My Own Old House (part 4): The Schramm Family

After the Whitteker Family moved out, there is a gap of a few years where I am not sure who rented and lived in our house. But in 1893 Otto B. and Sophia Froehlich Schramm purchased the home from Joseph and Cecilia Jewett. The Schramms lived in our house for over fifty years

Otto B. Schramm (1857-1943) was born in Buffalo, New York, to German immigrant parents, Augusta and Ludwig Schramm. Before 1865 Augusta brought Otto and his brothers, Julius and Herman, to Cincinnati and remarried. Her second husband, Conrad Mette (a copper smith), was also a German immigrant. The Schramm boys lived with their mother, stepfather and younger half-siblings in a building that still stands at the southeast corner of Schiller and Main Streets in the Mount Auburn section of Cincinnati, across from the Rothenberg School, just north of Liberty Street from Over-the-Rhine. The family lived in a multi-unit building, filled to the brim with German immigrants and their children.

Building at Southeast Corner of Main and Schiller, Cincinnati.
Source: Google Street View.

Building at Southeast Corner of Main and Schiller, Cincinnati.
Source: Google Street View.

According to the 1880 Census there were 21 people in six families living in the right (south) side of this building and 24 people in three households in the left (north) side of the building. The 1891 Sanborn maps show a cooper (barrel making) shop to the rear of the building; it was run by one of the residents, Christian Benus. The map also indicates a saloon in the first floor of the north side of the building.

Sanborn Insurance Map, c. 1891.
Source: Ohio Link.

Otto’s wife Sophia Froehlich Schramm (1859-1943) was the girl next door (or the next floor). Also the daughter of German immigrants, when Sophia was in her teens her father, Jacob, died. She, her mother Melissa, and sisters Frederica and Anna, lived in the same building as the Mette/Schramm family from the late 1870s until she married Otto in 1882.

Otto and Sophia’s parents and many of the other residents of their building and neighborhood worked as craftsmen, laborers, and employees of local manufacturing firms. As a teen, Sophia worked as a gold leaf cutter, as did two of her sisters. However, Otto’s life took a different turn, and he became a white-collar businessman. According to the 1870 Census he was an “apprentice to a lawyer,” at age 13. This may be an exaggeration of whatever form of work he was doing to help out in a lawyer’s office. In 1940 he told the census taker that he had attended high school for two years. In 1880 at age 23 Otto’s occupation is listed as stenographer—he worked for a number of years for the Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Dayton Railroad.

In 1882 Otto and Sophia married and moved from Mount Auburn to the suburban village of Carthage (now part of Cincinnati). While Otto’s occupation continued to be listed as stenographer in City and County Directories and in the 1900 Census, he developed a much larger involvement in local business than that title might suggest. Sometime between 1880 and 1890 Otto founded and ran a coal supply company. The coal yards were located in Lockland, Ohio, on the north side of Poplar (McLaren) Avenue, just east of the train tracks that separate that village from Wyoming. In 1900 he won a contract to supply 1,400 tons of coal to the County Infirmary, according to an article in the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Sanborn Insurance Map.
Source: Ohio Link.

Source: Wyoming Historical Society.

In 1887 Gideon G. Palmer, Wyoming resident and president of the Palmer Flour Mills in Lockland, nominated Otto B. Schramm to be a member of the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce. In 1888 Otto and four others founded the Lockland-Wyoming Building and Loan Company. 

It is likely that Otto and Sophia rented the home on E. Mills Ave. (then called Wiley Ave.) before they purchased it in 1893 from Joseph and Cecilia Jewett; they may have moved there in 1890. Otto and Sophia raised four children in the home: Alice Florence Schramm (1883-1965), Fredrick Schramm (1887-1900), Arthur Felix Schramm (1890-1968) and Sophia Schramm (1895-1901). Unfortunately Fredrick and Sophia both died of diphtheria as children. While now preventable through vaccination, diphtheria—caused by bacteria—was a common cause of death into the 1920s.

