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Pfahl History Page 4 .... Fred G Pfahl's life continued

Mr. Baird Sr. did not improve in health, I shall always think he must have had some confidence in me for early in march he sent me word he would like to have a talk with me. I met him and we had a very serious talk. He told me that he realized that his life was drawing to a close his only regret being that his daughters were not established in life and as long as Lulu and myself expected to marry at some time, it would please him to see us married before he died and urged that we do so at once. I demurred on the ground that present earnings were not sufficient for such a responsibility and he replied that he had considered that side of the situation and that it was his intention that I should work with his son in carrying on the business and the remuneration should be sufficient to meet our requirements. I gladly assented to this and after considerable argument we won the young lady's consent. A very few days after this, on Thursday, March 12, 1891, in the presence of the immediate family and a few friends, Mr. Baird being propped up in a chair to witness the ceremony, we were married. On the following Monday morning he breathed his last. The remains were taken to Salem, O. and buried there where he started in life as a young man.

Mrs. Pfahl was born July 28th 1871 at North Royalton, a few miles from Cleveland, her mothers maiden name was Taylor, her mother was a McClintock. The Taylors and McClintocks before coming to Ohio lived in New York State: the earliest knowledge we have of the Bairds is that they came from the vicinity of Ligonier, Pa. After the funeral we exchanged quarters with my brother in law, he taking residence at the store and Mrs. P. her sister Jennie and myself in the place vacated by him, a five room cottage on Seymour Ave. We lived there nearly two years and this was Fern's birth place but in the fall of the second year, the same parties who had been responsible for the factory at Greensburg had originated another of the same kind under the name of the Maryland Bolt and Nut Co. at Baltimore and offered me a job with them again. I had considerable talent for this kind of work and liked it very much in spite of the dirt and heat and was very anxious to go. Mrs. Pfahl consented and I moved my little family to the East, one of my brothers, all of whom had by this time returned to Cleveland, accompanying us, and went to work in the new factory. A few weeks later my sister-in-law Jennie joined us and from this time forth until she was married about five years later she made her home with us.

We lived in Baltimore for four and a half years, a year and a half after going there I was made foreman of the factory at the age of 24. This venture proved quite successful, was taken over by a large Corporation the South Baltimore Car Works, later a part of the Standard Steel Car Co., to supply them with bolts, nuts, rivets, tie and truss rods etc., which took us out of the general market for these articles. In the general business stagnation during and following immediately after the Bryan Free Silver campaign of 1896 we found ourselves without contracts and myself out of a job. For a few months I worked on the construction of a large sugar refinery but we were beginning to get home sick, so early in the summer of 1897 we returned to Cleveland. Fern was by this time five years old and leona who was born at Curtis Bay, a suburb of Baltimore, was three. We found conditions in Cleveland quite as bad as those we left in Baltimore and just as hard to find work: my wife's Uncle Horace Edgerton, the husband of her mother's sister, who lived on a farm at North Royalton, but whose main business was contracting in public road work, principally building stone bridges and culverts, invited me to move my family out to his home, offering a part of his large house for our use and a job driving one of his teams as long as I cared to work for him. I accepted his offer and worked for him until the close of the contracting season when I obtained a job for the winter at my own specialty with the Lake Erie Iron Company in Cleveland, boarding in the city with my Aunt Mary and getting home to the family at the end of each week. As soon as the weather became settled in the spring I returned to the country and drove team for Uncle Horace the second year. In the late fall I went back again to my job with the Lake Erie Iron Co. and stayed there during the winter making my home again with my Aunt.

By the spring of 1899 we were getting well into the business prosperity that followed the Spanish American War and I was offered a very promising job with the recently organized Champion Rivet Co. I accepted this and moved the family from the country back into the city again - on what is now Kinsman Rd. near E. 93rd St. It was here we first met the Sakers, Our neighbors next door. They were very congenial young people and we formed friendship with them that has never been broken but only ripened with the passage of the years.

