Non-Celebs | Flashback : Dallas

December 24, 2015

The Eisenlohr Family and Dallas’ First Christmas Tree — 1874

The Eisenlohr Market Drug Store, 1885 (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

According to the memories of Dallas artist E. G. Eisenlohr (1872-1961), his German-born parents brought the first decorated Christmas tree to Dallas in 1874 (or, according to a version of the story published a few years later, 1876). There had been Christmas trees in Dallas before this, but the Eisenlohrs’ tree may have been the first tree — or one of the first — to be brought inside and decorated with tinsel and ornaments.

According to E. G. Eisenlohr’s Christmas memories which appeared in The Dallas Morning News on Oct. 1, 1935:

The candles, holders and tinsel for that first Christmas tree in the village of Dallas in 1874 was ordered from the East. For days my mother baked cookies in the shapes of stars, ships, [and] boots [using] hand-carved molds, some more than 100 years old, that illustrated folk tales…. For days before Christmas Eve the children had been locked out of the room where Kris Kringle was decorating the tree and permitted to enter only after our parents played their Christmas concert and appeared at the window in answer to the cheers from the crowd in the streets. There may have been other trees in the village before we had ours but I have not heard of any and many persons said ours was the first here. I believe we had the first tinsel and glass decorations, for many persons told me later that their parents had told them of the decorated trees back in their old homes before they came to Texas.

The store, ca. 1875-1880 (via DeGolyer Library, SMU)

But what kind of tree was it? According to Kenneth Foree’s 1946 News article about the Eisenlohr tree, it was “a beautiful cedar tree (cut from an Akard and Young thicket by moonlight when the children were asleep” (DMN, Dec. 24, 1946).

Eisenlohr’s father, Rudolph F. Eisenlohr, owned the Market Drug Store (seen above), which was at the southwest corner of Main and Field (the current view of that corner can be seen here, via Google Street View, and the 1885 Sanborn map of that block can be found here.) The family lived upstairs. Imagine that first decorated tree — actually inside someone’s home! — lit with candles in one of those upper windows, attracting a crowd of people below who had never before seen such a sight in the little village of Dallas.

R. F. Eisenlohr (1846-1933)

The Dallas Herald, Feb. 18, 1877

eisenlohr_dallas-directory_1878
Dallas city directory, 1878

Norton’s Union Intelligencer, Oct. 23, 1883

***

Sources & Notes

More on this tree can be found in these three Dallas Morning News articles:

“Christmas of ’74 Featured by First Yule Tree in City — Intended for Eisenlohr Children, but Served for All of Youngsters ” (DMN, Oct. 1, 1935)
“Happy Citizens of the Little Town of Dallas Saw Their First Glass and Tinsel Ornaments in 1876 on a Tree Which Glittered Through the Eisenlohrs’ Window Upstairs Over Their Drug Store” (…that is one crazy-long headline…) by Mattie Lou Frye (DMN, Dec. 18, 1932)
“First Tree” (crazy-short headline…) by Kenneth Foree (DMN, Dec. 24, 1946)

Photo of the Eisenlohr store found on eBay.

More on artist E. G. Eisenlohr here and here.

4 Comments

October 29, 2015

Views of Dallas by Bruno Lore — 1931

Bruno Lore’s Dallas, in purples and pinks

by Paula Bosse

Bruno J. Lore (1890-1963) was a Fort Worth artist and illustrator who spent much of his career working for the Southwestern Engraving Company. Known as “the dean of Fort Worth commercial artists,” Lore had a long and successful career, counting among his many clients colleges and universities who commissioned him to create artwork for their yearbooks (and, perhaps as a friendly or persuasive perk, he was often asked to pick the campus beauties who would be featured in those same yearbooks). Even though information about Lore is scant, he seems to have had steady yearbook work, with his illustrations appearing in several Southern and Southwestern college annuals, primarily in the 1920s and ’30s. In Dallas, his artwork appeared in editions of SMU’s Rotunda.

