Mystery of Lost Aviator Paul Redfern Has Links to Toledo.

A crowd of thousands gather to see Redfern’s Stinson Detroiter prior to his departure from Sea Island. (Redfern Family Collection)

It will be 97 years this summer since the world last heard from Paul Rinaldo Redfern. The dashing young aviator was trying to make history as the first pilot ever to fly nonstop from the North America to South America. Tragically, he did make history, but not the kind he was seeking. Paul Redfern and his Stinson single engine plane vanished into the fog of mystery after he departed an airport in Brunswick Georgia that summer morning of 1927, leaving a behind him, a cheering crowd of well wishers and his worried bride from Toledo. In days to come, the only signs of him came from some reports that Redfern had indeed made it across the Carribean Sea and was spotted just off the coast of Venezuala when he flew low over some Norwegian fishing boats, and dropped some notes, while on a heading towards the mainland. What happened after that brief sighting? Over the next weeks, months and decades, his fate would become the subject of mystery, conjecture, hoaxes, sightings, hope and intrigue. Some say he made it to land, only to crash in the jungle and was severely injured, then taken captive by aboriginal natives in the rainforest. Some say they found pieces of his aircraft, and pieces of his clothing. Others claim there were reports of him taking a wife among the native tribes and having a child. In the end. No one knows for sure. His fate remains as mysterious as other ambition seeking aviators of the day who dared to defy the odds, only to become the stuff of legends.

Who was Paul Redfern and what was his connection to Toledo? To answer the first part of the question; Redfern was a dreamer. An ambitious dreamer. Son of a preacher and educator. His full name was Paul Rinaldo Redfern. Born in 1902 to Blanche and Dr. Frederick Redfern. While raised for part of his life in New York and Ohio, he spent his teenage years in in South Carolina where his father was a dean at  Benedict College. His mother taught English at Benedict. As a child, Paul would show great promise and intellect. He was said to be musical prodigy, his father wrote of him:

At an early age, Paul showed a strong mechanical inclination. His fascination with the violin led him to create one from a cigar box and a single string. He displayed exceptional musical ability by playing any tune that interested him. His unique technique involved holding the cigar-box fiddle between his knees and the staff against his shoulder. By age eleven, his exceptional playing caught the attention of the Idaho press, which featured his achievement and published his picture in a playing position.

Gertrude Hillbrand Redfern, his love from Toledo.

But Paul also had an keen mind for mechanics. He had so much natural talent in the understanding of the science and mechanics of aviation, that as a teenager, he built several small planes and gliders. At 16 years of age, he was asked by the U.S. Army to be a production inspector for their aircraft plant in New Jersey. He stayed with them until 1919. After the World War was over, he returned to South Carolina and finished high school. He build several more airplanes and after he graduated from high school, Paul acquired and flew a Curtiss Jenny JN-4 and a Dehavilland DH-4. It was then he began to realize his boyhood dream of making a living in the cockpit of an airplane. Operating out of the airport in Columbia, South Carolina, Paul started performing acrobatic stunts at county fairs, and became an “aerial advertising artist.” In addition to being a barnstormer, later he would work for the U.S. Customs office in spotting illegal whiskey stills from the air during prohibition. He also began to pioneer the first commercial flights, taking passengers to points North. Canada, New York and Ohio . It is not documented as what took him to Toledo, but by 1925, he had taken up residence in the Glass Cityand likely spent some time with other famous members of this pioneer flying fraternity in Toledo, such as Lincoln Beachey and the great Roy Knabenshue. It is in Toledo where he also flew promotional flights for numerous products, including a cigar company working for cigar salesman, Charles Hillebrand. Redfern’s job was to drop packages of the cigar samples around the city. As the story goes, Hillbrand and his wife invited the young fier over to their home for dinner and that’s when he met their daughter Gertrude. He fell in love at first sight with the pretty auburn haired 20 year old. The attraction was mutual. It didn’t take long for the two of them to begin a relationship and soon, they were married ny January of 1925. They lived for awhile in Toledo, but Paul was offered a job in Georgia and they moved from Toledo to Savannah where he got his job with U.S. customs as a flying revenue agent, finding illegal stills from the air.

Redfern and his wife Gertrude pose with the biplane he built after high school. (Redfern Family Collection)

Redfern obviously loved challenges and with the arrogance of youth, he jumped at the chance to accept a challenge to become the first pilot to fly solo from North to South American, non stop. The year was 1927. Lindberg had just made history flying from the US to Paris. Redfern wanted to break that distance record for a solo flight and this would be that opportunity. It would be a 4600 mile flight and would require at least two-days of being fully awake at the controls. The City of Brunswick Georgia said they would pay 25,000 to the first pilot who could achieve the feat and fly from their nearby airport on Sea Island Beach. It was the same amout that Charles Lindberg had earned just, a few months before. Redfern was certain he could do the same and more.

Barriers to Reaching Brazil

On Wednesday morning, August 25, 1927, Paul Redfern and his wife Gertrude appeared at Sea Island to greet the thousands of well wishers, photographers and reporters who gathered to see him this attempt to set a new long distance flight record. His green and yellow Stinson SM-1 Detroiter monoplane that he purchased from his friend Eddie Stinson in Detroit had been christened “Port of Brunswick”. The signs around the airport exclaimed “Brazil or Bust”.

The arduous journey by air would take him over the Atlantic Ocean and the Carribean and then over the tangled and dangerous jungles of the Amazon rainforest before reaching his destination of Rio De Janeiro. No shortages of hazards were involved.

His marathon flight to Rio de Janeiro would cover 4600 miles, over miles of untamed and hostile jungles and mountains of Brazil.

The daunting itinerary provoked many questions. Could the plane stay aloft for those long hours of operations? Could Redfern stay awake? Even Lindberg admitted that he kept falling asleep on his transAtlantic flight to Paris. If he did crash in the jungle, would he survive? Or would he fall victim to the dangerous animals reptiles, and the hostile natives who inhabited the remote area? Redfern did bring some guns and a rifle with them for that possibility. He even packed some fishing gear and flares. He was undeterred and determined to break Lindberg’s distance record. If he did, he would eclipse that record by a thousand miles. And like Lindberg, in these early days of aviation, there was radio or altimeter or other modern avionics to help navigate. All he had was a compass and a map and a dream. And hopefully enough fuel.

He tried to allay the fears of friends and fears by saying he thought if he should have to crash land in the jungle he could still survive and someday emerge and not to give up on him “if you don’t hear from me maybe for weeks or months”.

Paul Redfern, Bound for Brazil

Paul’s take off from the beach airport in Georgia was officially recorded 12:46 p.m. He taxied the airplane down the beach and then as wife watched with a cheerful smile, the Stinson Detroiter slowly lifted above the horizon and then turned towards the sea on its way to South America. The crowd watched intensely as the planee droned over the water and out of sight. It was written by one reporter that his new Toledo bride, Gertrude Redfern watched tearfully and collapsed into the arms of a friend. Reality was upon her. Her beloved husband, Paul Redfern, was out of her embrace and out of her sight and she didn’t know if she would ever see him again.

The cheerful smile fell from her face and she couldn’t hold back her emotion and sobs. Paul soared over the Atlantic Ocean, heading southeast at 85 miles an hour. He managed to survive the first night in the air and the next morning off the coast of South America he saw a ship below him in the ocean. It was the Norwegian tramp steamer Christian Krohg. He dropped his altitude and descended to the ship and threw package with a note asking for directions to South America. The steamer captain pointed the bow Westward. According to this account, Redfern apparently had succeeded in traversing the miles over the ocean. Then later that day, Lee Dennison, an American engineer, reported seeing his plane, The Port of Brunswick, flying over Venezuela’s Ciudad Bolivar Plaza. But it was not a jubilant sighting. He said the plane was “trailing a thin wisp of black smoke.” If that indeed was Redfern plane, it was the last time it was seen.

Paul Redfern Vanishes

As Redfern was to wing his way south to Rio De Janeiro, hundreds of Brazilians were ready to great him at the airport and carry him into the city. Those in the waiting crowd were Washington Luis, President of Brazil, and Clara Bow, silent movie star. His plan was to drop some flares over the town of Macapa to signal whether or would make it to Rio or try to land at at the alternate site of Pernambuco. It would depend on weather and fuel supply.

As the hours dragged on, however, there were no flares sighted. No flares, nor any sign from the intrepid flier as thousands of people scanned the skies. watching and waiting. With no sighting that third evening, it was apparent that he either had run out of fuel and crashed, or had been forced to make a landing along a 2,500 mile route that stretched from the jungles of the Amazon to the mountains. Over the next days, the world was on edge awaiting some word from Redfern that he was okay. His wife, Gertrude was thrilled with the early story that he had been seen over Venezuela and believed at that time that her husband was safe, wherever, he may be.

Searching for Paul Redfern and the Port of Brunswick

The long days though would turn to long weeks, and the hope would turn to resignation that Redfern’s fate was dubious at best. Over the next ten years, Paul’s family, including his wife, all traveled to the remote area of Brazil in search expeditions to see if they could find some shred of evidence or a clue to provide more information of his whereabouts and whether he was dead or alive. Every now and then, this void of information was filled by bush pilots or missionaries who would come forward with stories that he was seen alive. That he had crash landed and stranded in the jungle. In 1932, an American engineer named Charles Hasler made headline when he claimed that Indian natives were holding an American pilot whose legs had been broken, but the information was so limited that no expedition was organized.

In 1935, another story emerged of a “white man who came out of the sky, had both legs broken, and lived in an Indian village”. Similar accounts surfaced from jungle inhabitants in remote villages. Rescue and search parties formed, but after weeks of exploration, nothing was ever found. Rumors persisted.

The Searches Continue and Hope Lingers

Pilot Art Williams (second from left) led a search in Brazil for Redfern nine years after he disappeared. (Courtesy of the Paul Rinaldo Redfern Aviation Society of Columbia, S.C.)

Pilot Art Williams, in British Guiana, reported that in early 1936, that he passed over an Indian village in Brazil and that the Indians fled into the jungle but he saw “a lone white man standing in the open and waving frantically to the plane.” Williams said he later took a friend and they went back to the area with a small boat in an effort, but says when they finaly got to the village, a heavily armed tribe of Indians met them and they narrowly escaped with their lives.

Another expedition was launched the next year in February 1936, when an American Legion Post in the Panama Canal Zone put together an attempt to find Redfern. CBSNews correspondent James A. Ryan also accompanied the expedition. To pay the trip, the group issued five thousand “Redfern Rescue” stamp covers that had postmarked from Dutch Guiana to sell to stamp collectors. One customer, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who bought two of the “Redfern Rescue” covers.

The search effort not only failed but ended in disaster and one man emerged from the jugle to report they found trace of Redfern and that CBS correspondent James Ryan had drowned when his canoe tipped over in a river. 

Wife and Family Suffer From Cruel Hoax

There were more than a dozen search efforts made to find the lost pilot, but none to cold a cruel and the one in 1936 that fanned new hope that Redfern may indeed be alive and living as “white god” among a tribe of natives. It turned out to be nothing more than a despicable hoax.

Alfred Harred, a freelance reporter said he and the former pilot Art William actually found Redfern on in area on the Brazilain border with French Guiana. They said Redfern was living with a tribe of nude Indians and was hobbling around on crutches. His airplane was still hanging in the branches of a big tree.

