James Henry Brewster Meets the Dalton Gang

James Henry Brewster (1841-1916) 1913 photo

Occasionally I am asked if there are any famous ancestors in my family tree. I always have to think about that question. I have searched for an ancestor that did something remarkably noteworthy, but I haven’t come up with much. Most of my ancestors were just common folk, doing ordinary jobs and the necessary chores from day to day.

I can’t trace my ancestry back to Charlemagne. I have not discovered that I descend from any US presidents or any famous war generals. There are no great inventors, famous authors or actors in past generations of my family.

Sometimes I get so desperate for information about some of my ancestors that I think I would welcome a notorious ancestor into the family tree. At least there would be a paper trail if an ancestor was an outlaw or a fugitive. No such luck there, either.  My ancestors were all God-fearing, law-abiding citizens. However, sometimes the good guys meet up with the bad guys.

I have one collateral ancestor that was in the wrong place at the wrong time and he did meet up with some very bad guys. He is the one person I usually think about when asked about a famous ancestor in my family tree.

James Henry Brewster is not in my direct ancestry line. He was my great-great-granduncle, the older brother of my great-great-grandfather, Daniel Brewster.

The Brewsters were originally from Pennsylvania. James Henry lived in Tuscarawas County, Ohio, from about 1850-1884, when he and his family moved to Cherryvale, Kansas. He was a very successful stone mason and contractor there. He built the Montgomery County, Kansas, courthouse in about 1886, as well as several other city buildings. Some of his sons continued the family construction business as the Brewster Brothers. James Henry and his brother Daniel both served in the Civil War, both in Company E, 80th OVI.

James Henry Brewster has gone down in history as one of the men standing in line in the First National Bank in Coffeyville, Kansas, when the Dalton Gang robbed the bank and afterward had their last shoot-out.

The Dalton Gang had a good start on a life of crime. They stole a herd of cattle and robbed several trains between 1890 and 1892. A couple members of the gang had escaped from jail and a reward was offered for their capture.

On Wednesday morning, 5 October 1892, five members of the Dalton Gang rode into Coffeyville, Kansas. They wore disguises and planned to rob two banks at the same time. Once in town the Daltons were recognized by several townspeople. The word was spread and many citizens armed themselves with their own guns and with weapons from nearby hardware stores. The citizens were ready and waiting for the gang members as they came out of the banks.

Gang members Gratton Dalton, Bill Powers, and Dick Broadwell robbed the C.M. Condon & Co. Bank. Bob and Emmett Dalton robbed the First National Bank across the street. Bob Dalton was the leader of the Dalton Gang and that morning they took nearly $25,000 from the two banks.

As they emerged from the banks the robbers were fired upon by the citizens and law officers.  In the end, eight men died and four men were wounded. Gratton and Bob Dalton, Bill Power and Dick Broadwell were killed. Emmett Dalton was severely wounded. Four of Coffeyville’s defenders were also killed: Marshall C.T. Connelly, Lucious Baldwin, George Cubine, and Charles Brown. Three other citizens were wounded.

Here is how the Montgomery County History describes the event:…the First National across the street. Bob Dalton and Emmet entered here about the same time the other three men went into Condon’s. They covered the cashier, Thomas G. Ayers, and the teller, W. H. Shepard, with their guns and ordered everyone present to hold up his hands. The men in the bank in front of the counter at the time were J. H. Brewster, the well known contractor, who built the county court house, A. W. Knotts, who was afterward deputy sheriff, and C. L. Hollingsworth….  This account goes on to give a detailed description of the shootout that occurred that day. (source: History of Montgomery County, Kansas, Duncan, 1903:35)

That is the story of my semi-famous collateral ancestor. James Henry Brewster was a very successful contractor who constructed buildings that are still used today and was a man who survived the last shootout of the Dalton Gang.

For more information about the Dalton Gang you can view the Dalton Defenders Museum website and The Dalton Gang’s Last Raid, 1892.

 

Tombstone Tuesday–Curtis R. Schumm

Curtis R. Schumm tombstone, Zion Lutheran Cemetery, Schumm, Ohio.

