USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > A history of Cleveland and its environs; the heart of new Connecticut > Part 102
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97 | Part 98 | Part 99 | Part 100 | Part 101 | Part 102 | Part 103 | Part 104 | Part 105 | Part 106 | Part 107
Mr. Kerns is also a stockholder and a mem- ber of the advisory board of the United Bank- ing & Savings Company and is interested in several railroads. The prosecution of busi- ness for his own advantage has not been his only concern during an active career. He has served as village trustee, assessor and as a member of the school board at Brooklyn Vil- lage, now a part of Cleveland, and was influen- tial in the erection of the Denison school- house. For several years he was a member of the Ohio National Guard, Company B, Fif- teenth Regiment Infantry. He joined the Brooklyn Blues and was appointed sixth cor- poral in that company April 1, 1876. He later transferred his membership to the Brook- lyn Gnards and was appointed third corporal April 18, 1878, and for five years altogether was with that organization. He enjoyed the reputation of being the crack shot among 3,500 men who were enrolled in the guard. Mr. Kerns is independent in politics, is a mem- ber of the Cleveland Chamber of Industry, a former member of the Chamber of Commerce, belongs to the Early Settlers Association of Cuyahoga County, the Cleveland Humane Society and is affiliated with Riverside Lodge No. 209, Knights of Pythias.
On July 20, 1881, at Cleveland, he married
Miss Lydia Anna Kern. She was born at Fremont, Ohio, daughter of Daniel Kern, who was a well-known citizen of Sandusky County, being both a farmer and a preacher. Mr. and Mrs. Kerns have had one child, Norma, born January 4, 1886, died June 4, 1895, aged nine years and five months.
Mr. Kerns apparently inherits some of the physical and other characteristics of his renowned Indian fighter great-grandfather, Adam Poe, whom he resembles in stature and build. Mr. Kerns is over six feet tall, broad- shouldered and muscular, and with modern implements has perhaps the same degree of skill in the use of firearms that his ancestor exemplified with the trusty muzzle loading rifle and flintlock of revolutionary days. Per- haps no season of the year affords him more real delight than the time he spends at his country home. Then he gets into the open, and with gun and dog for companions is supremely happy roaming through the woods. Mr. and Mrs. Kerns have also acquired that wide range of knowledge and culture which comes only from extensive travel. In their own country they have traveled from Atlantic to Pacific, have visited Panama, the West Indies, Cuba, have been in some parts of South America, and in the older portions of the globe their journeys have taken them to England, France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Ger- many, Switzerland, Holland, Turkey, they lingered long in the Holy Land, and also enjoyed a trip down the River Nile. Mr. and Mrs. Kerns had planned and were about to embark on another extensive tour when the great war broke out.
ERNEST LOUIS GEFFINE is one of the fortu- nate young business men of Cleveland who found their congenial sphere of activity at the very outset of their business experience. Mr. Geffine was only nineteen years of age when he joined the forces of The Garfield Savings Bank, and has been steadily with that institution since that time, one of the most loyal and efficient members of its large staff. It is by no means a small achievement to be named as one of the executive officers of an institution whose total resources are nearly $10,000,000. Mr. Geffine is cashier of the Glenville branch at One Hundred and Fifth and St. Clair Avenue.
He was born in Cleveland December 9, 1886, son of Louis Mansfield and Mary Letitia (Walker) Geffine. His father was born in Paris, France, of a family long identified with
533
CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS
silk manufacture in that eity. He went from Paris to London, England, and married Mary Letitia Walker there, who was a native of London. In 1880 Louis M. Geffine came to America and for a time was employed at Tren- ton, New Jersey. His wife joined him six months later and they then came to Cleveland. The father was an accountant in this city, and died here in 1888, when his son, Ernest L., the youngest of six children, was only twenty months old. The widowed mother is still liv- ing at Cleveland. Of their children three were born in London and three in Cleveland, and all were educated in the public schools of this city. Edmund Walker, the oldest, died in Cleveland in 1898 at the age of twenty-one; Louis William is now connected with the Welsbach Company of Boston, Massachusetts ; Mrs. Joseph H. Wolfram lives at Chagrin Falls, Ohio; Victor Paul is chief clerk with The Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company ; Cordelia A. is the wife of C. S. Redhead of Waukegan, Illinois.
