G E O R G E D R A K E , J R .
audio producer & aural explorer​
Fifth & Ludlow Transcripts
Part 1: The Letter Under the Bathtub
George Drake, Jr.: I’m George Drake, Jr. and this is Fifth & Ludlow. Part 1: The Letter Under the Bathtub.
(THEME)
Torey Hollingsworth: “So, I was in college and my parents were redoing their bathroom in the house I grew up in which is a 1920s house. And the bathroom had never been redone at least as far as I know.”
George Drake, Jr.: That’s my friend Torey Hollingsworth.
Torey Hollingsworth: “And I think my dad called me to just check in while I was in school...”
Frank Hollingsworth: “I’m Frank Hollingsworth. This would have been March of 2008. So, she would have just been a freshman at Chicago at the time.”
Torey Hollingsworth: “...and said that they had had something strange happened while they were redoing the bathroom.”
Kathy Hollingsworth: “So I don't really remember where we were but we were away on vacation and they had been remodeling the bathroom actually for some period of time. I’m Kathy Hollingsworth. And we knew that both our contractor Dave Requarth and our painter Steve Young were going to be in the house while we were gone as well as some tile folks because we were also tiling another bathroom floor.”
Frank Hollingsworth: “And Dave's a… Dave loves Dayton history as well. And he says, ‘you're not gonna believe what we found.’”
Torey Hollingsworth: “There was a tub in the bathroom -- a, you know, ceramic tub -- that was connected to the floor…”
Frank Hollingsworth: “The tub was a cast-iron tub and went all the way to the floor. So, you know, it was hollow in the walls...”
Torey Hollingsworth: “...and they were ripping that out to put in a walk-in shower, and the contractor had found a letter that was poured into the cement underneath the bathtub.”
Frank Hollingsworth: “...and my impression is it was just -- it wasn’t encased in concrete -- it was just sitting there and in a void, you know. Between the walls... the interior and exterior walls of the tub.”
Kathy Hollingsworth: “And when we got home Dave and Steve were all atwitter about this letter that they had found and just thought that it was just really cool that they had found this letter when they had been breaking up the bathtub.”
Torey Hollingsworth: “And they were able to actually open the letter and found that it was this note that seemed to be someone trying to meet another person. Under sort of strange circumstances.”
(THEME)
Kathy Hollingsworth: “And obviously when they read it, it just became even more intriguing because there's so much that is not known and can be imagined just from the words that are on the page.”
Frank Hollingsworth: “You know, did it fall there by accident? You know, who knows, but it was certainly a great hiding place for probably close to 80-something years. It was, nobody saw it.”
George Drake, Jr.: This letter is kind of a part of the Hollingworth family’s folklore -- a story they like to tell -- it’s something they’ve held onto for over a decade. It’s raised dozens of questions, they’ve spent hours speculating, but they haven’t found any answers.
I first saw the letter in 2014 or so when Torey herself pulled it out when my wife Ruth and I went to Dayton, Ohio for a visit. It’s written very firmly in pencil in an almost cliche old-timey script from a man named Will to a woman named Rose.
I had Torey read what it says:
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Whenever you're ready.”
Torey Hollingsworth: “All right, do you want me to read the envelopes too?”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Start with the letter.”
Torey Hollingsworth: “Okay, ‘Dayton, Ohio, July... 11th? 20-20. Friend Rose, I got your letter and I am well and I hope…’ What do you think that says? ‘I am well and I hope...’ Something will…”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “What does that say?”
Torey Hollingsworth: “Yeah.”
Together: “‘This will please you.’”
Torey Hollingsworth: “Okay. I think I can do it now. ‘Dayton, Ohio, July 11th, 20-20. Friend Rose. I got your letter and I am well and I hope this will please you, Rose. I will meet you at the corner of Fifth and Ludlow at Jenkins Drugstore at 7:30 and you and I will go to the home and go… and you and I will go to the home and go some place to ourselves and talk the matter over. Hoping you will be okay… Hoping you will be all okay when we meet if you are willing to do this and keep it to yourself. Will’ And then it either says…”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Boy boy...”
Torey Hollingsworth: “...‘bye-bye’ or ‘boy boy.’ Yeah.”
(MUSIC)
George Drake, Jr.: Ever since they found the letter Kathy and Frank Hollingsworth have kept it in a frame in their bathroom. They moved from the house it was found in so it’s hanging up in their new house -- you guessed it -- in their bathroom.
After I’d seen everything in the frame and read the letter I could feel there was a story that went beyond the vague and mysterious words on the page -- and for the past 10 years the Hollingsworths have been speculating and making up their own versions of what it could be about.
I do that too. I hang onto things because of the stories attached to them -- even if I make them up. I once had this quarter from 1969 that was completely brown. It could have been that color for any number of reasons, but I didn’t spend it for weeks because I was convinced it was the mud from Woodstock, which just happened to take place in 1969. Things -- like the letter and that quarter hold memories. We may not be able to know what they are from the surface, but they’re there.
Everything in the frame was found in the Hollingsworth’s former home in Oakwood, which is just south of Dayton, during a renovation in 2008 -- almost 100 years after the house was finished being built in 1927.
Dayton around that time was a fascinating place. Leading up to the Great Depression, it was a city known for its engineering and innovation. Come 2008 when the letter was found -- Dayton had been impacted by the recession -- manufacturing had moved out and some parts of the city had seen better days, but the spirit of the people put Dayton on the map in the 1920s could still be felt.
On the right side of the frame are a couple of newspaper clippings that were also found in the bathroom, and the left side has the letter as well as two envelopes that were found next to it. The Hollingsworths say the newspaper clippings were part of a full newspaper page found wrapped around a copper pipe.
Both of them are dated December 22nd, 1925. One of them is a long column about notorious con man Nicky Arnstein getting out of prison that refers to him as a “distinguished looking man with aristocratic hair.”
The articles establish more of a timeline than anything. They show that the house -- specifically the bathroom -- wasn’t completed until December of 1925 at the very earliest. This will come into play in a little bit.
The letter and envelopes weren’t found around pipes, but flat underneath the cast iron bathtub. For being locked under something that had been holding water for almost a century, both envelopes -- and the letter, too, for that matter -- are in extremely good condition. They’ve browned, but they’re not water damaged or anything. Nothing is smudged or falling apart.
They tell a personal story, but the envelopes specifically lead to way more questions.
The first one -- first simply because of the date it was mailed -- was written by Will -- the guy who wrote the letter -- with the firm pencil and curly script.
The cancel stamp on it reads “Dayton, Ohio -- July 20th, 10AM, 1920.” Cancel stamps are still used today -- it’s that marking that defaces the stamp so it can’t be reused.
This envelope is sent to “Mrs. Rose O. Connors -- Krougs Bakery Corner of Joe and Warren St. In Care of Oscar Gilbert, City.”
In the top left corner of the envelope is a different handwriting -- a more standard script in deep, brown ink. It reads, “Opened by mistake but not read” and is signed “JT Shafer.”
The second envelope is canceled with a circular stamp reading “Zanesville, Ohio -- September 7th, 6PM, 1921.” Over one year after the other envelope.
The handwriting on this one is different than the other two on the first envelope. It’s also in pencil, but it’s written with a very light touch and the script itself is much larger.
It reads, “Mr. Jim Oconor -- Mail Room, Union Depo, Dayton Ohio.”
The entire left edge of the envelope is missing -- like someone ripped it open from the side.
(MUSIC)
(PHONE RINGING)
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “This is George Drake, Jr’s cell phone. Please leave a message.”
Victor Paruta: “Hi, George. Victor Paruta. I’m getting back to you about those letters. I will be back in town tomorrow through Friday the 13th and would be happy to meet with you during that time when our schedules converge.”
(MUSIC)
George Drake, Jr.: Before we get into speculating what the letter’s about I wanted to see if we could cheat a little bit and cut to the chase. Since I first started this project Ruth has really became my partner in this podcast, so she went along with me.
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Hey!”
Victor Paruta: “I’m Victor.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “I'm George.”
Victor Paruta: “Hi.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “This is my wife Ruth.”
Ruth Reveal: “Hi I’m Ruth. It’s nice to meet you.”
Victor Paruta: “Nice to meet you. Come on in!”
Ruth Reveal: “Thanks!”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Thank you.”
George Drake, Jr.: We got this guy, Victor, to help us try to figure out who these people were, without doing any research.
Victor Paruta: “Victor Paruta and I’m a psychic-medium.”
George Drake, Jr.: We met him at his home in Cincinnati with a copy of the letter to see what he could find out. He used a method he learned in a forensic psychic investigation workshop, which involves tracing a person’s signature. As Victor puts it, a signature carries the vibration of the person who wrote it, so things “start coming” to him when he traces it.
Victor Paruta: “There usually comes a moment when you catch that person's energy and then you could move into their energy and get information about them.”
George Drake, Jr.: So, that’s what he did, with Will’s signature at the bottom of the letter.
Victor Paruta: “Okay, I see... I see I'm getting impressions! Okay. So, here's what I see: I see a young man. He's wearing knickers and a cap. He standing by a fence. He's looking at someone who's looking at him the way he looks at this person. You could tell that he really likes her.”
George Drake, Jr.: Victor revealed this information while looking through the gap between Ruth and me, gazing at the wall across the table in almost a blank stare. His hands waving and rubbing together. He established from Will’s vibrations that he was young, poor, and, to put it bluntly, Rose was way out of his league.
Victor Paruta: “In other words, the woman that this is addressed to is in a higher socio-economic level than this guy is.”
George Drake, Jr.: Here’s the thing -- there’s no shortcut with this. Ruth and I weren’t convinced that his vision was actually the case -- it seemed too obvious and was right in line with the speculation most come to on their own anyway. Also, not to give too much away for the rest of this series, but he was way, way off.
(MUSIC)
George Drake, Jr.: For Kathy and Frank Hollingsworth, it’s the vagueness of the letter they found that’s opened the door for so many questions and so much speculation.
Here’s what it says again: “Friend Rose. I got your letter and I am well and I hope this will please you, Rose. I will meet you at the corner of Fifth and Ludlow at Jenkin’s Drugstore at 7:30 and you and I will go out to the home and go some place to ourselves and talk the matter over. Hoping you will be all okay when we meet if you are willing to do this and keep it to yourself. Will”
First of all, and maybe we’re reading too much into this, but he doesn’t use his last name. So it could be that they know each other well enough that he doesn’t need to use it. Or, and this is purely speculation, in case this letter did end up in the wrong hands, no fingers could be pointed directly at him. Also, the way he words it almost seems intentionally vague, like he’s trying to keep the specifics away from prying eyes. The few phrases at the end of the letter, especially the “talk the matter over” and, of course, the “keep it to yourself” part.
