Some musings on local history

As I excavate old stories for the weekly column of “This Week in Toledo's Past,” I frequently discover items buried in the pages of the old newspapers that provide a bit of insight into just how thing really were back in the “old days” and really speak to how life has changed. Then again, sometimes how it has stayed the same.
I found a story from July of 1902 in the Toledo Bee that was a detailed rundown of the various stores in the Toledo area and their numbers. In that year, 266 banks were listed, 25 pawnbrokers and more than 1,200 pool halls. There were four theaters, 366 cigar manufacturers, 265 licensed retailers of oleomargarine, but the biggest number of licensed retailers, by far, was liquor sellers at a staggering 3,723. I guess one did not have to go far to find a bottle of whiskey in those days.
The same newspaper also told of a woman who ran a boarding house in the Paulding County village of “Latty.” The men who stay there swear she has a 27-month-old son who smokes as many as seven cigars a day. Wonder if those men were the ones blowing smoke.
If I have learned anything recently, it's that if anyone thinks that gender-bending or transitioning is a product of modern liberal thought, one might want to read enough old newspaper to realize this is anything but new. Recently, we saw the story of Joe Foley in 1927 who worked the lake freighters and was employed in all types of typical masculine pursuits of the day, only to be arrested in Toledo where jailers discovered that “Joe” was really Alice Lovejoy of Boston.
His discovery in Toledo made national headlines. Such stories were not unusual, there are many. In 1902 in Toledo, Walter Jones was one of the “women” arrested in a questionable St. Clair Street establishment called a “concert hall.” Police said Walter had red makeup painted on his cheeks and a bright red dress covering his burly 6-foot frame. He told Toledo police he was a female “impersonator”. He was charged with loitering along with the others.
There is no shortage of “weird” stories to be found in the faded news ink of yesteryear. Take the story of George Kufer in 1910. In that year, Kufer, of Baltimore, Maryland, accepted a challenge to walk 16,000 miles on a circuitous route across America. He was to be paid $4,000 if he could pull it off, with a side wager of $500 that he would have to marry someone on his trip.
When he got to Woodville, Ohio, he met and married Edith McCloskey. She not only married him but then joined him on the long walk and they claimed the prize.
Another weird entry is from 1933, down in Continental, Ohio. In this case, a haunted piano was making mysterious music in the Charles Wetherill home. They said that for 12 years they had been terrorized by the sound of one key that played late at night, all by itself. And oddly, it would play just before someone in their family would pass away. This quivering key, played by “an invisible hand” would awaken them in the middle night and soon, someone in their family would die. They want to dispose of the old piano.
And from southern Wood County, a cautionary tale made the papers around 1907 involving Ephriam Shanabarger and family. They had become quite wealthy when oil was found on their farm near Cygnet. But wealth and wisdom are not always companions. Soon, the Shanabarger clan got mixed up in a cult of religious folks who convinced him, his wife and two sons that God was going to create a new “heaven” of everlasting life in the little remote town of Livingston,Texas not far from Houston.
They believed and poured their passion and pocketbook into the effort. Then they moved there only to be told that new information was found showing this heavenly paradise was actually in New Mexico. With his wealth and health all but gone, Ephriam returned to Wood County and filed for legal guardianship of what little he had left, and he died in poverty soon after.
But, not every “new found fortune” story has a sad ending. I like the story of Mary Wiggins Schultz. She lived a hard life of drudgery, making ends meet scrubbing the floors of Toledo's Pythian Castle on Jefferson Avenue. The single mother never had much. She lived in a tiny house in South Toledo with her five sons and money was sparse. But in August 1922, at the age of 68, she learned that two uncles, both hotel owners, had passed on and she was to inherit more than $365,000 dollars. Easily, several million in today's dollars. Mary told reporters it was time to enjoy life, buy a car, get a better home, put the sons through college, and maybe do some traveling. Mary's floor scrubbing days were over.