After seventy-five years, it’s remarkable that I can still picture him in my mind’s eye: The bedroom is dimly lit, illumined only by pearly soft sunlight sifting in through the white lace curtains. The old man is tall but stooped over, very thin and frail. He appears almost wraith-like, in a knee-length nightshirt. My Grandmother, "Grand Dodie," steadies him by the arm as he shuffles barefooted from his bed toward the bathroom. He’s obviously quite ill.
Holding my little hand, Mom ushers me further into the room and says softly, “Father Curry, this is your Grandson, Billy.” The gaunt and wrinkled face, framed by a full shock of tousled white hair, turns and looks down in my direction. His eyes twinkle from their dark, hollow sockets and his sunken lips part in a toothless, affectionate smile of recognition…and then my mental image fades to black.
That fragment of a memory, one of my very earliest, is my sole recollection of my Grandfather and namesake, William Jack Curry. The year is 1945. The place, East Liverpool, Ohio. I’m three years old. He’s 85—born in 1860 before the Civil War!
“PopPop" Curry died shortly after my visit, on the nineteenth of August. I learned much later that he starved to death from an obstruction in his digestive tract. Dad said it was his father’s decision not to have an operation. I’ve always wondered why he chose a sure slow death instead of a good chance to live longer—did he doubt a successful outcome or was he just world-weary and ready to go?
It recently struck me that my sisters and I are probably the last three people on earth who have even the faintest memory of PopPop Curry while he was alive. And faint memories they are—we know next to nothing about the man or his life. As sister Jane recollected, "What a pity that as an old man he never really communicated, let alone told stories, to his grandchildren! I don’t remember ever having one single conversation with him...or him ever laughing." It made me sad to think that, after our generation passes on, Jack Curry's life would totally vanish from our family’s memory.
Fortunately, family historians are granted a special superpower to journey back into the dark abyss of time and resurrect long unspoken family names and forgotten stories, photos and documents. We then send them echoing on ahead to be heard by generations yet unborn. How cool is that!Starting only with that wisp of a memory, I’m amazed how much I’ve been able to learn about him, largely through online research. So, let me now introduce you more fully to my Grandfather and your ancestor...
William Jack Curry, Senior was born on the family farm at Curry, Pennsylvania, southwest of Pittsburgh, on January 4th, 1860. He was the fifth-born child of William Ezekiel and Letitia Jack Curry and a grandson of Dr. Joseph Curry, a pioneer physician and early coroner of Allegheny County. Everyone called him "Jack," probably to avoid the confusion of having two Williams in the same household.
His father, William Ezekiel Curry, tried his hand at a number of professions--druggist, farmer, and lumber merchant until he finally found his niche in East Liverpool, Ohio as a joint owner of Anderson, Curry and Co., a furniture store, dry goods and undertaking establishment. This was a common business combination in those days since caskets were sold as furniture and most bodies weren't embalmed before burial.
The Curry family arrived at this flourishing pottery town on the banks of the Ohio River in 1874. Their short 20-mile move from a farm in nearby New Galilee, Pennsylvania was precipitated by tragedy.
As an 11-year-old child, Jack witnessed the horrific death of his beloved sister, Emma, age 15. Her hair and clothes caught fire when the kitchen stove flared up and she soon died of her excruciating burns. His older brother, Harry, age 17, was dispatched on foot to fetch the doctor. Panicked by the terrifying emergency, the lad overstressed his heart while frantically running the long distance to town. Weak and sickly with pneumonia after that, his heart finally gave out. Harry died December 20, 1873 at age 19. This was the third child that William and Letitia had lost. Their first baby, the toddler Jennie, died at age two in 1854.
It's little wonder the Currys couldn't bear living in that farmhouse any longer. How could you expunge the images of washing and dressing your dear children's bodies as you prepared them for burial on the dining room table...or of cooking over that same stove? And how did those dreadful events affect the psyches of the Currys' remaining five children?
My Dad related a melancholy visit back to that New Galilee farm with his father (Jack) and my mother in the 1930s. They viewed the impressive brick farmhouse and then paid their respects at the graves of Emma and Harry in the Mt. Pleasant Cemetery. That had to be difficult for Jack who by then had witnessed other tragic deaths of young family members, including his own cherished 15-year-old daughter, Elinor, who succumbed to the Spanish Flu in 1919.
By 1876 William and Letitia had purchased a five-acre tract of land on the west end of East Liverpool (see 1877 map below). This land, for the most part, was a steeply falling hillside that ran down to Tan Yard Run below but afforded sufficient level ground to build the Curry home off the end of West Seventh Street and, somewhat later, a plaster factory at the foot of the hill which evolved into a porcelain pottery business.