Otto and Sophia’s eldest daughter, Alice, was born while they were living in Carthage, and was 10-years-old when they bought the house on E. Mills. In 1904, when she was 21, she married Clifford Scott, who had grown up in nearby Carthage and Hartwell. Early in their marriage, they lived on Oliver Road in Wyoming and Clifford worked in a spring factory. They had two children at that point, Lowell Schramm Scott (1905-1973) and Marguerite Alyce Scott (1908-1999). Unfortunately, the marriage was rocky. In November 1913 Alice filed for divorce, claiming that Clifford “frequently struck and beat her” and had a habit of “calling her names, striking her and throwing things at her.” A divorce was granted in January 1914, but the two remarried just six months later.

Source: Cincinnati Enquirer, November 13, 1913.

Source: Cincinnati Enquirer, January 28, 1914.

Source: Cincinnati Enquirer, July 19, 1914.

A few years later, when Clifford registered for the World War I draft in 1918, the family was living in Devon, Connecticut, near Fairfield, where he continued to work for a firm that made springs. The couple’s third child, Howard Arthur Scott (1919-2000), was born while they were in Connecticut. Less than a year later, when the 1920 Census taker came around, Alice and the children were living with her parents in our house on E. Mills, without Clifford. But in the family was soon back together again, living in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1922, where Clifford worked as an auto mechanic. 

In the mid 1920s the Scotts returned to Cincinnati, and lived at 40 Ferndale Avenue, just a few blocks away from Alice's parents, and Clifford once again had a job in spring manufacturing. In 1931 Marguerite married Herman H. Miller; the couple began a family in Dayton, Ohio, but often visited the Schramm family home. During the 1930s Alice and Clifford divorced again. Subsequently, Clifford moved to Los Angeles, and Alice and 20-year-old son Howard moved to the Oakley section of Cincinnati where they lodged in the home of two elderly, widowed sisters. Eldest son Lowell lived with his grandparents in the house on East Mills, and worked as an accountant for a gas company. In October of 1940 Howard enlisted in the U.S. Army, and in February of 1941 so did Lowell.

Arthur Schramm, son of Otto and Sophia, was three years old when his family bought the home on E. Mills Avenue in 1893. Arthur grew up in Wyoming, attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, graduated in 1913, and became a civil engineer. After college, he lived in Roswell, New Mexico, married Beatrice Greiner, and worked for a tile manufacturing company. Sometime before 1923 Arthur moved to Houston, Texas, where he wed his second wife Kate Laprade (1882-1971). The 1930 Census reports him living in Kansas City, Missouri, where he spent the rest of his career with the packers and stockyard division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Kansas City, Missouri; he was head of the department when he retired in 1958. Arthur was also a Life Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Arthur married Kate Laprade and had one daughter Mary Katherine Schramm (1926-1988).

Kansas City Stockyards, 1943.

Source: Library of Congress.

After her sons joined the Army, Alice lived for a time with her aging parents. But in December of 1943, the following obituaries appeared in the Cincinnati Post and Cincinnati Enquirer.

Source: Cincinnati Post, December 20, 1943.

Source: Cincinnati Enquirer, December 21, 1943.

Otto, Sophia, and their children who died of diphtheria, Frederick and Sophia, are buried in Cincinnati's Spring Grove Cemetery. Their graves are marked by the flat stones in the foreground of the photo below.

After their parents' death, Alice and Arthur inherited the house, but sold it within a year. One of them left their mark on the house--this graffiti is on the back, second story, up under the eaves. I'm guessing it was done by a teenage Arthur, maybe given the job of painting the metalwork on the roof valleys and gutters (because the paint is red). It says "A.D. 1907 - A.S."

From boxing gypsies to Civil War prison to Olympic medals in archery

Poking around in the past you never know what you will find and where it might lead you.

