Willmarth Property (Chester Clark House), 1101 Burcham Dr. (1905)

This site is the last remnant of a farm known as the Willmarth Property which dates back to its first white settler, Hiram Willmarth (1793–1854), who initially saw the land as a government surveyor, “found it good,” and in 1837 acquired land patents for more than one thousand acres in Meridian Township including a full square mile of land bounded today by Alton Road, Burcham Drive, Timberlane Street, and Lake Lansing Road. The section line now known as Hagadorn Road was the approximate centerline of this expanse, and Hiram built his homestead near a spot that is now the northwest corner of Hagadorn and Saginaw Highway (M-78). The house burned down in the mid-1950s.¹

By 1874, the only part of the thousand acres still owned by someone named Willmarth was the 120-acre portion on the west side of Hagadorn Road from Saginaw Highway to Burcham Drive held by Hiram’s brother, Asa D. Willmarth. When Asa died in 1878 his will divided the land in thirds, with forty acres going to each of his three sons Orrin, Edwin, and Harvey. (More specifically, Asa’s wife Louisa owned the middle third until her death in 1905, after which it was obliged to transfer to Edwin.) In lieu of land, Asa and Louisa’s four daughters each received about $400 in total from their brothers.²

Sources disagree as to when the house at 1101 Burcham Drive was built—the city property record says 1894, while East Lansing Historic Commission documents state 1905.^† In any case it seems to have been built as a residence for Harvey (1847–1927) and his sisters Lydia Willmarth (1849–1918), Emma Orisa Willmarth (1850–1923), and Mary E. Willmarth Simons (1855–1941). Although the lot is laid out very much like a farmstead, with the house facing a courtyard/driveway, and a small barn set back further from the road, it is not clear whether this group of buildings was used to work the farm, which by 1914 had been subdivided down to thirty-five acres. After Harvey’s death in 1927, the last surviving sister Mary moved to Willow Manor in Lansing, a charitable home for widowed and elderly women.³

Chester F. Clark (1899–1957, M.S.C. DVM ’29) joined the College in 1929 as a Technician in Animal Pathology, gradually improving his academic rank in that Department. In 1946 he resigned his position as Associate Professor to be appointed State Veterinarian of Michigan. Three years later he returned to the College as Professor and Head of the Department of Surgery and Medicine, and served as Dean of Veterinary Medicine from 1951 until his death.⁴

Dr. Clark purchased this house in 1936. The previous owner, who acquired it from the Willmarth estate, had dug out the basement. In subsequent years, many changes transformed the original, boxy structure:

• The existing “east side entrance and porch bonnet [were] added probably during the 1930s.”
• The addition to the north was built in the early 1940s, replacing “the original barn and outbuildings (chicken coop, summer kitchen).” Around that same time the existing barn/garage was added; the Clark family “used to keep a cow and chickens in it.”
• The original front porch and entrance, facing Burcham on the south side of the house, were removed in the early 1950s and a fireplace and chimney built in their place. A bay window on the west side and a picture window on the east side were also installed around this time.⁵

The house was owned by descendants of Chester Clark and used as rental property until it was sold in November 2023.⁶

The lot lies at the southwest corner of what is now the Lantern Hill subdivision, which was developed in the 1950s as a faculty housing cooperative. Note that original Historic Commission documents list this site as 1107 Burcham, which is the lot just to the east, and spell the Willmarth name with one ‘L’ despite substantial evidence for two.

1. LSJ, 29 Jan 1956, p. 30. ↩︎
2. Beers, p. 51. ↩︎
3. U.S. Census (1910, 1920). Chadwick, p. 1. ↩︎
4. Minutes, 20 Sep 1957 et al. ↩︎
5. FSD (1935), p. 10; (1936), p. 11. Nichols, email of 18 Jun 2007. ↩︎
6. E.L. Planning Commission minutes, 10 Nov 2004. Zillow listing, retrieved 4 Jan 2024. ↩︎

1. † A 1967 Lansing State Journal article by staff writer William J. Duchaine makes the claim that 1101 Burcham is the “1859 Mary Willmarth House” mentioned on the historic marker at Old Marble School. Duchaine wrote the article in advance of that marker’s installation, so his uncited source was likely the same person or persons who did the research for the marker itself. Unfortunately the article contains numerous statements that are contradicted by other sources.

   It is exciting to think that this house could possibly date from the pre-Civil War era, but I have found only one Mary among the Willmarth family, and while she was the last member of the family to live here (in 1927), she was only four years old in 1859. The house does not appear in the 1874 Beers township map, and census data imply that Mary, along with her siblings Edwin, Harvey, and Lydia, was living with their mother Louisa on Hagadorn Road as late as 1900. In short I have not been able to reconcile Duchaine’s article with any other sources about this house, and its actual build date (1859, 1894, or 1905) remains a mystery.↩︎