This is the tombstone of Curtis R. Schumm, located in row 3 of Zion Lutheran Cemetery, Schumm, Van Wert County, Ohio. The tombstone is inscribed SCHUMM, Curtis R., son of L. & S. Schumm died Nov 15, 1901 aged 1y, 1m, 15d.

Curtis Richard Schumm was born 30 September 1900, the son of Louis J. and Sarah (Breuninger) Schumm. Curtis was baptized 14 October Oct 1900 at Zion Lutheran, Schumm.  The sponsors at his baptism were Victor Schumm and Richard Stamm. (source: records of Zion Lutheran, Schumm, Book III:68)

There is no record of Curtis’ death or burial in the church records of Zion Lutheran Church, Schumm. Their church records seem to be very complete and I was surprised that his death and burial were not recorded.

There is a record of his death in the Van Wert County Probate Court. According to their records Curtis Schumm died 14 Nov 1901 of a bowel inflammation.  Their records state that he was 1 year, 2 months and 14 days old. He was born, lived and died in Willshire. (source: Van Wert County Death Book #2, 1893-1904:199)

Louis and Sarah had two other children, Frieda (1893-1945) and Cornelius L. (1896-1986). Curtis was my first and second granduncle.

 

Black Creek’s Black Gold

A pumpjack in Indiana, about 4 miles from Chattanooga (2011)

Black gold, devil’s tar, earth oil, flowing gold, fossil oil, rock oil–these were all terms for what we now call petroleum or crude oil that were used in the early part of the 20th century.  Ohio led the nation in oil production for several years around the turn of the century and Mercer County helped make that possible. There is oil beneath the ground in Black Creek Township, in the surrounding Chattanooga area and in neighboring Indiana. In fact, my great-grandfather, Jacob Miller, had seven working oil wells on his Black Creek Township farm in the early 1900s.

Ohio has a rich history of oil and gas production that began over 150 years ago. The first discovery of oil from a drilled well was in Ohio in 1814, when a saltwater well driller discovered oil at a depth of 475 feet in Noble County. The first well drilled in the state was in Trumbull County in late 1859.

Oil and gas were discovered in Findlay, in northwestern Ohio, in 1884. It was found in Trenton Limestone at a depth of 1092 feet. That started a 20-year oil and gas boom. The Lima-Indiana oil and gas fields extend in an arc across Lucas, Wood, Hancock, Allen and Van Wert Counties and into northeastern Indiana. In 1896, 6,456 wells were drilled in Ohio and more than 23 million barrels of oil were produced, making Ohio the leading oil producing state in the nation from 1895-1903. John D. Rockefeller became involved in the oil business at this time through ownership of oil and gas reserves.

Black Creek oil fields, Ohio Department of Natural Resources

Oil and gas were produced from more than 30 individual geologic formations, primarily of limestone, dolomite, shale, and sandstone. Depths range from 50 feet to as deep as 9,100 feet. Oil and gas are generally believed to have formed through geochemical alteration of decayed organic remains of plant life and marine organisms that have been deeply buried and subjected to high temperatures and pressures.

Wells could be shot as soon as they were drilled. The method of “shooting” a well began by lowering a torpedo (a long cylinder) into the well and very carefully filling it with liquid nitroglycerin. Water was poured into the well to keep the explosion force downward and outward. To detonate the nitroglycerin a squib with a stick of dynamite or something called a “go-devil” (a heavy piece of metal shaped like a cross) was dropped into the well and exploded the nitroglycerin on impact. The go-devil got its name because the person wanted to “go like the devil” once it was dropped in the well.

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Koch well, north of Chattanooga, Ohio. Ohio Oil Company.

A device called a pumpjack brought the oil up from below the ground. On the Miller farm all the pumpjacks were driven by a powerhouse which was located on the west part of the farm. The powerhouse consisted of a large iron turntable with rod-lines that ran to and powered the wells. My dad and my uncles talk about riding back and forth on the turntable when they were kids. The oil from the wells was stored in several large oil tanks at the powerhouse. From there the oil drained into a pipe that ran eastward under the ground and drained into another pipe at State Route 49. The oil went through this pipeline and eventually ended up in Lima.

