USA > Indiana > Allen County > Fort Wayne > Some Fort Wayne phizes > Part 13
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The People's Store is always inviting everybody to make a call. The gentleman here shown is chairman of the invitation committee. Nat Beadell, besides attend- ing to the ad. writing for Beadell & Company, is a buyer for several of the big store's many departments.
Mr. Beadell is an Englishman. He was born in London, and spent his childhood and youth in the world's metropolis. He served his apprenticeship as a printer on the London Times. At the age of seventeen he sailed for America, his first stopping place being Norwich, Connecticut. This was in 1883. At Norwich he became employed in the dry goods business and con- tinued but a year, when he came to Fort Wayne and secured employment in the same line. Desiring to return to his old trade, however, he went to Lafayette in 1885 and took a position in the mechanical depart- ment of the Journal. But he had gotten a taste of Fort Wayne and wanted to come back. The Sentinel offered him the opportunity and for six and a half years he was employed in the mechanical department of that paper.
His employment with Beadell & Company dates from 1895.
Nat has one hobby-photography. He's one of the best amateurs in the city.
176
GUSTAVE W. BOERGER
IT is forty years since Gustave W. Boerger began to notice things about him in Fort Wayne. He has been very busy around here ever since. After he got through the playing age out of doors, he started in with putty ball in the public schools, Now he is busy telling the children just how good a boy he was and laughs in- ternally as he thinks of some of his boyish pranks about the eastern part of the city.
After leaving the public schools, he began actively in the wholesale leather business in this city. In 1894. after retiring from the leather business, he opened an insurance and real estate office in this city. He started in during the hard times but weathered the conditions and built up a safe and substantial business. He has been active in the insurance field and his ability in insur- ance matters has been recognized by the Western Underwriters who frequently send him out to neighbor- ing cities to adjust losses. His office at 120 West Berry street is a busy one indeed and his success has been well marked. Socially he is popular and for years has been prominent in the affairs of Harmony Lodge of Odd Fellows, is a past officer and at present is its financial secretary. Heis also an officer in the indiana Grand Lodge.
Of course, after retiring from the leather business, he found some tough leather in the insurance business, but he has a faculty of making the best of everything and he has tanned the insurance policy so that it is pleasing to handle. He makes his clientele think so at least. It is never tough leather on premium day when Mr. Boerger calls. He knows just how to make a business call and his greeting is a happy one.
LICY
177
ANNUNYUG' NATIONAL
HENRY R. FREEMAN
NEARLY every man has a fad. Mr. Freeman almost has one, but not quite. Now this seems strange. but it's true nevertheless.
" I was in Colorado once." he said, while discussing this queer state of affairs, " and took my first lesson in trout fishing in Wagon Wheel gap. Well say! I had caught muskellunge and bass and pickerel and blue-gills in the northern lakes, but never have I enjoyed such a time as I had out west. Even if there wasn't any fish to catch, it would be the liveliest kind of sport. Yes. sir, if I were ever to adopt a fad it would be fishing for mountain trout, But you see my business won't let me get away as I'd hke to, so I have done very little of it."
So, while he is a Freeman he isn't a free-man to such an extent that he is permitted to follow an alluring, fas- cinating pastime. Unfortunately there are no trout in Saint Joseph's river ; if there were he could easily catch a string every day by hanging a pole out of the kitchen window of his pretty Spy Run avenue home which overlooks the stream.
However it's only a step from currents to currency and if Mr. Freeman can't stand in the one and practice his desired fad, he can certainly handle the other to his heart's content in his work as the efficient cashier of the First National Bank. He has held this important place since 1902, when he succeeded the late L. R. Hartman. Beginning as a messenger in 1873, he has, by doing just what a hoy and a youth and a man ought to do, arisen to his present place of trust. Mr. Freeman was born in Fort Wayne, and, after leaving school was employed as a hill clerk and cashier in the Root & Company dry goods house, before beginning his service with the First National.
CHARLES T. STRAWBRIDGE
IT was with the tick of the telegraph instrument in the offices of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company at Bucyrus, Ohio, that Charles T. Strawbridge, now vice- president and secretary of the great Bass Foundry and Machine Works in this city, began his career. There he learned telegraphy, and at the age of 17 was an operator. He was born in Bloomingrove, Ohio, but had moved to Bucyrus when a lad, with his parents, finished his education in the high school there, and at once took to the handling of the keys that send their lightning words along railroad lines and around the world.
