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Farmer’s Bank. I think there was something between, but I don’t know what.
Candy store, on the other side of the ally.
Karpeles Millinary Store. Mama used to take our hats in here or to Irene Ilger to be retrimmed every year.
Cahn’s Clothing Store.
Pille’s Store. Stoves, plumbing, etc.
McNulty House. This is where Bob lived before we were married.
Schneider’s bakery.
Backhouse’s Saloon. Johnny, the son, was in Florence’s class, but he spelled his name “Baccus”.
Moore’s Grocery
Gray’s Livery Stable. Then there was a blacksmith at the foot of the hill on Claremont, south of Main.
North Side.
Briggs and Shelly Shoe Store
Black’s Bakery
Alley that runs straight through as an extension to Center Street
Kunkle and Goods Dry Goods Store. Dr. Hisey’s dental office on 2nd floor.
Heltman’s Grocery
Bockley’s Drug Store
? Dry Goods Store. 3rd fllor was the Masonic Lodge, with entrance on Orange Street.
National Bank
Several small stores. Dr. Kressinger’s dental office was over on of these. When Aunt Margaret came down from Cleveland one time, she had to have some dental work done and went to Dr. Krssinger. He always said afterwards that she came down from Cleveland to have him do it.
Miller House, later owned and run by Aunt Anna and Uncle George Hemmingway.
Neeley’s Grocery
Keck’s Jewelry Store – where I bough my gold watch.
Louck’s Drug Store. All drug stores and both hotels sold whiskey.
Orange Street: Walleck & Frazee had their furniture and undertaking establishment on the east side of the street between Main and Third. Second Street was just an alley. On the other side of the street was the Post Office, back of the National Bank. There was a greenhouse between Third and Fourth, and from Fourth on to the railroad was the Myers factory.
Church Street: From Main Street to Second was a row of lowdown saloons on the west side. This block was called “Pious Row” on account of the saloons. Alsdolph’s was one of the worst, yet all the Alsdolph children have turned out well. There was a wide board walk along that side and the drunkards sat on tipped chairs against the 1 ½ story buildings. Alsdolphs lived upstairs.
Second to Third Street was the old stone jail, and to the left of it in the same yard was the Court House. Mr. Gates (Howard’s grandfather) was the jailer. Horne and Gribbons were two murderers who were in there, and we children used to stop on our way home from school to look at them. The scaffold was built just outside the jail, the day they were hanged we had no school and children were not allowed around the jail.
Third to Fourth Street, west side, were the Presbyterian Church of old stone and the old schoolhouse where Berta went to school. It looked like a two-room building, one story, but that is all I remember about it.
Right across from the school on the north-west corner was Dr. Clark’s office. He was the Hughes’ doctor. I remember once when Clair was a baby, he was having a hard time cutting his teeth and Berta called Dr. Clark. He looked at Clair and said he would have to score his gums. Then he started whetting his dirty pen knife on his boot, and I picked up Clair and ran off with him. They couldn’t find us, so Dr. Clark had to leave. The teeth came through by themselves.
On the south-east corner was the old Methodist Church where we used to go to church. A wide board walk led across the street. We went up steps to the auditorium. At the front of the room on the right was the “Amen Corner”. Some of the older people stat there and would yell “Amen” during the sermon. The seats went sideways to the rest of the congregation and almost up to the pulpit. Our pew was the second or third from the front. Just in front of us Mr. and Mrs. Corston sat. The whole tope of his head was bald so he left a little at the side grow long and brushed it over the top and fastened it with a hair pin. We were always watching to see if a fly would get on his bare spots.
As long as I can remember, Mrs. Sprengle was the infant teacher. My teacher was Mrs. Wardwell. At the time I was commencing to go with the boys, the girls of the crowd when to church regularly to evening services so the boys would take us home. This church later burned down.
Ashland was an incorporated town with a mayor and other officials. There was a volunteer fire department with two horse-drawn engines. Two horses were kept at the station, and they were the ones that were hitched to the pumper. When the fire-bell rang, the horses rant out of their stalls, under the harness which fell down on their backs, someone fastened the straps, and the horses went out of the station at a dead run pulling the pumper, with one man driving, and the other firing up the boiler to the pumper.
The hook-and-ladder was drawn by the first team of horses that reached the fire station after the bell rang. I think they used horses from drays, but my daughter remembers around 1914 hearing the fire-bell ring, and then seeing a moving van that had just loaded and pulled out of the yard pull up, while the drive jumped out, unharnessed the horses, jumped on one of them, and galloped to the fire station. She says teams were coming from all directions with their riders lashing them to win the race. The first driver got $2 and the honor of pulling the hook-and-ladder.
The city used to have a band wagon, with the last seat in the back up higher for the drum. It was pulled by two horses, and was used in all the parades. They had parades on all occasions and especially in the presidential years, when they always carried torches and wore capes made of oilcloth. I remember one time when Papa took part in the parade that Blain was running for president. They kept chanting “Blaine, Blaine, Blaine of Maine” while they marched – but Blaine got left anyway. I don’t know just what route the parades used, but they did go past our house.
I also remember that after electric arc lights replaced the gas ones, Charles Kettering came from his farm near Loudonville and serviced the street lights. Each day he’d have to go the rounds, lower the light, clean the two vertical carbons, and clean out the globe. Later he married Olive Williams who lived on Walnut Street. He invented the self-starter and the Delco lighting system, and later was with General Electric. When his son was married, he gave him a million dollars, and when he died he left an estate of 200 million dollars.
Domestic Details
Papa was transferred to Marion and then to Dayton as station agent, and my only remembrance of Dayton is standing on the curb with a little bucket of candy that Papa had bought me at Johnny Jeckering’s store. I can’t remember Marion at all, and don’t know which place they moved first.
He was then transferred to Ashland as ticket agent, Erie Railroad. I was about three or four at that time. We first lived on West Walnut across from T.W. Hughes residence, which was on the corner of what is now Chestnut.
In a year or two we bought the Aiken’s house at the corner of Center and Pine (now East Liberty Street). Pine Street was named from a large pine tree we had in the corner of the front yard.
The house, as I have said before, was 1 ½ story, Cape Cod type house, with a side lattice porch. There were two bedrooms on the second floor, and a parlor, a parlor bedroom, dining room, and kitchen, and a back porch with a pantry off it, on the first floor. The cellar was entered from a sloping door from the outside, that we used as to slide down.
Berta, Edna and I slept in the one bedroom, and Mama and Papa in the other. I can remember when I first found out there wasn’t a Santa Claus. It was on Christmas Eve, and we three girls crept down and heard Mama say, “Where shall we put that?” so I knew they were doing it all. I was doubtful before, but that did it.
Shortly after Florence was born, Mama and Papa decided to remodel the house, and we moved down on West Washington Street, the first house from Center Street on the north side. It was a double house, and Karpeles lived on the other side. They had a millinery store on Main Street. They had two boys – Maurice who is a doctor in that fine Germantown suburb of Philadelphia, and Solomon. I think he studied law and became a lawyer. We used to have little picnics down at the foot of the hill where there was a spring.
The house was remodeled by McNeilly who was a carpenter, but no architect, as was customary at that time. The old house was moved back to be used for the back of the house, and a new two-story front with attic and cellar, was built on. The new part contained a reception room, a sitting room, and a front and back parlor downstairs, and three bedrooms and a hall upstairs, and a little room over the reception room that was later turned into a bathroom.
(When the bathroom was built in, the soil pipe was run down through the corner of the reception room near the front door, and often embarrassed the family when the toilet overhead was flushed when guests were arriving.)
The old parlor was turned into a dining room, the parlor bedroom was divided and half of it turned into a sewing room (later a lavatory) with floor-to-ceiling closets as a divider. The other half of the parlor bedroom and the dining room were turned into an L-shaped kitchen with a duplication of the floor-to-ceiling divider, this time in shelves where the dishes, kitchen utensils, and food were kept. The old kitchen was torn off, and an entrance to the cellar was put into the new kitchen, and the cellar was extended to go under the whole house.
At first the house was heated by coal stoves and grates in the new sitting room and parlors, and in the dining room by an open stove. A bucket of coal stood beside the stove, and provided a great temptation for Florence, who loved to eat coal. We finally got a coal furnace which was bought from a church. It was an immense thing, but it heated the whole house, upstairs and down.
The woodwork in the new part of the house was all cherry, and the long windows in the parlor went clear to the floor. There were inside shutters on all the new part of the house, up and down. There were blinds in the old part, and outside shutters, painted green. The whole house had wall paper on the walls. The parlors had a white paper with a gold design and a wide lacy gold border. The papers in the other rooms were changed more or less frequently and I don’t remember them, except one. Papa and Mama’s room was being papered in a lavender, that had some sort of a weird pattern. It didn’t have a white spot, but when you looked at the pattern it looked as though there were a white spot, with a pattern radiating out from it. It was a beautiful color, but it was the most terrible thing you ever saw, and Papa had to change it before they were quite finished putting it up.
