Soldiers in Aprons: The Housewives Who Changed America

100 Years ago this month… something happened in Ohio. Something that would have a huge impact on life as we know it and will likely       continue to affect life for a very long time.  No, it didn’t involve the construction of new buildings, or the fighting of a great war, or the brilliant oratory of a long-winded speaker or even the breakthrough of a dazzling new invention. For this event was as quiet and simple as the passage a new law. A new set of laws that would for the first time ever in Ohio,  create meaningful food purity standards. These were passed by the state legislature in May of 1913,  in concert with the new federal standards created to protect consumers from unhealthy and dangerous foods, and/or unscrupulous vendors and retailers.  Some might call it the birth of the nanny state.  If so, we can thank our grandmothers for its conception and delivery, for much of the labor to create these regulatory bureaucracies were driven by the determination of housewives, the everyday homemakers who were fed up with spoiled food, tainted products and the callous indifference of the retail food industry to sanitation issues.   This was 1913 America. When government regulation and oversight of such home and hearth  matters were few and far between.  After, all this was women’s work.  It was Mom’s job to run the house and to make sure that she got what she paid for. And that’s just what she did.  Until the early part of the 20th century,  it was largely believed that food safety and inspection should be up to the shopper and not the government. Caveat Emptor as they say. Sounds good in the abstract, but the women were not pleased with the daily reality of being ripped off or sickened from adulterated and poisoned food and drugs they bought at the local stores.  Food borne illnesses were commonplace, and sadly many would result in death.  As mass production of food products became even more pervasive in this new industrial age of the 20th century, the worries about what was in the packaged and prepared food increased.  With few laws or regulations, and without the right to vote, the women of America didn’t let that deter them from their desire to buy food and drugs they could trust. What they lacked in political power they made up for in sheer numbers and their determination to get the job done.  If the food industry couldn’t regulate itself, the women will find ways to get it done,  and, at the same time pressure the government to join them in their fight.  Thus, by 1910, was born the movement to create and nurture a network of women’s groups across the country giving rise to consumer advocacy. First started in New York,  new chapters of the ”Housewives League” began springing up in just about every corner of the country with local groups of women and wives ready to do battle in the marketplace to force the stores and food producers to clean up their act.   They also lobbied hard for more government involvement so that basic standards could be expected for food purity and measurements.  These women’s groups, especially the Housewives League, were not to be ridiculed or taken lightly. The voice of the women, throughout the country, became loud and powerful.  A dynamic force for change in the way stores and retailers did business. By 1913, the New York Times wrote of how these women, 750,000 strong, were not just complaining but effectively organizing and setting up local chapters which would often rate stores on four main criteria, namely, fair prices, clean shops, pure products, and efficiency.  Each store was rated by the women of the league. A bad rating could be a business killer. (move over Angies’ list!) While a 75% might be considered an “acceptable” score, the Housewives League continued to lobby those stores for improvements. Stores that didn’t comply or allow the League to rate them, were blacklisted.  Many soon came to their senses and complied with the demands of the housewives whose tenacity was rivaled only by their sheer power in the marketplace.

Toledo Housewives Were Leaders in Movement

Toledo had its Housewives League, as well, when it was formed in 1914 with 85 local women.  One of their first successes was to force what we now call the downtown “farmer’s market” to allow the general public to buy merchandise and products there on an equal footing with the local grocers and merchants, so they couldn’t monopolize the popular city food market which was located at that time on Superior Street. This victory opened the gates to the potential that housewives could bypass

One of Toledo’s Early Farm Markets on Spielbusch Ave.

the stores altogether and go directly to the farmers for their foods, increasing the odds for fresher and safer products, putting even more pressure on the food retailers to make changes. The Housewives League, however, continued its crusade to apply more leverage on the industry itself and on state lawmakers to pass legislation that would have the power of the government behind it.

In Columbus the passage of the new food purity laws in 1913 were just part of a much wider ongoing campaign through the U.S to meet the rising tide of concerns about food safety.  A tide of concern that had been pushed along by the publication of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, a shocking expose of the filthy and squalid conditions of Chicago’s massive meatpacking houses.  The book served to ramp up the fears and jitters of an American marketplace fraught with mysterious new substances being added to foods for taste or filler.

Chicago Meat Packing House

A  Case in Point:  Prior to the state of Ohio having any enforceable legal standards, the  Ohio Food and Dairy Commission conducted routine tests of certain food products in an effort to find out just what ingredients were actually being used in each brand of food. In one test in 1888, in Ohio, it was found that of 30 different brands of baking powder tested, 20 of them were filled with “alum”. This early expose was shocking to many.  ”Alum” it was written,  ”was considered by the highest medical authorities to be injurious to health when used in food.” (It still is considered unhealthy to consume alum as a food product, although it is used in a variety of applications.) The Ottawa Illinois Free Trader, then detailed a complete list of each brand and the percentage of alum or other ingredients used in the powders. While we tend these days to take the matter of food purity for granted, our grandparents did not.

Housewives League meeting in Detroit

As a result, the purity question became a major sales tool as food companies often touted their brands as the “purest and safest”.  In many cities, including Toledo, so called ”pure food” shows became quite popular as housewives could come to the show to see the exhibits that would demonstrate why a particular brand of food product should be considered safer than its competitors.   In January of 1926, A “pure foods” show in Pittsburgh was reported to have  broken all attendance records as people gathered by the thousands to take in the exhibits and to sample everything from milk to tea.

