424 N 7th Street, Marietta — Grandma Peggy's widow's house

Why this place matters

The widow-years house Grandma Peggy lived in for twenty-one years across Chuck Eesley's childhood and young adulthood. Named in Chuck's eulogy for his father as one of the places that should hold the family name longest. Closes the three-house Will-and-Peggy arc and sits in the small Marietta cluster of family addresses alongside 651 Sixth Street, Highland Ridge, the maternal-side 413 Harmar Street, and the Wolfe house at 108 Hillcrest Drive.

424 N 7th Street, Marietta, Ohio is the house Peggy McMaster Eesley lived in across her twenty-one years of widowhood — from her husband Will’s death on 2 June 1986 until her own death on 21 May 2007 at Harmar Place in Marietta, age 92.

The third of the three Marietta houses

The Will-and-Peggy arc covers three Marietta addresses across nearly sixty years:

651 Sixth Street — c. 1950 through the late 1960s. The old two-story house Will the architect bought and spent eight years remodeling around the family. Charlie’s childhood house.
Highland Ridge Road — late 1960s through Will’s death. The house Will designed and built for the family, with the orchard he planted and the small red bridge over the pond. The house Charlie inherited and raised Chuck in.
424 N 7th Street (this page) — June 1986 through May 2007. Peggy’s widow’s house. Chuck’s after-school destination across his school years.

The three Marietta houses sit within walking distance of each other in the same Ohio-river-town neighborhood. Will the architect’s relationship to the family’s housing ran across all three: he bought and remodeled the first, designed and built the second, and saw Peggy through the year of his decline before he died and she moved into the third. He did not himself live at 424 N 7th Street.

What the house held

The 7th Street house was the place Chuck went to after school and around holidays and during the small daily errands of a Marietta childhood. Chuck’s 2015 eulogy for his father names “Grandma Peggy’s house on 7th Street” as one of the four places that should hold Charlie’s name longest — alongside the track at Marietta Middle School, the Highland Ridge house, and any TV that can pull up CNBC. Peggy’s house was Chuck’s after-Highland-Ridge stop in Marietta during the years when both houses were still in the family.

When Peggy died in 2007, the 424 N 7th Street chapter closed. Whether the house was sold, occupied by another family, or remained in the family is open in this archive.

In the small cluster of Marietta family addresses

424 N 7th Street sits in the family geography of Chuck’s first three decades alongside:

Highland Ridge Road — Will’s designed-and-built house, Chuck’s childhood home.
651 Sixth Street — Charlie’s own childhood house, one block away.
413 Harmar Street — maternal Wildermuth-side: Robert Earl’s childhood house, three blocks up from the Muskingum.
108 Hillcrest Drive — maternal Davis-Wolfe side: Aunt Betty and Uncle Norm’s holiday-host house.

Five small addresses within walking distance, holding most of the family geography of Chuck’s first decades.

A pilgrimage photograph

No photograph of 424 N 7th Street is yet in this archive. The 7th Street neighborhood is part of central residential Marietta; the house may still be standing or may have been redeveloped. A Mid-Ohio Valley MLS listing search or a Google Street View capture — in the tradition of the 651 Sixth Street MLS exterior and the 413 Harmar Street Street View — would round out the visual record on the third house of the arc.

Sources: Chuck Eesley, family memory, June 2026; Chuck’s eulogy for his father (December 2015).