NEWSOM-LAMPHERES
219 East Scott Street

1890 Eastlake
Home Tour 1998

In the early days of Grand Ledge, the property where this house is located belonged to Edmund Lampson.  Edmund Lampson was the first permanent white settler in Grand Ledge.  He came to Grand Ledge from Farmington  Michigan  with his large family in 1848.  He built several early stores in the village and was justice of the peace.  Later he was elected the first village president.  He owned a great deal of land in town, over 160 acres, most of it located on the south side of the river.  His house is still standing at W. Jefferson St. and Spring St. 

Ed. Lampson died and his property was divided up and sold.  The Grand Ledge Independent Aug. 1,1890 announced the sale of the Lampson property, including the Lampson house.  The lot where #219 stands was purchased by Charles B. Newsom for $186.  The paper noted that Newsom and several of the other buyers were going to build homes immediately on the vacant lots they had purchased.

Charles Newsom was born in Yorkshire England on March 16, 1841.  He came to New York with his family when he was four years old.   The Newsom family came to Eagle Michigan in 1856 where they bought eighty acres of timberland in section 19, Eagle Twp.  Unfortunately, Robert and Hannah (Kirk) Newsom died the following year, 1857, and their family was split up.  Charles did farm work and obtained what education he could. In 1862 at the age of twenty-one, Charles enlisted in Co.A 27th Michigan Infantry.  He saw duty in Kentucky; his regiment joined General Grant's forces at the siege of Vicksburg.  From there he was sent to Mississippi.  He became ill during that campaign and went to a hospital in Kentucky.  After his release from the hospital in 1863 he rejoined his regiment to take part in the Tennessee campaign where he suffered through the difficult winter of 1863/64, when food and shelter were in short supply for the troops.  Mr. Newsom was severely wounded in the right thigh on June 17, 1864 at the Battle of Petersburg.  He spent a year in the hospital and never fully recovered from his wounds. He was discharged from the service because of his disability and received a pension of $12 per month.

He returned to Eagle after the war, and hired himself out for farm labor.  He saved his money, and in 1871 was able to buy his own 103 acre farm.  He made the last payment on his farm before his marriage on Jan. 4,1872 (or 1874) to Elsie Doty. He had worked on her father's farm in Eagle for a time before their marriage.   She was the daughter of a well-known pioneer family in the Eagle area.  Her parents were Philo and Betsy (Sawyer) Doty.  She had been born at the Doty homestead in Eagle on Sept. 23, 1844.  Charles and Elsie had one child, a daughter named Fae who was born in 1882.   A brief biographical sketch of Charles Newsom published in 1891 said:  Fae .is being carefully instructed by her mother in the courtesies of life, and domestic accomplishments, such as her age will allow, and is receiving a good education.  The Newsom family moved into their Grand Ledge home right around this time, and Fae continued her education and graduated from Grand Ledge High School in 1902.   They only had a few years together to enjoy their new home on Scott St.  Charles died at the age of fifty-five years on Sept. 26, 1897.  He had seemed to be in the best of health the day before, and had driven to Lansing and was seen about in Grand Ledge during that evening.  That night, he awoke his wife complaining of chest discomfort, and asked her to prepare a whiskey sling to ease the discomfort.  He felt better and the family went back to sleep.  Elsie discovered that Charles was unconscious about 4AM.  The Grand Ledge Independent reported:  .a physician was hastily summoned, but all effort was in vain; the fell destroyer had done his work, and one of our very best citizens—a manly man, of excellent character and right motives, was no more..  Funeral services were held in the home and he was buried in Oakwood Cemetery. 

Fae Newsom married and divorced.  She had two sons, Gordon and Charles Jarman from this marriage.  The boys grew up in Grand Ledge and graduated from Grand Ledge High School—Gordon, in 1923; Charles, in 1932.  Elsie lived with the family too.  It appears they did not live in the Scott St. home for a period of time, and might have rented the house out during that time.  The 1910 U.S. Census listed the family at a home on Taylor St..  In 1916, Samuel and Mae Huddleston were renting the house.  The Newsom/Jarman family continued to own the E. Scott St. home, however, and returned to it sometime between 1916 and 1920.  Elsie Newsom died at the home on E. Scott St. on Jan. 10, 1920 after being ill for several days with pneumonia. 

 Fae Jarman later married a local pharmacist, Charles Brown, who worked for many years at the Furniss and later the Maxson Kinne drugstores.  She worked for a time as secretary to city clerk Homer Reames.  On May 9,1921 Fae Jarman sold the family home on E. Scott St. to Thomas and Bernice Lawrence. 

Tom Lawrence was born in Canada in 1874.  Bernice Allen was born in 1883.  The couple was married in 1912 and were lifelong residents of Grand Ledge.  Their only child, a daughter named Betty Jean, died at the age of six.  Tom worked at the Grand Ledge Chair Company for forty-five years and both he and Bernice were active members of the local Methodist Church. 