This week I was looking for something to write about for the blog and started by searching old newspaper articles, to see what happened in Wyoming  in some past July or August. The most interesting article I found was about an impromptu boxing match between traveling gypsies that occurred on Clark Avenue, apparently locally known as "Lovers' Lane" in July of 1905.

Cincinnati Enquirer, July 25, 1905.

I wanted to do more with this post than just re-print an newspaper article, so I considered what else I could research and write about. The article mentions the "Town Hall" a reference to the old Wyoming Amusement Hall, which was two buildings earlier than our current Civic Center, on the same site. The village maintained its offices in the building until it burned in a 1907 fire. There were tennis courts on the property, which is possibly where the audience of tennis players came from. But writing about the history of that corner could be a long post of its own, so I put that idea aside. I've already written about Springfield Pike, so I thought I would look into the history of Clark Avenue.

Clark Avenue was laid out in 1874 as part of the Wyoming Land and Building Company (WLBCo) Subdivision.

By 1905, when the gypsies had their boxing match on the street, there were only two homes built on Clark Avenue...

...this one built in 1875...

Source: Google Streetview 

 ...and this one constructed in 1882.

Source: Google Streetview

They were both at the western, Springfield Pike, end of the street, so I guess it could have been a secluded little "Lovers' Lane."

I started out guessing that the street was named for William A . Clark, who owned property in Wyoming (his house is noted on the map above, on Burns Ave. across from Durrell Ave.); was a "Director" of the Wyoming Land and Building Company subdivision, and an investor in other Wyoming real estate ventures; and who later was part of the village government. But ultimately I question why the street would be named for him, and not any of the other investors (see my final note at the end of this post for another guess at who the street was named for). However, I learned a lot about the very interesting life of William A. Clark.

William A. Clark

Source: Spalding's Archery Guide, 1910.

William A. Clark was born in Ohio in 1842, to Sarah Goudy and John Clark. In 1850 the Census lists their family living in Sycamore Township, Hamilton County, Ohio, on a fairly sizable farm--at his death in about 1863, John Clark owned a farm of almost three hundred acres that stretched from what is now Galbraith Road, toward the north, along both sides of Reading Road to about where Southern Avenue is in Reading.

William served in the Civil War, in the 6th Ohio Infantry (The Guthrie Gray Battalion). According to an article about his life and death, published in Forest and Stream magazine in 1913, William was injured at the battle of Stones River, captured, and spent time in Libby Prison and imprisoned on Belle Isle, both in Richmond, Virginia, until being released in a prisoner exchange.

Libby Prison, Richmond, Virginia
Source: National Archives.

He returned to his unit, and was again injured in the battle at Chickamauga, left on the battlefield, and captured by Confederates. The article went on to explain "Mr. Clark always claimed that his life was saved by a surgeon in the Confederate hospital, who, finding that Mr. Clark was a fellow Mason, prevented proposed amputation and gave the wounded man special attention for several weeks." He was again released in a prisoner exchange, but this wound, a partial disability in his right arm, kept him from returning to combat.

After the war, William married Mary Jane Rankin of Lisbon, Ohio (located between Pittsburgh and Cleveland) in 1866. They moved to Cincinnati before 1870, when the Census lists them living in the 8th Ward and William having occupation of "clerk in store;" in the 1880 Census his occupation is listed as "clerk in shirt store." City directories indicate he worked for many years at the southeast corner of Walnut and Fourth Street for A.J. Clark Shirt Manufacturers and Dealer of Men's Furnishings (A.J. Clark also owned property in Wyoming in the 1870s, and his wife Helen's brother lived in my house in the 1870s - see this post). William may have been related to the owner of the firm, but I have not figured out through what connection.

Source: Kenny's Illustrated Cincinnati, 1875.

Source: Cincinnati Enquirer, October 2, 1874.