Below are Lore’s vividly colorful views of the SMU campus and the Dallas skyline which appeared in the 1931 Rotunda and provided a lively, modern exuberance to an otherwise fairly standard college yearbook.

rotunda_1931_title-page

Lore was doing yearbook work (along with his other commissions) into at least the ’40s. His later years seem to have been focused on Western art, and he produced several paintings. He seems to be most fondly remembered by collectors as the artist who was responsible for several decades’ worth of Western-themed cover art for souvenir annuals of the Fort Worth Rodeo and the Southwestern Exposition and Fat Stock Show.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Jan. 21, 1973

***

Sources & Notes

All artwork is from the 1931 Rotunda, yearbook of Southern Methodist University. The above illustrations are unattributed, but it seems fairly certain that they are by Bruno J. Lore, who is mentioned in the school’s newspaper, The Daily Campus, as providing the artwork for the 1931 Rotunda. This edition of the yearbook also contains eight somewhat more staid views of campus scenes in pencil or ink and wash which are attributed to Lore. Lore’s yearbook work was apparently done remotely, and he often worked from photographs.

February 10, 2015

University Park’s Monarch Butterfly Wrangler

Carl Anderson & friends (John Dominis, Time-Life Pictures/Getty Image)

by Paula Bosse

Carl Axel Anderson (1892-1983) was a mild-mannered internal revenue executive by day and a mild-mannered Monarch butterfly expert by night (and weekend … and probably every waking second). Anderson had been interested in insects and butterflies from an early age, and he studied entomology at the University of Minnesota and Columbia. When he was away from the office, he was raising, tagging, tracking, and, perhaps, training Monarch butterflies at his University Park home on Centenary Avenue, which writer Frank X. Tolbert dubbed “the Butterfly Ranch.” Even the neighborhood children — who called themselves The Centenary Monarchs — joined in and learned all about Monarchs from Anderson, their butterfly mentor.

Anderson’s primary interest was studying the migration patterns of the Monarch butterfly, and, conveniently, Dallas was on their pathway, twice a year, so he had a front-row seat. Not only did he observe them passing overhead, he also raised them from eggs laid on the underside of his milkweed plants, enjoyed them as caterpillars, and when they became butterflies, he “branded” their wings painlessly (see below) and released them into the wild, hoping to be able to track their migration from fellow butterfly spotters around the country. He wrote letters to newspapers around the country and mailed hundreds of postcards to groups and individuals, hoping to get his message out. His message, in part:

Monarch butterflies raised from the egg are being released. A number is placed on their wings before they are released. Members of the public are invited to join the observers on the magic carpet of these wings to see where it will take us. Invite your friends and associates to come along, too…. Examine the wings of the Monarch…for numbers or other marks. Allow the butterfly to go on its way after your observation. Please report any observation where marked wings are found….”

In 1950, big news was made when one of his butterflies — one with the number “9” on its wing — was reported to have been seen in California by a 10-year old boy named Ben Harris in Santa Monica, California. That must have been one of the happiest moments of Anderson’s life.

Every year during Monarch migration over Texas, Mr. Anderson was a reliable go-to story for the local media. Particularly fascinated by Anderson and his “butterfly ranch” was Dallas Morning News writer Frank X Tolbert, who wrote about him numerous times. A very early profile by Tolbert rhapsodized about Anderson’s “pet” butterfly Pete which set the tone for all his very sweet subsequent articles about Anderson that appeared over the years. (Next time you’re wandering around in the Dallas News archives, check out Tolbert’s story “An Affectionate Fellow Was Pete the Butterfly” published on May 16, 1948 — but if you like happy endings, beware of the last two paragraphs of the story: personally, I’d advise readers to stop reading when Pete sets off on his journey.)

Anderson was the subject of newspaper and magazine articles all over the country, but the high point was, undoubtedly, his appearance in the pages of Life magazine in 1954, accompanied by the striking photo of him with several of his butterfly pals resting on his face.

The caption for this photo reads: “Mottled with Monarchs, butterfly breeder Carl Anderson stares serenely ahead as the domesticated insects swarm all over his face.” (That is NOT a “swarm,” Life!)

The two-page photo spread was titled “Monarch Man: Texan Breeds Bushels of Them To Help Map Butterfly Migration.”

