Joseph & Mary Jane McCarrell Home

93 West Main Street

Built in 1895, the McCarrell Home has a family history that reaches back to Midway's earliest years. Joseph McCarrell purchased the property from Attewell Wootten in 1879, although he wouldn't build the brick home that stands here today until sixteen years later. An earlier dwelling may have occupied the lot.

Joseph and his wife, Mary Jane Threlkeld Coleman, had a large blended family. Joseph had seven children with his first wife, Charlotte Cynthia Orser, who died in 1872. Mary Jane, whose first husband, Henry Coleman, had died in 1867, brought four children of her own to the marriage. Together, Joseph and Mary Jane had five more children, bringing the family total to sixteen. By the time this house was built, however, most of the older children had grown, and it appears that only the youngest lived here.

Joseph was active in the LDS Church and contributed to the development of Wasatch County by helping build roads and bridges. A veteran of the Indian Wars, he also enjoyed hunting and fishing. Sadly, he died in 1896, just a year after the home was completed, at the age of 61.

The property remained connected to the family for many decades. Mary Jane acquired ownership in 1906, and the home later passed to her son, Henry T. Coleman. In 1945, Henry sold it to his niece, Elizabeth Luella Epperson Lowman. During the Coleman and Lowman years, the house was often rented to relatives and other tenants.

Architecturally, the home is a traditional Midway hall-parlor design, combining brickwork and Gothic Revival details with touches of Greek Revival influence. Its decorative cornice returns, trim beneath the eaves, and distinctive window headers reflect the craftsmanship of the period. A shed-roof addition was built on the south side in the 1950s, but the house retained much of its original appearance until more extensive additions were made around 2008, including a large two-story structure behind the home.

Today, more than 130 years after it was built, the original McCarrell home is still recognizable along Midway's Main Street.