Tribute to John J. Carroll of G and C Foundry

 

John Joseph Carroll, former president of the G. and C. Foundry, died on June 26, 1936. Funeral services were held first at his home at 1412 Columbus Avenue, and then at Saint Peter and Paul’s Catholic Church, with Father William F. Murphy officiating. The Sandusky Star Journal featured a tribute to John J. Carroll in its June 30, 1936 issue.

 A transcription of the remaining portion of the tribute is below:

 

It was one of the largest if not the largest funerals held in Sandusky. 

The funeral Mass was celebrated by the very Rev. William F. Murphy, pastor of the church, who also preached the sermon.

Father Murphy and Mr. Carroll were close friends. In youth they played baseball with and against each other. The friendship between the two grew firmer as the years rolled by.

Father Murphy’s tribute to Mr. Carroll was masterful. That it came from the heart was apparent. Now and then the venerable churchman’s voice seemed to falter. Many eyes were dimmed with tears.

The church was packed. In the gathering were representatives of every walk of life. There were friends and business associates here from Chicago, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Dayton and many other cities – friends and business associates of many years.

There were so many flowers that it was impossible to get them all into the Carroll home. Many of them came from cities, towns and communities far removed from Sandusky.

Honorary pallbearers were L.K. Burge. Chief John D. Curtis of the fire department, Carl F. Denzer, T.O. Edwards, E.F. Emmons, Congressman, William S. Fiesinger, James F. Flynn, Jr., Herbert F. Farrell, Dr. H.B. Frederick, Sidney Frohman, B.T. Gagen, Norman Gagen, E.B. Gangware, Dr. A.R. Grierson, Dr. George A. Heiler, William H. Hommel, Alfred Huntley, August Kuebeler, Jr., Norber Kuebeler, A.J. Little, John D. Mack, Dr. Frank J. Maher, William McLain, Charles F. Miller, Frank Mulheran, Frank W. Myers, John McCrystal, Sr., William J. Py, John Quinn, Russell Ramsey, William H. Ritter, John F. Rosino, Charles F. Mischler, Martin L. Ritter, Gil Rossmaan, C. Webb Sadler, Alfred Schnurr, George J. Schade, George A. Schoepfle, Ralph J. Smith, Edward A. Smith, Werner G. Smith, the Rev. Theo J. Stellhorn, the Rev. Dr. Donald Wonders, the Rev. Gates E.M. Young, Charles A. Thornburgh, Chief of Police C.A. Weingates, Major C.B. Wilcox, and John G. Wohlers, all of Sandusky; Fred and Phil Frankel, M.F. Gartland, T.A. Gartland, W.A. Greenbaum, William E. Rayel, L.R. Robinson, D.J. Ryan, Fred D. Ryan, Charles and Walter Seelbach, M.J. Sweeney, T.H. Terry, H.J. Trenkamp, and J.W. Wilbur, of Cleveland; H.P. Blake and C.W. Inches, of Canton; Charles H. Graves collector of internal revenue, Toledo and Port Clinton; P.F. Gartland of Indianapolis; F.J. Gartland and L.F. Gartland, of Marion, O.; W.J. Giuss, William F. McCarthy, and Robert J. Wiseley of Chicago; C. J. Miller of Fremont; and Anthony and John Haswell and C. E. Swank of Dayton.

 The active pallbearers were Carey W. Hord, Franklin D. Hohler, Rol G. Sloat, George Richter, Harry W. Gosser, Fred Schafer, and Edmund A. Andres, of Sandusky, and William Quinn, of Whitmore.

The city commission members attended the funeral in a body as did the officers and employees of the Third National Exchange Bank of which Mr. Carroll was a director.

The bank was closed while the funeral was being held.

 

The Carroll family plot at Oakland Cemetery is in Block H.

West Water Street Businesses from Behind in 1926

Sandusky photographer Ernst Niebergall took this picture of the rear side of the buildings along West Water Street between Columbus Avenue and Jackson Street about 1926. Today we know this area as the newly renovated Shoreline Drive. The first building on the eastern part of this block is known as Hubbard’s Block, at what is now 101 West Water Street. The building was originally owned by Sandusky businessman Lester Hubbard, and designed by Sheldon Smith, was built in the Romanesque Revival style of architecture. Hubbard’s Block was home to the Cosmopolitan Art and Literary Association in the 1850s. Moving down the street, next is the Stiles E. Hubbard building at 115 West Water Street, which had as its first tenants a grocery and dry goods store, and Austin Ferry’s hat shop. In 1926 George M. Rinkleff had a hardware store at 121 West Water Street. This advertisement shows us some of the items that were carried by the Rinkleff Hardware store in the 1910s, a few years before Mr. Niebergall took the picture of the block.

Known as the Lawrence Cable building, the structure at 121 West Water Street was built in 1868. Samuel Love had a men’s clothing store at 201 West Water Street in the mid-1920s. Charles R. Carroll ran a transfer business and a second hand store at 211 West Water Street. Many of the vintage trucks parked on the street were probably used to transport goods to local residents by employees of Mr. Carroll’s transfer business.

Chicken dinners were served at a restaurant to the west of Mr. Carroll’s business. At the corner of West Water Street and Jackson Street is the Freeland T. Barney building, which was built about 1870 and renovated in 1892. Most of the buildings that are pictured had businesses on the street level and apartments on the upper floors. You can read more historical details about the commercial property on West Water Street in Ellie Damm’s book, Treasure by the Bay. Pages 53 to 58 are devoted to the architectural background of these historic buildings.

Foundries in Sandusky

Now known as Sandusky International, the Sandusky Foundry and Machine Company was founded in 1904 by William Millspaugh. The company has long been recognized as an innovator in the paper making industry. The photograph below features a float from the Sandusky Foundry and Machine Company from around that time.

