Purchase Price $119,900
4 bed · 2 bath · 1850 sqft
This charming frame house was built before the turn of the century. With four bedrooms and 1850 sqft it has plenty of room for all the living you want to do. The home has been well cared for but does need some modern updating. Eat-in kitchen and finished basement mean that there are places here for all your activities.
Contact: Scott Hudson at ReeceNichols IDE Capital Realty
Call: 816-262-4092
House History & Gallery
Located at 1019 S. 28th Street, this charming frame house served as a parsonage of sorts for pastors associated with the Huffman Memorial M.E. Church located just about a block away.
By 1902, the home was occupied by Rev. Edgar P. Reed and his wife Josephine Bloom Reed. It was an easy walk for Rev. Reed to his church on the corner of 28th and Seneca. It is easy to imagine the Pastor and his family walking down the lovely tree-lined street to tend to their flock. Unfortunately, tragedy struck and Josephine died at the home on July 13, 1905 at the age of just 33 leaving a 2-week-old daughter. The family had her service at the house and then her body was taken to her hometown of Osborne, MO for burial. Perhaps not surprisingly, Rev. Reed left the house soon after.
Rev. Reed’s successor at the house and the church was the Rev. Charles E. Petree. It was during his pastorate in 1916 that the church moved to its current location a bit farther from the house at 28th and Renick. Rev. Reed was a native of Andrew County and began his ministry in Cosby and then served in Union Star, King City, and Maysville before becoming district superintendent in Kirksville. He moved from Kirksville to St. Joseph in 1913. He remained here for several years before moving to a pulpit in Pennsylvania.
Henry W. Walker and his wife Janie moved their family into the house by 1920 and remained for three decades (and owned the property until at least 1967). According to the 1920 Federal Census the occupants were Henry and Janie, their daughters Elsie (age 20), Clemmie (age 17), Comalois (age 14), and Mary Lee (age 7) and Janie’s mother Lillie Roland. The entire family had been born in Kentucky before making the move to St. Joseph. Henry was a car inspector for the Burlington Railroad.
In 1920, the Walker’s eldest daughter Elsie was a stenographer in an insurance office. Soon afterward she married Christian O. Ohmdahl, an immigrant from Norway. Ohmdahl worked as a cabinet maker in a department store while he was married to Elsie. The couple lived with her family and had their children at the house. Unfortunately, Elsie died of appendicitis in 1929. Ohmdahl continued to live with his in-laws and his daughter Margaret remained with them until 1950.
Perhaps the best remembered of the Walker children was their third daughter Comalois Walker Tiller. She became a public school teacher, working for a time in Clarksdale, and was very fondly remembered by her students.
It appears that though the Walker-Ohmdahl family continued to own the property at least until Janie Walker’s death in 1967, they rented it out occasionally. Among those who lived there was Lola Faye Blevins and her son George. Lola had been married to Kenneth C. Blevins, who was the Chief Engineer at State Hospital #2 at the time of his death. Lola and Kenneth were divorced. Lola only had a 5th grade education and she had her eldest son Kenneth when she was 16 years old. She supported her family as a stenographer.
In the early 1950s, John R. Clevenger lived at 1019 and he earned a bit of notoriety in October 1952 when he admitted to stealing a watch from a desk in the Western Tablet & Stationery Co. He was sentenced to 6 months for the crime, and was released on Dec. 2, 1952. Unfortunately this was not his only brush with the law. In March 1960 he plead guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor; shockingly what really happened was that he had molested a small girl. He only received a $100 fine and 180 days in jail for the crime.
Perhaps because she became very concerned about the people who were living in the house, or perhaps because its charm had a real allure, by the mid-1950s Janie Walker returned to the home. It was there she mourned the deaths of her daughters and cheered the success of her granddaughter Margaret Ohmdahl who had won admission to Scarritt College for Christian Workers in Nashville, TN in the 1940s where she majored in religious education. Janie must have been filled with pride as Margaret moved to Cincinnati, OH to pursue her career and in 1960 when she announced her engagement to J. Duncan McKeown of Indianapolis. Certainly the grandmother would have looked back to the decades that her family lived at 1019 S. 28th Street as among the happiest in her life.
