Herman Marwitz House
25 January 1909: 1. 801 22nd Street: 1. The grand house on the left was built in 1893 for Herman Marwitz by “his nephew” Alfred Müller. Marwitz was impoverished by the construction costs which (quadrupled), and he ever lived in the house. At the time of the postcard, Minnie Bedell LeRoux (1876-1964) ran a boarding house there. She was the daughter of Confederate Captain William Harry Bedell (1841-1913), and widow of Victor Donascio LeRoux, who was born in 1872 in Mexico, son of Frenchman Jean Baptiste Clement LeRoux of New Orleans, LA; 2. 721 22nd Street: Eaton Chapel, 1879, named for the founding rector of the Galveston Episcopal Church, Rev. Benjamin S. Eaton (1805-1871), who died while preaching at the altar of Trinity Episcopal, and whose body lays in a crypt beneath the same altar; 3. 705 22nd Street: Trinity Episcopal Church, 1857; 4. 2202-2204 Church: In 1909 the first level was vacant, with some boarders on the second floor: Josephine O. Tabery Aymes, widow of John O. Aymes their son Henry John Aymes; Shellman Angus Durham and his brother Jack R. Durham; Louise Scheele, widow of Charles Scheele, (she operated a chile parlor at 521 21st Street) and children, William, Elsie, Charles, Sophie, and Clara; David C. Tuttle and his wife Sadie; 5. 2202-2206 Church: Southwestern Telegraph and Telephone Company, 3 floors, 1896, the last work of Alfred Muller before he died (of typhus); 6. 2202-2204 Post Office: Fellman Dry Goods Company Building (selling dry goods, notions, carpets, matting, ladies' ready-made wear, dressmaking), a family enterprise: Leopold Fellman (1835-1918), Louis Fellman (1872-1956), Alphonse Fellman (1879-1916), 5 floors, 1906.
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23 March 2019: 1. 2216 Avenue H: Trinity Episcopal Church and School Offices, 2 floors; 2. 721 22nd Street: Eaton Chapel, 1879; 3. 705 22nd Street: Trinity Episcopal Church, 1857; 4. 2202-2206 Church: Merrimax Building (Southwestern Telegraph and Telephone Company Building), 3 floors, 1896, {Alfred Muller}; 5. 2201 Market: U. S. National Bank Building, 12 floors, 1924; 6. 2920 Todd Road: Gulf Copper Dry Dock & Rig Repair at Pelican Island.
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Postmarked: 25 January 1909; Den… & Hous RPO
Stamp: 1c Blue Green Ben Franklin #300 To: Miss Elta Evans Sadorus Ill Champaign Co. Message: Dear Folks Well I am with Tab. Got here 330 oclock going to stay until to-morrow noon he is just the same old fellow From Your Dad. Elta was the daughter of Price Evans (“Dad”) and Ella Tabler, whose brother Elmer Alexander Tabler, went by the nickname “Tab.” He was the son of Alexander Tabler (1854-1891) and Emma S. Goodman (1858-1944), only 5 years old when his father died, and his sister Mary was only two. The only other child in the family, Ella, was older at 13; she was twenty when she married Price Evans in 1898, making Tab the Uncle of Elta.