Mr. Strawbridge early developed into an expert oper- ator and took service with the Pennsylvania Company. During the first part of his career he was sent to different places along the railroad's line and was finally stationed at his home town, Bucyrus. From that city he came to Fort Wayne, in 1877. and took a position as telegraph operator in the general offices of the company here, where he remained for two years.
In addition to his telegraphy he learned stenography. and possessed fine clerical abilities. These qualifications attracted the attention of the officials of the Bass works, and, in 1879, they secured his services. He accepted a position as stenographer there. Repeated advancements in office positions came to him, and in 1900 he was made secretary of the works. Now his official title is vice- president and secretary. He is also secretary of the Fort Wayne Foundry and the Chicago Car Wheel & Fuundry Company. His sterling business qualities and pleasant, social ways have made his services invaluable to the companies with which he is connected.
Coffee
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Pink.
ROBERT MILLARD
- F it is true that "Order is heaven's first law"' and - is essential to the very existence of the universe, it is just as true that orders and lots of them are essential to the existence of a wholesale grocery house. The picture shows Mr. Millard with a tistful of these essentials. He is the Millard end of the large house of Moellering Brothers & Millard. "We should eat to live, not live to eat:" is a quotation Mr. Millard learned when a small boy in school, and it set him to philoso- phizing. Fashions may change. and customs become revised, said he: inventions may revolutionize some existing conditions and drive prosperous manufacturers and jobbers into bankruptcy-but there is no immediate prospect that anyone will devise a means of pre- serving life without eating. Several have tried the food-in-tablets scheme and it won't work. Therefore, the man who busies himself at providing food for the multitudes is pretty certain of always having something tu do.
Mr. Millard originated at Adrian, Michigan, and lived there until he was seventeen. He lived for a period of exactly the same length at Toledo, Ohio, where he was employed with the wholesale grocery house of Secor. Berdan & Company, and later with the Toledo Spice Company. Alterward he engaged in the merchandise brokerage business He came to Fort Wayne in 1891 and fullowed the last-named line of business, and then, In 1894, formed a partnership with Messrs. William F. and Henry F. Moellering, in their present enterprise. As showing his connection with leading public and private locat enterprises, it may be said that he is the president of the Anthony Wayne Club, president of the Commercial Club, and is financially interested in the Fort Wayne Iron and Steel Company, the Wayne Shoe Company, of which he is secretary and treasurer: the People's Trust Company, and others.
WILLIAM F. GRAETER
FORT WAYNE has a host of great men, but this man is still Graeter. He is the senior proprietor of the Indiana Furniture Company, and, without making any play on words, it may be truly said that there are no greater fornitore establishments in Fort Wayne than the Indiana Furniture Company. which, with Mr. J. V. Reul now his partner under the firm name of Graeter & Reul, he started in this city in 1888.
Mr. Graeter is a Hoosier boy. He was born at Madı- son, on the banks of the Ohio river. He started out in life for himself early, drifting over into Kentucky, where, at Louisville, he was engaged as a pattern maker in a manufacturing establishment. In 1882 he was back again into Hoosierdom and, at Indianapolis, was a salesman for the Metropolitan Manufacturing Company, advanc- ing to the position of manager for the company in that city, which he held for eleven years.
In 1888 Mr. Graeter came here and the Indiana In- stallment Company was organized, which in 1892 was incorporated as the Indiana Furniture Company, with Graeter and Reul as the incorporators. This partner- ship they have maintained ever since. Now they have two hig stores, one occupying the three-story building at 112 Calhoun street and the other a large building at 121 and 123 East Main street. Together they have a floor space of over bo,ooo square feet, covered with one of the largest and finest stocks of household goods in Indiana.
Mr. Graeter is a progressive, representative, and public-spirited citizen. From its organization, he has been one of the directors of the Fort Wayne Commercial Club. He was the first president, and has been contin- uously so since its organization, of the Commercial Land and Improvement Company, a body of business men who secured for Fort Wayne its great iron and steel rolling mills and the Knott-Van Arnam Company in the south- western part of the city, and who have done so much for our industrial progress in other ways.