Before the new house was built, we had a Brussels carpet in the parlor, and ingrain in the rest of the house. We used straw for the pad, as was customary, and the carpets were taken up every spring at housecleaning time, taken out in the back yard and beaten over the clothesline by Cooney Hammond, then fresh straw was put down, and the carpets stretched and tacked down. They certainly had to stretch them, too.
After the new house was built, we used newspapers for padding. The parlors had wall to wall carpet, but in the sitting room and dining room we had Brussels rugs, with green carpet filling around the outside. In the new house, the straw bed ticks were also replaced with mattresses, so it was much easier to keep the house clean.
Before the First World War, a new invention came to town which made our spring housecleaning much easier. A gasoline-driven vacuum cleaning machine as large as a truck would park at the curb, and the men would bring in a house about the size of a fire house with a cleaning nozzle on the end. This was supposed to take out all the dirt from the rugs clear down to the wooden floors without taking up the carpets, and it didn’t take long then to clean every floor in the house. The dirt was collected in big canvas bags on the machine out at the curb, and all the children for miles around gathered to compare the number of bags of dirt from each house.
When the new house was built, the oil lamps in the old house were replaced by gas burners. Originally we had a hanging lamp over the dining room table, and one in the sitting room. The gas chandeliers in the downstairs were placed in the middle of the rooms, shaped like this:
Later, when asbestos mantles came in, these were used. The mantle was very fragile, shaped like a cone and fastened at the top to a wire. We had to use a glass shade around it to protect it, as just touching it with a finger would break it.
We had lighters to light the gas. They were about three feet long, with a slit in the end to turn the key of the gas, and had a long wax taper in a hollow tube that could be pushed up as it was burned, to light the light.
We had well and cistern water piped into the kitchen, and also piped into the cellar where the family washings were done. Hot water in the cellar was heated in a wash boiler on a cook stove, and upstairs in a tea kettle. On Saturday nights, the large wash tub was brought up from the cellar to the kitchen, and water was heated on the stove for our baths. We always had fresh water for each person’s bath, but at Uncle Ezra’s, where there were so many children, there were about three children to a tub-full of water. As we were guests, we always got the first chance at it.
The washing was done in two wooden tubs with iron bands, and a washboard was used. When the tubs were emptied, the water was carried in buckets to a sink at one side of the cellar near the stairs, right under the kitchen pump. There was also a pump there from the cistern. We used yellow Lennox soap. It was awfully hard on hands, though the water was soft.
Mrs. Bryan was our “washwoman” for years, and charged 50 cents for a regular wash for four girls, Papa and Mama, and if the washing was extra large, Mama gave her 60 cents. Needless to say we didn’t put on clean outfits each day. The irons were called “flat irons” and were heated on top of the stove. The handles were also iron and were hot, so we used hot pads to hold them, but our hands were almost cooked. Mama had three irons – two about 7# apiece, and one small one about 3#. The ironing board was similar in shape to the ones now, but had no legs, and we put one end on the kitchen table, and the small one on the high chair or the back of a kitchen chair.
You couldn’t buy ready-made clothes, so all had to be made, except man’s suits which were tailor-made. Mama made many of our clothes, with lots of tucks, ruffles, and lace trimmings, and they were rally beautiful. Our very best thick dresses of wool were made by a “sewing woman”. Mama had a Howe sewing machine, and when the sewing woman came she would use it too. The woman would come to McDowel’s first and “sew them up”, then go to Frazee’s, and then come to our house. She usually spent at least a week in each place. She came from Reedsburg, was a widow, and well enough off so she didn’t have to work, but she liked to get away from home for awhile. She received $1 a day, and her keep.
It was a job keeping the house clean. We had a carpet sweeper, but most of the cleaning was done by broom. There were no paved streets, and the dust used to lie thick over everything. We used to sprinkle something damp around when we swept, to hold the dust, but I don’t remember what it was.
Another difficulty we had was with flies. We had just one screen door – on the side porch from the dining room, and we used to shoo the flies out with newspapers just before eating, and then close the screen. Even then, we took turns shooing the flies while we were eating. We used a stick a little over two feet long with about an eight or ten inch fringe of newspaper covering have the stick – swinging it slowly back and forth over the table. When we set the table, we put the knives and forks at our places with the plates turned over on top of them. The spoons were bowl-down in a glass spoon-holder. We always used linen napkins and tablecloths, and, of course, silver napkin rings. All the hot dishes were tureens, covered, with the exception of the roasts, which I don’t remember being covered.
We usually had breakfast around seven o’clock, and dinner at noon. The whistles blew at 7, noon, and 5, everything was timed for the whistles. We had supper about six o’clock.
One dish we particularly liked was “prepared crackers”. Oyster crackers were covered with boiling water, and then sweetened with sugar, and a lot of nutmeg sprinkled on. We used milk over them. Another mainstay was cornmeal mush, which Mama made in the black iron kettle, stirred with a stick used for that purpose. She would have the water boiling, and then sprinkle the mush in slowly, stirring constantly, until the whole kettle was full of mush. We used to eat it hot in milk, and after our bowl of milk was gone, we put mush on our plates, dotted it with butter, and poured on syrup. What mush was left was cooled in crocks, and sliced and fried in butter for breakfast.
Another great favorite of ours was veal steak, which was about 25 cents a pound. Mama used to fry it in butter, and we would have it with gravy and mashed potatoes. We also used to take fried veal in our shoe-box lunches when we went by train to Urbana. It only took four hours, but we began to eat as soon as we got on the train.
At that time, eggs were 10 cents a dozen, and chickens were 25 cents apiece regardless of size. Mama bought her bread for 10 cents a loaf, and oyster crackers were three pounds for a quarter.
We had a garden at the back of the yard where we raised tomatoes, onions, leaf lettuce and sometimes string beans and radishes. Papa always had sweet peas and lots of roses, and peonies. We had five kinds of fruit trees – Marilla cherries, sour; early May cherries which weren’t quite so sour, plums, crabapples, and Baldwin apples. We had to can all our fruit, because of course you couldn’t buy canned fruit.
There was a fruit cellar with stone shelves partitioned off from the main cellar, and there we kept all the canned fruits, the pickles, the bushels of apples and potatoes. The jellies and jams were kept in the top shelf in the big kitchen cupboard.
Papa was the first one in the neighborhood to have a telephone, when electricity finally came to town, and then we were bothered by people calling up and asking us to call Gates’, Frazee’s, or other neighbors to the phone.
Before water works came to Ashland, we had a “Chic Sale” or privy, as we called it, about halfway back in the yard, with a board walk leading to it. It was a cold place to go on winter nights. We also had “slop jars” and “chambers” for use in our bedrooms.
In the kitchen we first had a coal stove, then we used wood in it, then we used oil. You had to turn the oil on into a kind of pan and light it, then when the oil was heated, you turned the burner on, and it was almost like gas. Once I turned the gas on and it didn’t light, so I struck a match and the thing blew up in my face and burned my eyebrows off and singed my eyelashes, but my glasses saved my eyes. My face was as red as a beet all over. That night I was to attend Cora Mowrey’s wedding to Will Balch. Edna thought she’d fix me up with penciled eyebrows, but I looked like a fright with them, so had to wash them off and go without. Papa bought a regular gas stove soon after.
We had an organ in the old house, and Berta took lessons on it, and when she moved to Creston she took the organ with her. After she left, we bought a big rosewood square piano from Roseberry’s. I don’t remember the make, but it was a very fine one. I took lessons on it from Professor Shilling. His father, who was a fine musician, also taught. Professor Shilling told us how he used to annoy his father when he was a young man. When he came in late, he would play a piece on the piano, all but the last note, then he would go to bed. His father would stand it as long as he could, then he would have to come downstairs and play that note before he could go back to sleep. I can just see how annoyed he would be.
The closets in the bedrooms weren’t large, just square places cut out of the corner of the room. But the other closets were big, and well used. The one in the dining room ran the whole length of the sitting room, and under the stairs in the reception room. It was a little wider than the door, and there were hooks along one side where we used to hang almost everything. We also kept the ironing board, the carpet sweeper, the sugar bucket, the rag bags and all that sort of thing there.
There was also a long closet in the “middle room” upstairs, which ran the length of the room under the eaves. We kept Mama’s chest in there, and some odds and ends. It was completely dark, and Clair was terrified of it and always called it the “pig closet”. I don’t know why.
We always saved our large flour sacks to hold rags of all kinds, and scraps of materials, as the rag man came around once a year which was a great occasion. He had a horse-drawn wagon covered with a wooden top, with sides that raised and a spring scale hanging on the back. He would weigh the bags of rags, and then they were exchanged for their value in tinware, stone china or glass. When he raised the side of the wagon, we would see the most wonderful things in tinware (no aluminum then), stone china dishes, and heavy glassware such as goblets, spoon holders, and cream pitchers. We would look forward for a whole year to the rag man’s coming.
