Early Akron
Home Remedies, Pioneer Philosophy, 1885 Letter to John Gast, Spooning,
Opera House, Sleigh Rides, Games, Gast and Bitters Families
By Marie Gast Talbot
From Fulton County Folks, Volume 1
Fulton County, Indiana Historical Society
Among the early white settlers of the community of Newark, renamed Akron in 1856 , were many German families. One such was Andrew Gast, born in Bavaria in 1815, and his wife Marie Halbeinsen, born in Berne, Switzerland, in 1826. Mr. Gast, a shoemaker by trade, had left Germany about 1845-46 after serving six years in the Prussian army and under threat of being drafted into another six years of service. (Germany had an unsuccessful revolution in 1848.) Like many Western Europeans suffering from oppressive conditions in that period of history, he was eager to own his own plot of land. From early boyhood he had herded sheep in his native country. It took six weeks by sailing vessel to reach the new country and smallpox which broke out aboard ship took its toll on the journey. The ship’s captain pressed him into service as a male nurse since he seemed fortunately immune to the disease. History documents that as many as 350 out of 400 desperate immigrants perished on similar trips, the ships being over-crowded for profit to their owners and little better than those that transported slaves from Africa. Mrs. Gast, by then was an orphan, was accompanied across by an uncle later. The two families were acquainted and the couple met and married in New York City.
With two children, the young family moved to Freemont, Ohio, but in 1853 Mr. Gast decided to move farther west. So walked along the Wabash Canal, which had been built with Irish immigrant labor parallel to the Wabash River, until he found an old family friend, Henry Hoffman, also from Bavaria, and other German families living in Akron. He returned later for his family whom he transported partly by canal from Ft. Wayne to Wabash, then by oxen and wagon furnished by Mr. Hoffman. They stayed at the Inn located just west of the present business district on the north side of the street where the bank parking lot is now located. This was operated by George McCloud, later by Jim Kuhn and his wife who had migrated from Pennsylvania.
The family at first lived in a log cabin a mile south of Akron, later bought 20 acres of uncleared land from Daniel Strong and moved into town in a house near present Maple Street, erecting a separate building east of their home for the shoe shop. Children’s shoes were made to last three years, a size too large the first year, to fit the second, and frequently too small by the third. There Mr. Gast worked nights, accompanying his work by singing the many arias and native Bavarian songs he had sung from gast-hous (guest-houses or inns) as he wandered accompanying himself with a stringed instrument during the winter season in his native land as a young man. Their oldest daughters were born in New York City, Wilhelmina Gast Sayger, born 1847, was the mother of Dessa Sayger Fultz, honored recently at age 86 at the 1972 Old Grads Reunion for her many valued years of service to the Akron community as a public school teacher and administrator. The second daughter was Frederica Gast Bright, born 1848. All the children, of whom nine reached maturity, attended school in a log cabin along with Indian children about three months of the year and were taught by Mrs. Samuel Terry. These older girls spoke only German so had some problems adjusting. There was a son, Will, then twins, Andrew Almondo and Mary Helen, born 1855. “Mondo”, or “Double A” as he later became known, spent his entire life to age 101 in Akron, making many contributions to the town’s development. Rudolph, born 1858, became a locally well-known orchardist living two and one half miles north of town. These twins and their younger brother were taken by their mother in a spring wagon in 1860 to Fremont, Ohio, where the maternal relatives lived, to be baptized in the Catholic faith; but since no Catholic order existed in the vicinity near Akron then, the family later joined the Winebrennarians, a philosophy popular at that time in the Midwest.
The parents were multi-lingual, speaking both French and Italian besides German, and used to frustrate their German-speaking children by conversing in French on occasion. Mrs. Gast had been educated in France, her family having substituted her in girlhood for the daughter of a matching French family for a time while she learned French, tailoring and formal French gardening which skill she put to use in Akron., She had brought along tulip bulbs from Europe, a strain of which Whit Gast, a grandson who made a reputation in the 1940’s with his tulip gardens along state road 14 west of town, still had a yellow and red striped variety. Mrs. Gast also introduced the first Christmas tree to Akron, decorating it for the town’s children. She was a tall, red-haired woman with determination and energy and had the reputation for being an organizer and manager.