He says Paul Redfern told them that when he crashed the plane, his legs and arms were broken, but eventually healed and married an Indian woman. He says they had a son. Harred claims that he and Art Williams were chased away from the village because the tribe thought they were going to take Paul redfern away. They fled under the threat of poison arrows and violence. This fantastic story as related by Alfred Harred were spread quickly around the world, it fell apart like a cheap suit in the rain. When reporters tried to contact Art Williams, he denied everything saying he never met Redfern and never met Alred Harred who would eventually admit it was all fiction.

The Final Rescue and Search Attempt

Amelia Earhart

By the fall of 1937, there was yet another massive search effort underway to find yet another missing aviator.   The object of this search: Amelia Earhart who vanished in her Lockheed Model 10 Electra in July of that year. As the world trained its attention on a remote island in the south Pacific where her plane was last heard from on a round the world attempt, the Redfern story seemed to fall to the margins. The world’s press was not as interested it seemed and Redfern’s fate was fading from the newsprint.

That however did not deter Paul Redfern’s family in their quest to get some answers. Ten years had passed but they wanted to try one more time to find their son and Gertrude’s husband. In 1937, they requested New York explorer Theodore J. Waldeck to lead an expedition from British Guiana. This attempt was risky and deadly. The expedition became marooned at a place called Devil’s Hole on the remote Cuyuni River . One of the men on the trip, Dr. Frederick Fox of New York, contracted jungle fever and died. He was buried on site as the others kept travelling until April 27, 1938. On that day, Theodore Waldeck reported that he had found the wreckage of the Port of New Brunswick in Venezuela. He says he could prove that Paul Redfern was in fact dead, but for some reason he never did. So as far as many were concerned, the young aviator’s fate was still unknown. His parents never gave up hoping that someday he might walk out the jungle and walk back into their lives.

His wife Gertrude also held on to hope for many years, but finally, after she too had gone to South America on one of the many expeditions, she also became more convinced that his fate was tragic, and decided it was best to move on with her life, as best she could. While living and working in Detroit, she petitioned a Michigan court to have her husband declared legally deceased. They had no children, and Gertrude never remarried. The Toledo native lived the balance of her life as a single widow and and died in 1981.

.The story of Paul and Gertrude Redfern is hardly recorded in Toledo. More so in Redfern’s South Carolina. At the time, as the drama was unfolding, the Toledo papers heavily covered this local-interest real life adventure mystery. But news stories do have a limited “shelf life”, even one as compelling as this. When Gertrude Redfern passed away in 1981, there was no significant story in the Blade’s obituary, but just a mere mention of the fact of her dead pilot husband’s disappearnce in South America. The story had lost its luster with each passing decade along with the generations of Toledoans who might have followed its many twists and turns.

But Redfern’s tale has been given some new lift in recent years. The world it seems loves a good mystery and this is surely one of them. Will we ever really know what happened? And could there have been a seed of truth in all the reports that he in fact did crash and survived. There are many who still believe the end of the Redfern tale did not end with a fatal plane crash. And that he may have survived. There are others who think he may have veered far off course and the searchers were all loooking in the wrong place. Whatever and wherever his fate, Redfern’s name is now a legend. At Rio de Janiero, there is even a street named for him. Back at home, in South Carolina, his high school in Columbia bears a plaque and a sign in his memory, as does the airfield in Brunswick, Georgia. In South Carolina there is a group called the Paul Rinaldo Redfern Aviation Society. The group reportedly meets every August 25th, at exactly 12:46 p.m., the exact time that Redfern’s Stinson Detroiter, called the “Port of Brunswick” crawled down the runway, lifted into the blue and disappeared over the horizon on that summer morning in 1927. At that appointed time they hold a ceremony and they raise a glass, maybe more, to this one-time Toledo aviation pioneer, wherever he may be.

Paul Redfern and his Father Frederick Redfern in front of the Stinson Detroiter that took him to eternity

What Ancient Secrets Lie Beneath Maumee Bay State Parks?

Maumee Bay State Park is one of Ohio’s most popular tourist spots drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. But long before this Lake Erie shoreline attraction became a summertime mecca for swimmers, campers and golfers, it was reported to be the site of a stunning archaeological discovery. In 1895, on October 24th, it was widely reported in many newspapers throughout the country that a prehistoric Indian mound was found on the site which was known as the Niles Farm at the time, owned by well known writer and lawyer, Henry Thayer Niles.

Henry Thayer Niles owned Niles Beach along Lake Erie

Inside the mound, about 12 feet below the surface, 20 skeletons were found in a “sitting posture” and near each skeleton was a curious piece of pottery, “different from other mounds in other localities”. The skeletons, however were said to have crumbled upon exposure to air and “fell to dust”. However it was reported that two skulls were recovered and stayed intact. They measured about the same size as a normal human skull, but had much larger, heavier and stronger jawbones”. It was also reported that the niece of Henry Thayer, Niles who was a student of ancient cultures was there for the excavation, along with her uncle Henry. The newspaper wire accounts say each skeleton’s face was turned toward the east. And estimated that each bowl of pottery would hold about a gallon of fluid and that the edges of the bowls were “fluted” or “crimped” unlike most pottery of this type. The pottery also had pictographs or hieroglyphic type images on its sides. The age of the remains and mound were unknown, but Henry Nile’s niece estimated that they could have been several thousand years old. As to what other excavations may have followed on the Niles property, if any, is an unknown, as well as the eventual whereabouts of the pottery, the skulls and other artifacts that were unearthed that day. Such discoveries of earlier civilization in the Black Swamp during the 1800’s were not uncommon. Less than a year later in 1896, a similar revelation was made when several “ancient Indian” skeletons were recovered from an earthen mound in what used to be the Ironville neighborhood of East Toledo, roughly located in the area of Millard and Front Streets. That particular area was said by early settlers to be inhabited by several Indian settlements along the riverfront at Maumee Bay. However, what relationship those “ancient” burial sites might have had to the latter day Native Americans living in the area in the 1800’s is unknown.

It’s believed that in Lucas County alone there were as many as a dozen “ancient” sites. Perhaps more. Sadly though, most of them are invisible to us today. Assigned to obscure newspaper articles, diaries of pioneers or the conjecture of researchers. Most of the locations in the Toledo area that were discovered were never excavated with any scientific method, so as a result, we know relatively little about them or where they were. The only place that is officially marked, noting the existence of these ancient people, is found on Miami Street in East Toledo where the city’s earliest settlers found a large earthworks of an aboriginal fort situated atop the banks overlooking the narrow bend in the Maumee river. The fort was likely placed there strategically so that the ancient inhabitants could detect any movement from any potential adversaries on the river in both directions. Those earthworks and artifacts, however, were likely obliterated by the ambitions of a hungry plow. As the new residents of the 1830’s and 40’s were eager to work the soil and get crops in the ground, they were likely unconcerned with such historical curiosities in the course of their labor.

An article from the Toledo Blade in the 1930’s, featured an interview with the Herbert Whitmore, who was a descendant of one of the original pioneer families who settled along that area of the Maumee River. It was noted in the story that the family still had several artifacts taken from the fort site as the early settlers tilled the land for farming. Pots, arrowheads and even a French Axe was found as it was believed that the early French explorers in the 1700’s may have made camp at the site, long before the first pioneers from the East came to make it their home. At this time, a stone marker, is the only thing that denotes the prehistoric fort’s existence. It was placed there in the early 1940’s by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Today, it remains as a mere roadside curiosity dwarfed by the grain elevators that tower above it and discolored by the exhaust of the cars and trucks that speed past it. For what it’s worth: A street adjacent to the marker was even named Fort Street at one time, but even that has been changed. it is now Hathaway Street. So time moves on. As time moved on into the 1970’s, the desire by the state of Ohio to build a new state park on the area known as the Niles Farm in Eastern Lucas County was turning from talk to action.

Niles Beach(above) circa 1950 was a popular place for people to gather along the lake.

Long after the Niles family owned the land and operated a farm there, much of the lakeshore property had become a “resort” areas with summer cottages and a popular place for Toledo families from the 1920’s to the 1960’s to use the small stretch of beach as a summer playground on the lake. A massive storm and flood destroyed many of the little cottages in the fall of 1972.

By 1975, the land of the old Niles Farm was sold to the state and was even called a state park in advent of the project. One of the studies undertaken to determine what impact such an endeavor would have on this fragile wetlands environment along the lake was an archaeological evaluation. It involved some limited excavations in the sand bermed area known as Niles Beach. Roughly, just east of where the current state park lodge is located. The report from 1981 on the historical importance of the area was conducted by a team of well known and respected archaeologists. It included Dr. Michael Pratt, a familiar name in Northwest Ohio for other historic investigations he has conducted throughout the area. This particular survey of the old Niles Farm and the heavily wooded beach area did turn up a variety of artifacts of ancient peoples. Almost 90 in all. Some ceramic, such as ceramic pottery or sherds, and some made of stone, such as grinding tools, points and flakes from chert or flint. It was also noted that hundreds of artifacts had already been taken and removed from the site by a man named Eugene Paulsen of nearby Genoa. He told the investigators that he probably removed over 200 pieces of pottery and other lithic or stone items that he found embedded in the clay or washed ashore near the beach. What happened to those artifacts that were accumulated by Mr. Paulsen are unknown.

The final report said all of the artifacts found at the site in the 1981 search were probably from 1300 to 1500 A.D and were from the late Woodland people. Of the other artifacts found by other collectors – those artifacts represented every culture from the Paleo Indian through the modern day “Indians” of the 1800’s.. Missing from their report was the story of the 1895 burial mound that was unearthed with the 20 skeletons inside. That historical event was never mentioned, by ignorance of it, or design. Not sure. It did say that earlier artifact discovery sites were now obscured by the rising lake levels which had essentially puts hundreds of feet of historic shoreline underwater. The researchers concluded that the Niles Farm and Beach site had such little historical significance that it would not need to be put on the National Historic Register and should not impact the building of a park. Within a few years, the bulldozers and earth moving equipment began carving up the old Niles Farm into a plat of roadways, parking lots, campsites, a lodge and cabins and a golf course. And Maumee State Park is now a reality. One can only wonder what or whom may be buried beneath.

Toledo Showman Leaves Legacy in Lights

When Toledo was still in its adolescence as a city and flexing its Midwestern muscle in the world of industry and commerce, it required leaders with vision. And in the early years of the 20th century, it could be argued that Toledo had no shortage of such ambitious visionaries. Mayor Samuel Jones, Brand Whitlock, The Lamson and Tietdke brothers,  John Gunckel, Edward D. Libbey,  Michael Owens, Edward Ford  or suffragette Rosa Segur, Inventor Lyman Spitzer, and developer George Ketcham.   There are many others and the list is lengthy of those who left heavy footprints on the city’s pathway to the industrial and social future.  Public entertainment and theatre were also a key part of life in the city in those years and one man, Frank Burt, played a major role in creating venues where hard working Toledoans could find a few hours of relaxation and laughs.  Unlike many,  Burt’s legacy did not fade away with the decades. Even though his name has largely been lost in the dust of time, his venues continue to live on and and his creations continue to entertain. Frank, the son of a Confederate officer was born in Louisiana and his birth name was Frank Burton Fulenwider, but his father, frowned on Frank entering the world of showbusiness and forbade him to use the family name, so Frank became Frank Burt. In the 1890’s Frank came to Toledo almost penniless, but soon landed a job as manager of the Casino theater near Point Place and within time, his eager ambition made him a successful showman as owner of numerous theaters and entertainment venues nationwide. Ever the showman, he would became the focal point of his own melodrama that almost shortened his career and legacy. On a warm spring night in May of 1904,  he was shot and gravely wounded by his irate wife in front of his theater, the Burt Theater at Jefferson and Ontario.