Ernest Louis Geffine attended the Sterling Grammar School of Cleveland and the Central High School, and on April 1, 1905, about four months after his eighteenth birthday, entered the service of The Garfield Savings Bank at its branch at One Hundred and Fifth and St. Clair Avenue, where he is today manager. He began there as a bookkeeper, and about two years later was transferred to the Gordon Park branch as bookkeeper and later for two years as cashier. For years he was in the main office where for two years he was loan teller. Then in January, 1917, he was re- turned to the Glenville branch as eashier.
Mr. Geffine is a member of the Cleveland Chapter of the American Institute of Bank- ing, is a republican, and a member of St. Paul Episcopal Church of East Cleveland.
October 23, 1915, he married Miss Lucia Huggins of East Cleveland. Mrs. Geffine was born at Sanford, Florida, but is a graduate of the Shaw High School of East Cleveland. Her father, Thomas F. Huggins, who died Febru- ary 28, 1915, was a prominent business man in Cleveland, being engaged in the surety business for several years. Her mother, Ger- trude (Bill) Huggins, is still living in Cleve- land. Mr. and Mrs. Geffine reside at 1892 Wymore Avenue in East Cleveland.
HENRY H. McKEE has been identified in some capacity with The Garfield Savings Bank of Cleveland since 1907. He is one of the executive officers, being cashier of the Gordon
Park branel at St. Clair Avenue and East Seventy-Ninth Street. Of The Garfield Sav- ings Bank, with its assets of nearly $10,000,- 000, and with main office and with five branches in different parts of the city, it is not necessary to speak here in detail, since re- peated reference is made to the institution on other pages.
Mr. McKee has an interesting career of work and experience, and was born at Stam- ford, Delaware County, New York, May 12, 1876. Ifis parents were Rev. James H. and Rosalie (Doty) McKee. His mother now re- sides in Columbus, Ohio, while his father, who died in Westmoreland, New York, March 2, 1918, at the age of seventy-eight, was for thirty years a Congregational minister in New York and Ohio. He was born in Kortright, Delaware County, New York, and his wife at Windham in Greene County in the same state. James H. McKee was also a Union soldier, serving four years with the One IFundred and Forty-Fourth New York Volunteers. He was a corporal and when discharged held the rank of second lieutenant. One of his experiences was taking charge of a boat load of prisoners from Andersonville, which he conveyed from Norfolk, Virginia, to New York. He was author of the book entitled "In War Times," this being a history of his regiment, with which he was identified from its organization until the close of the war. A copy of this work is found in the Cleveland Public Library and other libraries over the country. He was also a regular contributor to church and other pe- riodicals. A man of ripe scholarship, he was especially interested in geology. As a result of his studies he wrote several artieles on the results of glacial action, and his investigations discovered some rare fossil formations in New York State. He was a member of the Vet- erans' Association of the One Hundred and Forty-Fourth New York Volunteers at Wal- ton, New York. At the battle of Gettysburg he served as part of the reserves, and was also in the siege of Charleston and the battles of John's Island and Honey Hill. He was wounded at Jolin's Island. During his work as a minister he had a large acquaintance throughout New York and Ohio. For nine years he was a minister of the Congregational Church at Aurora, Ohio, and though he never had a regular charge in Cleveland was a member of the Ministers' Club of this city and well known here. He belonged to the Ontario Conference in New York State. He and his wife had two children, the daughter, Alice D.,
534
CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS
being reference librarian in the University Library at Columbus and living with her mother.
Henry H. McKee first attended school at Little Valley in Cattaragus County, New York. He graduated from high school at Olean, New York, in 1892, and in 1899 re- ceived the Bachelor of Arts degree from Ober- lin College. In the summer of 1906 he took post-graduate work in the summer school of the University of Michigan. After leaving Oberlin he taught two years at Bainbridge, Ohio, in 1899-1901, and while there he organ- ized the Central High School and had much to do with its construction at Bainbridge.
Mr. McKee is one of the citizens of Cleve- land who can speak with authority derived from experience concerning the early condi- tions of the Philippine Islands after the American occupation. He was in the Philip- pines from 1901 to 1905. He was one of the three appointed by Oberlin College to go to the Philippines and carry the ideas and sys- tems of American education to those islands. This appointment came as a response to the call of Superintendent of Schools Atkinson, who asked the United States to supply him 1,200 American teachers. Mr. McKee went over with the largest body of that contingent, 600 of whom crossed the ocean in the United States Army transport Thomas. He left San Francisco July 23, 1901, and returned to that port May 30, 1905.
