This property was sold by William H. King and his wife, Annie, in 1895 to Louis H. Klair (1870-1952) who presumably built the double home. Louis Klair served on the City Council in the 1920s and became a director of the Havre de Grace Banking and Trust Company in 1934. He and his wife, Cora (1872-1954), lived here with their three children, Dorothy R. Spencer (1897-1974), George Werner Klair (1901-1999), and Louise Klair Gorsuch (1903-1983).

Around the year 1900, Louis Klair and Cora began a modest grocery store here. As patronage grew, so did their stock of merchandise. Within a few years Klair’s Grocery store, or “Pop Klair’s” (a “GA Store,” a Grocery Country Store Co-Op) became very successful. They stocked canned goods, meats, poultry, fish, vegetables, and fruits. And, having telephone service since 1916, they even delivered groceries. They had a large storage shed in their garden just north of their house. Paul Gibson, the decoy carver, left school in 1916 (when he was 14) and worked here for the Klairs until 1940. Their grandson, George R. “Dick” Klair, also remembers delivering groceries for them.

The building used to have a huge grape arbor in the back garden (as well as the storage shed) from which the Klairs made and sold grape jelly in the store. And they used to have big jars of oatmeal cookies, made by Cora, that “were wonderful.” People today describe how as kids they found it fun to watch “Mrs. Klair” use her "reacher/grabber" to get canned goods down from the higher shelves. As the years passed, Louis and Cora’s son, George Werner Klair, and his wife, Lillie, began helping to run the store in the 1930s and 1940s. However, in the early 1950s, with local competition, and the death of Louis in 1952 and Cora in 1954, the store closed.

Cora Klair bequeathed the property to their three children on her death. Their daughter, Dorothy, was married to A. Hughes Spencer; George W. was married to Lillie Klair; and Louise K. Gorsuch was the widow of W. Stanley Gorsuch. The Spencers may have lived in this home because a neighbor, Victoria Brown Swanson, can remember “Mr. Spencer whistling Easter Parade as he tended the fabulous azalea bushes.”

Dorothy Spencer bought the building from her siblings in 1956 and upon her death in 1974 left it to her husband, Hugh Spencer. The building was converted into two separate homes and became a rental property. When Hugh Spencer died in 1985, he bequeathed it to Joyce E. Gorsuch, daughter of Louise and Stanley Gorsuch, and George R. “Dick” Klair, son of George W. and Lillie Klair. The property continued to be a rental, and Fred Packard says he and his late wife, Cathy, lived in #803 during the late 1980s.

Currently this historic building is owned and lived in by Joan Klair Beam, daughter of Dick Klair and wife of Richard E. Beam. The Beams have been working to renovate and repair the building and have converted it back to being a single family home with all new electricity and plumbing.

County Records
Built 1900, 2650 sq ft, 3 baths, 2 stories with basement, 15,400 sq ft lot.