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| Courtesy of East Liverpool Historical Society |
After graduating from the public schools, Jack Curry got a job with the East Liverpool Tribune and by 19 signed on as a pharmacy clerk in the employ of Dr. George Ikert. Around age 20, he switched careers to work for R. Thomas and Sons, a manufacturer of porcelain and pottery door knobs.
The Richard Thomas family's residence and adjacent bustling pottery was just a couple of blocks east of the Curry home on West 7th Street. Jack and young Atwood "At" Thomas became best friends as teenagers, a bond that lasted the rest of their lives.
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| Richard Thomas' Sons June 6, 1883, From left clockwise: George (30), Atwood (24), Lawrence (28) and Charles (6)
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In an episode I'll relate in a future post, Jack may have indirectly saved At's life on Sunday, July 4,1882 when he dissuaded his friend from taking an Ohio River excursion on an overloaded steamboat, the Scioto. That afternoon, the ill-fated paddle-wheeler collided with another boat and sunk, taking 57 lives, including Jack's brother-in-law, Wilson Paul, age 29. I have to think the Thomas family felt a special gratitude for Jack after that tragic event and treated him like another son.
Two months after the sinking of the Scioto, an event occurred in New York City that swiftly created an entirely new ceramic industry in East Liverpool. On September 4, 1882, Thomas Edison threw the main switch at the Pearl Street Station in Manhattan and thereby inaugurated the first central power station and electrical distribution grid in America. It served a total of 59 customers! This humble beginning was a historical pivot point that heralded in the electrification of the entire world. This singular event also determined the career pathway of young Jack Curry, living in a small Ohio town 400 miles to the west.
Almost overnight there was huge demand for the products to build out the electric grid of America, especially wire, poles and ceramic insulators. R. Thomas and Sons would eventually become one of the Nation's leading manufacturers of electrical porcelain insulator products.
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R. Thomas & Sons Advert June 6, 1891
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I was tremendously excited to discover this 1887 photo below of my Grandfather with the R. Thomas crew at an Internet site for collectors of antique insulators. I believe the older gentlemen sitting on a chair at the right end of the first row might be Richard Thomas, Sr., the company's founder and a hands-on potter. In his later life, Jack would take a similar lower-right position in company photos when he was the founder/president of the American Porcelain Company.
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| Employees, R. Thomas & Sons, East Liverpool Plant, 1887 John W. Boch, VP & porcelain expert, to right of Wm. Jack Curry Courtesy of Museum of Ceramics, East Liverpool |
Jack served fourteen years with the Thomas company, rising to the foreman position. While there, he obtained an intimate knowledge of ceramics technology and the electrical porcelain insulator business from his mentor John W. Boch. Is it Jack's admiration for Boch that shows in the photo above where he sports a matching bowler hat and moustache?
Economic times were tough in the Curry household after the drowning of Jack's brother-in-law, Wils Paul, in the 1882 Scioto riverboat disaster. His sister Annie Curry Paul, was left with no means of support. She and her four children moved back in with her parents and four adult siblings (Jack, Frank, Mame and Hattie). To help support this expanded family, Jack started up the Curry Cigar Factory on Fourth Street in 1886. He put Frank in charge of cigarmaking and was able to keep his job with R. Thomas and Sons. See my blog post, "History Detectives: The Cigar Store Mystery" for more on this entrepreneurial venture.
During his tenure with Thomas, Jack's early interest in compounding medicinal remedies shifted to experimentation with different ceramic mineral mixes. In his spare time (a bachelor until age 43) he busily pursued development of a hard wall plaster material in a building on his father's property. This proved a success as was his subsequent invention of a cement composition that was totally impervious to water. He also developed ceramic products for school blackboards and furnace liners.
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| © Willam Jack Curry, III |
To produce and market these products he organized the Old Roman Wall Plaster Company in 1893 and served as its president (see stock certificate and letterhead). In addition to their manufactured product lines, the firm sold cement, lime and building materials and did a large business.
The East Liverpool map at the beginning of this post shows that the Curry's hillside property shared a long boundary with a cemetery situated on the flat bluff above. The Old Roman plaster plant was located at the bottom of that steep hill in West End Hollow.
The company's products were made from sand and gravel mined from that hillside. Like a child's sandpile, the unconsolidated materials uphill from the digging below would slip down until they reached their stable "angle of repose." Often a high and precipitous wall would temporarily form and then come cascading downslope with the next rain. As the resource was progressively mined out, the top edge of the now steeper hillside fell away in fits and starts, caving in and inching its way eastward toward the property's boundary line with the cemetery.
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| Courtesy: East Liverpool Historical Society |
This postcard photo of an early baseball game at the West End Ball Field gives a great panoramic view of the Curry's plaster plant and the slumping sand and gravel slopes created by the mining operations.
