ROBINSON-HUDDLESTON-SOPER-SAMUEL
325 West Jefferson Street

c1870/1893 Queen Anne
Home Tour 1998

Although from the exterior it does not look like it, parts of this house date back to the very days of Grand Ledge.  From information obtained at the Register of Deeds office for Eaton County, it appears that Ed. Lampson held this property in the 1860’s.  He was the first permanent white settler in Grand Ledge and his house still stands at the corner of West Jefferson and Spring Streets.  He settled here with his large family in 1848.  He owned about 164 acres of land in the area, most of it on the south side of the river.  Many years later, David Taylor, who came here in 1849, described what Grand Ledge was like in those early times:  “At this time the present site of Grand Ledge was a wilderness.  Not a tree had been felled until one reached the county line on the north.  The south side of the river could boast of just one board shanty where Mr. Trench housed his family…”  Henry Trench (sometimes called French) later returned to his native state, which left the honor of being the first permanent settler to Mr. Lampson. 

In April 1867 Edmund and Henry Lampson sold the property where this house is located to Samuel Robinson  and a small house was probably built on the property shortly after that time.  Henry Lampson was Samuel’s son-in-law.  Robinson and his wife Melissa (Hines) came to Grand Ledge in 1853 with their nine children and spent the rest of their lives here until they died in 1892 and 1900,  respectively.  Samuel was a shoemaker by trade.  Eventually they moved out onto a farm near town. 

The 1873 map of Grand Ledge shows a small house on the property.  Although there is no way to be certain that this house was not taken down and replaced with another, there is a section of the Rainey house that appears to be older than the rest. An exterior door on the western side of the house, which opens onto a porch, leads into an area used as an every-day living room adjoining the dining room.  There is a laundry room which was the old kitchen to the house behind this living area.  The wood trim around the exterior door, around the window facing west, and around the door leading to the old kitchen is markedly different from the trim in the rest of the house.  This woodwork is a very simple design executed with less skill than the elaborate woodwork throughout the rest of the house, which suggests that this part of the house might be a remnant of the first small cottage on this property. Also, the basement of the house does not extend under this section of the present house which also suggests that this is an earlier construction. The back stairway and the rooms above this old part of the house are probably part of the original construction as well.

The Robinsons added on to their home and greatly enlarged it soon after it was built.  The 1881 sketch map of Grand Ledge shows a larger home, a two-story three-gabled Victorian home.  Janet Rainey, the current owner, reports that an old shingled roof can be seen in some of the attics.  There are rough, bark-covered floor joists visible in the basement that suggest that this addition was done in the 1870’s.  The 1870 U.S. Census lists Samuel and Melissa Robinson and their son Joseph, who was 20 at the time, living here.  Samuel gave his profession as shoemaker, and owned real estate valued at $3000, and personal property worth $2000.  These were tidy sums of money in those days, so Samuel apparently did well at his trade. 

In Nov. 1882 Samuel and Melissa Robinson sold the property to John and Jane Nixon of Delta Township.  The Nixon family were pioneers in the Oneida/Delta Twp. area.  John Nixon came to the United States from Ireland with his parents as a young boy and settled in New York state.  Later his parents moved the family to Canada.  His wife, Jane Jackson, was born in Ireland too, and came to Canada as a young child.  They were married in Canada.  John came to Michigan and bought the farm at the northwest corner of St. Joe and Nixon Rd. where he lived for most of the rest of his life.  He went back to Canada and brought his wife Jane and their three young children to their new home in 1840.  His brothers Samuel, James and Robert also settled in this area.  Samuel’s property was adjacent to his brother’s, on the northeast corner of St. Joe and Nixon Rd.  Nixon Rd. is named for the family.  The other two brothers, James and Robert, settled on farms on M-100 south of Grand Ledge.  John’s obituary said: “…He was possessed of a remarkably retentive memory, was a constant reader, and was undoubtedly one of the most intelligent and best posted men in Eaton county.”  He never missed voting in an election for 47 years.  The Nixons lived on their farm in Delta Twp. for many years, until John was seriously injured by a team of horses.  He and Jane left the farm and moved into the house on West Jefferson in 1882.  John died in Aug. 1887.  Jane Nixon moved shortly after John’s death and lived the rest of her life with her daughter, Mary Wells, on the Wells farm directly across from the John Nixon homestead.  She died there in Aug. 1893.

Jane Nixon sold the West Jefferson St. property to one of her three surviving children, Isabelle, who was married to Samuel Huddleston.  Samuel and Isabelle bought the house in 1889 for $1000.  Samuel Huddleston was a very talented carpenter, as noted in his obituary: “…The first bridge over Grand River at this place was built under his supervision, much of the actual work being done by him.  He was an excellent carpenter, many houses and other buildings in Delta, Oneida, and Grand Ledge testifying to his skill at his trade.” 