For Kathy and Frank, the big questions about the letter have been: what is the “matter” he references and why does Rose have to keep it to herself?
Kathy Hollingsworth: “I think, I think that, you know, there's something perhaps romantic relationship. Perhaps, you know, maybe there was a child involved who knows that went on between will and Rosie.”
​
Frank Hollingsworth: “I suspect that there was… that Will and Rose had something going on that they didn’t want anybody else to know about. Could be an affair, could have been anything, but it was certainly something they weren't… didn't want them to cover at the Dayton Daily News or the Dayton Journal Herald at the time, or whatever, whatever it was. It wasn't something they were looking to have publicized.”
Kathy Hollingsworth: “...but it's addressed to a Mr. Jim O'Connor. And of course, it's Rosie O'Connor who is the original addressee. So, I think it probably, you know, is Jim [her] brother? Father? Husband? You know, you just don't know what the connection is.”
George Drake, Jr.: That story of an affair or a secret relationship between Will and Rose is the one most people make up on their own. It’s juicy, it fits with the letter, and, besides, who doesn’t like a good love story? It’s the one I came to in 2014 when I first saw the letter. Part of me wanted that to be the story -- maybe to just be right -- but I don’t think it is. His letter seems too formal. If it were a love letter for a secret meeting, I think it would be more eloquent and less demanding. Also, who hangs onto a love letter for a few years before ditching it under a tub?
Because the letter was found underneath a tub and not hidden in a secret drawer or something, they also speculate that it doesn’t necessarily relate to the people who lived in the house, but more likely the people who built the house. And it’s with that that we arrive at the next round of speculations. If Rose and Jim didn’t live in the house they were found in, how did the letter and these envelopes—dated 1920 and 1921, respectively—end up underneath the bathtub of a house that was finished being built in 1927? That’s a pretty big gap. Remember, the newspaper clippings date the bathroom to 1925. So, the other question is: where were the letter and envelopes for those four or five years?
Frank Hollingsworth: “Well that’s what I’ve wondered about. Whether or not it’s, you know, was it a worker that put it there? You know, it fell out of their pocket? Just the little bit of research that I did, I don’t think any of those names show up as the original owners, so it could have very well just been somebody, you know, a worker, and then it just fell out of their pocket, and ended up underneath the tub.”
George Drake, Jr.: The next thing they speculate about is the note written in pen on the front of the first envelope -- that note by JT Shafer saying, “opened by mistake but not read.” This could be a number of different things, according to the Hollingsworths, but they haven’t come to any concrete — as far as speculations are concerned — conclusions.
Is JT a man or a woman? Do they work for the Postal Service? Do they work at the bakery the envelope was sent to? Why did they even open it in the first place? Frank doesn’t have any answers, but he’s also the first one to cast some doubt on Shafer’s note.
Frank Hollingsworth: “We know opened by mistake, but not read. And in the guy signed his name and you're going, ‘come on. You really you didn't read this thing!?’ So, it may, you know, perhaps people weren't as, you know, we're more judicious in there. You know, ‘this is not my mail. I'm not going to read it.’ So, yeah, chances are you know, they're fair that it's somebody didn't read it but, when you when you do read it you go, ‘well, it'd beemn hard to go see Rosie and have a straight face if you have you'd read that.’”
George Drake, Jr.: The final jigsaw piece is the cancel stamp on the second envelope. It’s sent from Zanesville to Dayton, which Torey agrees isn’t that close -- even today it’s still 2 hours away by car.
Torey Hollingsworth: “It was one of the earlier cities in Ohio would have probably been a pretty thriving place in the 1920s.”
George Drake, Jr.: But the distance isn’t what’s odd. They have no evidence for this, but ever since they found everything under the tub, the Hollingsworth’s have been under the impression that the two envelopes are connected.
Torey Hollingsworth: “I believe that the letter was in the envelope addressed to Rose O'Connor. And then the that envelope was inside of this other envelope addressed to Jim O'Connor.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Oh shit!”
Torey Hollingsworth: “And Jim O'Connor is not the same person who wrote the letter because the letter appears to be written by someone named Will.”
(MUSIC)
George Drake, Jr.: This has been their version of the story since 2008. Torey’s mom Kathy went more in depth as to how, in their minds, this could have played out.
Kathy Hollingsworth: “And you know, I'll even go to say that well, maybe Jim O'Connor's her husband and, you know, somebody wanted him to know about this. So, the letter mysteriously got sent to him because it was important. They thought that they know about whatever Rosie and Will were up to and that hopefully the matter. Taking care of and life went on well for everyone. Yeah. I just think there's all kinds of possibilities.”
George Drake, Jr.: I went over the possibilities a lot, I made a list of who I needed to talk to to tell this story fully, and what directions it could take me. What I really wanted were answers. I knew ahead of time figuring some things out would be more difficult than others, so I was going to start with the basics.
The Hollingsworth’s contractor found three things under the tub: a letter written from Will to Rose, an envelope addressed to Rose from Will, and a second envelope addressed to Jim from someone else entirely. So, the question was: Did someone really forward Will’s letter to Jim a year later?
Frank Hollingsworth: “So lots of mysteries, you know, and part of it you wanted you want to understand the mystery, which you also don't want to dig too far into somebody's sordid past if it is that and may or may not be who knows.”
(THEME)
George Drake, Jr.: To see pictures of the letter, envelopes, newspaper clippings, and what the bathtub looked like, visit the website, www.fifthandludlowpodcast.com.
There you can also find the show on iTunes and other outlets to subscribe to the podcast.
When you get to iTunes, take a moment to rate and review the show, if you could. Those stars and short reviews go a long way in getting Fifth & Ludlow heard by more people.
Theme and other music used in Fifth & Ludlow is by Mustafa Shaheen.
Logo and branding is by Peter Diaczenko.
This series is made possible by a generous grant from the Montgomery County Arts & Cultural District with assistance from Culture Works.
Additional funding from 91.3 WYSO.
Episode editor is Katie Davis. Additional content assistance from Craig Shank and Ruth Reveal.
Special thanks to the Hollingsworth Family for their help with this episode.
I’m George Drake, Jr. Thanks for listening to Fifth & Ludlow.
(THEME OUT)
George Drake, Jr.: Next time on Fifth & Ludlow…
Kathy Hollingsworth: We are off to 420 Ridgewood, Oakwood, Ohio, which was our home from October of 1990 to September of…
Frank Hollingsworth: 2012.
Kathy Hollingsworth: 2012. 22 years of great memories in that house!
Dave Requarth: “We went to take the bathtub out one day and when they lifted the tub up lo and behold this envelope was in the under the tub and was just laying there plain as day.”
George Drake, Jr (on tape): “Well, it fits.”
Frank Hollingsworth: “It fits and the folds…”
George Drake, Jr (on tape): “Match up.”
Frank Hollingsworth: “Match up.”
Part 2: The Two Envelopes
George Drake, Jr.: Last time on Fifth and Ludlow...
(THEME)
Torey Hollingsworth: “Do you want me to read the envelopes too?”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Start with the letter.”
Torey Hollingsworth: “Okay.”
George Drake, Jr.: My friend Torey’s family found this mysterious letter hidden underneath the bathtub of their 1927 house.
Torey Hollingsworth: “Friend Rose, I got your letter, and I am well, and I hope this will please you, Rose. I will meet you at the corner of Fifth and Ludlow at Jenkins Drugstore at 7:30 and you and I will go to the home and go some place to ourselves and talk the matter over. Hoping you will be all okay when we meet if you are willing to do this and keep it to yourself. Will’”
George Drake, Jr.: It was found alongside two envelopes. One that went with the letter to Rose and another one to a man named Jim O’Connor.
Torey Hollingsworth: “That envelope was inside of this other envelope addressed to Jim O'Connor.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Oh shit!”
Torey Hollingsworth: “And Jim O'Connor is not the same person who wrote the letter because the letter appears to be written by someone named Will.”
(THEME)
George Drake, Jr.: I’m George Drake, Jr. and this is Fifth and Ludlow. Part 2: The Two Envelopes.
Before we get more into the people and the story at hand, we should take a step back and look at the city Rose, Will, and Jim called home.
(MUSIC)
George Drake, Jr.: At the beginning of the 20th Century, Dayton, Ohio was filled with ingenuity and inventions that were elemental in shaping how the world is today.
Alex Heckman: “From 1890 to 1930 Dayton is, in many respects, in a golden era of manufacturing and entrepreneurship…”
George Drake, Jr.: That’s Alex Heckman. He’s the Vice President of Museum Operations for Dayton History.
Alex Heckman: “...but it's also a period marked by great tragedies with both the Great Dayton Flood of 1913, and World War I, and the worldwide Influenza epidemic that followed World War I.”
George Drake, Jr.: In the 70 years from 1850 to when Will wrote his letter to Rose in 1920, Daytonians invented things like the electric wheelchair, the modern parachute, the motion picture camera — as well as the first movie theater, for that matter — and the cash register.
Alex Heckman: “John H. Patterson, in 1884, creates the National Cash Register Company. That company in its first 25 years appears in something like 50 different countries around the globe.”
George Drake, Jr.: They saw roads starting to take shape as the popularity of cars started to increase because people didn’t need to crank their cars anymore to get them started — Daytonian Charles Kettering invented the self-starter in 1911.
They lived at a time in Dayton where they saw one of their own — Paul Lawrence Dunbar — become the first African American Poet Laureate of the United States, and another — James Cox — become Ohio’s governor for three terms. They also could have gone out to Huffman Field to watch Orville and Wilbur Wright — the Wright Brothers — fly their plane, the Wright Flyer.
Alex Heckman: “Dayton, by 1890, had the highest number of patents per capita of any city in the United States and that's something that I think the community has been very proud of during that period and throughout its history, even up till today.”
George Drake, Jr.: Henry Ford actually purchased the Wright Brothers’ bike shop and moved it up to Michigan, along with one foot of the ground beneath it because he felt there was something in the soil that helped make Daytonians so great.
On March 25, 1913, Dayton experienced a massive flood after torrential rains caused the Miami River to break through its levees, only to be followed by a series of fires throughout the city. Almost 400 Daytonians died as a result of the flood, and it displaced over 60,000 others.
Alex Heckman: “I mean, all of these things just kind of paint a picture for the other end of the spectrum for what these people lived through.”