After this foreign experience Mr. McKee returned to Ohio and took up his residence at Aurora. In 1907 he entered the service of The Garfield Savings Bank, and for about a year kept his home at Aurora and commuted between there and Cleveland. Since 1908 he has had his home in Cleveland. His first work with The Garfield Savings Bank was as book- keeper in the main office at Euclid Avenue and Sixth Street. From there he was assigned as receiving teller at the Glenville branch, was then appointed teller at the Gordon Park branch, and after another interval at the main office as escrow teller returned to the Gordon Park branch in 1912 as cashier. He has been in charge of this branch as cashier since that time. For a brief interval, how- ever, he was in the safety deposit department at the main office, though even then kept in touch with the Gordon Park branch.
Mr. McKee is a member of the Cleveland Chapter of the American Institute of Bank- ing, and served as president of this organiza- tion in 1915; is a member of the City Club,
Cleveland Heights Tennis Club, and Cleve- land Heights Presbyterian Church. He and his interesting family reside at 3048 Somer- ton Road in Cleveland.
June 26, 1901, Mr. McKee married Miss Jessie P. Hower of Cleveland, daughter of J. L. and Amanda J. (Brickman) Hower. He is a member of an old Cleveland family and her parents for many years lived on Euclid Avenue near Seventy-First Street. Her father, who died in 1913, spent most of his life as a traveling man in the dry goods trade, representing a well-known Boston wholesale house. IIer father was a brother of the late J. G. Hower of The Hower & Higby Com- pany of Cleveland. Mrs. McKee was born and educated in Cleveland, taking her musi- cal studies in the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Mr. and Mrs. McKee have one son, H. H., Jr., born May 20, 1911.
WHITE SEWING MACHINE COMPANY. Forty years ago when Cleveland was a relatively small town and contributing a relatively small share to the manufacturing resources of this country, the White Sewing Machine Company was considered a representative industry. For all the tremendous growth and volume of busi- ness which today makes Cleveland one of the greatest centers of productive energy in the world, the White Sewing Machine Company has held its own and is bigger, broader and more substantial now than ever before.
It was about 1876 that the White Sewing Machine Company manufactured its first sew- ing machine. The industry was started and was owned by the late Mr. Thomas H. White. Since that year, in a total of four decades, this company has manufactured and sold ap- proximately 4,000,000 sewing machines.
There was a very small output in 1876, but the business was continuously and consistently developed by Mr. White and his associates. In recent years they have manufactured and sold approximately 600 machines a day. Prac- tically 80 per cent of this modern pro- duction are White rotaries. While not the first company to develop and put on the mar- ket a rotary shuttle machine, the White Com- pany was not only the first but the only com- pany that has successfully marketed rotary shuttle sewing machines. The development of the rotary business speaks well, not only for the splendid construction of the machine itself, but also for the organization guided by Mr. White.
Today the White Sewing Machine Com-
535
CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS
pany's plant covers acres of ground, and at Cleveland employs approximately 1,000 skilled mechanics in the factory, while the general business requires an office force of about 100 people. Compared with the extensive busi- ness the capitalization is extremely low. The original capital in 1876 was $10,000, and at the present time $3,000,000. Mr. White up to the time of his death personally owned and controlled approximately all the stock.
For a number of years this company, like other companies in the same line, secured its cabinet and other wood requirements by con- tract, concentrating its special resources upon the manufacture of the machine itself. It is an indication of the progressive spirit of the company that quite recently it acquired a financial and working interest in The Theo- dore Kundtz Cabinet Works. The Kundtz Company, referred to elsewhere in this pub- lication, are the largest exclusive wood work- ers in the country and possibly in the world. They manufacture practically all of the sew- ing machine woodwork for all the various com- panies excepting the Singer. The Kundtz factory employs about 3,000 men. The work- ing interests which now unite the White Sew- ing Machine Company and The Kundtz Com- pany insures for the former a dependable and regular sewing machine woodwork supply.
The business is now international in scope. In April, 1916, the company began manufac- turing sewing machines at Guelph, Ontario, Canada. They have a factory there employing several hundred men, including the operation of a foundry for manufacturing castings, and a plant for the manufacture of woodwork. The Canadian branch of the business has been exceedingly prosperous, based. no doubt on the great popularity of the White machines in the Dominion, and the facilities of the Guelph plant have been taxed to the utmost to supply the demand.
