Taken from the website, "Stop #24 on The Lafayette Trail
Description MIHT HA-1111 February 1977 (
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“The Carver House is a beautifully maintained example of a Queen Anne and Stick Style cottage. The house, marked by the crisp detail and structural integrity which characterizes the Stick Style has irregular massing, multiple roof lines, prominent porches and variety of materials (brick, clapboard, shingled gables, stained glass, etc.) which distinguish the Queen Anne. The Carver House retains many noteworthy original features such as metal roof cresting and stained glass window and door lights, including two examples of opalescent, jeweled stained glass.” At the time of the inventory, this was owned by G. Howlett Cobourn.
This house and the one south of it (123 South Union Avenue) are of the same style, a combination of Queen Anne and Stick Styles and there is also a family relationship between the two. Arthur Vosbury (1832-1889), and his wife, Joanna, built these homes as wedding presents for their two children. This Carver House was built for Nettie J. Vosbury (1859-1920), who married A. Hamlin Carver (1857-1943); the Vosbury House at 123 South Union Avenue was built for Louis A. Vosbury (1865-1935) and his wife, Sadie Vosbury.
Arthur Vosbury was a successful businessman, banker, and manager of the Havre de Grace Branch of the New York DuBois Lumber Company, who came to Havre de Grace in 1866. In early years, logs were transported on rafts downriver to the local log pond. At the DuBois Mill (on the water at the foot of Fountain Street) the logs were used for building materials with even the rafts being taken apart for the lumber. Many structures in town, including these two houses, were framed from the trimmed logs.
The lot for this house was purchased by Henry Carver (1828-1888) in 1878. Henry and Mary Carver sold the lot to their son, A. Hamlin Carver, in 1886 and it was on this lot that Arthur Vosbury built the home for his daughter, Nettie Vosbury, who was marrying A. Hamlin Carver. Designs for the construction of such houses were often published in magazines and in pattern books, such as Palliser’s Model Homes 1878 , the drawings of Andrew Jackson Downing being the earlier prototypes.
Hamlin Carver was an editor for the Havre de Grace Republican and worked for the First National Bank for many years before becoming Mayor of Havre de Grace from 1909-1911. Nettie Vosbury Carver died in 1920 and nine years later Carver mortgaged the property (and all its “pitched and cultivated crops”) to The First National Bank of Havre de Grace. In 1937, a mortgage assignee sold the property to Citizens National Bank. A. Hamlin Carver died in an auto accident six years later.
The next owners of the property were Frederick Lee Cobourn (1885-1962) and his wife, Annie, who bought it in 1940. Cobourn was a Judge in the Third Judicial Circuit Court where he served until 1953. Cobourn, and later his two children with their families, owned the house until 1982. His son was George H. Cobourn, who also became a judge, and his daughter was Lydia Lee Walgren, who married Alfred Walgren.
Rene A. Lambert (1930-2015) and his wife, Mary Clark Lambert, purchased this home in 1982. While Rene worked at the Aberdeen Proving Ground for many years, he volunteered his time to so many organizations that he was awarded a Key to the City of Havre de Grace in 2009 in honor of his many years of dedicated service to the city. Both he and Mary enjoyed historic home preservation and completed an extensive restoration of the original features of this home, such as metal roof cresting, shingled gables, stained glass window and door lights, and prominent porches. This included historic research of paint chips to reveal the home’s original paint colors, with which in 2000 they restored the original color scheme of their home.
In 2018, Mary Lambert received an Historic Preservation Award from the Havre de Grace Historic Preservation Commission for this house. Mary continues to own and live in this home, which is next door to the home of her daughter and son-in-law, Karen Lambert Gorsuch and Scott Charles Gorsuch.
County Records
Built 1883. 2940 sq ft, 1 full and two ½ baths, 2.5 stories with basement, 12,000 sq ft lot."