Then there was the man who came around selling books before Christmas. He would carry these stiff-backed children’s books, and if he got to a home about mealtime, he would give them a book for a meal. I remember one year Mama bought me “Apples of Gold”, and Edna an animal book. I really don’t think she paid more than a quarter or 50 cents, and she gave him a meal for one book.
The Dunkard College, now Ashland College, had an annual meeting once, and so many came that everybody had to take them in. Mama filled ticks with straw and put them on the floor in the parlors and different rooms, and rented them for 25 cents a night. The principal subject of the meeting was “Hats or Bonnets”. The Progressives wanted hats, and the old-timers wanted to retain their bonnets and the men their frock coats, fastened shut by hooks and eyes instead of buttons. The Progressives won and took over the running of the college. I don’t know what the others did. The meals were all furnished on the college grounds under big tents. The downstairs bedroom was rented by three young women, evidently progressives, because they left lipstick on the towels, the first time I had ever seen lipstick.
School and Vacation Days
I started to school at six in the Walnut Street School. It was a little two-room brick building, one room down and one up. It had a wooden banister and nearly all the children slid down when they came from the upper room. My first grade teacher was Miss Caroline Bender (Callie). Berta and Edna had both had her, and years later my daughter Florence had her in the first grade at a much enlarged Walnut Street School. When I was upstairs in the second grade, my sister Florence was born. I haven’t the least idea who my teacher was.
Then we went to the Central building, between Church and Cottage Streets, the present location of Ashland High School. I went to four grades on the first floor (3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th), then the A and B Grammar Grades on the second floor. The High School was also on the second floor in the big room. I went three years there, and the last year I went to St. Mary’s of the Springs, near Columbus.
The first room in the build was the 3rd grade. I don’t remember the teacher’s name, but she was always standing us in the corner. One day, when I was in one of the front corners, the superintendent came in. I felt terrible. Belle Finkle had the 4th grade, I don’t remember the 5th grade teacher, and the 6th grade teacher was Emma Stuntz, who was a favorite of ours. She later married John Myers, who lived in the big house just north of the railroad, and the mother of Ted and Marguerite.
The 7th grade teacher was Rosie Humphrey, and Maria Curtis was the 8th. She used to teach us physiology by bringing a big wooden bucket with livers, kidneys, etc., in it, that she got from the butcher. One day she was talking about diseases, and she said some people pronounced it p-pneumonia, and we were very much embarrassed before the boys. While in the room, our old crowd was formed. There was Rena Myers (Kegey), Emma Myers (Beer), Maggie Shearer (Edwards), Cora Mowrey (Balch), Jennie Pierson (Moore), Hattie Alberson (Rudy), Kate Roller (Pancoast), and yours truly, Mary Brinton (Tubbs). The boys were Tull Kagey, Asa Grindle, Charlie Beer, John McDowell, Will Ridgley, Austin Hisey, Frank Heltman, and I don’t remember.
We went into High School, and the professor there was Prof. Joseph Stubbs, who later was president of Baldwin University of Berea. Our teachers were Belle Osborne and Lettie J. Poe.
When Florence’s crowd formed in Grammar School, it included Kit Weist, Eva Shinn, Ally Reep, Minnie Freer, Taff Moore, Kate Myers, Bess Cole, Lola Secrist, Guy Kinnamon, George Beer, Perce McDowell, Clugston,
When Florence graduated from High School, Taff Moore told her how many presents she had, and added gleefully, “and I haven’t heard from New York yet.”
We used to have bobsled parties and went to Hayesville for oyster suppers. The bobsleds were Milburn wagon bodies on runners instead of wheels, and drawn by a team of horses. There was a thick layer of straw in the bottom for warmth, and we leaned against the sides of the bobsled and covered our laps with the blankets. The harness of the horses had lots of bells, and we would sing, and if it was quite cold the runners of the bobsled would squeak on the slippery packed snow. Hayesville was eight miles away, and sometimes we went a little farther to Jeromeville or Mifflin. It took about two hours, one way. Sometimes it would snow quite hard, and that was all the more fun.
Another winter sport we enjoyed was skating on McIlvane’s pond. We had steel skates to strap on our shoes. Some of the boys had wooden skates with steel blades that had straps over the toe but screwed into the shoe heel.
There was a roller-skating rink off Main Street at the west end, and we used to go skating there after school. I remember playing crack-the-whip on roller skates, and it always seemed to me that they put me towards toe end because I was a poorer skater, and I would go flying. I don’t remember anyone getting hurt though.
I went to dancing school with Louis Cahn, one of my classmates at school. He has since become a prominent lawyer in Chicago. Papa didn’t want me to go to dances, but he finally consented and I went for one year. The teacher was Prof. Schuler from Mansfield. Later there was a revival meeting at the church, and they said that anyone who danced would be put out of the church unless they signed a pledge that they wouldn’t dance any more. Jennie Pierson of our crowd and quite a number of others signed. Then they found that they would be putting most of the young people out of the church so they just dropped it, but Jennie stuck to it and didn’t dance.
The big dance of the year was the Masonic Ball, in the Mason hall. They had supper and dancing. They always had a Fireman’s Ball, too, in the Fireman’s Hall, which was the ballroom on the third floor of the Opera House. One time when we were at the Masonic Ball, Papa had taken us all, and Florence was about six. We were coming down from the ballroom, which was on the third floor, and Florence fell all the way down one flight of stairs. She bent her arm – they called it a “green bend”, and she had to wear splints on it.
In vacation we went to Urbana to visit Aunt Mary, and into the country to visit Aunt Lucretia. Papa, working for the railroad, always got passes. Aunt Mary’s house was just an ordinary city house, but we always looked forward to going out in the country so we could ride horseback and try to milk he cows.
Aunt Lucretia’s house was different. It had a large living room in front, and also a bedroom. We slept upstairs. There was a long room with two full beds in it, foot to foot. There was one room up at the end of the hall, sort of a play room, but there were so many wasps in there that we always steered clear of it. The cellar had cupboards built over a cement trough, and water ran through from a spring in the orchard, keeping the contents of the cupboards always coo. There was also a tank at one end of the cupboards where they washed the milk utensils.
The side yard sloped down quite a great deal to a spring house at the foot of a hill. It had a large room with a cement trough containing a spring at one side where they set the cream cans. The water ran through the trough, and out into the watering troughs outside, for the horses. Over the spring house was the shop where they did all the mending of farm equipment.
When Aunt Lucretia’s girls milked, they always wore gloves made out of stockings to protect their hands, and when they worked outside they wore those gloves and sunbonnets, to avoid being tanned. They wanted to look as nice as the town cousins. These girl cousins all worked their way through college by teaching country school.
One year when Florence was very small, Papa and mama went West for a trip, leaving Florence and Edna at Aunt Lucretia’s, me at Aunt Mary’s and Berta boarded at Heltman’s and went to school. Florence was very fond of cookies, and though Aunt Lucretia usually had them on hand, she evidently wasn’t as generous with them as Florence could wish, and one day she told her aunt wistfully, “Aunt Lucusha, Mama has cookies evewy meal at home.”
It was at Aunt Lucretia’s that I learned to say the alphabet backward, when I was small, and I can still do it. Emma used to play the organ, and Maggie and I used to sing. I sang alto. One day there was a cousin, Myrtle Hackett, who came to spend the day. She had quite a pretty voice, and sang a hymn as a solo. Then Emma, Maggie and I were to follow with our song. We sang, “Work, for the Night is Coming”, and to our disgust she joined in.
We used to walk over to Uncle Haines Linvall’s farm for the day. Mama’s relatives who lived out there were Quakers, and Mama was a Quaker for six months before she was married. After marriage she joined the Methodist Church with Papa. We had a great uncle, Joseph Townsend, who lived on a farm in Champaign County. He was called a Quaker preacher, and we used to go to his church once in a while. Everybody would sit perfectly silent until the Spirit moved them, then would get up, say a few words, and sit down. Of course, we girls would get the giggles. The services would last most of the day. Emma and Maggie and I used to correspond, and we always used the Friends’ language – thee and thou. For instance, they would say, “Is thee well?” We did this for years.
At home, Annabel Damp, Carrie Frazee and I used to play together. Annabel lived across Pine Street and Carrie lived across Center Street. We used to play hide-go-seek, and jacks. We had regular jacks, but no ball, so we had to throw one of the gacks up and catch it. We also used to jump rope, and roll hoops. We would make kites out of newspaper, and fly them in the fields. And of course, we used to play with dolls and make dresses for them. Our dolls were 5 cent ones, about four or five inches high, with stiff arms and legs. I don’t remember ever having a large doll, but Berta had a “dollar” doll, with china head and hands, and the rest of it stuffed with sawdust. It was about fifteen inches high, and she used to make clothes for it. We never played with it, though.