The Burt Theater as it stands today on Jefferson

Addie Burt had pulled up in her carraige, and saw him talking with a man under the marquee of the theater and she wanted Frank to go inside the theater where they could talk. Frank refused. It was then she reached into the folds of her dress and withdrew a small pistol and opened fire on Frank. One of the bullets went through a cheek and exited out his eye socket, She hurried away and while Burt, who was still able to move, ran to a nearby saloon for help.  Frank later said that Addie shot him because she suspected he was having an affair with another woman. Earlier that morning he had served her with divorce papers.

The young Burt would later recover from his wounds, but the marriage didn’t survive. And ironically while Frank managed to live, six months later Addie Burt died of sudden brain inflammation.

That turn of events allowed to Frank to marry the young showgirl, Candace Morgan, with whom he was indeed having an affair.  That wedlock and his marriage to his ambitions as a theater promoter lived on for another two decades.

At the time of the shooting Frank Burt, a former Vaudevillian himself, was listed in the papers as owning more than eight theaters around the country including the Burt and Lyceum Theaters in Toledo, and other theaters in Ft. Wayne, Lima, Evansville, Youngstown and other cities in the area.

The Casino, circa 1900, Burt was part owner

He was also a part owner of the Toledo Casino at Point Place and had an investment in the newest amusement park on Lake Erie, called Cedar Point in Sandusky.

As for the Burt Theater in Toledo, he opened it in 1898 as a copy of a 15th century Venetian palace complete with a row of ornate gothic columns and balconies.

The 1565 seat theater also featured an extra wide row called a “fat man’s row”.

Patrons were offered a variety of daily shows of early Vaudeville performances and melodramas, but like many “live” theaters of its era, the popularity was eclipsed by the growth of moving picture houses.

In 1907, Frank Burt would have another brush with death, suffering painful injuries when he was trying to crank his automobile and it jumped into gear and pinned him against a light pole crushing his legs.

After healing and regaining his strength, Burt left Toledo in `1908 and moved into new areas of theatrical interest to pursue even greater achievements.

He was by most measure, a master showman and creative and enterprising amusement park manager and his reputation became legendary across the nation.

Lakside Amusement Park near Denver

By 1912, he was managing the popular Lakeside Amusement Park in the bustling city of Denver, and a few years later, he began dividing his time between Denver and California when he took the role as concessions manager of the Pan American Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915.

After the Exposition, Burt moved south to the coastal town of Seal Beach California where he developed and managed the Seal Beach Amusement Park, or “Joy Zone” in California which opened in 1916.

The Joy Zone at Panama Expo in 1915

His colorful presence there left an indelible impression on the town he is remembered fondly by local historians.

One of his claims to fame was the promotion of dare-devil air stunts including wing walkers, and aerobatic performers.

Some of his projects still live to this day as a legacy to his talents and vision, Cedar Point, The Lakeside Amusement Park near Denver and the still standing theater building that bears his name in Toledo, the Burt Theater.

After those ventures in California, like many at the time, Burt was bitten with the “movie” bug. He and his wife moved north to the San Francisco area to start a movie colony in that part of the state. But after a few ill-fated movies and bouts of illness. Burt’s star would no longer rise.

Frank Burt died in 1924.

But the old Burt theater did not die. In later years, it inspired a new showman for Toledo.

As downtown Toledo evolved, the old Burt theater would find a new life as the home venue for another great showman. Duane Abbajay. Duane took the reigns of the theater in 1962 when it was the very popular Peppermint Club where Jerry Lee Lewis would amaze audiences with his energy and musical prowess. Abbajay brought in many top acts, including Chubby Checker, Little Richard and the Everly Brothers. 

But as Duane saw the rising popularity of country music in the 1970’s, he took the theater in another direction and the club became the Country Palace and would fill the venue by booking top country acts of the day including Waylon Jennings.  It also earned a national claim to fame by being mentioned in Kenny Roger’s famous ballad “Lucille”.  Set in a “bar room in Toledo across the from depot”, the song’s creator Hal Bynum is reputed to have witnessed a scene at the Palace one day that inspired the song’s story.

After Abbajay sold the club, 725 Jefferson became a popular drag show venue known as Ceaser’s Show Bar. The operation and reputation of Ceaser’s flourished for well over a decade before, its lights were dimmed by time and an out of control city bus that rammed the front entrance. It was the proverbial show stopper.

 There was talk about tearing the building down, but thankfully rational heads prevailed. Its history and architectural features were saved from the wrecking ball of progress by those who recognized that it still had value and good bones. The county’s Land Bank took control in 2013 and it has since been rescued by a new owner who has plans for preserving this historic treasure of Toledo for future use.  Stayed tuned. The old Burt Theater at Ontario and Jefferson may yet have a new life and somewhere Frank Burt is smiling.

The Hidden Corners of Toledo’s Past

THE WEIRD THINGS THAT NEVER MAKE IT INTO THE HISTORY BOOKS

Most stories that become documented as “history” are usually those stories that detail the “important”, events of our area’s timeline.  Normally, we memorialize the benchmarks of the past deemed worthy of remembrance. The formation of our governance, the stories of major wars, the evolution of society and economies and those key people who were stewards of that change.

What is left out and often kicked the margins of time, however, is often the “good stuff”.  The odd ball, the strange, the mysterious, the weird, the contradictions, and sometimes events that just defy logic, convention and laws of nature. The stories the history books forgot.

Here are a few from Northwest Ohio that may challenge your beliefs about our past and any notion you had that Toledo and the area did not have an interesting past.

Toledo Architect designs a Penitentiary Made of Glass

In 1916, Toledo was pretty proud of its reputation as the Glass Capital of the World. So proud that Toledo architects Schreiber an Beelman thought that building a prison completely out of glass was a novel and practical concept. So the plans were drawn up and submitted to the state commission that was considering plans for a new state prison. According the news reports, sociologists thought it was also a good idea.  By using a combination of glass and brick for the cells, the prison could be circular in design and a guard station would be located in the center so one guard could see into the cells from that center point and monitor what was happening.  While it might have been a novel idea, the prison commission apparently had other plans and the dream of a glass prison for Toledo was shattered quickly.

“House of Mystery on Collingwood”

In 1934, the reporters were quick to label it “the House of Mystery”. And that it was. At 1218 Collingwod Blvd, a series of strange events occurred and police were left to wonder what had happened there.  On July the 18^th, a resident of the home, 65 year old Platt Tucker who  often rode a bicycle vanished and police were looking everywhere to find him. It seems as he fell out of sight, police found his 59-year sister, Elma, in a side-yard, unconscious after having been pushed out of an attic window. Fingerprints found in the dust of the windowsill indicate she may have hung there a long time before falling the ground.  During the course of helping her, Police then found a 61 year old sister, Alma, chained to a bed post in a second floor bedroom. The mother and father died about a year before. Police say the house was in a terrible state of disrepair and cleanliness and Alma was not only chained to the bed but had been provided only scraps of bread to eat off the floor.  Platt Tucker, the missing brother returned home the night police discovered the scene, but Tucker managed to slip through their guardposts and made his way off into the darkness.

Eccentric Mystery Man Dies at Toledo State Hospital

All the staff knew about Lynn Johnson was that he had lived at the hospital for 27 years after being admitted for a minor ailment in 1900. But the eccentric Johnson died in a four story fall from a rooftop at the hospital on February 28, 1927. Johnson, it was said never wanted to leave the hospital and stayed on for almost three decades, earning his keep by doing handyman work. He never revealed to anyone where he came from or why he liked living there. He saved all of his money and gave over $600 to the campaign fund to save the hospital.  When children would be discharged from the hospital he would give them a $2 bill in a wooden frame that he had crafted.

Toledo Man is Builder of Lincoln’s Funeral Car

In 1865  Myron Lamson Toledo had a big job to complete.  He had been put in charge of designing and building President Lincoln’s new presidential railroad car, the  “Air Force One” of its day. As the car was nearing completion, in April of 1865, Mr. Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theater in Washington.  Now, it was Mr. Lamson’s duty to convert the car into a funeral car for the dead president.  With Mr. Lincoln’s body to be carried from Washington on a special 180 city tour across the nation to its final resting place in Illinois, the 42-year old Lamson, an enlisted man in the Union Army had little time to spare to prepare for this historic and final trip for Mr. Lincoln.

Myron Lamson

It would be the only time Lincoln would be aboard his special car.  The train would bear not only Lincoln’s coffin, but that of his beloved son Willie who had died in 1862. His body had been disinterred in Washington so that it could be buried alongside his father’s in Illinois. And if you recognize the name, Lamson, Myron Lamson was the father of Julius and Charles Lamson who started Lamson’s department store in Toledo. Mryon Lamson would later work for his sons at the store.

Boys in Findlay Boys Find Treasure In a Bird’s Nest

In April of 1888, Three or four boys were playing on the Toledo, Columbus and Southern Railroad bridge in Findlay when they discovered a bird’s nest in the roof of the bridge, which they proceeded to investigate, On reaching the nest they were astonished to find, instead of eggs, a silk handkerchief in the nest.  Without delay, they unwrapped it and found thirty-six solid gold rings, the cheapest of which jewelers say, was worth $5. It made the value of the find not less than $200. How this could be, did it really happen or where the rings might have come from is all food for thought. But strange food indeed.

Strange Wild Beast Roaming Wood County

Back in 1902 when oil well derricks studded the landscape of Wood County, there was a boom town called Mermill. One of many such towns that today are little more than a memory and the name of a road.

Oil wells of Wood County circa 1900

In those days, there were plenty of hardships to contend with in the rural community, but one of them was for awhile was a mystery. Some of the locals began to report that there was a strange beast roaming the area at night and terrorizing the citizens and the animals. The local farmers say it was about six feet long and dark in color. Whatever the beast might be it was killing some cattle and a $50 reward was offered for its capture and scalp.  Other reports indicate it not just is a danger to livestock but the beast would hide in the underbrush and then leap out at unsuspecting children with an “unearthly scream”.

Toledo Street Walkers Declare Themselves to Be Orphans

One morning in February of 1901, Toledo Police Judge James Austin had brought before him, ten young women of the street who were accused to accosting men in the downtown area and offering their services.  When

the judge asked for their names, they all claimed to be orphans and did not know their names.  The court room was filled with snickers. One of the girls laughed loudly and between giggles, started laughing so loudly it was contagious and soon every in the room was laughing including the judge. And the amiable Judge Austin must have ben affected by the hilarity as he told the girls that all the charges were being dismissed. He instructed them that if they were going to accost men, they should do it on streets that aren’t so prominent and where it wouldn’t be so public.

The Name Game of Street Characters

Nicknames are not unusual among those characters who are well known on the streets and who find often themselves at odds with the law. Sometimes, the names their mothers awarded them at birth at were largely forgotten as they answer to their earned names. Such was case as a group of “frequent flyers” stood before the police court Toledo one hot August morning in 1915.  They bore such monikers as “Beehive Eddy”, “Red Shirt”, “Scarry Jack”, “Creosote Jim” and “Equator”. I’m sure there is a story behind all of those names and wouldn’t you like to know them?

