The Buchanan House Part IV: 1924-2007 -- The Saliba and Kibler Families

The Saliba Family

During World War I, the Mediterranean island nation of Malta served as an important site for the manufacture of ships. When the war ended and the number of manufacturing jobs diminished significantly, thousands of Maltese desperate for work left the country. By 1920, more Maltese had immigrated to Detroit than any other city in the United States--as many as 7,000, according to a Detroit Free Press article from December 12, 1920. They settled primarily in Corktown, near Michigan Avenue and 5th Street.

Among Corktown's Maltese immigrants were Charles and Benvenuta Saliba. Charles had worked as a mounted policeman back in Malta. The couple came to the U.S. in 1920 with their three young children, Agata, Lena, and Emmanuel. The family first lived on 2nd Street, but by 1921 had moved to 24 Baker (which changed to 1250 Baker when Detroit's address system was reformed in 1921). Mr. and Mrs. Saliba purchased the Buchanan house from the heirs of Susan Buchanan on March 27, 1924. They agreed to assume the $5,100 balance on a mortgage on the home as well as any unpaid taxes levied since the previous June.

Charles and Benvenuta Saliba went on to have three more children--Joseph, Anthony, and Paul--all born in the Buchanan house. Charles Saliba ultimately became a foreman at the Ford Motor Company. The family rented every available space in the house to borders for just $3.00 per week. Most of them were also Maltese, and employees of Ford.


Detail from the 1930 Census listing all residents of 1242 Baker.
Eight boarders lived with the Salibas, including six Maltese immigrants.

In late 1930, Baker Street changed its name to Bagley. The address was finally 1242 Bagley, which the house bears today.

Tragically, Charles Saliba passed away on the night before Thanksgiving on November 22, 1939. His wife was not feeling well, and he was helping prepare food for dinner the following day. He passed away inside the home.


Downtown Detroit, July 18, 1957. Inset: The Buchanan House,
from the rear, is on the left. 1250 Bagley, now demolished,
is on the right. Image courtesy of Wayne State University. (Source)



The Lodge Freeway (the building of which destroyed much of
Corktown) around the mid-1960s. Inset: Rear of 1242-1250
Bagley. Image courtesy of Wayne State University (Source)

Benvenuta Saliba quit-claimed the house to her son Emmanuel on February 25, 1974. Mrs. Saliba, by then eighty-two years old, passed away just one month later, on March 28. Emmanuel Saliba then passed away less than two years later, on December 23, 1975, at the age of 57.


The Buchanan house in 1976. Image courtesy of the
Michigan State Historic Preservation Office.

The Kibler Family

The surviving children of Benvenuta Saliba sold the Buchanan house in 1976 through a land contract with Arthur W. and Emma Alice Kibler, a married couple in their fifties. They put $1,000 down and paid off the $6,000 balance in installments. Mr. Kibler died two years later, on March 16, 1978, at the age of 54.


Headstone of Arthur W. Kibler at Woodmere Cemetery in Detroit

The land contract was paid off and the property ownership was legally transferred to Emma Kibler on October 24, 1984. The following photos of the house were taken around that time.


Photo provided by Danielle Lewon of the Detroit Historical Commission



Photo provided by Danielle Lewon of the Detroit Historical Commission

Mrs. Kibler shared her home with many renters over the twenty years she lived there until her death on June 17, 1996. The house became the property of her son, Arthur Richard Kibler. He ultimately tore off the circa-1940s faux-brick siding and restored the original wood clapboards. Less inspired was the decision to add stockade fencing around the adjacent courtyard.


Circa 2004 photo found on the Internet by Allan Machielse

The home was later painted bright yellow.


The Buchanan House in the winter of 2007/2008.

Arthur Kibler continued to share the home with boarders. He mortgaged the property in January of 2005, which fell into foreclosure and was repossessed by the bank in May of 2007.

Next week: The Buchanan House Part V: 2008-Present -- Renovation in Progress

The Buchanan House Part III: 1914-1923 -- The Renters of 20 Baker Street

Susan Buchanan rented out her house at 20 Baker Street after she moved to Clayton Township to live with her sister, where she stayed until her death on July 31, 1919. She evidently signed over the house to Peter B. Lennon (her sister's stepson) on the April 7th before her death, but the deed was not recorded by the Wayne County Register of Deeds until August 6th-one week after her death. However, Susan Buchanan's heirs (several nieces and nephews) filed a claim in probate court and won. Peter B. Lennon's deed was declared void. Miss Buchanan's heirs continued to rent the home until finally selling it in 1924.