The pumpjacks on the Miller farm were taken down before I was born, but I remember seeing a pumpjack on the Caffee farm when I was a child. The Caffee farm was just west of the Miller farm and their last pumpjack was taken down about 1964. There is still a pumpjack and several large oil containers across the state line in Indiana, about 4 miles southwest of the farm. I took the above photo of that pumpjack a few days ago. It was not running at the time.

My dad has the geological surveys and logs of the Miller oil wells. Below are the results of the drilling by the Ohio Oil Company:
Well #1: Started 11 April 1901, completed 27 April 1901; depth of 1196 feet; produced 40 barrels/first 24 hours.
Well #2: Started 23 July 1901, completed 5 August 1901; depth 1188 feet; 23 barrels/first 24 hrs.
Well #3: Started 13 Sep 1901, completed 1 Oct 1901; depth 1196 feet; 87 barrels/first 24 hrs.
Well #4: Started 21 Oct 1901, completed 16 Nov 1901; depth 1173 feet; production not given.
Well #5: Started 22 Nov 1901, completed 7 Dec 1901; depth 1202 feet; 30 barrels/ first 24 hrs, 20/second 24 hrs.
Well #6: Started 11 Aug 1902, completed 28 Aug 1902; depth 1234 feet; 40 barrels/first 24 hrs.
Well #7: Started 16 June 1903, completed 26 June 1903; depth 1145 feet; 30 barrels/first 24 hrs, 20/second 24 hrs.

Location of Jacob Miller oil wells on 80 acre Black Creek farm. Thanks to my dad for drawing this map.

The torpedoes used to shoot the Miller wells contained from 160-200 quarts of nitroglycerin. That really sounds like a lot of explosives! What a dangerous job that would be to bring in and detonate that amount of explosives. My dad said they brought the nitroglycerin in by wagon and it was hung from the top frame of the wagon. This method worked like a shock absorber so the ride would not be so rough and set off the explosives.

May dad has some papers that accompanied oil checks sent to Jacob Miller. They were from Oil City, Pennsylvania, and it is interesting to note the price of oil in the early 1900s. On 30 October 1908 Jacob received a check for $22.03 for 22.25 barrels of oil at $.99/barrel. On 16 Aug 1909 Jacob received a check for $12.12 for 14.96 barrels of oil at $.81/barrel. The oil wells on Jacob Miller’s farm produced oil until some time in the 1940s. Well #4 was the last working well on the farm.

I grew up on what used to be called Wildcat Corner. It was once the location of Wildcat School, a one-room school house a mile north of Chattanooga. The school was used in the early part of the 1900s. I have heard that the school got its name from the many oil wildcatters in the area at that time. My aunt Ruth went to Wildcat School.

Wildcatters from the Ohio Oil Co., a mile north of Chattanooga, Ohio.

Some oil well terms as defined by the Oil & Gas Dictionary of Historical Terminology:
Gusher
: Aka “flowing well”, named because natural gas under the oil was released when the exploring drill struck the pocket. The gas rushed to the surface, carrying the petroleum ahead of it, causing it to flow spontaneously, often throwing it high in the air over the derrick and into the sky.
Shooter
: One who shoots oil wells with nitroglycerin to loosen or shatter the sand and to increase the flow of an oil well.
Go-Devil
: A device used to explode the nitroglycerin in shooting an oil well, so called because after dropping the Go-Devil you were to “go like the Devil.”
Dead-in-a-Hurry
: A worker who transports nitroglycerin. The name comes from the dangerous nature of the occupation. Many men lost their lives in this profession, and because of the danger were not allowed to carry life insurance, thus leaving their families in dire straits.
Pumpjack
: aka nodding donkey, pumping unit, horsehead pump, beam pump, sucker rod pump (SRP), grasshopper pump, thirsty bird, jack pump, is the overground drive for a reciprocating piston pump in an oil well. It is used to mechanically lift liquid out of the well if there is not enough bottom hole pressure for the liquid to flow all the way to the surface.
Derrick: A lifting device composed of one tower or guyed mast.
Wildcatter
: One who drills for oil in unproven territory in the hopes of striking it rich.

