USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > A history of Cuyahoga County and the City of Cleveland, (Vol. 2) > Part 5
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
FREDERICK WILLIAM STECHER. It was his connection with the larger business interests of Cleveland that gave importance to the name and career of the late Frederick William Stecher. He made a success of con- ducting a mercantile business on established lines, but his great capacity for affairs and original genius brought him into distinctive enterprises. His success in business was accompanied by a public spirited part in the community. His citizenship was widely commended, and secured him the esteem of all his fellow citizens.
The late Mr. Stecher was born at Sheboygan, Wisconsin, November 25, 1866, and died September 27, 1916. His parents, Rev. Antone Daniel and Margaret (Bachman) Stecher, were natives of Germany. His father was a Lutheran minister who lived at Cincinnati, then at Huntington, Indiana, and finally at Sheboygan, Wisconsin. He was a man of liberal education, and gave his life to the church. His death occurred in 1894, and his widow survived until 1920. They were pious, thrifty and re- sourceful people, devoted to their children, and inspired in them the virtues of industry and business integrity. The sons always credited their parents with a large share of their individual success.
Frederick W. Stecher acquired his preliminary education in the Lutheran parochial schools, attended the high school at Sheboygan, and subsequently entered the department of pharmacy of the University of Wisconsin, where he was graduated in 1887. He paid his own way through college by work in vacations; being for two summers employed in the drug store of his brother, Henry W., in Cleveland.
His first service as a graduate pharmacist was with the Hofflin Drug Company at Minneapolis, in which city he was later with the Palace Drug Company. In 1892 he came to Cleveland, where his brother Henry had been in the drug business for ten years, and acquired a half interest in the pharmacy. The firm was continued under the name Stecher Brothers until 1900, when Frederick W. became sole proprietor.
For Stecher,
33
THE CITY OF CLEVELAND
The late Mr. Stecher was one of a few men who could do more than one thing and do them well. While still a druggist he developed an extensive wholesale barber supply business, and was the organizer and first president of the Barber Supply Dealers Association of America.
However, his most conspicuous achievement was in perfecting and building up a sale for a product known to millions, though comparatively few of the users credited Mr. Stecher as the man responsible for this phenomenal success. In June, 1901, after sixteen months of study and experiment, Mr. Stecher perfected the formula for Pompeian Massage Cream, a product that achieved recognition and favor accorded to few such preparations. The perfection of the formula was only one step toward success, since the manufacture and sale of the preparation involved the consideration of large capital. He systematically and intelligently directed advertising and sales effort. Some of his best business friends advised Mr. Stecher to give up the project, but he labored on, exerting the full resources of his energy and a remarkable degree of faith and tenacity. Within his lifetime Pompeian Massage Cream was to be found on the display shelves of upwards of 75,000 drug stores in America, and in nearly all barber shops in this and in foreign, since it was sold in every civilized nation. The building up of a national and international demand for this Cleveland made product has been one of the outstanding achieve- ments in American business history.
Mr. Stecher's name also deserved consideration in connection with another of Cleveland's most distinctive industries. He was one of the founders of the American Multigraph Company, was vice president of the company and also president of the International Multigraph Sales Company. He was a stockholder in numerous banks and corporations, and owner of valuable real estate both in Cleveland and in Lakewood.
His associations were those of a man of large affairs. He was active in the Chamber of Commerce, the Chamber of Industry, Cleveland Ath- letic Club, Cleveland Advertising Club, Clifton Club, Rockwell Spring Trout Club, the Castalia Trout Club, and was a member of the Episcopal Church and the Masonic Order.
On October 30, 1895, he married Miss Lue Morgan. Two sons were born to their marriage. Robert Morgan Stecher, born December 1, 1897, graduated Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth College in 1919, and completed his preparation for a professional career in the Harvard Medical College with the class of 1923. The second son, Paul Frederick, born in July 31, 1901, died October 31, 1909. Mr. and Mrs. Stecher adopted a little daughter in 1911.
Mrs. Lue Morgan Stecher is the only surviving child of Moses I. and Laura E. (Greene) Morgan. She is a descendant of James Morgan, who came from Wales in 1636 and settled at Roxbury, Massachusetts. The heads of the successive generations of descent from James the immigrant were: John, Joseph, Consider, who graduated from Yale College and practiced medicine in Connecticut; Dr. Isaac Mosley Morgan, founder of the family at Brecksville, Ohio; Consider ; and Moses I. Morgan.