The REAL Housewives of  America  

The Housewives League meanwhile grew in power and influence and busied itself in a wide variety of issues pertaining to food safety and sanitation. In Detroit and Toledo, one area of concern was how bread was sold. The idea of loaves sitting on the shelves and being exposed to indiscriminate handling by many public fingers was looked upon with disgust and prompted a campaign to force bakers and sellers to wrap their loaves of bread. Mary Alice Powell, the long time food reporter at the Toledo Blade wrote in a 1964 Blade article that one Toledo Housewives League member recalls that the “bread was full of germs fingered by consumers try to find the freshest loaf”. The 1964 article goes on to point out that a petition by the women gathered some 15,000 signatures in Toledo, demanding that retail grocers and bakers to wrap their bread when put on the shelves. When no action was taken in Columbus, the women took their case to Washington and soon thereafter, “wrapped bread loaves” became the legal standard in the state and elsewhere.     Mary Alice Powell also writes that it was the Toledo Housewives who also claimed victory in the fight to have milk sold in clean bottles. Prior to 1919 in Ohio, most milk buyers had to take their own milk jugs and containers to a traveling milk wagon in the city to get them filled. The Housewives League thought this was unsanitary and needed to be fixed. Once again, they took their concerns to state lawmakers and got laws passed to require that milk be sold only in sanitized bottles. Ohio was first to require this, soon followed by other states.

You can also thank the Housewives League every time you go to the grocery store and don’t have to pay sales tax on your food items. Yes it was those pesky women from Toledo and elsewhere in the state who thought food shouldn’t be taxed. In 1947, the Housewives League fought for and eventually won the battle to remove the taxes from your food.   The Housewives League stayed active in the Toledo area even into the 1960′s and 70′s, but by the mid 1990′s, the League disbanded. Not sure why.  Maybe it was a lack of interest, or a lack of time, but certainly not a lack of issues. While they may be somewhat different than they were back in 1913 when the first food safety laws were enacted, food and consumer issues continue to demand much of our attention. We have just as many concerns about what we eat and put on the dinner table as our grandmothers did 100 years ago  – whether it’s general health and nutrition, genetically modified foods, antibiotics in our meats, or mercury in our fish.  The writer can only wonder how will ours’ and future generation fight for the purity of the food?

In Search of an Ending: The Mystery of Toledo’s Warren Sisters

I always love a good mystery, and there are just enough eccentric and curious people on this planet to satisfy that fascination.

Take the case of the Warren sisters of Toledo, for example, an odd case if ever there was one. Mary and Nanette (Nattie, according to the 1910 census) lived most of their adult lives at the family’s estate near downtown Toledo during the late 1800′s and early 1900′s.   It is said they lived alone, as spinsters, after their father, Samuel Warren, a successful horse breeder and buggy manufacturer vanished one day in 1878 and was never heard from again.  Police even dragged the cistern behind the house on 14th Street, but the body of Mr. Warren was never found. His disappearance was noted as an early Toledo mystery. The two young sisters were shaken by the unexplained loss of their father, but continued living with their mother in the years after.  But then another tragic turn, as the girls’ mother, Mary Van Gorton Warren, died suddenly of a stroke. It now left the Warren girls on their own. The deaths of their parents, however, made these 20-something daughters rather wealthy as they became  the heirs of a significant estate. Not only did they receive the family home at 335 14th Street in Toledo, but several parcels of farm property on River Road,  plantations in the south, and some type of sugar beet interests in California.  Life should have been promising, but according to news stories of the time, the disappearance of the father and subsequent death of their mother also left the Warren girls with emotional issues. The youngest sister Mary developed serious mental health problems, becoming so serious that Mary eventually turned violent and lost the power of speech. In the meantime, the older sister Nanette, was not only left to care for her fragile sister in the Toledo family home, but was left in charge of running the entire family businesses.

Life and Death in California

Thier lives took an even stranger turn when, in about 1912, they moved from Toledo to Los Angeles. For reasons not entirely clear, but supposedly because of Mary’s state of health and state of mind.   They would move to an apartment in the City of Angels and it was there that the lives of these reclusive sisters would make national headlines.  In January of 1914, the landlady of the apartments where they lived had been trying to deliver a message to them from a woman named Mildred Cline of Toledo, but the sisters wouldn’t, or couldn’t, answer the door.  Fearing for their welfare, the landlady had the police break into the apartment to check on them and that’s where in one of the bedrooms, they found a starving Nanette lying in bed. Next to her was her sister Mary. Very dead and decomposing. Physicians said Mary had probably been dead for as many as three weeks prior. The news wire reports at the time said Nanette, who hadn’t eaten for about a week, was taken to a ward for the insane as investigators tried to unravel what might have happened inside the apartment and just how her younger sister had died.  Adding to the mystery and intrigue was the discovery of half a bottle of chloroform poison near the body of Mary. Police also found valuable heirloom jewels in the room, dispelling rumors among their neighbors that the women had become impoverished because of bad business investments.

