The-Leaf-Picker-Upper (again) but with more on its inventor, Fred Gedge, and operator, Joe Sontag

Last year I posted this amazing photo of Wyoming's early "leaf-picker-upper." In November and December of 1941, the photo was published in at least a dozen newspapers from Massachusetts to Texas to California. It still amazes me. This year, I'm reposting, but with information about Fred Gedge, its inventor, and Joe Sontag, the man running the machine in the photo.

Fred (Fredrick George) Gedge (1887-1966) was born in Covington, Kentucky. His father, Julius Gedge, was a salesmen when Fred was young, but later was partner in the Gedge & Gray Company, which manufactured machinery used in mills for the production of food, beverages, and other products. Juliuis’s partner, George A. Gray, was his sister’s husband.

A Gedge-Gray horizontal mixer in Alexander's Grist Mill, Cuyahoga County, Ohio.
Source:  Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HAER OHIO,18-VAVI,2--11. 

The family moved to 12 Walnut Ave in Wyoming about 1904. Fred attended the Ohio Mechanics Institute, worked for Proctor & Gamble for a year, and then was a manager in his father’s machinery manufacturing business until 1927.

Julius Gedge Family Home, 12 Walnut Ave.

The Gedge & Gray company operated out of a plant in Hamilton, Ohio, until it was destroyed by a 1913 flood. After the flood they moved their manufacturing facility to Lockland, Ohio, constructing a factory at Hosea and Cooper Avenues.

Help Wanted Ad
Source: Cincinnati Enquirer, March 10, 1920.

Fred Gedge married Grace Tabbs (1886-1951) in 1915. Grace was originally from Louisville, Kentucky. Her father died when she just 4 years old; Grace’s mother lived with the couple until her death in 1930. Grace and Fred made their first home at 130 Springfield Pike, Wyoming. Fred enlisted in the Army during WWI, but the war ended about the same time his training did.

Fred and Grace Gedge's First home, 130 Springfield Pike.

In February 1930, Fred left the manufacturing business and began to work for the Village of Wyoming as what was officially titled “service inspector,” but was effectively the equivalent of a “village manager.” Later that year Fred’s father died, and the couple moved back into his family home at 12 Walnut Avenue.

Frank S. Bonham was Mayor of Wyoming
Source: Hamilton Evening Journal, February 27, 1930.

In addition to running the affairs of Wyoming, Fred was a member of the Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission from 1944-1954, and its chairman for much of that time. When the City of Wyoming adopted a new charter in 1949, he officially became the first city manager, and held that position until he retired in 1955.

Fred's wife Grace died in 1951; they never had any children. In 1952 Fred married Emily Knight Smith, a widow, and they moved to the house at 357 Beech Ave.  Emily passed away in 1962, and is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, in a plot with her first two husbands.  Fred lived until 1966 and is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Glendale, near his parents, brother and first wife, Grace.

Home of Fred Gedge and his second wife, Emily, 357 Beech Ave.

Joseph Charles (Joe) Sontag (1887-1970), the man operating the leaf-picker-upper in the photograph, was a lifelong resident of Wyoming. His father, Julius Sontag, immigrated from Germany in about 1880, first settling in Cincinnati, and moving to Wyoming not long after. He both worked as a blacksmith for manufacturing companies, as well as had his own business of shoeing horses and making iron tools and implements.

Joe's mother, Philomena Rieninger,  was born in Indiana to German immigrant parents. When she was in her late teens her family had hard times. Her father, a farmer, ended up in the poorhouse, and Philomela and her siblings were put out to work as household servants. She and at least one brother ended up moving to Cincinnati, where she met and married Joe's father, Julius, in 1884.

Joe's parents moved out to the Park Place neighborhood, where they raised their family of two girls (Catherine and Flora) and two boys (Joe and Julius). Park Place was annexed into Wyoming in 1904. The Sontags first lived on Springfield Pike, then Charlotte Ave., and by the 1920s owned land on the 1500 block of Maple Ave., where several of the children also established homes. Joe never married and lived much of his life with his parents and then his widowed mother.

Sontag home on Maple Ave.
Source: Google Maps Streetview

Joe spent his whole life working with automobiles and other vehicles. In 1910, when he was 22, the occupation listed for Joe in the census was "Automobile Tester." City directories and later censuses continue to list him as working as a mechanic or driver for garages. In World War I Joe was in the Army in Company E of the 405th Telegraph Battalion Signal Corps, served time in France, and was a Sergeant at the time of his discharge at the war's end. In the 1920s he was a "Garage Foreman" working in Cincinnati, and by 1940 was working for the Village of Wyoming as an auto mechanic.