Sugg House, also known as Sugg House Antiques, and the Sugg/McDonald House, is a historic building and former residence in Sonora, California.[2][3] It was built in 1857 during the California gold rush by William Sugg, a freed Black slave.[4] Several changes have been made to the structure in the 19th century.[4] For 125 years the Sugg–McDonald family lived in the same house.[4]
The architecture and style of the Sugg House is similar to other homes of this region and era, and contains rambling porches, a balcony, a gable roof, and a paint job of red with white for window trim.[4] The original structure was built in 1857 by William Sugg out of adobe brick.[3] The adobe bricks had been made on-site.[7] Some of the walls are 18 inches (460mm) thick.[7] The original building was modified within a year after the Sugg family moved in, as the family continued to increase in size, so did their home.[4]
In the 1880s, the building added on the second floor consisting of a balcony, four bedrooms and an attic overhead, as well as two more bedrooms, and a framed kitchen was adjoined to the rear of the building.[4]
In the late 19th-century until 1921, the building was used as a guest house for when the local hotels were too full.[4] The building had an outhouse until 1940, when the first indoor toilet was installed.[4]
Sugg family
William Sugg (1828–1899)Mary Elizabeth Sugg (1839–1915)
William Sugg (sometimes Suggs; February 15, 1828 – November 7, 1899) was from Raleigh, North Carolina, and had arrived in California enslaved.[3][8] He filed his manumission papers on June 21, 1854 in Tuolumne County, and the fee was paid to Francis Tate of Texas.[3]
In 1855, he married Mary Elizabeth Snelling (February 4, 1839 – November 19, 1915) from Missouri, who had settled in Merced County.[3] Together they had 11 children.[3]
Their daughter Rosa Adelle Sugg married Donald William McDonald in 1876, and they lived in San Francisco.[3] Donald William McDonald had been an active musician in the Third Baptist Church in San Francisco.[3] Two of Rosa and Donald's children: Vernon Sugg McDonald and Earl Sugg McDonald were sent to the Sugg House in Sonora, California to live with their grandmother.[4][9] Vernon Sugg McDonald died on the house in May 1982, and was the last of the family members to live there over the span of 125 years.[4][10]
In 2008, there was attempts to create a museum about the site by local historian Sylvia Alden Roberts, author of Mining for Freedom: a Black History Meets the California Gold Rush (2008).[8]
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