The following list of boarders is far from complete, and it would contain many fewer names if the old city directories were not digitized and searchable on Footnote.com. However, the result of hours of research is a long, dry list of names and descriptions. I've learned my lesson--the next time I research a home used as a boarding house, I will focus on owners and not every single renter I can find.

1914	Sarah M. Burpee	Born about 1858 in Corktown. Her family moved to Frankfort (near Traverse City) around 1891, but she returned to Corktown alone at some point before 1912. Miss Burpee had several jobs over the years, including manager, dressmaker, and newpaper agent. She died in Detroit on March 17, 1925.
1914	George Karas	The directory indicates that Mr. Karas was a "houseman", or butler. Nothing else is known.
1914	Bessie Marie (Richley) Lee	Born 1891 in New Castle, Pennsylvania. There is a 1913 marriage record of her having married a Chinese man named William B. Lee in Ohio, but nothing else about the man has been found. When she lived in the Buchanan house she worked as a stenographer for the Detroit Real Estate Board. She married Hayden Harve Haase in 1923.
1914	William F. Revnell	Born 1886 in Illinois. He previously worked at a small resort hotel ran by his mother in Frankfort, Miss Burpee's former town. Mr. Revnell had been married, but was divorced by this time. His occupation changed often and included hotel clerk, fisherman, electrician, wig maker, and school bus driver. He married Rose M. Burkard in 1916 and eventually returned to Frankfort.
1915	Charles Aldrich Blondo	Born 1884 in Armada, Michigan, moved to Corktown at some point before 1892. He was a chauffer or truck driver for most of his working life. He married Violet Melody around 1903. They had one daughter, also named Violet, who died of meningitis in 1906. They divorced, presumably before Mr. Blondo lived at the Buchanan house. In the late 1920s he married Mollie Welch, a widow with four children.
1915	George Person	He was an autoworker according to the directory. Nothing else is known.
1915	Ambra (Favorite) Smalley	Born about 1876 in Eaton Rapids, Michigan. The 1918 directory lists Mrs. Smalley as the widow of Arza. However, the couple had in fact divorced and Mr. Smalley had married a woman fourteen years younger than himself in Ohio in 1912. Interestingly, his marriage record also indicated that he was widowed. Mrs. Smalley too remarried, in 1922.
1915	Doris Smalley	Born 1896 in Eaton Rapids, Michigan. She was the daughter of Ambra Smalley. On July 3 of the following year she married a Canadian immigrant named Percy Fonger, a machinist at the Cadillac Motor Car Company. She died in 1918 from postpartum hemorrhage after giving birth to a stillborn baby.

Detail from 1915 city directory listing Mrs. Smalley and her daughter at 20 Baker Street.

1915	Harry Smith	"Sailmaker." No other information found.
1916-1917	Daniel M. Barnett	Born about 1873 in Vermont. He worked as a saw filer in an auto factory. He presumably lived in the Buchanan house with his wife Amelia, his wife of ten years. Mrs. Barnett was born in Canada around 1882 and immigrated two years later. Mr. Barnett died in Detroit on August 11, 1929.
1917	Harriet Barnett	The directory indicates that Mrs. Barnett was the widow of a man named Jacob. She was presumably related to Daniel Barnett (above) but no other records have been found.
1917	Albert Butler	"Electrician." No other information found.
1917	George W. Butler	"Electrician." No other information found.
1917	Eugene Cole	"Auto worker." No other information found.
1917	Curtis Brooks Prescott	The directory lists "Curtis B. Prazak" at the Buchanan house, but it is almost certainly Curtis Brooks Prescott, who married Lena Prazak in Detroit on May 23 of that year. Born 1890 in Cascade Township, Michigan. His listed occupation is "motorman". Mr. Prescott enlisted with the U.S. Army at the age of 19 and served for three years, and was evidently served again during World War I. He died in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1954.
1918	Simon Hause	"Mach hd." No other information found.
1918	William A. Hoppe	Born 1887 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Employed by National Roofing and Paint Company as a sheet metal salesman.

William A. Hoppe's draft registration card. Two other boarders listed the same
address on their registration cards when they were completed the same year.