Each spring Mr. Anderson raises hundreds of Monarchs in cages. If released, they flutter about him, looking for a sip of sugar water. When the Monarchs mature, he brands them and turns them out, alerting friends across the U.S. to watch for them. One of Anderson’s butterflies turned up 1,200 miles away. But instead of clarifying the northward migration it added another enigma by flying cross-country and winding up almost directly west of Dallas. (Life, May 24, 1954)

monarch_life_052454-b

monarch_life_052454-c

Anderson died at the age of 91, having spent the bulk of his long life engrossed in the study of his beloved Monarch butterflies. This excerpt from a 1955 interview shows a glimpse of the wonder and enthusiasm that kept him fascinated by the butterflies his entire life:

“Just at dusk on Oct. 26, the wind shifted to the north with a velocity of 15 MPH. It brought in a huge cloud of Monarchs riding ahead of the cool front. The cloud changed into the shape of a tremendous, brown, moving carpet of unusual surging design. A signal from some leader or leaders in the great flight designated a grove of our hackberry trees as the resting place for the night. Down came the flying carpet of thousands of butterflies. And in a few minutes every twig was bent by the weight of Monarchs. They took off in small groups the next morning, leaving our Dallas hackberries bare of leaves.” (DMN, May 3, 1955)

Thanks, Carl. I wish I’d known you.

Below, a short clip from Oct. 1973 featuring an interview with Carl Anderson by Arch Campbell of Channel 8 News (Campbell mistakenly refers to the park as being Tenison Park — it is Lake Cliff Park).

***

Sources & Notes

Color photo of Carl Anderson by John Dominis (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image). It is from the same session that produced the slightly different black and white image featured in Life magazine.

The profile of Anderson (which includes the text and photos reproduced above) appeared in the May 24, 1954 issue of Life; it can be accessed here.

The Channel 8 film clip is from the WFAA Collection, G. William Jones Film & Video Collection, Hamon Arts Library, SMU; the direct YouTube link is here.

Read another profile of Anderson from the Bakersfield Californian, “Lepidopterist Traces Branded Butterflies” (July 11, 1949), here.

A bunch of Monarch butterfly sources:

“The Monarch Butterfly’s Annual Cycle” from the Monarch Butterfly Fund, is here.
“The Monarch Butterfly Journey North News,” a regularly updated blog on the current (overwintering/leading-up-to-Spring 2105) migration, is here.
A regularly updated map of Monarch sightings (currently at Winter 2015, showing Monarchs warming up in the bullpen along the Texas coast) is here.
An animated map of 2014’s Spring migration is here. UPDATE: An animated map of the Fall/Winter 2015 migration is here.
“Monarch Butterflies Could Gain Endangered Species Protection,” from the Scientific American blog, is here. (“Populations of the iconic and beloved Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus plexippus) have dropped an astonishing 96.5 percent over the past few decades, from an estimated 1 billion in the mid-1990s to just 35 million in early 2014.”)
Information on the Monarch butterfly conservation program — and some beautiful photographs — can be found on the World Wildlife Fund site, here.

Keep your eyes peeled — they’ll be on their way soon

4 Comments

February 1, 2015

The Marietta Mask

SMU football star Doak Walker in an ad from Boys’ Life, Oct. 1955

by Paula Bosse

Dr. Thomas M. Marietta (1910-1995), a Dallas dentist, devised a startlingly new invention in 1947: a specially-made facemask. Initially, the mask was created to protect the face of a Dallas hockey player who had recently sustained a broken nose and would have been unable to play without a mask for fear of further injury. Marietta’s creation was a success — not only did the player get back on the ice, but tentative inquiries from other sports teams began to trickle in. But what changed everything were the masks he made for TCU’s star quarterback Lindy Berry, who had suffered a broken jaw, and Texas A&M’s fullback Bob Smith, who had a badly broken nose. Without the odd-looking masks that protected their entire faces, they would not have been able to play out the seasons. The masks were an unqualified success, and the doc went commercial.