Andrew Gast, a mild man, subscribed to German papers which he read to compatriots in the village grocery store where there was much talk of the “common man”, this apparently growing out of interest in the still popular philosophy expressed in Tom Paine’s “rights of Man”. He became an ardent Democrat of the progressive Northern wing of the party. His son, Mondo, early took up the cause and later recounted a story of his mother calling the older children into the house when he was age nine (in 1864) to tell them, “Now, children, we are no longer Democrats but Unionists as we are going to vote for Mr. Lincoln”. This threw youthful Mondo into consternation, particularly since he had just finished “Blacking every Republican Boy’s eyes in town”. Lincoln was running for re-election in 1864 on a coalition ticket, having left his party to form the Union Party in an effort to weld together the split nation as the Civil War drew to a close. Mondo remembered the torchlight parades with men riding on wagon beds splitting rails to indicate their candidate. An erected hickory pole “was also used to signify the party of Andrew Jackson known as “old Hickory” because of his stubbornness and tough role in the Indiana wars of the southwest.
Social life was all locally inspired in the 1870’s and ‘80’s and included hayrides in spring wagons in the crisp fall after the harvest season around Halloween time. These wagons were manufactured by the Studebaker Brothers in South Bend whose trade name was enscrolled on the side. One member of that family, Fred lived and reared a family of four girls in Akron. Following these rides were parties where apple cider and cakes were served and frequently girls and boys vied with one another “bobbing” for apples. This was done by trying to retrieve a floating apple in a tub of water with the teeth alone, the point being that one tried to accomplish this without getting wet. This provided an opportunity for “horse play” when the boys frequently ‘dunked’ girls’ heads under water, anticipation provided a sort of fearful delight and made for much merriment.
At the first heavy snowfall, wagon wheels were exchanged for hand carved wooden runners and young and old went for sleigh-rides, their feet warmed by hot bricks or stones. Horses collars and harness were decorated with round, musical sleigh bells whose enchanting sounds carried with such clarity over the quiet snow. There were taffy pulls, parties usually of young people, who amused themselves by a boy and girl teaming to “pull” ropes of the elastic candy until it reached the stage of converting to sugar. Sometimes uninvited jealous boys stole the candy as it cooled on the windowsill preparatory to pulling. This caused village speculation for some days afterwards, and on at least one occasion, when all swore innocence, a dog was found with a suspiciously stiff tail and sore rear. There were box “socials” where young and old commingled, the womenfolk bringing highly decorated boxes of enticing goodies, which were auctioned off to the highest male bidder. The game was that the boy or man buying the box was obligated to share dinner with the girl or woman whose name was in the box. One time a generous citizen, who might have had previous information, purchased several such boxes belonging to young girls, as a result of which his wife had to be carried home with a fake heart attack.
There were many log-burnings as men joined to clear the land for crops, pastures were commonly used. Women spun home grown flax and wool and weaving was done locally by some families.
The first rag rug was brought to Akron from Pennsylvania by Catherine Kuhn Bitters, born 1832, wife of William Bitters, born 1825, who established Akron’s first brick mill on clay land east of Akron. The Bitters family, consisting of five brothers, Major, John, Lemuel, William and Tully, had migrated from Northampton County, Pennsylvania possibly around 1850. The father of these five men, John Bitters, born1784, is buried in Akron’s “Old Cemetery” His wife was Sarah Jane Major, born 1802, of Scotch-Welsh extraction. He was the son of Arnold Biter (thought to have been a German accented mispronunciation of “Peter”) who was a Hessian soldier hired by the British to fight in the American Revolutionary War. This army he quickly deserted, after gaining passage to the North American continent, to join the rebellious Continental Army under General George Washington. Later he sent for his family and became a citizen of the new country. The youngest son, Tully and his nephew, Albert Bitters, were for many years editors of two Rochester newspapers in the early 1900’s, one liberal, one conservative. The earlier John Bitters had six brothers, tall, robust men, all of whom died of “lung fever”, said to have been caused by the swampy land in northern Indiana in the early 1800’s.