Ike Saner used to drive the hurdig, an omnibus which was the only thing going between the railroad station and town. There were no taxis at that time. He was a great lover of children, and each year he had a picnic for all the children in Ashland at Sampsell’s Grove, about a mile from town. Everybody called it Ike Saner’s picnic, though it was really a town picnic, with everyone bringing food and putting it all together on the tables. Of course the mothers went along to help with the meal and help look after the children. There were games after the dinner – races, catch, and that sort of thing. The men weren’t there, as this was during the week. It was one of the year’s highlights.
Papa sold the lot between our house and Cowan’s and Rev. and Mrs. Roseberry built a house on it. Phronie, their daughter who was about twenty, was insane, but was kept at home. She didn’t like Mama, so Mama never went over except at night, just to inquire. Phronie would say the nest day, “Mrs. Brinton was over last night to see how I was”, but they never knew how she would know. She was quite destructive, and they had to watch her closely. I remember she used to wear a bright red mother hubbard wrapper. She was finally taken to Massilon Hospital, and died there.
After Roseberrys moved, Rev. Mather lived there. He was so strict that he wouldn’t buy a Sunday paper, but he always came over and read ours. He walked a little sideways. He had one of the sweetest wives I ever saw, and a daughter Mary who taught school in Galion. I wrote to her for years.
There was a girl in High School, Alice Reynolds, whose father was editor of the Times. He was later killed by Cal Mason’s brother over a law suit. Alice went to St. Mary’s of the Springs, and told Papa about the art courses there, as they specialized in painting. After Edna graduated from High School, Papa sent her there for three years. I went with Edna her last year, after I finished the Junior year in High School.
It was Edna’s last year and she was taking the regular course, and painting. Sister Catherine was a very fine artist, and Edna took china, pastel, crayon, water color, oil, and painting on velvet. She go the gold metal for painting. After she graduated, she went back for two summers and took extra painting lessons.
I just had the regular course – shorthand, typing, church history, history, chemistry, astronomy, physics, geology, and literature. I was the worst in the class, but I got a silver medal as the best of the first-year students. I think now that it was probably to persuade me to come back the next year.
We slept in dormitories divided into individual rooms by muslin curtains on wires. Each room had a bed, wash stand, chair and rug. Our clothes were kept upstairs in a clothes room that Miss Jane and Miss Mary took care of. They weren’t sisters, but they were very old, very fat women who had been there for years.
Once a week, I think Wednesday, our clothes that needed mending were sent down and put on our desks in the study room. We had to mend them, then they were inspected by Sister Gregory, who had charge of the girls, and returned to the clothes room. I had never darned a stocking before, so Sister Gregory loaned me on of hers to practice with. I stitched clear around the hole, then darned across the stitching with the result that there was a ridge all around the hole. Sister Gregory taught me how to darn it right, then.
We didn’t have uniforms, we wore dark clothes – not washable. Of course there were no dry cleaners either. We had to have a black dress for Sunday, but I don’t remember what else. They used to send down clean underwear for us once a week. We bathed in our washbowls in our rooms.
Of course we had no inside plumbing, so we had an outhouse called the “Ginz”, a round “eight-holer” with partitions between. There was a covered walk leading out to it, enclosed with latticework to within two feet of the roof. Later a second-floor outhouse was built adjoing the dormitory, just a “one-holer”. I remember there was always a cold breeze blowing up from the two story shaft, and I was terrified to go in there for fear the whole edifice would collapse with me.
One night some of the girls were making candy, and put it out on the porch to cool. Mary Snider of Zanesville, who had been there for several years and was a good Catholic, suggested to me that we go over the lattice to see if we could get some of the candy. We squeezed through the two-foot gap, and had just touched the candy, but hadn’t gotten any, when we heard someone coming. We managed to get over the lattice without getting caught, but I had whitewash all over the front of my dress, so Sister Gregory and the other girls suspected me. Mary and I could both say truthfully that we hadn’t had any candy, so later that night after we went to bed, Sister Gregory brought us a special treat. The food at the school was always very good, though.
I had two favorite sisters – Sister Mary Ambrose, and Sister Winifrede. Sister Mary Ambrose taught shorthand, typing, and literature, and Sister Winifrede taught the sciences. Sister Winifrede was in her twenties, and she came to the convent when both her parents died, mostly because she was lonely. She had some property, but of course it all had to be turned over to the convent.
My eyes were giving me a lot of trouble. When I first went there, I was wearing gold pinz-nez glasses with a gold chain that fastened to my dress. I went to Dr. Clark in Columbus, which was about three miles from Shepherd Station where St. Mary’s of the Springs was located, and he had me wear regular glasses with gold rims and ear pieces. But my eyes were so bad I couldn’t go back to school there next year.
Career
The year after I left St. Mary’s was the year of the Columbian Exposition at Chicago. I think this was the first of the world fairs. It was called “The White City”, as all the exposition buildings were pure white, and terrible on the eyes.
I had been helping Papa in the office with reports and selling tickets, so when he, Mama and Berta went to Chicago, I took over with the help of Joe Matthews, Papa’s night man. I even sold coupon tickets, and only refused to make out a coupon ticket when a man came running in while the train was standing there. I didn’t have time to look up rates and kind of coupons.
Coupon tickets were the forerunner of the travel bureau. I would sell a ticket to, say, Seattle, and the ticket which would be about two feet long, would have all the transportation covered, in order, on perhaps as man as six railroads. The return trip would be in reverse. This just covered the ordinary railroad car. Papa had a great high case, and the tickets were hung on spikes inside the case, and included every possible rout to any place in America, starting in Ashland.
After Papa, Mama and Berta returned, Edna and I went to Chicago, and we stayed about a week. We spent a great deal of our time in the art gallery, which was wonderful. We also went to the “Midway Pleasance”, where the first big Ferris Wheel in the United States was located. I think we paid 50 cents apiece to go on it! I don’t remember anything else about the exposition, but I know we didn’t miss much.
Edna taught painting for several years after leaving school, and then she went to New York for more advanced instruction. Aunt Margaret, Mama’s youngest sister, had married Robert George and moved to Bellevue, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Allegheny, across the river from Pittsburg. Edna moved there on account of Uncle George’s failing health, both mental and physical, and she had a class in painting made up of Pittsburg painting teachers, and she also had many private pupils. Addison McKean’s mother was one of her pupils, and that’s how she met him.
Berta and Charles moved to Creston after Clair was born, and Charles was the station agent of the Erie and Wheeling Lake Erie Railroads. I went to Hamel Business College on Howard Street in Akron, commuting to Creston by train. I stayed with Berta and Charles, and while there I helped Charles with freight reports.
At Charles’ insistence, I sent in an application to F.J. Stout, Superintendent of Wheeling, Lake Erie Railroad, and was hired as a stenographer. I was first in the Car Accountant’s office in Massillon, then went to the superintendent’s office in the same town.
Shortly after that, Robert Blickensderfer was made general superintendent with the W & LE, with office in Toledo. One day, while in Massillon, R.B. told Mr. Stout that he wanted me in Toledo, so I went up there. I lived first with Charles’ sister Harriet Neal, on Erie Street, across the road from the court house. Then when Charles was made agent at Toledo, I roomed with them on 10th Street.
C.C. Needham was Claim Agent, and I helped with his personal injury reports and took dictation from RB for his personal business, such as his 1500 acre farm in Lebanon County, Missouri. Katharine Van Ness became his business secretary, and we were the greatest of friends. James P. Stark was chief clerk.
When I first moved to Toledo, our offices were in the Spitzer Building at the corner of Huron and Madison, on the fourth floor. At this time Willys-Overland was testing their first engines for cars. They would put an engine on a chassis and drive it around town. We could hear it coming a block or two away, and we would rush to the windows to see the “horseless carriage” coming down Madison. It was quite a curiosity, but it wasn’t long before the Willys Overland Company was really in business making cars.
RB was a widower and marries a very nice woman. I think her name was Josephine. We were very good friends. When the St. Louis Exposition was on RB took me to St. Louis with Mrs. RB, Mr. and Mrs. Stark, and Mrs. Stark’s young brother, in the 01 (his private car). Car 01 was parked on a private siding just outside the exposition grounds, so we ate most meals and slept in the car. RB, Mrs. RB and I had a lot of fun together; part of the time he would go alone, and his wife and I would go out together. The Starks went alone, since Mrs. Stark’s brother was quite a handful.
I never was fast at shorthand, and Mr. Blickensderfer had had a slight stroke which affected one side of his face, and then he would put a cigar in the good side of his mouth, and then dictate. He would start dictating the minute I came into the room, and I had to write shorthand holding my tablet, until I could find a chance to sit down. I used to sweat blood trying to read my notes, but he was always very kind and considerate when I would ask him about them.
However, I was finally in such a nervous condition that he sent me with Florence to his farm near Oakland, Missouri, for a rest. Actually he took us out there with his family in the private car, and then left Florence and me there for about eight months.
RB’s house on the farm was called “The Mansion” because it was the largest house in that part of the country. It was painted red, and had six immense bedrooms with high ceilings. The house gave an appearance of being square, but the middle section had two indented porches, one on each side. It also had a big porch part way across the front, the other part being taken up by a bay window in the front of the library.
