Maps make it easier to understand Sarah's descriptions. You can see a modern map of Carrollton online at maps.google.com, but I recommend that you also check the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps for the time period. Sanborn maps of Carrollton in 1898 are the latest available online. Check for earlier maps, too.
I don’t know who lived in the two cottages then on the left, on the “Aunt Lou”1 side on 5th & Sycamore, but on the other corner, opposite Aunt Josie’s2 (and they were living there; if not right then, they moved there soon after Katherine3 was born Oct 11th, 1889, just before Chandler4 died, and on Mama’s 7th anniversary — Aunt Josie and Uncle Will had been married six years — they were married Oct. 1, 1883). [Apparently, Sarah got so distracted about Aunt Josie that she neglected to name the residents who lived on the other corner.]
On the left side was the very large two-story frame known as “Vance’s Folly,” directly opposite the Fisher home. Mr. [David N.] Vance and his family had been gone for such a short time that their memory hung like a fragrance about it, and my cousins talked intimately of “Bessie” and the other children. I think it was empty for a year or so (and of course when we came to town). Mr. Vance ... was the kindest, most hospitable and free-spending of men. ... He gave liberally to the church and the poor. (He was from Belfast, Ireland.) [Vance and his family left Carrollton, possibly before 1900. Sarah said they moved to Canada.]
Next to “Vance’s Folly” was Mr. Henry Winslow’s home. He had married Miss Lucy Cooper, from Shelbyville I believe. She was (it was whispered) in love with another man, Marshall Foree, brother of the Pryor Foree who married Sue Conn, also of Shelby County, but her father insisted on the “fine match” with Mr. Winslow. They had two children — John Cooper, as old as Beverly Howe5, and Pauline, born in '87 or '88, a beautiful, pale, blond child with very long curls.
As before mentioned, the Christian Church and the Grobmeier house across from it came
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| Carrollton Christian Church, 1889* |
The Catholic School and Church (the old one — the new one was just begun about 1902) and the cemetery behind them, and the vacant lot where the church was afterwards built occupied almost a whole square, just a small frame house or two were at the end of the street, and of course the houses on the other side were not there, except one frame one, where I believe the “Lafunts,” as they were called, lived (near where Hill’s grocery is). LaFontaine was their name; they were Alsatians, I believe, and among the few French people in town. Gretchen — called “Lady Lafunt” — married a Cincinnati man; another girl (Mary) married Claude Raney (father of the Claude Raney who was the basketball star). He was a faithful member of the Christian Church and raised all his children in it.
Out beyond what we long afterwards called Railroad Street [Polk Street], the only house I know of for sure was the Henry Kuhlman house, and the Beemer house across the street (at Taylor). Perhaps the Suetholtz house was built then. ... Just about 1890 Harry Kipping built the house where we lived, and he married his first wife, a lovely black-haired girl (I forget who she was), and his two daughters were born there. (Fred, I think, too.)
Farther out 5th St. was called “Skilletville” and only small scattered frame houses, dangerously near the shanties, were built there, and farther out was Andersonville, where only Negro cabins were to be found, out over the paths leading toward the Kentucky River.
But over on 6th Street the town was already pretty well built up in 1890. Let’s go back to 6th and Seminar, across the street from the Gullion house, and the big house where Ed Cameron lives; I don’t know who lived there till they came (almost 1896, I guess).
On the right-hand corner, toward the south, was where Miss Anna Glauber and her parents and sisters lived. Old Mr. Joseph Glauber was the cutest old man; he kept the shoe store. John Glauber his assistant, later his partner, then successor, was a man out of a German
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| John Glauber at his store c. 1910.* |
Next to them was the house of Mr. Smith, Uncle John’s father; Uncle John was the oldest of the children (almost 27 in 1889). Joe was next in age, then his sisters, Alice and Ora and “Yulie” and Lucy. Alice and Ora were very talented as “couturiers” — Alice was the best milliner Howe Bros. ever had (the first one, too), and Ora made beautiful dresses. “Yulie” married and went to live in Milton, but Lucy had a sad marriage. (Alice did, too). When we came to Carrollton, Uncle John’s father was dead, Alice was married, and Ora and Lucy and Joe and his wife lived in that home. Lucy married [about a year before] her boy, Carroll, was born. ... [Her husband apparently left Carrollton.] As soon as she could leave her child (who grew into a pale, pretty child with golden hair and whom she adored), she began teaching. She was a good teacher and ambitious and kept rising, till she finally became the first woman county school superintendent (about 1892), a wonder in those days. But soon after that, Carroll took sick and died. I believe she wore her black, long veil for four or five years for him. I well remember seeing her in it.
Across the street (Clay Street, though we never knew it as that) from Smith’s lived the Helmas[?] family, whose mother was a sister of Mrs. Elizabeth (Mrs. Ed) Grobmyer, with her children, of whom Katie was the oldest, Anna (Mrs. “Grocery” Ed Hill) next, and the two boys, John and Joe, youngest.
Next to them lived the Raneys in a double house — Mr. and Mrs. Raney Senior on one side, and Claude and his family on the other. On the corner of “Railroad” (Polk) Street was the house where the Abel family lived; Annie, who married John Horan (Bud’s mother), and her sister Phene (they made nice dresses), who married a Wiesmiller; Theodore, the one who drove the bus to and from Worthville, and the sister who married Henry Luhn, who now lives in the house. I have heard that Annie and Phene gave the big altar statues, the crucifix and descent from the cross, to the new church, and earned the money just by their sewing. It is almost like “the alabaster box” of ointment. They were all such delicate girls, Annie looked the frailest of all, but she is still living.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• To Be Continued ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
2Josephine "Josie" King (born abt 1846), daughter of James Guthrie King (1829-1919) and Mary Catherine Mayfield (1840-?); Married William "Will" Fisher in 1883
3Katherine Fisher (1889-?), daughter of William Fisher and Josephine King Fisher
4Chandler Harper Howe (1888-1889), Sarah's brother
5Sarah's first cousin Beverly Winslow Howe (1885-1941), son of William Ficklin Howe and Louisiana Winslow Howe
6Charles D. Salyers (1849-1926), Sarah's future father-in-law
7Katherine "Kate" King (1857-1883), first wife of Charles D. Salyers; mother of Sarah's future husband William Levi Salyers (1878-1944)
* Images in this post are published with permission from Phyllis Codling McLaughlin, who included them in her book Carroll County (Images of America series, Arcadia Publishing, 2012). Image of the church courtesy the church congregation and staff. Image of John Glauber courtesy Carolyn Glauber.
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