The Old 5th Street Cemetery atop the bluff was in use as early as 1800. It served as the town's main cemetery for more than eight decades but began reaching its capacity in the 1870s. It became a serious concern for City Council by 1882. This led to the creation of the new burial grounds including Riverview (1883), Spring Grove (1885), and St. Aloysius (1883) cemeteries.
When 5th Street Cemetery was closed, families of the dead there were requested to relocate the remains, but many descendants no longer lived in East Liverpool, and as many as 134 bodies remained in place. The Evening News Review reported that all bodies not removed by October 29, 1901 would be taken up by the authorities to make way for the new City Hospital on part of the cemetery tract.
The abandoned cemetery soon became a jungle of weeds. In 1903 a section of the old cemetery was purchased for the site of the new City Hospital. The remainder was designated as a city park which was not funded and the site soon fell to ruin and became a hangout for drunks, tramps and felons...tough guys with monickers like "Tip, the Denver Kid" and "Applebutter Ike". The area became derisively known as "Skeleton Park" after some children found exposed bones lying about on the ground.
When 5th Street Cemetery was closed, families of the dead there were requested to relocate the remains, but many descendants no longer lived in East Liverpool, and as many as 134 bodies remained in place. The Evening News Review reported that all bodies not removed by October 29, 1901 would be taken up by the authorities to make way for the new City Hospital on part of the cemetery tract.
The abandoned cemetery soon became a jungle of weeds. In 1903 a section of the old cemetery was purchased for the site of the new City Hospital. The remainder was designated as a city park which was not funded and the site soon fell to ruin and became a hangout for drunks, tramps and felons...tough guys with monickers like "Tip, the Denver Kid" and "Applebutter Ike". The area became derisively known as "Skeleton Park" after some children found exposed bones lying about on the ground.
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| Run-down Skeleton Park, ca. 1905, Courtesy of East Liverpool Historical Society |
The closure of the Old Roman Wall Plaster Company, 14 years after its startup, was a dark, some might say ghoulish, episode in Jack's business career...and by now, you may have an inkling of where this is going.
As Roman Wall Plaster's mining operations dug further into the hillside, the unconsolidated material kept cascading down and caving in the cemetery land until five long-forgotten caskets were undercut and human bones went tumbling down the slope. The East Liverpool Review headline read, COFFINS WERE LAID BARE! The City sprang into action and got a permanent injunction that stopped all mining in March 1908.
Back in the fall of 1907, Jack foresaw the inevitable cessation of mining and the necessity to find another business to replace the plaster company. Along with three brothers-in-law, J. C. McQuilkin, W. A. Andrews and T. J. Andrews, he organized the Ohio Porcelain Company in October 1907 and built the plant at the Old Roman Wall Plaster site on the Curry property as shown on the 1908 Sanborn Insurance map below.
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| Credit: U. S. Library of Congress Sanborn Insurance Co., July 1908 |
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Ohio Porcelain made standard shapes of electrical porcelain over the several years of its existence. The photos below shows some rare insulators produced with the company's "O.P.Co" mark...
In 1911, Ohio Porcelain and all the porcelain companies in East Liverpool, (except R. Thomas & Sons) were acquired and merged into the General Electric Porcelain Company "Combine." Jack Curry apparently worked for the Combine as he’s listed in the 1912 and 1914 Polk City Directory as “general manager” without a company name. During that time, he was actively planning a new ceramic venture. In 1915 the Combine sold the Curry's old Ohio Porcelain site to George Reid, founder of the Adamant Porcelain Company, which operated there for many years.
In 1914, Jack Curry along with family investors formed the American Porcelain Company. He took over the old plant of John W. Croxall Sons at the southwest corner of Second Street and Union Streets in East Liverpool and refitted it for the manufacture of standard electrical porcelain shapes.
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| Credit: Jim Colborn |
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| Credit: Elton N. Gish |
In 1911, Ohio Porcelain and all the porcelain companies in East Liverpool, (except R. Thomas & Sons) were acquired and merged into the General Electric Porcelain Company "Combine." Jack Curry apparently worked for the Combine as he’s listed in the 1912 and 1914 Polk City Directory as “general manager” without a company name. During that time, he was actively planning a new ceramic venture. In 1915 the Combine sold the Curry's old Ohio Porcelain site to George Reid, founder of the Adamant Porcelain Company, which operated there for many years.
In 1914, Jack Curry along with family investors formed the American Porcelain Company. He took over the old plant of John W. Croxall Sons at the southwest corner of Second Street and Union Streets in East Liverpool and refitted it for the manufacture of standard electrical porcelain shapes.
