Lowell Damon died on March 12, 1878 at the age of 69. Under the terms of his will, the property that he had purchased from his father was divided between his wife and three of his children. The fourth son, as I indicated, was all but disinherited. Amy Howe Damon, his widow, received the southeast portion of the property. …It consisted of 11 1/4 acres with the Damon House, this facility that's still on the property. The northeast portion of 16 acres, which included the present site of the administration building and public library, went to his eldest daughter, Arabella. The northwest portion -- 17 7/10 acres -- went to his second daughter, Sara McCufler, and the southwest portion went ... to his eldest son, Cyrus.

Stickney Avenue divided the property east and west. There is a reference in the probate records of a road and that road falls right about on the present route of Stickney Avenue. ... On Nov. 1, 1881, she sold her 11 1/4 acres and the house to Alexander H. Rogers of Milwaukee for the sum of $3,000 -- a thousand dollars down and a mortgage for the remaining $2,000. It took Rogers five years to pay off the mortgage. But in November 1886, he paid off the mortgage and at the same time platted and recorded the Rogers subdivision, which was the property on the north side of Rogers Avenue. If any of you live up there, when you look on your deed records, you may be a part of the Rogers subdivision.

At the same time, Mr. Rogers sold the house and three adjoining acres to a third party for about $4,000. And this area was again subdivided a year later to establish the present boundaries of the property, the house and the boundary line that runs as indicated by the bushes. There were eight or ten owners of the Damon House property between 1886 and 1913 when, in 1939, members of the Rogers family, the sons of the original owners who had purchased the property from Mrs. Damon, bought back the house and its present grounds and donated it for preservation purposes to the Milwaukee County Historical Society as a memorial to their family. Five of the Rogers brothers had lived in the house had grown up here, and four of them (one of them had passed away) were still alive and purchased the house and turned it over to the Society.

Alexander Rogers, who had bought the property from Mrs. Damon, had come to Milwaukee again as one of these New England Yankees. He came to Wisconsin Territory in the early part of the 19th Century. His father had owned much of the considerable amount of land on the west side of the city of Milwaukee, and his mother, the mother to the five sons who purchased the house and gave it to the Society, was a daughter of Hiram J. Ross, another pioneer family here in Wauwatosa. The Rogers family had lived in the Damon House for several years and then, according to evidence that was provided to Frederick Heath of the Historical Society, they built the house just across the street on Rogers Avenue, which is the big house you see on the opposite side of the street. That was built by the Rogers, who at one time owned this property.