The locality of Akron was apparently part of the great Kankakee Swamp which extended over the breadth of the northern end of the state and accounts for the many lakes here and in southern Michigan. East of Akron on the south side of the main east-west road was a large, swampy lake called Summit Lake. After some drainage, this became three lakes which were shallow but still being fished in the early 1900’s. On the north side of the main road one and a half miles east of town was one of the numerous “sink-holes”. A story persisted into the 1900’s of a man with a wagon and team of horses who were lost while crossing the dangerous quagmire. By 1910 the north-south road was routed two directions around the erie place. Lamatrack trees crowded in and around such spots and the sound of wind whinnying in the slender branches of those lacey trees added to the chilling mystery of the spot. Children were told the legend that this sound came from the doomed horses.
Also in the swamps there grew tall huckleberry bushes. Although at first communally owned and used, later Siegel Strong who had obtained a deed to that property allowed families of children, usually accompanied by an adult, to harvest this early fall crop. One had to wear hip boots to pick these native, very flavorful small berries and beware of rattlesnakes that sometimes sunned themselves on the tops of the bushes.
In the forests surrounding the settlement were graceful beechnut trees, also black walnut, hickory nut and butternut trees from which all who wanted freely gathered nuts each fall after the first frost. There were wild hazelnut bushes in the corners of the rail fences and paw paw fruit with its peculiar and delicate sweetness which developed only after the first heavy frost had changed its greenish starch to sugar. Persimmons also needed heavy frost to develop their flavor, and many an unsuspecting child was gulled by a teasing older brother into tasting the unripened fruit which puckered the mouth painfully. There were wild cherry trees which produced a small, black, rather bitter-tasting fruit, and even some “wild” apples since Akron was practically on the route of Johnny Appleseed. Spring beauties, yellow deer’s tongue, Sweet Williams, Jack-in-the-pulpit, and boys and girls or Dutchman’s breeches carpeted the forest floors in the early spring. Mushrooms of the sponge variety were a delicacy much sought after shortly after the snows melted and tender dandelion “greens” were harvested with fervor.
In the mid-1800’s, there were few doctors to minister to the settlers’ health needs. Babies were delivered at home with the aid of kind neighbors and female relatives. Many families kept a “Doctor’s Book” as reference: this explained symptoms of childhood diseases, etc, and suggested treatment. One home treatment has been proved efficacious by a leading medical school in very recent years: that was the placing of a shallow dish of sliced onions with sugar “to draw the juice” at the head of a bed patient with a head cold. The patient was sometimes made to drink the accumulated juice the next morning. Wise housewives continued the continental folk-habit, no doubt enlightened by helpful Indiana neighbors, of going into the woods early each fall to gather herbs and berries for treating the winter’s ills. Among these were the small, trailing wintergreen vines with their red berries and shiny evergreen leaves that one had to hunt for under the fallen maple an oak leaves. Some of these could still be found in the early 1900’s in “Whittenberger’s Woods” bordering the north edge of town. Also there were sassafras roots to be dug from which to obtain bark for tea.
Small game was plentiful in the woods, squirrel being popular as both meat and sport for young lads in the 1860’s an ‘70”s just learning to handle a rifle. Traps were set in the cornfields for rabbits and there was considerable fishing as men thought nothing of taking off a day’s work for this type of food gathering. Each fall one watched eagerly or the firs sight of the V-shaped flock of wild geese that awakened one with their distinguishing honking in the early dawn as they settled on Town Lake or on Rock Lake east of town during the migrating periods. Families often had wild goose for Thanksgiving dinner. Up into the 1900’s, one Akron man professed his fondness for snake meat, insisting on its good flavor and nutritious value. There were prairie chickens, which could still be seen occasionally around Kewana in the 1930’s. Quail breast with gravy on toast was a favorite breakfast dish in the fall after the first light snow had fallen when bevies of these birds could more easily be tracked.
Wheat as well as corn and sometimes buckwheat was carried to be ground into meal at mills where there was a water-driven wheel for power. One of the last survivors of these used by Akron folk was at Palestine, another at Roann. There was also sorghum molasses made by grinding and pressing the juicy stalks and reducing the liquor to syrup form. Maple syrup was made in large vats located in the heart of the woods near the source and children delighted in snitching a taste of the mildly sweet sap from the wooden buckets that hung from pegs about here feet from the ground. A hand-carved wooden spout was inserted into a notch cut into the tree to the proper depth in the early spring when the sap began to run. Frank Day northeast of Akron still operated such a vat on his farm around 1910. Neighbors helped to keep constant watch over a steadily burning wood fire under the shallow vats and assisted with the constant stirring to keep the sugary liquid from burning.