Nurses caring for Nanette say the Toledo woman had no recollection of the events leading up to her sister’s death. Nor could she explain why every crack in the bedroom had been stuffed with rags.  Fueling the suspicions even more was the fact that sister Nanette, would now stand to inherit the entire Warren estate worth about a half million dollars. That was an enviable fortune in 1914.  It prompted many questions and suspicions as newspaper readers from across the nation were treated to the story of the sisters’ secretive lives in Toledo and why they opted to remain unmarried, spurning the interest of many young suitors. The implied question was of course that Nanette had caused her sister’s death for the family fortune.  It seemed a reasonable motive and police asked many questions, but in the end, Nanette was never charged, despite the many questions left unanswered.  Within a week after the body of Mary was found, the coroner in Los Angeles said there would be no further investigation and the remains of Mary could be released for burial.

Loved the scent of violets

A few days after the initial reports of the story, newspapers were writing that Nanette had received a gift of some violets from a woman who took pity on her situation, and it was the scent of the violets that helped clear her mind to begin talking with authorities about what happened. “I do like violets,” she said, although, after a few minutes, after talking about her childhood and life in Toledo,  she then stopped and would not speak further. It was also reported that a man by the name of B.F. Mace contacted the coroner in Los Angeles and said he was living in the Warren homestead in Toledo and had power of attorney for the affairs of the estate and would come to California to help settle matters. Another man also claiming to be the next of kin of the sisters came froward from Toledo, George J. Waldvogel, and informed investigators the reason that Nanette protected and tried to hide the body of her sister was because she was afraid that authorities might bury her sister and she was abhorrent to the idea of her sister, or anyone, being buried in the “cold earth”. Waldvogel who had been married to the Warren’s sister aunt was attempting to have the body of Mary released to him to have it returned to Toledo to be interred in a mausoleum.

And that is unfortunately where the story ends…at least for now. Did her remains ever make it back to Toledo, and did Nanette ever get released from the insanity ward to return to live out the remaining years of her life? If so, where? Who was B.F. Mace and did George Waldvogel ever get custody of Mary’s body?  Questions for which there are no convenient answers. The public trail of the Warren sisters journey onto the stage of notoriety stops abruptly after the first sensational stories of Mary’s mysterious death and Nanette’s vigil over her.  After many checks of obit files, and cemetery indexes, census records, and newspaper accounts, the story grows cold and seems to vanish into oblivion. I will continue looking.

If you have any information on how the final chapter of this story is to be written, I invite you to share it with our readers. Until then, perhaps it is only fitting that the tormented tale of Warren sisters remains cloaked in the same mantle of mystery that seems to have surrounded their lives.

Good Luck Came Late For A Noble Findlay Beggar

While surfing through some old newspapers from around the globe, I happened to find this one buried in the sea of ink that tells the story of an old tramp from the Findlay area, whose good fortune came a little late – too late.

The story begins in January of 1907, on a cold and icy winter’s day where an old man, down on his luck, a bum some would say, died on the streets of Findlay. Clad in rags and known as Alfred Axelson, he had no family and few friends, if any, after moving to this country from Sweden many years before, with hopes of starting a new and prosperous life. Alfred though found out that life here was just as hard as it was in the native land he left. He spent many years tramping around the country working on farms, and working for hand outs.  In his later years he was reduced to begging and ended up in Findlay, living mostly on the streets and barely staying alive. In January of 1907, he couldn’t hold on any longer. Found on the streets, nearly dead from exposure, Alfred was taken to a local hospital where in a short time, death’s angels came to visit and Alfred Axelson’s remains were sent to a pauper’s grave to be forgotten and buried.

But not quite.

For what Findlay residents didn’t know was that Alfred Axelson was not just any homegrown vagrant, but was in fact, a man of nobility. Born, Axel Alfred Crondhjelm, Count Alfred Crondhjelm to be precise – the son of one of the oldest families in Sweden. But the family name, however famous, was apparently more formidable than its bank account and the Crondhjelm estate was meager at best.  After the death of Alfred’s father, with no promise of any fortune to inherit, Count Alfred left Sweden to pursue a new life in America. As revealed earlier, his hopes were dashed by the realities of the American economy. Life was hard and good luck failed him.   The Count eventually changed his name to Alfred Axelson and never revealed to anyone the Swedish roots of his family nobility.

The story could end there–but doesn’t.

What poor Alfred didn’t know was that a few years before his death, one of the wealthier members of his family died in Sweden and Alfred was named as an heir to part of the estate. It was estimated in US currency to be about 70,000 dollars a year, or at least a million annually in today’s dollar value. Poor Alfred. Didn’t know about the death  and the inheritance and didn’t know that the courts in Sweden had set out to find him to tell him of his great fortune.

They even sent the administrator of the estate to the U.S. to find the missing Count Alfred in the fall of 1906. Five months later, that administrator eventually did.  Two weeks after the Count Alfred Crondhjelm died, as a penniless beggar on the cold winter streets of Findlay, Ohio.

One of Toledo’s Forgotten Stars: June MacCloy

Had  movie actress June Mary MacCloy lived, she would have been 104 this year and she would have had some wonderful stories to tell.  Sadly, MacCloy passed away back in 2005 and it is strange, but when she died,  few in Toledo probably knew it. There was a small obit printed in the Blade(ten days later)and one line referencing her early life in Toledo.  Yes, June MacCloy, was a Toledo girl. A Toledo girl who made good, both on the stages of Broadway and under the lights of Hollywood.  A statuesque blond actress who epitomized the glamour era of Hollywood and who probably could have and should have made an even bigger name for herself.   The Scott High School graduate was also blessed(or cursed, some would say)with an unusual singing voice –  so deep and rich and husky that it was very manly, but very good.  Still, there were critics who believed that her voice was a liability and there were always rumors that she was a lesbian which during that era of more provincial sexual morality, may have also affected her career.