The retail branch business of the White Sewing Machine Company employs about 2,000 people, distributed among 125 branch retail agencies. There is also a wholesale de- partment, with about thirty wholesale travel- ing representatives in that division. White sewing machines are a household word in practically every county of America, and the business has also been extended to many for- eign countries, where the company normally maintains a corps of representatives.
Some of the ideals of the business are well stated in the following quotation from a recent official report : "Our expenditures in the way
of dollars and cents are enormous when con- sidering the large number of people we em- ploy, and the necessarily large purchases of raw material we must make. We advertise very extensively and our particular aim is to spend money for advertising where it docs the most good, which means giving the dealer direct help, and furnishing constaut and con- tinuous service to the consumer. In short, the best advertisement we can have is the living monument represented in our sewing machine. Our motto has always been: 'Better than the Best.' Good goods always make satisfied cus- tomers, and satisfied customers mean good advertising."
WILLIAM WAYNE CHASE is president of the White Sewing Machine Company, one of the distinctive industries of Cleveland that receive special mention on other pages. The facts of Mr. Chase's career, gathered from various sources, are told briefly in the following para- graphs. No comments or interpretation is needed to indicate that from one step of progress to another Mr. Chase has utilized a great deal of native ability and all the re- sources of hard work and fidelity to the inter- ests entrusted to his charge. He inherited neither wealth nor special influence and has acquired both of them through his own efforts.
Mr. Chase was born in Bainbridge Town- ship, Geauga County, Ohio, November 19, 1872, a son of Charles E. and Annette S. (Ellis) Chase. His parents were also natives of Bainbridge Township and both are now deceased. They represented old families in that section of Ohio. The Chases came out of Vermont and established themselves in Geauga County probably as early as 1810. The Ellises were of old Connecticut stock and were likewise identified with the early settle- ment of the Ohio Western Reserve. Charles E. Chase was born in a log house in 1837, and spent his life as a blacksmith and farmer. He was a very pronounced democrat in poli- tics. That fact did not interfere with his personal popularity or the confidence of his fellow citizens in his good judgment, since he was elected and for many years served with- out opposition as a justice of the peace. He was also a member of the Masonic order. He and his wife were the parents of two sons and a daughter, William W. being the youngest. The oldest, Rev. Granger D. Chase, is a grad- uate of Ohio Western University and for many years was active in the Methodist min- istry in the Michigan Conference. He now
536
CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS
lives near Charlotte, Michigan, on a farm which he bought a few years ago, and every Sunday preaches at some church in or near Charlotte, though he has no regular charge. The daughter of the family is Mrs. W. M. Davis of Cleveland.
William Wayne Chase as a small boy at- tended school in Geauga County, and in 1885 at the age of thirteen came to Cleveland and continued his education in the local public schools until he was fifteen. From 18SS until May 12, 1892, he was employed by the Lake Shore Railway Company, and at the latter date entered the service of the White Sewing Machine Company as a bookkeeper. In the meantime he had been giving his spare hours, chiefly at night time, to the study of law, though that knowledge he has used chiefly in his own business. He studied law at night under Attorney H. H. Henry of Cleveland, and was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1895, when only twenty-three years of age.
Aside from the technical features of manu- facture, there has hardly been a department in the White Sewing Machine Company with which Mr. Chase has not been identified by active experience during the last quarter of a century. From bookkeeper he was gradually assigned to other duties, became superintend- ent of retail branches, later office attorney, and in July, 1905, was made vice president and secretary of the company. He was pro- moted to his present responsibilities as presi- dent in September, 1917. He is also vice president of the Theodor Kundtz Company of Cleveland.
Mr. Chase is non-partisan in politics. He is affiliated with Brooklyn Lodge No. 454 Free and Accepted Masons, and by twenty-one years of continuons membership is a veteran member of that lodge, also a member of Webb Chapter No. 14 Royal Arch Masons. He also belongs to the Union Club, Country Club, Cleveland Automobile Club, Cleveland Cham- ber of Commerce, and in 1918 was a member of its Foreign Trade Committee; is a member of the Cleveland Association of Credit Men, the Civic League, and is a member and trustee of Euclid Avenue Congregational Church and chairman of the Finance Committee of the Congregational Union of Cleveland.
