Isaac Curtis Brewer III and IV

A portrait of Isaac Curtis Brewer III is among the many photographs taken by Willard A. Bishop of prominent Sandusky men from the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. This Mr. Brewer was the husband of the former Sarah Morton, and was well known as a civil engineer. He was born in Massachusetts in 1824, but moved to Conneaut, Ohio by 1870. In 1872 he bought a home in Sandusky, at 519 Huron Avenue. From 1864 to 1887, he worked for the Lake Shore Railroad. Mr. Brewer died on June 5, 1896, and he was buried in Conneaut, Ohio following Masonic services. 

Isaac Curtis Brewer IV was born on January 29, 1868. The younger Mr. Brewer worked as an assistant engineer in the city engineer’s office, but by 1900, he was the superintendent of the Jarecki Chemical Company, which made fertilizer from the byproducts of fish. Isaac C. Brewer IV is pictured below, with other employees of the Jarecki Chemical Company, next to a load of fish. He is the second man from the right.

The first marriage of Isaac Curtis Brewer IV, to Annette Fitch, ended in divorce. Following the divorce, Annette Fitch Brewer left Sandusky with her young son, Isaac Curtis Brewer V. She wrote a book chronicling her cross country adventure, as well as the child custody dispute. By 1920 Isaac Curtis Brewer, IV had married Martha Anthony. 

On June 29, 1933, I.C. Brewer IV fell to his death in Sandusky Bay, near Battery Park. Dr. John Yochem reported that Mr. Brewer, who had a history of heart trouble, had either suffered a stroke and fell into the bay, or possibly he had slipped and fallen into the bay to his death. Funeral arrangements were handled by the Charles J. Andres Sons' Funeral Home, and burial was at Oakland Cemetery

A page from the Brewer family Bible, now in the collections of the Sandusky History Archives Research Center lists the birth of Isaac Curtis Brewer V as August 14, 1899 in Ashtabula, Ohio. He attended college at Kenyon College, and served in the U.S. Army during World War I, he later married and moved to Iowa.

Mr. and Mrs. Gustav Jarecki, Jr.

Gustav Jarecki, Jr. was born in Erie, Pennsylvania in February 1867 to Gustav and Dorothy Jarecki. The elder Gustav Jarecki organized the Jarecki Chemical Co. in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1881. Gustav, Jr. began working for his father, who sent him to Ohio to establish a plant in Sandusky. 

 The Jarecki Chemical Co., seen above in an 1893 Sanborn Map, was located at the foot of First Street, adjacent to Sandusky Bay. This location made it convenient for obtaining fish, and also for shipping the final product by water. One of the best selling products at the Sandusky factory was a fertilizer made from fish by-products. This picture postcard shows the dock of the Jarecki Chemical Company covered in fish in the early twentieth century.

             

 The plant operated from 1887 until 1920 when it was sold to the Armour Fertilizer Co. (Armour ceased operations in Sandusky in the 1960s.) In the early 1900s, Gustav Jarecki, Jr. moved to Cincinnati where he established another branch of the company.

Gustav Jarecki, Jr. and Cora L. Woodward married in June, 1891. 

Mr. and Mrs. Jarecki had only one child, a daughter named Gretchen Dorothea Jarecki. Gretchen studied at the Briar Cliff Manor in New York; she is pictured below when she was a preschooler.

While Mr. and Mrs. Gustav Jarecki, Sr. are buried in Sandusky’s Oakland Cemetery, the family of Gustav Jarecki, Jr. is buried in Cincinnati’s Spring Grove Cemetery.

A database of interments at Spring Grove Cemetery list the following burials in Section 125; Lot 133:

Gustav Jarecki, buried January 1, 1946

Cora Jarecki, buried January 1, 1946

Gretchen J. Welch, buried October 9, 1985

Gretchen’s husband, William W. Welch was buried on January 1, 1957, and a former husband, Warren D. Owen, was buried on January 1, 1942. Gretchen Jarecki Welch lived until the age of 95; she died in Pompano Beach, Florida on October 5, 1985.