Dr. Isaac M. Morgan, the great-grandfather of Mrs. Stecher, was a prominent pioneer of the Western Reserve of Ohio. He was a stanch whig in politics, and no whig meeting in Brecksville was complete without
Vol. II-3
34
CUYAHOGA COUNTY AND
his presence. He was township trustee in Brecksville, and served as county commissioner of Cuyahoga County, beginning his term in 1821. In 1823 he was appointed Common Pleas Judge by Governor Jeremiah Mor- row for a seven year term, this appointment being confirmed by the Legislature in joint session December 21, 1823. Thus he was one of the first Common Pleas judges in Cuyahoga County, Elias Lee, Erastus Miles, Samuel Williamson and Thomas Cord preceding him. He began his term as judge in 1824. Dr. Isaac Morgan married Sally Harris, and their five children were Charles, Consider, Malvina, Marana and Daniel H. Consider Morgan, grandfather of Mrs. Stecher, had the following children : Moses I., of Brecksville, was the oldest. Henry Goodwin, the second, was a practicing physician in Cleveland and later at Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where he died. The third child, Sid Othneal, also a physician who practiced in Ohio and later at Glen Ullin, North Dakota, where he died, leaving the following children: Zetta, who married Dr. William Bodenstab, and now lives at Bismarck, North Dakota; Engie, wife of Joshua Crosby, now of Greybull, Wyoming; S. O. Morgan, of Loughman, Florida; Clara, wife of Charles Tucker, of Long Beach, California; and William, also of Long Beach. The fourth child of Consider Morgan was Ella Marana, wife of William Hanna, of Cleveland.
Moses I. Morgan, father of Mrs. Stecher, was born at Brecksville, Cuyahoga County, February 1, 1835, and died in 1895. His wife, Laura E. Greene, was born at Naperville, Illinois, and her father, William Briggs Greene, moved from New England and was a pioneer in Illinois.
ROBERT WALLACE was born in Ireland May 17, 1834, and was twenty years of age when he came to the United States and crossed the continent to California, where he remained several months. He then came to Cleveland, and here he became a power in the shipbuilding industry and in connection with navigation interests on the Great Lakes. He was one of the founders of the American Shipbuilding Company, was the first president of the Cleveland Shipbuilding Company and was one of the organizers of the Globe Iron Works, both of which corporations became a part of the American Shipbuilding Company, in 1899. Mr. Wallace became president of the last mentioned corporation and was its chief executive until about seven years prior to his death, he having been retained as a member of the board of directors after his retirement from the presidency. It was due to the enterprise of Mr. Wallace that mechanical power was first used in the unloading of cargoes of lake vessels entering the port of Cleveland, and he was the first to bring about the building of all-steel vessels in Cleveland. He became a director of a number of banking institutions, was a zealous member of the First Congregational Church, was long and prominently identified with the Masonic fraternity, in which he received the thirty-second degree of the Scottish Rite, and he was a citizen who ever commanded unqualified popular confidence and esteem. His death occurred March 6, 1911, his wife surviving him by a few years. He was survived also by three sons and two daughters.
JOSEPH F. SAWICKI, judge of the Municipal Court of Cleveland, has been an active member of the bar of that city about twenty years and is a
35
THE CITY OF CLEVELAND
former representative of Cuyahoga County in the State Legislature. He also has a national reputation as a leader among the Polish Americans.
Judge Sawicki was born March 18, 1881, at Gorzno, Poland, close to the border of Russia and Germany. His father, Peter P. Sawicki, came to the United States and to Cleveland in 1883. A few months later he went back to Poland. In 1885 he arrived again in Cleveland, and in the spring of the following year was joined by his family. He was for a number of years engaged in mason contracting, and later established himself in the shoe business, and so continued a prosperous business in that line at Cleveland. Peter P. Sawicki married Bogumila Jurkowska. Her father was a soldier, a Polish Legionary patriot, who fleeing from Russia settled in German Poland. He reached the age of ninety-six, and was esteemed for the un- usual qualities of his mind. The mother of Judge Sawicki died in Cleveland January 22, 1915. She was the mother of fourteen children, eleven of whom were born in America.