1918	Frank August Krokofski	Born 1877 in Corktown. Worked as an upholsterer for furniture maker Fred L. Parrish for most of his working life. His wife died in 1911 at the age of 24. He remarried in 1912 but was divorced by the time he lived in the Buchanan house. His three children ended up living in the German Protestant Home for Orphans and Old People at 1852 West Grand Blvd. His daughter married the son of the orphanage's superintendent in 1924. Mr. Krokofski's third marriage took place later that year, and his two sons were living with him by 1930.
1918	Michael John Miller	Born 1886 in Sarnia, Ontario, immigrated 1907. Married Edith May Lively in 1910, but they divorced by 1916. His widowed mother Mary was also listed at his previous address, so it's possible she lived at the Buchanan house as well. Mr. Miller had worked as a machinist in an auto plant, but at this point he was a self-employed painter.
1918	Albert R. Morrison	"Watchman." No other information found.
1918	Alex Morrison	"Watchman." No other information found.
1918-1919	Frederick Thomas Mountain	Born 1887 in Durham, Ontario, immigrated 1916. Worked as a plasterer. In 1917, he resided at 229 6th Street with William Hoppe and Michael Miller (above). Mr. Mountain returned to Canada in 1928.
1918	James Timothy Ring	Born 1895 in Woodford, County Galway, Ireland, immigrated 1914. Employed as a chauffer for the Reider Cartage Company at 345 Parker. The 1930 Census lists a man of the same name, similar birth year, and same immigration year as Mr. Ring as an inmate at the Santa Fe Penitentiary in New Mexico. Further research would be needed to confirm if this is the same individual.
1919-1920	Rosa Louise Bequeret	Born 1892 in Illinois. Miss Bequeret worked as a clerk for Express Company at the time. She married Carl Tasso on December 7, 1920. In 1918, she and at least four other residents of the Buchanan house (Frank Bleich, Daniel Waterworth, and John and Minnie Sholdice, below) all lived at 52 Baker, which is now 1326 Bagley.

Rosa Bequeret Tasso (1892-1978)
Photo courtesy of Gwen Bequeret

1919-1921	Frank Herman Bleich	Born 1880 in Germany, immigrated 1905. Employed as a clerk for cigar and tobacco retailer William F. Hensel at 50 State Street.
1919	Henry J. Manion	Born 1891 in Alpena, Michigan. He lived most of his life in Flint, and was evidently only in Detroit for a brief time. Mr. Manion married Mildred Decaire on April 26 of the following year.
1920	Clifford Allbright	Born about 1899 in Michigan. Worked for a railroad as a fireman, which was the term used for the technician who controlled the fire in the engine. He married Christine Schmidt on December 6 of the year he is listed at the Buchanan house.
1920	William Kolemik	Born about 1883 in Russia, immigrated 1913. Iron worker. Nothing outside of the census record has been found.
1920	Paul Harold McClung	Born 1897 in Wellston, Ohio. Worked as a machinist in an auto plant. Enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve in May 1918 and had attained the rank of Machinist's Mate 2nd Class. He was released in February 1919 and honorably discharged September 1921. Later returned to Wellston, Ohio.
1920	Ralph Adam McClung	Born 1896 in Wellston, Ohio. Brother of Paul McClung, above. Also a Navy reservist. Enlisted June 1918, released December 1919, honorably discharged September 1921. Employed as a baker while living at the Buchanan house. He also returned to Ohio, but ultimately died in Detroit in 1973.
1920	George Michels	Born about 1873 in Germany, immigrated 1900. Painter.
1920-1922	John Flanery Henry Sholdice	Born 1873 in McGillivray, Ontario; immigrated 1895. Owned a cigar business that is listed at various addresses on Washington Blvd. and Cass Ave. Mr. Sholdice passed away on Christmas Eve of 1926.
1920-1922	Minnie O. (Allen) Sholdice	Born about 1880 in Canada, married John Sholdice (above) in Perth County, Ontario, about 1903.

Detail from 1920 Census showing residents of 20 Baker Street.

1920	Florence G. Churchill	Born 1901 in Michigan. Miss Churchill was a niece of John Sholdice (above). She married Leonard Bradley in 1923.
1920	Charles Franklin Van Gilder	Born 1885 in Pennsylvania. He worked as a stationary engineer, which means he operated steam engines and boilers in buildings as opposed to the ones on ships. He never married.
1920-1922	Daniel O. Waterworth	Born 1884 in Michigan. Employed by the Toledo Plate Glass Company
1923	Charles Caruana	Born about 1895 in Malta, immigrated about 1920. Auto worker. Mr. Caruana presumably lived with his wife, Amadea (also born in Malta) and daughter, Nellie (born about 1920 in Michigan).