Mr. Huddleston applied his trade to his own home, and the changes he made give the house the style it has today.  The house underwent its third major renovation starting in 1893.  The Grand Ledge Independent Sept. 22, 1893 simply noted that he was “…making a fine improvement to his residence by an extensive addition.” Two years later, the Independent noted in October and November 1895 that he was again making an “extensive addition” to his house on Jefferson.  His additions seem to have been off of the back of the house and on the second floor and he appears to have added onto the front of the house as well, probably the entry hall and the front stairway.  Arnie Samuel, a later owner,  said that when he was doing some work in the attic over the front of the house, he saw  a section of the original clapboard exterior wall which is  now encased inside the current structure.  Samuel Huddleston added trim to the house which gives the old house a Queen Anne appearance.  The projecting front window with the hood, the gingerbread in the front gable, the “sunburst” trim over the porch, the distinctive windows which have a large pane of clear glass surrounded by smaller panes of colored leaded glass, and the “fishscale” wooden exterior trim give the house a modernized, 1890’s appearance, and incorporate some of the elements of the Queen Anne style.  Interestingly, Arnie Samuel found another piece of exterior woodwork in the attic, apparently never used, which is the exact duplicate of the gingerbread in the gable end of the house.  It was handmade, and had 164 pieces.  Mr. Samuel speculates that the piece was meant to be installed on the western gable end of the house, but that the plans were changed and the round window was put in instead to give light to the attic.

Samuel Huddleston died at his home on Dec. 25, 1905 of paralysis after a two-week illness.  Isabelle decided to sell the house shortly after his death. 

J.Mason Soper bought the  Huddleston house for $2400 in March 1906.  The Soper family were early settlers in Delta Twp.  Horrock’s Farm Market stands today on what was the Soper farm; long-time residents remember the big old farmhouse on that corner.  Across the street, where the Delta Twp. offices are located, stood the Soper School, named for the family.  The corner, naturally, came to be known as “Soper’s Corners”.   Mary Hamilton Soper was from another early Delta Twp. family.  A.J. and Harriet (Horton) Hamilton bought land from the U.S. government and established a farm on W. Mt. Hope Rd where Mary grew up.  She and Mason were married in 1883 and they lived in Delta until they decided to move into town.  The Grand Ledge Independent on March 9, 1906 noted that Mason Soper was giving up farming and buying the Samuel Huddleston residence on West Jefferson, and that the Sopers expected to move in about April 1st.  Mason tried his hand at several careers after he gave up farming.  He worked for a time at the gas company in Grand Ledge.  Then he was in the harness business briefly with Martin Maier.  Finally he became a partner with Eli Taylor in a grocery store, located on North Bridge St.  The business pros-
pered and they remained in business together until 1927, when Soper’s health began to fail and he was forced to retire. William H. Resseguie and Son took over their grocery business in the same location, at #209 North Bridge St.  Eli Taylor continued his career and became Vice President of the Loan and Deposit Bank.  Besides his business duties, Mr. Soper was an active Mason.  He held various township offices and served as state representative for the district.  He died at the age of seventy-two after several years of ill health, in July, 1930. 

Mary’s younger brother, Andrew Hamilton, was a widower and he left his farm in Delta and moved into the house on W. Jefferson with Mary.  Andrew’s wife had been Jeanette Patterson and she had died just a couple of months before Mason Soper.  She was related to noted builder/architect Darius Moon, and in fact, Mr. Moon built the Hamilton centennial farmhouse which is still standing.  The W.Jefferson St. house was now divided into two apartment units, one on the east side, and one on the west side. There used to be a wall with pocket doors dividing the large central living/dining room.  Those pocket doors were locked.  The eastern apartment had the foyer entrance, the front stairway, two upstairs bedrooms, the front parlor, the dining room, and the present kitchen and downstairs bath.  The smaller apartment on the west used the front door and porch on that side of the house for their entrance.  The current living room served the same purpose.  The old kitchen was where the laundry room is today.  They had the use of the back stairway which lead upstairs to the back bedroom and bathroom.  The doorway which divided the large central room were covered over with wallboard and wallpaper at some point in time.  Mary Soper had the eastern apartment; Andrew had the unit on the west.  When Mary’s health began to fail, she moved from her upstairs bedroom to the downstairs front parlor and put a small bathroom in the corner of the dining room.  She died of nephritis at the age of 80 on Nov. 23, 1939. 

Mary left the  house to Andrew’s children, but stipulated that Andrew should have a life lease to stay on in the house.  Andrew had a stroke and his son “Sam” (Loyal) and his wife moved into the house to care for him until he died in Sept. 1946.  Another relative, Andrew and Mary’s nephew Grant Hamilton (son of Roy Hamilton) and his wife Marguerite lived in the smaller apartment on the west side for about a year.