Joseph F. Sawicki was five years old when brought to Cleveland, and grew up in this city, attending the St. Stanislaus Parochial School, the public schools, St. Ignatius College, and completed his legal education in Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Law School of Baldwin-Wallace University. He was graduated with the Bachelor of Laws degree in 1904 and in the same year admitted to the Ohio bar. In a few years he had achieved a successful place in the Cleveland bar, with a large general prac- tice. In 1905 he was elected a member of the Ohio General Assembly, being the youngest member of the House in the session of 1906 and was also the first Polander elected a member of the Ohio Legislature. In 1910 he was again elected, and his two terms of service made him favorably known over the state as well as in his home community of Cleveland. On January 1, 1919, he was appointed a judge of the Municipal Court, and in the following November was regularly elected to the municipal bench for a term of six years.
Throughout his professional career he has ranked as one of the leaders in the Polish community of Cleveland. His activities in behalf of the wel- fare of his native country and of his Polish fellow citizens have won him honor and distinction both at home and abroad. He is a member of the Polish National Alliance, of the Alliance of Poles in America, is president of the Supreme Council National Committee of America, chairman of the Ohio State Polish Citizens' Committee, a member of the Polish Roman Catholic Union of America and the Polish Falcons of America. During the World war he was a member and director of the National Polish Com- mittee of America, and chairman of the Polish Relief Committee of the State of Ohio. At a meeting held in the Hotel Gotham at New York City, December 21, 1923, presided over by Ignatz Jan Paderewski, former premier of Poland, and world famous musician, Judge Sawicki was created a knight of the Order of Restoration of Poland "Polonia Pertituta" and was deco- rated with the white gold Commander's Cross, indicating his rank in the order. Judge Sawicki is honorary president of the Polish American Cham- ber of Industry, of which he served as president for six terms. He is president of the board of directors of the Bank of Cleveland, is president of the Cleveland Polish Aid Society, a director of the Warsaw Savings and Loan Association, a director of the Travelers Aid Society, a member of the
36
CUYAHOGA COUNTY AND
Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, the City and Kiwanis clubs, the Cleveland Museum of Art, trustee of the Cleveland Welfare Association, and belongs to the American, Ohio State and Cleveland Bar associations.
In his marriage, which occurred at Detroit, June 24, 1908, Judge Sawicki found not only a wonderful wife and mother, but a woman of distinguished talents and one of the foremost Polish women of America. Her maiden name was Elizabeth Veronica Sadowski, who was born in Poland, daughter of John and Anna Sadowska. Her father was a Polish nobleman, who, losing his patrimony, came to this country practically without means. Event- ually he became a successful manufacturing baker in Detroit, where he died in 1906. Mrs. Sawicki's mother is now in her seventy-sixth year and resides in Detroit, being possessed of fine mental and physical ability. Mrs. Sawicki was two years old when she came with her parents to Detroit. She was educated in the parochial schools of that city, also attended a convent and a business college, and improved her decided musical gift in the Detroit Con- servatory of Music. Mrs. Sawicki was one of the organizers of and the first secretary of the Polish Woman's Union of America. She is a member of the Polish National Alliance, the Polish Catholic Union of America, the Alliance of Poles of the State of Ohio, the Polish Catholic Union of Ohio, the Polish Charitable Association of Cleveland, is president of the Polish Woman's Club of Cleveland, a member of the Federation of Women's Clubs of Cleveland, the Woman's Club of Cleveland, and a director in the Woman's Savings & Loan Association of Cleveland.
Judge and Mrs. Sawicki have four children: Eugene J., born April 4, 1909 ; Edwin F., born August 26, 1910; Felicia Elizabeth, born August 22, 1913, and Anna Barbara, born January 26, 1917.
HAROLD KINGSLEY FERGUSON, president of the H. K. Ferguson Com- pany of Cleveland, Ohio, one of the leading organizations of the kind in this country acting as industrial engineers and construction engineers. The company has handled an impressive program of building work, including construction for many of the largest industrial corporations.
Mr. Ferguson, whose permanent home has been in Cleveland for a dozen years, though his interests take him to all parts of the country, was born at Albion, Michigan, November 22, 1883, son of John H. Ferguson and grand- son of James H. Ferguson. His grandfather was born in the north of Scotland and on coming to America settled in Sullivan County, New York, and from there removed to southern Michigan. He was a farmer by occu- pation. John H. Ferguson was born in Sullivan County, New York, was reared in Michigan, and from Albion, that state, removed to Delaware, Ohio, and in order to give his children the advantages of a higher education located there, where he and his wife are now living, retired. He is seventy- four years of age, and for many years was a wholesale agent for pianos. John H. Ferguson married America Clark, who was born at Angola, In- diana, of English ancestry. Her father, Benjamin Clark, was born in eastern New York State and early became a citizen of Angola, Indiana. Mrs. John H. Ferguson is seventy-three years of age.