Next week: The Buchanan House Part IV: 1924-2007 -- The Saliba and Kibler Familes

The Buchanan House Part II: 1896-1913 -- Susan Buchanan

Susan Buchanan was fourteen when she left Ireland with her mother and seven younger siblings to live in Detroit in 1851. She never married, and by the 1890s she was living with her three remaining unmarried siblings in the home she owned at 24 Baker Street. In 1896 she had a new house built for the family at 20 Baker Street--the house that stands today at 1242 Bagley.


The Buchanan house as it appears in a Sanborn map soon after its construction.
Susan Buchanan's brother Patrick and his wife Rosa owned 32-34 Baker Street.

On July 13, 1896, carpenter Peter D. Tallant was issued building permit number 591 by the City of Detroit to construct the home at an estimated cost of $2,500. Tallant was born in County Roscommon, Ireland, in 1845 and immigrated to America around 1867. He also constructed the building that is now Nemo's Bar and Grill at 1384 Michigan Avenue in Corktown.

Susan Buchanan would live in this home for the next sixteen years. In that time, she she shared it with three siblings and several boarders.


* * * * *


Catherine Clancy


CATHERINE BUCHANAN
WIDOW OF CORNELIUS CLANCY
DIED MAY XXII 1900
MAY SHE REST IN PEACE
Catherine was the only Buchanan in the household who had ever been married. She wed Cornelius Clancy in Most Holy Trinity Church on February 10, 1857 at the age of 18, but her husband died just two years later. The couple had no children and Catherine never remarried. She worked as a clerk in various department stores, including Metcalf's and later Hunter, Glenn & Hunter.

Catherine Clancy died at 20 Baker Street on May 22, 1900. She had contracted pneumonia two weeks earlier, which ultimately led to heart failure. She was 61 years old.


Detail from the 1900 Census listing the Buchanan house residents.
This record was made shortly after Catherine Clancy's death.


Thomas Buchanan


THOMAS BUCHANAN
DIED JUNE 3, 1901
Thomas was a marine engineer, which at the time was an increasingly hazardous occupation. In February of 1875, Thomas Buchanan and nine other delegates from around the country met in Cleveland, Ohio to form the Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association, the first nationwide union for marine engineers. It is still in existence today and it's the largest and oldest maritime union in the United States.



Founders of the Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association, February 1875.
Thomas Buchanan is in the back row, second from the left.
Photo Courtesy of Marco Cannistraro, Communications Director, M.E.B.A.

Thomas Buchanan died while staying in Port Huron on July 3, 1901. The following appeared in the Detroit Free Press the following day:



Funeral services were held at 20 Baker Street and then Most Holy Trinity Church on July 6.


Jane Elizabeth Buchanan


JANE ELIZABETH BUCHANAN
DIED JULY V, 1906
MAY SHE REST IN PEACE
All that is known about Susan Buchanan's sister Jane is that she was a housekeeper, and that she died at 20 Baker Street on July 5, 1906 from neurosclerosis at the age of 61.


Peter Bernard Lennon

Susan Buchanan's sister Ann was the stepmother of Peter Lennon. He was born in Clayton Township, Michigan in 1878 and obtained a law degree from the University of Michigan in 1903.


University of Michigan Law Department Football Team, 1903.
Peter Lennon, team captain, is at the top-left.

After graduation he moved into the Buchanan house and opened an office at 103 Griswold in this building:


Northwest Corner Griswold & Congress, July, 1906.
Courtesy of the Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library (Source)

Around 1908 Mr. Lennon had returned to his native Clayton. He went on to be elected to the Michigan state house of representatives as a Republican in 1918. He served three consecutive terms until being defeated in 1924. He then ran for the state senate in 1926 and won, serving three terms there until defeat in 1932. He ran in the Republican primary for U.S. representative in Michigan's 6th district, but did not win the party's nomination. Mr. Lennon passed away on August 11, 1939, in Howell, Michigan.


