Calvin Scholler's Third Marriage

Calvin Scholler's experience with marriage had been heartbreaking so far — one young wife lost to influenza and another to cancer — but in April 1923 he decided to brave it once more.


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Hobart News, April 12, 1923.


The Gazette added, "The bride is formerly from Glascow [sic], Scotland, and a life-long friend of Mr. and Mrs. Bruce."[1]


Other mildly interesting items on that page include (in the left column) the Gem Theatre's ad for The Toll of the Sea, which made me learn a little more than I used to know about motion pictures in color.

In the next column, the top article concerns the future site of the Roosevelt Gym. The bottom article describes the newly formed Hobart Gun Club planning to meet "on the Jerry McAuliff[e] farm east of the city in the field formerly used as a motorcycle race track," which sounds as if the racetrack had fallen into disuse.

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[1] "Scholler-Young Nuptial," Hobart Gazette, April 13, 1923.

Ross Township Commencement

Ross Township's graduating class of 1919 including two young people from Ainsworth — Robert Chester and Raymond Triebess, as well as three from Deep River.

The page from the Gazette of May 16, 1919, carrying that announcement also gives us an update to our continuing saga, Plumbing Hobart's Secrets. In this episode, George and Helen Rhodes have just returned from Philadelphia, where George had finally concluded his wartime plumbing mission. George was ready to hit the ground running in the service of Hobart's plumbing needs. Meanwhile, George Bruce — perhaps seeing the Lee & Rhodes juggernaut bearing down on him — had started rethinking his career in plumbing.


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More on Rhodes and Bruce, from the Hobart News of May 15, 1919.


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Final and Other Business

Simeon and Abbie Bullock were happy to open their home to their grandchildren, Lester and Vera Quinlan. The young folks had now enrolled in the Hobart school; they were no doubt making new friends, and they had plenty of relatives in the area. But the newly widowed Jessie Bullock Quinlan still had her husband's estate to settle. In mid-April 1919, she and her father left for Alva, Oklahoma. They spent three weeks attending to the final business, returning to Hobart on May 3.

Meanwhile, in Hobart, the first ad of the resurrected business of Lee & Rhodes appeared, perhaps by accident, next to an ad placed by Charles Lee's long-ago partner, George Bruce.


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And the Gem Theater's Saturday-night features included a comedy starring the immensely popular Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.




Sources:
♦ Advertisements. Hobart News 10 Apr. 1919.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 10 Apr. 1919; 8 May 1919.

Small-Town Gossip, 1917

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These were some of Hobart's Red Cross volunteers during World War I. Handwritten notes on the back of the original identify only four of them: in the first row, from the left: Blanche Roper and Lillian Burge. In the second row, at center, Mrs. Lacey; at the right end, Mrs. Messick. They are in front of the M.E. Church on Fourth Street. Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.


As summer faded into autumn, a story was making the rounds in Hobart about Mary Bruce (the plumber's wife). Eventually it reached Mary's own ears, and she was astonished to learn what she'd been up to lately.

According to the story, in an act of patriotic voluntarism, Mary had knitted a sweater as something the Red Cross could give to some soldier headed overseas to fight for his country. She had slipped a note inside it, with her name and address, asking the recipient to write to her. After some time she received a letter from the soldier now wearing her sweater — but he told her he'd bought it at Marshall Field's department store in Chicago. The story's implication was that the Red Cross was taking donated goods and selling them.

Mary was so annoyed that she wrote in to the Gazette to denounce this ridiculous concoction, and the Gazette printed her letter. In the first place, Mary said, she did not knit a sweater; she did not even give a purchased sweater to the Red Cross; so of course all the rest of the story was utter nonsense.

As a piece of gossip, however, it's both inventive and efficient: it packs the maximum slander into the minimum narrative. In just a few sentences, it insults Mary (for being so forward as to ask a strange man to write to her), the Red Cross (for selling donated goods) and Marshall Field's (for buying what it should have known were donated goods). The only one who comes out unscathed is the (nonexistent) soldier — I suppose even gossips wouldn't cross that line.


Source: "Just a Canard." Hobart Gazette 28 Sept. 1917.

Holy Toledo! or, Trouble in Plumbing Paradise

I was totally blindsided by this little item in the August 7, 1914 Gazette:


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But why? They were doing so well together!

The next week, the News confirmed it, but wasn't much more informative about the reason.