Refined white sugar was unknown to Akron children of the 1860’s according to Mondo Gast who told of refusing to accept such lump offered him by a priest at his baptismal ceremony in Ohio in 1860 when he was age five. He declared that no old priest was going to entice him to put a lump of SALT in his mouth!
Of the William Bitters- Catharine Kuhn family there were eight children, most of whom spent their lives around Akron and Rochester. Franklin Pearce Bitters, born 1852, graduated from Valparaiso University and later studied medicine in Louisville, Kentucky, to become a doctor. He used to conduct a “singing school” in Akron. Brother Calvin, born in 1855, also graduated from Valparaiso and practiced law many years in Rochester. A daughter, Flora Etta, born 1863, married Mondo Gast and like her husband also lived to be 101 in Akron. She graduated from Rochester College, then a two year teacher training school in the county seat, and taught country school east and north of Akron, wading hip-deep snow to get to the eight grade one-room schoolhouse and boarding for six weeks stretches in various homes of students as payment for her work. Cost of the term was then $1.00. Money was scarce in the 1880’s and one family, the Eshelman’s, made a hickory rocking chair in payment of their children’s tuition. She recounted her family’s baking bread in an outdoor oven using long-handled wooden paddles to place and retrieve the loaves from the hot stones. Families had their “smoke-houses’ where hams and bacon were cured. Dwelling houses were then built with a “summer house” joined to the main house by a roofed passageway where milk and butter were kept cool in summer and canned fruit as well as root vegetables and tree fruit were stored in winter. Sometimes artificial earthen “caves” were built near the house. These were made of heaped up earth and used for storing winter supplies of fruit and vegetables.
Mrs. Gast told her children that no little girl sat down at age four onward with empty hands, but always with work such as knitting since all socks and mittens were hand knitted; or they were set to braiding cord for candlewicks, the candles being made out of sheep’s tallow. Quilting of bed coverings was common to most families as a means of using up scraps and work was often done by candlelight. The four Bitters boys and four girls, all at separate tasks in and around the house, often sang “parts” to the same song as they worked. In fact, Akron was from its beginning a music-loving town.
An old resident now living in Salem, Oregon, Mrs. Myrtle Burns Hoover, now age 89, descendant of Andrew and Matilda Wagner Curtis who lived on the southwest corner of the main intersection of town in a large brick house, supplied us with many historical details, Mrs. Hoover has the bright hazel eyes of a young woman, the tinkling laugh of a girl, a clear and true-toned singing voice, and fortunately for us, a clear memory of Akron’s early history. In church, everyone in the early days sang “parts” all over the church in an unself-conscious and serious manner. At any time of the day or night, she said, one could hear music pouring out of the Andrew and Sara Strong home west of the center of town on the north side of the street. The Strongs were an unusually talented family, one son, Friendly, succeeding in having some of his paintings hung in London galleries. Others were musicians. The youngest, Everett, had a grocery and dry goods store. He was a jolly fellow and could always be heard on Thursday night band concerts leading with his melodious trumpet and embroidering the tune. His sister, “Debbie” (Deborah), was for years Akron’s outstanding piano teacher. Notable Strong descendents were the children of another sister, “Hattie” Strong Kistler; Charles, Kathryn and Margaret. Kathryn, a beautiful and delightful red-haired pianist and organist, married Dr. Evan Whallon. Their son, Evan Whallon Jr., is now conductor of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra in Columbus, Ohio.
Mrs. Hoover told us that in the 1880’s between the Curtis residence and the site of Leninger’s store were six or eight huge pine trees not native to this locality, whose origins no one seemed to know. Under these trees were benches where citizens gathered to relax and chat on hot summer days. On the northeast corner was Hoover’s Furniture store with a hitching rack on the west side of the building along the north-south road. Here horses and their various vehicles stood in the dist or mud while their masters shopped or visited with friends. Strong’s dry goods and later grocery store was next door east. On the southeast corner was a restaurant and east of that (Lon) Bright and Richter’s drug store. Next to that a barber shop where Nick Waechter later established his trade, and beyond that the Levi Duke imposing brick residence formerly owned by the Utter family. All were joined by boardwalks which clattered as one walked since there were occasional loose or missing boards.