Harold Kingsley Ferguson was educated in public schools in Albion and Jackson, Michigan, and in 1905 graduated as Bachelor of Science from Ohio Wesleyan University at Delaware. In the meantime he had spent
1
37
THE CITY OF CLEVELAND
three years in training and working service with the Jackson Light and Power Company. On leaving the university in 1905 he became timekeeper and estimator for the Austin Company of Cleveland, one of the old and well known engineering and construction corporations of the city. On January 1, 1907, he began work for the Santa Fe Railway in the signal de- partment and was stationed in Colorado and New Mexico on construction work until 1910. He was then promoted to assistant signal engineer with headquarters at Topeka, but soon resigned to become commercial engineer in the railway department of the General Electric Company at Schenectady, New York.
Mr. Ferguson in 1912 returned to Cleveland to become secretary of the Austin Company, factory builders. In 1918 he formed the H. K. Ferguson Company, of which he is president. During the World war, while with the Austin Company, Mr. Ferguson gained distinction as being the author of the plan for putting up standard buildings in thirty working days, a task formerly requiring four or five months. Some of the work done by the H. K. Ferguson Company includes industrial buildings for the Hayes Wheel Company of Jackson, Michigan, the Fatima Cigarette Factory at Richmond, Virginia, building work for the General Electric Company, the Delco Com- pany of Dayton, the Showers Brothers Furniture Factory at Burlington, Iowa, and Bloomington, Indiana, buildings at Staten Island, New York, and Ivory Dale, Ohio, for Procter & Gamble, and work for the Maxwell Motor Company of Detroit, the Nordyke & Marmon Company of In- dianapolis, and the National Cash Register Company of Dayton. In 1923 the H. K. Ferguson Company undertook the erection of a large manufactur- ing plant at Tokio, Japan, for the Shibaura Engineering Company of that city. The preliminary work had been done before the great earthquake in September, and while that calamity delayed the program the work has since been completed. Mr. Ferguson is also a director of the Stearns Conveyor Company of Cleveland.
Mr. Ferguson is a trustee of his alma mater of Ohio Wesleyan Univer- sity, he is a trustee of the Windermere Methodist Church of Cleveland, and belongs to the University Club, Cleveland Athletic Club, Canterbury Club, Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, and the Engineers Club and Bankers Club of. New York.
He married August 26, 1908, Miss Lillian Austin of Cleveland. They have a family of four children : Eleanor J., Kingsley, Ruthe E., and Margery L. Ferguson.
JOHN ALOYSIUS NALLY is a Cleveland attorney with an extensive prac- tice in corporation law. He is also an official in a number of well known financial and industrial enterprises in his native city.
Mr. Nally was born in Cleveland, February 27, 1878, son of Thomas W. and Bridget (Dempsey) Nally. His parents were born in Ireland, and were married and have spent their lives in this city. Thomas W. Nally was for many years a locomotive engineer with the Big Four Railway in the passenger service out of Cleveland. He was on duty at the time of his death in a wreck, when he was in his fifty-ninth year. His widow survives him.
He attended parochial schools, and finished his professional eduration in
38
CUYAHOGA COUNTY AND
the Cleveland Law School of Baldwin-Wallace University. Admitted to the Ohio bar in 1900, he engaged in private practice the same year, and while he formerly handled the general routine of an attorney, he has during the past twelve years specialized in corporation law.
Mr. Nally is president of the Northern Ohio Mortgage and Investment Company, president of the Beachcliff Savings and Loan Company, president of the Avon Development Company, president of the Nally Discount Com- pany, and is a director in the Manifold Printing Company, the Motor Repair and Manufacturing Company, and the Lorain Street Lumber Company.
Mr. Nally is a member of the Cleveland Chamber of Industry, the Cleve- land Yacht Club, and senior member of the law firm of Nally, Dally and Miller, with offices in the Guardian Building. He married August 16, 1905, Miss Regina V. Avoy of Cleveland. They have one son, John Aloysius.
EMIL JOSEPH for over forty years has been a member of the Cleveland bar, engaged in an extensive law business, with affiliated business interests, and has been one of the prominent men in the civic and philanthropic move- ments of this city.
