113 West Church Street
Researched and written by Ruth Ann Montgomery
For many years, Elnathan Sawtelle was a successful farmer. His father, who had the same name, was
also a prominent Union township farmer. The elder Sawtelles were natives of Massachusetts. They were
participants in the western movement of New England people seeking new opportunities in farming in the
1800s. First they moved to Vermont in 1837 and lived there for eighteen years before coming to
Wisconsin in 1855. Of the elder Sawtelles eight children, only four survived, three daughters, and
Elnathan, Jr.
Elnathan, Jr. was born in Ludlow, Vermont in 1822 and came to Wisconsin with his parents. Seven years
later, he married Lucy Biglow. The younger Sawtelles moved to Evansville in 1865 and built a house at
416 East Main Street.
Nineteen years later, in 1884, Lucy Sawtelle was in failing health and Elnathan decided to build a house
on Church Street that would be comfortable and convenient for his wife. Elnathan found a house plan
that he liked and adapted it to make life easier for Lucy. William Libby, one of Evansville's favorite
builders, was hired to construct the house.
Before the house building could begin, a small house on the property had to be moved. Sawtelle, also
had a lot on Liberty Street and the smaller house was moved to that lot, remodeled and enlarged into two
apartments.
In April 1884, the site preparations were completed on Church Street and the basement for the new
house was dug. Sawtelle's house on East Main had sold more quickly than expected, so for a short time,
a tent, referred to as "a Dakota mansion", became home for Elnathan and Lucy.
Throughout the summer, Libby worked on and supervised the building of the Sawtelle's new house. In
May, the roof of the new house had been completed and it was being painted. However, it was not until
October that the interior was near completion and the painters were putting the finishing touches on the
new residence. The exterior paint was described as a "leather color with appropriate trim".
A newspaper article in the October 24, 1884 Evansville Review described the interior of the house. The
wood trim was native pine without paint or stain. The floors were mainly oak. The house was heated with
a hot air furnace located in the cellar.
There was a kitchen and root celler in the basement. A dumbwaiter was used to bring food prepared in
the basement kitchen to the dining room on the first floor.
Living rooms, bedrooms, and servants rooms were all on the first and second floor. A stairway led up
through the attic to the roof. From the large balcony on the roof, most of the village of Evansville could be
seen.
The doors were fitted with trigger latches, similar to those found in Dr. John and Emma Evans' house built
that same year at 104 West Main Street. A cistern in the attic collected rain water and piped it into the
kitchen.
William Libby reported to the Review that the house cost $3,300 to build. The local newspaper, the
Enterprise, described the house was "one of the best and handsomest residences this place affords."
The Baptist minister, Rev. E. R. Curry and his wife moved into the house with the Sawtelle’s in October
1884.
Nine years after building the house, Elnathan Sawtelle died. Lucy became the sole owner of the house
and the other properties he owned. They had no children and Mrs. Sawtelle took in boarders. Lucy was
an active worker in the Baptist Church next door to her house.
On August 20, 1910 she died. She was 80 years old. Her brother, Lucius Biglow, was her heir and
received title to the house. He settled the estate by selling the property at 113 West Church to Dr. Fred
Colony and his wife, Edith, in March 1911. Very shortly after, the Colony's and their two children, Martin
V. and Alice, moved into the house. Dr. Colony and his wife, were a popular Evansville couple.
Fred Colony, a native of Janesville, was born in 1865. He came to Evansville as a young man. He worked
in a local drug store, known as the Sonn's Drug Store in the late 1880s. Unsure of his life's vocation,
Fred taught school at Attica in 1889. Then he decided to attend Rush Medical College in Chicago.
This was the college chosen most often by young men from Evansville who wanted to become physicians
and surgeons. To pay his expenses, during the second year of school, Fred, worked for a Chicago
physician. He was hired to respond to the doctor's night calls.
After attending Rush Medical College for two years, Fred Colony received his sheepskin and became a
full-fledged physician in March 1891. He came back to Evansville to practice. His office was located
above Dr. Evans' Drug Store, at the southeast corner of Main and Madison Streets.