The library had a high wainscoting of solid black walnut, a big fireplace, and across the back of the room were bookshelves to the ceiling with cabinets below. Off the end of the room was a small room which was supposed to be on the line of latitude. RB’s father was an astronomer, and he had equipment there. On the third floor was an observatory with a moving tower and telescope, or at least there has been. The equipment was all gone when we were there.
Each room downstairs had woodwork of a different wood – one was white walnut, another was a red wood, etc., and each room had a big fireplace. There was no furnace. The wide hall was all in black walnut wainscoting, and went clear through the center of the house. The stairs went clear to the third floor with big black walnut banisters. All this wood for the house was shipped in from California, we were told.
The white walnut room was the one we used for sewing; the dining room was an immense room back of that. There were two kitchens, but we used the big kitchen between those two porches, and the help ate right with us in the regular dining room.
There were about five acres in the yard and the barnyard, and in summer it was just covered with violets, which were different from any I had ever seen, with the two dark upper petals and the five lighter lower ones, and a yellow center. They had no scent. Some were all the lighter shade, but they were all much larger than we had in Ohio. There was a pond near the barn that we swept off in winter and skated on.
The ones who lived at The Mansion were John Berger, the hired man, Kitty Litzenburg, the hired girl, Joe Fox, a farm hand, Joe Tietze, RB’s nephew, who was also a farm hand. RB had his hand right on it all the time; I kept track of the finances, and Mr. Mumford, RB’s son-in-law who was a storekeeper and postmaster in Oakland, sort of kept an eye on things.
Mr. Mumford was also superintendent of the Moravian Church at Oakland. He and Mary, his wife, had three small children – a daughter Mary who was about five or six, and two boys whom I don’t remember. The church was half a mile from The Mansion, and we walked across lots and over a stile to shorten the distance. There were many poor people with large families, and it was said that if a mother had only enough material for half a dress or suit, she made the front of one material and the back of another, as “you can’t see him comin’ an’ goin’ at the same time.”
At harvest time, we had to feed twenty to thirty harvest hands, and Kitty Litzenburg’s mother and Emma Fox helped out. That year I made up my mind I was going to give those harvest hands a treat and mentioned apple dumplings. Everyone but Emma, Florence and me was opposed, so the three of us made them, and you should have seen those men eat! It was something unusual for harvest hands to get anything like that. For the harvest we bought our bread in Lebanon, but ordinarily Kitty made it.
A short time after we came, Emma Sears, the daughter of RB’s doctor in Cleveland, who was not too strong, came out to live at the farm as a paying guest. She had a very good voice.
When the wild plums got ripe, Louis Tietze brought us a large basket of them. He said they made grand jelly, so not knowing anything about how to make jelly, Florence and I made it. We cooked, and cooked, and cooked it; it seemed that it would never get thick. Then we put it in quarts and pint cants. When it got cold, you couldn’t cut it out with a knife, you couldn’t dig it out with a spoon. We managed to out a little bite to taste it, and though you couldn’t chew it, you could suck it, and it tasted good. You couldn’t even soak it out of the cans – and when we left it was still there.
At Christmas time, we decided to make a nice Christmas for the church, the Mumfords and us. We made stockings out of red mosquito netting and filled them with hard candy, apples, and it seems to me we had a popcorn ball in them. A stocking was given to every child in the church, and it was wonderful how the families grew suddenly. We had an entertainment, songs, etc., and I know the church was well filled.
When we went down to Lebanon to buy Christmas supplies, we started before daylight in Milburn wagon, sitting on chairs in the back of the wagon. The mud came up to the axles, and the horses had to walk the entire distance. We passed a herd of angora goats just as the sun was coming up, and their soft hair shown just like haloes.
Mama and Papa sent us Christmas presents ahead of time, but told us not to open them until Christmas. We opened the big box, but didn’t’ take out anything and each day Florence would sniff it and say, “I smell a diamond necklace.” I think this was the first Christmas we had been away from home. RB, his wife, son, and daughter, and Katherine Van Ness came out in the private car to spend Christmas with us.
One time we were going on a picnic in the Milburn wagon with the high sides and the chairs in the back and were going across the Osage fork of the Gasconade River. John Berger was driving the two horses. We inquired of a man who was leaning on a gate near the river where the ford was. He said “Just bear upstream right smart, then angle down around the pint, and you’ll git thar all right.” However we missed the ford, and the water came into the bed of the wagon. John Berger told us to hold on tight, because if we fell out he couldn’t have saved us – the current was too strong. He turned around in the middle of the river and went back again, and we finally found the ford. We crossed the Osage fork to the island. There were big sycamore trees, dead, leaning over the water. Violets were blooming all over the island, and big land turtles roaming all over and out on the fallen trees over the water.
All of the people in the house except Emma Sears knew what “snipe hunting” was, so we decided to have a snipe hunt. As she was quite delicate, I stayed with her. When you go snipe hunting, the one who is to catch the snipe has a bag with a stick holding it open, and a string to the stick to pull it away and let the bag close. The other people were supposed to go in circles around the “trap” yelling to scare the snipe in. They got farther and farther away until finally we couldn’t hear them any more. (Actually they just went home). The snipe seemed to be scarce in the woods, naturally, but Emma was bound we were going to stay to catch one. Of course I knew the joke, and I was getting tired, but Emma didn’t want to go. Finally we saw several big buggies coming up the road near the woods, and I said we ought to go because people might come into the woods. She didn’t want to, but I just said I was going home, so she came too. We found all the people waiting for us at the big gate, and she took it very good naturedly.
Papa had taught Florence and me to shoot a revolver in the cellar of our house in Ashland, so we went to Missouri armed with his.22 Smith and Wesson. We used to practice target shooting out by the barn, and we got so we could hit the side of the barn. One night everyone except Florence and me had gone to the church, and some boys in the neighborhood thought they would frighten us. We heard them walk up the steps to the side porch. We turned the lights out and stood in the hall facing the window that was at the end of the porch, and I had the gun in my hand. I could hardly hold it. I shook so, and Florence was just as bad. I can see us shake yet. We made up our minds that if they got in the door we would shoot. We stood there for what seemed like hours before the rest of the people came home. Well, they didn’t get in , but if they had we would have shot them.
There was a young girl and her brother – I think their name was Light – who lived several miles away, but used to come once in a while to see us. They had a good-sized farm, and were in quite good circumstances. The girl said one day that they would soon be able to eat eggs again because they had gone down to 10 cents a dozen.
The Fox family used bacon fryings on their bread instead of butter. We made butter and took it to Lebanon and traded it for groceries. Everyone ate lots of yams, which were very big, but there was one yam that was so big it wouldn’t go into a milking bucket.
After we left the farm, Florence went back to Ashland, and I went back to work again in the Toledo office, but I did the clerical work for the clam agent as well as some of RB’s secretarial work.
After four years in Toledo, the offices were moved to Cleveland, where they stayed for five years. While there, the railroad bought the CC & S (Cleveland, Cochocton, & Southern). Katherine Van Ness and I roomed down on Huron Street for awhile, then I roomed with Uncle Linvill Pennington on Euclid Avenue for a year.
Then Katherine and I went to live at Dr. L. B. Snow’s house. Dr. Snow had worked for Uncle Linvill when he was a young man, then went into medical college. He became a very fine physician. We always called his wife “Aunt Ella” though she was no relation.
While I was at Uncle Linvill’s house, I received a letter from Sister Winifrede, who had been one of my teachers at St. Mary’s. One of her parents was Catholic and one Protestant, and they had died when she was young and left her with no relatives, so far as she knew. At any rate, she asked me to help her get out of the convent. She and a young priest had fallen in love, and they were both planning to leave and be married. She had nothing, so I bought her a complete outfit and went down to Ironton or where it was whe had been transferred to, prepared to bring her back. Uncle Linvill said she could stay there until she got a position. When I got there, she and the priest had decided to try it a little longer. I heard nothing more from Sister Winifrede then until after I was married and Florence was born, when I received a second letter asking for help. I wrote and told her that now I was married and had a family, and could do nothing more for her. I had give her her chance. Some years later I heard that she had died.
After some months I went to Dennison’s. This was a rooming house, and they had two sons and a daughter. One of the sons went with Katherine. One year while we were there, a bunch of us went out to Euclid Beach and camped in three tents – a tent for the girls, one for the boys, and another tent for the colored cook. The ones that were there were Ed White, Dodge Dennison and his brother, Katherine Van Ness, Dol Dennison, Florence and I. One night there was a terrible storm, and it blew the tent down flat – the cook’s tent – so she had to come in and sleep in our tent. We had a raft out in front that we dived off of. I couldn’t swim a stroke. They would help me out, and I would dive off, then someone would catch me when I came up.
