Heirloom Home
Charles and Mattie Jackson House
This is one of only a few houses in Stillwater that was owned by a black family in the Nineteenth Century. Lots 4, 5, and 6, Block 2 of Holcombe’s Addition, were purchased by Charles and Mattie Jackson on June 1, 1877. In mid-November, the couple, anxious to build their house, took out a $900 mortgage from the Stillwater Building Association, followed by a second mortgage in January, 1878, for an additional $600. Their house, with its addition in the rear, is pictured on the 1879 Bird’s Eye View Map of Stillwater.
Charles Jackson was one of the few black men in Nineteenth Century Stillwater, and his biography is quite engaging. He was born a slave in central Georgia about 1851. After the Civil War, he followed the Union Army north, and eventually ended up in St. Paul, Minnesota. While working in a livery stable in St. Paul, he met Albert Lowell, proprietor of the Sawyer House, Stillwater’s grand hotel. Lowell offered him a job, and Jackson came to Stillwater to work as a barber, first for Lowell, later on his own, and at one time, as a partner with Samuel Hadley, another black barber who also lived in Holcombe’s Addition.
The 1880 U. S. Census lists the household as Charles Jackson, age 29, a barber; Mattie, his wife, age 26, born in the District of Columbia; a son, Claude, age 6; a daughter, Eva, age 3; a daughter, Lilla, age 1; and a boarder, Bernice Hadley, age 7.
After little more than a decade in the house, Charles and his family were forced to move out of the house when their mortgage was foreclosed.
Charles Jackson, one of Stillwater’s black pioneers, died in Stillwater on May 5, 1903. While there were two or three other black families in Stillwater during this period, the city was hardly an oasis of racial harmony. In keeping with the spirit of the day, the Stillwater newspapers often carried articles insulting to the Negro race. And while individual black people were tolerated, there was little kindness toward the race as a whole.
Over the years, the house has been altered considerably with a front porch that was added long after the original house was built. It would be considered a vernacular style house.
Source(s): Information complied by Donald Empson, Empson Archives on 3/24/2009. Book 1 of Deeds, page 378; Book N of Mortgages, page 96; Book N of Mortgages, page 139; 1880 U.S. Census Washington County: Stillwater: Page 245, #24; For additional information on Jackson, see Stillwater Gazette, March 5, 1886; St. Croix Valley Press, July 6, 1995, "From slave to pioneer" by Brent Peterson.
Washington County Parcel Identification Number (PIN): 3303020210012
Common Property Name: Charles and Mattie Jackson House
Neighborhood: Holcombes Addition
State Historic Preservation Office Inventory Number: WA-SWC-939
Construction Date: 1877
Architectural Style: Vernacular