(Click on images to enlarge)
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.
3 comments:
This is very interesting and has sent me to the maps. . .The Lees migrated from Ontario, Canada in 1890 to Muncie, Indiana. Wouldn't that migration take them through Toledo, Ohio? I wonder if they stayed there for awhile, but Charles would have been 15 in 1890.
I know my father had a half-sister, Mary, who my father did not find out about until WWII. I thought she might be the sister of Frederick, but she does not show up on any census.
Hmmmm . . .
Hmmmm indeed. This is getting interesting! How did your father find out about this half-sister during WWII?
The story he told me is that she began to send him cigarettes and other items while he was in the service. We would visit her and her family (she was married to a very sweet man by the name of Earl White) at their home in Anderson, Indiana. I knew Charles was married before (Frederick's mother who buried in Muncie) but can find nothing in the census about Mary. . .
Post a Comment