The Grand Ledge Independent on June 6, 1924 reported that the Lawrences sold the house to Fred and Harriet Lamphere.   The Lampheres and their three children (Gordon, Marian, and Wayne) were moving to Grand Ledge after operating grocery stores in Maple Rapids, Elsie, and Bellevue.  Fred Lamphere opened his store at 302 S. Bridge St..  He decided to specialize in the grocery side of the business, and he sold out his inventory of shoes, dry goods and general merchandise.  The Lampheres moved to Charlotte briefly and ran a store there, but they did not sell their Scott St. home; they rented it for the period of time they were away from Grand Ledge.  They returned to Grand Ledge in 1938.  In March 1938,  Fred Lamphere bought out the Lawrence Market, which had been operated by Val and Don Lawrence for many years at 306 S. Bridge St.  Mr. Lamphere reopened the Lawrence Market as a new IGA store with a full line of groceries, fruits and vegetables.  Larry Brooks joined the business and a meat department was added to the store.  Lamphere did not like the meat business, however, and in 1941 he sold the meat part of the business to Leo Palmer.  In the spring of 1943, as he celebrated his 40th year in business, the Grand Ledge Independent said Fred Lamphere was .known to all as a meticulously careful merchant.  One has always been able to depend on the high quality of his merchandise and on the fair dealing of Mr. Lamphere.    Fred Lamphere died suddenly at his home of a heart attack on Oct. 23, 1943.  Several weeks later, the Lamphere Grocery became the Palmer Market.

For the next twenty years, Harriet Lamphere continued to live in her home on W. Scott Street.  She cared for her lovely flower gardens surrounding the house.  She was an active member of the Methodist Church, Eastern Star, ABC Club, and the Garden Club.  In her later years, she moved to the Methodist nursing home where she spent the rest of her life until she died at the age of 88 in 1969.

Although the Baptist Church had expressed an interest in acquiring the property, the Lamphere family sold the home in 1968 to Doug and Sue Edington.  Doug Edington remembers that they put a great deal of work into this house, and they did most of the work themselves, with minimal help from contractors.  They updated all of the mechanics of the by-now old house:  plumbing, furnace, roof, electric, insulation, windows, siding.  They tore off the old wooden front porch and replaced it with one that was very similar to it.  They put in new kitchen cupboards and bathroom fixtures.  The Edingtons had four children and they decided they needed more room, so they put an addition onto the back of the house.  They designed the ground floor as a family room; upstairs were two bedrooms.  The second floor of the addition is accessible from a spiral staircase in the family room; it does not open into the upstairs of the old part of the house.  Local builder Jim Schwartz designed the addition and helped Doug Edington with the framing; Doug did the finishing work himself.  They tried to keep the Victorian style to the house, and they reused old trim and woodwork as they were able, and they found some pieces of the old wood trim in the basement and closets, which they reused.  They added a closet to the front entry area.  The house had a small kitchen and eating area, and Doug and Sue removed a wall and made a larger L-shaped room.  In 1978 Doug changed jobs and the Edingtons sold the house.

The house had several owners within a short period of time.  Some of these owners used the back addition  as a rental apartment.  At times the house was rented out as two apartments. 

In the late 1980's the Church of God, which now occupied the old Baptist Church, was thinking of expanding, and they bought the Edington house and the house behind it which fronted onto W. Lincoln with the idea of using the land for a parking lot with exits onto both Lincoln and Scott Streets.  The Church decided not to do that in the end, and in 1989 they sold the Edington house to Matt and Carole White. 

The Whites worked to repair, restore and decorate the main part of the house to reflect its Victorian heritage.  The Whites removed paneling from the walls, stripped through many years of old wallpaper, restored much of the old woodwork, installed a full bathroom in the upstairs of the house, put French doors in the front parlor doorway, and added antique lighting fixtures.  The White home was featured on the Holiday Home Tour in 1990. 

Reid and Tracy Olds bought this home from the Whites in January, 1992.  They have redecorated the home to fit their own tastes and the needs of their young family:  Ethan, Evan, and Ellie, and their three beloved cats. The old apartment addition serves as guest rooms and a family room and play room for the children.  Reid put down a new pine floor in the dining room.  They have replaced some of the woodwork as necessary.  They painted the exterior of the house in warm tones that serve to highlight the distinctive woodwork on the house.  

The Lamphere-White-Olds house is similar to many of the Eastlake style homes here in Grand Ledge.  The floor plan of this house is typical of other homes from the Victorian age.  The front door leads into a everyday parlor, where the family life was centered on a daily basis. The dining room and kitchen were usually off of the  everyday parlor toward the back of the house.  The formal parlor was on the front of the house, and often featured pocket doors to close it off from the rest of the house when it was not in use.  Often, the formal parlor had its own door leading to a porch.  There was usually a small bedroom on the main floor as well.  The staircase was not part of an elaborate vestibule;  it simply served the purpose of leading up to the second story.  Originally this house was built with three bedrooms upstairs with a narrow hallway, but one of the bedrooms was made smaller when a bathroom was added in the upstairs hallway. The original woodwork has been preserved as much as possible in this house, and duplicated as necessary in keeping with the original style.  This house also has interesting metal trimwork, like the door knobs, door hinges, and the original front doorbell.   On the exterior, the house also has characteristics of the Eastlake style:  the steeply pitched roof, intersecting gables, projecting bay window, and an asymmetrical shape.  The porches were also typical ofthis style and were very important to Victorian architects. 

This Victorian home was built during a time of growth and prosperity in Grand Ledge, and that is reflected in the quality of construction and the beautiful details that were built into this house. The Olds, like the Whites before them, have carefully preserved these elements as they adapted this old home to the comforts of modern family life.