Mary Eleanor Lennon


Mary E. Lennon (1876-1945)
Photo courtesy of Hugh Johnson

Mary E. Lennon was the sister of Peter Lennon. She was born in Lennon, the town named after her father, in 1876 and graduated from the University of Michigan in 1899. She moved in to the Buchanan house in 1910 and worked as a school teacher at the Cadieux School in Grosse Pointe and then the M. M. Rose School in Detroit. She only lived in the house until 1913, but remained in Detroit for the rest of her life. Miss Lennon later worked for the Detroit High School, which later became Wayne University, where she worked as a professor of English. She passed away in Detroit on December 13, 1945.


Adelaide Black

Adelaide Black was born in Corktown in 1895 and lived in the neighborhood her entire life. Her mother and younger brother died before she reached the age of ten, and her older brother died of pneumonia at the School for the Blind in Lansing, Michigan in 1908. Both the census and the city directory list her as a servant at the Buchanan house in 1910.


Detail from the 1910 Census showing residents of the Buchanan house.

Although her given age in the census was thirteen, birth records have confirmed that she was in fact fourteen at the time. Four years later she married James Aloysius Callaghan and had three children, but died in 1921 at the age of 26. Five months later her husband married her mother's sister, Anna Jane Grosshans.


Helen Murdock

The city directory lists "Mrs. Helen Murdock" at 20 Baker Street in 1912, but no information on this woman has yet been found.

* * * * *

Around 1913, Susan Buchanan left Detroit to live with her widowed sister Ann Lennon in Clayton Township. The Buchanan house would be rented to borders for the next nine years.

Next week: The Buchanan House Part III: 1914-1923 -- The Renters of 20 Baker Street

The Buchanan House Part I: 1750-1895 -- The Land

The Buchanan House
1242 Bagley Street, Detroit
(Renovation in progress!)
The next house to be profiled was built by the upper-middle-class Irish family in 1896. It is now owned by my brother and myself as a rental property, and the renovation is ongoing. The following is the history of the land on which the house was built.


Dominique Labrosse
The first owner of the ribbon farm on which the Buchanan house stands was Dominique Jourdain dit Labrosse. Although he was probably granted the land by the government of New France, Silas Farmer wrote that "no evidence of the kind was presented to the Commissioners of Claims" when Labrosse applied for a land patent from the new United States government.

Dominique Labrosse was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1730. He was the son of master sculptor and wood carver Paul Jourdain dit Labrosse. Dominique Labrosse settled in Detroit where he married Jeannette Cardinal, also from Montreal, in 1755.



On July 21, 1808, the United States government issued a land patent to Labrosse for his farm on the Detroit River. It was designated Private Claim No. 246. Like the Cicotte Farm, it was 3 arpents (French acres) wide and 40 arpents deep.


Henry Berthelet

In December of 1808, Dominique and Jeanette Labrosse entered into a contract with Henry and Josette Berthelet to purchase the farm. The purchase was made on the condition that the Berthelets would provide for the Labrosses, who were childless and in their seventies by that time, for the rest of their lives. Jeanette died in 1814, followed by Dominique in 1816.


Portrait of Henry Berthelet by Robert Scott Duncanson
Courtesy of the Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library

Henry Berthelet was born in Detroit on April 29, 1776 and married Josette Bouchette in what is now Windsor, Ontario on November 9, 1802. They lived on the Labrosse farm for over twenty-five years, and some land records refer to it as the Berthelet farm. Henry Berthelet died in 1846, and Josette in 1855.


Charles C. Trowbridge


Charles Christopher Trowbridge (1800-1883)
(Source)
Born in Albany, New York in 1800, moved to Detroit in 1819. Trowbridge became a wealthy banker and joined with other investors to purchase the Labrosse Farm in March of 1835 for $13,000. This was at the beginning of a boom in speculative land sales in the soon-to-be State of Michigan.

In July of 1835, the segment of the Labrosse Farm between the Detroit River and Michigan Avenue was platted by city surveyor John Mullett. Labrosse Street was named after the previous owner of the farm. Baker Street was named for Colonel Daniel Baker, owner of the Baker Farm, immediately to the west of the Labrosse Farm.




Subdivision of the Labrosse Farm south of the Chicago Road
Recorded in Liber 13, Page 85 of Wayne County Records (Source)
The Buchanan house would later be erected on lot 8 of block 57. This parcel is one of the triangular lots that resulted from the streets of Corktown, which are parallel to Fort Street, meeting Michigan avenue at an angle of approximately 27°.


Robert Allen Forsyth
Born in Detroit in 1774. Forsyth and Charles Trowbridge were both members of the Cass Expedition that explored the Michigan Territory in 1820. He purchased lots 7 and 8 of block 57 of the Labrosse Farm from Trowbridge on November 10, 1835.