George Drake, Jr.: Rose, Will, and Jim, regardless of what was going on with them — potential affairs and secret meetings aside — bore witness to all of that. They experienced the ingenuity — maybe they saw man take flight — and they survived the flood.
(MUSIC)
(GARAGE DOOR OPENING)
Kathy Hollingsworth: Do you want to get up front so you can tape better?
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): I will record you better from the back.
Kathy Hollingsworth: Okay. Alright.
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): But thank you.
(CAR DOOR SHUTS)
George Drake, Jr.: I met Frank and Kathy Hollingsworth — the couple who found the letter under their bathtub — one Saturday in December 2017 to go back in time ourselves. We were headed to their old house — the one where they found the letter and envelopes while they were remodeling a bathroom. They arranged for the tour because they knew the owners at the time, the people they sold the house to.
We made our way up to the house — a large Georgian Colonial. Perfectly symmetrical, a big porch with six columns on the bottom floor, five evenly spaced windows on the second, and two chimneys — one on each side of the house.
The Hollingsworths had looped the family in on the story that we were working on, and their kids were really interested in what they simply called “the mystery,” so you’ll hear them from time to time.
We walked up the stairs, which were straight ahead as soon as we came inside, through the master bedroom and into the bathroom the Hollingsworths renovated nine years prior.
Child: “Is was this bathroom, right?”
Frank Hollingsworth: “Yep. It was this bathroom right here!”
Child: “Where did you find that letter?”
Frank Hollingsworth: “Well, there used to be a big tub, a big cast iron tub right here that went all the way to the floor. So, it was porcelain…”
George Drake, Jr.: Frank recounted the story to their kids as the rest of us filed into the bathroom. He’s a pretty methodical guy, so he tells the story the same way every time. It’s not a big bathroom. The Hollingsworths didn’t do anything to its size, which made it easier to visualize how it looked like when it was built. The shower they put in has the same footprint as the tub that was there, so you could see it filling that same space, with the wrap around shower curtain hanging to the floor.
While we were in there, Frank and Kathy — along with their daughter Meredith — brought up something I’d always thought, but I’d never put into words. To put it simply, the letter and envelopes couldn’t have been put underneath the tub after it had been installed.
Frank Hollingsworth: “The way the tub was made there would have been no way for somebody to — it had to go in there when the tub went in.”
Kathy Hollingsworth: “They couldn’t slip it under, there was no space.”
Frank Hollingsworth: “Yeah, there was no space for it to go in. So, it was a mystery. It was a mystery. Still is.”
Meredith Hollingsworth: “It seemed intentional that it was under there.”
Frank Hollingsworth: “If it... because of the context of the letter it felt intentional... felt like somebody was trying to hide something.”
(MUSIC)
George Drake, Jr.: I hadn’t even seen the Hollingsworth’s old house until that day, and standing there in the bathroom, feet away from where the letter stayed untouched for almost a century, made it feel more real — like I was getting closer to finding pieces to put together, figuring out what Will and Rose’s relationship was, but that just wasn’t the case.
I hadn’t learned anything new outside of “where the mystery began,” in a sense. So, I got the name of someone who was there when the letter was found.
Dave Requarth: ”Well, one observation that I had after reading it several times when we first found it was that I thought — in 1921, I believe, the letter was — you know, a lot of people were not well educated. It's a choppy letter that's hard to read, but you, if you look at it enough, you can kind of figure out that, yes, this was a meeting of some people with — that was maybe a little clandestine at the drugstore.”
George Drake, Jr.: This is Dave, he was the contractor for the remodel.
Dave Requarth: ”Yeah, I'm David Requarth and I'm one of the owners and vice president of Requarth Lumber Company.”
George Drake, Jr.: His company started in 1860 and it’s still in the hands of the direct family. Back in Dayton’s heyday they sold wood to many of the inventors of the time — even to the Wright Brothers. On January 19, 1904, Orville Wright wrote in his diary, “Bought lumber for making ribs and uprights from Requarth Co.”
His company now does remodeling, which is where our story comes in.
Dave Requarth: “It was winter, cold, snowing. I remember because we had to jackhammer the floor out because it was an old, what they call a “panned floor,” and it had a 4-inch-thick concrete floor with mosaic tile on it. It was a very original bathroom to the house.”
George Drake, Jr.: He says they spent two or three days just getting the floor out. After that it was the wall tiles. Finally, it came time to get rid of the tub, so they called in a local plumber to come help.
Dave Requarth: “We went to take the bathtub out one day and they wanted to take the bathtub out in one piece, because it's a real mess to break those bathtubs up with a sledgehammer. And so, they had this really cool walking machine that literally walked down the stairwell with this big old cast-iron — and, I mean, this thing probably weighed 700 or 800 pounds, because it took three, you know, of these big plumbers to pick this thing up. And when they lifted the tub up, lo and behold, this envelope was under the tub, and it was just laying there, plain as day. So, we were figuring that somebody needed to get rid of it and they had it in their pocket and was like, ‘well, this would be a good place. Who's ever going to remove this bathtub?’”
George Drake, Jr.: He said the one thing that was off about the bathtub is how it was installed — it wasn’t right. At the time the house was built, they were normally set in plaster so they’d have a sturdier bottom. This one didn’t have that. It wasn’t even on concrete like the rest of the floor.
Dave Requarth: “It was intended to be a, what they call a “panned joist floor,” so that it had this concrete. But the bathtub had its own frame that the bathtub sat on, and so that's why it had a wood bottom there.”
George Drake, Jr.: In other words, it was the perfect environment for the letter. Dry, hidden, away from sunlight, and, most importantly, not encased in plaster or concrete.
Dave Requarth: “And it was relatively clean. A lot of times when you lift old bathtubs up in these old houses, they got a layer of crust under them, but it was real clean. And so, it just sat there since 1927.”
George Drake, Jr.: As he was looking at a photocopy of the letter and envelopes he remembered how they found them underneath the tub. The envelope to Rose was off to one side on its own, while the envelope to Jim was folded in half with the letter sticking out of it.
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “This may be a hard question to answer, but did it look dropped, or did it look placed?”
Dave Requarth: “You know, as I remember, they were laying on the floor. Like, one was here and one was there. So, if somebody... when they were setting that tub and there was somebody there that was like, 'I need to get rid of this letter' and his buddy said, 'well set it under this bathtub.' You know, they were... they were putting that 800-pound bathtub in. So they were wrestling that tub just like we wrestled it to get it out. So, to answer your question: it could be one or the other. Really. But it is an interesting question.”
(MUSIC)
George Drake, Jr.: One thing Ruth, our friend Torey, and I kept mulling over while talking about the envelopes is: how did the mail work in the 1920s? There were a few things that we weren’t sure about, so, I contacted the United States Postal Service.
(LINE RINGING)
David Van Allen: “This is David Van Allen, may I help you?”
George Drake, Jr (on tape): “Hey David, it's George. How are you?”
​
David Van Allen: “Good.”
George Drake, Jr.: This is David Van Allen.
David Van Allen: “Regional spokesman for the Postal Service.”
George Drake, Jr (on tape): “And what is the region that you work with?”
David Van Allen: “State of Ohio.”
George Drake, Jr (on tape): “Okay. I put a letter in a mailbox — how quickly would it get to somebody... somebody that, to the location, in the 1920s? Say, I do it from Dayton to Dayton. How long would it take?”
David Van Allen: “Well, from Dayton to Dayton it’d probably turn around pretty quickly. It's part of the reason they had delivery so many times a day, because everything was manual back then. They didn't have the machinery that we do today and the computers and all that kind of thing. So, there was a whole bunch of clerks just stamping mail, and putting them in pigeon holes, and then getting them out to carriers. And this happened throughout the day, maybe two, three, four times a day. My grandfather, which is a little bit later in the 1920s, delivered mail for a while. And the way he did it: he'd go to the post office, he'd get a big load of mail, walk several miles to the street he was going to be delivering, deliver that street, walk back to the post office, load up again, walk out another direction, go deliver — and he'd do that several times a day.”
George Drake, Jr (on tape): “Wow.”
David Van Allen: “So, it's quite a different, quite a different world than we have now. “
George Drake, Jr (on tape): “So, during that time, was mail delivered to people's homes at all?”
David Van Allen: “Yeah, mail was delivered to people's homes. In fact, in Dayton, free home-delivery mail began in 1869.”
George Drake, Jr (on tape): “Okay. So when, in consideration with these letters, they were both delivered to specific people via different, like, third parties. So, was that common? Was that more common if not…”
David Van Allen: “Delivered by third parties… what do you mean?”
George Drake, Jr (on tape): “I mean, like, sent to, in this case, a bakery or the Union Depot.”
David Van Allen: “Oh sure. It was not uncommon for mail to be addressed to one person in care of another. But if you look at these, both of these letters are pretty poorly addressed. They lack street names and/or numbers.”
George Drake, Jr (on tape): “I can kind of infer that if you mail a letter from inside of Dayton, you don't have to — at least in the 1920s — you didn't have to write ‘Dayton.' Am I correct? I'm looking at…”
David Van Allen: “Yeah, it wasn't uncommon for people to use 'city' as the last line of address for local letters. Postal officials discouraged the practice, even then, because if a letter was accidentally transported to another city…”
George Drake, Jr (on tape): “Ahhhh.”
David Van Allen: “...the address, quote 'City,' was basically as good as having no address at all. So, you know, the letter could be misdirected if it slipped into an open circular, got stuck in another envelope, or was just put in the wrong mail sack.”
George Drake, Jr.: I was hoping he’d be able to shed some light on the note in pen at the top of the inner envelope — the one addressed to Rose from Will. The note reading “Opened by mistake but not read.”
George Drake, Jr (on tape): “And just to confirm, the script pen writing at the top, there would be no one in the post office that would be opening other people's mail. Right?”
David Van Allen: “No, no. It looks like it probably got in somebody else's hands for some reason and then they redirected it.”
George Drake, Jr.: I had learned how mail delivery functioned in the 1920’s — that’s what I was looking for with this conversation, after all — but I still felt trapped. I admittedly still knew nothing about the people at hand, so I bounced our speculation of the inner and outer envelopes off of him to see what he thought.
George Drake, Jr (on tape): “Would it make sense for what we think is the 'inner envelope' to Rose to be forwarded to Jim in the 'outer envelope?' Like, I mean, just based upon, you know, your knowledge of that time, and also looking at the size of the envelopes?”
David Van Allen: “Yeah. Well it seems like that's what happened, but determining who, how or when, or why, you know, it's just a mystery.”
