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Captain Walsh’s Home |
This magnificent old prefabricated Gothic Revival Carpenter’s Cottage at 235 East L Street, might better be called “the house that Eleanor built.” Eleanor Walsh was the wife of Captain John Walsh. Captain Walsh had a regular sailing run from his home port of Valparaiso, Chile to Canton China. While Eleanor Walsh was in Valparaiso, she bought several lots of land in Benicia. She was a shrewd business person and arranged for the erection and rental of the house. Eleanor’s house was a prefabricated cottage that was designed and constructed on the east coast then shipped around the horn and reassembled where it now stands. Records indicate that the cottage was completed before December 1850. Eleanor and the Walsh family would not move into the house for several years. Its first resident appears to have been John B. Frisbie. Frisbie had married General Mariano Vallejo’s second child, Epifania de Guadalupe Vallejo, and they lived in the house for some time. It was very unusual for a married woman to transact business under her own name at that time. Until the legislature abandoned the practice later in the 19th century, such transactions had to be recorded and registered in the County where the woman operated. The Solano County record book entitled, Married Women Doing Business in Their Own Names, showed that Eleanor was quite busy in acquiring and developing land in Benicia. The house is known as the “Frisbie-Walsh House” or the “Captain Walsh House” but it might more appropriately be known as the “Eleanor Walsh House”. This mural depicts the steep pointed roof line and gables as well as the brick chimney. Some of the windows have arches with points at the top. These are called “ogival” arches. Notice the elaborate trim work, bay window, drip molding, kingposts, verge boarding and finials. |