On the northwest corner was Nabor Cook’s grocery and the town pump with its single tin cup. It was on this corner that the Pottowatomi Indians (possibly Miamis also) used to gather monthly to collect their “government money” (probably payment for their lands being taken over by the expanding white settlers). Today a plaque attached to the wall of the bank commemorating the crossing of two great Indian trails reads: “Placed by Manitou Chapter No. 840. This tablet marks the crossing of the Indian trails of the Pottawatams, Black Hawk and Miami Tribes from White Pigeon, Michigan, to the Indian Reservation in Miami County, and from Fort Wayne to Winamac, thence to South Bend and Michigan City. Original White Colony made settlement on July 4, 1836.”
Another plaque below this one reads: “Attested 1918 by Daniel Whittenberger, sole survivor of Original Colony.”
Mrs. Hoover’s maternal grandfather, Eldred Blaine (whose wife was Frances Pentz) used to talk with these Indians, learned their language, but never, as far as is known repeated whatever they may have told him of how they felt about losing their ancestral lands and being pushed on further west.
“Pa” Blaine, as the grandchildren affectionately called him, a tall, robust man, was for many years the village blacksmith. His shop was west of the center of town on the south side. Some old residents still remember the wheeze of the hand pumped bellows, the clang of the hammer on the anvil, the sizzle of the hot, hand-shaped iron horseshoe begin plunged into water, and the careful nailing on of the shoe with the horses foot firmly held between Pa’s knees. Pa Blaine, a silent man, had some self assigned habits which were his way of serving the community. For instance, at sunrise every Fourth of July for many years he fired a salute, taking along his anvil to ring out the opening of the auspicious day, from Bunker Hill, a rise on the southwest corner of the south side of the Erie railroad tracks. Also, he assigned himself the task until his death (1903) of placing a wreath and flag every “Decoration Day” on the grave of a Civil War soldier whose name was never known and who died on the outskirts of Akron while trying to reach his home following the war. His grave was along the side of the road where he had fallen three and a half miles southwest of town past Miller Whittenberger’s “place” which was southwest of Akron’s “new” cemetery.
A packet of colorful and enlightening letters, 70 in all, written between October 1883 and April 1885 by Akron young people and relatives of John Gast survives the years. These are in envelopes size 5 3/4 by 3 inches, mailed with 2 cent stamps, 1 cent for post cards, John, born 1863, was left an orphan at age 13, lived with a married sister where he worked for his board until almost 20, then went “West”, first to Iowa, then to Texas where he cooked for cowboys, picked cotton, demanded and finally got his inheritance amounting to $580, and invested in cattle, becoming a cowboy finally. He died of pneumonia at age 21 in Jacksborough, Texas, in the spring of 1885. Letters to him were written by seven of his brothers and sisters, several nieces and nephews his age, and Akron friends, chief of whom was Will Judd. Many family names in these letters are still familiar ones in Akron.
Letters from women relatives reveal great concern for his health, his interrupted schooling, his separation from family, his lack of religious life, and his exposure to rough company. There were many requests from both relatives and friends for pictures and many apparently were sent to him. Brothers urged him to push farther West and men friends constantly asked about availability of work. Several asked to borrow money for raising crops. There were many questions about the Texas climate, soil condition, whether prairie land or timber, and many told of considering moving to Kansas or “Nebrasky”, some having already made exploratory trips there. Some asked “how is the sheep business” and what was the nearest railroad station. Brother Mondo asked about mining, timber, if much stock was shipped and if so where, to the south or west, naming Chicago and St. Louis. A constant anxious question was whether men could find work in the winter months there.
A brother three years younger, "Gusta” (Agustus), told him often about current wages in Akron. In October 1883 he was cutting corn by the shock for $13 a month and one for “4 cents a shock and boarding myself, I can cut 30 shocks a day”. A man earned 17 a month while “a boy my size” earned only $8 a month. Another man was hired by the year for “$250 and hoss feed). In May 1884 there was “plenty of work on the big ditches” but this was obviously for strong men only. One family was for a time making income by “bording ditchers”.