(MUSIC)
George Drake, Jr.: At this point, I’d been researching this letter for a few months and the word “mystery” was starting to feel like a cop out whenever something couldn’t be answered. I came to the conclusion that we needed to answer something, and thought a good place to start was with the letter and envelopes themselves.
Ever since they found everything under their tub, the Hollingsworths have thought that someone may have mailed Will’s letter — envelope and all — to Jim, a year after it had been sent to Rose, but they didn’t have any evidence to back up that claim.
So, I wanted to see if we could confirm the “inner” and “outer” envelopes theory but, at the same time, answer another question I hadn’t really taken into account: is there anything written on the backs of either the envelopes or the letter? Maybe Will or the unknown sender from Zanesville had written their return address on the back flap of the envelope. If Will did that, maybe he included his last name, too.
There was only one way to answer that question — we needed to take everything out of the frame.
(FRAME BEING TAKEN APART)
George Drake, Jr.: Nothing. No return address, no notes, nothing.
Frank Hollingsworth: “Nothing on the back.”
Judi Rosenbeck: “Nothing on the back.”
George Drake, Jr.: “Well, it’s something, though. Now we know.”
Frank Hollingsworth: “Yep.”
George Drake, Jr.: A potential answer remains unanswered.
Frank took the envelopes to see if one fit inside the other, so we could figure out if the letter to Rose could have actually been forwarded to Jim.
And it did. Perfectly.
Judi Rosenbeck: “I’ll be darned.”
George Drake, Jr (on tape): “Well, it fits.”
Judi Rosenbeck: “It sure does. Like a glove.”
Frank Hollingsworth: “It fits and the folds…”
George Drake, Jr (on tape): “Match up.”
Frank Hollingsworth: “Match up.”
(MUSIC)
George Drake, Jr.: Throughout this time, Ruth had been scouring census records to find out anything about Rose, Will, or Jim. And she did find some things out, mainly about Rose. Simple stuff, like where she was living in one census, and where she was living when the next census was taken ten years later was easy to find, but that didn’t really fill in any holes. So, she kept digging.
Woodland Cemetery is a really old cemetery right by the University of Dayton. It’s been there since the mid-1800s and houses the burial plots for many famous Daytonians including the Wright Brothers and their family.
Ruth took a longshot and tried using the “Locate a Loved One” search feature on the cemetery’s website to search for ‘Rose O’Connor’ and compared what she’d found to the census records.
Ruth Reveal: “So, I found Rose O'Connor at Woodland Cemetery. And then I, like, reverse-searched the plot she was buried in, and found that she was buried next to Harley and Bertha Wysong — but I was like, ‘well, I don't know who those people are,’ so, I just kind of forgot about it. And then I went, I found some census records. So, I went to search for ‘Rose O'Connor,’ and found a woman who was living in Dayton for the 1930 census. And she was living with Harley and Bertha Wysong, and they were listed as her daughter and her son-in-law. So, I was like, ‘well that must be the same Rose that's buried in Woodland Cemetery.’ So, she has a son named ‘James,’ but he was only 16 in the 1930 census, but it says that she's widowed, so it doesn't say her husband's name, so he could have been named James. I have no idea. Right? But, the exciting thing is that she had two boarders living in her house in 1930: Andrew and William.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Ohhhhhh!!”
Ruth Reveal: “Right?!”
(THEME)
George Drake, Jr.: To see pictures of things from around Dayton History’s Carillon Park, the unframing of the letter, and how the envelopes match up, as well as Rose’s grave, visit the website www.fifthandludlowpodcast.com.
There you can also find the show on Spotify and other outlets to subscribe to the podcast.
If you could, take a moment to rate and review the show. Those stars and short reviews may not take a lot of time to write, but they do help in getting Fifth & Ludlow heard by more people.
Theme and other music used in Fifth & Ludlow is by Mustafa Shaheen.
Logo and branding is by Peter Diaczenko.
This series is made possible by a generous grant from the Montgomery County Arts & Cultural District with assistance from Culture Works.
Additional funding is from 91.3 WYSO.
Episode editor is Katie Davis. Additional content assistance from Ruth Reveal and Craig Shank.
Special thanks to the Hollingsworth Family, Dayton History, Dave Requarth, The United States Postal Service, and Dayton Art Solutions for their help with this episode.
I’m George Drake, Jr. Thanks for listening to Fifth & Ludlow.
(THEME OUT)
George Drake, Jr.: Next time on Fifth & Ludlow…
Ruth Reveal: “So, was the address there?”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “18 S. Tecumseh?”
Ruth Reveal: “Yeah.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Yep.”
Ruth Reveal: “Ohh!”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “It’s there, and we’re going!”
Ruth Reveal: “Exciting!”
Curt Dalton: “The strange thing is is that, in 1926, Rose is still living out at S. Tecumseh Street, but James isn't there, but he's also not dead.”
Ruth Reveal: “That's when the letter would have been written. And then and William is not listed as one of the boarders in 1920 the 1920 census! Oh my gosh. So, like, that's too many coincidences.”
Part 3: The People
George Drake, Jr.: Last time on Fifth and Ludlow…
(RIPPING SFX)
George Drake, Jr.: We took the letter and envelopes out of the frame, and while there was nothing on the back of any of it, the envelopes fit together perfectly.
George Drake, Jr (on tape): “Well, it fits.”
Frank Hollingsworth: “It fits and the folds…”
George Drake, Jr (on tape): “Match up.”
Frank Hollingsworth: “Match up.”
George Drake, Jr.: Then Ruth started doing some digging into Rose and found that Will, the man who wrote the letter to her in 1920, may have been closer than we thought...
Ruth Reveal: “The exciting thing is that she had two boarders living in her house in 1930, Andrew and William.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Ohhhhhh!!”
Ruth Reveal: “Right?!”
(THEME)
George Drake, Jr.: I’m George Drake, Jr. and this is Fifth & Ludlow. Part 3: The People.
At this point it had been a few months since we started looking into Rose, Will, and Jim — and they were starting to feel more like people to me instead of just names on paper. They had lives in the city that I now call home. They walked down the same streets, they could have seen some of the same trees. I mean, Woodland Cemetery, which has been there since the 1840s — and where Rose is actually buried — has many trees that are over 100 years old, so it’s possible.
Then I started to wonder what life was like for them — were they at a good place financially leading up to the Depression? Did they ever make it out to Huffman Field to see the Wright Brothers fly their plane? What was it like the first time they ever drove in a car? Unfortunately, these are things that census records can’t answer — but that’s all we had.
We did also have this letter from Will that he sent to Rose. He wrote in a way that Rose would know exactly what he’s talking about, but to everyone on the outside, it’s vague enough to not be able to pin anything down. It says, “Friend Rose. I got your letter and I am well, and I hope this will please you, Rose. I will meet you at the corner of Fifth and Ludlow at Jenkin’s Drugstore at 7:30 and you and I will go out to the home and go some place to ourselves and talk the matter over. Hoping you will be all okay when we meet, if you are willing to do this and keep it to yourself. Will.”
Up to this point, we hadn’t found anything out about Will. But we did have a lead.
So, to go over where we left off, here’s what Ruth — my wife and partner in this podcast — found out from census records:
Rose — or at least the Rose we were looking into, which seems pretty certain to us at this point — had a daughter named Bertha who shared the last name of Wysong with her husband Harley. According to the census, they were both living in Rose’s house in 1930.
Rose also had a son named James who would have been 16 at the time.
According to that same census, Rose is a widow, but it doesn’t say her late husband’s name, so there’s a chance it might not even be the Jim from our envelope.
Finally, in 1930, Rose had two boarders staying in her home — one named Andrew, and another one named William — or, to us, “Will.” The same name as the guy who wrote the letter. There’s no way we can be sure if it’s the same guy, however, because we still don’t know Will-the-letter-writer’s last name.
Ruth Reveal: “So, it's William Hoffrichter is listed as her boarder. And in 1930 he's... it says he was 62 years old.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “In 1930.”
Ruth Reveal: “In 1930. So, in 1920 he would have been 52. She would have been 37 in 1920 when the letter was written. Bertha was her first daughter. And she was only 16 when she had her. And then she had a son Ralph, and then a son James.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Okay, wait. So in 1930 James was 16.”
Ruth Reveal: “Yeah, so it doesn't really make sense to send a six-year-old a letter…”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Right.”
Ruth Reveal: “...forwarded from Zanesville. So, then, like, when I was thinking about the letter and Will saying 'we'll go to the home,' I was like, if he was inquiring about getting a room at her house that would make sense. If he said ‘we'll go to the home’ like, 'the home where I'm going to live with you if I'm your lodger.'”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “But he was so secretive about it.”
Ruth Reveal: “I know. Well, he's also listed as a widow and she's listed as a widow. So, I don't know. Maybe he was like, embarrassed? I have no idea. But then there's this other boarder, Andrew Reedy. He was 76. I haven't looked him up yet. Let's see.”
George Drake, Jr.: So, she looked for Andrew Reedy in the census records and found a result — not from the 1930 census, but the 1920 census — and he wasn’t the only one listed there…
Ruth Reveal: “Oh, there he is! There's his, wait... (screams) There's Rose's husband James! So, Andrew, I went through Andrew Reedy's record. From the 1920 census in Dayton, James O'Connor is listed as the head of the household, age 53. Rose O'Connor, his wife, Ralph, his son, Clara, daughter, James, son. Five years old. That's when the letter would have been written. And then, and William is not listed as one of the boarders in 1920 the 1920 census! Oh my gosh, so, like, that's too many coincidences.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Yeah, it has to be... It has to be him.”
Ruth Reveal: “Jim has to be her husband and the letter was just forwarded to her husband, and apparently he was still alive in 1920.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “So, he died in between 1920 and 1930.”
Ruth Reveal: “Yeah. Jim.”
(MUSIC)
George Drake, Jr.: In 1920, Jim is listed as a night watchman on the railroad — so it makes sense that the envelope addressed to him was sent to Union Depot.
One thing we noticed about the census records as a whole is that they’re wildly inconsistent. Spelling errors are frequent, ages fluctuate from one census to the next. That’s as far as we got.
Ruth Reveal: “It's lucky that Bertha and Harley still lived with them, because otherwise we wouldn't know that her name changed and then we would have no idea that they were related, even though they’re buried next to each other. But, like, Rose, I don't know. She seems like a cool lady. She had like, a lot of kids, two boarders living in her house. I just want to know where they lived.”
(MUSIC)
George Drake, Jr.: They lived at 18 S. Tecumseh — right in the heart of Dayton’s Oregon District.