Dr. Marietta (Marion Ohio Star, Nov. 22, 1951 — full article is here)

In 1951, football players did not generally wear facemasks. It was commonplace for players to rack up a dizzyingly large number of injuries such as broken and dislocated jaws and noses, knocked-out teeth, facial lacerations, major bruising, concussions, etc. An article appeared in The Dallas Morning News on Aug. 31, 1951 describing what this whole facemask thing was about and how the Texas Aggies were about to try a revolutionary experiment by equipping “possibly half of the A&M team” with Dr. Marietta’s newfangled masks. Coach Ray George approved a trial test of the masks, saying that his primary concerns were reduction of facial injuries, elimination of head injuries, and improvement of athletic performance. A&M’s trainer, Bill Dayton, predicted that the wearing of facemasks would become universal among players in the coming years.

Many head injuries happen as the result of a player ducking his head. We believe that by the use of this face gear we can eliminate head ducking, and our players will see where they are going. When they watch their opponents, they are able, by reflective action, to keep their heads out of the way. (A&M trainer Bill Dayton, DMN, Aug. 31, 1951)

The various incarnations of the Marietta Mask over the next couple of decades were used in various sports by children, by college athletes, and by professionals. Dr. Marietta patented several designs for masks and helmets and had a lucrative manufacturing business for many years. In 1977 the business was sold, and the Marietta Corp. became Maxpro, a respected name in helmets.

Football and hockey will always be extremely physical sports with the very real possibility of injury, and though there’s need for further improvement, Dr. Marietta’s invention helped lower the danger-level quite a bit. Thanks to a mild-mannered dentist from Dallas, a lot of athletes over the years managed to avoid all sorts of nasty head and facial injuries. Thanks, doc.

marietta-mask_corbis_oct1954 Oct. 1954 (©Bettmann/CORBIS)

marietta_joe-perry

***

Sources & Notes

Photo ©Bettmann/CORBIS; the original caption: “An outer-space look is given by this all-plastic mask lined with foam rubber. It was designed by Dr. M. T. Marietta, a Dallas, Texas dentist.”

Joe Perry photo from HelmetHut. To see some pretty wacky versions of early masks from a Marietta catalog, see images from HelmetHut.com, here.

Read the following newspaper articles:

“Mask Maker: Dentist Helped Wolves Win Title (Abilene Reporter-News, Nov. 29, 1950) — regarding the Colorado City (TX) Wolves and their injured player, Gerald Brasuell, the team’s tackle who wore Dr. Marietta’s mask and was able to play despite having a triple-fracture to his jaw, here
“Broken Jaw Protection: Doctor’s Face Mask Enables Injured Gridders To Play” (Marion, Ohio Star, Nov. 22, 1951), here

To see several of Marietta’s patents (including abstracts and drawings), see them on Google Patents, here.

And to read an interesting and entertaining history of the football facemask (and I say that as someone who isn’t really a sports person), check out Paul Lukas’ GREAT piece “The Rich History of Helmets,” here. (If nothing else, it’s worth it to see the cool-but-kind-of-weird-and-scary, crudely-fashioned, one-of-a-kind facemask made out of barbed wire wrapped in electrical tape!)

And because a day without Wikipedia is like a day without sunshine, the facemask/face mask wiki is here.

January 31, 2015

F. J. Hengy: Junk Merchant, Litigant

“All Kinds of Junk” — 1890 ad

by Paula Bosse

Frank Joseph Hengy was born in Germany in 1850. He immigrated to the United States in 1873, and in about 1880 he made his way to Dallas with a wife and children and established himself as a prosperous buyer and seller of scrap metal and other assorted “junk.” He also owned and operated a foundry, producing amongst other things, sash weights. In the 1894 city directory, there were exactly two “junk dealers” listed, which is surprising, seeing as Dallas was a sizable place in 1894 — there must have been a lot of bottles, rags, bones, sacks, paper, iron, brass, copper, and zinc lying around all over the place, just waiting to be hauled away.

hengy_souv-gd_1984 Souvenir Guide to Dallas, 1894

F. J. “Joe” Hengy’s junkyard (and adjacent residence) was at Griffin and Ashland, right next to the M K T Railway tracks. He advertised in the newspapers constantly and was apparently THE man to sell your junk to. His name even made its way into the minutes of an 1899 city council meeting, when, during the discussion on how the city was going to pay for the shipping of a Spanish cannon that had been captured in Cuba and had been given to the city as a war trophy, a councilman asked sarcastically, “What will Hengy give for it?” (Dallas Morning News, Aug. 5, 1899).

