Murdock, Staples and R J Wheeler Connection
by Robert Molenda
Now, here is the deal! The inside skinny on Hollis and Isaac. They had to be neighbors. Staples was a bit older than Murdock by about sixteen years. Murdock was a lawyer and a judge in quick succession. He came to Stillwater in 1855 just after receiving his law degree. He passed the bar the next year and became a judge a few years later. Staples, on the other hand came to Stillwater in 1853, checking out the St. Croix Valley lumber expanse for his wealthy lumber friends from Maine. Staples and Murdock were both successful in their endeavors. Murdock was a director of both the Stillwater and St. Paul Railroad Company and the First National Bank of Stillwater. Staples was a lumberman, interested in both transportation and banking along with other interests integrated into the lumbering business. They had to have crossed pathways many times because of their common interests and pursuits.
Murdock built his house on the north hill in 1859. The judge and his family must have had a magnificent view from anywhere on his property. Both Isaac Staples and Hollis Murdock were accomplished men of their times. All of a sudden in 1869, Isaac Staples decides to acquire the property to Murdock’s south. He wanted to be able to walk down to his sawmill and flour mill below on Main Street and oversee his other businesses elsewhere downtown.
So here we have it. These two guys were important to Stillwater. They lived nearby and had completely different lives and connections.
Staples contracted to build his mansion atop Government Hill, the present location of Pioneer Park. The view of Lake St. Croix was exceptional, but his new mansion would be directly in line with the view from Murdock’s home located due north of Staple’s mansion. Staples built his mansion in 1871. It was a grand building and the center of social activity after it was built. It was very expensive, but it did enable Staples to to walk down the stairway to his businesses below the hill. So, here were these two successful men, pioneers in Stillwater living next to each other as neighbors. Imagine what kind of conversations took place between them as neighbors and professionals.
The building had a Ballroom, it was grand.! Isaac had a garden, a basement with a furnace, a total of three stories and a Mansard roof. The two men had to interact with one another on a regular basis, but it might make you wonder about the judge having lost the view to the south and how that might or might not bother him or his family.
The Murdock property and Staples property coincided from 1871 to when Murdock died in 1891. Murdock’s wife took over the property at that time. So, Murdock and Staples were neighbors for at least twenty years. Staples died in 1898, leaving the mansion to his large family. The irony here is that nobody could or wanted to afford to upkeep the large mansion. The Staples mansion was razed in 1906 as it sat vacant for many years. The Murdock property at 210 Laurel Street was sold many times over all these years until the present. All the people who lived there were successful and active in the Stillwater community. This building still stands there proudly today. If only it could talk. Sadly, the Isaac Staples Mansion is gone, but for these few photos from the John Runk Collection.
Presently the home of Judge Hollis Murdock is an elegant group VRBO (Vacation Rental By Owner), hosted by Mr. Matthew Stepaniak a few years ago. Matthew is an interesting young man who comes from another interesting family. The big bonus here is that Matthew introduced me to his mother, Nancy Stepaniak, who happens to be the great-great-grand niece of Isaac Staples! She is a delightful woman who was kind enough to show me a lot of photos of her family when they visited Stillwater and had reunions of the Staples family. Matthew, showed me a hand-drawn copy of his family tree, showing the direct line to the brother of Isaac Staples. What is the likelihood of meeting someone related to the Isaac Staples family more than 100 years after the mansion was razed? This is what happens when someone in Stillwater asks a question like, “Does anyone know someone related to Isaac Staples?” The photos that Nancy showed me were taken in Pioneer Park, which is where the elegant mansion once stood. There is a depression in the center of the park where the basement of the mansion was located. At the time the picture was taken, there was a fireplace there for grilling purposes in the public park. How about a terraced wall to the south that was used to grow grapes? There also was a greenhouse to the east of the mansion. We do not want to forget the ballroom on the upper floor. The Sanborn Fire maps showed the layout of the Staples mansion. Close your eyes, imagine what it must have been like to be there!
So, here are Matthew and Nancy, son and mother, both relatives of Isaac Staples’ family hosting the home of Judge, Hollis Murdock, Isaac’s neighbor, more than one hundred years after the Staple’s mansion was razed!
Even this writer has a distant connection to the Murdock property. When my family settled in Stillwater in 1972, we bought a home on nearby east Linden Street. One of my neighbors was Joe O’Brien, who lived in a small home atop a walled structure on north Second Street, just south of Linden Street. Joe himself was an interesting character, but he told me that when he was a little boy in the early 1900’s, he played hookey from school to watch men and horses move a house from the Murdock property to 114 East Linden Street. He told me how they brought in the house and attached it to the remnants of another house that was located a few lots east of its present location.
In many old photographs and drawings of Linden Street, you could always see a home that was three stories high, with a mansard roof on the top floor. I checked the Sanborn Fire Maps from 1898 and 1904 and it shows the location of the building with the mansard roof in 1898. In the 1898 map, it shows that there was a fire in the building and that it was located at the address 118 East Linden Street. The following map in 1904 shows the new location at 114 East Linden Street and it shows a hip roof design and a different building layout. You could see where two buildings were attached. From the same set of maps, you could also see where the added building came from on the Murdock property. The dimensions of the two buildings also coincided. When working on the building itself, I could see where the two buildings were joined together. The other mystery that was solved was why there was a stairway up to the attic when there was no way anyone could stand upright when they were in the attic! So, if you visit 114 East Linden Street, you will see one building that really is made from two! One is the original building that stood atop the stone wall at 118 East Linden Street, the other would be the building that was moved from the Hollis Murdock property and joined. Here we are more than a hundred years later, rediscovering Stillwater and wondering how they moved houses up and down hills with horses and wagons and marveling as to how things got done. This story has taken us about three blocks downhill from the Staples and Murdock property, we have gone from a distinguished judge plus a lumber baron and some of his family, to a riverboat captain and partner in the log rafting business, Mr. R J Wheeler. The steamboat captain lived at 118 East Linden Street.
Most of these buildings are gone or moved and what is left has changed considerably. What remains are the stories and the people who brought life to the stories. In many of the John Runk Photos, what is sometimes more important is what the photograph does not reveal. There are a few photographs of the Isaac Staples mansion, but often the Murdock property is hidden from view. So, what is not gone, is hidden. This sounds like a Jerry Seinfeld episode. A story about nothing! The Staples Mansion is gone, razed in 1906. The Murdock property is here, but it was hidden from a lot of the historical photos. You need to take most of this tour with your imagination. Welcome to Stillwater!
One more thing about Murdock is the safe that is still in the house. It is a huge and heavy safe for a residence and it makes people think of what Hollis Murdock kept inside the safe. Matthew Stepaniak has a good answer, “The judge kept his friends close, but his money closer”.
