Even though Chattanooga, Ohio, is a little village, it has a dark side, with a few tragedies and misfortunes over the years. Some were accidents, others more nefarious.
1912 picture postcard of Chattanooga, Ohio.
Probably the most infamous incident is the murder of thirteen-year-old Mary Arabelle Secaur in 1872. Mary was raped and murdered on her way home from church on 23 June 1872. Her body was found the next day in a wooded area on Tama Road, a couple miles east of Chatt in Liberty Township. Three men, Alexander McCloud and brothers Absalom and Jacob Kimmel, were taken into custody and were held in the Mercer County Jail in Celina. On 8 July a mob broke into the jail, took the three men to a place near the location of the murder, and lynched Alexander McCloud and Absalom Kimmel. Jacob Kimmel was taken back to jail but was not indicted due to lack of evidence. To this day, there are still unanswered questions about Mary’s murder and the lynching.
Mary Arabelle Secaur (1859-1872) is buried in Liberty Chapel Cemetery, Liberty Township.
Chattanooga, Ohio, c1890
In 1889, Chattanooga sawmill operator Jacob J. Baker suffered a tragic, untimely death. Jacob, age 49, had moved from Shelby County to the Chatt area with his family in about 1853. Jacob married Caroline Bollenbacher in 1863 and he farmed and eventually ran a sawmill in the village of Chatt. While working in the sawmill on 6 June 1889, he stopped the big saw to make a repair or to change a part. Someone inadvertently threw the belt, starting up the saw again, and Baker’s body was cut in two by the circular saw.
It was said that Baker’s body was the first in the community to be embalmed, embalmed by Chattanooga’s undertaker John Allmandinger, and reportedly the first to be taken to the church and cemetery in the new black, horse-drawn hearse. [1]
Jacob J. Baker (1840-1889) is buried in St. Paul UCC Cemetery, Liberty Township.
Chatt Bar, before 1918. Photo courtesy of Doug Roebuck.
Mrs. Margaret Emrich was found dead in a well at her home at the corner of Schaadt Road and State Route 49 on 5 March 1906. She was found by George Koch, Otto Fickert, John Becher, Adam Kuhn, and Fred Schaadt.
Chatt’s physician, Dr. Price T. Waters, did a postmortem exam that day and an inquest followed. Dr. Waters testified that Mrs. Emrich’s lungs and stomach were void of water and that she had the appearance of having died out of water. He found no signs of a struggle, cuts, or bruises. The finding was that “the deceased came to her death by lack of evidence, the cause of death I (Price T. Waters) cannot determine.”
George Felver, the JP and Coroner, conducted a hearing at the George Koch residence. A.J. Fisher, John Becher, and Adam Bollenbacher were sworn in to examine the residence of Mrs. Emrich and to search all the rooms in the house and the cellar. Their report was submitted to the Court of Inquest and indicated that they found no money, notes, jewelry, or valuables, except for ordinary household goods.
Her death was recorded as an accident, and no one was ever tried or convicted for the incident.
However, some in the community felt that her death was not an accident. It was rumored that a man owed her money and that he and his brother may have wanted her gone, so that the note would be canceled. To back up the murder theory, no money, notes, jewelry, or other forms of securities were found in Mrs. Emrich’s home. [1]
An accident or a robbery and a murder? We will probably never know.
From her obituary: Mrs. Margaret [Ulrich] Emrich [1828-1906] was found in the well at her home one mile south of Chattanooga. The deceased was the widow of Philip Emrich and had two children [Maggie & Philip], also deceased. She is survived by two grandchildren, Mrs. William Thompson, and Mrs. Fred Schott, of Chattanooga, and a sister, Mrs. Wendell, near Chatt. A daughter-in-law is in the state hospital at Toledo. The funeral was held at the home of the deceased on Tuesday and interment was in Kessler cemetery. The deceased was born December 1826 [in Germany] and was nearly 80 years of age. [2]
2008 Google Earth street view of former Wendel’s Motor Sales.
Lastly, there was a fatal shooting in Chatt in 1958, when a migrant worker, staying in migrant housing in Chatt, was shot and killed by another migrant worker. The migrant housing was located in the rear of what was the St. Mary’s Packing Company, today the gravel parking next to the fire station.
Gregoiro Prado Valdez, 34, a Mexican field worker, was accused and indicted of second degree murder and found guilty of killing Jesse Gomez, 33, in Chatt on the evening of 26 August 1958. Gomez, also a migrant tomato picker, was a native of Puerto Rico and made his home in Saginaw, Michigan.