A few words now as to Uncle Horace Edgerton, he was of one of he original pioneer families of Cuyahoga County having been born here about 1825 and died in 1912, he was a large man of Herculean strength and was known in his young manhood to have lifted without assistance just by the might of his muscles, a half barrel of white lead weighing 800 pounds from the ground and loaded it on a dray. This seems incredible but I had every assurance it was true, even when he was more than 70 years old, I personally have seen demonstrations of his strength that few men would attempt. As to his personality and character, I could do no better than to suggest that you go to the library and secure a copy of the novel "David Harrum" and as you read the story through you will have a perfect picture of Horace Edgerton in the flesh. I do not mean to say by this that he was the original David Harrum, but that he might well have been. The language, enunciation, every thought expressed, the native wit, humor, faults as well as virtues, in fact every quirk and twist of character fit him as perfectly as though it were his life story. I have said that he was of a pioneer family, it may not be out of place here to narrate a little of the early history of Cuyahoga County. The first white family came into the county and built the first log home in 1797, the county was organized in 1810, the first court house built of logs on the Public Square in 1812, Cleveland granted a charter as a village in 1815 and by 1825 about the time Uncle Horace was born had a population of 500, by 1835 this had grown to 5000 and in 1846 to 10,000, in 1854 Cleveland and Ohio City (West Side) united the municipal governments of the two towns and in 1860 the census showed a population of 44,000 and in 1880 it was 160,000. In the early days of the village it was common as late 1820 for bears and wolves to raid the domestic animals of the settlers and when the county was organized in 1810, Newburg, a larger village than Cleveland was a rival for the county seat.

I did not remain long with the Champion Rivet Co. My compensation was very liberal but the work was the hardest and hottest I ever was called on to do. In a short time, through a friend, I was offered a good position with the American Ship Building Co. at Lorain. Again I moved my family and started all over in a strange place. Here, the following summer in 1900 Stannard was born. After two years in Lorain, the Champion Rivet Co. persuaded me to return to their service again, it was purely a matter of the amount of money offered which for a man in my social status was too tempting to be resisted, but before the year was out, the Ship Building Co., while not meeting the terms of the Rivet Co., still offered sufficient inducement to persuade me to return to Lorain. Here we remained until nearly the end of 1912.

During this time our two youngest children were born, Marjory on March 12th 1905 and Wallace on December 22nd 1908. It was during this period that I took a deep interest in political and civic matters, exercising no small degree of influence in the community, although I never held a public office of any kind nor was at any time a candidate for one, except that for two years, from 1909 to 1911 I served as Deputy State Inspector of Oils under Gov. Harris. This was a State appointment and came to me unsolicited and as a complete surprise. My district comprised all of Lorain County and the town of Berea in Cuyahoga County, the duties required but little of my time and the compensation was in the form of fees which averaged about three hundred and fifty dollars a year. While working for the American Ship Bldg. Co. we built ships, of course, only as they were ordered, and while for the most part we were steadily employed it occasionally happened that we had our work all cleaned up and for several months at a time the plant would be shut down. During the thirteen years we lived in Lorain from the time we first went there until we left for Rockfort, this happened twice, in fact three times. The first time happened in 1904 or 05. At this time I was fortunate enough harbor improvement. This kept me busy until the Ship Yard reopened. About four years later, in 1908 the same thing occurred again and it was during this time that I occupied myself soliciting Insurance. I bought out a small Agency doing a complete line of Insurance; Life, Fire, Casualty and Surety bonds. This business I managed to build up to considerable extent but it proved to be distasteful to me as it seemed to me that every time I sold a Client a policy, he felt that he had conferred on me a special favor which of course in a sense was true, yet he had favored me no more than he had his grocer or tailor. When the Ship Yard reopened again in the early winter, I sold a half interest in the business to a well known Real Estate broker, Capt. W.S. Pole and continued for a year as a silent partner, in the meantime returning to work with the Ship Bldg. Co. I should explain that my connection with this company was rather unusual. In the building of steel ships, enormous quantities of rivets are required. It was my work to provide these rivets. My contract with the Company was to the effect that they were to furnish equipment and material paying me a certain gross rate per ton, myself to furnish and pay all labor required. This worked out very satisfactorily to both of us.

After a year of partnership with Capt. Pole neither of us were altogether satisfied although there was no friction or disagreement between us: my partner offered to buy my share, I was glad of an opportunity to get out of the Insurance business and we quickly came to terms. It was in connection with this transaction that I received what I have always considered one of the highest compliments I ever had offered me. Capt. Pole went to the National Bank of Commerce where we keep our Insurance account, to borrow the money to pay for my interest in the business. The cashier, Mr. Eddie Braun told him he would have to have an endorser on the note. I knew the Captain's credit was none too good among business men but the amount involved was so small, only a few hundred dollars, that I had no idea he would have any difficulty getting it at the bank as we almost always had a monthly balance of that much in the account. Mr. Braun told the Captain that if he would get me to indorse his note he could have the money at once. At that time, no one could have collected one fourth the amount from me by process of law, my partner could have bought and sold me ten times over, yet my signature was enough to get the money and later, when I told Mr. Braun what the money was to be used for and that I was practically lending Capt. Pole the cash to pay me with, he assured me that it was not merely a matter of formality but that the bank was satisfied that my signature was sufficient guarantee that the note would be paid on maturity.