Mr. Chase and family reside at 8218 Euclid Avenue. September 12, 1892, he married Miss Edna E. Thomas of Cleveland. Mrs. Chase died May 31, 1905, the mother of three chil- dren : Kathryn, wife of Howard Heene, treas- urer of the Theodor Kundtz Company ; Rus-
sell N .; and Charles W. These children were all born at Cleveland, and the sons received most of their preparatory education in the noted Asheville School at Asheville, North Carolina. Charles is a member of the class of 1919 in that preparatory school. Russell grad- nated from there in 1918 and in the fall of the same year entered Cornell University. On March 5, 1907, Mr. Chase married Miss Reba Neff of Cleveland. They have two children, Ruth Rebecca and June Annette, both of whom at the proper age will enter the Hathaway-Brown School for Girls at Cleve- land.
EDWIN HEINA. One of the prominent busi- ness men of Cleveland is Edwin Heina, who is vice president and general manager of the Cleveland Metal Products Company, and ad- ditionally is identified with a number of other successful companies and corporations. He is one more proof of a fact often asserted, that Cleveland does not have to reach outside her own borders to find men of talent and busi- ness acumen.
Edwin Heina was born in the City of Cleve- land, October 14, 1876, and is a son of Josef and Anna (Sicha) Heina. His father was born January 20, 1851, at Milevsko, near Tabor, Bohemia. He learned the tailoring trade at Vienna, Austria, and in 1872 came to the United States and located at Cleveland. He was an expert cutter and as such was in the employ of several of the exclusive, high class tailors of the city. His death occurred January 28, 1907, at the age of fifty-six years. After locating at Cleveland, Josef Heina was united in marriage with Anna Sicha, who was born January 24, 1854, in the Village of Mikovici, near Prague, Bohemia. She came to America in 1870 and lived first in Nebraska, then at St. Louis, Missouri, and in 1872 came to Cleveland and still resides in this city. Three children were born to Josef Heina and his wife, namely: Edwin; Mrs. E. F. Renscher, who lives in this city; and Mrs. Yarley Stadnik, who resides at Lowman, Idalıo.
Edwin Heina was educated in the public schools of his native city and was graduated from the high school when eighteen. He was ambitions and immediately sought employ- ment along the line for which he felt himself best fitted, and soon was engaged as a clear- ance clerk with the East End Savings Bank Company but did not continue in that place for any great length of time as his natural
537
CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS
business gifts soon were noticed and he was promoted from one position to another and when he severed his relations with this bank thirteen years later, he was savings teller.
Mr. Heina then became associated with the Cleveland Foundry Company as employment supervisor and then became purchasing agent, afterward factory manager, and in January, 1915, he was elected viee president and a men- ber of the board of directors. In January, 1917, the above company was merged with the Cleveland Metal Products Company, which name was assumed, and Mr. Heina became vice president and general manager of the Platt works. Another exceedingly im- portant business enterprise with which he is officially connected is the Perfection Stove Company, of Sarnia, Canada. Mr. Heina's business career has been one of continued ad- vancement and he occupies a position of weight in commercial circles and enjoys per- sonal esteem and confidence also.
Mr. Heina was married September 16, 1902, to Miss Nellie G. Bennett, of Cleveland, and they have two children, Virginia and Nancy. Mr. Heina and family belong to Calvary Evan- gelical Association Church. He is independent in his political attitude but always works for the best interests of Cleveland.
ALBERT SCOTT RODGERS is vice president and secretary of the White Sewing Machine Com- pany. A history of this great Cleveland in- dustry is given on other pages of this pub- lication. Mr. Rodgers has spent most of his active years in Cleveland, and was only a boy when he acquired his first experience in the manufacture of sewing machines.
Born at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Decem- ber 1, 1876, he is a son of William A. and Sarah A. (Quinian) Rodgers. His father was at one time financially interested in a con- cern that fitted gas fixtures in hotels and other buildings, and spent much of his time on the road selling such equipment. He died in 1882 at Pittsburg, while his wife passed away in Cleveland in 1906. They were the parents of seven children, one son dying in infancy. Four sons and two daughters still survive, those at Cleveland being Albert Scott, C. A. Rodgers and a sister, Mrs. Mary J. Higgins.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.