214 West 2nd Street
Mary Holmes Maxham (1807-1877)
Widow Mary Maxham came from Vermont and built this yellow brick (burnt brick) house as an affluent elderly lady. At the time of its building the projecting bay windows gave the house an urban charm that was more stylish than the surrounding farm houses. It was considered a “high class house for those early times” and was a popular cross-wing architectural style of the early United States. [1] Like other structures of “burnt” bricks, the house has a three-foot rock foundation to protect the bricks from effects of rain and moist soil. Presently the exterior bricks are covered with siding, but the rock foundation is still visible.
In 1871 the house and property totaled three- and one-half acres. Mary Maxham had the house built in the center of the rural Lynne village, about 300 feet from the school house which was the center of community activities. On her first Sunday at church (in the school house) she walked down the aisle with the aid of a cane; Mary Hutchens, about age 14, noticed the chairs were filled, so she jumped up and offered the stranger, Sister Maxham, her seat.
That evening Mary Maxham requested that Mary Hutches live with her and earn one dollar a week. The Maxham house was on the west side of the school and the Hutchens house was on the east side of the school. Mary Hutchen’s mother permitted Mary to live at the Maxham house if she would come home one day a week and help with the Hutchens washing and then take the ironing back and do that. This Mary did. In fact, she did her grandmother’s washing and ironing and Mrs. Maxham’s too. Before long, Mrs. Maxham was known as “Aunt Mary” to all the Hutchens family. [2]
Mary Maxham had one son, Isaiah T. Maxham, who died in the Civil War in 1864. When Mary Maxham died in 1877, she left her house and property to the William Hutchens family. [3]
[1] - Carter and Goss, Utah’s Historic Architecture, 1847-1940, 1988, Utah State Historical Society, p.37-43.
[2] - Autobiography of Mary Elizabeth Hutchens Sherner, Mary Elizabeth- Her Stories, transcribed by Dorothy A Sherner and Laura Sherner Welker, manuscript, 1933, p. 48, 55, 56, 79.
[3] - Utah U S Wills and Probate Records, 1800-1985.