181
CHARLES H. RAWLINS
THE business men of Fort Wayne have the reputation of knowing a good thing when they see it. One day a committee of them from the Commercial Club went to Muskegon, Michigan, on business concerning the removal of a large iron and steel plant from that city to Fort Wayne. They were accompanied by Mr. Charles H. Rawlins, an expert iron man, who explained why Fort Wayne should have the mill, and it was immedi- ately settled that although they were anxious to secure the big factory, it was equally desirable that Mr. Rawlins be engaged to manage it. They got him. As Mr. Rawlins expresses it, "I had met committees of busi- ness men from other cities before, but never was | so favorably impressed as by the men from Fort Wayne."
This, then, is the man who manages the plant of the Fort Wayne Iron and Steel Company and officiates as its vice-president. He is also a heavy stockholder in the venture.
Mr. Rawlins' father was a worker in iron who con- ducted many experiments in a Chicago mill. The son, though a small lad, took a natural interest in the bust- ness and preferred to "hang around" the mill rather than spend his time in idle sport, although he never had any intention of becoming an "iron" man.
School days ending, he drifted into railroad work, being connected with several prominent systems in the middle west, including the Northwestern, the Santa Fe. the Big Four, the Monon, and the Wabash. Later he acted as sales agent for several of the largest coal companies in the west. But during alt this while- although he had been signally successful in all his ventures -- his mind frequently reverted to the old days when he watched his father at work in the steel mill, and one day, four years ago, he awoke to the knowledge that he was cut out to follow the steel industry. His Success has been more than remarkable.
182
CHARLES E. BARNETT
- F you want to see a typical bachelor's den, ask Doctor Barnett to show you his. Usually you'll find a con- genial bunch of medical students gathered there, filling the air with nicotine aroma and jolly bits of shop talk as they lounge at ease; but they also meet there to make laboratory experiments and investigations which they trust will result in untold benefits to future generations of suffering fellow creatures. On the walls of this den are pictures of outing life, hunting scenes and the like, and a few views suggestive of the strenuous life of the modern physcian, all of which betray the fads and pro- fession of the occupant. From an elevation, looking down upon you with a friendly grin, is an old weather- beaten, discolored skull. It is that of Indian and was unearthed near Swinney Park. Who knows but that its owner was felled by one of Mad Anthony's sharpshooters? On this question the skull refuses to be interviewed. But the chief feature of this den is the accumulation of Turkish rugs which cover the fluor. The doctor is a crank un rugs, and while you and we might think some of them unlovely because they are dingy and devoid of brilliant colors, he loves them the more for that very reason.
Dr. Barnett is a native of Kentucky, the state which produces colonels feuds, blue grass and corn extract. He holds the chair of anatomy and surgery in the Fort Wayne College of Medicine, and during the recent quar- rel with Spain was a surgeon with our boys. He has a slow way of speaking and moving-a very slow way, in tact-but you don't notice that peculiarity while he is doing a piece of surgical work or chasing the elusive quail, or as he drives or rides his fractious steed over the smooth streets of our municipality.
SURGERY
ANATOMY
(POLITICS
HENRY P. SCHERER
WOMEN have not inherited the peremptory right to change their minds. The snap shot of Former Mayor Henry Scherer indicates that he has retired from politics, but on closer observation you can see that he still has a string attached to it. Here is a man who may at this very moment have the voters of Fort Wayne on the string. He used to be a carriage and wagon maker and he has no trouble in getting a vast number of voters on his wagon. Don't think that he has entirely retired from the wagon business just because he is now a highly prosperous real estate and insurance man. He is a charter member of the City Packard Band and played solo alto for many years, While he is not tuoting his own horn at this critical juncture he may be busily engaged in fitting up seats on a band wagon.
