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.