This property was owned by John Gilmore at his death and sold by his heirs to James Gilmore (John’s brother) in 1901. This house most likely was already built by that time. James Gilmore and his wife were living in Pennsylvania and sold this the same year to John W. Sills, a former City Council member. When John Sills died in 1927, he left this home to his daughter, Lorelle Sills Beauchamp. She and her husband, Elon H. Beauchamp, sold this property in 1927 to Vincenzo “Jimmy” DiGiuseppe (1893-1969).

Of interest to Havre de Gracians is the connection between the above Beauchamps and our own world-renowned decoy carver, Captain Harry Jobes (1936-2019). In December 1933, The Midland Journal, No. 23, carried an announcement of the marriage of “Donald Jobes, son of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Jobes, member of the Havre de Grace Baseball Club, Susquehanna League, and Miss Lorelle Beauchamp of Wilmington, Delaware, in Chestertown, Maryland.” Lorelle Evangeline Beauchamp was the daughter of Lorelle and Elon Beauchamp who inherited this house; she and Donald Keith Jobes were the parents of Captain Harry Jobes who was born in 1936. Another newspaper reported in 1943, however, that Donald Keith Jobes filed for divorce from Lorelle (who was living in Wilmington) on the basis of abandonment and desertion.

Meanwhile, Vincenzo “Jimmy” DiGiuseppe opened the Klondike Bar in a small building adjacent to this house and where a garden now grows alongside Strawberry Lane. He also added two back rooms to the house and installed a pot belly stove in the kitchen. The Klondike became quite successful and as people got to know Jimmy, it also became known as Jimmy’s Bar. Jeanne Hawtin remembers that Jimmy’s Bar had swinging doors and her Dad used to bring a bucket to the bar, fill it with beer, and bring it back to the nearby apartment of her Aunt Nelly and Uncle Doc Green above Green’s Pharmacy where they played cards. As Jimmy grew older, locals said that his two nephews, Anthony Carcirieri (1920-2004) and Mario Carcirieri, occasionally helped him out at the bar. At some point in the 1960s there was a fire and Jimmy’s Bar burned down. The house and Jimmy survived the fire and the bar was not rebuilt.

After Jimmy died in 1969, a lengthy dispute arose between Anthony and Mario Carcirieri about ownership of Jimmy’s property. The Circuit Court resolved it by appointing a Trustee in late 1974 to sell the house at public sale. The Trustee completed the sale in January 1975 giving title to John Higgins, Jr. and Glenn A. Higgins. After about four years, they sold this to William E. Putland; a condition was that the Montgomery Ward store at 103 North Washington Street would have the right to a 13-foot-wide strip of the land for ingress and egress to Congress Avenue from the rear of its store. The verbal right had been given by Jimmy in 1957. The next owners of this house were Kevin E. Gillen and Dale Gauzza who lived in Pennsylvania; they appear to have converted the home into apartments. William P. Dunn, however, who bought it in 1992, restored it into a single family home.

In 1998 William Dunn sold this home to Colleen Webster who works as an English professor at Harford Community College, has earned a Master Naturalist Certificate from Harford County Parks, and a certificate in Environmental Studies from Johns Hopkins University. Her many talents include being an artist which was immediately apparent when she painted her new house a vivid turquoise color with yellow and pink accents.

In 2015, Colleen was kind enough to open her eye-catching home to the Annual Candlelight Tour. Inside, visitors found many original artworks, paintings, pottery and wall reliefs. In addition to using doors as canvases for paintings, and gluing old tiles and sea glass to various surfaces, Colleen’s artwork comprises unique recycled objects that have been discarded by others, she said. A coffee table is made from a window, the dining room table is constructed from a bedroom door, and the outdoor table was originally a carriage house door. To achieve a cathedral ceiling in the master bedroom, Colleen removed the floor of the attic above it. Many plants and large paper butterflies and birds seem to fly freely around the house. Colleen converted a bedroom into a huge walk-around closet, filled with period and artsy clothing that she finds in consignment shops. Her decor reflects her pursuit of literature, art and performance, and love of the natural world, which continues into her garden filled with plants and fruit trees and random verses of poetry.

County Records
Built 1900. 1502 sq ft, 1 bath, 2 stories with basement, detached garage, 2910 sq ft.