DONNELLAN HOUSE: A VICTORIAN GEM LOST

Can a demolished house still tell us valuable stories about Laramie’s history? Consider the stately Donnellan home. It stood at 605 E. Grand Ave. for more than 75 years before being razed.

FORT SANDERS ORIGIN

The house was built three miles south of Laramie on the Fort Sanders Military Reservation in 1866. After Fort Sanders closed in 1882, the government offered several military buildings for sale, including eight officers’ quarters, which reportedly sold for $2,000 each.

In 1883, Colonel John W. Donnellan (1841-1917) purchased and moved a large former officer’s home to the northeast corner of 6th Street and South B Street (East Grand Avenue). Donnellan chose the home of a distinguished Civil War veteran, General Innis N. Palmer, who served as Regimental and Post Commander at Fort Sanders between October 1872 and September 1876.

COL. JOHN W. DONNELLAN

Donnellan was born in 1841 in County Clare, Ireland, and came to America with his parents by 1851, settling in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1859, he traveled to Colorado, where he engaged in mining at the Tarryall Creek Mine southwest of Denver. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he returned to Cincinnati and enlisted in Company C, 83rd Volunteer Infantry. He was later commissioned Lt. Col., 27th Infantry, U.S. Colored Troops, Ohio. His 1917 California obituary says the commission was “bestowed personally by President Lincoln.”

In 1866, he returned to work in the Colorado mining camp, but the severe wounds he had received during the war troubled him, and he left the mountains. He moved to Wyoming and in 1868 he established the Laramie branch of the first bank in Wyoming Territory, H. J. Rogers and Company, which started in Cheyenne in 1867.

Donnellan made significant contributions to Wyoming’s early history. In July 1869, he was elected President of the Republican Territorial Central Committee. Gov. John Campbell appointed him the first Treasurer of Wyoming Territory, a position he held from December 1869 through October 1872. In 1870, Campbell appointed him as colonel commanding the Militia of the 2nd Military District for the section along the railroad in Albany and Carbon Counties, Wyoming Territory. He was elected Albany County Probate Judge in 1876 and was also County Treasurer. Donnellan was later Commander of the Department of Colorado and Wyoming, Grand Army of the Republic.

On May 19, 1870 in Denver, Donnellan married Marian McNasser, daughter of Col. James McNasser. They had four children, John Tilton, Olive, Kenneth, and Edna. The oldest and youngest were born in Laramie, and the others in Denver, where the Donnellan family lived from 1872 to 1876 before moving back to Laramie.

In 1880, Donnellan, with Henry G. Balch and Daniel C. Bacon, organized the Laramie National Bank, where he was cashier and manager until 1889. He then moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, where he assisted Balch and Bacon in founding Commercial National Bank and served as cashier and manager.

After retiring in 1903, Col. and Mrs. Donnellan moved to Sacramento, California, where her parents once lived. He died on July 26, 1917 and she on July 12, 1934, both in Sacramento.

IVINSON RENTAL

Following the Donnellan family’s move to Utah in 1890, they retained ownership of their Laramie house until 1901.

In 1891, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ivinson rented the Donnellan house while their new home at 6th and Thornburgh (Ivinson Avenue), now the Laramie Plains Museum, was being constructed. After the Ivinsons moved into their new residence, John W. Connor, acting as Col. Donnellan’s agent, managed rentals for the Donnellan home.

FIRE AT DONNELLAN HOME

By 1896, Mrs. Anna Mostler was renting the house. She offered room and board, and advertised "Christmas Dinner at Mrs. Mostler's, 605 Grand Avenue (Donnellan house)."

On January 9, 1897, a fire occurred at the Donnellan house, causing about $200 in damage. Three people, including Mostler and two boarders, were indicted, and arrested for arson. Newspapers were full of assertions that careful plans had been made for the destruction of the house. The trial began on March 16, 1897, with the jury seated and several witnesses testifying.

However, in a sudden turn the next day, the Laramie Republican reported that Prosecuting Attorney M. C. Jahren moved to dismiss the case against all defendants "as the prosecution had failed to bring out the testimony from their witnesses which they had reason to believe and were informed they could obtain from them." Judge Charles W. Bramel thanked the jury and declared the defendants exonerated from all charges.

By 1900, James and Sarah Gray were renting the Donnellan house with their eight children and four boarders.

DONNELLANS SELL

Col. Donnellan sold the house in 1901 to Mr. and Mrs. William H. Frazee, proprietors of The Leader, a downtown store. The February 14, 1901 Laramie Boomerang stated, “The Donnellan residence occupies a quarter of a block and is therefore a tract 132-foot square, extending from the corner of the street to the alley, and abutting the grounds of the late Senator Balch.”

William Frazee was elected in 1902 to a 2-year term as Wyoming State Senator. In 1907 he moved to Utah, selling the Donnellan house to Harriet Balch Emmons. She was the widow of State Senator and Laramie banker Henry G. Balch, who died in 1901; she married W. B. Emmons in 1902. Harriet Emmons transferred the Donnellan house to City Realty Company in 1908; it was later transferred to Union Realty Company.

GRAND AVENUE HOSPITAL

By July 1911, the Donnellan house was turned over to Laramie physicians who established Grand Avenue Hospital where many surgeries were performed and babies were born during the next six years. The building was abandoned as a hospital in 1917 when Ivinson Hospital opened at 10th Street and Thornburgh Street (Ivinson Avenue). The Donnellan house then reverted to its owner, Union Realty Company.

Harriet Balch, who had divorced Mr. Emmons, purchased the Donnellan house again in December 1917 from Union Realty Company, and moved in after renovations were completed. In 1920, she sold the house to Mr. and Mrs. Steven Frazer.

SORORITY HOUSE

The Frazers sold the Donnellan house around 1924 to Gamma Zeta Sorority, which later became Kappa Kappa Gamma Sorority. It occupied the house until 1941, when it moved to a new house on the UW campus.

Kappa Delta Sorority then occupied the Donnellan house from 1941 until 1953, when construction of its new house on campus was completed.

HISTORY DISAPPEARED

Mrs. Jessie Meredith occupied the Donnellan house in 1957, when she advertised “Room and Board at 605 Grand - $75/month or board only $60/month. Three meals a day, six days a week. One meal Sunday.”

In January 1958, Bob Westbrook, auctioneer, advertised a “Public Auction of all equipment and 14 rooms of furnishings, including hospital beds, belonging to Meredith Rest Home, 605 Grand Avenue, Laramie.”

The Donnellan house was demolished in about 1959 to make way for the new Safeway store, erasing all evidence of this Laramie landmark. Advance Auto Parts and Ace Hardware now occupy the location.

By Jan Botkin Therkildsen

Editor’s Note: Jan Botkin Therkildsen, a board member of the Albany County Historical Society, discovered the Fort Sanders beginnings of the Donnellan house when she learned that her former sorority, Kappa Delta, had occupied the house in the 1940s. Another very similar Fort Sanders officer's home was purchased by Nathaniel K. Boswell, early Albany County Sheriff, and moved to the northwest corner of 5th and South B Street (Grand Avenue), where it stood until 1961. It was then moved to LaBonte Park. The city now leases it to Feeding Laramie Valley.

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