Then the Wabash Railroad bought the Wheeling Lake Erie, and the CC & S, and the Wabash built the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal, which took the line into Allegheny, which was right across the river from Pittsburgh. They built an office building about one block from the Allegheny River, and the Monongahela River was about a block behind. The tracks for passenger trains came in on the second floor of the building.
I lived with Aunt Margaret George, Uncle Robert, and Edna in Bellevue. I was there about a year until I cam home to be married. Edna was teaching painting – water colors, oils, pastels, china, and all kinds of painting. I took some lessons in china painting from her, and was painting the dinner set, the light green set with the pink roases, for my own use after I was married. I also helped put the past on the serving plates and a few cups and saucers for the afternoon tea set, but we got only part of this set finished. Everything I painted she had to fix up, but I enjoyed it.
Ida Gove from the Auditor’s Office, who lived with Aunt Margaret too, was taking private lessons from Edna. She painted a dinner set, at least a good many pieces of it, and said it was one of her choice possessions. Martha Hagen from Wheeling roomed with Ida, and Edna and I shared a room. Katherine Van Ness had married one of the men from the Auditor’s Office in Cleveland, and had moved to Colorado Springs.
Uncle Robert had failed increasingly, and the last few months I was there he had a male nurse. Before that, Edna sometimes had to help out with home when he got obstreperous and Aunt Margaret couldn’t handle him. Sometimes he would say plaintively “Edney, you’re so mean to me,” after she had scolded him. He was childish, and thought everyone was against him.
Romance and Wedding
I met Bob around 1896, when he was working for F. E. Myers & Bros. in the book keeping department. He had come to Ashland to go to school, but I don’t know whether or not he ever did go, as I knew when he was working there, before I went away to business school.
When I cam home for a weekend or for vacation, I used to see him. He ran around with our bunch – Edna (Mrs. Addison G. McKean), Nora Hisey and Rose Marsh (who never married), Rene Myers (Mrs. Tull Kegey), Em Myers (Mrs. Charlie Beer), Kate Roller (Mrs. Duff Pancoast), Ethel Hanford (Mrs. J. R. Garver), Cora Mowrey (Mrs. Will Balch), Hattie Alberson (Mrs. Vinton Rudy), Jennie Pearson (Mrs. Will Moore), Grace Reaser (Mrs. Frank Heltman), Maggie Shearer (Mrs. Milt Edwards), and the boys, Tull Kegey, Ace Grindle, Charlie Beer, John McDowell, Frank Heltman, Will Ridgley, Austin Hisey, and several more I can’t remember.
We used to go to dances in the Fireman’s Hall, and Bob and I used to lead the grand march at the dances. He was a favorite with all the girls, and one of the best dancers.
Bob and I used to play cribbage too, it was a very popular game then. Of course there were no movies to go to. One evening Bob was coming to the house, and since Belle Osborne had given me a recipe for a jelly cake that she said was very good, I thought I would make it for him though I hadn’t had much chance to learn to bake. For the jelly, which was to be mixed in with the cake batter, I used elderberry jelly. The cake rose and browed beautifully, and I frosted it white. After Bob arrived, I cut the cake, and to my amazement, it was green! Of course, with the blue jelly and the yellow cake batter I should have known. He was too polite to refuse it, but in spite of the color it tasted good.
I had joined the Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh while I was working there. The minister was a millionaire who had married Miss McLaughlin, the daughter of a steel magnate, and turned all his salary back to the church. I called on him before I joined, to talk to him, and said that if they were opposed to dancing I wouldn’t join. But he assured me that they weren’t. When I joined, he simply asked us to stand up in our pews, and afterwards several of the ladies around me welcomed me and invited me to occupy their pews.
That was quite different from the downtown Methodist Church in Toledo where Stella Hughes and I joined when I was working there. We had to come forward, and there was a big row of people joining. The minister asked the congregation to come forward and welcome us after the service, but not a soul came. Stella and I never went back, but I attended a new Methodist Church out farther where the minister was quite progressive. At that time the ladies wore large hats, and the minister asked the ladies to please remove their hats. All did, except one. He told her it was a beautiful hat, but to please remove it, which she did. I’ll bet she never went back.
We were married on Jun 23rd, 1906. We chose June 23rd because Bob was one year younger, and his birthday was on June 22nd, so on the license we both showed the same age. Florence was married two years earlier to Paul Weeks Litchfield, also on June 23rd. I left Pittsburgh in April and came home to get ready.
My wedding dress was made by Mrs. B. J. Osborn on Highland Avenue. It was radium silk over taffeta, and was terrible to work with as it kept sagging. We also made my wedding veil, which was long, coming to the bottom of my dress.
Clara Moherman Goodman gave me a recipe shower, a small one, just the girls of the crowd. I also had a miscellaneous shower given by Nona Brown, and this was much larger. I still have some of the things I received. This is a list of the gifts and donors:
Mrs. Jane E. Tubbs – pieced quilt
Clara Goodman – fancy basket
Lotta Thomas – stocking bag
Mama Myers – sheet and pillow cases
Nora Hisey – white apron
Mrs. George Hemmingway – den pillow
Emma Beer – etched finger bowl
Rose Marsh – cut glass finger bowl
Grace Heltman – china olive dish
Murt Freer – Venetian olive dish with handle
Anna Brubaker – cut glass tumbler
Harriet King and Edna Sterns – bouquet vase
Eva Reaser – bon bon spoon
Mable Beer – silver fork
Ella Swartz – two doilies
Kate Pantcoast – plate with pansies
Rena Myers – plate with green edge
Cora Balch – plate with pink edge
Florence – two “baby pins”
Edna – lace edged centerpiece
Mrs. Helen Heath – Battenburg centerpiece
Carrie Smilie – fringed towel
Mrs. Patterson – hemstitched towel
Jennie Moore – pair of towels
Nona and Blanch Heath – lunch cloth.
Some old accounts show the following purchases:
silk lining for wedding dress - $6.00
veil - $3.00
white slippers - $2.00
gloves - $2.50
allover for yoke - $1.50
walking shoes - $3.50
traveling gloves - $3.50
hat - $8.00
white hat - $10.00
traveling suit - $30.00
short skirt - $8.00
6 yards gingham for 2 aprons – 36 cents
1 bolt lace for petticoats – 55 cents
1 nightgown - $1.25
2 gauze vests – 50 cents
1 pair plain sheets – 55 cents
4 pairs towels - $1.00
2 dust caps (2 yards) – 40 cents
2 and ½ yards sateen for pillow cover – 68 cents
2 pairs pillows - $9.00
4 comforts - $12.00
1 spread - $3.00
1 down pillow – 75 cents
2 floss cushions - $1.00
1 pillow roll - $2.00
6 yards calico for 2 aprons – 35 cents
pocket book, invitations, note paper, letter paper, yolking for dimity, fancy work.
My trousseau included:
1 pair blue night slippers
1 blue kimona
1 pair patent leather kid slippers
1 combing towel
1 emb. Swiss goods for waist
5 shirt waists
1 emb. waist
Emb. for 2 corset covers
Insertion for over arms of one cover
3 corset covers (bought)
2 made emb. corset covers
31 kandkerchiefs
5 gauze vests
9 nightgowns
9 pairs drawers
1 chemise
2 long new skirts
5 pairs lace stockings
1 pink corset pad
6 yards Irish insertion
4 yards lace for short skirt
3 yards ecru insertion for silk dress
1 stocking bag
1 fancy work bag
1 red opera bag
silk dress
dimity
wedding dress
traveling dress
short skirt
black silk petticoat
white hat
suit hat
white gloves long
pair of suit gloves long
pair of silk gloves long
white satin slippers
corset
pair of elastics
pair of white stockings
shirt
My linens included:
1 pair plain sheets
2 lunch cloths
4 tablecloths
2 ½ dozen napkins
11 round doilies
1 square centerpiece in white daisies
1 centerpiece in red and blue
3 round Battenburg doilies
1 square Battenburg doily
6 glass doilies
3 small drawn-work doilies – square
1 larger drawn-work doily – square
4 tray cloths
1 cut-work stand cover
6 pairs plain pillow covers
3 pairs hemstitched pillow covers
3 pairs plain sheets
2 pairs hemstitched sheets
1 plain spread
1 red pillow cover
1 tan and green pillow cover (bought)
1 tan and blue pillow cover (bought)
2 covers like box – 1 tan and red top
1 brown den table cover
5 cushion tops (get material for bottoms)
7 pairs hemstitched towels
2 pairs towels
1 pair scalloped end towels
4 pairs bath towels
4 rough washcloths
5 aircell washcloths
27 tea towels
10 kitchen towels
10 class towels
8 dish cloths
6 dust cloths
3 gingham aprons – one partly finished and 1 loose one
Silver was:
1 dozen common teaspoons
½ dozen tablespoons
½ dozen dessert spoons
½ dozen solid teaspoons
½ dozen plated teaspoons
½ dozen buillon spoons
½ dozen clam forks
1 olive spoon
½ dozen after dinner coffees
10 odd small spoons
18 souvenir teaspoons
1 steak set
1 salt spoon
1 bonbon spoon
The Ashland Times wrote up the wedding as follows:
Radiant June Wedding
Marriage of Miss Mary Elizabeth Brinton and Mr. Robert M. Tubbs
Saturday Evening
Perfectly Planned from Impressive Ceremony to Enjoyable Going Away Parade
Perfect in all its appointments, smiled upon by the weather man and witnessed by a brilliant assemblage of more than one hundred guests, the marriage of Miss Mary Elizabeth Brinton and Mr. Robert M. Tubbs is marked in society’s calendar as one of the most beautiful ever solemnized in Ashland.
