Mitchell House, which houses the St George’s Historical Society Museum on Duke of Kent Street, was erected about 1731 by Major Walter Mitchell for his American brother’s son, William Mitchell. Walter had apparently acquired the lot and an older house through his wife Sarah Briggs, who inherited it from Charity Briggs Hilton, to whom the lot was originally granted in 1712.

A 1994 archaeological excavation revealed a post hole carved into the bedrock in the old kitchen, evidence of the timber-framed walls of Hilton’s house or an even older predecessor.

William Mitchell moved into the new stone house with his bride of four months, Mary Tucker of Southampton. Walter Mitchell died the following year, confirming his gift of the house and including a storehouse on east Water Street, part-shares in several sloops and £300, a nice gift with which to start married life.

William Mitchell was a successful merchant and militia officer. He traded frequently with his father John, who was based in Philadelphia, and went to sea himself on a number of occasions. He was an officer in HM Independent Company and captain of Paget Fort in the 1730s.

Mitchell was granted a garden lot across Duke of Kent Street in 1734 and added a chimney to the southern end of his hall in 1740. When he died in 1749, his incomplete will left all his property to his wife Mary. She lived another 23 years in the house and frequently hosted her Tucker relatives when they visited St George’s. She carried on her husband’s shipping business, specialising in feminine articles such as fabrics, needles, tea and gloves. In 1772 her niece Effie and her family moved into the house after Effie’s husband, Captain Thomas Smith, lost a court case and with it Tucker House.

The following year, Mary Mitchell willed her house to Effie’s single daughter Marianne Smith. She also directed that her executors were to fashion her coffin from the wood of a large cedar tree growing in the front yard. An inventory of the house made in 1774 reveals the house much as it stands today, with a hall, hall chamber, passage, kitchen and ‘Mrs Mitchell’s bedchamber’. After the widow’s death, Smith’s inheritance was unsuccessfully challenged by the illegitimate daughter of William Mitchell, who alleged his will was defective.

Marianne Smith retained the house until 1820. She never married, but some evidence suggests she may have had an affair with Collector John Stewart which produced two children. To support herself, she taught ‘reading, writing and needlepoint’ at her house for £3 a year tuition and rented the cellars to the Commissary of Provisions department of the British garrison.

In 1820 Marianne Smith sold a small lot in the northwest cornerof her property, upon which was erected the short-lived Independent Chapel of St George’s. Later the same year, she gave the property to her niece Elizabeth, who married Major Edward Moore, then commander of the colony’s gunboats. The Moores were posted abroad and did not live in the house. In 1836, Dr Joseph Trigance, garrison surgeon for the 30th Regiment, rented the house and offered free smallpox vaccinations to the town’s children.

In 1842 a formerly enslaved couple, John William and Isabella Archer, bought the house and opened it as a tavern. The two had earlier run The Gun Tavern on Duke of York Street and no doubt used their profits to make the purchase. John William Archer’s sad fate is chronicled in chapter 6 (see Foster House). After Isabella’s death in 1850, the house escheated to the Crown and was regranted to Jonathan J Trott, a farmer from Tucker’s Town, who sold it to Alfred Burch within a year. Burch and his successor, Thomas Ward Kelly, operated a hotel and tavern here called City Hall and added the cottage to the west of the main house. From 1900 to 1914, the house, renamed the Commercial Hotel, was run by George and Annie Wailes.

George C Wailes originally came to Bermuda in 1883 as a private in the 84th York and Lancaster Regiment. Within five years, he had purchased his discharge and was a warden in the military prison. In the 1890s he became a grocer and with his wife opened a tavern elsewhere in the town. In 1914 Wailes gave the property to his son George Jr, who promptly mortgaged it to Claude McCallan, who foreclosed upon it six years later.

When the property came up for auction, a group of historically minded St Georgians led by Lillian Hayward rallied to save the house. They formed the St George’s Historical Society and purchased the building in order to convert it into a museum and library. This new group saved the old building, then on the verge of ruin. The Society launched a three year restoration of the house and still operates the museum today.

The building, with its jumbled roofs and sprawling layout, offers a fine example of a well preserved 18th century house with early 19th century additions. Furnished with period pieces, it gives visitors to St George’s the rare opportunity to examine both the interior and exterior of an old town dwelling.

In the original building there was a wall separating the large hall at the top of the front welcoming arms steps from the bedroom to the right. The wall was removed in 1956 to create a symmetrical Georgian interior layout. It is thought that the old kitchen, with its wide hearth and brick bake oven, was once detached and was joined sometime in the early 19th century. The well in the front garden was there in the 1820s and was probably the town well of the 17th and 18th centuries.