A house is first recorded on the 950 lot on the 1887 Sanborn map, numbered at 520 N. California.  The house was certainly built earlier as there are residents listed as living at the site in the 1880 census.  The head of house is recorded as 26 year old Maurice Diggins, an Irish immigrant who came to the United States in 1875.  Maurice worked in an oil mill.  He lived with his 26 year old wife, Annie and his 1 year old daughter, Mary.  Annie is recorded as being born in New York but having both parents born in Ireland.  The census also records that the house was owned rather than rented.

The Diggins family lived at the 950 house until about 1925.  A second daughter, Anna, was born in 1881.  In 1900, Maurice had changed occupations and was recorded as a "street laborer."  By now, his daughter Mary was 21 and worked as a stenographer.  Anna's brother, Thomas L. Brown, had also moved in with the family and worked as a cooper.  At this time, a cooper was a barrelmaker.  A second Irish family, the Kinney family, is recorded as living across the street at 946 N. California.

By 1910, the address had changed to 932 N. California; both daughters and Anna's brother had moved out of the house.  Maurice had taken a new job as a school janitor.  Maurice and Anna lived alone in the house still in 1920; Maurice now worked as a night watchman for a school.  They were one of the few White families remaining in the neighborhood in 1920, at a time when the population had shifted from 87% White to 96% Black.

Maurice and Anna Diggins left the house at 950 California sometime between 1920 and 1925; the 1925 City Directory lists the head of house as Jos C. Hill.  The house was occupied by numerous tenants in the years from 1925 to 1987.  Sometime in the late 1980's or early 1990's the house was removed from the lot.  Today the lot stands vacant.

                        950 N. California lot today

Back to Map