It is just fifty years ago that Mr. Scherer began yelp- ing for a rattle box and tin whistle, He has been playing a successful tune in life ever since. He was elected councilman from the Eighth ward in 1888, and while serving in the council was elected by his colleagues to hll out the unexpired term of Mayor Zollinger until May, 1893, Mr. Zollinger's death having occurred while in office. He then retired from politics just as he has now. In 18go he was elected mayor for two years and at the expiration of the term was elected for a term of three years. He was so popular with the Democratic party that he was made county chairman until he retired. Henry Scherer is not of a retiring disposition, however, and he may be in a dark brown study now. to determine whether to reach over and pull the string or not. Henry Is a very prudent man. He does not butt into danger for the purpose ot advertising his bravery. While he dues not attempt to trace his ancestry to the three wise men he usually knows which side his bread is buttered on. He never gets his feet wet unless he is out in the rain,
184
STEPHEN MORRIS
W THEN Stephen Morris was a young lad he somehow got a notion fixed in his mind that it wasn't a good thing to tell whoppers or steal. He reasoned in a youthful but sturdy way that if he didn't dare to do right and dare to be true, he never would amount to much. He saw other boys who didn't dare to do right, and observed that they were bad boys. So while the other boys ran away from school to go fishing in the canal feeder he took home his reward-of-merit card. When the other boys climbed fences into orchards to pick up wurm-stung and windfall fruit, Stephen remained in the highway and looked wistful. When his folks had company in the parlor he never would creep into the pantry to try the steaming hot fried cakes that had been placed there to cool, although he would rivet a longing look upon them. When the cider-barrels were placed in the cool basement in the early autumn he would never insert a straw in the operture through winch the froth oozes and create a connection by suction with the juice of the apple. Not a bit of it.
And what has been the result? For twenty-nine years, beginning when he was a boy. Mr. Morris has held an honored position with one of Fort Wayne's oldest and most substantial financial institutions-the Old National Bank. When he entered the place as a messenger, it was known as the Fort Wayne National. He has held several positions of trust and is now the bank's note teller.
Mr. Morris is a son of Judge John Morris, and was born at Auburn, Indiana. He was brought to Fort Wayne in 1850 when only six months old. After a course in the public schools, he attended the Methodist College before beginning his long service in the bank.
18.
P
DINA
WILLIAM V. DOUGLASS
-
T is an interesting fact that nearly all men, even the most successful and seemingly contented. will tell you. when questioned, that they had uther plans for life than those which they finally adopted.
Here's Mr. Douglass, for example, one of our most respected, always-smiling fellow tuwnsmen, who carries, buried away down deep in his heart, a regret-not large enough to sadden his life at all. but nevertheless a re- gret which comes forth occasionally and demands atten- tion
Now what do you suppose is the cause of this regret? simply this: Mr. Douglass wishes he were a railroad man. This is the story:
He came from New Hampshire to Fort Wayne in 1803. In those days of his youth he was employed in various ways. For some time he worked in the large clothing house of Woodward & Young, and then in N. B. Stockbridge's book store. It was about this time that his health showed signs of failing, and physicians in- sisted that he engage in some kind of work which would keep him from the indoor life to which he had been devoted. His father, W. B. Douglass, was one of the best-known conductors on the Pennsylvania Line-was employed in that capacity for a quarter of a century- and it was decided that the son should spend a time on the same road as a passenger brakeman. He started in. and became so enthused over railroad life that he decided to adopt it, provided he could soon rise to the position of conductor, But. although he was in a direct line for ad- vancement, he did not receive the assurance of promotion until he had decided to go into the grocery business here with a partner; the firm was known as Anderson & Douglass, Then the announcement of the promotion came, but it was too late. Sometimes a little thing only is needed to change one's life history.
Mr. Douglass, in 1882, engaged in the real estate and hre insurance business and has been exceptionally successful.
JOHN M. E. RIEDEL
F the heathen of our land fail to become converted, the fault cannot be laid at the door of Mr. Riedel. That door, by the way, is on the third floor of the Schmitz block : take elevator. We repeat : Don't, for goodness' sake, hlame Mr. Riedel if the people of our land refuse to turn from their wicked ways and walk in that straight and narrow path which leads to everlasting blessedness.
We say this because when we called on Mr. Riedel to invite him into this book he told us he was just finish- ing plans for the thirty-ninth church which he has been called upon to design. Perhaps he has drawn several since then. These temples of worship are scattered over the area touched by Rhode Island on the east. Wiscon- sin on the north, Louisiana on the south and Nebraska on the west.