Seven years later, Edith Pratt and Fred Colony were married on July 7, 1898 at the home of her mother.
The wedding was a quiet affair, because Edith's father had recently died.
Edith had lived in Evansville most of her life. She was an early member of the Woman's Literary Club.
After their marriage, the Colony's lived in several houses and her mother sometimes lived with the young
couple.
Colony was fond of fast horses and shortly after he set up his practice he began to invest in good driving
horses. When automobiles became available, the doctor was one of the first to buy one. He purchased a
new Rambler in 1907 and when the weather and roads permited, he used the car to make his rounds.
According to an ad by local Rambler agent, Clarence Baker, a Model 21 Rambler was selling for $1,350 in
1907. Colony purchased a Cadillac two years later. He frequently would take friends and family on
Sunday afternoon rides. The Review reported that a trip to Janesville could be made in one hour by auto.
An Evansville promotional brochure published in 1910 praises Dr. Colony: "He has always been foremost
in adopting the latest and best developments of science or convenience and when the introduction of the
automobile gave a new spur to the practice of medicine as a first aid to the injured, he was one of the first
to invest."
Colony became a first ward alderman for the City of Evansville in 1910. He promoted the restoration of
the dam at the park in Lake Leota as well as a landscaping plan for lagoons and an amphetheter, but the
proposal was turned down by the voters.
Edith Colony was born in Sun Prairie, and her father, who operated a grocery, moved to Evansville.
Except for a short period of time that her family lived in California and Janesville, she spent her entire life
in Evansville. She was very active in the Mothers' and Others' Club, an early form of a parent-teacher
support group for the public schools.
In 1916, Edith Colony died unexpectedly leaving Fred with the two children to raise. Their son, Martin,
was sixteen years old and their daughter, Alice, eleven. Edith was praised for her beautiful home life and
her "kind and loving ministrations, flowers and succor for the sick and needy." The funeral was held at
the home on Church Street.
Dr. Colony and the children continued to live in the house for three more years. In 1919, the house was
sold to John Eugene Montgomery (usually called Eugene) and his wife, Kate.
Dr. Colony hired Dan Finnane, a local auctioneer to call an auction of household goods at his residence
on Church Street. The sale was held on November 6, 1919 and included “household goods of all kinds,”
according to the auction advertisements.
The Montgomerys moved to Evansville from the family farm on Jug Prairie, west of Evansville. John had
inherited the farm from his father, John Jackson Montgomery, who had retired to the home at 42
Montgomery Court.
For a brief period of time in his youth, Eugene worked for Frank Crow in the Crow Drug Store in
Evansville, but his true vocation was farming. In November 1896, he married Kate Adell Starkweather and
they had three children, Alvin, Caryl, and Lyle. They farmed until moving to Evansville in 1919. Their
house for a short time was home to three generations of their family and became the site of many
gatherings, happy and sad.
Kate's 88-year-old mother, Sarah Ryan Starkweather, came to live in the house with them. The
Starkweathers had farmed near Cooksville until 1900 when they moved to Evansville for two years so that
her foster daughter, Mabel Ames, could attend the Evansville High School. Mabel later wrote a book of
poetry, "Rosemary and Rue" published in 1932 by the Antes Press in Evansville.
The Starkweathers moved to a farm near Brooklyn in 1902. Her husband, Harvey, died in 1910 and she
lived on the Brooklyn farm until the Montgomery family moved into the house on Church Street. Sarah
died at her daughter's home in January 1921.
When the Montgomery's came to Evansville, their son, Alvin, was already a student at the University of
Wisconsin. He received his degree in Chemical Engineering in 1921. For many years he worked in the
Chicago office of the J. O. Ross Engineering Company. After retiring in 1953, he moved to California.
Alvin provided much of the biographical information about the Montgomerys, as he spent more than sixty
years researching the family history, tracing it back to early Colonial times.
Alvin spent vacations and holidays at his parents home on Church Street and in later years, he recalled
that he had been fascinated with items stored in the attic. One of the interesting boxes left by a previous
owner contained glass negatives of pictures taken in Evansville.