He was born in New York City, September 5, 1857, son of Moritz and Jette (Selig) Joseph. His parents were born in Germany ; Moritz Joseph, who brought his family from New York City to Cleveland in 1873, was for many years a prominent clothing manufacturer, being one of the found- ers of The Joseph and Feiss Company. In addition to his prominence in a business way he was active in civic and benevolent affairs, particularly those originating in and affecting the interests of Jewish people. Hundreds of friends revere his memory and his good deeds. He died in June, 1917, and in March, 1918, his wife passed away. Both were over three score and ten.
Emil Joseph was in his fifteenth year when the family came to Cleveland. This city has been his home for over half a century. He had attended the public schools of New York City, graduated from the Central High School of Cleveland in 1875, and then returned to New York to complete his higher education in Columbia University. He received the Bachelor of Arts degree there in 1879 and took his law degree from the Columbia University Law School in 1881. In that year he was admitted to the bars of New York and Ohio, and forthwith entered upon the profession of law in Cleveland. He has handled a general practice. He has accumulated various business and financial interests, being one of the directors of the Union Trust Company, one of the most important financial organizations in Cleveland.
His time, energies and means have been freely at the disposal of those public interests represented in worthy civic and philanthropic movements. He is a director of the Cleveland Public Library, is chairman of the local board of the Jewish Orphan Home, and is a member of the City Club, Ex- celsior Club, Oakwood Country Club, Town Club, of which he is president, Western Reserve Club, Tippecanoe Club, Cleveland Bar Association, Amer- ican Bar Association, Ohio Society of New York, Columbia University Club of New York, and the Cleveland Alumni Association of Columbia Univer- sity, of which he is president. He has also found time to develop many intellectual and artistic interests. An interesting hobby has been a collection of engravings, etchings and portraits of men and women distinguished
Mary Hawking Chard
MOChard
39
THE CITY OF CLEVELAND
throughout the world, including one of the largest collections of Washing- tons and Lincolns. His private library contains over five thousand volumes.
Mr. Joseph married December 8, 1891, Fannie Dryfoos of Cleveland. She was born at Fremont, Ohio. Three children were born to their mar- riage. Alice, who finished her education at Vassar College, is the wife of a well known Cleveland attorney, Adrian Ettinger, and is the mother of two children, Robert J. and Ernest Ettinger. The second daughter, Lucy, fin- ished her education in Smith College and is the wife of Louis S. Bing, Jr., president and treasurer of the Bing Furniture Company of Cleveland. The only son is Frank E. Joseph, now in his senior year at Columbia University.
WILLIAM P. CHARD, who was taken by death February 8, 1924, was long and favorably known in church and city affairs at Cleveland and as a veteran of the Civil war. Thirty years of his life were spent in the railway service, and in later years he engaged in the real estate business, with considerable attention to public affairs and service in the municipal government.
He was born at Prince Albert, Canada, October 28, 1846. His father, James Chard, a native of Wales, came to the United States when a young man and his first location was at Euclid, Ohio, where he worked on a farm. In 1832 he removed 'to Cleveland. Cleveland was then a village, its importance being due to its position on the lake. All the highways leading from the back country were thronged with wagons and teams bearing merchandise to be transported over the lakes. James Chard established himself in business as a leather merchant, his shop being on Seneca Street, near Superior. About 1837 he gave up his business in Cleveland to join the Mckenzie expedition in Canada, and moved his family across the border. In 1849, leaving his family in Canada, he started for California. He got as far as Independence, now a part of Kansas City, Missouri, where he was taken ill and died.
James Chard married Ann Parry, who was born in Wales. Her father being the oldest son, inherited a large estate, and though educated for the ministry of the Episcopal Church, he devoted his life to the superintendence of this property. Ann Parry was a daughter of his first marriage. At the time of his second marriage his children all left home, Ann Parry coming to America with her sister, Mrs. Samuel Challenor. Mr. Challenor became a building contractor in Cleveland, and was one of the pioneers in that line in Cleveland. There was no planing mill at the time, and he had workmen in his shop who cut, stripped and finished all interior woodwork such as sash. doors and blinds. James Chard and wife were married at Cleveland in 1830. At his death his widow was left with five children, and subse- quently she returned to Cleveland and spent her last years in the home of her son, William P. Her children were: James, Sarah, Mary, Helen and William P. The son James went out to California, enlisted in the Union Army while there, joining a California regiment, and was drowned in San Diego Bav before the end of the war. The daughter Sarah was twice married, her first husband being George Woodward, by whom there is a son George, an actor in Belasco troupe, and her second husband was a mathematician, by whom there was a son William. The daughter Helen married and reared three daughters, who now live at Alton, Illinois.
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.