Ruth really wanted Rose to have survived the 1913 flood. It’s one of those things true present-day Daytonians put on a pedestal — that the city came together as one and survived the flood, like they were there paddling the boats with them. Rose did. In 1913, they were living somewhere else in the Oregon District — where the flood waters would have been at some of their deepest. With that in mind, we weren’t even sure the house would still be there.
Either way, I put the address into the GPS.
Ruth Reveal: “So, was the address there?”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Yep. It’s there, and we’re going!”
Ruth Reveal: “Exciting!”
George Drake, Jr.: For being one of the hardest-hit areas during the flood, the houses look great. If the house was made of brick, it’s most likely still standing today, and this area has brick houses on both sides of most of the streets. They’re original and they predate the flood.
Ruth Reveal: “1855?”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “That was the date, yeah...
Ruth Reveal: “Oh, oh!”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “...it was built. So, yeah, if it's here, it's definitely still standing.”
Ruth Reveal: “24...”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “20. It’s this one.”
Ruth Reveal: “It's so cute!”
George Drake, Jr.: It is a cute place. It’s turquoise in color with white shutters and maroon trim. It’s actually the right half of a double — so it has a mirror image of itself on the other side.
We knocked, but no one answered. So, I left my card along with an explanation of what I was doing and how I wanted to tour their house, not necessarily record them personally, but I never heard back.
Part of me wanted to experience the same thing I felt when I was in the bathroom of the Hollingsworth’s old house — that feeling of being so physically close, standing where they stood, maybe guessing who stayed in what room, wishing I could instantly time travel to see how they lived.
Just like last time, I didn’t think it would be enough. It would be a cool experience, but it wouldn’t lead anywhere or answer any questions. Ruth and I were having fun finally finding things out, and I didn’t want to lose that momentum. With that said, I never knocked on the door of 18 S. Tecumseh again.
Instead, I went a more practical route to find out information about the people in question.
Curt Dalton: “Curt Dalton. Visual resource manager for Dayton History.”
George Drake, Jr.: If you need to know anything about the history of Dayton — especially if there are records or anything like that to comb through — Curt is the guy to talk to. He’s not afraid to do some digging or get a little dusty.
To start, he looked into the two people from the front of the envelope addressed to Rose. Oscar Gilbert, who the letter to Rose was addressed to “in care of,” and JT Shafer — the one who signed the envelope “opened by mistake but not read.”
Curt Dalton: “Oscar Gilbert who's on the front of the first letter is the superintendent for the Krug Baking Company and then he lived with his wife Rosa at 1147 W. Second. So, that might be possibly why the letter was open. Because Rosa, Rose, with that bad handwriting, that could be because the gentleman who is James, this is James F. Shafer — that’s what it kind of looks like because it's initials — he also works as a baker at a bakery. And so, he was probably working for Mr. Gilbert, saw the ‘Rosa,’ opened it, and thought, ‘Oh, this isn't his Rose,’ and said ‘I didn't…’ I'm sure that's why he wrote the note, you know, ‘I didn't read this,’ because it’s against the law to open up someone else's mail.’”
George Drake, Jr.: Curt also looked into the people who built the house the Hollingsworth’s lived in. As they said, they’ve always speculated that the letter actually belonged to the people who built the house and not necessarily who lived in the house and paid for it to be built. And that may be true, because Rose and Jim definitely didn’t live there.
Curt Dalton: “It looks like, from everything I can find out, that a Dr. P.H. Kilbourne and his wife Ethel, and probably his mother, Mary, because it says 'widow,' are all living at 420 Ridgewood Avenue.”
George Drake, Jr.: That’s according to the 1928 city directory, which is the first year the house even shows up in a city directory. So, Curt said that establishes what we already knew — that the house was at least finished being built in 1927.
He didn’t dig too much into Kilbourne because he didn’t seem connected to Rose and Jim. He only learned that — around the time he completed construction on his house — he worked in room 740 of the Fidelity Medical Building downtown.
Curt then gave us a lot of the information we’d already found out about Rose and Jim from the census records — when they were born, their kids names, occupations, etcetera. He was able to see where they lived for the years in between when the census was taken by looking through city directories.
Then he dug a little deeper though and found something else.
Curt Dalton: “But more importantly is an ad that the newspaper, that appeared at least four times at that time, beginning just a little over a month after the letter has been written. The ad appears in the Dayton Daily News on August 16, 1920 for the first time on page 14 under the title ‘Personal Notices’ and it says 'I will not be responsible for any debts contracted by my wife Rose O'Connor.’ Signed ‘J O'Connor.’ Now, this appears another three times at least after that, and back then that's what you had to do legally when you were going to get a divorce.”
George Drake, Jr.: So, Will sent his letter to Rose on July 20th, 1920. Less than one month later, Jim takes out this ad in the paper — for four consecutive days — that basically says, “if my wife is out there running up tabs, this is my public notice that it is not my problem.” That alone seems to align with the “affair” narrative many have adopted for Rose and Will, but it may not actually be in the case.
Curt Dalton: “In ‘24 and ‘25 the O’Conners were still living together. So, more than likely they didn't get a divorce. You could take the time to look at divorce records back then and see if they filed, because they kept records even if they don't go through with it, but more likely changed his mind. Okay? The strange thing is that in 1926 Rose is still living out at S. Tecumseh Street, but James isn't there, but he's also not dead. So there's two possibilities: he finally got fed up and left, or he got sick.
George Drake, Jr.: Now, moving onto 1930 — the first time Will enters our story.
Curt Dalton: “In 1930 Rose is now listed as a widow of James, which is why I do not believe they got a divorce, but normally if they had gotten a divorce she wouldn't have been his ‘widow.’ So, William Hoffrichter, I guess, is also listed as a widow. Widower, I guess, but they say 'widow.’ Age 62 so, you know, that's that's when they finally started putting down if you were married, divorced, widowed, etcetera. So at one time he had been married to somebody, at least one person, but I've never seen any records of it.”
George Drake, Jr.: Will was as a machinist working with farm lighting, which Curt says was most likely Delco Light — the biggest player in electricity in Dayton at the time. Delco opened up shop in 1916. Because many homes and businesses within the city already had electricity, Delco looked outward toward the rural areas — like the farms — to make it so they didn’t need to rely on oil lamps and lanterns. That is what Will helped with.
(MUSIC)
George Drake, Jr.: We went from knowing the pretty on-the-surface stuff about Rose, Jim, and Will to knowing some relatively intimate details — all with public records nonetheless.
After our conversation with Curt, Ruth and I were talking through what we learned in the car on the way home, and she brought up one important thing we’d overlooked when discussing the classified ad that Jim took out in August 1920 — the second envelope.
So, the letter Will sent to Rose was maybe forwarded to Jim in 1921, but a year after she received it. So, it’s not likely that the letter was the reason why he took out the ad because he didn’t even see it yet.
Ruth Reveal: “If James had somehow found out that something was going on, then just a month later, after Rose met Will, he filed those things in the newspaper. But he wouldn't have had like, physical evidence... someone must have told him or she told him or something.”
George Drake, Jr.: Now, don’t get me wrong, Curt finding this ad is exciting — pieces were starting to come together, but in a sad way. As I said before, we were starting to feel attached to the people in this story. So, while this news of Jim’s ad definitely made for a nice element, we didn’t necessarily want there to be marriage troubles. On top of that, Ruth and I were kind of disappointed that our admittedly somewhat mundane speculations about Will being a boarder weren’t confirmed.
Ruth Reveal: “I have been convinced now that it was just a totally harmless, like ‘I want to be a boarder in your house.’ And so when he said he had a newspaper ad, I thought for sure it was an ad…”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Yeah I did too!”
Ruth Reveal: “Yeah — for renting a room in their house. I did not expect that it would be an ad that James was like, ‘I do not…’”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Right. Right.”
Ruth Reveal: “‘I'm not responsible for my wife.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Yeah, I thought the same thing.”
Ruth Reveal: “Yeah, and I was excited. I was like, ‘oh, that's perfect.’ Like, ‘then we have evidence that that was their relationship.’”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “It'll tie that bow on it.”
Ruth Reveal: “But it's not. I mean — and he seems, also, like everyone else we've talked to, to think that there was something romantic going on.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Yes, exactly!”
Ruth Reveal: “Like, every single person.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “And you’d think he would be the one person that would be like…”
Ruth Reveal: “Right. Like, ‘oh no…’”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “...very factual, like, ‘do not,’ kind of, ‘make your own assumptions about people.’ But he assumed so much!”
Ruth Reveal: “I know.”
(MUSIC)
George Drake, Jr.: While in the car, we decided to head to Rose’s house and make the walk to the corner of Fifth and Ludlow where she was supposed to have met Will. I admit, partly for that “standing where they stood” aspect, but also for a better feeling on timing.
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Alright. So, which way would Rose have gone from here?”
Ruth Reveal: “She would have walked out her door and gone right… And then, we’re approaching Sixth Street. She would have turned left on Sixth Street.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Okay.”
George Drake, Jr.: The walk to where Jenkin’s Drug Store once stood is pretty much the same as it would have been back then, in the 1920s — the streets have the same layout and many of the buildings along the way are the same — but it’s probably less crowded. Parking is easy to find in Dayton today — even on a weekend — but the pictures I’ve seen of the city from the 1920s, there are black cars lining the streets like a wall on both sides, and the sidewalks seem more crowded, too.
Just over halfway there, oddly enough, we passed the Fidelity Medical Building — which, if you remember, is where Dr. P.H. Kilbourne worked. He’s the man who built the house that would act as the time capsule for Will’s letter.
Ruth Reveal: “So, that’s really close!”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Yeah. That’s such a small world!”
Ruth Reveal: “Well, Dayton is a small city.”
George Drake, Jr.: We arrived at the corner of Fifth & Ludlow, where Jenkin’s Drug Store once stood, in a little under eight minutes. When we got there we had to confirm which corner was the right one.
Ruth Reveal: “Okay. It was the northeast corner of Fifth and Ludlow.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “So it was this one. This corner here?”
Ruth Reveal: “Is this northeast?”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “That corner.”
Ruth Reveal: “Well, let’s cross!”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Alright.”
George Drake, Jr.: The building that stands on the corner is five-stories tall and is known as the Ludlow Building. It’s actually three buildings disguised as one — the two three-story buildings on each side also make up part of the structure. It was built in 1917, and there’s photographic evidence that Jenkin’s Drugstore was there in a different building during the flood in 1913, as well as on the ground floor of the Ludlow Building. So, Jenkin’s must have moved out during construction and then back in sometime after it was completed.
Jenkin’s had four locations around Dayton. They sold everything from antiseptic shampoo and cigars, to ivory toilet articles and candy.
