Included in the Shoemaker Collection are:
"E side Germantown Road, third house below W Walnut
Lane. The Post Office of Germantown in President Jackson's Time"
"This house is No 5073 (old numbering system) Main St. just below Walnut Lane, & was possibly built by Dr. Christoper Warmer, now spelled Warner, if the supposition is correct it was about 1770, but it may have been erected earlier; certain it is he owned & another one adjoining, which he willed to his daughter Elizabeth who married John (L?)iebert. The frame building was of much more recent origin than the stone, & was probably built about the time the Post Office occupied it, which Hotchkins says was in Jackson's administration, it certainly was in the fifties, as I did not come to Gtn until 1859 & 'Tommy' McDowell was then Post Master, & remained so for some years after. In those days there was no free delivery, people going to the office for their letters.
"The McDowells combined with the important official position they held, that of storekeepers, selling candy & segars, which they continued after they lost their government position, & it was the proper thing for the children of the neighborhood to take their pennies to 'Tommy's.'
"The walls were thick & solid in the main building. A closet cut into the wall was like the...old book cases in an English University. Several inches of accumulated whitewash were once taken from the walls on the first floor, the room yielding 56 buckets of scrapings: showing how well the old white washers did their duty, this part was always used as a dwelling.
"The last tenant was J. Francis the cobbler.
"I head the article 'Thos McDowell's', but he, I believe never owned it, though he occupied it for so many years that it was always spoken of as his. Geo. W. Carpenter's Est. being the owners, & they sold about 1887 to Jno Kerrigan who tore it down & erected the present brick structure."
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