The Bennetts
The first occupants of the house were the Bennetts. Henry DeWitt Bennett was postmaster in the early 1860s and then was engaged in the lumber and salt business. From 1869 to 1883, Mr. Bennett served as Secretary and Steward of the University of Michigan. Henry and Mary raised their sons, Henry and Willie in the house. The Bennetts followed their sons to Pasadena, California.

The Kempfs
The Kempfs were the most prominent of the German families who enriched Ann Arbor with generations of music. Reuben and Pauline Kempf led simple but active lives- filled with music, lessons, concerts, and entertaining. They welcomed internationally-known musicians into their home and the community, helping establish Ann Arbor’s reputation as a world-class music site.

Reuben’s German immigrant parents owned a large farm south of town near the present location of Briarwood Mall. They sent him to Switzerland for training to become a minister, but Reuben soon found he was much more inclined toward music. In 1877 he transferred to the Royal Conservatory of Music in Stuttgart, Germany, where Victor Herbert was a classmate. After graduating in1880, Reuben returned to Ann Arbor to teach. In 1883 he married Pauline Widenmann, another Ann Arbor native of German descent and an accomplished singer who had trained at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. In 1888 the Kempfs moved into the former home of Henry DeWitt Bennett at 312 South Division Street. For the rest of their lives, they lived in this beautiful Greek Revival home.

Reuben and Pauline's daughter Elsa was born in 1884. While still a child, she posed as the mascot in the portrait of the Lyra Gesang Verein (left), an all-male German singing society founded by Reuben Kempf. Later she graduated from Ann Arbor High School and the University of Michigan. An accomplished violinist, she taught at Perry School on Packard for several years before marrying and moving to Wisconsin. Elsa's brother Paul, born in 1896, complained bitterly in later life how embarrasing it was having to walk to school with his sister, who was a TEACHER! Though Paul unfortunately did not inherit his family's musical ability, he did grow up to become a very successful business man and to serve on the City Council. He married Edith Staebler and lived all his life in Ann Arbor.

The front parlor with the Steinway grand was the Kempfs' music studio for over 50 years. Here they both taught generations of Ann Arbor young people to play the piano and to sing. As active and revered participants in the musical life of the City, the Kempfs met many of the famous artists who came here to perform. Pianist Ignace Paderewski borrowed their piano for a concert, and contralto Madame Ernestine Schumann-Heink borrowed the studio’s full-length mirror for her concert dressing room.

A City Museum

After the Kempfs, the house was owned by Mr. and Mrs. Earl Parker, neighbors who had lived across the street and always loved the little white house. In 1969, following Mr. Parker's death, Mrs. Parker wanted to sell the house but was concerned that it be preserved. Working with the Kempfs' son Paul, then an active member of the Historical Commission, she sold the house to the city.

Paul Kempf and other members of the Historical Commission established the non-profit Ann Arbor Historical Foundation to raise the money needed to adapt the house for use as a museum. It opened to the public in 1970. Curator/caretaker/local historian Wystan Stevens lived in the house from 1970 to 1983. In 1973 the house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and as part of Ann Arbor's first local district, the Division Street Historic District.

The Historical Commission and its successor the Historic District Commission held their monthly meetings in the house. In late 1975, Louisa Pieper began volunteering as staff to the Commission, working out of an office in the basement. As her responsibilities grew with the expansion of the city's preservation program, the office eventually moved to city hall.

Responsibility for operations and the renovation of the house as a museum gradually evolved from a subcommittee of the Commission into an independent non-profit in 1988. First called the Kempf House Center for Local History, the name was later shortened to the Kempf House Museum. A state historical marker and National Register plaque were installed

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