I’ve seen this building dozens of times — I even cupped my hands to take a look inside a few years ago because it was vacant at the time. It’s never really meant anything to me, to be honest, outside of the fact that I thought it was sad that such a pretty building was empty. But I see it in a different light now — especially because it looks the same as it did back then. It’s the building where Rose and Will could have met.
(MUSIC)
George Drake, Jr.: A few months went by, and during that time Ruth and I spent our first anniversary in the quaint little town of Bellville, Ohio. When we got off the highway to make our way to our hotel, we drove past the Ohio Genealogical Society. We’d been meaning to go there but this was completely on accident. So, we pulled out my phone to record because I didn’t bring my kit, and stopped in to comb through some records.
Ruth Reveal: “‘I just want to point out, for posterity’s sake, that we are currently on our first anniversary getaway, sitting on the floor of the Ohio Genealogical Society reading cemetery records. Wysong, okay.”
George Drake, Jr.: We left empty handed. It basically had everything Curt had already told us. Also, because census records are sealed for 72 years after information is collected to keep peoples’ information private, we were unable to follow Rose and her children past the mid-1940s or so.
And, unfortunately for me, that’s what I determined I needed to do next: somehow find my way into that 72 year gap and track down a descendant of Rose, Jim, or Will to help shed some more light on what this letter could be about.
Before I started to cold call all the O’Connors and Wysongs in the phone book, I decided to try something easier first — I made an image that read “Podcast producer seeking descendants of Daytonians for series on local mystery,” included the names of the people I was looking into, and how to get in touch with me. I posted it on Facebook as well as Craigslist personals in a few major Midwestern cities.
I had more luck on Facebook. Within a day the image was shared over 100 times (which is a lot for my social media use). Then, a woman named Jessi Sievers reached out directly.
Jessi Sievers: “I love connecting people to their history and I love the stories that you find when you do — the stories are my thing. I really like stories so... So I'm not a professional, like, that's that's the takeaway here. I am not a professional. This is, like, I take what I find, I can give you facts, I can sort of interpret, but, you know, I'm not a professional.”
George Drake, Jr.: She’s an amateur genealogist and has looked into everything to do with herons family’s past, as well as the families of some of her friends. She has accounts with a few online databases — including Ancestry.com — and uses them to the fullest extent. She said, on Ancestry, people can upload their own family trees on there to help fill in any blanks, and that they can either make them private or visible to the public…
Jessi Sievers: “And someone — one tree — had all of these people, and this like — nobody else was doing this family, or something. I'm not sure but… we could see if maybe we could get in touch with them.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “They very well might be the only person.”
Jessi Sievers: “They could yeah, they... yeah.”
(THEME)
George Drake, Jr.: To see a map showing the 1913 flood, Jim’s ad in the classified section, Rose’s house as it is now, some ads from Jenkin’s Drug Store, and what the corner of Fifth & Ludlow looked like in the 1920s, visit the website, www.fifthandludlowpodcast.com.
There you can also find the show on TuneIn and other outlets to subscribe to the podcast.
If you have time, I’d appreciate if you took a moment to rate and review the show wherever you listen to it. Those stars and short reviews go a long way in getting Fifth & Ludlow heard by more people and moving it up in the rankings.
Theme and other music used in Fifth & Ludlow is by Mustafa Shaheen.
Logo and branding is by Peter Diaczenko.
This series is made possible by a generous grant from the Montgomery County Arts & Cultural District with assistance from Culture Works.
Additional funding is from 91.3 WYSO.
Episode editor is Katie Davis. Additional content assistance from Ruth Reveal and Craig Shank.
Special thanks to the Hollingsworth Family, Curt Dalton, Dayton History, the Ohio Genealogy Society, and Jessi Sievers for their help with this episode.
I’m George Drake, Jr. Thanks for listening to Fifth & Ludlow.
(THEME OUT)
George Drake, Jr.: Next time on Fifth & Ludlow…
Jessi Sievers: “So this was in October 10th of 1928 in the Dayton Herald: ‘Rose O'Connor, 405 Brown Street, charges James O'Connor of Dayton with willful of absence for three years past.’”
Jessi Sievers: “Vicky is her name, The owner of the tree, and her mother would be Clara’s youngest daughter. She is still living.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Wow! What?!”
Jesse Sievers: “Yes!”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “She seemed a little hesitant about stuff, and she has, I would like to say ‘request,’ but it is actually more of a demand.”
Kathy Hollingsworth: “Okay.”
Part 4: Finding Rose's Family
George Drake, Jr.: Last time on Fifth and Ludlow…
Ruth Reveal: “Oh, there he is!
George Drake, Jr.: My wife Ruth looked through some online records and found Jim in the 1920 census…
Ruth Reveal: “And William is not listed as one of the borders in 1920.”
George Drake, Jr.: We couldn’t find Jim in the 1930 census, and that could be because of this ad Dayton historian Curt Dalton dug up:
Curt Dalton: “'I will not be responsible for any debts contracted by my wife Rose O'Connor.’ That's what you had to do legally when you were going to get a divorce.”
George Drake, Jr.: And, because we didn’t really know how — we took on the help of amateur genealogist Jessi Sievers to find Rose’s living family members…
Jessi Sievers: “And someone — one tree — had all of these people…"
(THEME)
George Drake, Jr.: I’m George Drake, Jr. and this is Fifth and Ludlow. Part 4: Finding Rose’s Family.
From the start, all we really had to work with was the letter from Will to Rose — which isn’t that much. If it wasn’t for the second envelope — the one addressed to Jim — I’m not even sure we would have gotten to this point, because it gave us another name to work off of. Regardless, here we are.
At this point, we’ve figured out a good amount about Rose, Jim, and their family. Basic stuff, really — birth dates, addresses, and the like. We took on the help of Dayton historian Curt Dalton, who helped us establish a little more than what we could find in census records — namely an ad that Jim took out in the Dayton Daily News the month following the delivery of Will’s letter, which insinuated that he and Rose were going through a divorce. A divorce Curt later discovered may not have even gone through.
So, we were kind of stuck. But Jessi Seivers, an amateur genealogist, came to our aid.
Jessi Sievers: "I'm a little nervous. I mean, I've not done something like this before. I've done lots of research, just not had to present it in front of a microphone. So…"
​
George Drake, Jr.: Jessi already told us about how, on Ancestry.com, people can make their family trees public, and that there was one person who had many of the names we’ve been looking for in their tree — but she hadn’t gotten in touch with them yet.
However, she did find out even more stuff that we didn’t know.
Jessi Sievers: “Well, I kind of, I made a timeline — for myself more than anything — and I really, what I focused on was kind of the cast of characters that you gave. You know, that you’re... That you were looking for. And really what a lot of the stuff, what it came down to kind of focused more on Rose than anything. I mean, as far as being able to find things and pull them, and Rose was kind of the center, I guess, of what I was finding.”
George Drake, Jr.: Before she took on Jim’s last name of “O’Connor,” Rose’s maiden name was either pronounced “Rife” or “Reef.” Again, census records vary from one to the next, depending on who was giving the information and who was transcribing it. So it’s spelled a number of different ways, from “R-E-I-F-F” to “R-I-F-E.” Jessi thinks, either way, it’s of German heritage, which is pretty likely, because in the late 1700s and early 1800s, German immigrants migrated from Pennsylvania to Ohio and established communities across the state.
Rose was born in Hamilton, Ohio, which was one of those communities. It’s about 40 miles south of Dayton — kind of near Cincinnati. She’s from a large family — lots of brothers and sisters — but Jessi didn’t determine where she fell in the birth order.
Jessi Sievers: “In 1895, she marries a guy named Harry Heckroth. This is... And then she has her first child, which is Bertha. So, the birth record for Bertha, who ended up being Bertha Wysong, she was born in 1896 in Hamilton to Rose and Harry.”
George Drake, Jr.: This was news to us. We’d always known that Bertha was older than the other kids in the house but we hadn’t even considered that she was from a previous marriage, because, it seems, later in life she was given — or adopted herself — the last name of “O’Connor.”
In 1903, Rose is listed as the widow of Harry Heckroth. Jessi eventually found a marriage record for him shortly thereafter, so maybe this was just Rose’s way of wiping her hands clean of him.
Over the course of the next ten years, Rose and Jim get married, have a few kids and, eventually, Rose’s oldest daughter Bertha married Harley Wysong.
Jessi Sievers: “So, then, in 1916, they had another son, Norman, and he dies, however, at the age... Within, like, a few months. Actually, he would have been only a few months old. And one of the interesting things for me on that was, the cause of death for him was, like, colitis. So, it was a like, an inflammation... intestinal inflammation. But, also one of the contributing factors to it was malnourishment. I mean, I think they just really… I don't know if they were that poor. I don't, I don't… I don't know.”
(MUSIC)
George Drake, Jr.: By 1917, the warning signs concerning the divorce issues between Rose and Jim start to arise — at least for Rose.
Jessi Sievers: “So this is from the 16th of May in 1917 in the Dayton Daily News. And, again, this was verified with, because… Okay, clearly, “James O'Connor” is not an uncommon name. There are a lot of Irish in Dayton, but the addresses — that's what I tried to verify, that we're talking about the same people through the addresses, so. ‘After being told that he had run his wife out of the yard with a razor, Judge Budroe fined James O'Connor, 18 Tecumseh Street, $200 and costs, and six months in the workhouse on a charge of assault and battery.’”
(MUSIC)
George Drake, Jr.: The guys in Rose’s life weren’t great. Not only Jim, but Jessi found that in his marriage after Rose, Harry had been arrested for assaulting his wife and being drunk and disorderly. And, the behavior she dealt with from Jim was also seen in their children. James Jr. had several children later in life — one of which — Ronald — died under what Jessi called “neglectful circumstances” when he was just 5 months old. According to his death certificate, he died of a “concussion” to his “brain.” At the bottom under, “How did the injury occur?” it just says, “book fell on head.”
This is the disturbing reality of digging into someone — anyone’s — family history. You uncover some complicated issues. Even with the information Jessi found in the public record, this kind of stuff ends up coming to the surface.
Unfortunately for Rose, her time with Jim didn’t get much easier after their divorce problems in the early 1920s. They moved from their house at 18 Tecumseh but, by the time that historian Curt Dalton told us that Jim wasn’t living with Rose anymore, Rose was taking legal action against him.
Jessi Sievers: “So this was in October 10th of 1928 in the Dayton Herald: ‘Rose O'Connor, 405 Brown Street, charges James O'Connor of Dayton with willful of absence for three years past.’ So, that would take you back to 1925.”