Valdez shot Gomez twice, after quarreling over wages, killing him almost immediately. Valdez told the jury that he shot Gomez when Gomez came at him with a knife. However, witnesses did not find a knife at the murder scene.
Guadlupe Callejos, 22, Saginaw, supplied the gun and drove Valdez out of the area after the shooting. Callejos was also indicted on second degree murder charges and appeared as a witness during the Valdez trial.
About a month after the shooting, Valdez, still a fugitive with a 26-state alert, wandered drunk into a Salvation Army mission in Aurora, Illinois. He was taken into custody by the Aurora Police to sleep it off. There he told another prisoner that he was wanted for murder in Ohio. Mercer County was notified and Mercer County Sheriff Bruce Barber left for Aurora immediately to return Valdez to Celina.
Valdez said he had intended to give himself up, as he had done after knife fights in Chicago and Oklahoma City, where he served two years for manslaughter.
Valdez appeared before Common Pleas Judge Paul Dull the day after Callejos’ arraignment. The two murder arraignments were the first in Mercer County in ten years. Dean James was the Mercer County prosecutor. An interpreter was needed for the trial and nearly 40 migrant field workers were tentatively scheduled to testify.
After a four-day trial, the jury of seven men and five women brought in a guilty verdict against Valdez. Sentencing was delayed by Common Pleas Judge Paul P. Dull, pending a possible motion for a new trial. [3]
That is some of the darker side of Chatt’s history.
[1] “Ohio’s Chattanooga: An Oil Town Of Yesterday,” The Daily Standard, Celina, Ohio, 28 Apr 1977.
[2] Margaret (Ulrich) Emrich, Kessler/Liberty Cemetery, Mercer County, Ohio, Find a Grave.com, Memorial no. 29280210.
[3] “Murder Suspect Held for Mercer Officials,” The Lima News, Lima, Ohio, 3 Oct 1958. And “Conference Room Need Cited at Mercer Jail,” The Lima News, Lima, Ohio, 6 Nov 1958. And “Valdez Convicted in August Slaying in Chattanooga Camp,” Van Wert Times-Bulletin, Van Wert, Ohio, 19 Dec 1958; NewspaperArchive.com.
6 comments
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So interesting, and a bit sad, to read about these “dark side” events in a small village.
Author
I guess every community has a history, good and bad. Thanks for writing.
Thank you for sharing this. Jacob Baker was my great-great grandfather. Lived across from the sawmill
Author
What a tragic death he had! Interesting to hear of your family connection. Thanks for writing.
You are very good at your job of finding out the long lost details of the bits & pieces from someone’s memories.
I was only 12 yrs old when my dad and I were near the murder site commotion,
(quite a sight for a boy of 12 yrs old), and I was mistaken about the sheriff’s name from the 1958 migrant murder, and your info cleared that up. Thank you.
There were actually 2 large migrant camps here in Chatt in the 40’s, 50’s and early 60’s.
Each camp had 2 long pine board buildings, (shaped like today’s motels), divided off into 8X10′ rooms with cots for sleeping on for their families to stay in while here to pick tomatoes. They got their water from a hand pump well on the lot, between the long buildings, and used outhouses.
One camp was on the east side of SR 49, where the gravel parking lot is beside the Chatt’s fire station is now. The other camp was located on the north end of Chatt, on the south side of Strable Rd, on the west side of SR 49, behind homes and business.
When the migrant camps went out of business, Mercer Landmark bought the migrant buildings by what is now the fire station, and converted them to hold large bins to store different kinds of dry fertilizer to sell to the area farmers.
Then, when Landmark started handling the dangerous Anhydrous Ammonia, they needed to follow safety restrictions of keeping some distance from public areas… so Landmark bought the 2nd migrant camp area on Strable Rd., and tore down the migrant buildings to build their Anhydrous business.
My dad, Bob LaBrun helped to tear down the wooden migrant bldgs, and we used the wood to build a new cooler room for our business, that was Chatt Valley Foods.
It’s surprisingly interesting, how many times a property can change owners and businesses! From a clay tile and brick factory, (where the pond is now on Strable), once was also a stockyard, to farm fields for crops, to migrant housing, and then the fertilizer business.
Author
Thanks for the addition information, Don. As always, very interesting and good to know more about the history of Chatt. Thanks for writing!