Early owners of this home included two dry goods dealers, a farmer and a doctor

With the cooperation of the Southeast Iowa Union/Mt. Pleasant News, The Mt. Pleasant Historic Preservation Commission will be publishing, every week or two peeks at some of the featured homes in the 1909 book, Mt. Pleasant Beautiful.

In the series, the 1909 picture will be contrasted with one of recent vintage. The Commission has been collecting information for the eventual issuance of a new book updating the information on the still standing homes from the 1909 publication.

You can test your knowledge of historic Mt. Pleasant with this column. The identity of the featured home will be published with the next featured home. The last featured home was the Cole house, 607 East Monroe.

This week’s featured house was built about 1860. The 1860 census shows that at that year it was occupied by George and Abbie Arms and their four children. They had purchased the lot in 1856 but it is unclear if there was already a dwelling there.

George Arms was a dry goods dealer and had teamed with Titus Taft in 1854 to open a store on the north side of the public square. A major fire displaced Arms’ goods in December of 1857. It is unclear whether or not Taft was still in partnership as his fire losses were listed separately in the report of the fire. In any event, Arms, who the paper calls Dr. Arms for unknown reasons, occupied temporary quarters briefly before opening a new store in the Union Block in April of 1858.

George Arms and Titus Taft also worked together in real estate transactions and the Taft & Arms Addition, along with the Arms Addition expanded the footprint of Mt. Pleasant during the mid-19th century.

By 1870 George and Abbie (his second wife) had removed to New Jersey and spent the balance of their lives in the east, where they had originally moved from.

Our featured home was purchased in1862 by James and Rebecca Kibben. Kibben was another dry goods dealer who had migrated west from Virginia, not atypically making stops along the way in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois as the frontier also moved westward.

Kibben died in 1874 but the next homeowners we have detailed purchased the house in 1892. Daniel and Amanda Dutton farmed in Mount Union and moved to Mt. Pleasant for the sake of their children’s schooling.

In 1906, another couple in the long list of owners, Dr. George and Ora Huffman purchased the house and in fact were the owners at the time of the 1909 publication of Mt. Pleasant Beautiful. However, three years later they moved to the healing atmosphere of Arizona for Ora’s health and the house changed hands again.

This time the home was purchased by Henry Bowman and his second wife, Leona who perhaps occupied the home until their deaths in the late 1920s. Henry Bowman was a very successful grain and related products dealer. Leona was active in P.E.O. as well as other organizations.