In spite of some adverse economic conditions and a fire which destroyed a part of the plant in 1916, this company prospered under Curry's technical ability. The Sanborn Insurance Company map for 1923 shows the layout of the American Porcelain factory on Second Street.
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| Credit: U. S. Library of Congress Sanborn Insurance Co., July 1913 |
My Dad told me that his father, Jack, was a potter's potter who formulated proprietary mixes for his products and slept on a cot at the plant when necessary to keep a close eye on his kilns during their firing cycle.
Jack also had his boys, Bill & Mac, do minor jobs at American Porcelain from time to time, mostly to keep them busy after school and out of trouble. Dad related, when he was 12, he was given a job to count out small wire insulator parts in groups of one hundred and put them in envelopes...apparently thousands of them waited in a huge pile to be packed this way.
After seeing how much time the counting took, and wanting to be done so he could leave and hang out with friends, he found a balance scale, put a hundred parts on one side of the scale as a standard weight and then proceeded to weigh and package the parts with blazing speed. With the pile dispatched, he hid the scale and went to get his father to check his work and release him.
Jack was very suspicious that his son could accurately do this job in one fourth the time it usually took so he counted several envelopes and was surprised to find exactly 100 parts in each. After making Dad reveal his method before he could go play, Jack implemented the balance-weighing method as a standard practice...no doubt with more than a bit of fatherly pride. From this simple anecdote, I can see how Dad organically developed an early interest in the ceramics industry and innovative problem-solving that would eventually propel him to high level executive positions in major refractory corporations.
Jack Curry also designed porcelain insulators and was inventor of record along with his brother-in-law, Will Andrews, on an insulator patent granted April 4, 1916 (U. S. Patent No. 1,177,996).
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| © Willam Jack Curry, III |
One of the products made by The American Porcelain Company was the large trolley line insulator seen in the attached photo and close-up of the company's mark that was manufactured pursuant to the Christian Sauerisen patent (U. S. Patent No. 1,381,594).
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| © Willam Jack Curry, III |
This unusual insulator was unearthed from the former American Porcelain site during construction of a new business. It was given to my Uncle Mac (Matthew), Jack's second son, who then passed it on to me.
Insulators of this type were used to suspend the many cross-wires that carried electrified trolley lines. One of the features of this patent was that the insulator could be imprinted with text to act as signage along the trolley route. The “Car Stop” version of these trolley insulators is rare because they were only used at the stop locations along a line.
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| Credit: Popular Mechanics Magazine, February 1923 |
The photo below shows the American Porcelain crew shortly after the company started up, circa 1914-16. Jack, in work apron with pipe in mouth, is seen sitting with his men at right side of the first row. His brother-in-law and head of sales, William A. "Will" Andrews, is the dapper mustachioed white-haired man on the back right and the two boys on the left are his sons, Clement and Donald, who would later work for the company. The man in the raincoat is unknown, possibly the other co-owner, Thompson "Thomp" Andrews.
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| Courtesy Sally Kittridge Smith |
During this period, and specifically from 1916 to 1926, Jack speculated heavily in the booming stock market. After he passed in 1945, my Dad found a thick folder of worthless stock certificates in a drawer in a little-used dropleaf table. Clicking on the stock below will take you to a scrolling gallery of these ornate old certificates.
Fast forward 15 years from its founding and here's the American Porcelain crew, circa 1928, shortly before Jack retired at age 68 and sold his interest to the Andrews brothers. Jack, again, is seen at the right side of the first row, kneeling with his fellow potters. The woman to his right in a work smock is probably the office manager.
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| Courtesy Sally Kittridge Smith |
Unfortunately, the Andrews' were not potters by training or work experience and by 1932 the business had failed in the wake of the Great Depression.
After retiring from the ceramic industry, Jack immediately started yet another business in town, the Curry Tire Shop on Dresden Avenue, with the intention of involving my Dad in its operation. Here an ad from the ELO Trib Review of 10/28/1928...
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| Source: East Liverpool Tribune Review, October 24, 1928 |
Dad, at that time and by all accounts, was a wild 21-year-old bachelor and fast car enthusiast--a young man in need of subduing! Uncle Mac said the tire shop job didn't take, and Pop soon found other work more to his liking.
Unfortunately, the depression took its toll on the tire business and Jack Curry was regrettably forced into bankruptcy in 1938.
William Jack Curry, Sr. passed away on August 19, 1945, at age 85 and is interred at Riverview Cemetery, East Liverpool, Ohio.
© All rights reserved
© All rights reserved
Research Links for this post include:
Early Clay Industries of The Upper Ohio Valley by W. A. Calhoun
A Tour of East Liverpool's West End
History of Columbiana County, Ohio – Harold B. Barth - 1926
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