Shortly after Andrew died, his children sold the house.  Mr.and Mrs. Richard N. Nott bought the house as an investment and rented the house out as apartments.  The Grand Ledge Independent announced on March 22, 1907 that T.B. Robinson was selling his dry goods business to a man named R.N. Nott of Kendalville, Indiana.  This was the beginning of a long career in business for Mr Nott here in Grand Ledge.  Their business moved into the Robinson store at 216 S. Bridge St. and remained in that location.  In 1946, their son, Ransom N. Nott took over managing the store for his father and ran the store until he retired himself in 1966.  Richard and Netta Nott lived on the corner of S. Bridge and W. Lincoln at that time.  Their son Ransom and his wife Isabel lived on W. Jefferson St.  Ransom’s daughter, Mary Lou, was recently married to Llewellyn Wiseman, and the young couple rented the apartment on the east side of the apartment, the larger one of the two.  Richard Nott died in July 1952, and Netta Nott did not want to remain in the Bridge St. house all alone.  Mary Lou and her husband had left the apartment already.  Netta Nott moved into the larger of the apartments at #325;  her son and his wife (Ransom and Isabel) moved into Netta’s S. Bridge St. home, and Mary Lou and her husband Lou moved into the house on W. Jefferson that Ransom and Isabel had vacated.  Netta Nott remained in the apartment for many years until advancing age forced her to move into a nursing home.  She died at the age of 95 in September 1969.  During her years in the house she updated the kitchen. 

Arnold and Delores (“Dee”) Samuel rented the small western apartment around 1960.  When Netta went to the nursing home,  the Samuels bought the house from the Nott family.  For a short time they continued to rent out the apartment, but around 1963-64, they decided to make the house into a single family home again and raise their family there, which grew to include four girls.  Mrs. Samuel recalls that actually the job of changing the house back wasn’t that complicated, since all that separated the two units was the wall which divided the central room of the house.  They took the dividing wall down and although they found the old pocket doors stored in the garage, they were unable to make use of them. The two remaining sets of pocket doors that divide the front parlor from the rest of the house are still intact and do work.  A small bathroom had been built into the upstairs hallway to divide the hallway between the two apartments, and that was taken down.  Arnie Samuel recalls some of the interesting discoveries he made as he made repairs and renovations to the very old house.  He remembers that the wall between the dining room and the present kitchen is made of vertical solid hard wood boards, two inches thick and several inches wide.  He was trying to install some electrical wiring, and instead of being able to use a skill saw, he had to use a chain saw to cut through the wood.  In one corner of the basement, on the front of the house, is an old exterior window in what had been an exterior wall of the house, which is now covered over by one of the 1890’s additions, and which gives another clue to the original dimension of the house. There is a very large cistern in one of the crawl spaces of the basement.  Mr. Samuel believes that the entrance to the basement stairs was moved at some time.  There had been two doors in the master bedroom upstairs leading into each of the upstairs hallways.  The door across from the bathroom was kept locked during the years that the house was an apartment.  The Samuels opened that door, but after a time they removed the door completely and covered over the space.

During their years in the house, besides redecorating to their own taste, they re-sided the house, raised the dormer on the back and added to the upstairs bathroom in the 1970’s.  The old wooden siding had an exposed surface of 2 ¼ inches and would have been very difficult to duplicate, so they opted for modern siding. The old woodwork was there when they bought the house, but it had been painted. They kept the old woodwork as they found it, and when they remodeled they reused the woodwork as much as possible.  There was a small bathroom and a butlers pantry in the kitchen area.  They incorporated the pantry space into the kitchen, and gutted the bathroom.   Both Arnie and Dee taught school in the area for many years, and when they retired, they sold the house and moved up north in Michigan. 

Janet Rainey bought the house from the Samuels in 1993.  Janet has furnished the house with many family pieces and keepsakes.  She loves the house and says that sometimes she feels like she is living in a piece of artwork.  She has enclosed the front porch on the western side of the house, but she did it with panels that can be taken down so that this change is not a permanent one.  She has painted the house with fresh colors. She tore down the old carriage  house/garage which had once housed livestock (a goat) and built a modern garage.  Inside, there are ceramic tile floors she has had installed.  The old kitchen in the west apartment, which was the earlier kitchen of the two kitchens in the house, has been converted into a laundry room and half bath.  She removed wainscotting and restored as much of the old woodwork that she could, both with original pieces and with pieces that she had made to match.  There was a very small upstairs room that has been converted into a linen closet.  In the formal parlor on the front of the house, Janet refinished the wooden floor.  She also took down many layers of old wallpaper and did repair work on the plaster.
The home is filled with family pieces and keepsakes and special photos, many of which were taken by Janet’s father, who was a photographer.

This old home has seen many changes in its many years, but it retains its history in the wonderful architectural details that remain and help to make its history come alive for us.  The house itself is, as Janet Rainey said, a “work of art”.