He worked for six years in lumbering in Manistee County and then began a retail business in Lyons, Michigan.

In 1873 he organized the Second National Bank of Ionia; that same year he purchased this house from Cyrus Lovell.

At some point, he added a second floor porch that gave the house a steamboat Gothic look.

[2] The Lovell-Webber House was a large rambling wooden structure, measuring about 60 feet across and a little more deep.

The main section had long, narrow paneless windows on the first floor (built in the 1870s), with unpaneled doors.