent developments in the ownership of the property. The oldest child was a son, Charles Wesley, who came west with his parents in 1846. He later was ordained a pastor in the Congregational Church and served that religious body for a number of years. The second and third children were daughters. Arebella Amanda, who was physically disabled and never married. She lived the rest of her life here in Wauwatosa, and Sarah Josephine, who married a man named John McCullough and moved to California. There were two other daughters who died at a very young age -- four or five months -- before the family left New Hampshire.

And then the black sheep of the family, Herbert Cummings Damon, who was born in 1846 and spent the rest of his life in Wisconsin. The Lowell Damon family arrived here in the fall of 1846 and Lowell immediately began work on building an addition to the house. The rear portion of the house that you see was erected by Oliver in 1845 or '46. The front portion was begun in 1846 and completed in 1847 for the occupancy by Lowell. So rather than it being built from the front to the back, it was instead built from the back to the front.

Lowell Damon was both a skilled carpenter and a master mechanic wheelwright. I've tapped some sources about this man, one particular individual, a man by the name of Frederick P. Underwood. Again, Underwood is a prominent name in the pioneer period of Wauwatosa history. Frederick Underwood was at one time president of the Erie railroad. But he had grown up here in Wauwatosa and had worked as a young boy for a number of years as an assistant to Lowell Damon. And when Frederic Heath, who was president of the historical society in 1940 and '41, at the time they were negotiating for the acquisition of the house, he corresponded with Underwood and Underwood told him what he could remember about Lowell Damon.

Among other things, he called Lowell Damon a mechanical genius. He was a man who could do anything with his hands. And he had a carpenter's shop or a wheelwright shop across Wauwatosa Avenue in a rented lot and it was here he did much of the work with his hands, building all kinds of materials and instruments out of wood. Lowell Damon also was a cabinetmaker and I believe there's an example of his handiwork in the parlor room in the front portion of the house. This was a desk, a large desk that was donated by a descendant, I believe a descendant of the Warren family, to the Milwaukee County Historical Society, maybe 15 or 20 years ago. I know we sent a truck down to Illinois to pick up the donation and brought it back and put it on exhibit in the house. Nellie Fisher, another pioneer name in Wauwatosa history, had a number of pieces in her household made by Lowell Damon, as well as the Underwood family. Frederick Underwood told that to Heath in one of his letters.