The Starr family enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle at Maplecroft, supported by servants, modern household systems, and extensive gardens. Over the years they employed cooks, maids, drivers, gardeners, handymen, and nurses for their children, with most staff living in Marshall’s segregated neighborhoods. In 1873, Frank and Clara Starr hired a cook, Mattie, who lived in her own room off the kitchen, and Clemmie Fort, about the same age as Ruth Starr, lived and worked at Maplecroft for more than 40 years. Family stories recalled Clara Starr telling Ruth and Clemmie to "take care of each other" before she died, and when Ruth or her niece Clara Willoughby held parties, they hired students from nearby Wiley College to help. The family also adopted modern conveniences unusually early, including running water and intercom systems. Completed in 1874, the water tower contained mechanical equipment connected to a windmill that pumped water from a cistern to a tank in the upper story, with pipes running to washstands in three places in the house, and in the late 1880s the home was connected to the city’s water lines. The kitchen and the cook’s room were originally linked to the main house by a walkway to keep heat and cooking odors out, but the walkway was later enclosed and the rooms reconfigured. Frank Starr also equipped the house with bells and speaking tubes so the family and staff could communicate. The grounds included a vegetable garden, a fig yard, a small orchard, ornamental flower beds with more than 60 varieties of roses, and a green lawn beyond the kitchen that served as a tennis court. A gardener named Jerome headed the grounds for a time, and after he left Frank joked that his mother-in-law, Sarah Fry Clapp, was truly in charge. In the 20th century, educator, civil rights activist, and NAACP officer Fred Lewis served as general superintendent for the Starr properties, overseeing renovations for Ruth Starr Blake, who spent little time in Marshall; because he was a Wiley College graduate and former educator, he and Blake arranged his pay on a scale corresponding to teacher salaries. In 1954, Lewis returned to the classroom and later became principal of nearby Dogan Elementary School.