Ohio remains a leading producer of oil and gas, ranking in the top half of all oil producing states in the nation. Commercial quantities of oil and gas have been found in 76 of Ohio’s 88 counties. More than 275,000 productive oil and gas wells have been drilled in Ohio and 64,378 are still in operation, most in the eastern third of the state. Most of Ohio’s production wells are referred to as “stripper” wells, which means that they produce less than 10 barrels of oil per day. Ohio ranks 4th nationally behind Texas, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania in the number of wells drilled. In 2010 Ohio wells produced more than 4.78 million barrels of oil and more than 78 billion cubic feet of natural gas. Market value for oil and gas production totaled nearly $718 million dollars.

Sources of information:

Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Geological Survey

Ohio Department of Natural Resources Interactive gas and oil map 

ODNR Division of Mineral Resources Management—Oil and Gas

Oil & Gas Dictionary of Historical Terminology   

Ohio Oil and Gas Association, Oil Boom History

History of the Petroleum Industry in the US: Wikipedia 

Indiana Gas Boom: Wikipedia

 

 

Tombstone Tuesday–Maria M. Hofmann

Tombstone of Maria M (Schinnerer) Hofmann, Evangelical Protestant Cemetery, Van Wert County, Ohio.

This is the tombstone of Maria M Hofmann. The stone is inscribed HOFMANN, Maria M., wife of Christian Hofmann, 1857-1934, John 5-24 [text]. The tombstone is located in row 2 of the Evangelical Protestant Cemetery, Harrison Township, Van Wert County, Ohio.

Maria Magdalena Schinnerer was the sixth child of Frederick Schinnerer and his first wife, Margaretha “Mary” Deier. Maria was born 16 November 1857 in Dublin Township, Mercer County, Ohio. She was baptized at home three days after her birth. The sponsors at her baptism were Mrs. Maria Schumm and Mrs. Magdalena Schumm. (source: records of Zion Lutheran, Schumm, Book I:56)

Maria married Christian Hofmann on 16 November 1879 at Zion Lutheran Church, Schumm, Ohio. (source: Van Wert County Marriage Book 5:199)

Maria was enumerated as Magdelena Hoffman in the 1900 US census, Monroe, Allen County, Indiana, with husband Christian and their eight children. She was enumerated as Marie M Hofmann in the 1910, 1920 and 1930 US censuses in Pleasant Township, Van Wert County, Ohio. According to the 1910 US census Maria had 9 children and they were all living. In 1920 she was a widow, still living in Pleasant Township with her children Adolph C, Otto J, Herman, August R, and Pauline. Marie was living with children Otto J and Paulina A in Pleasant Township in 1930.

I was able to determine the names of Maria and Christian’s children as well as estimate their birth dates and places of birth by using the 1900 and 1910 censuses:  Julia A (Jun 1881), Fredrick J (Aug 1883), Amelia L (1884), Henry C (Nov 1886), Otto J (Nov 1889) Adolph C (Sep 1891), Herman J (Apr 1893), August R (Aug 1897), and Pauline AC (c1905). Their first eight children were born in Indiana and Pauline was born in Ohio.

Evangelical Protestant Cemetery, Harrison Township, Van Wert County, Ohio

Maria’s husband, Christian Hofmann, (1854-1914)  is buried in row 5 of the Evangelical Protestant Cemetery.

Schumm Parochial School

Zion Lutheran Parochial School, Schumm, Ohio (brick building built in 1899)

It is almost time for school to start again and that made me think about school photos. School photos are wonderful snapshots of the past. I have access to some old school photos and will share them in some blogs. This blog features the Schumm Parochial School east of Willshire, in Van Wert County, Ohio. Most of these photos are from my mom.

The congregation of Zion Lutheran Church, Schumm, Ohio, was established in 1846 and the first parochial school was started there in the fall of the same year. For a number of years the log church also served as a school room. A frame school was built in 1857 and a brick school was erected in 1899.