Mr. Riedel was born in St. Louis, but he didn't stay long enough to see the World's Fair. Coming to Fort Wayne, he attended Concordia College for a time, and then entered the office of T. J. Tolan & Sons, architects. After working their a while and learning the principles of the business, he transferred his labors to the office of W. H. Matson.
In 1889 he opened an office for himself, and later formed a partnership with B. S. Tolan. They later dis- solved the alliance. and Mr. Riedel has successfully continued the business with the help of competent as- sistants.
Among the local structures of importance which are the product of his hands and brains, are the remodeled Concordia College buildings, the Sunset Cottage and others at the Indiana School for Feeble-minded Youth ; engine houses Nos. 7 and 8. the Foellinger block and others.
CHRISTIAN C. SCHLATTER
IT is somewhere written that the noblest work of the Creator is an honest man. There are pessimists who adhere to the claim that none of these specimens now remain, while others, more liberal in their views, express the belief that the species, like the giraffe and the buffalo, is slowly but surely reaching the stage of entire extinction. But we insist that there are vast num- bers of this sort of bric-a-brac adorning the world today and that many are to be found in Fort Wayne. If we were asked to pick out one of these and Mr. Schlatter happened to be one of the first men to appear, we would spot him in a minute.
Perhaps he got a good start in that direction while working on the farm in Cedar Creek township where the first sixteen years of his life were spent. At any rate, Mr. Schlatter seems to have made up his mind that if he ever became a merchant he would provide the farmer with the best of tools and implements to make his labor as agreeable as possible, and to furnish the rural house- wife with just the kind of utensils needed to make her work light and pleasant. This he is now doing every day.
Mr. Schlatter went to Wooster, Ohio, when he was eighteen years of age to attend school, and began his experience in the hardware business working in a store there. After two years he came to Fort Wayne where he spent ten years in the employment of Morgan & Beach, so that when he embarked in trade tor himself in part- nership with Henry Pfeiffer, he knew the business thor- oughly. About five years ago the wholesale and retail house of C. C. Schlatter & Company, with Mr. Schlatter as president and treasurer, was incorporated.
Mr. Schlatter is a great lover of music and his fine orchestra, maintained at his personal expense, is one of the valued musical organizations of the city.
188
HARRY W. SOMMERS, JR.
H ARRY SOMMERS is the young man who has kept the Anthony Wayne Club moving in the path of prosperity since "S.m" Foster and a few associates lifted up the faltering organization and set it on its feet.
Mr. Sommer- is a natural born good fellow, and that's what has made him a successful hotel and club man. it is this quality that brought him into the important place he now occupies, that of manager of one of Indiana's best and largest social organizations-the Anthony Wayne Club, of Fort Wayne, which is now in a better condition than ever before in its history.
When Mr. Sommers came to take the management of the club it had just been revived with a membership of one hundred and sixty, with no enrollment fee to hinder those who desired to come in. Now. a suitable fee is required and the club membership limit of three hundred is full, with scores of applicants standing in line waiting for vacancies.
When he was sixteen, Mr. Sommers removed with his fulks from Germantown, a suburb of Philadelphia, to Chicago, where he was initiated into the mysteries of the hotel business as steward. He was employed under his father, an experienced hotel man, in such important hostelnes as the Virginia and the Metropole. When he was nineteen the Chicago & Eastern Illinois Railroad made him superintendent of its dining car service be- tween Chicago and Terre Haute. Later he was con- nected with the Kimball House, at Davenport. lowa. Then he took charge of the Hotel Sommers, at Moline. Illinois, and made a success of it. continuing until the property was sold. He then opened a fine European hotel at Rock Island, lihnois, and the success of his venture marked him as the man wanted by the Anthony Wayne Club in its time of need, He has been here since March, 1903.
180
F. WILLIAM ORTLIEB
T HIS young man was born in the fall but he has been rising ever since. Frederick William Ortheb began life in Fort Wayne in September, twenty-eight years ago. He let his first name fall early in life and he has been pushing his middle name forward. Although he is very popular he never has been called " Bill." He is known as Will. Will is not so near like money as " Bill," but he lets it go at that. He devoted his early moments to getting through the Lutheran and the public schools, and went to business college.
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