Ownership of the land on which this house is built can be traced by deeds back to 1714 (or further) when it was owned by John Stokes (1685-1732) and the town was Harmer’s Town. It later went to Joseph and George P. Whitaker (1803-1879) of Cecil County who opened the Principio Ironworks there in 1836 and built an iron company here in 1845. The furnace was bought by A.P. McCombs (1824-1916), and named the Havre Iron Company, which he sold in 1865. The company is said to have supplied metal for guns for the government during the Civil War.

This land, reaching east to Strawberry Alley, was bought by John and Mary Hollahan (sometimes Hollihan) in 1865 and sold with a house to Margaret and James A. McLhinney (1863-1933) around 1909. When the McLhinneys sold this property in 1920, the mortgage included the wording, “In the event of a sale under this mortgage all crops of every description planted or growing on the mortgaged property shall pass to the purchaser.” Such crops were presumably growing where there are now two other houses on Bourbon Street. At that time this house was one large room with a side porch on Bourbon Street and a small porch on Washington Street, had a root cellar with an outside entrance, a well in the cellar, gas lights, and a bathroom. In 1920, Teresa and Joseph McIlvain owned the property briefly for which the McLhinneys supplied the mortgage.

This property was bought in 1921 by George A. Davis (1885-1943); he and his wife, Mary Davis (1892-1996), made this their home. They added a large addition onto the rear during the 1930s and operated a boarding house and restaurant (Davis' Dining Room) in the front part of the house from 1932 until 1943. This most likely was when they enclosed the front porch. With the running of the horse races at The Graw, and other related activities, it was a time when extra rooms and meals were in great demand in Havre de Grace.

George and Mary Davis had two daughters, Evelyn and Grace. Evelyn married William Kemp Richardson and they bought the nearby home at 352 Bourbon Street in 1937. Grace’s husband was Edward DeCamilis, a jockey, who bought the Hotel Chesapeake (on North Union Avenue) in 1943 and Evelyn ran it for him. Evelyn and William had two daughters and a son. One daughter was JoAnn, who later married James H. Swann. Another daughter was Nesta who married David Leo Costanza. Evelyn and William’s son was William K. “Billy” Richardson, Jr., who later married Priscilla. The Richardson family lived at 352 Bourbon Street for many years and later Billy bought that house and lived there with his family—Priscilla still lives there and many locals know her for having worked in Joseph’s Department Store.

George and Mary Davis’s other daughter, Grace (born about 1917), married Edward De Camillis (mentioned above) and they lived with the Davis family here.

During the late 1930s, George and Mary Davis built two one-story red brick bungalows facing Bourbon Street, directly behind their main house. They moved into 353 Bourbon Street, which allowed them to rent out more rooms in the main corner house. The second house, ending at Strawberry Alley, became 351 Bourbon Street and they sold it to offset building costs. Both of these houses have expanded over the years and are owned independently of this corner house.

After George died in 1943 at the age of 58, Mary Davis continued to operate the boarding house and restaurant for several more years until she sold it to her granddaughter and husband, JoAnn Richardson Swann and James H. "Jim" Swann in 1961. They had the land to Strawberry Alley resurveyed and divided into three separate lots. Several of the tenants continued to live in this home into the 1960s.

Jim Swann operated a well-known real estate company in Havre de Grace, first known as Colonial Services and later as Swann Realty. He maintained an office at 330 St. John Street for many years, in the window of which locals remember that he displayed several white stained-glass swans. From 1990-1992 Jim served as ER (Exhalted Ruler) of the local BPOE Lodge #1564. JoAnn Swann worked at the Aberdeen Proving Ground for about two decades, while raising four daughters. One daughter is Lawrin Walker (living in South Carolina), with whom James Swann now lives following the death of JoAnn in 2013. This ended about 57 years of his owning the house.

One of JoAnn Swann’s sisters (daughter of Evelyn and William K. Richardson) was Nesta Costanza who lived in Bel Air and predeceased her in 2009. A daughter of Nesta and David Constanza (and JoAnn’s niece) is Kimberly L. Kleinberg who, with her husband, Dr. Allen Kleinberg, bought this home in 2018 (Kim Kleinberg is the great-granddaughter of George and Mary Davis). What appeared at first to be a renovation of this historic home of the Davis-Richardson-Swann family became a completely rebuilt and greatly enlarged three-story home that sits above the original stone and brickwork root cellar. The Kleinbergs say that they created the kitchen island top with old attic beams and that the root cellar is the future home of a whiskey and wine room.

In May of 2020, the Kleinbergs moved from Bel Air into this large corner home with their daughter, Emma, a songwriter. In December 2020 and again December 2021 Emma entertained the Annual Candlelight Tours of Havre de Grace by singing from their balconies and porches.

County Records
Built 1940. 2552 sq ft, 2 stories, no basement, 2 baths, 3321 sq ft lot.