When Elta received the postcard, she was 9 years old and her Uncle Tab nearly 23. Her father spent his life close to their home in Sadorus for the most part, Tab did not remain in the area of his youth. Apparently he had already set out on his own by 1909, leaving Sadoris and his niece behind in a search for work. Price had evidently taken a trip to Galveston and on the trip had seen Tab and spent the evening with him. The postmark is an R. P. O. [Railroad Post Office], and train passengers in those days often mailed correspondence at depots while traveling, the fastest way to send correspondence. Although smudged and incomplete, the postmark seems to read “Deni… & Hous.” which may have been a branch of a long-defunct Denison & Houston line connecting the two cities. The nature of the postcard, a mansion in Galveston, and the Texas R.P.O postmark, affirm that the postcard was mailed in Texas, 750 miles from Price’s home. Price could have encountered Tab at one of the many stops on the way. His brother, Robert Evan Evans, could have been on Price’s Texas train trip itinerary, as he was then working as a railroad telegraph operator. He had been married in 1904 in Indiana to Maude Mary Robbins from Montezuma, Piatt County, IN about 60 miles east of Sadorus, and there they started their family: Reid (1905), Price Overman (1908), and Fay (1913). It is not clear where Robert was working in 1909 when the postcard was sent, but in 1910 he was station agent and telegraph operator at Hammond, Piatt County, IL about 25 miles south of Sadorus. Tab by this time found work with Western Union in St. Louis, MO as a Western Union telegraph operator, an occupation perhaps suggested by Robert Evans, maybe even as his protégé. Robert would move to Texas before 1913 working as a telegraph operator in Streetman, Freestone County, where he would remain and raise his family. As a railroad man, he may have traveled to Texas in advance of his move there, or may have been reconnoitering there in 1909 and rendezvoused with his brother Robert and perhaps Tab as well. Price says, “he is just the same old fellow,” but of course, Tab was not quite 23. Price was still a young man at 33, and may have seen his nephew on the trip down and later, on the way back home, he mailed the card on the train. |
The largest stop on the likely route from Sadoris to Denison was Saint Louis, MO, only about 200 miles southwest of Sadorus, but worlds apart in many ways. Sadorus was founded in 1824 by Henry S. Sadorus (1783-1878), the first town founded in the county, but after the Illinois Central Railroad brought its line through Champaign in 1855, it was largely left behind. In 1910 Sadoris was a small farming town of 300-400 citizens south of Champaign-Urbana, while the latter town had a population of 20,000. Champaign-Urbana was the seat of one of the first land-grant colleges in the US, initially called Illinois Industrial University when it was founded in 1867. In the early 20th century it would have been a dominant financial and social influence in the county, and is now the flagship of the public university system of Illinois with a student body of about 35,000 students.
While Champaign-Urbana was a regional center, Saint Louis was an important urban complex in mid-America in the early 20th century, fourth largest city (population 700,000) after New York (5,000,000), Chicago (2,200,000), and Philadelphia (1,500,000). Chicago was somewhat closer to Sadorus, a distance of about 150 miles, but circumstances brought Tab first to St. Louis, where 1910 he is found lodging at 1323 Taylor avenue with 6 other 20-something bachelors. Soon after, though, he moved to the Chicago area, and near there, in Lake County, IN on the south shore of Lake Michigan he married Irene Mueller on 25 October 1917. Her first husband was John David Barchard, and they had a son, John Max Barchard in 1906. Tab and Irene moved to a house at 2950 N. Whipple Street in the Logan Square area northwest of downtown Chicago. Price Evans and his brother Robert were born in Llansaintffraid, Glyndyfrdwy, Merionethshire, in the Dee River Valley in North Wales. Their entire family came to America on the four-master ship Egypt with their father Robert (36) and mother Emma (Jones)(35), children Thomas Jones (12), Anna (10), David (7), Price (4), Susanna Jane (2), and Robert (1). It was a five day trip in steerage on the four-master, two-funnel, iron hull ship, departing Liverpool and arriving in New York 25 April 1882. They seem to have come to directly to Sadorus, where the family grew with the addition of Margaret Emma (1885), Henry Vosper (1886), and two children who died before their second birthday, Mary (1887-1889) and Albert (1890-1892). Robert seems to have had diverse working skills, and hired himself out as an unskilled laborer in Wales (1871) and in Illinois (1900, 1910). He made sure his sons acquired more marketable skills, Price worked as a painter (1900), furniture store worker (1910, 1920) and funeral director (1940) while Robert, Jr. worked as a telegraph operator(1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940). Elta’s mother Ella Tabler Evans died in 1926 and Price married Mrs.Mary Gennan, and took in her daughter Lucile into the family. He died in 1940 and was buried beside his first wife. After the age of 36 Elta married Carl Theodore Lewis, an auto mechanic; they moved back to Sadoris and commuted the 15 miles to Champaign. Tab did not remain in the Chicago area, and he and Irene divorced in 1924 in Gunnison County, CO. Irene made her way to the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, where she worked as a telegrapher, and died in 1933. Tab married Cecelia Smith in Gunnison County, CO in 1925, and they lived Garfield County, CO, east of Gunnison, first in in New Castle, then in Rifle, where Tab worked as a railroad telegrapher. Tab died in 1970 and Celia died in 1984; they are buried in Rose Hills Cemetery in Rifle. Craw Cemetery holds the remains of many of the Welsh immigrants to Sadorus. Elta Evans Lewis (1899-1971), Carl Theodore Lewis (1902-1996), Price Evans (1875-1940), Ella Tabler Evans (1878-1926), Robert Evans (1847-1926), Emma Jones Evans (1847-1923). Robert Evans, Jr. (1880-1841) is buried in Birdston Cemetery near Streetman in Navarro County, TX. Neither Elta Evans Lewis nor Tab Evans had any children. |