Remembering Forest Park

The Forgotten Gem of Genoa

This is a seldom seen aerial photo of Forest Park in its heyday. The road in the foreground is Woodville Road and off to the right is Reiman Road. The wooden roller coaster is clearly visible along Reiman Road. _{Photo Courtesy of Genoa Historical Society}

  It wasn’t the biggest amusement park in Toledo area history, but it may have been the best. And least that’s how many people from the area thought of it. It was known as Forest Park, opening on Woodville Road, near Genoa , sometime in the mid-1920’s.  The park, like many of that prohibition -roaring 20’s era was a promise of good times and fun.  One of several such parks around Toledo competing for the attention of those who wanted to a spend a few hours riding the rides, playing the games, dancing to the bands, or maybe lacing up some roller skates to take a few laps around the wooden rink. Forest Park offered a full menu of these features and much more, for several decades, from the 1920’s through the 1940’s. It was “the place to be” every summer, spring and fall, and even in the winter months. The land for the park, at Woodville and Reiman Roads, also known as Hickory Corners, was purchased by businessman Carl Uthoff in the mid-1920’s. Although the exact date of opening day has been lost to time, early Genoa Gazette articles show it was up and running by 1925.

Within a few years, it was it drawing record crowds, and on some days, those crowds were measured in the thousands. Pretty impressive for a park that was miles from the big city population of Toledo.  But one of the reasons it prospered was its convenient location along busy state highway(Woodville Road), and adjacent to that roadway, in the 1920 and 30’s, the Lakeshore Electric Interurban train ran several times a day. The stop at Forest Park made the trip from Toledo a short and easy ride for fun seekers from the city, or in the other direction from Fremont or Woodville. And once they arrived, there was a full spectrum of fun things that was boast worthy.

Below is a panel of photos from Margaret Fintel’s family photo album. They show photos of her grand parents Stephen and Peg Huntzinger and her mother, Peggy, astride the carousel animals from the historic Dentzel carousel that is now proudly operating in Burlington North Carolina.

Suprisely, there is not much written about “Bob’s Coaster” or the “Speedway” wooden coaster(below) that was a premier attraction at the park. Speculating from the aerial photo, it was a large and impressive structure and appeared to take riders as high as 50 feet or more at the top before the cars raced down the other side. The builders and the designers appear to be lost to time and the fog of the past. If anyone knows more about its construction and its eventual demise, this writer and others would be grateful to hear from you.

The Speedway Coaster

The park not only had a roller coaster,(The Speedway as it was called), but a (now historic)Dentzel carousel merry-go-round, A Hersell Carousel, dodg-em-cars, a miniature-train ride and even a Ferris wheel. For those seeking more traditional thrills, bowling alley, a movie screen, and a variety of circus acts and performers, including the dare-devils on the high wires and trapeze.

One of the high wire acts that were regularly featured at Forest Park over the decades

Conspicuous at on the highway side of the park was a popular restaurant and a large indoor large roller rink, while a few feet away there was a dance hall with a beautiful marble floor where couples could dance the night away. Owners Carl Uthoff and partner Bill Stanger always booked some top notch dance bands and singers to croon for the crowd and the young lovers.

The outdoor dance floor(right) that was built in the 1920’s. Later an indoor venue was built.

Forest Park was so popular, and packed with amusements, it was a fierce competitor with other parks in the area at the time, including Willow Beach at Point Place or Locust Point near Oak Harbor, or Walbridge Park in Toledo.

It seemed like every year, Carl Uthoff and buisness partner Bill Stanger added new and better offering for the public to enjoy. The midway offered a penny-pitch stand, a shooting gallery, an archery range and Madam Farray, the fortune teller, would tell you for a quarter what the future held. It’s not certain though if she ever foretold the future of Forest Park. If she had, she might have envisioned its eventual demise by the end of the late 1940’s. Times change, and after World War Two, Americans were seeking their entertainment in other ways. The arrival of television kept lots of folks glued to their black and white screens in the comfort of their living rooms. By the late 1940’s, the popularity of the big bands of the 20’s were falling from grace and no longer in vogue. Even the once popular Interurban trains were out of step with the times and the trains were shut down and the tracks taken out. In short, Toledo area families, like many across the nation, had found new opportunities and options for family getaways.

If that wasn’t enough, on many nights, there were fireworks to keep the crowd’s attention . If people wanted to stay the night, on the other side of Woodville road were 25 cottages that could be rented for $1 per night.

One of many game sof chance along the midway at the park

The $1 a night cottages on the other side of Woodville Road. Some remnants remain.

Forest Park, like many of these pleasure parks of that era were aging. The once popular wooden roller coaster was condemned and other buildings were also in need of repair. The crowds dwindled and Carl Uthoff, who had been struggling to make a profit during the war years started allowing slot machines and gambling on premises. As a result, the park lost its liquor license. Soon theereafter, he sold the park to new owners. The time had come and time was cruel. By the 1950’s the only remnant of the park still in use was the dance hall building which was used as a auction house for a number of years. The once busy roller rink stood in mute silence along the roadway relegated as a storage locker, eventually surrendering to a ball of flame in 1957. As the decade wore on, the remains of this mecca of fun were mostly broken and lifeless. As many baby boomers of the 50’s and 60’s will attest, a drive-by on Woodville Road revealed only a mere wistful glimpse of what once was. Weeds and nature had mostly reclaimed the property and in 1967, that last remaining building, the big dance hall, also fell to fire and memory.

Peaches Browning, a scandalous actress and singer from the 1920’s was a big hit with the crowd at Forest Park.

It should be mentioned that Carl Uthoff and his business partner Bill Stanger also built an entertainment park in Pico California in the 1920’s. The community, now known as Pico Rivera, was in the mid 20’s a rural community wets of Los Angeles thta was growing quickly. Stanger, who lived nearby, must have seen the opportunity, so he and Carl Uthoff of Genoa built what became known as “Danceland” in Pico on Whittier Blvd. As of this wiritng, I am still researching this venue and what ever happened to it. Below are some images and photos of the “Forest Park” of California.

I am have unable, thus far to determine whether anything remains of Danceland in Pico Rivera. Perhaps like with Forest Park, mostly in the mist of memory. There is little if anything remaining on the corner of Woodville and Reiman that would inform the casual observer as to what an exciting and storied place it once was. A place that beckoned thousands of people every year to its gates. But while the buildings may be gone, the memories remain. Mostly second hand memories recountred in family stories and grainy photos. But I find that if you fasten your eyes on the faded photos and listen ever so closely, you can still hear the echoes of laughter and joy at a place called Forest Park.

Beulah and Ellsworth Scott were said to have been married on the dance floor at Forest Park.

The once popular roller rink that was visible along Woodville Road.In later years after Forest park was sold to new owners in the 1950’s, the rink was used mostly for storage and then in the late 1950’s fell to flames. (Below) a view of the miniature train and some of its young riders, and young at heart.

The Lake Shore Electric Interurban tracks (pictured below) ran along Woodville Road, and was a convenient way for thousand to get to Forest Park. Below are the tracks just north of Reiman Road.

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  Lake Shore Electric Tracks Along Woodville Road

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  The LSE on Woodville Road

The Whitmore Canoe Curiosity

A few years ago, the Toledo History Museum acquired a canoe. Not just any canoe, but a very old dugout canoe that is presumably of Native American origin. But to date, that simple fact has not yet been confirmed, nor do we know its age, or if it was hewn from a tree and shaped by Native Americans. If so, who were they and to what tribe did they belong? These are the essential questions that remain unanswered.

However, what we do know is enough to trace its origins to one of Toledo’s first pioneer families, and if the family stories are true, then this humble canoe may well be the oldest human-made watercraft in Northwest Ohio and a significant artifact in the broader history of the Great Lakes region.

The canoe is 17 feet long and appears to be very old and hewn from a single tree trunk. It found its way to the History Museum from the Toledo Zoo where it had been since the mid 1960’s. It was given to the zoo by a Ron Goodyear of East Toledo, a direct descendant of the Luther Whitmore family. Goodyear had told the Toledo Zoo, upon giving it to them for display, that the canoe had been given to Luther Whitmore as a gift from area Indians who considered the Whitmores to be friends. The time frame for this would have been around 1830, as the Whitmores had emigrated to the eastern side of the Maumee River from Connecticut sometime in the late 1820’s. They and other families, such as the Prentices, the Cranes, the Gardner’s and Fassett’s primarily found hospitable land for farming along the east bank of the river near what is now Fassett Street, southward to the area near the current casino or I-75 Disalle bridge.

The native tribes of Chippewa, Ottawa and Wyandot, were also active in the area and friendly to these early white settlers. They had numerous interactions, and many of the younger pioneer men became conversant in their languages in order to establish trade. It was written in Whitmore family lore that Luther Whitmore purchased the dugout canoe from the native Indians and later passed the canoe to his son Luther Junior. Another version of the story says that Luther Whitmore Jr. had become a a government agent and was responsible for distributing the regular annuities to the local tribes which they acquired in the various treaties that had been signed. Thus he became well known among the local tribes and he was given the canoe as a gift.

The first written mention of the canoe we have found thus far in our research was from two article from 1937, that appeared in Toledo Blade and Toledo Times. Both were penned by George Pearson, the long time Blade writer for East Toledo. In this article, he interviews, Herbert L. Whitmore who was still living along the east side of the River in the 1100 block of Miami Street, not far from the original Whitmore homestead. His father was Elijah Whitmore, who was the son of Luther Junior. Pearson writes that the Whitmore home is filled with many artifacts and relics from the early days of area’s settlement, including those of French origin(from the first French explorers) to native American axes, and arrow heads, and of course, the prized dugout canoe.

It is noted in the article that the canoe was painted red. No mention given as to who might have painted it. Was that done by the Indians, or later by someone in the Whitmore family?

Fast Forward to 2023, and one can clearly see traces of red embedded in the deep grains of the wood, and curiously, on the bow of the canoe, is the word “Wagush” painted in red paint of some type. As the Zoo was told by family members in the 1960’s, the word “Wagush” meant “friend” in the Wyandot language and the Native Americans emblazoned it with the word for their friendship with Luther Whitmore. A quick check of the Wyandot language dictionary, however shows no such word in that language, but instead Wagush is a Chippewa or Ojibwe word , meaning “fox”.

So the mystery of the word “Wagush” remained unresolved. As does its actual age and origin. If this is indeed a true artifact hand hewn by the last generation of Native Americans in Lucas County, it would seem to the logic of untrained observer of the past to be of some important historic value to the area.

What do we need to discover its real story. Well, money is always a first start as the funding could get us the carbon 14 dating that needs to be done, along with a scientifically valid study of the structure itself and how it was made. From this, perhaps more information leading to the identity of those who created this canoe and when. My hope is that someday soon we can put together the resources to do the research needed to answer the many curiosities of the Whitmore Canoe.

The Toledo History Museum invites your input and comments.

The Town of Cygnet, Ohio Taken Hostage

You may not know it now, but at one time, the small and quiet town of Cygnet in southern Wood County was a boisterous boom town of oil men and dreamers. A petroleum paradise as it enjoyed a geological location which had put it smack dab in the center of Northwest Ohio’s famous oil patch.  It was the right place at the right time. For as Pennsylania’s oil pools had begun to dwindle, oil was disovered in 1886 in Wood County and Ohio’s oil fever became red hot.  This multi-county deposit of black crude was the biggest oil patch in America.  Speculation was rampant and everybody was trying to cash in to grab a piece of the “black gold” pie.  Where farmers had grown wheat and corn, a new crop was growing. A crop of wooden oil derricks. Lots of them, by the hundreds, they towered above the fields of green and grain from Cygnet to Jerry City to other oil-rich burgs that don’t even exist anymore, except in the names of old roads and old maps.  Oil Center, Wingston, Mermill, Bays. Galatea, Hammondsburg,  and Mungen. Between 1895 and 1903, Ohio was the leading producer of crude oil in the nation, producing more than 380 million barrels of oil. It peaked in 1896 at 23.9 million barrels of oil.  Northwest Ohio’s rich output of crude brought a a steady stream of new people to the area. “Boomers” were their nicknames as they sought out the hundreds if not thousands of jobs in the oil fields, on the rigs or in the refineries that also sprung up during the era.