Below is a 1907 photo of the Schumm Parochial School. I believe that my grandfather, Cornelius Schumm, is in the back row, to the pastor’s immediate right. The pastor was most likely W. Giese, who served Zion from 1905-1908. I cannot identify anyone else in the photo, although my grandmother, Hilda Scaer, was probably somewhere in the photo, too.

Schumm Parochial School, 1907

[note: The names of those in the photos below are listed from left to right. ]

 

Zion Lutheran Parochial School, Schumm, 1936:

Zion Lutheran Parochial School, Schumm, 1936

Front row: Vera Handweck, Louis Allmandinger, Elmer Schumm, Roman Schumm, Henrietta Moeller
Middle row:
Virginia Schumm, Hildegard Schumm, Betty Baker, Amy Schumm
Back row:
Pastor Alfred Moeller, Amos & Milton Schumm, Henry Dietrich, Richard Schumm, Herb Hoffmann, Lola Schumm, Ellen & Helen Schumm, Elmer Schumm.

 

Zion Lutheran Parochial School, Schumm, 1938:

Schumm Parochial School Hot Dog Roast, 1938

Front row: Jr Roehm, [?], Amy Schumm, [?], Henrietta Moeller, [?], William Allmandinger, Virginia Schumm
Back row:
Florence Schumm, Ellen Schumm, Elmer Schumm, Louis Allmandinger, Hildegard Schumm, Lois Schumm, Helen Schumm, Betty Baker, Roman Schumm.

 

Zion Lutheran Parochial School, Schumm, 1939:
[This photo was published in the most recent history and genealogy of the John George Schumm family. However, none of the children in the photo below were identified in that book. The 2010 Schumm history and genealogy was distributed at last year’s Schumm reunion. Copies of this book are still available. Contact me if you are interested in obtaining a copy of the book.]

Zion Lutheran Parochial School, Schumm, 1939

Front row: Elmer Schumm, William “Bill” Baker, ___ Scare, Ernie Roehm, William Allmandinger, Emmanuel Roehm, Edgar Allmandinger, Frederick Schumm, Esther Schumm
Middle row
: Hildegard Schumm, Florence Schumm, ___ Scare, Paul “Jr” Roehm, Ella Roehm, Amy Schumm, Henrietta Moeller, Phyllis Gunsett
Back row
: Pastor Alfred Moeller, Betty Baker, Lois Schumm, Helen Schumm, Ellen Schumm, Louis Allmandinger, Roman Schumm, Elmer Schumm.

The Schumm Parochial School existed  for over 100 years. Zion Lutheran, Schumm’s 100th Anniversary booklet says that nineteen children were enrolled in that first class in 1846. I have a copy of the old Schumm church records and among the records is a list of twenty school children. This list of children is not dated, but it is a very early enrollment list. The list also gives the birth dates of the children:

Boys:
Joseph Billmann, born 2 Oct 1833
Georg Schueler, b. 1 May 1834
Heinrich Billmann, b. 26 Dec 1837
Friedrich Schumm, b. 12 Jun 1839
Daniel Schumm, b. 2 Mar 1840
Friedrich Billmann, b. 16 Feb 1840
Wilhelm Schumm, b. 16 Sep 1840
Ludwig Schumm, b. 25 Nov 1840
Samuel Leininger, b. 27 May 1838

Girls:
Maria Catharine Dietrich, b. 6 Apr 1832
Isabella Billmann, b. 4 Oct 1835
Elisabeth Pflueger, b. 28 Jul 1835
Magdalena Schueler, b. 3 Nov 1835
Catharine Stoker [?], b. 11 Jul 1836
Rosina Schueler, b. 17 Aug 1837
Caroline Scheck [?], b. 15 Sep 1837
Haeberle, Rachel [?] b. 16 Oct 1835
Maria Schueler, b. 17 Feb 1840
Susanna Haeberle, b. 10 Sep 1841
Catharine Roth, b. 16 Jul 1832