Sometime before 1874 William A. and Mary Jane Clark purchased two lots in the Wilson Subdivision of Burns' farm: Lot  50 (two homes are now on this lot: 97 Burns Ave., built in 1926, and 101 Burns Ave., built in 1875) and Lot 51 (now 107 Burns Ave., built in 1870). I don't know how accurate those construction dates are--they are from the County Auditor's records. Maybe the family lived at 107 Burns for a few years and then built 101 Burns, but I found evidence that the Clarks lived in the home at 101 Burns in both 1875 and 1910. The family included children Carrie (b. 1868), Georgianne (b. 1872), Albert Rankin (b. 1877) and William W. (b. 1880). In 1880 the census reported their household included both of William and Mary's widowed mothers, as well as a young woman who was a servant.

William A. Clark Home, 101 Burns Ave.
Source: Google Streetview

107 Burns Ave.
Source: Google Streetview

Once in Wyoming, William got involved with local real estate and village government. In addition to being a Director on the board of the Wyoming Land and Building Company, he was a stockholder in the Park Place Land & Building Company, which was established in 1875 to sell lots in a large subdivision to the north of Wyoming (which is now part of Wyoming).  By 1897 he was Superintendent of the Wyoming Water Works (which had been established in 1892) and held that job through at least 1910. He also served as Wyoming Village Clerk for many years, and for a time managed the Wyoming Light, Water, Heat and Power Co.

When he wasn't working, and despite his injured arm, William was a leading proponent and practitioner of the sport of archery. In 1879 he helped found the Ohio State Archery Association, and was a member of the Highland Archers, a Wyoming-based archery club. William was also an early leader of the National Archery Association, serving as its Secretary and as its President in 1891, 1898, and 1901. William was national archery champion in 1886, 1887, and 1897. His children also became skilled archers; son Albert was national champion and 1900, and there were many years that daughter Georgia placed highly in the competition.

William A. Clark
Source: Spalding's Archery Guide, 1905.

Albert R. Clark
Source: Spalding's Archery Guide, 1905.

In 1904, the third modern international Olympics were held in St. Louis, Missouri, and included archery among the sporting events. However, this was only the second time archery was a part of the Olympics, there was no international archery organization nor any international rules, and only Americans competed in the sport at the 1904 Olympics (which, overall, were sparsely attended).

Source: Wkipedia

Some indigenous peoples of the world demonstrated their own forms of archery at the "Anthropology Days" held in conjunction with the Olympics and the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. See this article.

Source: Spalding's Athletic Almanac, 1905.

Source: Spalding's Athletic Almanac, 1905.

Nevertheless, Cincinnati and Wyoming were well represented at the 1904 Olympic archery event. William A. Clark was on a team that placed second in the team competition, earning him a silver medal. Wyoming had several other medalists in that Olympics. C.S. Woodruff was also part of the men's silver medal team, and his wife Emily Woodruff participated in the women's events. Eliza Pollock was on the gold-medal winning women's team, and received two individual bronze medals; her husband Henry W. Pollock was also an archer, but I'm not sure if he competed at the Olympics. Archery was the only sport in which women participated at the 1904 Olympics; there were six female archers at the games.

Clark Avenue, 2015.

So the next time you walk down Clark Avenue, whether by yourself, or with a lover, see if you can imagine yourself back to 1905, a dirt road, and a boxing match between traveling gypsies, watched by aristocratic tennis players dressed in white. Maybe standing among them was a Olympic-medal winning Civil War veteran with a wounded arm, who walked over from his office at the Village Amusement Hall to see what all the commotion was.

Now, I haven't forgotten the original question - Who is Clark Avenue's namesake? While William A. Clark's story is very interesting, the road may not be named for him; there is another potential candidate. John. A. Clark was the executor of the estate of Joseph T. Wilson, the man who first subdivided Burns' Farm. Maybe the street was named for him? But determining that would require more research, and another blog post!

4th of July, 1905

I wonder who it was with the interesting sense of humor -- the author of the article or the leaders of Wyoming? At least there were fireworks!

Source: Cincinnati Enquirer July 2, 1905.