The weather and harvesting were constant subjects. Brother Rude (Rudolph) rented 75 acres of farm ground in the spring of 1884 near Beaverdam at “$4.80 per acre”, In September 1884 some one rented the “Poor farm for two years for $1500”. In January 1885 Will Judd wrote:” I haint got anything to do… I never seen work so scarce in my life a fellow can’t get nothing to do I haint sold my mare yet I took her to Warsaw last Saturday… but the price was to low…”
Crops were poor in 1884 as the season was dry, “won’t make much more than 20 or 25 bu to the acre”. Besides that, a letter June 7, 1884, said, “corn is nearly ready to lay by”… but… “worms have distroid nearly all our sod fields”. Corn sold for 60 cents a bushel and the “duck ponds were all dried up”. In March 1884 brother Rude wrote that he was raising “20 head of hogs for July. Have ingaged them to Stoner for $4.00 pr head”. Brother-in-law, Dave Bright, wrote that wheat was “tolerable good but only worth 75 cts pr bushel”. January 5, 1885, brother Will in Lafayette wrote: “We kild our hoges we got 26 gallons of lard from them we sold $9.00 worth of lard and kept the rest wich is 10 galons”.
However, social life still went on and there were many “protracted meetings” where people were “taken into church”. For these events the locality of Sycamore was most often mentioned. Once brother Gusta mentioned going coon hunting, writing, “we didn’t get any coons but got a lots of watermelons”. There was fishing in Rock Lake, preparatory to which many minnows were first obtained (probably from handy ditches), “and we stayed all night and had a good time”. Friend Will Judd attended a “dunkard meeting” and had a good time but had his buggy whip “stole” and his “good silk handkerchief”. He arrived home at 4:00 a.m. Sunday, then went to two meetings on Sunday, “one singing”.
There was always the annual Fourth of July picnic which was an event for whole families and communities of friends to enjoy together. Picnics were also traditional for the last of August before corn harvesting. On August 7, 1884, it was reported that “the Darkies had a camp meeting up at Wesaw a couple of weeks ago”. Will Judd expressed concern, as did others, that the school house had burned in October 1883, so “we cant have no spelling”. This was rebuilt by December and Link Kuhn was the teacher. Brother Gusta planned on going to school till the middle of June (1884) as there was no work. However, “I got the prize for spelling again this winter it was A gd deal betether one than I got last year”. A niece reported,” I am now in the third reader”.
There were occasional sows, “theater”, in Rochester, one being Uncle Tom’s Cabin. There was “singing” every Saturday night and always “Sabbath School” Sunday at 9:30. No denomination was ever mentioned except the Dunkards who were a newly formed group, apparently. Sister Dilla who married a preacher wrote from Lafayette that they had baptized ten children, ages 8 to 14, “in the canal”. By April 1885 a girl friend wrote, “skaiting is gitting to be very fashionable hear now instead of Dancing” and named several locations of rinks. January 19, 1885, brother Gusta wrote, “Akron is growing very fast nearly all the old farmers is moving to town to live there has been a news paper started up lately…”
But friend Will Judd continued to furnish the most colorful news. A local man who had taken his new wife to Oregon to live returned her to her Akron parents without comment while he moved on to California. Speculation was rife. In mid-November, 1883, a “terriable accident” had occurred: Harley Secor was killed when his team ran away at midnight. “His mother about went crazy”. In November 1884 Will wrote that a mutual friend had “got a girl up a stump and had to run off the cunstable and the girl’s father and brothers went after him but he got away”.
By November 1884 many wrote about the presidential elections. Niece, Nettie Sayger, wrote on November 12, “Well the democrats are having big times here over Cleveland and Hendricks. Pat was to Rochester last night they had a jollification there they burn about gums”, Elsewhere this event was called a “jubelee” and apparently log-burning was still an inseparable part of each “jollification”. Brother Rudolph noted that brother Mondo was still “wrestling with Democracy”. It apparently took several days to hear of election returns and one farmer left his work to drive to town to learn the outcome of this one.
Relatives were very concerned that Mondo’s first wife, Laura Ball Gast, was seriously sick for twelve weeks in the spring of 1884,, that doctors despaired of helping her, although they were unable to diagnose the illness as “ulcerated stomach”, She died May 6 leaving two small sons who were unhesitatingly taken in by relatives to rear as their own. This seemed a fact of life at that time. Although no doctors were named in any of the letters, it is known that Dr. Harter, who married a Whittenberger, served Akron citizens for may years, riding out at night on horseback when called upon until is death about 1900. He was replaced by Dr. A. Johnson, a quiet, studious man. A son born to Mrs. David Bright in 1884 was delivered by “the woman” after the “alarm bell” was sounded out in the fields where “the men” were working, the men being unable to get the doctor there in time.