George Drake, Jr.: After that, Jim vanishes. Jessi says it’s likely that when he first filed for divorce in 1920 — and put that classified ad in the paper — he just left. Which is possible, because he’s not in the 1930 census and Rose says she’s widowed — even though she’s not — because in 1940, Jim pops back up, very much alive, as a border in someone’s house. For that time in history anyway, saying she’s widowed was maybe a more respectable answer than saying she’s divorced — and that’s something she kept up for the rest of her life, all the way to her death certificate in 1949.
Jessi also did some digging into William Hoffrichter, Rose’s border, who we assumed is the one who wrote the letter. We were never 100% certain it was him, because he doesn’t use his last name, and the letter is so vague it’s hard to nail down anything, really. Jessi didn’t provide anything concrete as to who he is, either.
One thing is certain, though: he does have quite the relationship history prior to the letter being written in 1920.
After 6 years of marriage, his first wife died in 1894. And, shortly after, he married again, but filed a divorce from her, claiming infidelity.
Jessi Sievers: “She marries again about a year afterwards. So, it's entirely possible, but then he marries again a year afterwards, also.”
George Drake, Jr.: That would be his third wife. A few years later they split up, too, and eventually he married another woman. So, it could be argued that if you take his past into account, the speculation most people come to — that Rose and Will were having an affair — seems plausible, in a way.
Jessi Sievers: “He had been divorced a couple of times. So I wouldn't put something past him, I guess, but that's probably not fair to make that judgment on his character.”
(MUSIC)
George Drake, Jr.: A month later, Jessi told me to call her because she had some news concerning Rose’s living family members.
(PHONE RINGING)
Jessi Sievers: “George!”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Hey Jessi, how are you?”
Jessi Sievers: “I'm all right. How are you?”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “I'm good. I'm good. So I know you have some news for me.”
Jessi Sievers: “I do! I was able to make contact with the owner of the tree that I told you about, the only one that really had all of these people on the tree on Ancestry[.com].”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Right. Right”
Jessi Sievers: “And it turns out that she is actually Rose O'Connor's great granddaughter.”
George Drake, Jr.: I didn’t think we’d ever be able to track down any living relatives at all, and Jessi found one almost by happenstance — and, as an added bonus, she’s interested in her family’s history. Her name is Vicky. She’s Clara and Francis’ granddaughter. Her mom was their second-youngest daughter.
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “And what was her name?”
Jessi Sievers: “Her name, I think, is Eileen, if I remember right from my notes. She is still living.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Wow! What?!”
Jessi Sievers: “Yes!”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “You just got me all sorts of excited. Okay, okay.”
Jessi Sievers: “Yes! So, in the couple of messages that we sent to each other... Well, first of all, she was a little bit, you know, when I contacted her, you know, ‘Why? Why are you researching this family? How are you related?’
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “That’s my family!”
Jessie Sievers: “Yeah, right! And I did explain to her that, you know, it was not for me. It's not part of my family. And it's not part of your family, either. She was more confused by that, too, I think. But I just, I didn't explain any of the details of the letter, but I did tell her why you were looking into this family.”
George Drake, Jr.: During our research, my wife Ruth and I came across a death certificate for James — Rose’s husband — that said he was buried in a veterans cemetery in Indianapolis, and we showed it to Jessi when we first met her. She took one look at it and pointed out all of the reasons why it wasn’t for the James in our story. First of all, he didn’t die in 1927 like this James O’Connor did. As I said earlier, he was still living come the 1940 census. Not only that — he wasn’t a veteran either. However, we weren’t the only ones to come across that death certificate with high hopes.
Jessi Sievers: “Now, I did ask her also if she knew what had happened to James. To Clara's father to roses husband — or ex-husband, as it probably turned out — and she had seen the same death certificate that you had found and she agreed that that was likely not him, because her mother remembers meeting him. And, again, so her mother would have been a small child in the 40s, and so she said it was probably mid-40s, but her mother remembers meeting James.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Okay. So there's still kind of no answer to who Will is at this point.”
Jessi Sievers: “No. And I did try a little bit… But I mean, that's just so, so broad. You know, I mean, how many Wills are Williams or... You know, I can't find any good way to narrow down who he might be.”
(MUSIC)
George Drake, Jr.: So, Jessi and Vicky had been going back and forth for a few weeks swapping details, records, and other things they’d found out. And once they’d shared everything that needed to be shared, Jessi gave Vicky my email and she got in touch.
She seemed excited to be learning new things about her family and confirming things she’d been suspicious of. She said that weird things had been happening to her — like she and her mom kept getting disconnected on her landline, and she joked that it was her grandmother Clara intervening.
She even said she had an idea of who Will is.
Then things shifted a little. She wondered if we even had the right family to begin with. Again, she didn’t know what the letter was about, so it makes sense that she was apprehensive. She asked if she could have some details about the envelopes and the letter itself, which I gave to her. Then came an ultimatum.
She said she felt she shouldn’t be involved with this project unless she would be able to keep the envelopes and letter when I was done, because she felt they belonged with her family.
Obviously, this was not my decision to make.
(MUSIC)
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Do you guys have any inkling as to why I’m here?”
​
Frank Hollingsworth: “Something about the house.”
Kathy Hollingsworth: “Something about the letter. No.”
George Drake, Jr.: A few days later, I sat down with Kathy and Frank Hollingsworth — the people who found the letter underneath the bathtub — to tell them about the situation.
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “And it turns out that Rose has a living ancestor.”
Kathy Hollingsworth: “Oh how cool!”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Two of them.”
Kathy Hollingsworth: “Oh wow! Very cool.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “A woman named Vicky.”
Frank Hollingsworth: “Yeah?”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “...and her mother.”
Kathy Hollingsworth: “Oh, how cool. Very fun.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “So, in the process of getting that all squared away to talk with her. She seemed a little hesitant about stuff. She wasn't sure I had the right family. I explained to her that, you know, all the things that I knew, and she was like, ‘okay that aligns with what I know.’”
Kathy Hollingsworth: “Hmm.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “...and she has, I would like to say ‘request,’ but it is actually more of a demand.”
Kathy Hollingsworth: “Okay.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “She does not want to participate in this at all unless she's able to keep the letters.”
Kathy Hollingsworth: “Oh wow.”
Frank Hollingsworth: “Wow.”
(THEME)
George Drake, Jr.: To see some of the documents Jessi dug up, as well as the envelopes and letter, visit the website, www.fifthandludlowpodcast.com.
There you can also find the show on Google Podcasts and other outlets to subscribe.
When you get to Google, take a moment to rate and review the show. Those stars and short reviews really go a long way in getting Fifth & Ludlow heard by more people.
Theme and other music used in Fifth and Ludlow is by Mustafa Shaheen.
Logo and branding is by Peter Diaczenko.
This series is made possible by a generous grant from the Montgomery County Arts & Cultural District with assistance from Culture Works.
Additional funding is from 91.3 WYSO.
Episode editor is Katie Davis. Additional content assistance from Ruth Reveal and Craig Shank.
Special thanks to the Hollingsworth Family and Jessi Sievers for their help with this episode.
I’m George Drake, Jr. Thanks for listening to Fifth and Ludlow.
(THEME OUT)
George Drake, Jr.: Next time on Fifth and Ludlow…
Eileen: “I never knew James at all. I think I saw him once that he came. He was a short man, had dark hair. But after he left, they said, ‘what did he want?’ and my mother said ‘he wanted money.’”
Jessi Sievers: “So, more or less, Emma Downey checked him into the children's home to die. That's, I mean, because she would have known he was sick. There was no other reason for her to have put him there”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Who do you think Will is?”
Vicky: “Pardon me?”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Who do you think Will is?”
Vicky: “Will. Well…”
Part 5: Rose's Story
George Drake, Jr.: Last time on Fifth and Ludlow…
Jessi Sievers: “So this is from the 16th of May in 1917 in the Dayton Daily News.”
George Drake, Jr.: We learned from amateur genealogist Jessi Sievers that Rose’s husband Jim wasn’t such a great guy…
Jessi Sievers: “‘After being told that he had run his wife out of the yard with a razor, Judge Budroe fined James O'Connor 18 Tecumseh Street $200 and costs. and six months in the workhouse on a charge of assault and battery.’”
George Drake, Jr.: But now Vicky — Rose’s living great-granddaughter — may want nothing to do with this podcast…
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “She does not want to participate in this at all, unless she's able to keep the letters.”
Kathy Hollingsworth: “Oh wow.”
Frank Hollingsworth: “Wow.”
(THEME)
George Drake, Jr.: I’m George Drake, Jr. and this is Fifth and Ludlow Part 5: Rose’s Story.
Before starting this project, I didn’t know who would be the central figure — Rose, Will, or Jim. I had the most from Will, that was certain — I had the letter that he sent to Rose in July of 1920. Here’s what it says:
“Friend Rose. I got your letter and I am well, and I hope this will please you, Rose. I will meet you at the corner of Fifth and Ludlow at Jenkin’s Drugstore at 7:30, and you and I will go out to the home and go some place to ourselves and talk the matter over. Hoping you will be all okay when we meet, if you are willing to do this and keep it to yourself. Will”
The fact of the matter is this: Will has been evasive from the beginning. He didn’t use his last name in the letter, so it wasn’t possible to track him using that. And we thought we’d found him with William Hoffrichter, Rose’s border, only to start to doubt that he was actually the Will in question. Jessi did find out that Will the border had a checkered love life and a possible affair between he and Rose may not be out of the question, but then Vicky — Rose’s great granddaughter — explained to me that she may have an idea of who Will actually is. And, to me, Will the border seemed like too simple of an explanation for someone like Vicky, who’d been investing so much time looking into her family’s past.
Then Vicky told me that she’d like confirmation on whether she’d be able to keep the letter and envelopes, or else she didn’t feel like she could be a part of this project.
With that, potentially finding out Will’s true identity and more was in the hands of Kathy and Frank Hollingsworth — the people who found the letter under their bathtub. I sat them down later that week to ask them if they’d be willing to part with everything.
Kathy Hollingsworth: “Oh wow.”
Frank Hollingsworth: “Wow.”
Kathy Hollingsworth: “Interesting.”
Frank Hollingsworth: “Well, you know as I think about… who’s... who's got really the most claim on those letters?”
Kathy Hollingsworth: “It would certainly be her family.”
Frank Hollingsworth: “It would certainly be her family.”