But, seriously, got junk? Call Hengy. Got tons of it? By god, he wants it. A couple of examples of the endless ads placed over the years — two ads, 12 years apart (the 1887 one getting his first initial wrong).

1887_hengy_dmn_082487 DMN, Aug. 24, 1887

1899_hengy_dmn_102299 DMN, Oct. 22, 1899

In the mid-1890s, Joe took his son Louis on as a partner, which, in retrospect, was probably not a good idea, because it wasn’t long before Joe found himself in the middle of years and years of lawsuits: father against son, son against father, father and associates against son, son and associates against father, etc. Not only was he constantly being sued by his son, he was also sued for divorce … twice … by the same woman. He turned around and sued her for custody of their youngest children (and won). She sued him for the business when he was threatening to sell it and retire. He sued her back for something or other. And on and on and on.

Not only was Joe spending all his non-junk-hauling time traipsing about courthouses, but he also found the time to suffer the occasional partial destruction of buildings on his property — twice by fire and once by the massive flood of 1908. The fires were suspicious (the flood was not).

Then there was the time he was charged with the crime of mailing an obscene letter (I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that it was probably a letter sent to his wife — or maybe ex-wife by that point — who was in the midst of suing him and their son). Even though this was a potentially serious federal offense, he was ordered to pay only a small fine for “misuse of the mails.” He was also charged at one point with “receiving and concealing stolen property,” but I’m not sure that got past a grand jury investigation, and one might wonder if there wasn’t some sort of “set-up” by aggrieved relatives involved. It was something new anyway. Probably broke up the monotony a little bit.

But the thing that seems to have been Hengy’s biggest headache and was probably the root of most of the lawsuits filed BY him and AGAINST him concerned property he owned which had been condemned in the name of eminent domain by the M K T Railway. The condemnation was disputed, the appraisal of land value was disputed, the question of which Hengy actually owned the land was disputed, etc.

By the end of 1913, Joe Hengy had been engaged in at least 10 years of wall-to-wall litigation. He moved to Idaho at some point, remarried, started another business, and, finally, died there in 1930. Let’s hope his later years were lawsuit-free.

Hengy’s business and residence (which was, surprisingly, right next door to his litigious son) was at 2317 Griffin, very close to the present-day site of the Perot Museum. (Full map circa 1900, here.) (Click for larger image.)

Lastly, two odd, interesting tidbits.

Joe Hengy took time out from junk and courtrooms to invent new and improved … suspenders! I’m not sure exactly what was so revolutionary about them, but a patent was granted in 1912 — you can read the abstract here, and see them in all their suspendery glory here. (With so much foundry and scrap metal know-how, you’d think he’d go in a more … I don’t know … anvil direction or something.)

And, then there’s this — a kind of sad ad for a tonic called “Sargon” with a testimonial from Mrs. Ollie Hengy, the no doubt long-suffering wife of perennial plaintiff/defendant Louis Hengy. “Was On Verge of Breakdown.” I don’t doubt it! (Incidentally, Ollie and Louis divorced the same year this advertisement appeared in Texas newspapers. Maybe that stuff did work.)

ollie-hengy_vernon-daily-record_090629 1929

***

Sources & Notes

Top ad from Dallas’ 1890 city directory.

Sargon ad appeared in The Vernon Daily Record, Sept. 6, 1929. More on the quack tonic Sargon here.

Sources for other clippings and images as noted.

Lastly, an interesting article that answers the questions “Why was the scrap metal game profitable?” and “Just where did all that metal GO, anyway?” can be found in the article “Many Uses for Junk: How Wornout and Discarded Metal is Utilized,” originally published in The Brooklyn Citizen in 1899; it can be read here. I’m nothing if not exhaustive.