In February of 1849, the City of Detroit annexed three of the ribbon farms (Forsyth, Labrosse, and Baker) that until then had been part of Springwells Township. This brought the area of the city proper to a total of 5.85 square miles.


Forsyth sold the parcels of land that same year, and died just three months later.


George B. Russel


George B. Russel (1816-1903)
(Source)
Born in Pennsylvania in 1816 and obtained a PhD in medicine at age twenty. He came to Detroit in 1839 and became a very successful doctor and businessman, investing hugely in real estate and industrial infrastructure. He purchased lots 7 and 8 on July 20, 1849 and sold them three years later.


Arthur John Robertson, Esquire
Born in Inches, County Inverness, Scotland in 1803. Robertson was a wealthy real estate speculator who came to own a vast amount of land in Canada and the U.S. after his Canadian wife died in 1836. He purchased the lots in question on August 9, 1851 and sold them less than a year later.


Flavius J. B. Crane

Flavius J. B. Crane (1812-1886)
Courtesy of the Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library

Born in Canandaigua, New York in 1812 and moved to Detroit in 1851. Crane was a real estate agent and made a fortune off the land boom. He bought the property on April 6, 1852 and sold it about a year later. He moved to Denver, Colorado in 1872, where he spent the rest of his life.


William Cole
Born in Johnstown, New York, 1809 and moved to Detroit in 1832. Cole owned a sail making business at the corner of Woodward and Atwater. He purchased the two lots on Baker Street on October 3, 1853. He lived around the block from the property, at 358 Michigan Avenue, where PJ's Lager House now stands. Cole built a rental home on lot 8 at 20 Baker Street--but it was not the same home that stands on the spot today. Only a few of the renters of that home have been identified:

• Joseph Kennedy, carpenter, 1855-1856
• Francis Riley, forger at Detroit Locomotive Works, 1856
• John Donovan, drayman, 1857
• Henry Fowler, accountant, 1857

Cole moved to Saginaw around the same time he sold the property in 1860. He lived there until his death in 1892.


The Buchanan Family


The Buchanan family's stained glass window at
Most Holy Trinity Church, 1050 Porter Street, Detroit

On January 5, 1860, lots 7 and 8 of block 57 of the Labrosse Farm were sold to Patrick Buchanan. They would remain in the family's possession for over sixty years.

Patrick Buchanan was born around 1830 in County Tyrone, Ireland. He and his brother William immigrated to America in the 1840s and settled in Corktown. Soon after the death of his father James Buchanan, his mother Susan O'Gorman Buchanan immigrated to Detroit with her eight youngest children.

After Patrick Buchanan purchased the original house at 20 Baker Street, he moved into the home with his mother and younger siblings. By that time, Patrick was a clerk in the employ of Town & Shelden, a dry goods wholesaler owned by Reuben Town, Allen Shelden, and Zachariah Chandler. So impressed was Patrick Buchanan by his employers that he named two of his sons Allen Shelden Buchanan and Zachariah Chandler Buchanan.

Among the members of the Buchanan family who lived at the first home at 20 Baker Street were: Ann Buchanan, who married Captain Peter Lennon, founder of the town of Lennon, Michigan; Thomas Buchanan, a founding member of the Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association, the oldest and largest maritime union in the United States; and Margaret Frances Buchanan Sullivan, who moved to Chicago in the 1870s and became a newspaper editor--obviously an extraordinary accomplishment for a woman in the 19th century. She was sent by the Associated Press to cover the 1889 World's Fair in Paris, the event for which the Eiffel Tower was constructed, as the only American correspondent. Mrs. Sullivan is the author of the book Ireland of To-Day: The Causes and Aims of Irish Agitation.



Patrick Buchanan married Rosanna Doran on August 3, 1865 at Most Holy Trinity Church in Corktown and moved to a house on Fifth Street. Two years later, on July 14, 1867, he sold the property on Baker Street to his sister Susan Buchanan for $800. Around 1870 a home was built at 24 Baker Street and the family moved into the new home.


Detail from an 1884 Sanborn map showing 24 Baker Street.
The attached structure may have been the original 20 Baker.

The Buchanans lived at 24 Baker until 1896, when a new home was built at 20 Baker Street--the house that stands today.

Next Week: The Buchanan House Part II: 1896-1913 -- Susan Buchanan