West of town, northside and still standing, was the Whittenberger house now owned by Michael Porter family. Around this was a low stone retaining wall where, Mrs. Hoover told us, Akron’s youth in the 1880’s and ‘90’s used to gather on summer nights to “spoon”, and many a romance that blossomed into marriage had its origin there. In later years, groups of teenagers, as many as 15 or 20, gathered to play “tele-i-o” (spelling unknown). Two leaders chose sides, and one team set out down the middle of the quiet road, the object being to wind around the streets, mislead, if possible, the second team cold not start in pursuit until they heard the first call.
In the early 1900’s, Charles Fremont Hoover was the village undertaker. He was a slight man who characteristically wore a “stiff Katie” (derby) which seemed to symbolize his profession. He lived a block east of the town’s center across from the present library (former site of the livery stable) where still stands the huge, spreading, silver-leaved tree about whose origin no one living remembers. This is a landmark well over 100 years old although it unhappily seems to be dying at present. Monroe “Punk” Kinder was the village photographer with rooms above what is now Smith Furniture Story. Brothers Emery and Albert Scott from the 1890’s to 1940’s owned the corner drug store where the old Curtis residence formerly stood. .Mollie Pollock, the village milliner, a most necessary citizen in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, was succeeded by a pair long in professional association, Dora Bright, a widow short and “chuffy”, and Fannie Shields, a maidenly lady, wirey and bird-eyed. Both were very creative, and Akron’s womenfolk and their daughters took pride in appearing in bonnets and hats with gloves at all public meetings, not only in church, but even for downtown shopping. It was an event to go to their shop and participate with their good guidance in choosing the basic untrimmed hat along with the proper ribbons and artificial fruit or flowers for tasteful decorations.
Citizen Mondo Gast was a man of unusual energy and drive
and made a substantial contribution toward developing Akron’s civic
enterprises. On the death of his parents when he was 21 (1876), he took over
his father’s shoemaking trade, introduced the first machine-made shoes from Cincinnati,
became postmaster, then was elected as county sheriff at age 33 in 1888 for two
terms. Later, against the advice of his father’s old friends, he bought up “useless”
clay land one and a half miles south east of Akron and established a tile mill,
arranging with the Erie Railroad to run a spur into his “factory” so that he
could load and ship tile. Finding no sale for the tile, he organized teams of
men to lay tile to drain the swampy land. Later he added brick making to the
mill. These “plants” provided labor for many local residents as well as for the
four Gast boys. He was a hard task-master and bodily threw out any man who came
to work drunk. For a short space of time he made contracts to build brick-paved
roads but this was discontinued as unsuccessful. Out of this, much later, grew
a corporation for building concrete roads which the family still carries on. In
the meantime, he used brick to build schoolhouses and churches. These included
the local Methodist Church in 1903 and Akron High School in 1914. He
established the town’s first electric light plant and telephone company in 1904
and built the opera house about 1900. Later he built a hotel and installed the
town’s first
water works”. He served some years as a member of the State Fair Board (an
appointment n recognition for prizes won in both corn and poultry). In his last
years while still unusually vigorous he became a dairy farmer and arranged
regular shipments of milk out of Akron to Chicago. He lived to be past 101,
having spent his entire life in Akron. He was noted for his political activity,
his high temper, his colorful language and his physical and mental vigor. He
never forgot his humble childhood when the large family was so poor that all
they had for supper was “mush and milk”. He rationalized his rive to “make gook”
on the resolve never again to be poor.