Cygnet which had blossomed from a community of 50 to 6,000 almost over night,  seemed to be at the epicenter of this explosion in growth. Sometimes literally. Nitroglycerin blasting accidents and tragedies were not uncommon. Several times during this era, homes were blown off their foundations and buildings reduced to rubble and splinters when the nitro shooters become a bit too aggressive, or careless. Fires were a nuisance and often deadly. The inherent dangers of pulling oil from the ground put scores of people into the ground, as fatalities in the oil patch were a commonplace fact of life.  Explosions, accidents, flames and a few fights in the 13 saloons of Cygnet sent many men and women on a trip up the so called “golden staircase” to their ultimate reward. Like the time in 1902 when Yank Robinson and George Kersey had a duel to the death on Main Street with Bowie knives over a woman. They both died.  But danger be damned, fortunes were being made and Cygnet grew into a center of commerce and industry. With several oil storage facilities in the area and control of the important “Buckeye Pipeline” which carried the crude liquid bounty to ports from Cleveland to Chicago, Cygnet was a name known far and wide, and the boomers kept coming with dreams in their heads and hope in the hearts.

But as the oil stopped flowing with abundance and sweeter crude deposits were discovered in Texas and Oklahoma, the glitter of Wood County’s “black gold” began to fade. By the 1920’s, Cygnet was sobering to reality that the best days might be behind them, although, Cygnet was still handling much of the Ohio basin crude oil that was still being extracted. Productive drilling in the region was still common through the 1930’s, although not nearly as prolific as in years prior. It was however, still the main hub for many of the pipeline companies and tank farms that took root in the region during the boom years. But the wild days were over. A once bustling community which had spread its wings wide and proud for many years, was now but a little swan, as its name implies,  settling into a much quietier future. But one day in November of 1934, it awoke from its slumber. For on Thursday morning, November 15th, the whole town was shaken and taken hostage.

During the very wee hours of the morning, at least six bandits, perhaps eight, had slithered into town and as the 400 souls slept, the bandits set about the business of cutting all the phone lines in town. All 300. They thought.  Once contact with the outside world was cut off, the Cygnet Savings Bank became their next target and at 3:10 in the morning, the solitude was cracked by the sound of the bank’s front door being ripped from its hinges. The noise awakened Caryl Schwyn, the President of the bank, who lived in an apartment above the bank. He ran to the telephone to call for help, only to discover the line was dead. At that point, Schwyn says a blast of nitroglcyren  rocked the whole block. The first of seven nitro blasts the bandits would use to reduce the interior of the bank to shambles.   Schwyn called for his maid, Julia, whose room was right above the safe. She said she thought the explosions were going to come right through the floor. She yelled down to the men below and said “Whose there?”.  One of the bandits yelled back, “Shut up you nitwit.” Firing a shotgun at her to underscore his threat.  It would not be the last shot fired.

The men, were promiscuous in their use of the their guns. Every citizen who even dared to come running to the bank or poked their head out of their homes, was fired at by the gang. It is said at least a 100 rounds were fired through the morning as everyone was holed up inside their houses,  afraid to move.  But Carl Schwyn, at 38 years of age, was not only the bank president, but owner of thousands of oil well leases in the area;  and  he was angry. Not just with this attack on his bank, but the huge personal stake he had in the financial interests of the town. Despite his wife’s opposition, he climbed out of a window and onto the roof of the bank building. The bandits saw him and fired. With bullets flying past him, wearing only his pajamas, he was able to crawl along the rooftop to a drugstore window, and the druggist led him then to the telephone exchange building next door.  There, with the help of Miss Honor Hartigan, the operator,  they managed to find one phone line of out 300, that the bandits had missed. It was the line to Bowling Green. That careless error by the bandits allowed them to make an emergency call to Bowling Green to the sheriff’s office to summon help. All the while, Schwyn was on the phone, he could hear even more blasts coming from the bank and more gunshots. The bandits had started firing at a local resident who had just driven to the telephone exchange. He wasn’t hit, but it was a close call, as numerous shots were fired around him. Minutes later, Sheriff Bruce Pratt rolled up, with a carload of deputies and red lights flashing against the dark sky.  One the bandits yelled, ” Here comes the law”, and they fled the bank.  Within minutes, they were gone, apparently, able to exit town on foot as easily as they were able to enter.  In their wake, however they left behind  The Cygnet Saving Bank building in shattered ruins.  The  seven nitro explosions were so strong, there were no windows left intact. The interior was in splinters.  The one thing that did remain intact – was the vault. Damaged but unopened. They didn’t get inside.  A good thing for this particular day was the “payday” for most of the workers of the Ohio Oil Company and the Imperial Pipeline Company in town.  A big payroll of cash that was obviously the prize the bandits were trying to steal, but despite their best laid plans, they were forced to leave town empty handed. Toledo Police detective were brought in later in the day with fingerprint kits to see if they could identify the cuplrits, but found that they must have worn gloves because there were no prints found anywhere.

The search for the would-be safecrackers yielded few clues and a lot of theories.  Then a  month later, it appears this same  “phone line gang” struck again. This time near Chillicothe in the tiny community Adelphi, Ohio, where once again they terrorized the townspeople with gunshots and explosives and cut all the phone wires.  Once again, they pulled the same stunt, cutting phone lines and electric wires and placing their explosives on the vault at the Armstrong Bank.  Unlike their experience in Cygnet, the nitro worked. They yeggs got inside the safe and took about $2,000 in cash. Police expressed confidence that these were the same men who siezed Cygnet in November. Then, two days later, the gang hit again. This time near Willard, Ohio in the little burg of North Fairfield. Same M.O. Early morning, half dozen miscreants cut all the phone lines then headed for the local bank where they set off some powerful explosion to get inside the bank and the bank’s vault.  Another success, and from this vault,  they managed to snag about $3,000 in bonds. The town of 400 people were terrorized and  watched as the heavily armed gang piled into three cars and headed north out of town.   This would not be their last attempt at such a brazen robbery.  In Clermont County on January 10th, 1935, the bold gang of safe crackers snuck into the small town of Felicity, Ohio, population 700, and in the pre-dawn hours, severed the phone lines, took up positions around the bank and in the street to keep citizens away and then went to work. With no police department there, and no communication, they took their time blowing holes in the bank with powerful explosives. Once again, like in Cygnet, they couldn’t breach the big vault at the Citizens Bank.  It held tight and protected the $7000 cash inside.  The bandits, foiled again, were only able to grab a few hundred dollars from the smaller safes inside the bank before heading out of town. They were never heard from again. At least not using this particular style of robbery.

From this writer’s research, I was unable to find any reports of similar robberies in subsquent months and years. It would appear that this bank job in January of 1935 was the gang’s last. The November robbery at Cygnet being their first. So who were they?  Police agencies in Ohio, say they were no fingerprints and that left detectives with few clues. Fortunately, no one was injured or killed, given the frequent use of nitroglycerin and bullets it’s a wonder no blood was left in their wake. What they did leave behind were four small towns in Ohio that had come mighty big stories to tell, and questions never answered.

One footnote to the Cygnet robbery that actually garnered as many national news articles as the robbery attempt itself was that when the phone lines were cut by the bandits, in the days that followed, the Cygnet telephone manager couldn’t find anyone to repair them. That’s because the day of the robbery was the first day of rabbit hunting season in Ohio, and all of the available repairmen had gone hunting.

Toledo’s Craig Bridge, the man behind the name.

Medal of Honor recipient Lt. Robert Craig of Toledo

The Craig Memorial Bridge in Toledo is 65 years old this year. Opened to traffic in 1957, it provided a key transportation link over the Maumee River, not just for Toledo drivers, but for thousands of motorists using this first major North-South Interstate Expressway. When the drawbridge span was dedicated in January of 1957, it was in the name of Lt. Robert Craig of Toledo who died in heroic service to his nation 79 years ago this week during World War Two. His actions were so significant he would become the posthumous recipient of the coveted Medal of Honor. The following is his story:

July 11, 1943. The world is at war, and Robert Craig is in the middle of it. Italy. The island of Sicily to be exact. It’s where where Second Lieutenant Craig had stormed ashore with the 15th Infantry Regiment and thousands of other soldiers from the 3rd Army in Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily. Intense fighting raged for days between the Allied Forces and the Axis armies of Germany and Italy. Often fierce and deadly to both sides. Near the town of Favoratta, Craig’s “L” Company was pinned down by an enemy machine gun nest. The German bullets had already wounded three of the company’s officers who had tried find its hidden location. For reasons, perhaps known only to himself, the 24-year old Craig, who had been working at Tiedtke’s as sales clerk before the war, found something deep within himself and volunteered to personally locate and destroy the menacing machinegun nest. Not only did he figure out the location of the gun, but managed to snake his way to within 100 feet of it and charged headlong into its spray of automatic gun fire.

A War Department press release quoted Corporal James Hill as saying that Lieutenant Craig “ran head on through the machine gun fire … reached the gun position miraculously unhurt, and, standing over the crew, killed all three of them with his carbine.”

The bravery allowed his company to advance, but they were thwarted once again by yet another wall of gunfire. This time coming from the rifles of an estimated 100 enemy soldiers. Craig, on a slope, without cover and no place to hide, told his platoon to withdraw to behind a ridge for cover, while he, once more, opted to draw the fire towards himself. With little hope of survival, Craig, assumed a kneeling position and returned fire againt the soldiers, killing five and wounding three others before the barrage of Axis bullets eventually found his body leaving it motionless on the hillside. But while Craig lay dead, his courage and intrepid sacrifice endured and so inspired his men, they advanced on the enemy gunners, inflicted heavy casualities and sent them on a retreat.

Back in Toledo, Craig’s family would not know of his death until two months later in September of 1943 when Italy finally fell and surrendered to the Allies. It was a major victory and turning point in the war in Europe. The young Libbey High School graduate’s sacrifice on the faraway hills of Sicily helped make that happen. His bravery that day did not go unnoticed and in May of the following year, 1944, Robert Craig, who had been born in Scotland, and moved to Toledo a young boy, was awarded the Medal of Honor. The nation’s highest military honor that is approved by Congress and awarded by the President. His father, William F. Craig recieved the medal for his son Robert in special ceremonies at Camp Atterbury in Indiana. It was a proud moment for his family. They would recieve another day of pride when in January of 1957, the new Maumee River bridge on the Detroit-Toledo Expressway was opened to traffic and was dedicated to the memory and gallantry of Lt. Robert Craig. More than 2000 people attended the event on that very cold January Day. William and Jane Craig were there and wept silently as their son’s memory was honored. The band from Libbey High School, Robert’s high school, played for the event, and James Meade, the pastor from Robert’s church who spoke that day said “the bridge should serve as a symbol of freedom, justice and goodwill. The things that Robert gave his life for”, July 11, 1943 on a battlefield in Sicily.

