Lowell Damon kept a supply of walnut and cherry lumber in his shop across the road, plus the more common pine and pieces of oak, and Underwood said at one point in his letter, "He (meaning Lowell Damon) made good coffins and made them quickly. This something that Fred Underwood particularly remembered because, as a boy, he used to hold the light for Damon while they were putting the varnish on the coffins to dry. This is in the days of rather primitive embalming practices, and so you had to get the body into the coffin and you had to get the coffin made in a big hurry in order to have the funeral services.

In addition, Lowell Damon also made buggies and wagons, and according to Frederick Underwood, he did it all. He designed them; he constructed them, painted them, put on the finish and so on. They were not streamline, but according to Underwood, they lasted for a lifetime. He made things to last. As an example of this, there were two wells that served the family on this piece of property. Each one, instead of having a rope that lowered the bucket into the water, Lowell Damon used a chain, so that a rope wouldn't break and the bucket falls into the water. He used a metal chain and prevented that and that was an example of his ingenuity and skillfulness. Damon also was a public figure in pioneer Wisconsin. He served as town clerk for 13 consecutive terms, for a total of 27 years. The clerks' office was located in the front portion of the house in what is today the parlor and this is where people in the Wauwatosa part of the community came to pay their taxes and where public meetings were held and other types of public business was transacted.

Lowell Damon was a man of strong personal conviction, particularly on religious and political matters. He held a pew in both the Baptist and Congregational churches here in Wauwatosa and, as I indicated earlier, sold or perhaps gave land for the Baptist Church that was located at one tune at the comer of North Avenue and 76th Street. Politically, he was a died-in-the-wool States-Rights Democrat, and I know that's heresy to say that here in Republican Wauwatosa, but nevertheless that's the fact. There are two examples of the strength of his political convictions. The first one took place in December of 1859 when John Brown was hung for his part in the raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, VA. The Baptist Church, which was essentially an abolitionist center here in Wauwatosa, rang the church bell for an hour in memory of John Brown. Lowell Damon was so incensed over this that he never set foot inside the church for the rest of his life.

The second example of the depth of his political convictions, I think, is indicated by the fact that when his youngest son, Herbert, enlisted as a teenager -- 17 or 18 years old -- in the Union Army during the Civil War. This act incurred an enmity between the father and the son that was so lasting. As I indicate on a division of the property, the son Herbert received nothing of the homestead as a bequest in his father's will. In fact, he was given a sum of $100 and he never received that. The will specified he was to get $100, but because the boy had enlisted in the Union army to support the cause of the Republican President Abraham Lincoln, why his anti-Republican, anti-Lincoln father disinherited him for all practical purposes.