11 Comments

January 22, 2015

George Cacas, The Terrill School’s Greek Ice Cream Man — 1916

Prep-school boys & the ice cream man, 1916

by Paula Bosse

I love this photo. It shows two students from the Terrill School for Boys, buying ice cream from George Cacas, a Greek immigrant. I’m not sure of the exact location of the photo, but I would assume it is either in front of, next to, or very nearby the Terrill School, which was located at Swiss and Peak. It appeared in the school’s 1916 yearbook accompanying an “interview” with Mr. Cacas, whom the boys apparently (and one hopes affectionately) called “Spaghetti” (click for larger image):

Another photo of Mr. Cacas, from the previous year’s yearbook (click for larger image):

The Terrill School was established in 1906 and was one of the city’s early important prep schools for boys. (Incidentally, the Terrill School shared a fenceline with the prestigious Miss Hockaday’s School for Girls for many years — I’ll be writing more on this convenient arrangement in the future!) Below, two photos showing three of the campus’ many buildings, from about the same time as the one featuring Mr. Cacas.

Recitation Hall on the left; Phelps Hall, right — 1919

1928

***

Sources & Notes

Top photo and interview from the 1915-1916 Terrillian, the Terrill School yearbook; photos of the “Main House” and two campus buildings from the 1918-1919 Terrillian.

The Terrill School for Boys was located in Old East Dallas at 4217 Swiss Avenue, from 1906 to about 1930. It then moved to Ross Avenue for a few years and was eventually merged with a couple of other schools to form St. Mark’s School of Texas — more on that from the St. Mark’s website, here.

Location on present-day map (Bing)

The name “Cacas” didn’t seem right for a Greek surname — and the signature at the bottom of the photo looks like it might have been George’s, with his last name beginning with a “K.” But George’s family’s name was, in fact, spelled “Cacas,” as seen here in the city directory from 1915. I wonder if they spelled it “Cacas” back in Sparta?

cacas_directory_1915

5 Comments

December 12, 2014

Getting Married on the Radio — 1922

Inez & John, exchanging vows on Dallas radio, 1922

by Paula Bosse

An early radio stunt happened in Dallas on the night of June 29, 1922 when a couple exchanged wedding vows over the air, with the bride, the groom, and the minister each broadcasting from the studios of different Dallas radio stations: WDAO, WRR, and WFAA. These were the very early days of radio, and when the wedding was broadcast, WDAO had been on the air for a little over a month, and WFAA for less than a week! (WRR, Dallas’ first radio station had been on the air for about a year, but most of that time it had been operating as a one-way radio dispatcher for the city’s fire and police departments). In June of 1922, these were the only three Dallas-based radio stations, and they all worked together in this “historic” broadcast. (This early media stunt was a full 47 years before Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki got hitched on the Tonight Show.)

DALLAS COUPLE TO WED BY RADIO THURSDAY NIGHT

DALLAS — The first wireless marriage ceremony ever performed in which neither the bride, the groom, nor the officiating minister will be at the same place is to be solemnized here Thursday night when Miss Inez Mabel Brady, Dallas society girl, becomes the bride of John H. Stone, operator at WRR, the municipal broadcasting station.

It is estimated that more than 25,000 radio fans will “witness” the tying of the radio nuptial knot.

Three Dallas broadcasting stations will be used in the ceremony. Rev. Thomas Harper, pastor of the Central Congregational Church, who has been asked to officiate, will repeat the marriage ritual into the transmitter of [WFAA,] the broadcasting station on the roof of [the Dallas Morning News] building. The bride and her attendants will be at the Automotive Electric Company’s radio station [WDAO, on South Ervay], while the groom will make his responses from WRR, the station of which he is in charge.

Operating staffs of the three stations are working out the details of the ceremony, which will include a broadcasted wedding march.