Late in the summer of 1911 we were again out of work at the Ship Yard. Just at that time the Great Lakes Engineering Co. of Detroit was beginning to build a ship at the new Plant they had just completed at Ashtabula, I went down and got the job making their rivets and stayed there until the ship was nearly completed, about the first of February, coming home over the weekends in the meantime. By this time the Lorain Plant had secured new contracts and I was called back there to work. For several years now, I had been very active in the political affairs of both the City and the County, being identified with what was known as the Progressive wing of the Republican party. I had never been a candidate for any local office, although I had been strongly urged to make the canvas for the City Treasurership at one time and for Sheriff of the County at another. What I was aiming at and saying nothing about was a federal appointment, the Postmastership of Lorain City. It will be recalled that the presidential campaign of 1912 developed a contest between ex-president Theodore Roosevelt and President Taft, whose administration proved very conservative, or as it was expressed in the language of the day, Stand pat. Mr. Arthur L. Garford, a wealthy citizen of Elyria with Ex-Secretary of Commerce Jas. R. Garfield were the Progressive leaders in Ohio. Mr. Garford was also the head and leader of the movement in Lorain County. I had been a close and trusted lieutenant of his from the time I began to have anything to say about County affairs. As state after state declared for Roosevelt in their preference primaries, it seemed that nothing short of a miracle could prevent his nomination. The National Committee under the control of the administration provided the miracle by unseating enough of the elected Roosevelt delegates to give the Taft forces control of the convention. Mr. Garford knew of my ambition and had assured me that in case of Roosevelts nomination and election, he Garford, would have absolute control of the distribution of all federal patronage in Ohio and if I desired the Postmastership there could be no question about it as he would make it his business to see that I got it.

We all know what happened. Roosevelt, incensed at what he considered a high handed robbery of the nomination, bolted the Convention with his followers and instituted the Bull Moose ticket insuring the election of Woodrow Wilson. The convention was held in June, the following month I received the offer of the Emerson-Brantingham Co. of Rockfort, feeling that it would be years before I could get another political opportunity that would appeal to me and in disgust, wanting to get as far as possible from all political activity, I accepted the offer: from that time have given no thought to politics except to cast my vote.

It was through the influence of Mr. D.R. Davies, Vice President of the Acme Machinery Co. of Cleveland, that I was offered the position as foreman of department with the Emerson-Brantingham Co. very large manufacturers of farm implements of all kinds. We were here for three years and it was here Fern was married and Leona graduated from high school and entered on her training as a nurse. We could have been very happy here except that during these three years we suffered a great deal of sickness and misfortune all of which is well known to all members of the family.

During the month of October, 1915, through the recommendation of the same Mr. Davies, who was responsible for our going to Rockfort, I was offered the position of assistant Superintendent of his factory by Mr. S.D. Latty, President of the Kirk-Latty M'fg Co. of Cleveland. After some hesitancy due to doubt of my own ability, I accepted and we moved back to Cleveland, I was now forty-five years old and would have been glad to feel that I was permanently located. I grew to like the work very much notwithstanding it was at the time of the World War with its attendant labor shortage. I was not harsh enough with the men and Mr. Latty and I proved to be very uncongenial so when after two years I was again submitted a better offer I left Cleveland to become Superintendent of the factory of the Severance M'fg. Co. of Glassport, Pa. Here we remained until August of 1925, an interval of eight years, when the Company retired from business and we returned to Cleveland. I had attained the height of such career as was destined for me.

The Societies I affiliated with were, Knights of Pythias, (Pearl Lodge) in 1891 later transferring to Woodland Lodge, Lorain. Keeping up this membership until 1926, when I dropped it, the Masonic Order, (Doric Lodge) Baltimore, in 1894 dimitting to Lorain Lodge about 1903 and of which I am still a member. Have also taken the Chapter or Royal Arch and the Council degrees of the same Order. Was also a member of the Lorain Business Men's Club for a number of years but withdrew from this organization when the membership converted into an Elks Club.

There is no occasion for me to record any thing further as all who would be likely to be interested are perfectly familiar with subsequent events. I have now reached the age of sixty-two which more than covers the span of the average lifetime, there is very little probability that we will be involved in any radical change from this time on except that greatest and last change of all changes. What the future may hold for us no man knows but when the time comes I shall indulge in no vain regrets and be prepared to meet whatever may be in store without any foolish fear. I have endeavored to record all the high spots of my life that my children or any one else might be likely to be interested in and hope that my children will each of them carry on the story from here and start a chain of family history that will no doubt be read with a great deal of interest when we are all but forgotten as are those of whom we would so much like to know how they lived and where they came from.

Fred G. Pfahl Aug. 31, 1932.   Hope you enjoyed the story.........Jim Pfahl.

jpfahl@yahoo.com

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