The Opera House, a florid name for a drab grouping of rear rooms, was built above and back of Scott’s drug store. A rickety gallery often rang, and incidentally shook precariously, with the follicking laughter of Ed Arter, the town’s “ice-man”, who cut and stored ice from Town Lake each winter and who was dearly loved by children. They followed his wagon and team to beg for chips of ice that fell as he neatly chipped off blocks of ice to hoist to his shoulders for delivery to his patron’s “ice-boxes”. It was a real privilege for small boys to ride on the back of his wagon for a daring block or two from home. Girls never risked such improprieties. In the early 1900’s up to 1915 when the first movie, “Hiawatha”, was shown in the opera house by lattern slide (the equipment smelled of “coal oil”), traveling stock companies in the winter season put on a week’s performances of “Ten Nights in a Barroom”, “Lena Rivers”, Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, and other melodramas. These were real tear-jerkers and some residents still remember the creaking ropes and pulleys as Little Eva was hoisted fro her dying bed up to heaven in the fly galleries. Once the rope broke which spoiled the illusion for some and provoked unholy laughter from wicked spell-breakers in the audience. Between scenes some “professions”, which along with local talent represented by Whit Gast and Bookie Cook, cracked jokes or sang slightly ribald parodies to poke fun at local citizens. Many of these between scenes productions had their origin in or were inspired by a New York theatrical periodical called ”Madison’s Budget” Mrs. Gast often wrung her hands in dismay complaining of the broken or lost furniture ‘borrowed” from her home to pad out the meager stage settings.
A moving picture house was established about 1910 by Clarence Erb and Tillie Burns Read, sister to Myrtle Hoover, one of our informants, now 84 and living in Salem, Oregon, played Hearts and Flowers” and other suitable mood music as piano accompaniment to the silent pictures. These sisters and their brother, Leo Burns, a house painter and decorator, were children of “Mattie” Martha Curtis Burns, granddaughter of the cattle-buyer, Andrew Curtis, father of Jim and Nancy Curtis. Jim was the father of Judd Curtis who lived during the early 1900’s in a commodious brick house a mile west of town across the railroad tracks. Judd Curtis was the grandfather of Vicki Baber Jasper, talented soprano and Akron’s present proud claim to musical fame.
The story of Akron would never be complete without a record of the Leninger family. Three brothers, Moses, Daniel and Elias, were some of the many “Pennsylvania Dutch” (meaning German) who settled northern Indiana in the early and mid 1800’s. Moses was a farmer, Elias a skilled cabinetmaker, reared a family of nine children on a farm three miles north of town. Among these were four older daughters whom he carefully and lovingly trained to sing as a quartet. These “girls” sang at many weddings, funerals and on other occasions over northern Indiana for many years, the timbre of their voices being so similar as to produce a most unusual choral effect. It is regrettable that no recording was done of this locally famous quartet. The eldest, Anina, became an osteopath who trained at the fountainhead for that profession, Kirksville, Missouri. She was widely loved and relied upon by many families for her dietary and health advice as well as for her professional skill and personal warmth. Most of these children obtained college degrees in teacher training, in dietetics, etc. One of the younger daughters, Mabelle, married Karl Gast, son of Mondo, who was early given he epithet of “brick” because of his red hair when he worked in his father’s brick mill.
The third Leninger brother, Daniel gained most prominence by establishing the largest dry goods store in the county in 1882. He was long remembered in his little black skull cap as he supervised his remarkable team of sons who were assigned to various departments, which later included grocery and shoe sections. These sons were Willis, Lewis, Roy and Earl. Daughter Pearl married Hubbard Stoner, son of Fletcher, early 1900’s banker, and daughter Faye who married Cleotus Smith, a stock farmer south of town. On band concert nights Leninger’s store was the chief social gathering place for farmers and the town’s citizens to exchange news and local gossip.
Gossip, incidentally, was not notably malicious but simply news told in the spirit of social interest, and after an exchange concerning a tragedy, a sudden death, a child born out of wedlock or other event, this was surprisingly quickly, quietly and industriously transformed into action which resulted in generous carrying in of food to support a stricken family, making a layette and always great gifts of flowers. In the immediate period, an outgrowth of the town’s spirit is quite evident to those who travel about in that in these turbulent times of great social unrest, there is a notable lack of prejudice in this community. Traditionally, it has been simply bad taste to call attention in any derogatory manner to one’s racial, national, religious or ethnic background and to this day Akron stands out as a center of mental health in a country seemingly sick with prejudice and social strife.
Sources:
Pamphlet: “The Gasts in America”, 1925 Dessa Sayger Fultz
Informants: Myrtle Burns Hoover, age 89, from personal memory
Marie Gast Talbot, 73, from stories told by parents