Since it is a bit blurry:

Fourth of July will be celebrated in the usually quiet village of Wyoming in a manner calculated to whoop things up. There will be a drill by the Fire Department in the morning, followed by a potato race, in which Mayor A. A. Taylor, Solicitor James E. Robinson and the members of Council and Board of Education will take part.

The prizes are a small measure of potatoes, a rubber ballon and a tin whistle. A baseball game will take place at 10 a. m. between married and single men, after which a presentation of diplomas to survivors will be in order. Major George Fox will present medals to winners of athletic contests and has laid in a large supply of sole leather.

At 5 p. m. Hon. J. H. Bromwell will be introduced by the Mayor, and will hand out an old-fashioned Fourth of July oration, and as soon as night falls a magnificent display of fireworks will be exhibited.

Jewett Drive -- How the Streets Got Their Names

Jewett Drive is named after the family that for almost sixty years owned and lived on the property that was divided into the lots that line the street. Four generations of Joseph Franklin Jewetts lived in Wyoming, along with their wives, brothers, sisters, and cousins.

Joseph Franklin Jewett (1835-1922), the family patriarch, was born in Granby, Connecticut. He moved to Cleveland, where in 1858 he got into the sack manufacturing business as a partner in the Jewett & Adams Company. Just a few years later the company opened a branch in Cincinnati, and Joseph moved to the city to manage it, brining his wife, Cecelia Child (1842-1914), and family to the Queen City with him.

Source: The Railway Agent and Station Agent, vol. 17, 1897.

In the nineteenth century, grain, coffee, sugar, and many other goods were put in cloth sacks and, later, paper sacks, as part of the bulk shipping process. Manufacturing sacks in Cincinnati made a lot of sense—Cincinnati was a busy port on the Ohio River. Farmers brought their goods to the city and needed to bag them before they were loaded onto riverboats or railroad cars and shipped to distant markets.  In the mid-1880s Adams, Jewett & Co.'s place of business, which included manufacturing of the bags, was located on the southwest corner of Water and Vine streets, right on Cincinnati’s waterfront. Back in the nineteenth century railroad sidings also were located on Water Street. This land is now part of Smale Riverfront Park--the Digging Cincinnati History blog includes a great post about the area. 

Source: Cincinnati Illustrated Business Directory, 1883.

In August 1865, Joseph and Cecelia Jewett purchased slightly more than eight acres of land fronting on the west side of Springfield Pike, in the area that was to become Wyoming (it was Lot 1 of the Isaac B. Riddle Subdivision, which I hope to blog about in the future). 

Joseph and Cecelia had eight children, six girls and two boys. The oldest daughter, Laura (1861-1938) did not marry and lived in Wyoming and nearby Hartwell for most of her life. Second daughter Jennie (1862-1865) died just after her third birthday. Three of the Jewett girls married and moved away from the Cincinnati area. Helen (1865-1935) married Frank B. DeCamp and moved with him to St. Louis, Missouri; Carrie (1866-1955) married Albert Pfau and moved to Terra Haute, Indiana; and Grace (1870-1956) married Brandon Millikin and moved to Hamilton, Ohio. Youngest daughter, Cecelia (1874-1967) lived at home until she was in her 40s when she married Agustus T. Welsh and moved to Burns Ave. in Hartwell, returning to Wyoming to live on Stout Ave. near the end of her life.

Jewett Family, about 1895, on porch of family homestead built before 1870 and demolished in 1923.
Front Row: Joseph F. Jewett, Sr., Cecelia Child Jewett, Laura Jewett, Grace Jewett Millikin;
Second Row: Cecelia Jewett Welsh, Max Jewett, Carrie Jewett Pfau, Joseph F. Jewett, Jr., Helen Jewett DeCamp.
Source: Wyoming Historical Society/Gene Ann Cordes.

Joseph F. Jewett, Sr. was involved in the Wyoming community. He served as a founding representative on the Wyoming Board of Education in the early 1880s. He was also one of the investors that owned the Wyoming Land and Building Company Subdivision (Burns Farm).

