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Carlos Lavalette Douglass was an American politician, farmer,
and flour manufacturer.
Douglass, son of Christopher and Phoebe
Douglass, was born in Cattaraugus County, New York on 7th November 1827
and went to the public schools. He was one of eleven children.
He married Margaret Stewart (1829-1901). They had four children, Ruth,
Carlos, Horace and Louis. In 1856, their home was 'The Mill House' (The
Douglass-Stevenson House).
He moved with his family to Michigan.
In 1837, Douglass moved with his family to the town of Walworth,
Walworth County, Wisconsin Territory. Douglass was a farmer and flour
manufacturer. He served on the Walworth County Board of Supervisors and
as chairman of the Walworth Town Board. Douglass served a single
one-year term as a Republican in the Wisconsin State Assembly in 1873.
Douglass died at his home in the town of Walworth, Wisconsin on
6th Janury 1898.
The Douglass-Stevenson House
The two-story, front-gabled part of this house is Wisconsin’s oldest
known stovewood structure. Douglass built the dwelling about 1857 by
laying short, fourteen-inch lengths of log in a mortar matrix to create
solid walls that look like stacked firewood. He plastered the walls, but
later owners cut an opening in the plaster in one room, where this
building method can now be seen. The stovewood house recalls Fontana’s
beginnings. Douglass bought property here at the west end of Geneva Lake
in 1852, and by 1860 he was operating two gristmills. The mills
attracted settlers, who built the village on land sold by Douglass.
Sometime before 1873, profits from his land dealings and mills enabled
Douglass to expand his house with a one-story, side-gabled wing of frame
construction. A porch, graced by folk Victorian turned columns and
scroll-sawn brackets, stretches the length of the wing. Carlos’s son
Horace added a stuccoed rear wing around 1910. The house is now
headquarters for the Geneva Lake Conservancy.
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