Caryl Kathryn Montgomery, Kate and Eugene's only daughter, was married in her parents' house on West
Church Street on August 16, 1924. The bride wore a gown of pearl crepe de chine and carried a bouquet
of roses. Garden flowers were used in the bouquet of her maid of honor. The groom, Len Gay, was from
Madison and after the ceremony the young couple went to live in that city.
The Montgomery's youngest son, Lyell Starkweather Montgomery, was 16 years old when they moved
into the house on Church Street. In 1929, he became a sales manager for the Wisconsin Air College,
located between Janesville and Beloit at the air port there. The school trained pilots had four training
planes, two open and two closed. Lyell later became Manager and President of the Gale Packing Co. in
Galesville, Wisconsin.
In 1938, Eugene Montgomery celebrated his 80th birthday in the home on West Church Street. Shortly
after that, the Montgomerys sold their home, and most of their furniture. Eugene went to live in the
Wisconsin Masonic Home at Dousman, Wisconsin until his death in 1951. However, his wife, Kate,
refused to leave her friends in Evansville. When she could no longer live alone, she went to live in the
Attic Angel Nursing Home in Madison and died there at the age of 97, in 1962.
The Montgomerys sold the house at 113 West Church Street to Laverna Gillies Houghton in October
1940. Laverna and her father, James Gillies, moved into the house. Laverna was born in 1877 in Union
Township and her family had moved to Janesville so that she could attend the high school there. She
graduated from the University of Wisconsin. Her mother died in 1897 and she and her father moved back
to Evansville. He went into the real estate business with Marshall Fisher.
In 1904, Laverna, Daisy Spencer, and Gertrude Eager sailed to Europe on the Princess Louise, a
German-Lloyd steamer. The girls spent four months taking the Grand Tour of Europe, visiting many
historical points on the British Isles and Continental Europe. They left New York harbor on April 23, 1904
and returned September 5.
The three women were asked to give talks about their tour and eventually formed a traveling club. By
1906 the club was named The Tourist Club. In 1913, Laverna, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin,
became the bride of Fred Prescott Haughton and they made their home in Duluth. He died in 1933.
Laverna returned to Evansville in 1940 to care for her 90 year old father, James Gillies. Her home on
Church Street became a hub of activity during World War II. She organized a sewing club to make
clothing for people in war-torn England. About forty women gathered in her home to help sew items to be
sent abroad.
James Gillies died at home in December 1945. As the only child, Laverna, was left to dispose of the real
estate holdings of her father.
Laverna made changes to the house by removing a wall on the first floor, creating a long living room on
the east side of the house, where originally there had been two rooms. She remained in the house at 113
West Church until 1953 when she sold it to Don and Aneta Capron.
The Caprons modernized the kitchen and enclosed the back porch. The large glassed-in porch gave a
lovely view of the large lawn in the back of the house. They also purchased part of the Gray-Waddell
property to the west, to enlarge their side yard.
A garage was added close to the house, but the large barn near the back alley was maintained. It serves
as a reminder of the days when horses and later Dr. Colony's automobiles were housed there.
Don Capron operated a small business, Capron's L.P. Gas Service in Evansville and Orfordville until his
death in 1968. Both Aneta and Ira Donald Capron were natives of Beloit and were married there in 1934.
They had lived in Madison, before moving to Evansville with their daughters, Margaret and Sally.
Aneta became a member of the Tourist Club, first organized because of the travels of Laverna Gillies and
her friends. The Caprons were active members of the Congregational Church and Aneta was one of the
Evansville community members responsible for the organization of the local nursing home. She served on
the Board of Directors of The Evansville Manor from the time it opened in the early 1970s until her death
in 1989.
Today the house at 113 West Church is the home of Margaret and Gordon Brigham. Margaret is the
daughter of Aneta and Don Capron and she and Gordon have operated the hardware store in Evansville
since 1970, first as the Coast to Coast Store located at 13 West Main Street and later on East Main
Street, today known as the Ace Hardware Store.
The Brighams have added a deck to the south side of the glassed-in porch built by Margaret's parents.
They have recently painted the house to highlight the decorative detail of the trim. The house is today,
as the Enterprise described it in 1884, "one of the best and handsomest residences this place affords."