The ceremony took place Saturday evening at the home of the bride’s parents, Captain and Mrs. J. B. Brinton on Center Street and the spacious rooms were tastefully decorated throughout, making a fitting frame for the rites which were to follow. The mantel was banked with roses, and with palms, ferns and flowers was formed an arch beneath which the vows were plighted.
At 7 o’clock, as Mrs. Howard Swartz played Lohengrin’s wedding march the bridal party entered the parlor between the aisle marked out by Gaylord and Harriet Freer, the ribbon bearers, and took their places beneath the arch. The beautiful and impressive ring service of the Presbyterian Church was used by Rev. Clover, Mrs. Swartz softly playing Nevin’s Love Song as the impressive ceremony proceeded.
The bride was radiant in her lovely costume of white radium silk over taffeta, trimmed with Duchess lace. She carried bride’s roses and wore a handsome pearl brooch, the gift of the groom. Miss Edna Brinton, sister of the bride, was the gracious maid of honor, and wore an exquisite embroidered gown and carried pink roses. The groom’s best man was Mr. Emory Brown.
Congratulations and best wishes which could be offered in all sincerity were showered upon the happy couple and delightful hours were enjoyed until train time brought the hour of departure. The refreshments, tastefully served buffet, were furnished by Caterer Goodman.
The room in which the presents were shown was crowed with beautiful and costly expressions of good will. Indeed, they proved so numerous that it became necessary to provide an overflow room. The list included silver, but glass, and furniture, useful and ornamental, selected with rare good taste and infinite in variety.
The going away hour brought the happiest expression of good will, for not content with the downpour of flowers and rice, the office associates of the groom planned a more elaborate demonstration, which was received in the same happy spirit in which it was extended.
The carriage which took Mr. and Mrs. Tubbs to the Erie depot was preceded by a swallow-tailed guard of honor headed by a martial band whose lack of practice was made up for by a show of zeal seldom equaled. Following the long line of carriages came half a dozen automobiles whose horns added to the inspiring features of the parade.
At the depot there was another downpour of rice amid which Mr. and Mrs. Tubbs boarded Erie Train 9 and started on their journey to Muskoka Lake, Ontario Canada, where they will enjoy a two week’s outing. On their return they will be at home in their residence on West Walnut Street now fitted for their reception.
Mr. and Mrs. Tubbs are both worthy of the heartiest congratulations. The bride is a social favorite and is as lovely in person as she is gifted in mind and heart. The groom, for a number of years, has held the position of bookkeeper for F.E. Myers & Bros. and his ability has won him a high place in the office of the great firm.
The out-of-town guests were Mrs. J. E. Tubbs of Republic, mother of the groom; Miss Edna Brinton, Pittsburgh; Mrs. Paul Litchfield, Akron; Mrs. Frank Heath, Candor N.Y.; Mrs. E.E. Heath, Republic; Mr. & Mrs. Wyant, Republic; Miss Martha Hagen, Miss Maude McKeon, Miss Lydia Pennington and Mrs. Sattersthwaite, Cleveland; Mrs. R.S. George and Miss Ida Gould, Pittsburgh; Miss Dennison, Alliance; Mr. and Mrs. Robert Blickendorfer, Oakland, MO; Mr. and Mrs. C. C. Needham and Miss Stella Hughes, Canton; Mrs. T. W. Hughes and Mr. and Mrs. C. Z. Hughes and children, Toledo; Mrs. Will McKnight, Urbana.
In the Republic News, Republic, Ohio Friday, June 29, 1906
Marriage of Miss Mary E. Brinton and Robert M. Tubbs
The Marriage of Miss Mary E. Brinton and Mr. Robert M. Tubbs occurred at Ashland Saturday evening. After the ceremony refreshments were served and an enjoyable time passed until train time brought the hour of departure.
The carriage which took Mr. and Mrs. Tubbs to the depot was preceded by a swallow-tailed guard of honor headed by a martial band. Following the long line of carriages came half a dozen automobiles.
The couple will enjoy a tow week’s outing in Ontario, Canada.
Following is a list of presents:
(I have left out the rest of the article, and given a list that was taken from the slips of paper Edna and I made out when the presents came.)
Mr. and Mrs. F. E. Myers and Family – clock (glass & gold pendulum)
Anna Browdy and Emma Graves – cut glass dish (#1)
Dr. and Mrs. King – cut glass oil bottle (#1)
Mr. and Mrs. Howard Swartz, Mr. and Mrs. Irv Thomas – 1 dozen etched tumblers (grape)
Sister Winifrede – sugar spoon
Frank Henkle – gravy ladle (marked MEB)
Mrs. Frazee, Miss Frazee, and Robert Milie – ½ dozen oyster forks (trumpet flowers)
Mr. and Mrs. R. Patterson and Ada Patterson – ½ dozen teaspoons (colonial)
Fanny Cahn Holtzheimer and husband – brass candlestick
Mr. and Mrs. Sterns – baking dish (silver with poppies)
Mr. and Mrs. Ned Topping – lettuce fork (violet)
Mr. and Mrs. John Coss – olive dish (#1)
Dr. and Mrs. Walter Hisey – silver tea strainer
Goldie Priest – marmalade jar (currants)
Uncle Heaton and wife – silver card tray (T)
Hortense Paulin and mother – Hanging of the Crane (picture)
spoon cases (?)
Susie Hisey, Kit Wiest, Bess Cole – cut glass vase
Mrs. Rose Tubbs and Miss Frances Tubbs – cut glass bowl (#2) (aunt and cousin, Elmira)
Mr. and Mrs. Thos. Mathews, Jos. Murphy, Sam Miller, Julius Lutz and Lorin Miller (friends where he had his meals) – cut glass water set
Nora Hisey and Rose Marsh – brass fern bowl
Mr. and Mrs. P. A. Myers and Mr. and Mrs. Guy Myers – large lace table cover
Mr. and Mrs. Tom Harkenss, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Heltman, Mr. and mrs. Will Balch, Mr. and Mrs. Chas Beer, Mr. and Mrs. C. F. Reid, Mr. and Mrs. Geo Freer, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Brubaker, and Mr. and Mrs. John Goodman – cut glass water pitcher
Ida Gove – water color
Uncle Linville family – large water color
Aunt Margaret – bed spread and roll
Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Gates, Mr. and Mrs. Chas Moore, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Freer, Dr. and Mrs. McClellen – baking dish (silver with T)
Mrs. B. J. Osborn – vinegar cruet (#2)
Ralph Beer and Cloyd Mansfield – cut glass dish #3
Mr. and Mrs. J. R. Garver – cut glass compote (low)
Mr. and Mrs. Walter Ingmand and Miss Carrie Shillito – large cut glass vinegar cruet (#3)
Mr. and Mrs. C. Z. Hughes and Family – mahogany stand
Peg and Paul – buffet (Florence and Paul. We sometimes called Florence “Peg”)
Baby Katharine – 2 mahogany chairs
Susie Swineford – sardine fork (long handle)
Belle F. Osborne, Lettie J. Poe, Lou M. Cown and Neil Sackett – out glass dish (#4)
Stella Hughes – ½ dozen cut glasses (slender crystal with star on side)
Rena Myers and Eva Reaser – ½ dozen etched claret glasses
Mrs. Van Ness and Gene – sofa billow (white)
Aunt Phebe Egbert – 4 embroidered doilies (Mrs. Van Ness’ aunt)
Mr. and Mrs. Henry D. Heath (uncle) – cut glass olive dish (#2)
Mr. and Mrs. A. C. Bogniard and Mr. and Mrs. Duff Pancoast – cut glass compote (high)
Mr. and Mrs. E. E. Brown – gold clock (figured) (this never did run)
Martha Hagen – laced-edged center piece
Mr. and Mrs. Chas. Bretherton – sugar spoon (flower at base of bowl)
J. E. McDowell, E. A. McDowell and wife and Percy McDowell and wife – cut glass dish (#5)
Dr. and Mrs. M. J. Karpeles – fruit spoon (gold bowl)
Mr. and Mrs. V. H. Madden – tomato spoon
Mr. and Mrs. Geo Hemmingway and Mrs. Nell Heath – china closet
Mr. and Mrs. Wm. W. Moore – bed spread
Mama, Papa and Edna – kitchen outfit, chop dish, platter, tureen, nut dish, lemonade pitcher, vegetable dish, asparagus set, baking set, vase hot roll dish, pansy vase
Mrs. Cully and Louise – silk fancy work bag
Mr. and Mrs. Milt Edwards – salt nut spoon
Mr. and Mrs. J. P. Stark – Venetian glass dish
Maud McCuen – pitcher and tumbler doilies
Mrs. George Mather – towels, fringed
Mrs. J. L. Guthridge – hemstitched towels
Myers Office Force – gas range, etc.
