Grandma Anderson's House

Grandma Anderson's House. . , This house was built in 1918 at 800½ South Main Street, El Dorado, Kansas, (Gordon's Addition, Lot 5, Block 4) in direct response to the oil boom and the massive amounts of people moving to the area looking for housing. Originally the home was two single-room rentals. Later the wall was opened up and the house was rented as a two room home. This is an excellent example of the type of rental housing that was available to the oil boomers. It also shows the quick thinking of El Dorado citizens, who built rental houses onto the back portion of their lots for additional income., Grandma Mary Elizabeth Anderson rented and lived in this house from 1931 until the early 1950s. She rented the home from a Mr. Cropson, a radio repairman, who owned and lived in the property in front of this house., The house was never modernized with running water or plumbing. There was a water hydrant just outside the kitchen door and farther back was the outhouse., Grandma Anderson was born in 1872 and was 59 years old when she started renting this house. She had nine children from 1893 until 1912. She and her husband, Lewis Anderson, moved to El Dorado in 1919. Her children were all grown and had left home by the time she began renting this two room house. But family visited and stayed with her often in this home., After Grandma Anderson's death, her granddaughter Barbara Redburn, purchased the house for $2,600 in September 1986. It was moved to one mile east of Cambridge, Kansas by Ralph Hobson to be restored in memory of her beloved Grandmother. When the museum began the oil town living history area, the Redburns donated the house and all its contents to the museum.