(The article was first published in the Press Newspapers on July 10th, 2022)

River Horror: A Maumee Tragedy

The first week of May in 1902 brought a breath of springtime to Toledo. After another long and cold winter, the sun’s warmth cast its spell over the city, in a perennial promise of life renewed. The trees and flowering shrubs were clothed in a bouquet of color, the Maumee River was freckled with a variety of boats and ships, while along the riverbanks, hopeful anglers stood vigil waiting not just for a the pull of a fish or the meal it provides, but for the sheer joy of catching one.

Toledo Maumee Riverfront circa 1900

At Armory Park in downtown Toledo, the seasonal rites of baseball were well underway and the Toledo fans had reason to smile. Toledo had beaten Kansas City 7-5. In East Toledo, at Navarre Park, the trails and walkways on the gentle green slopes were filled with the sounds and scents of the season. The heady fragrance of the lilacs hung like a mist, inviting all to breathe deeper from the well of spring. The sweetness matched only by the chatter of children.

But as always with springtime, the weather can be unruly and restless. So too the ephemeral mood of gaiety and gladness. Sometimes a false peace, easily shattered by a sudden spasm of nature that breaks apart a city’s habitat of homes, or shattered by a foolish blunder of man that triggers a tragedy so great, it can break a city’s heart.

And so it was on the night of May 7th, 1902.

A group of Sunday School students, most of them teenagers, from First Baptist Church on Cherry Street in Toledo, climbed aboard a steam powered naphtha launch called the “Frolic on the Maumee River. It was to be a day of pleasure and play. A perfect day for a picnic on one of the nearby islands just beyond the bay in Lake Erie. It was to be a late afternoon-into-evening cruise with the bonus of a wonderful crimson sunset over the water. There were 11 people on board the Frolic, including the Captain and owner of the launch Joseph Hepburn. A man experienced at the helm of the craft who often took people on these excursions to Maumee Bay and the lake. His young passengers numbered ten. Seven young women and girls, all in their teens, several still in high school. And three young men, of similar ages. Two of the girls, Grace and Edna Lowe were sisters. And a brother and sister, Art and Clara Marx, was family with whom Captain Hepburn lived on Locust Street.

Eulalie Ricard

One couple, William Pfanner and Eulalie Ricard of Toledo, were engaged to be wed. They sat close to each other, staring into each other eyes as young lovers do. Clasped in each other’s embrace as day ebbed to night and a darkness set in over the waters. The young passengers, by all accounts, had enjoyed their excursion and by 10:00 o’clock that Wednesday evening, Captain Joseph Hepburn was on a heading back to Toledo, steering the Frolic inbound near the mouth of the Maumee River.

Further upstream, a well known tugboat, the Arthur Woods, of the Great Lakes Towing Company fleet, was making its way outbound, or downstream. It was not a huge tug, 55 feet in length and 35 feet at the beam. But it had been working the area of the Toledo docks for about three years pulling and guiding the larger vessels in and out of the docks and slips on the busy shipping channel. At the helm of the Woods was Captain Robert Fitts. Seasoned and well respected. His crew of three, the same. They were headed that spring evening for the slip at Ironville on the east side of the river where they were to dock and drop off a passenger. A woman who had asked Captain Fitts for a ride up to Ironville. It was not a customary practice to carry passengers for transport,aboard the tug, but for some reason, Fitts agreed and she climbed aboard. Little did he know that her presence on the Woods would become an embarrassing scandal for himself and the crew. .

As the Woods progressed downriver and drew closer to the Ironville area near the mouth of the river, Captain Fitts ordered the helmsman to make a starboard turn to the right towards the slip and docks at Ironville. As the tug cut across the channel, Fitts says he saw nothing, nor did he have any indication that any thing or any boat might be in his heading.

The position of the boats as described by Captain Joe Hepburn of the Frolic Launch

As the Frolic entered the harbor, the girls on the boat were still in a jovial mood from their long day on the water. They broke into song. A marching song, but before their voices could reach the next verse of the song, their voices cracked with horror. Bearing down on them was the bow of the tugboat, and not more than a second or two later, the front end of the Arthur Woods hammered into the side of the Frolic like a giant iron fist. Amidships it was hit, and turned the smaller boat up on its side, as if lifted by a hand, sending everyone on the Frolic into the cold inky water of the Maumee. As written the Toledo Bee on May the 8th, “The black Maumee opened its arms wide and took them deep down”.

The shattered Frolic rolled quickly into the water and within a minute it had vanished beneath the surface, “nothing remained on the ruffled surface of the river except the swaying tug that caused the devastation”. In the first moments of agony, the only things that surfaced were splinters from the Frolic and a few items from , but then, Captain Joe Hepburn, an experienced swimmer, made it to the surface, and Grace Lowe, a passenger also broke the water’s face and she grasped onto Captain Hepburn’s leg in her desperate bid at life itself. Hepburn grabbed Grace Lowe and pulled her close to him. Also a swimmer, 22-year old Art Marx, struggled to rise to the top and counted himself among those who would live, as a would his sister Clara Marx, who somehow found a floating seat cushion on the dark water and clung to it until she, like the other three, were plucked from the water’s grip by the crew of the tugboat. There was no sign of the other seven passengers. Five girls and two boys.. Later reports indicated that most of the girls did not know how to swim and there were no life preservers. It was estimated by some that the water in the river was about 20-25 feet deep at that location.

Arthur Woods tugboat in center with other tugs in Toledo

Example of a typical naphtha launch of that era

Captain Charles Fitts told news reporters that as the tug was cutting across the channel the first alert he got was the sound of a scream. At that point he ordered the tug into reverse and then heard a crash and more screams from woman and groans from men. Fitts says he’ll never forget those “bloodcurdling screams”.

No Running Lights on the Launch

He contended that the Frolic launch had no running lamps. No lights at all on a night when any hints of sunlight had long faded away and the sky and water were as dark as black glass. So dark that night, all the light was swallowed up and you couldn’t see the hand in front of your face. After the collision, they tried to shine lamps on the area where the launch went down, but said the lights on the tug were of little value.

Did the launch have a lamp or lantern? The Frolic Captain Joe Hepburn clung to his statement that he did have a light in the aft of the boat. Fitts, the tug Captain, held fast to his claim that there were no lights on any kind on the Frolic.

The search for those answers would have to come later.

Of immediate priority was the search for those who were lost. Survivors or bodies? By midnight, the hope for survival had ebbed to sorrow. The search was not renewed until daybreak the following morning. The search for seven bodies. As news began to circulate through Toledo of the events of the previous night, hundreds of curious onlookers assembled. They knit themselves together along the Ironville docks to bear witness and see for themselves the grim task of reclaiming the victims from their watery crypt. Some of the spectators were from nearby Shantytown along the river bank who gathered as soon as the morbid drama of recovery was underway. Nearby, clumps distraught family members stood and stared out across the water. Holding each other in the chilly morning sun, they studied the movements of the rowboats on the river for any sign that somebody they loved had been found at the bottom.

The reporters from Toledo’s newspapers also joined the curious and family members on the riverbank. Their search was for stories and they found them. They would write that the pastor of the First Baptist Church W.E. Loucks was first informed of the tragedy at six o’clock the next morning by a fellow pastor from another congregation. The Reverend Loucks spent the morning visiting the bereaved family members. He said “it came as a shock to me” and says he has known the families for five years and will do all for them that he can. The scribes from the Toledo Bee made it their mission to find out as much as they could about each victim, so that could attach more than just a name and age to the unfortunate.

A picture of the Lowe sisters was featured the first day in the Toledo Bee, as the two siblings would no longer have each other to confide in or share their future lives. Grace Lowe, by the grace of good fortune was able to survive the ordeal, but not without severe injury to her lungs and her heart. She was said to be hysterical with grief the following morning in knowing that her beloved sister, Edna Lowe, 19, was never to surface alive after she fell into the water’s unmerciful grip.

News Bee Photo of the Grace and Edna Lowe

Irwin Swain was just 17, a freshman in high school. Well liked and admired by many. His desire was to be an artist as he loved to sketch. He left many of his drawings lying about the house and his forlorn mother will have them to remember him by.

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Bessie Bystrom was 18, an active Sunday school member and a clerk at a local grocery store. Her father an engineer at the Nasby Building.

Beth Ann Seesee, only 17, was described as a tall slim girl with beautiful brown hair and black eyes. She was loved by all who knew her.

Grace Haskin, 17, also a student at the high school was well liked and an active participant in her church. Ironically, her father had drowned in a launch accident on the river, just two years prior.

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And then there was the poignantly sorrowful story of William Pfanner, 20 and Eulalie Ricard, 19. They were engaged to be married. He was working as a teller for Ohio Savings while his fiance Miss Ricard had graduated high school and Ursuline Convent and was active in Sunday school. Witnesses said they ran to each other as they saw the approaching tug and went to their death wrapped in each others arms. Miss Ricard was the cousin of victim Bessie Bystrom.

In the course of the next few days, there was no shortage of stories and remembrances about this river tragedy to feed the appetites of inquiring minds. There were of course the many questions that still lingered about what happened that night. How could the tug not have seen launch? Both captains, Fitts and Hepburn clashed publicly about whether the launch was displaying a running light. Tug captain, Charles Fitts was adamant that the launch had no such lamp or light. Captain Joe Hepburn was equally as adamant that they did. And he also accused the tug captain of taking a hard starboard turn that put the heavy tug on a collision course with their much lighter and vulnerable launch. An inquest into the vexing questions about the reasons for the tragedy would provoke even more questions. The identity of the woman said to be on board the tug was not known. The tug captain, Charles Fitts at first denied there was a woman on board. But other witnesses claimed to have seen her and she was reported to be drunk and amorous with the tug’s fireman. And during inquest testimony it was revealed by the tug’s fireman that he tried to make love to the mystery woman that night, but she rebuffed his advances. These sordid details may have had little to do with the cause of the accident, but in the black of white of newsprint, they helped sell newspapers. Not everyone was impressed with the sensational reporting in Toledo’s daily papers. A federal officer brought in to survey the damage and investigate the accident labeled the reporters as “newspaper leeches” and advised the people involved not to talk with them.

But that didn’t deter the reporters’ efforts to search for new revelations. Each new day seemed to bring new narrative of the human pathos that had played out on the river’s stage. Clara Marks, one of the four who managed to endure the torture of near drowning, did not survive easily. Her personal account in the Toledo Bee two days later was vivid.

“When the tug struck the boat, the side away from me went up in the air, and then I jumped off. I went down, down , down. I thought I would never stop going down. It was so black and cold. Then all of a sudden I seemed to stop. My lungs were bursting. I waved my arms, but they moved so slowly, as if a great weight was tied to them.”

The reporter who took her narration noted that Clara talked in a monotone and her skin was still white, and that water from the river was still in her lungs.

” I never swam before, but I kicked my legs and waved arms.” “I went to the surface, my throat and lung filled with cold water.” Within seconds she went down again. “I went down three times,” she said quietly. “I know that when I went down for the third time, that it was all over. And that I would not have to struggle any longer. It was a blessed relief.”

On her third time resurfacing she found a seat cushion, filled with cork, floating in the water and clutched it. It kept her afloat until she was finally rescued by her cousin Art Marks who swam to her in the darkness and was able to guide her through the water to be pulled aboard the Arthur Woods tugboat. Once aboard the tug Marks helped turn the victims, face down, to force them to expel the water in their lungs. A hero for the moment. The The Toledo Bee,said surely he should be ascribed that status.

