This home was built in 1873 by William Flagg, one of the pioneer residents of Bloomington. The house stood at 704 E. Walnut Street and occupied nearly the entire block. The house was built of yellow brick and had a walnut railing on the grand staircase that came from the old courthouse. Flagg had developed a residential district on the land that he owned. Flagg had built a chair factory and a farm implement business on the property. Unfortunately his skills as an builder and land developer did not transfer to managing businesses. When Flagg's brother in law (the brother of his deceased first wife) foreclosed on the house and other land, the parcel included over 69 acres and the two businesses.
Flagg did not have to leave his home however, because his second wife, the former Maggie Ryburn, was able to purchase the house and land. She then managed the business, according to his obituary in 1881, and made a success of it. She accomplished this despite the handicaps natural to any woman -- the limitations of her education, which was meant to prepare her only for life as the manageress of a home and the ornament of her husband. A later article in the Pantagraph indicated that litigation over the note or mortgage held by Flagg's continued through to 1885, when it was heard by the supreme court and ended in a verdict for the brother in law, resulting in the loss of the furnace works, the home and all the land still held by Mrs. Flagg.
Mrs. Flagg must have sometime later left Bloomington. She is not buried with her husband in Evergreen Cemetery and I could not locate a date of death for her. In 1910 she lived in Chicago with her daughter Cora in Chicago in a home of their own.
The home was still standing in 1927 when it was featured in a series of picture articles in the Pantagraph. The home was occupied by Hal Stone, who was a court clerk in McLean County.