(– Fort Worth Star-Telegram, June 28, 1922)

Obviously new to the hustle of radio promotion, The Dallas Morning News (owner of WFAA) mentioned the event only a couple of times — fleetingly. They did note that “This probably will be audible to one of the largest audiences ever ‘hearing’ a wedding ceremony” (DMN, June 28, 1922). It’s not known just how many people tuned in to listen to the ceremony (probably a considerable number), but the story made news around the country, as can be seen in this article from The Durham Morning Herald in Durham, North Carolina:

Durham (NC) Morning Herald, July 13, 1922 (click for larger image)

The broadcast had only a tiny hiccup:

radio-wedding_winfield-daily-press_kansas_063022 Winfield (Kansas) Daily Press, June 30, 1922

As successful as the radio wedding was, the marriage between Inez Brady and John H. Stone does not appear to have lasted very long. At the time of the wedding, Inez was just out of school and was only 16 or 17 years old (the descriptions of her as a “society girl” and “debutante” were, I think, a bit of an exaggeration). According to the news stories surrounding the wedding, she “fell in love” with Mr. Stone’s voice on the radio. None of that bodes well for a lasting marriage. The 1923 city directory had the newlyweds renting rooms on McMillan, off Lower Greenville, but the 1924 directory had John in Oak Cliff and Inez in Old East Dallas. She re-married in 1928 at the creaky old age of 22, and he seems to have left WRR to work in some capacity for RCA. The marriage might not have lasted, but they both had a “brush-with-celebrity” story to tell (and re-tell) for the rest of their lives.

***

Sources & Notes

I’m not sure which ended first — Mr. and Mrs. Stone’s wedded bliss or the radio station WDAO, which ceased operation sometime in 1923. A good look at the history of early local radio can be found at DFW Radio Archives, here. (WRR and WFAA continue to march forward, just a few years shy of their 100th anniversaries!)

2 Comments

December 3, 2014

Cowboys and Indians on Elm Street — 1915

lawrence_kiddie-photo Photo by Joe Lawrence, circa 1915

by Paula Bosse

The photo above, showing two not-terribly-thrilled children dressed up in Old West costumes, was taken by Joe Lawrence in his “Crystal Electric Studio” at 1608 Elm Street, one of many small businesses located above the Crystal Theater.

The Crystal Theatre — with office space above (click for larger image)

Joseph Z. Lawrence (1884-1943) was born in Romania and settled in Dallas in 1909. In 1915 he was doing business as a photographer at 1608 Elm Street. Lawrence later owned the Lawrence Art Galleries on Pacific Avenue, and, along with his son Harry, was an early supporter of the Dallas Nine artists.

***

Sources & Notes

Top studio photo by Joe Lawrence, found on eBay.

Photo of the Crystal Theater found on Pinterest, here. A photo of the 101-year old building taken during the recent spate of downtown demolition — with the wrecking ball literally INCHES away from it — is here. The Dallas Morning News article it comes from is here.

At some point the address of the building (originally 1608-10) became 1610 Elm, perhaps when it was extensively remodeled in the late 1920s and became a retail store.

crystal-theater_building-code-bk_1914 1914 — “Comfort & Refinement”!

14 Comments

November 19, 2014

Dallas News Hustler — 1908

Ernest d’Ablemont, 13, newspaper carrier aboard his trusty steed, 1908

by Paula Bosse

The photo above appeared in the pages of The Dallas Morning News on Jan. 26, 1908 under the headline “One of the Dallas News Hustlers.” The caption:

Ernest A. d’Ablemont is one of the hustlers selling The Dallas News. He began selling the paper in March, 1905, on Sundays at the age of 11 years. He is now 14, or will reach that age on his birthday, March 16, 1908. Since he began, he has never missed a Sunday, rain or shine, hot or cold. Since his business career began he has clothed himself and has accumulated sufficient money to enable him to make a loan of $150 at 10 per cent.

Quite the business-minded newsboy — the Inflation Calculator estimates that $150 in 1908 would be equivalent to almost $4,000 today! In 1909 — just a year later — he had his own entry in the Worley’s city directory, but he had jumped ship from the News and was working for The Dallas Dispatch.

dablemont_worleys_1909

Ernest d’Ablemont was born in Dallas in 1894 to immigrant parents — his father, Felix, was French, and his mother, Inga, was Norwegian. One wonders what could possibly have enticed a Parisian to come to Dallas, but Felix had been in the city since about 1883, working first in a meat market, then spending most of his life as a produce man. Felix was a “truck farmer” (he grew vegetables to sell locally), and he had a small piece of land off 2nd Avenue in the old Lagow Settlement area, south of Fair Park, about where S. 2nd Ave. intersects with Hatcher. Felix placed this ad in 1903:

dablemont_dmn_110103

“German, Swede, Norwegian or French preferred.”