Her last movie appearance was in the Marx Brothers’ comedy Go West , released in 1940.   Cast as the saloonkeeper, this Toledo native was said to be  “a worthy match” for the inimitable talents of Groucho Marx who greeted  her in one scene saying: “Lulubelle! I didn’t recognize you standing up”. To which she replied, with hands on her hips saying, “Vamoosh, you goose.” And then croons on stage, ” You Can’t Argue with Love”. MacCloy as Lulubelle in Go West (1941)

June Mary MacCloy’s story began just north of the Indiana state line in Sturgis, Michigan, where she was born on June 2 1909. Her family, however moved to Toledo when she was still a girl, to a home in the 1400 block of Franklin Avenue  It was here that she was raised and matured into  a tall and good looking girl who could turn heads with her striking beauty and a radiant smile.  By the time she was in her mid-twenties, however, she left her humble home  and headed to te Big Apple of New York City.  It didn’t take long before she found work, and soon joined Earl Carroll’s Vanities on Broadway in 1928, however, she left the revue after complaints from her mother that her costume was too revealing.  MacCloy recalled later that the outfit she wore was  “basically strings of cotton candy and Mother thought one of the rich guys in the audience would rape me or something. Although that kind of thing did happen, I always managed to stay out of harm’s way.”

McCloy’s masculine baritone voice led her next to work as a male  impersonator, mimicing the style of Broadway star Harry Richman with the song “I’m on the Crest of a Wave” while playing in the George White’s long running Broadway Revue, ”Scandals”, a production that launched the careers of many notables of the era.  It was written in her obit that  she continued working in Vaudeville and had the chance to work with the famed director Vincent Minnelli, (husband of Judy Garland and father of Liza Minelli), whom MacCloy recalled as a sadistic “nut” and a perfectionist with a “sexual craving for his own kind”.

Her film career began in 1931 when MacCloy made her first feature film  ”Reaching for the Moon“, with Douglas Fairbanks Senior, Bebe Daniels and a very young Bing Crosby. She had arrived in Hollywood in the fall of 1930.  On September 18, 1930, The Toledo News Bee carried a story and picture of the young and promising hometown girl as she traveled by train from New York to her new home in Hollywood.  She made a quick stop in Toledo that week to visit with family after siging a $12,000 contract with Paramount to begin her career in the movies. The New Bee says that MacCloy was the first Toledo woman to ever do a talking motion picture.

After her silver screen debut in “Reaching for the Moon”, she would go on to some success and notice in Ring Lardner and George Kaufman’s ”June Moon” with Frances Dee and Jack Oakie. This movie could have been her big break, but the picture did not live up to its billing and MacCloy’s career never seemed to get the traction it needed to develop a full potential.  In fact, most of her films are rarely available anymore for viewing with the exception of the Marx classic “Go West”.   Also on her resume is  “The Big Gamble” which starred Bill Boyd and ZaSu Pitts, then and a series of comedies for RKO- and a series of radio shorts. MacCloy did have her moments in the big spotlight. In 1932 she sang Little Old New York in Lorenz Ziegfeld’s last Broadway production, Hot-Cha!, and also sang with several touring bands of the 1930′s.

During her career in Hollywood and on Broadway, the stunning MacCloy was a  favorite of the gossip columnists and the show biz tabloids. She was so good looking, there were always plenty of stories about her army of admirers. She said in later interviews that many men at that time proposed marriage with the lure of money and diamonds. One of those men was Jimmy Whiting, a multi-milionaire playboy type in Hollywood who tried putting a ring on MacCloy’s finger.  There was little doubt that he had plenty of money to employ in his campaign for marriage and on one occasion - he even arranged  a flight in a plane filled with rose petals.  But it was not to be.  For Whiting’s chief rival for MacCloy’s heart turned out to be a Toledo boy by the name of Charles Schuyler Schenck  who had also moved out to Hollywood’s budding film colony in the late 1920′s where he was doing some writing and playing music.  Schenk was the grandson of a former bank president in Toledo. While he was not quite as rich as Jimmy Whiting, he was was very handsome and it was Schenck who eventually won over MacCloy’s affections with his easy going style and Midwestern personality.  He and MacCloy drove to Yuma Arizona where they eloped in November of 1931.  The Toledo News Bee headlined the story “June MacCloy Chooses Love Over Riches”,  framing it as a cupid wins the day type story line, but this too proved to be just another Hollywood script headed for the scrapheap of memory.  The marriage to Schenck lasted only a few years. And by 1933, MacCloy was still a tender  24 years of age and had already been married and divorced 3 times.  It was the stuff of which gossip columns are made. The first of her union was to an Atlantic City man by the name Robert Forrester in 1928, which according to the Toledo News Bee had been annulled on application by MacCloy’s mother within a year.  Then the actress then married a Cincinnati film salesman, Wilbur Guthlein whom she divorced in 1931 to marry Schenck.  The man who did eventually win her heart for the long term was Neal Wendell Butler, a California architect who shared her love of jazz music and with whom she had two children. After her marriage in 1941, she retired from show business and made her home in Southern California with her husband who died in 1985, and where Toledo first female motion picture star died at the age of 95 on May 5th,  2005.