The Jewett sons stayed close to home and became involved with family businesses. Both Jewett sons began their careers with the bag company. In the 1890s, Joseph Jewett, Sr. started a new venture—the Cincinnati Carriage Goods Company. Many “carriage” companies at the turn of the century were straddling the change from horse-drawn to horse-less carriages. I don’t know the full details of what the Cincinnati Carriage Goods Company sold, but I did find documentation that they were dealers of rubber tires.  Additionally, Joseph Jewett was also reported to be a “cotton dealer” in some publications in the 1910s.

Joseph and Cecelia’s son, Maxwell Jewett (1872-1960) worked with the Cincinanti Carriage Goods Company, and then in the 1920s managed The Jewett Company, which bought and sold cotton goods. Max lived with his parents until he married Jennie Kane (1882-1951); they had one daughter, Jane E. Jewett (1908-2002). After Max and Jennie's marriage, Joseph Sr. and Cecelia sold or gave them a 100 foot by 590 foot lot cut out of the southeast corner of the Jewett homestead property. In 1919 they deeded this land back to Joseph, Sr. and moved into Cincinnati. Census records show Max and Jennie were living in San Diego, California in 1940, but city directories place them back in Cincinnati by 1951.

After initially working in the family sack business, sometime before 1905 Joseph F. Jewett, Jr. (1868-1947) established a pulley manufacturing company, The Standard Pulley Company. In 1893 he married Elizabeth “Betty” Haven (1868-1939). For a time they lived in Covington, Kentucky, where son Joseph F. Jewett, III (1893-1976) was born. But they were back in Wyoming, Ohio for the birth of daughter Eleanor “Haven” Jewett (1898-1928). At the time of the 1900 Census they were living on Walnut Ave. in Wyoming, and in 1907 they purchased and moved their family to the house at 507 Springfield Pike, where they lived until 1924. They stayed in Wyoming the rest of their lives; the 1930 Census records them living on Wentworth Ave., along with son Joseph, III.

507 Springfield Pike, Home of Joseph F. Jewett Jr. from 1907 to 1924.

Joseph F. Jewett, III studied engineering at the University of Cincinnati and then served in WWI, from 1917 to 1919. He began service as a Second Lieutenant and by the end of the war had been promoted to Captain. For part of his enlistment he was stationed in Maine, but then spent most of 1918 in France. Upon returning to the United States, he married Helen Gardner in Portland, Maine in 1919. They came to Wyoming, and in the 1920 Census are listed as living at 701 Springfield Pike--on the Jewett homestead property, possibly in a home on the southeast portion of the lot, recently vacated by his uncle Max. Joseph III and Helen had two children, Dorothy Jewett (b. 1921) and Joseph F. Jewett, IV (1924-2011). However, the couple divorced and Helen moved to Los Angeles with the children. Joseph IV was a military pilot in both WWII and the Korean War.

In 1919 Haven Jewett, daughter of Joseph Jr. and Betty, married Stanley Duttenohfer, of the family that owned Cincinnati’s Duttenhofer shoes, and they had one son, Stanley, Jr. Unfortunately Haven died in 1928 of tuberculosis. 

In the 1920s, the Jewett homestead land was sold to Marion and C. Dean Poage. Joseph, Sr. sold the bulk of the land to them in 1921. The lot at the southeast corner was sold to the Poages by Joseph, Sr.'s children in 1924; they had inherited it at his death in 1922. C. Dean Poage was a builder-developer-real estate agent who built many Cincinnati area subdivisions. He sold the first lot from the Jewett land in April, 1928 - the home at the northwest corner of Jewett Drive and Springfield Pike, the current 701 Springfield Pike.

