Izannah Walker's House, Central Falls, RI

    ©  Kathy Duncan, 2022

Like most genealogists, I have several of my own personal rules, and they apply to my research into doll makers and quilters. One rule is to be open-minded and flexible. That means I am always prepared to make corrections to my own research. It also means that I don't slavishly adhere to accepted research conclusions drawn by other researchers. Another rule is to avoid making assumptions because they lead to false conclusions. That one I'm still working on. 

Warning!  It turns out that I identified the wrong house in this post. I will be writing an updated post soon with corrections. 

This post is intended to make a correction to my previous post about Miss Izannah Walker's Celebrated Dolls in terms of where her house in Central Falls was located, and my conclusion that it was no longer standing.

The existing nineteenth-century Central Falls, Rhode Island City Directories place Izannah Walker in a house at 14 Illinois Street as early as 1873, the year she received her patent. That means she was probably in residence there while she was working on her patent. At this point, I don't know when she took up residence there.

Izannah was still in residence at 14 Illinois in 1887, the year before she died. That means she was in residence there throughout the time period when she was making the post-patent dolls and supplying E. W. Billings with dolls for his trade. 

I incorrectly located 14 Illinois street on the east side (right side) of the street near the intersection of Illinois St. and Central:

Incorrect Location of Izannah Walker's House
Arrow Points to General Area of Her Previous Residence at 11 Jenks

This happened because I used Google Street View to look for 14 Illinois Street. It landed me in front of a house that it labeled as being 15 Illinois Street. That house does not have a house number on it. In fact, most of the houses along that street don't have house numbers. I went up and down the street, spun around several times, and even went around the corner. I probably made myself a little dizzy. Had I turned around and zoomed in on the house across the street, I would have realized that it is actually 15 Illinois Street. 

I've been bothered that I could not find a better period map. It bothered me so much that I stopped in the middle of another property-related search to try again. This time I had better, more accurate results.

I began by looking for a Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Central Falls from the turn of the last century. I still have not had good luck locating Izannah's neighborhood on those maps but will keep trying. However, the internet shook loose a map of Central Falls, Rhode Island that was published by Everts and Richards in 1895. Here is Izannah's neighborhood with her house: 

Illinois Street was one block east of Madison Street. From the intersection of Central and Illinois, look on the west side (left side) of the street, where all the houses are evenly numbered. Lean in and squint a bit. The first house is 6, the second house is 10, and the third house is 14. It's an odd sort of offset-looking footprint with a small structure at the back, which could be a shed or a big chicken coop. Take a minute and look at the other structures in the neighborhood. Look at the footprints and the lot sizes. Not much has changed since 1895. This map was created seven years after Izannah's death. We could speculate that her house was still standing at that point and that Emeline Whipple was still living in it.

If you are having trouble spotting 14 Illinois Street, it is here:

My next step was to try and pinpoint the location of 14 Illinois Street on a current map. I was still faced with the frustration of the current houses being mostly unmarked in terms of house numbers. Google maps, however, came to the rescue anyway. This satellite view provided the house numbers for that area:

In case you can't see the house numbers on the rooftops, what was 6 Illinois St. in 1895 is now 14 Illinois street, 10 Illinois St. is now 24 Illinois St., and 14 Illinois St. is now 30 Illinois St. If you compare the footprints of the current structures with the footprints in 1895, they are mostly unchanged. 

If you are having trouble spotting the location of 30 Illinois St. aka 14 Illinois St., it is here:

My next step was to take the addresses on both sides of the street, including 30 Illinois St., as well as the houses around the corner, and investigate their build dates through online real estate sites. One was built in 1850, one in 1870, and one in 1880. The overwhelming majority, including 30 Illinois St., have build dates of 1900. That seems odd given that the footprints for many of them are the same now as in 1895. I know there were houses on these lots as of 1895. The odds that they were all torn down and rebuilt in 1900 seems unlikely unless there was a massive fire, and the rebuilds all used the same footprints as the original houses. Odd and unlikely. 

My feeling is that the original build dates are currently unavailable, and 1900 is a good epic number for an old house's build date. Poof, they were all built in 1900. 

My question was whether the house found at 30 Illinois St. has the same footprint as the house at 14 Illinois St. in 1895. At first blush, they seem different. Not quite the same, weird offset shape. It's more of an L-shape now?

A closer look at the rooftop suggests the original offset shape:

On Google street view, the front of the house shows the suggestion of an addition on the left:

Creep up the street with me a bit, and a side view makes that addition more obvious:

I would propose that this is very likely the house where Izannah Walker lived during the heyday of her doll-making business. The house is certainly large enough for two women to live comfortably and create dolls. Of course, it's also possible that Izannah was operating her doll-creating business at another location. 

So is there a way to know for sure? Yes, again, this project would need boots on the ground and an intense day among the Providence County, Rhode Island land deeds. A researcher would begin with the name of the current property owner. Then the researcher would go to the Reverse Index of land deeds for the present. It's possible that these are computerized. The current owner is the "grantee" (aka buyer). Note the name of the "grantor" (aka seller) on the deed. That name becomes the "grantee" in the next search to find out who the previous "grantor" was. That process continues back through time using the reverse index and checking land deeds until the research gets back to around 1915, following the death of  Emeline Whipple. At that point, a variety of names might appear as the grantor: Izannah's nephew David H. Walker, who was her heir or his lawyer, Charles Whitehall; Izannah's niece, Mary Helen Holbrook, who inherited the executor role from her husband but who also seems to have declined it in favor of Frank H. White. It is possible to continue all the way back to when Izannah purchased the property. 

Trust me, I would tackle it, but those records are not available to me online. Yet. 

Correct location of Izannah Walker's house:

Correct Location of Izannah Walker's House

I would beseech any Izannah Walker fans who are reading this to drive by, admire, and sigh a little but don't trespass and don't make it weird for the current property owners.