The Ephraim and Emma Woodworth Truesdell House is a private house located at 1224 Haggerty Road in

Canton Township, Michigan Canton, officially the Charter Township of Canton, is a charter township of Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2020 census, the township had a population of 98,659. Canton Township is Michigan's second most-populated townshi ...

. The structure is significant because it is one of the most finely crafted houses in the township and because of its association with one of the most important families in the area. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 2003.

History

Erastus Truesdell was born in Massachusetts in 1802. Erastus married Calista Merry and moved to Michigan in 1832, one of the first families to settle in Canton Township. Erastus and Calista had eight children, the seventh of whom was Ephraim F. Truesdell, born in 1842. Ephraim served in the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

, and married Emma Woodruff; the couple also had eight children. In 1888, Ephraim and Emma Truesdell hired Charles W. Curtiss, a builder from

Plymouth, Michigan Plymouth is a city in Wayne County, Michigan, United States. The population was 9,370 at the 2020 census. The city of Plymouth is surrounded by Plymouth Township, but the two are administered autonomously. Plymouth is a western suburb of Metro ...

, to construct this house. Ephraim died in 1908, and his son Charles purchased the property in 1911. This article is available, in fragments, through Google News archive
Here, for example
is a GN archive link to: "The house was passed down in the family and was used for funerals because of its large double doors that allowed caskets to pass through into the parlor." After Charles died in 1937, his wife rented out rooms in the house to schoolteachers and, during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, workers at the nearby

Willow Run Willow Run, also known as Air Force Plant 31, was a manufacturing complex in Michigan, United States, located between Ypsilanti Township and Belleville, built by the Ford Motor Company to manufacture aircraft, especially the B-24 Liberator hea ...

plant. The house stayed in the family for a number of decades; during this time the house was used for funerals because the large double doors in the front allowed caskets to be easily carried into the house. In the 1980s, developers bought it with the intention of starting a

bed and breakfast Bed and breakfast (typically shortened to B&B or BnB) is a small lodging establishment that offers overnight accommodation and breakfast. Bed and breakfasts are often private family homes and typically have between four and eleven rooms, wit ...

. The home was resold in 1992 and restored, and in 2003 was listed on the

Description

The house is a two-story structure constructed of red brick on a stone foundation. It is built in a cross-shaped plan, with a deep gable-front section intersected by a side-gabled section which projects to either side of the main section. A

hip roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...

section containing the double-door main entrance, is nestled in the corner created by the intersecting gabled portions of the structure. A low porch with Stick-Eastlake turned posts and pierced screens wraps around the hip roof section and shelters the front door; a similar porch sits on the opposite side of the front facade. Both side and front gables are ornamented with an incised arch beneath the roofline. A

bay window A bay window is a window space projecting outward from the main walls of a building and forming a bay in a room. Types Bay window is a generic term for all protruding window constructions, regardless of whether they are curved or angular, or ...

is located on the south side; the remainder of the windows are of the one-over-one double-hung variety, set within segmented- arch brick caps.

History

Description

See also

References

Further reading