If anyone who reads this has any information about MacCloy’s family from Toledo, I’m eager to get in touch with them to see what else they might be able to share with us about her life in later years after she left show biz.  It is also this writer’s opinion that perhaps there should be some public acknowledgement of MacCloy’s life and history in her home town of Toledo.  Seems curious that MacCloy fell into such local obscurity once her bright and shiny star fell from the Hollywood heavens.

Special Report: Toledo’s Missing Navy Silver — Found, But Tarnished With Questions

USS Toledo heavy cruiser launched in 1946

A treasure with Toledo’s name on it has been missing for awhile. A treasure worth tens of thousands of dollars and forged with historical  significance, but strangely nobody really knew it was missing. A footnote of our history, forgotten in the fog of our memories. But now, fifty years after it left Toledo, it has surfaced and here is its story.

In 1946 when the United State Navy was about the launch the USS Toledo,a brand new heavy cruiser, the citizens of Toledo wanted to do something special for this new ship that would be christened in name of our fair city.  So, in this strongly patriotic post-Word War Two period, the Navy League of Toledo  quickly raised the treasure needed, with the help of community kindness, to have a custom 18 place engraved silver service dinner set made for the USS Toledo and its officers’ ward room which has been a long standing Navy tradition. The silver collection was commissioned through the Gorham Silver Company of Rhode island, one of the most famous makers of silverware in the world. It was an artfully crafted collection of over 200 pieces,  with many of the trays and plates featuring the engravings of Toledo landmarks on them.  The collection was impressive and beautiful, created at a cost of about $12,500.  Ironically, the silver collection did not make it aboard the USS Toledo for two more years. Broer Freeman, the local  Toledo jeweler who was handling the purchase and details with Gorham Silver company found the entire collection in 1948, in a back storeroom, crated up and ready for delivery, but somehow, no one ever delivered the silver to the USS Toledo. Depsite some local embrassment for this oversight, the set was officially delivered to the USS Toledo and took its place aboard this new warship that would go on to see plenty of heroic action during the years of the Korean War.

 

WHEN USS TOLEDO IS RETIRED, SILVER IS RETURNED TO TOLEDO 

By 1960, however, when the USS Toledo was retired from active duty and decommissioned, the coveted silver service set, at the request of Toledo Mayor Mike Damas, Mayor Michael Damas

was returned to Toledo and locked in a vault at the former Naval Armory at Bayview Park with the idea that it might eventually be displayed to the Toledo public at the Toledo Museum of Art. There is no record of that ever happening.  Less than a year later, the set was loaned again to the Navy. This time going aboard the  USS Spiegel Grove for a voyage on a goodwill tour of Africa’s coastal cities.  The Spiegel Grove, a Navy landing craft had been named to honor President’s Rutherford B. Hayes’s beloved home at Spiegel Grove in Fremont, so it was only natural that the Toledo inspired silver dinner set would grace its wardroom.

But the loan of the USS Toledo silver to this landing craft was short lived, when the Navy requested that the set be placed aboard the soon-to-be commissioned super aircraft carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk. Once again, with the Ohio connection of the Wright Brothers and their historic relationship to Kitty Hawk North Carolina, Toledo’s city fathers felt this was an appropriate move to allow the set to be placed aboard the new super aircraft carrier.

USS Kitty Hawk

In 1963, Toledo City Council passed a resolution to make that official and soon the silver dinnerware was on its way to San Diego to become apart of this huge US Navy super carrier.  That was the last time the silver was ever seen in Toledo, it has never been back since.    When The USS Kitty Hawk was taken out of service and decommissioned several years ago, it sort of vanished into the byzantine bureacracy of government limbo.  So what happened to it?  Curious minds like mine always want to know.

Thanks to the Internet these days, finding long lost treasure or elusive information is not as hard as it once was. So, within the last week, photos of the USS Toledo silver service appeared on a Facebook posting for the USS Midway Museum in San Diego.

Photos from the Midway Museum Facebook Page

The images portrayed workers preparing the set for display aboard the historic aircraft carrier that is now a museum ship in San Diego harbor.  The museum opened for business in 2004 and is a popular tourist spot on the San Diego oceanfront harbor. But the discovery of this treasured Toledo artwork has prompted even more questions. At least on the part of this reporter. I am curious to know why the set was never brought back to Toledo for display in one of our museums or venues. It was after all, originated here in Toledo and paid for by the people of Toledo and placed in the custody of the US Navy as a goodwill gesture to honor the USS Toledo, and then later the USS Kitty Hawk.  From what I read in the original news stories from both 1946 and 1963,  it was never intended to be given away to the US Navy without some conditions attached, and certainly did not appear to give the Navy’s carte blanche  authority to exercise sole discretion as to the artwork’s eventual disposal.  In an effort to find out just what the expectations of the city might have been in 1963, or in 1946,  I have submitted questions regarding its historical chain of custody to the U.S. Navy History and Heritage  Command.

