The home at 601 E Chestnut was Guy and Elizabeth Carlton's, designed by Arthur Pillsbury and built in 1908. Guy Carlton was a life long resident of Bloomington, the son of the livery stable owner, another Guy Carlton. Guy's electrical appliance store was located at 526 Main Street for 45 years before he died. When Carlton died in January of 1944 the Pantagraph reported that he installed the first ornamental electric lights in downtown Bloomington. These cluster lights were first installed on Main Street in 1911, and the merchants on the other streets were all agog. They immediately organized and petitioned the city to put the same ornamental cluster lights in place of the plain electrical lights through out downtown.
In his shop Guy Carlton sold every imaginable electrical device, including an electric frying pan in 1913. His window display in December of 1913 included an electrically lit Christmas tree on a revolving platform, scores of mechanical toys and electrical appliances. I can see the children staring at the tree and toys, shining out of a window magically lit by hundreds of light bulbs and the toys spinning crazily.
The Carlton family came from Maine in the 1850s to settle in Bloomington. Guy's father first worked for others but soon had his own livery stables at East and Washington and later went into business as an undertaker with a man named Beck. The elder Mr. Carlton fought in the Civil War, but before he fought, he enlisted as a drummer boy and served in that capacity for three months. At the outset of the war he would have been about fourteen years old. When he re-enlisted he was a first lieutenant and served for three years, part of the time at a prisoner of war camp.