701 Springfield Pike, first home sold from subdivision of Jewett homestead.

The 1928 deed for this property reveals one of the ugly realities of the early twentieth century housing market - racism. Covenants on the deed for this and the other lots Poage sold on Jewett Drive  limited development to single family homes, prohibited fences in the front yards, prescribed minimum house setbacks from the street, but also specified that:

"(5) Said premises or any part thereof or any buildings hereinafter constructed thereon shall not be sold, rented, leased, occupied or used by any person or persons other than of the white or Caucasian Race, except for servants living with families occupying said premises."

Racial covenants like these were commonly used in communities across the United States from the 1920s into the 1940s, but they were deemed judicially unenforceable by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948, as violating the Fourteenth Amendment, and were subsequently removed from deeds as homes were resold. As communities adopted zoning ordinances (which Wyoming did in 1925), specifications about yard setbacks and permitted uses were also removed from most deeds.

In the 1940s Joseph Jewett III remarried, and he and his wife Emma moved to the house at 40 Jewett Drive. Joseph III lived out the rest of his life on part of the land where his grandfather had established his home in Wyoming a hundred years earlier. 

McNamara & Conner Subdivision

It was June 15, 1890 -- 125 years ago -- that this advertisement ran in the Cincinnati Enquirer:

Source: Cincinnati Enquirer, June 15, 1890.

It is interesting to see what they thought buyers would appreciate about the location. At the top of the list was good commuting with convenient passenger trains to downtown -- 40 a day! Also good schools and churches, streets and sidewalks, public electricity and water (soon to come).

Below is an image of the McNamara & Conner subdivision plat. It was actually the third time these blocks were subdivided into lots. There were two earlier subdivision plans including this area filed by the Lockland Wyoming Improvement Company, but apparently no lots from the first two platted subdivisions ever sold. Timothy E. McNamara and Oliver E. Conner purchased these 10.87 acres in April 1890, and had this plan prepared in June of that year.

Looking at the plan, you can see that the lots fronting on Burns Avenue are the largest, 70 feet wide, with those facing Grove slightly smaller, 60 feet wide, and the lots on Crescent Avenue yet even smaller, at 50 feet wide. The subdivision's designer appears to have planned in advance for larger homes on Burns, and smaller, more affordable homes next to the railroad tracks.

The 1890 advertisement stated that McNamara & Conner would build "a few elegant" residences on the lots, but save a handful of homes constructed in the 1890s, most homes in the subdivision weren't built until the early twentieth century, and are more modest dwellings.

Only home in McNamara & Conner Subdivision built in 1890 according to Hamilton County Auditor records.
Source: Hamilton County Auditor.

Today there are 35 houses in these three blocks. Based on information from the Hamilton County Auditor, only 6 homes were built in the subdivision in the 1890s--most of those on the corners adjacent to Cooper Avenue. Another 5 houses were built in the 1900s, all on Crescent Avenue. During the 1910s 6 houses were constructed. During the boom years of the 1920s, 11 homes were built, and 5 more in the 1930s. Only 2 homes have been added in these blocks since World War II.

Researching the lives of the men who financed and marketed the subdivision, Timothy E. McNamara and Oliver E. Conner, reveals that they were businessmen with a diversity of interests. In addition to a real estate partnership, McNamara and Conner also shared ownership of an 1885 patent for a hand fire extinguisher.

Source: Official Gazette of the U.S. Patent Office, vol. 31 no. 11, June 16, 1885.  

Oliver E. Conner (1847-1922) focused his career on real estate. Below is his obituary.

Source: Cincinnati Enquirer, October 4, 1922.

Real estate was a sidelight for Timothy E. McNamara (1846-1911), who was primarily in the distillery business. He spent part of his career managing the Millcreek Distilling Company, subsidiary of the Standard Distilling Company.

Know a Good Example of Historic Preservation in Wyoming?

Do you know of a good example of historic preservation in Wyoming?

Have you or one of your neighbors been careful to retain or restore historic elements as part of maintaining, renovating, or remodeling a Wyoming home, business, or institution?

Nominate them -- or yourself -- for an award!

Application Form is Here

Examples of last year's winners - see pages 4-5 of this City Newsletter.

Nominations are due ASAP!