Ernest followed in the footsteps of his farmer father. After his early entrepreneurial foray into the world of newspaper delivery and a couple of years of service in World War I (which took him overseas where he was assigned to a field hospital and a “sanitary train”), he returned to Dallas and worked the family’s truck farm until he retired. He died in 1954 at the age of 60.

***

Sources & Notes

Top image of young Ernest on horseback from The Dallas Morning News, Jan. 26, 1908; photo by Clogenson.

Want-ad from the DMN, Nov. 1, 1903.

WWI “sanitary trains”? I’d never heard the term. Find out what they were and see what one looked like in this GREAT photo from Shorpy, here.

2 Comments

September 25, 2014

W. W. Orr: Buggies, Phaetons, Carriages — “Everything on Wheels!”

W.W. Orr’s carriage business on Main St., 1878 (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

I came across the image above in the 1878 Dallas city directory, and my eye was immediately drawn to the novel open-air display of buggies on the second floor of the building. I’ve never seen this before — the frontier version of the auto showroom!

I hope this is a depiction of the actual shop owned by W. W. Orr at 724-726 Main Street (corner of Main and Martin — see map below) and not some sort of early augmented clip art. Orr ran a successful business selling buggies, phætons, and carriages, and he probably did have an imposing shop.

William Wallace Orr was born in Ohio, and after the Civil War he made his way to Texas, where he served for a short time as an East Texas postmaster before coming to Dallas where he and his wife, Amanda, operated a livery stable.

Dallas Herald, April 19, 1873

I’m not sure whether “epizootic” is used here as some sort of 19th-century tongue-in-cheek hard-sell advertising term (“His prices are INSANE!“) … or whether it means the horses have some sort of disease. I tend to think it’s the former.

The carriage business, which had started by 1878, is notable (to me, anyway) because it was housed in a building with a basement — I wasn’t aware that basements really existed in Dallas at the time. Orr rented out the basement beneath his “carriage repository” as a beer cellar. If TV westerns are anything to go on, drunken brawls in most drinking establishments of the time were to be expected. What might not be expected is an account of a bar fight to be reported like this:

orr_cellar_dal-her_060278 Dallas Herald, June 2, 1878

Regardless of what disreputable activities were going on in the cellar, it seems that Orr’s business of manufacturing and selling “everything on wheels” was a booming one.

orr_dal-her_060380 Dallas Herald, June 3, 1880

He had stylish conveyances, cheap prices, and good goods:

orr_dal-herald_081283 Dallas Herald, Aug. 12, 1883

After the death of his wife in 1886 (she died of consumption at the early age of 42), Orr passed the business to his son. In poor health, he left Dallas for Mississippi, where he met a woman who nursed him back to health and whom he later married. After a few years of an apparently happy second marriage, W. W. Orr died in 1894. Cash savings, investments, and real estate holdings back in Dallas had left him a wealthy man, and, as might be expected, his family in Dallas was dismayed to learn that he had left his estate to his infant daughter in Mississippi. His three grown children from his first marriage were not happy, and they contested the will. (The case is covered exhaustively here. I think the baby daughter emerged victorious, but I’m not absolutely sure.)

It’s interesting that Orr and his first wife are buried side by side in Greenwood Cemetery. Amanda Melvine McQueen Orr has a large, ornate monument and headstone; W. W. has his name — and nothing else — carved into an unadorned marker. It would have been nice to have had a little a buggy in the corner. …Something.

The location of Orr’s buggy and carriage house was at the corner of Main and Martin, shown above in a map from around 1900. (Click for larger image.)

And, below, is the full ad, with that incredible artwork! (Click it!)

1878

***

Sources & Notes

Illustrated ad from the 1878 Dallas city directory.

All other ads from The Dallas Herald, as noted.

Map is a detail from a map of Dallas, circa 1900, from the Portal to Texas History, here.

Amanda Orr’s headstone and memorial statuary can be seen in several photos here; W. W.’s sad unadorned slab can be seen here.

Phætons? They sound dangerous!

5 Comments

Category: Non-Celebs

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this: