In 1919, Anson Bailey Cutts, Sr. (1866–1949), a chief rate clerk with the Great Northern Railway, purchased the Edna S. Purcell house. Cutts and his wife, Edna Browning Stokes (1875–1976), lived in the house with their son, Anson B. Cutts, Jr. (1905–1985). Though he left the house to attend Yale and pursue his career, Anson Jr. returned to the house in 1962 to aid his widowed mother when her health was failing. He continued to live there after her death in 1976. In 1985, Cutts bequeathed the house to the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, parent organization of the Minneapolis Institute of Art. It now is part of the museum's collection.