 US NAVY SAYS THE USS TOLEDO SILVER COLLECTION IS NOW OWNED BY THE NAVY

In a late development in the last few days, I have received some answers from the US Navy, specifically from Lt. Commander Heidi Lenzini of the US Navy’s History and Heritage Command who says that after checking their records and files, it appears that when the silver service was returned by Mayor (John) Potter of Toledo to be placed onboard the USS Kitty Hawk in 1963, that it did not come with any stipulations that it be returned to Toledo or that it was being loaned to the Navy, …”therefore the collection is considered to be the property of the Navy. The Navy decided the Silver would be best suited to be placed in a museum on a loan basis instead of in storage.” She goes to write that the Navy felt the placement of the 204 pieces of the collection, valued at over 61,000 dollars today could be seen by millions of people a year at the USS Midway Museum in San Diego. The loan agreement with that museum is for an unspecified period of time, or until such time that another ship bearing the name the USS Toledo goes into service. As for the USS Toledo submarine, launched almost 20 years ago, Lt. Commander Lenzini says that new USS Toledo does have two of the original silver platters from the collection.

In the Navy’s reply to me, they did include a number of the original letters between the City of Toledo and the US Navy from 50 years ago, regarding the placement of the silver.  After studying some of those early missives, I think they leave some questions as to the original intent and ownership of the collection. I suppose it’s all a matter of  some interpretation. From what I have read, the letter from Mayor John Potter and the Toledo City Council does not explicitly, no implicitly give the US Navy ownership of the collection. And it clearly does give the City some control as to where it will be placed. (these letters will be posted later)

NAVY SAYS TOLEDO MIGHT BE ABLE TO GET SILVER COLLECTION RETURNED

In this most recent e-mail from the US Navy History and Heritage Command, it is suggested that if the current Mayor of Toledo wants the silver returned to the city, then a request should be made to the US Navy Secretary and, if approved, it will be returned.  The Navy spokesperson goes to write……“The Navy has many collections currently in storage and is continuously looking for ways to keep the silver out of storage and placed where it can be treasured by many.”

THE SILVER SERVICE MAY NO LONGER BE INTACT ..PIECES ARE MISSING

On the Kittyhawk Museum website

In the course of finding this “missing” silver service from Toledo, it came to my attention that the town of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina may be in possession of one or more pieces of the set.  As that small town has been assembling a museum to honor the aircraft carrier that bore its name, they posted online, a photo of a large silver platter from the USS Kitty Hawk, that was part of the missing Toledo set. The platter has an engraving of the Toledo Museum of Art with  “USS Toledo” etched on it. With the platter is a poster that explains the origins of the historic silver service from Toledo. I spoke with Lynn Morris, the town clerk in Kitty Hawk who says she thought the platter came into their museum packed in a large wooden crate with other items sent from the mothballed USS Kitty Hawk. The Navy”s Heritage Command, however, says it has no record of any of the Toledo silver collection being sent to Kitty Hawk North Carolina for display there.

It should be noted, that when the set was created it contained more than 225 pieces including the engraved trays, platters, plates, candelabras, pitchers, and many other pieces that one would expect as part of a formal table service.  However, the USS Midway Museum was given only 204 pieces and the USS Toledo Submarine has two platters, suggesting that about 18 pieces may be unaccounted for. What pieces or items are missing, we don’t know yet, but will try to get an accounting of the Toledo silver that is now on loan to the Midway Museum. I am also trying to determine what type of silver this collection is made of. Was it sterling silver or silver plate? That could make a big difference in its valuation.

Questions linger and perhaps they all have a reasonable answers that will be satisfactory to all.  As to whether the City of Toledo will take any further action to recover this historic treasure, that will be determined in the future. We will ask and I know one Toledo City Councilman at this point who is interested in seeing the  colleciton returned to Toledo. But for now, this forgotten collection of silver, made possible by the gratitude of Toledoans some 67 years ago, is safe and will be viewed by the thousands of visitors and tourists in a city thousands of miles away.

We’ll keep you up to date on any new developments.

 

The Luckey Legend of Benjamin Franklin Stone

The story of  the black man’s entry into the ranks of American law enforcement really didn’t begin to materialize until little over a century ago in about the  late 1800′s and the early 1900′s.  Even then, the numbers of black Americans given the chance to wear a badge were still few and occurring mostly in the larger cities where black populations were large.  In Toledo, for example, Albert King was the first black citizen hired to wear a Toledo Police badge in about 1900.  In the smaller communities of the area, minority police officers were non existant at the time,  and in many rural towns, they still are.

Young Benjamin Stone

 So it was surprising to learn that the first black man in Ohio to become a small town police chief was a man by the name of Ben Stone, in the tinyWood County village of Luckey Ohio – in the 1920′s. He was born in 1874, Benjamin Franklin Stone, of mixed Irish and Black parents, and was considered ”mulatto”, at the time.  While history doesn’t record exactly where he was born, we do know that he and his brother, Tom Stone, eventually ended up in an orphanage on Lagrange Street in Toledo,. By the time he was 10 years old, Ben and his brother, Tom were taken from the orphanage by Bill Dunipace, an early farmer near Luckey who needed help on his farm. Dunipace was a bachelor and gave the brothers the promise of a better life in exchange for doing the various chores and jobs around the farm. Apparently, Tom Stone didn’t take to the notion of being a part of the farm life and fled back to Toledo, while Ben stayed on to work with farmer Dunipace and lived out his childhood in this rural setting of the late 1800′s. It is said, that their relationship grew close and became like a father and son. Two decades later when Mr. Dunipace died, he left Ben 80 acres of land and a house on Sugar Ridge Road. For a number of years, Ben tried his hand at farming and living the rural lifestyle, but as a young man, at about 30 years old, he wasn’t content to just settle down and work the land. He had other pursuits on his mind and one of them was guns. Throughout his boyhood, he enjoyed shooting guns and spent much of his time while growing up…honing his skills as a marksman. Locals say he became so good with a revolver, he could shoot the eye out of a crow perched in the highest branch of a tree. And one neighbor says he actually saw Ben shoot at and hit the same nailhead on a wooden door, four times in a row. He also enjoyed other thrills like speed and motorcycles. Not only did he have a motorcycle, but kept it parked at night inside of his modest house on the farm property where he lived. Stories are still told of how Ben would blaze at high speeds down the back country roads of Webster Township on his motorcycle, “plinking” at prearranged roadside targets with great accuracy