And as every tale needs a hero, such heart rending horrors are sure to bring those forward who say they were “almost” victims. Such was the case of Pearl Miller, an 18 year old from the First Baptist church whose father strongly suggested he not go on the the Frolic excursion because it might be dangerous and he could die in there was an accident. Was it a premonition? Whatever the genesis of his father’s fear, young Pearl did not climb aboard the Frolic that day. He says that if he had, he probably would have drowned, for he can not swim.

Ironically, as if one tragedy to unfold in the headlines that week of 1902 was not enough to absorb, the day after Toledo’s terrible river tragedy, came word of catastrophic volcanic eruptions in the West Indies on the islands of Martinique and St. Vincent. Not one but two volcanoes erupted within hours of each other. Both were deadly, but the eruption of Mt. Pelee at Martinique was mind numbing with over 25,000 dead at St Pierre, essentially the entire city caught in the mountain of molten lava that mushroomed down the slope burying everything in the path. The earth’s convulsions spared few from he wrath of fire and rock. The stories did not need any florid embellishments, for the reality was sensational and horrid as the mind’s eye could envision. Toledo’s river horror would share ink and front page headline space with this seismic event of human calamity for the next week. The astonishing events in the Caribbean did little to impede or diminish the coverage of the the Frolic accident on the Maumee River and the full spectrum of the community response to it.

The coroner’s inquest, the mystery of the unidentified woman reported to be aboard the tugboat, and descriptions of how the victim’s families were coping all kept Toledo readers flipping the pages and drying their eyes. The story of the funerals was especially mournful. On Saturday May 10th, inside the sanctuary of the First Baptist lay seven caskets , side-by-side. The first time such a scene of this type and size had ever been witnessed in the city. The church itself was awash in clouds of floral beauty and fragrance as greenhouses in the city emptied their storage rooms of flowers and banked them in layers around the caskets. Hundreds of friends and family crowded the pews and stood near the coffins, as family members were given a chance for last last look and a chance to say goodbye. There were also hundreds of others who were strangers, affected curious who came to pay their respects and to be a part of this most solemn event. Extra rooms and the church vestibule were opened up to help accommodate the sea of people, many of whom wept openly, as others talked quietly about the investigation and who was to blame. The voices of a special quartet floated over the pews with song and hymns, keeping the mood somber. Outside, the skies had turned gray and cloudy. Cool and gloomy, fitting the mood of the afternoon.

Each coffin had its own set of pallbearers. Most were family or school friends. A poignant moment was observed as it was noted that all six of Beth Ann Seesee’s pallbearers were girls. Classmates. After the services, the caskets were taken that Saturday to Woodlawn and Forest cemeteries. Will Pfanner’s body was the only one to be interred at Woodlawn. The other six were taken by carriage to the Forest Cemetery.

The Burials at Forest Cemetery Turned Into a Mob Scene

It was at Forest where the mood of the mourners began to shift. Hundreds of other people joined those arriving caravan and according to news accounts, the scene devolved into one of chaos and disrespect. As news accounts described it, “Not less than 2,000 people gathered at Forest Cemetery to witness the internment of six of the young people who drowned Wednesday night…” The Sunday morning Toledo Bee called most of them “sensation seekers filled with morbid curiosity.” who laughed and joked as the six hearses slowly rolled into the cemetery. They were so unruly, they pushed and shoved and nearly caused some mourners standing on the edge of the graves to be “pushed into the cavity”. As the narrative of the burials continued, it noted the gray skies that brooded overhead and a sharp chill in the air as rude behavior of the curious continued. Miscreants who trampled fresh graves and tombstones as they rushed from one grave to another of the Frolic victims, stealing flowers and relics. A spectacle that disgraced the saddest funeral the city has ever known.

The next day, a similar scene played out once again at Forest as more of the irreverent made a pilgrimage into the graveyard. A Bee headline opined with chiding indignation, that all that was needed to make it a circus were “peanuts and popcorn”.

Mystery Woman Aboard the Tug Identified

With the victims at rest for eternity, the questions and controversy of the wreck were not close to being put to rest. The inquest was still underway and with each new day, new revelations broke the surface. One of the revelations came that Monday following the accident as the mystery woman was finally identified, In fact she freely admitted to it. Nellie Armstrong who lived at the Suburban Hotel on Water St. said she was the woman who got aboard the tugboat that night and was aboard when the accident happened. She was also identified by a man who says he was drinking with her in an Ironville saloon after the accident happened and she got off the tug. Nellie proved to be at ease on the witness stand and was described as glib and talkative. She said she had hitched a ride with the tug boat from the Jefferson Street docks so she could apply for a job as cook with one of the boats docked at Ironville. She asked tug captain Charles Fitts for a ride and he said, “Sure, hop on board.” One of the girls who survived the ordeal said after getting on board the tugboat, she saw Nellie Armstrong and asked her to help her out of her wet clothes, but the woman swore at her and refused to help.

The tug’s crew had lots of questions to answer about the events that happened just after the collision. One allegation made at the inquest was the Captain Hepburn of the Frolic, an experienced and excellent swimmer, wanted to jump back into the Maumee River waters to see if he could rescue any other passengers. But, he says the crew of the tug would not allow him to do it. Why they didn’t let him was a point of contention with tug captain Fitts stating that Hepburn said was going to jump into the water again with the intention to commit suicide. The tug fireman, William Smith agreed with the captain, but the tugs engineer, Charles Williams said he only heard Hepburn say he wanted to get back in the water to “save the girls”.

Captains of Both Vessels Held to Account

Captain of Frolic Launch: Joe Hepburn

Why more of an effort was not made by Charles Fitts, the Captain of the Arthur Woods, to rescue the victims of the Frolic, or at least make an effort to that end, is not clear. For many it was a haunting question mark for Fitts had a reputation for heroics in water rescues. Charles A. Fitts, was one of the most reliable pilots of the Maumee. Born in Toledo in 1872, he was the son of Captain Albert S. Fitts and had been around the lakes all of his life. As a younger man, he was a man of magnificent physique and strength. Athletic and aa little above the average height, he was regarded as a pleasant speaker and companion. His muscles according the friends and shipmates were like iron, and he was a strong swimmer. He aspired to be a pilot of Great Lakes steamers, like his father, and after leaving high school, he did so. Either working as a wheelsman or pilot on a variety of steamers including the Pastime which his father had sailed out of Toledo for a number of years. While on the hurricane deck of the Pastime,one day on the Maumee, he saw a boy fall off the dock. Fitts jumped overboard and swam to the boy who was near his last breath, and pulled him ashore, where he was resuscitated. His next rescue was at the foot of Jefferson street in Toledo. Three young men were on a small yacht when one them was swept off when he was hit by the main sail boom. He struggled helplessly in the water until Fitts swam out and succeeded in landing him on the deck of the Pastime where the young man recovered. Just why Fitts himself did not leap at the opportunity to help these struggling souls on that night in May of 1902 is silent to history. A question that would later become a part of the official ruling from investigators.

The inquest did not end quickly, the coroner conducting the proceeding was deliberate and methodical about gathering the evidence to determine where the blame might lie. A question that once determined could result in a wave of litigation against either the tug or the launch. A week after the accident, the coroner was taken to the scene of the collision on the river at Ironville. He wanted to see and judge for himself the supposed location of the vessels and who should have yielded to whom. Measurements and river depths were recorded and there was disagreement between the two captains as to where exactly each vessel was at the moment of impact. The coroner eventually said he has enough information and would make a ruling in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, the news and immediate excitement about the tragedy began to wane. The story was dropped from the front page and the city residents turned their attention to other and newer stories of interest.

A labor strike at Rossford’s Ford glass plant and at least five other factories idles thousands, the death of “Mary Ann the Gun” a once notorious pickpocket in Toledo, the Toledo arrest on “general principles” of a white man and black woman for their relationship, and the efforts by developers to build a new housing project near the zoo called Harvard Terrace.

This tragedy did keep some people focused on boat and water safety. There was an short story on how the river tragedy triggered a sudden demand for lights for boats and some shopkeepers said they were already sold out of the lamps. There was also a public demonstration at Walbridge Park of a new type of life preserver that promised better personal safety. It used inflated inner tube devices to keep people afloat in the water should they fall out of a boat. But sadly in the weeks that followed the accident there would be several more drownings on the river. Either from fishing boats that capsized in the currents, or children lured by the call of the cool water. Another summer when the river’s witch becomes a cruel temptress.

But the river is never blamed for its cruelty. The boat captain involved were left to fret as to which one of them might shoulder that burden of blame. The anxiety and the stress of the accident and the pending ruling began to take its toll on launch Captain Joe Hepburn, within two weeks after the disaster he resigned as head of the Toledo Yachting Association’s regatta committee, saying that he was no longer physical able to withstand the duties of the job. He is in such a state that he is in “no condition to participate in anything resembling festivities”

On May 27th, Coroner Storz finally ruled that neither skipper was to blame for the tragedy that took seven lives. Storz essentially sidestepped a final judgment as who was at fault, and relinquished that obligation to the Federal government, letting “Uncle Sam fix the blame”. In his Storz’s ruling he said he did not find either captain “to be liable for criminal negligence.” He also ruled that he couldn’t determine if the presence of woman passenger on board the tug was a contributing factor. He did write that he was surprised that more of the victims could not have been rescued, although he explained that might have been attributable to the “excited state of the tug crew” at the time.

In the end he implored other watercraft operators to be more careful, to be ready for emergencies and said he would leave it to the jurisdiction of the United States government to make a ruling.

Within a day, that ruling from the Customs office came and contradicted the coroner’s results. Colonel Bonner of U.S. Customs found both captains guilty and each should bear some blame for the deadly tragedy. The tug captain Charles Fitts was fined $500 for violating the rules by allowing a woman passenger on board the tug that night, and for operating with one crew member short, and without an adequate lookout for any impending hazard on the river. Colonel Bonner also ruled that Captain Joe Hepburn was not without fault, and was fined $200 for not having running lights on his naphtha launch, the Frolic, and that his craft also should had someone keeping watch for possible hazards in the darkness.

Epilogue

The rulings came the same week in 1902 as Toledoans were ready to observe Decoration Day, what we now call “Memorial Day”. Dutifully tens of thousands of people took carriages or walked or took a trolley to area cemeteries to pay their respects to those who died or served their country in the Civil War, and other wars in the nations history. Flags flapped in the breeze, bugles played, preachers prayed and everyone stopped if only for moment to absorb and reflect. School children, at the urging of teachers and veterans, gathered flowers to scatter over the graves of those who had fought their last battles. Forest Cemetery hosted the largest numbers of pilgrims who came to give their solemn thanks. Many of whom no doubt saw the fresh mounds of earth piled atop the new graves of six young people who perished when the Frolic launch flipped and discarded them to the bottom the river. Likely pausing to ponder the young lives who futures were robbed by the whim of circumstance. In time, however, the mounds of loose clay would subside and grass would grow over them and headstones would appear with etched names, so the living would not forget who they were. But, as always, memories do wither with the seasons. Perhaps not for the families and close friends, but those others who knew them only by their notoriety of death. Time and memory move on. There would be other tragedies, large and small, sensational and similar to ensnare the attention span of the public.

Maumee River A Lethal Seductress

Ironically, nine years later in 1911, on September 2nd, seven people, six of them Toledo city officials and employees, were also sent to the murky depths of the Maumee when their 35 foot fishing boat “The Nemo” was rammed by the bow of a freighter, the “Philip Minch”. This calamity too rendered weeks of journalistic and public fascination. But it too eventually faded to a footnote in Toledo’s past.