Mr. and Mrs. Frank Heath and Family – carving set with cut glass knife rest
Dr. and Mrs. Snow – pie knife
Lusie P. Palmer – cream ladle (lily pattern)
Mrs. Irvine Yost – 6 doilies, wheels (Irish)
Mr. and Mrs. O. D. Mitchell – cut glass finger bowl
Katherine Van Ness and Fred (Pratt – husband) – heart shaped cut glass dish and gold bowled bonbon spoon
Mr. and Mrs. Alf C. Neel – cream ladle – (plain bowl)
Mr. and Mrs. Carl C. Lembke – small cold meat fork (gold prongs)
T. W. Hughes and Family – glass candlestick
Mr. Dunbaugh – drip coffee pot
Will and Louie Cahn – bronze statue (Dante)
Mollie McCarthy – white silk stockings
Mr. and Mrs. Wm. N. Zurfluh – drawn work sideboard cover (cousins from Lima)
Mr. and Mrs. Walter C. Bradley – sugar spoon (rose design)
John A. Sowers – cut glass dish
Vic Luce – cheese knife (scoop)
Mr. and Mrs. C. C. Needham – large cut glass bowl (star in bottom)
Needhams and Blickensderfers as a joke – a small go-cart (I didn’t display this)
Mr. E. J. March – embroidered pillow cases
Mr. and Mrs. R. B. Blickensderfer – ½ dozen tablespoons, ½ dozen soup spoons and 1 dozen teaspoons
Mr. and Mrs. T. J. McRoberts – bonbon spoon like Kath’s
Mrs. Elizabeth Dennison – cut glass dish (diamonds)
Grace Pennington – cut glass wheel bonbon
Blanch Work – centerpiece
Grace and Jack Satterthwaite – ½ dozen knives and forks
Mr. and Mrs. McK. Duncan – library table (nephew of President McKinley)
Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Bryant, Mrs. E. S. Dempey and Mr. and Mrs. J. G. Speiker – silver berry spoon
Mr. and Mrs. Will Young – ½ dozen etched ice cream glasses
J. K. Tubbs – cut glass bowl (small design) Rantoul, Kansas
Mr. and Mrs. Vinton Rudy – pink cake plate
Mr. and Mrs. Will Knight – pair towels
Mrs. Neikirk (Republic) – tea strainer with double handles
There were some details, however, that were not included in the newspaper reports: we were married at 603 Center Street, Ashland, June 23rd, 1906. The new minister, Rev. Joel C. Glover performed the ceremony (I never did like him but he was the Presbyterian minister.)
Ella Grosscup Schwartz had commenced playing the wedding march, when we discovered we had forgotten to send for Mother Tubbs and Aunt Anna at the Hemmingway Hotel, so she switched onto something else and we sent a cab for them. The wedding was in the parlor, in front of the mantel, and everyone stood around the back parlor, living room and hall.
John Goodman was caterer, and served in the dining room and sitting room. The menu was: 1st course – chicken croquettes, pea patties, 2 bread and butter sandwiches, 2 olives and 1 pickle on each plate, cold turkey; 2nd course – ice cream, cake, candy, nuts; 3rd and last course – coffee.
At nine o’clock we left for the train, preceded by a band composed of friends of ours – an impromptu band – playing all kinds of instruments. It being Saturday night, the town was crowed. We went down Center Street, up the full length of Main, and up Cottage Street to the depot. I don’t know how many people went, but there was a long line of cabs, the waiting room was full.
We had a small steamer truck which we checked to Buffalo. We didn’t know it, but our friends had taken it over, pasted our pictures on top, pasted red hearts all over , and printed all kinds of inscriptions, then fastened log chains through both handles with a big cow-bell at each end, crossed the chains on top, fastened them with a big padlock, and threw the key away. And the girls had taken my nightgown and stitched it back and forth across.
We went to Galion where we transferred to the Buffalo train. The girls had told me just before we left that something had happened to my nightgown, so I pulled it out of my bag and ripped the stitches out in the waiting room. It was late and we were the only ones there.
On our way to Buffalo, the brakeman came through and looked at us, and said, “That’s the worst looking trunk that has ever gone over the Erie.” He knew us by the pictures on the trunk. When we got to Buffalo in the morning we expected something, but when we went into the baggage room and saw the trunk, we were stumped. Bob asked the baggage master if he had a key, and he said no. Then he saw Bob’s Masonic watch charm, and he, being a Mason, found a key to open the padlock. We tore off all the hearts and pictures and put them with the chain and cowbells into the trunk. After we got home, we had to varnish the trunk to get the rest of the inscriptions off.
We stayed at Buffalo that day and night. When Bob registered at the hotel he forgot to register for me. I was standing right behind him, so the clerk changed it. We went to Niagara Falls and spent the day there, and went on the “Maid of the Mist”, the little boat that goes to the foot of the falls.
We went from Buffalo to Muskoka Lakes, where we spent ten days, then came back to Ashland to our new home at the corner of Chestnut and Walnut in the old Hughes home that had been turned into a double house.
Married Life in Ashland
We lived in the Hughes house at the corner of Chestnut and Walnut for about three years. Florence Elizabeth was born June 13, 1907, and Bob (Robert Edward) on January 22, 1909. Everything went along as smoothly as can be expected with two small children.
Shortly after we were married, The Tyro Club, a literary club with a fixed membership of twelve, asked me to consider joining the first time they had an opening. Then the Lotus Club, which had a membership of approximately that number, but no fixed number, asked me to join immediately, and I accepted.
We met once a month, and had book reviews, discussions, and a social time. When I joined, members included Nona Brown, Blanch Harkness, Ally Livingston, Mary Clark, Mrs. Hess, Murt Freer, Anna Brubaker, Mary Patterson, Mrs. I. L. Miller, Cora Beach, Florence Topping, Jane Mykrantz, Bessie Reaser, Maggie Mansfield, Anna Snader Reaser, Mrs. Reid, and a Mrs. Miller who lived on Sandusky Street. There may have been one or two more.
Bob was the treasurer of the Presbyterian Church, and also sang in the choir. He had a very fine bass voice, and loved to sing. The organ at the church was run by water power, and about once a month, in the middle of a hymn or anthem, it would give a horrible groan and stop. Then Bob would have to get up from his seat in the choir loft and go down in the basement and fix it. He was the only one who could make it work, and after he moved away they had to get an electric organ.
Bob was very popular with the girls before we were married, in fact he was popular with everyone. When we went to dances, there were always fewer boys than girls, so each boy would take several girls. He was a good athlete, also, and could turn cartwheels, handsprings, do the split, and that sort of thing. He was a wonderful ice skater, and could turn cartwheels on skates, and jump fences along the frozen pond down on the freer farm. He was a Knight Templer in the Masonic Lodge, and was Worshipful Master twice.
Bob and I used to play cribbage in the evenings before Florence was born, because we couldn’t go. We used to take walks after dark, as was the custom then under the circumstances, because of course I was too modest to be seen in my delicate condition. And afterward, I was too tied down with the baby to go anywhere, so everything stayed the same until after Bobbie was born.
Since I will be talking form now on about both father and son, until further notice, “Bob” will refer to the father, and “Bob Jr.” to the son, although there middle names were different and he wasn’t actually a “Jr.”
Soon after Bob Jr. was born, Papa was retired by the railroad on account of age. He was at that time 71 years old, having served continuously as station agent with the Erie for 32 years. This left him with only his army pension of $75 a month, since railroad pensions did not begin until the following year. Papa and Mama asked us to move into the family home on Center Street, and take over the expenses of the house in lieu of rent. We did, and we lived there for around four years – when Florence was in first grade.
By the time, also, Paul was born, and it was obvious from the very first that something was wrong. He was very weak and bloated, and demanded constant care. His intestinal trouble was diagnosed in 1919 at Mayo Brothers Clinic as Hirschsprung’s Disease, a very rare disease, which caused the ballooning of the lower intestine. When he was a little older, he used to play with other children, but since he was always so bloated they used to think he had a pillow under his clothes, and poke him in the stomach, and then I would have to run out and stop them, as the doctor had said that a hard blow on the intestine while it was distended this much might rupture it and kill him. But he lived as normal a life as he could.
We rented a house at the end of West Walnut between Lamprecht’s Greenhouse and the ravine. Back of us was the Ashland Floral Company, owned by Mr. Karper. We had an immense garden, and raised our own vegetables for canning and eating, and supplying our friends and neighbors.
Shortly after we moved in, the children came down with chickenpox, and then whooping cough. The sewing women was there when they started whooping cough, and she spent mo |