 BEN STONE MAKES HIS HIS MOVE INTO TOWN.

Ben Stone’s Cabin

Eventually, in 1916, Ben tired of the farming life and sold off 40 acres of his land to a neighbor, but kept the old cabin and the other forty acres where he lived.  He also took a few odd jobs working for other farmers in the area. His solid reputation for hard work and honesty paid other dividends when he took a full time job as the night watchman for the Schwan Furniture store and funeral home in Luckey, guarding the business from the growing number of depression era criminals who roamed the area looking for things to steal. A few other merchants also paid Ben to watch their stores at night and soon he was officially appointed as the town marshal. With that designation he was allowed to carry and gun and he patrolled Luckey’s streets at night with a flashlight in one hand and a shotgun in the other. He also tucked a .45 caliber handgun into the side of his well worn and shaggy coveralls that was his familiar uniform. It can be stated that Ben was hardly a student of modern fashion. His unshaven and grizzly face and his disheveled appearance, were not helped by his refusal to wear a glass eye after he had lost one in an accident many years before. His reason for not wearing the glass eye, he said, was that “it doesn’t make me see any better”. Ben was clearly a man of modest needs and means. After selling his cabin and the remaining 40 acres in the country, he eventually made his home in the back storeroom of the old Schwan Furniture store and where his bed was fashioned from empty wooden boxes used for burial vaults.

 THE DAY THAT BEN BECAME A LUCKEY LEGEND

Locals say Ben would have made a good character for a movie. And if ever there was a great opening scene, it might have been written about the quiet autumn day in 1933 when this mild mannered and friendly marshal became a real-life action hero. As the tale is told from the 1981 Luckey Centennial history book, the story unfoldedThursday afternoon, September 28 in 1933. John Landwehr who worked at the Schwan furniture store, was washing the front windows when he noticed a man walk toward the Luckey Exchange Bank wearing a hunting coat. Another man was sitting in a parked car, acting nervously, on the street nearby. Sensing something wasn’t right, Landwehr and his sister ran to the backroom of the furniture store to awaken Marshal Stone who had been up all night patrolling the streets. When informed of what might be happening at the bank, Ben promptly rolled out of bed, put a six shooter in each pocket, and picked up a double barreled shotgun loaded with buckshot.

“He went out the back door of Schwans down the alley and through The Williamson’s Garage and when went down the sidewalk past the bank and waited in the stairway beside the barber shop.” Meanwhile the bandit had entered the bank and pointed a pistol at Harvey Helm, the cashier and two others in the bank, and demanded the money in the drawer. As Helm passed $344.98 to the bandit, he touched an alarm button that sounded in the telephone office and several other downtown stores. Then he and others were herded into a back room of the bank by the bandit who fled out the front door. As he exited, he was greeted by the shotgun wielding Marshal Ben Stonewho said “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

 That’s when Ben Stone says he heard “two cracks” from the robber’s gun and then felt something “nip” his legs” and “That’s when I let him have the right barrel and he went down in a heap.” Someone then shouted that the robber was going to fire again, at which point, Ben not only fired the other barrel at the robber, but then pumped three more bullets into him from his pistol. As soon as the gunfire erupted, the other man in the getaway car took off and Ben would recall later” I’m pretty sorry I didnt get him too.” He was later caught and sent to prison.

LOCAL WOMAN STILL RECALLS THE DAY IT HAPPENED 

By this time, the normally quiet downtown main street in Luckey was flooding with people who came to view the aftermath of this violent bank robbery that ended badly for the suspect as he lay mortally wounded bleeding profusely from his wounds, while Marshal Stone dealt with the pain and bleeding from two bullet holes in his legs. One of the people who came to town that day to witness the scene, was LaVeda Graening, who was a teenager at the time. Now in her nineties, and living in Perrysburg, she told me recently, what she remembers of that day as the crowd gathered around the dead bank robber sprawled out on the bloody street.

 ” My cousin called me and told me what was happening and I ran as fast as I could to get there. The streets were filled with people and people gathered around to see someone shot in the street. It was so public…seeing a body there. Just out in front of everybody. I don’t want to be too descriptive, but when they took his short off, you know, you could see the wound in his chest. It was awful”.

 Ben Stone who had suffered two gunshot wounds to the legs was being transported by a local resident to Mercy Hospital in Toledo. Mrs. Graening remembers that townspeople were concerned for Ben and sent get well cards to the wounded Marshal in hopes for his quick recovery. “Everybody liked Ben. He was a friendly man. I can still remember seeing that little smile of his. He used to have little sayings and called some of the girls and women in town his little “Ain-gies”, or Angels. He loved children….he was like a Granpa to me.”

