This home has been owned by only five families in 131 years

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 Hulings House at 705 East Washington.

This week we feature a home built in 1881, which has been owned by only five families in its 131 years existence.

The 1881 builders were Howard and Mary Snider, both from Mt. Pleasant families. Howard Snider owned the family drugstore that had been his fathers and he also served as manager of the Mt. Pleasant Gas and Electric Light Company, a position that had also been held by his father.

The pair were both only 24 years old when they built the house adjacent to Howard’s boyhood home and on property owned by his parents. They were still the owners 28 years later when the original Mount Pleasant Beautiful book was published. Regrettably, Howard died only four years later of Bright’s disease.

In 1919, Mary, or May as she was known, sold the house. After employment in Kansas and in Iowa City, she returned to Mt. Pleasant and served as hostess at the newly built P.E.O. Memorial for 12 years beginning in the late 1920s.

She also served a four-year term as Dean of Women at Iowa Wesleyan. She died in 1944 at the age of 86.

The 1919 buyer was Dr. Ulysses Smith and his wife. He was the newly appointed president of Iowa Wesleyan.

They sold the home in 1924 and moved to another house briefly before becoming the first IWU president to live in the newly acquired house at Walnut and Washington, which continues as the presidential residence to this day.

Dr. Smith was a respected Methodist minister who served a large number of churches in Eastern Iowa over a 50 year period. His final church was in New London from which he retired in 1942.

In 1924, the house was purchased by Dr. and Mrs. Samuel Huston. Huston was an eye, ear, nose and throat doctor and practiced in Mt. Pleasant for the next 22 years.

Ownership passed to Glover Ferrell who was a professor at Iowa Wesleyan. Subsequently the home became the property of the Seagers, whose daughter is the current owner.