"By mutual consent"? But why?? (And as you can see, George Bruce is already advertising solo.)

Next came a formal announcement of the dissolution, for the benefit of their creditors and debtors.



This announcement ran in the paper for three successive weeks. But not a word about what Charles was planning to do with himself.

Not until the second week of September do we find out what Charles did with himself.



Toledo? Ohio?? Of all places! What was going on in Toledo that could entice a man to leave a successful business in Hobart? (I wonder if Toledo was the "east" where Charles had allegedly been planning to go just before the family tragedy in 1912?)

Later that month we find Anna Lee offering a room for rent. No clue where the room was.



Owing to the absence of news in October and November, I'm not clear on the sequence of events. Either the Lee family moved to Toledo and then Charles got sick, or vice versa. But by mid-December, the whole family had returned to Hobart.





Incidentally, at the Hobart Historical Society Museum I came across a ledger kept by John Fiester, a Hobart businessman and a customer of Lee & Bruce. A page in that ledger reflects the break-up of the partnership, as his plumbing payments change from "Lee & Bruce" to just "Bruce."


Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

So does the "Water Fund Disbursements" section of the Town of Hobart's annual report of receipts and expenditures for 1914:


"Annual Report of the Clerk and Treasurer, showing the Receipts and Expenditures of the Town of Hobart, State of Indiana, from January 5, 1914, to December 31, 1914, inclusive." Hobart News 2 Feb. 1915.

Advertising Like Crazy

Lee & Bruce just keep on advertising! I ought to have printed out some of the ads of competing plumbers, especially Paul Newman. The tone of his ads sounds like these new guys have him worried. He ran one to the effect of "I am not like a mushroom, popping up overnight and then gone the next day." Unfortunately for him, neither were Lee & Bruce.


From the Hobart Gazette of Sept. 5, 1913.
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(I like that United Doctors ad: "Married ladies must come with their husbands and minors with their parents.")


From the Hobart Gazette of Dec. 12, 1913.


From the Hobart Gazette of Jan. 9, 1914.


From the Hobart Gazette of Feb. 27, 1914.

I know this is becoming the "Chas. A. Lee Blog" but I can't help it that Charles' life got so eventful right around the time that Ainsworth news dried up. Both the Gazette and the News have dropped their separate Ainsworth/Ross Township columns. Nowadays (circa 1913) an Ainsworth person pretty much has to die or be born in order to get into the paper. I hope this is only temporary. I seem to remember seeing 1920s papers with Ainsworth columns.

Plumber News: A Move, A National Write-Up and a Little Spigot

Things were going very well for Charles Lee. First, his firm was doing such a good business that they had to find larger quarters, according to the Hobart News "Personal and Local Mention" column of October 23, 1913: "Lee & Bruce have rented the Black building, which has been used as a pool room, and will move their plumbing establishment into this room shortly after election. This firm has grown out of its present quarters and needs a larger room." (I'm assuming the reference to "election" was to the local elections in November.)

Then his firm got a write-up in a national magazine:


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Those little one-liners about "Tell it to Richmond" are advertising for a competitor, William S. Richmond, who recently opened a plumbing business in Hobart.

A month later, a daughter!

City Plumber

This little Hobart Directory, printed in the Hobart News of April 17, 1913, listed the town officials. Charles Lee was the City Plumber.


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This page from the Hobart News of May 15, 1913, just mentions (lower right) a job done by the Lee-Bruce Plumbing & Heating Co. that apparently passed inspection:

Bruce & Lee, or Lee & Bruce, Ads

Soon after they went into partnership, Charles Lee and George Bruce started running a series of ads in the two Hobart papers, and trying to make up their minds which of them should be named first.


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From the Hobart Gazette, May 23, 1913.


From the Hobart News of June 5, 1913.


From the Hobart Gazette of June 6, 1913.


From the Hobart News of July 10, 1913.


From the Hobart Gazette of July 11, 1913.

Two Practical Plumbers

In the spring of 1913, Charles Lee went into partnership with George Bruce. This ad is from the Hobart News of April 3, 1913:


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I'm assuming Mr. Bruce's first name was George because of an item in the "Personal and Local Mention" column of the Hobart News of March 20, 1913: "Chas. Lee and George Bruce transacted business in Chicago, Wednesday."

(Poor Frank Pio! That's the sort of thing that could happen to a person before the development of antibiotics.)