STONE ADOPTS LUCKEY AS HIS HOME AND  LUCKEY ADOPT S HIM AS ONE OF THEIR OWN 

Laveda Graening’s remembrances of the Luckey’s most famous lawman are shared by many. The legacy of this man remains indelibly etched into the historical accounts of the Wood County community as a local hero. An unlikely and unusual embrace of a black man in the lily-white farm country of Wood County made up predominantly German and Swiss ancestry at a time when racial prejudice was still practiced openly in many communities. The open warmth that was shown to Ben during this era says a lot about the people of Luckey and says a lot about character of Ben Stone and the effect he had on the people of the community.

 ”He was my Dad’s best friend”, LaVeda Graening recalls, and she tells of how Ben’s “bunkhouse” or quarters, where he used to sleep at night in the back of the mortuary, often became a social gathering place for the men of the town who would get together on a Saturday morning to tell stories over a pot bellied stove. Ben, who was regarded as “town character” often took his share of good natured ribbing from some of the men in town about his dress, his bib overhauls and and his happy-go-lucky lifestyle, but Ben, it is written, always took it in good stride and laughed with those who make the jokes. After the bank robbery and shooting in 1933, the townspeople of Luckey took Ben a little more seriously. Appreciative of the fact, that he had put himself in harms way to protect the town and residents, the citizens found a new sense of respect for Marshal Stone. In November of 1933, few months after the shooting, Ben Stone was the guest of honor at a testimonial dinner at the Grace Lutheran Church in Luckey where 160 of his fellow townspeople thanked him for his courage and service to the town and presented him with a new gold deputy sheriff’s badge with his name engraved on the back of it. They also presented him with a check for 150 dollars.

 SLAIN BANK ROBBER’S MOTHER THANKS BEN STONE

Another gift Ben received was surprising and offered a strange twist to the bank robbery saga. It was a letter of thanks from the mother of Glenn Saunders, the bank robber that he had shot dead. Mrs. Saunders of Columbus Grove, thanked Ben for killing her son, saying he had always been trouble and she and her husband were relieved that he wouldn’t be causing anymore trouble. She continued her communication with Ben over the years and they often exchanged Christmas gifts.

 Ben continued his duties for the next decade in his adopted home of Luckey, patrolling the streets, with his guns tucked into the bib overhauls and greeting his friends and residents everyday with a familiar smile. After the shooting however, he had to give up riding his bicycle because of the wounds he sustained in the shoot-out. He sold it a young girl in town, Betty Landwehr, who had become one of his “Ain-gies” or Angels. Her mother paid for the bike with10 dozen cookies, delivered over a period of time. Betty rode the bike for many years before heading off to Bowling Green to college. Betty lives now in Florida and has very fond memories of Ben Stone as do most of those fortunate enough to have known him.

Ben Stone’s Marker

 When Ben died on August 27th, 1943, of heart disease, at the age of 69, staying true to his simple desires of life, his remains were cremated, and his ashes spread over the Webster Township Cemetery at Scotch Ridge. Today one can find a grave marker among the those of the other families and settlers of the area. And while the old dirty boots of Ben Stone no longer walk the streets of Luckey protecting its citizens at night, the footsteps of this young orphaned boy who found a home can be heard in the winds of time.

Cops and Robbers Street Slang Has Been Spoken For Decades

As I’ve spent hours surfing the headlines of yesterday’s newspapers, one of the first odd words I happened upon was the word “Yegg”.  It didn’t take long to determine that it was the term our grandparents used to describe burglars or safe robbers or specifically those who blew up the safes in stores and banks to get at the stash of cash on hand. In the early part of the 20th century it was in common use, however its origin remains murky at best.  Crime slang is nothing new, however, as police and criminals have used their own street vernacular for many decades.  In Toledo, the police department and local criminal elements were also fluent in the jargon of the day. And much of that lexicon, like the word Yegg has passed into obscurity.  In a 1927 Toledo News Bee article, I found an interesting glossary of these old terms from a hundred years ago. Colorful indeed and useful when reading and translating old police reports.  Toledo Police Detective William Culver, who gained a national repuation for astute police work,  shared one particular example using the underworld criminalese of the day with the News Bee readers.

“A front office man and a finger dick with a fanatic and filthy smoke got by the announcer and rushed a mob in the joint”.

So what does it mean?

Culver says it meant ”a headquarters man and a detective were accompanied by a prohibition agent using gas bombs and managed to elude the “lookout” man and raid a gang of crooks at a “vice resort”, which was a gambling and drinking parlor.

Here are some other crime expressions of the day recorded by Toledo Police officers.

The eye ————- Detective agency

Track 13 and a Washout  –  A  life sentence in a western prison.

The Third Rail —- a pickpocket caught on a railroad train

Toadskins ———- Papermoney

Undershine ——— A fur coat

Vog ——————- A chicken thief

Trolley —————–A wire or string used to pass paper from cell-to-cell.

Vermont Charity — Sympathy

Ludy——————-Someone who passes phony money for a counterfeiter

Lush Toucher —- A crook who robs drunk people

Beak   —————A judge

Yad ——————A porch climber

Wingy ————–A person with one arm

Wisechuck ——–A uniformed back officer

Zenas ————–Man or woman who wears lots of jewelry

Lifeboat ————A pardon