The Bay View Foundry was in operation from 1904 through the 1920’s. The firm produced brass, bronze, aluminum and iron castings. In 1920, E. Lea Marsh succeeded A. W. Link as the company president. Eventually Mr. Marsh moved back to Connecticut. His son, E. Lea Marsh, Jr. was a legislator in the state of Connecticut, and was the owner of a dairy herd which included Elsie the Borden cow.

The G and C Foundry, which is no longer in operation, manufactured cast and finished products for fluid power. It was incorporated in 1922 by M. F. Gartland and John Carroll. The plant was located on West Monroe Street on Sandusky’s west side. Employees from the pattern department stood outside the G and C Foundry in June of 1918.

The final chapter of Charles E. Frohman’s book A History of Sandusky and Erie County, is devoted to a brief history of manufacturing in Sandusky, Ohio. Visit the Archives Research Center to learn more about manufacturing in Sandusky, both past and present.

The Vanished Settlement of "Africa" in Erie County

The July 1878 issue of the Firelands Pioneer features an article written by A. W. Hendry about a vanished settlement of African Americans in Erie County in the 1830’s and 1840’s.

The settlers resided in an area southeast of the city of Sandusky, across Pipe Creek. The area was known as “Africa,” because the residents were men of color. Samuel Carr and Frederick Swears were the first settlers, arriving in Erie County in the mid 1830’s. Samuel Carr lived on the bank of Pipe Creek. He sold produce from his garden in Sandusky. Mr. Swears had a grain farm and also raised cattle and hogs.

Mr. Hendry wrote that the land beyond the creek was overgrown, so the settlers cleared away the brush and timber, and built log cabins and cultivated the land for crops. Isaac Brown and Thomas Butler first settled in Pipe Creek, but later purchased fifty acres of land from John Beatty in Perkins Township. (This land was later owned by James Hinde.)

Other settlers in the Pipe Creek area were Basil Brown, George Robinson, John Hamilton, Benjamin Hill, Moses Thompson, William Thomas, George Carr, John Stoaks, Ben Johnson, Peter Gregg, two men with the last name of Jones, Samuel Floyd, William Butler, Benjamin Bell, William Harris, James Jackson, Dick Lett, and a Mr. Glinton. Rev. Thomas H. Boston settled in Erie County in 1839. In about 1843, there were over one hundred African Americans residing in the settlement. The residents built a log school house, which was sometimes used as a church. A Mr. Robinson from Rhode Island was a school teacher there. General John Beatty, in an address to the Firelands Historical Society on October 3, 1900, stated that he once attended a revival meeting at the home of “old Sammy Carr.” He said that “It was the most animated religious gathering I ever witnessed.” General Beatty also mentions a debate between the white young men of Milan Road and the African American young men of the Huron Road (now Cleveland Road.) A Mr. Brown took the floor and he “was not only a master of good English, but had a touch of humor in him, and a whole arsenal of sarcasm and invective.” Mr. Brown won the debate, and General Beatty’s team lost.

Following some unpleasant land disputes, most of the residents from this early settlement moved to Canada. However, the families of Rev. Boston and Basil Brown remained in Erie County. Visit the Sandusky Library to read about the vanished settlement of Africa, and hundreds of other accounts of the pioneer settlers of Erie and Huron County in the Firelands Pioneer, a multi-volume set of journals shelved in the genealogical section of the library’s Reference Services area.

1918 Obituaries at Sandusky Library

In the genealogy section of the Reference Services Area of the Sandusky Library, is found a title in a single volume which contains obituaries that appeared in the Sandusky Register and the Sandusky Star Journal newspapers during 1918. Not only was the United States at war in 1918, but also the influenza epidemic was claiming thousands of lives. Mrs. Katharyn Wunderly, longtime area genealogist, took the time to photocopy Sandusky obituaries from 1918. An index appears at the front of the book, creating a very user friendly resource.

The obituary of Lowell C. Hein, the namesake of Sandusky’s VFW Post 2529, appears on page 125. At the time of his death, it was believed that Mr. Hein was the first Sandusky resident to lose his life in the Great War. In fact, it was later discovered that Corporal Elmer A. Reese had been killed a month earlier, in June, but his death was not reported until September. His obituary appears on page 147. An article from the October 5, 1918 Sandusky Register, appearing on page 155 in the 1918 Obituaries book, stated that 134 deaths from pneumonia and Spanish influenza had been reported at Ohio’s Camp Sherman. Throughout 1918, other deaths were caused by suicide, car accidents, other illnesses, and even murder. Several articles about a heart-wrenching incident in which a blizzard claimed the lives of two young men from Marblehead, are found on pages 3 and 4 of the 1918 OBITUARY NOTEBOOK.
M. B. Caroll was reportedly the oldest resident of Erie County, according to the article reprinted on page 86.

Visit the Sandusky Library to view several sources of Obituaries. A multi-volume set of Obituary Notebooks covers obituaries from February 5, 1921 through August 6, 1952. The newspaper clippings were compiled by Mrs. Carl J. Sartor, and given to the Sandusky Library by her daughter, Bernice Sartor Hug. A necrology file which gives the citations to obituaries appearing in the Sandusky Register from 1977 to 1992 is found in the Archives Research Center. See the Reference Services Staff for more information.

The Ohio Obituary Index, hosted on the website of the R. B. Hayes Presidential Center, indexes over one million obituaries, with thousands of Sandusky residents’ names included.

Four computers in the Archives Research Center are reserved for the use of genealogists and local historians. If you only know the date of a person’s death, you can search through the microfilmed copies of local newspapers in the Archives Research Center.