In, a similar tragedy would play out again when in 1930, eight prominent Toledo men mysteriously went to their deaths when they were flung from their high speed Dart boat into Lake Erie. The victims were on a night run from Toledo to Pelee Island in Canada for an Elks party. As the sped across the dark waters of the lake, something caused the sleek wooden speed boat to flip and pitch them into the black water of eternity. The story was charged with mystery and high intrigue for weeks and then the story’s sharp focus slowly faded into the mist.

Mystery of Why This Tragedy Still Unsolved

More than 100 summers have passed since the night in late spring of 1902 when what should have been a routine non newsworthy pleasure cruise turned into a horrible episode in the city’s history. However, much has changed since then. Steam launches are no longer seen on the river, replaced by gas powered pleasure craft. The community of Ironville is gone and so are the docks, at least as that generation knew them. First Baptist Church on Cherry Street later became a homeless mission and during urban renewal, torn down. And most of the city’s newspapers of that day, including the News Bee are gone too. The ink and its pages though, preserved in digital form, are able to reveal to readers volumes of history and this Toledo tragedy. The only tangible physical evidence enduring is found in the city’s cemeterys, Woodlawn and Forest. Here one can still find the graves of the seven victims and even the latter graves of some survivors. At Forest, the markers of those lost were joined by the tombs of the two boat captains , Joe Hepburn and Charles Fitts. Two men of water, joined for eternity in a sea of earth. Nearby one can find also the final homes of the victims’ family members, and friends who bore the sorrow and memories. Buried with them, no doubt, their burden of tears and torment.

Yes, much has changed. And much has not.

Now on a sunny spring day, as it was May 7th, 1902, the leaves in the green canopy at Forest still rustle overhead in the soft breezes that curl among the weathered headstones, whispering to all who hear them, the stories that time won’t forget.

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The Fostoria Company That Made History Come Alive.

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It hardly seems likely, but there was once a modest little red brick building on Center Street  in Fostoria Ohio that put more people under the lights of the stage and theater than probably any other drama producers this side of Broadway. From coast-to-coast, for most of the 1900’s, thousands of communities, large and small, would become seduced by the bright lights and the scriptwriters from this Fostoria company who helped those regular folks put on the grease paint and costumes so they could “put on a play”. Not just any typical community theater production, but grand outdoor pageants designed to highlight the histories of those communities that were celebrating centennials, or other significant milestones of their heritage.

The company was the John B. Rogers Company, started in 1903, by Mr. John Rogers, an attorney from Fostoria who used the various talents of local actors and musicians to stage his own local dramas and musicals. Enjoying early success, Rogers soon expanded the concept and began employing the talents and eagerness of other amateurs in other communities to celebrate the anniversaries and centennials.  Many of the early productions were performed on indoor stages as operas, or minstrel shows. As the years progressed the company began selling community leaders on the idea of staging elaborate Centennial anniversaries, or commemorations of notable events of history from their area.  

The shows would often utilize a cast of hundreds of people, a truckload of period costumes, various animals, a large rolling stock of wagon and cars, plus a wealth of music scores, and about a dozen choreographed dance routines. In later years, the Rogers’ directors included early forms of multi media complete with slide shows, sound effects and pyrotechnics. Most of these elaborate shows were performed on a hand-crafted grand stage, made of platforms, scaffolding and curtains about 200 feet in length. It was built strategically on a football field where thousands of people attended the spectaculars from the stands.

These pageants were usually the culmination of a year-long celebration of the centennial or the sesqui-centennial at a 150 years. After World War Two, company officials estimated the Rogers’ Company produced over 5,000 of these shows before they finally closed down operations in 1977 in Fostoria, however another company bought the Rogers inventory and moved it to the Pittsburgh area where it continued until the 1980’s. 
The Rogers company, on average, would produce about 70 shows a summer. Most of operations focused on small town America where local communities would pay a fee for the Rogers company to design a celebration plan for them, that included not just an outdoor historical pageant, but would also give them an organization “plan of action” with which the townspeople could use to stage the entire year-long celebration. Those festivities always included beard contests, vintage clothing sales, commemorative dinner plates, historical programs and photos, wooden nickels, and other souvenirs of the community’s celebration. In the final six weeks of the event, the company would assign a director-business manager to the town to direct the pageant and generally oversee the celebration to ensure that company procedures and fiscal policies were being followed.

 

This writer became very familiar with the Rogers Company when I went to work for them in the summer of 1969, as a wet-behind-the-ears 20-year-old freshly minted “director”. Yes, I was unusually young for this type of heady assignment, but not one to shrink from adventure. One spring morning, I flew to points south to begin my director’s training in the small southern community of Clayton North Carolina, a few miles south of Raleigh.

(My first association with Rogers came the summer before when I took part in their production of Genoa Ohio’s centennial pageant in 1968. I was a theater major at the time, and the chance to work for Rogers the next summer was an experience of a lifetime)

Because this story was intended to be about the Rogers’ Company, and not about me, I’ll try to refrain from too much self-indulgence, but I will attempt to provide a unique perspective of the company and the effect in had on the communities they worked with.

The Clayton show was special and somewhat atypical because it was being directed by the Vice President of the company, George S. Elias. A man as unforgettable as he was skilled at his craft. With hundreds of Rogers shows on his long lists of credits, George also brought to his mini-school of new directors, an unflinching passion for the world of show business and showmanship. His stocky build,his soft blue eyes, and a face framed by a shock of graying blond hair, combined with a friendly smile and quick wit, had little trouble getting the attention of those around him. Be they young directors, novice actors or the most influential community’s leaders. I was fortunate to have had George Elias as a mentor in those early years.

 

George’s proudest accomplishment as a Rogers’ director was no doubt his annual reenactment of Custer’s Last Stand at the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana. It was a brilliant idea designed to raise money every year for the reservation and to tell the story of this great American story from the perspective of the Indians who crushed Custer’s 7th Calvary unit.
Elias for a number of years wrote and directed the spectacular battle scene, in classic Cecil B. DeMille’s style with bull-horn in hand, directing the hundreds of actors on horses with guns and arrows to be brutal and violent, while at the same time imploring them not to hurt anyone. Elias became so loved by the Crow Nation, he was made an honorary tribe member. By 1969, Elias was on set with director Arthur Penn, offering technical advice in the production of the movie “Little Big Man” with Dustin Hoffman and Faye Dunaway. Elias called me in June of 1969 to ask if I wanted to come out for the weekend to see the battle scenes being shot and to meet with Penn and the crew. I declined. A decision I have always regretted.

George Elias was not the only Rogers’ director whose roots were buried deep in the loam of Hollywood and Broadway. There were many others, including screen writers, dancers, actors, and behind the scenes technicians, who joined this Fostoria company during the summer months to earn some extra money and to experience a rich slice of pure Americana. One of the most popular directors for the company during its last years in operation was Carl Hawley, a Hollywood scriptwriter and showman who delighted in lending his experience and talents to these small town productions.

 

In 1968, Hawley and his wife LaFaye, produced a show for Brookfield, Illinois’s 75th anniversary, called the Diamond Jubilee. The local paper wrote of Hawley.

Everything was coming together. In late June “congenial” Carl Hawley, of Hollywood, Calif., arrived in Brookfield to produce and direct the pageant. Apparently no local person could come up to the standards needed for this job, so Hawley was sent for by the Rogers Company.
Hawley was a true showman, in the best “S.E. Gross” style, brimming over with good nature, optimism and a fine sense of flamboyance. And he had 20 years’ worth of experience in promoting such spectaculars as this.
The July 3rd Enterprise reported that   “he has worked with a number of movie stars before joining the Rogers Company. He has assisted in producing and directing James Arness in ‘Gunsmoke,’ Red Skelton and others. He has also traveled with Bing Crosby and appeared in movies under the name Carlos Fernando.”
On his pinky finger, Hawley wore an outrageously large ring, with a gigantic diamond in it that would’ve made Eva Gabor jealous, if it were real. He wore it, he said, as a symbol of Brookfield’s Diamond Jubilee. In early July, his wife, LaFaye, arrived to help co-produce and direct.

There were many directors in the history of the Rogers company and they essentially became the public face of this mostly obscure Northwest Ohio company that provided a wealth of memories to hundreds of thousands of people across the nation. One of their long time directors, Phillys Shelflow, left her Hollywood home each year along with her husband to direct and choreograph the pageants. She said in a 1968 interview that she loved the work because it was all about “bringing America to Americans”.
And speaking from my own experience as a Roger’s director, this seemed to be the essence of each celebration and each production. Every celebration would not only feature the pageant, but a “queen’s contest” which allowed local women in the town to sell tickets to the big show and the woman who sold the most won the crown and a truckload full of prizes from local merchants. Each celebration also featured beard growing contests for the men any man who grew some facial hair was encouraged to join the “Brothers of the Brush” which involved buying a button, an old-fashioned bow tie, and maybe a top hat or some other type of historic fashion.

The ladies, as well could pick through the racks of beautiful recreation of historic period dresses of many type which were at the Centennial store.

This store was also the headquarters for the event and was the place where everything was coordinated, meetings were and a variety of commemorative items were up for sale. Items that were mostly produced or brokered by the Rogers’ company. In fact the Rogers company also owned another firm called the Ohm Company which specialized in various trinkets, badges, hats and ties that most folks, who got into the celebratory spirit were eager to buy. It was a win-win-win situation. The town, the Rogers company and the director all shared a cut of the profits.

While money and the American “profit motive” were certainly in play for the Rogers Company, I always sensed that the owners and directors were motivated by more than just the almighty dollar, and that the greatest reward was in the sense of community these productions created.  In the smaller towns across the country who got caught up in the spirit of the celebration, the people who took part often found themselves making new friends, sharing new experiences and generally painting some indelible memories they carried for many years.

 

One case in point, was my first show I directed on my own which was in Newell, Iowa. A small farming hamlet of 700 citizens in Northwest Iowa, not far from Storm Lake, and about 60 miles east of Sioux City. It was essentially in the middle of nowhere and I thought I’d be dealing with some pretty dusty folks who had corn silk in their ears. How wrong I was. This little town was as prosperus and progressive as any town I had ever known, and  . the townspeople of this bucolic village were as energetic and friendly and competent as any I have ever encountered throughout the rest of my life. These folks knew how to have fun. A small town with a big heart. I learned a lot from them and never forgot their hospitality and zest for life. The show and the celebration of the town’s 100th birthday was a grand success. I was proud to be a part of it.  In 2004, 35 years after the 1969 Newell Iowa Centennial. I decided to visit that small town again while on a trip out West. The intervening years had taken their toll.  Much of Newell had physically changed, with closed up store fronts, and fewer downtown businesses. But more importantly, the people had not changed. Many of the same folks instrumental in putting the celebration together were still there, 35 years older, but just as eager as ever to have a good time. They held a party for me and my family. I was humbled. We reminisced, we laughed, we drank, we traded stories, and we paid tribute to those who had passed on, and by the night’s end, we made the past come alive again.  I also realized that the Centennial they observed in 1969 was more than just a one week event. It had stayed with them for decades. Several told me that it was the biggest thing that had ever happened in their little town and it was a very important time in their lives. One they would never forget. Nor shall I.

The work of the Rogers Company may be over, but still quietly lives on in thousands of towns across America.

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  The Rogers Room At The Fostoria Museum