George Drake, Jr.: In a way, keeping the letter was never their intention — they always wanted it to go back where it belonged. Vicky was hesitant about Jessi and me wanting to know about her family, which is why she wanted the letter in the first place. As soon as I told her that the Hollingsworths agreed to hand over the letter, the switch seemed to flip back, her hesitance vanished and her excitement returned. Looking back on it, I think I was reading too much into the situation. She had all the reason to be hesitant — I was a stranger looking into her family’s past, I had a letter written to a distant relative of hers which I wasn’t divulging the contents of, and I was wanting to present what I’d found out to the masses. She’s spent years researching, collecting, and putting together pieces of her family’s past. All she wanted was another missing piece.
(MUSIC)
Vicky: “I always enjoyed hearing stories from Clara, so this just takes me back to her days, for sure.”
George Drake, Jr.: That is Vicky, Rose’s great-granddaughter.
Vicky: “My father's family is pretty well set-out. We knew everything about his family, but my mother's family... there was a lot of question marks.”
George Drake, Jr.: She met Ruth and me along with her mother Eileen and her Cousin Clarissa.
All of a sudden I found myself sitting in a room with three people who were directly related to Rose. It had taken two years to get to that point — a point I didn’t think we’d be able to get to — but this is who we had been looking for. I was looking forward to hearing their personal additions to people I’d become attached to over that period of time.
Eileen — Vicky’s mom — is Rose’s granddaughter. Her mom was Clara — Rose’s youngest daughter. Her memories of Rose and Jim are patchy, but they help paint a picture of their lives more than census records ever could — like this story of Clara’s from Krug’s Bakery, the place where the letter to Rose was sent.
Eileen: “Whenever she baked cakes and she’d ice them, she'd say ‘when I worked at the bakery we iced them with our hands. We got a big handful of icing.’ Then they put it on the top and then they turned it. That's really all I know about Krug’s Bakery: that she worked there and she iced cakes.”
George Drake, Jr.: Clarissa also remembers Clara telling stories of the bakery
Clarissa: “She was underage, like 14, and when the inspectors or officials came around she would have to go hide in the flour bin — in a giant flour bin because she was under age. I remember her telling that story.”
George Drake, Jr.: The one person who they didn’t have many stories about was Jim, Rose’s husband. He died pretty early on in Eileen’s life, but she does have one memory of him that stands out.
Eileen: “I never knew James at all. I think I saw him once that he came to our house where my mother and daddy were. They were working in the yard, and he was only there for a few minutes — somebody brought him but they stayed in the car. He was a short man, had dark hair, but after he left, I don't know if it was my daddy or who it was, they said, ‘what did he want?’ and my mother said ‘he wanted money,’ and that's the only time I ever saw him.”
(MUSIC)
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Who do you think Will is?”
Vicky: “Pardon me?”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Who do you think Will is?”
Vicky: “Will.”
George Drake, Jr.: This is Vicky talking now.
Vicky: “Well, when I first, when you first shared that with me, I thought it was going to be someone from the Roses past, but now I'm not so sure. She had two children with a gentleman by the name of William. So I thought maybe it was him, but the dates kind of don't really match, unless he, for some reason, tried to seek her out in 1920? I'm not sure.”
George Drake, Jr.: The man she’s talking about is William Downey. According to the 1900 Census, Rose was living and working in William’s home as a servant.
Rose and William’s two kids were Roy, who was born in 1900, and Ralph, who was born in 1901. The unusual thing is that Ralph for the rest of his life went by the last name of O’Connor — Rose and Jim’s last name. Every census, every newspaper clipping, up to his death record, he used O’Connor as his last name. Roy, on the other hand, seemed to have stayed behind with William as Roy Downey. We’ll come back to that a little later.
Vicky thinks the letter itself doesn’t seem like William wrote it — or at least the man she’s thought him to be through her research.
To her, William Downey had money and was probably well-educated. The way the letter is written doesn’t seem like that kind of person. The first letter of most of the words on the page is capitalized, and there are spelling errors throughout. For instance “place” is spelled “p-l-a-s-e,” and words like “ourselves” and “yourself” are both split into two words.
As Vicky put it, “If this was a gentleman that had servants, you think he'd be much more fluent.”
On the other hand, to Jessi Sievers the amateur genealogist, William isn’t like that at all, and may have only had an elementary school education. She found that in 1880, when he was about 17 or 18, he was an apprentice to a machinist. By 1884 he was on his own working as an iron molder. He was not a white collar guy.
Other records also indicate Rose may have been more of a border and not actually a paid servant in William’s house.
And, finally, there are places in Dayton where it’s obvious people with money once lived, filled with large old houses that have unfortunately seen better days. The area where William’s house was when Rose was living with him is definitely not one of those areas.
During our conversation Ruth asked them if they’d ever known Bertha or Harley Wysong — Rose’s oldest daughter and her husband.
Vicky: “She went by the name, ‘Dolly.’ “
Ruth Reveal: “Oh!”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “Oh, okay. That's news.”
Vicky: “I always knew her as Dolly.”
George Drake, Jr.: And the name differences don’t end there. Here’s Clarissa.
Clarissa: “The thing with the family is… is that everyone has these names but they're not their real names. Like, they had these nicknames that like, we only — like, I only knew her as Dolly. And I grew up with my uncle Butch, but his name was ‘Francis,’ and my grandfather's name was ‘Francis,’ but everyone called him ‘Phil.’ They they they gave people these names and then they didn't use them.”
George Drake, Jr.: For Vicky and her family, questions concerning their past are like playing whack-a-mole — once you answer one, another one pops up somewhere else.
And, this time, that somewhere else — was me. More specifically, how the letter found its way underneath the bathtub where the Hollingsworths found it.
Clarissa: “Our grandfather — her father — Francis had a floor finishing business, right? So he installed and refinished wood floors. So when she said it was under, like, a floor, we figured maybe somehow it got in their building materials or something, and maybe that's how it got there.”
Vicky: “And then you also mentioned that the homeowners kept original wallpaper that they found.”
George Drake, Jr. (on tape): “They did, yeah.”
Vicky: “And my mother said, well, Rose used to wallpaper for people. So, we were thinking, did she do that?”
George Drake, Jr.: The other question this letter made them consider is what it could be about. If William Downey really is the one who wrote the letter, there is one part that Vicky saw as a possible connection.
As I said earlier, Rose and William had two sons together — Roy and Ralph. While Ralph spent the rest of his life living with Rose and Jim, Roy seems to have stayed behind with William.
According to the Montgomery County Children’s Home “Register of Admittance and Indentures” log, on January 16, 1905, Roy — the older of the two — was put into the care of the Children’s Home by his aunt Emma Downey when he was just over four years old.
The Children’s Home was originally called the Dayton Orphan Asylum, until 1866, when the city took it over. Its mission was to help educate and take care of orphans or other children who couldn’t be taken care of.
On January 29th, not even two weeks after Emma checked him in, Roy died of diptheria.
Vicky: “He's buried there, wherever this home was. So maybe they went to his grave. I don't know.”
George Drake, Jr.: In his letter, William uses the phrase “you and I will go out to the home.” I’ve always felt the “out” part implies that the “home” in question is a bit out of the way. The Children’s Home was about two-and-a-half miles away from the corner of Fifth and Ludlow, so it fits the bill.
Back to the Children’s Home log — there are three things that are odd about it.
To begin with, Roy is listed as “Roy Downey, parentheses, (Heckroth)” — the last name of Rose’s first husband Harry. Maybe that’s just to denote who his mother was, because Rose is also listed with the last name Heckroth.
Next, under “father,” it simply says “unknown,” which could have been Roy’s and Emma’s doing because Rose and William weren’t married, so maybe she was trying to keep it a secret.
And, finally, Jessi Sievers found out that Emma Downey wasn’t actually Roy’s aunt. If Rose and William really were Roy’s parents, that would make Emma his step-mother, because Emma was William’s wife at the time.
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Jessi Sievers: “So, more or less, Emma Downey checked him into the children's home to die, because she would have known he was sick. There was no other reason for her to have put him there, because up until that point I think he was living with them. There is a brief newspaper clipping that says something about... it's one of those social clippings where ‘so-and-so and so-and-so attended a party’ and it lists ‘Mr. And Mrs. William Downey, their son Charles, and Master Roy Downey.’ ”
George Drake, Jr.: That article was printed in the Dayton Herald on January 23, 1904, almost exactly one year before he got sick.
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George Drake, Jr.: In the six months since Jessi last presented me with what she’d found out about everyone this letter has to do with, she’d kept digging, finding more and more out and continued to form her own informed speculations, which is why she wanted to talk again.
About five years after Emma put Roy into the Children’s Home she passed away, leaving William a widower.
Eventually, he married a woman named Josephine.
Jessi started to look into Josephine using her and William’s address and kept finding classified ads Josephine had apparently taken out.
I’ll let Jessi pick it up from there.
Jessi Sievers: “They were advertisements for a message service. More or less she was a psychic. Almost weekly she had ads in the paper, like “Come see me and we'll talk to the dead people,” or something. I don't know. When William died it actually listed as his church in his obituary the spiritualist church. So apparently she converted him at some point.”
George Drake, Jr.: And it’s with that — William’s conversion — that we arrive at her speculation behind his letter to Rose. Like Vicky, Jessi also thinks the “home” he mentions is the Children’s Home.
Jessi Sievers: “We're just going to totally theorize here because what else can we do? You know, if he at any point had been raising Roy, he would have been attached to him. So when he died, I'm sure it probably bothered him. And so, what if after they got married, Josephine convinced him maybe that she could get in touch with his spirit or something? Because, you know, when you read the letter and it talks about going out to the home… well, the children who died in Montgomery County Children's Home were buried really close to it in old Greencastle Cemetery. That is a theory.”
George Drake, Jr.: She also thinks that a plausible theory is if you remove Josephine all together, maybe William just wanted to make peace with Rose about losing Roy. Maybe they never had that chance. It could have been something that had been eating away at him for the 15 years since his death to when he sent the letter.
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George Drake, Jr.: In the 1940 census, William is living on Wyoming Street in downtown Dayton. What’s interesting is, Rose is also living on Wyoming Street at that time — not even half a mile away from William and on the same side of the street. Whether this was intentional or just coincidental is anyone’s guess.
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George Drake, Jr.: There are a lot of moving parts to this story — way more than I ever thought there would be. There were many times that I thought it would be dead end after dead end and I’d be left with little snippets of a bigger story. But I’m confident that we’ve figured out at least 80% of the facts to do with this story and these people. Admittedly, there are details that we weren’t able to figure out, simply because it’s stuff that you wouldn’t be able to look up in public records.
So let’s start with where everything was found: How did the letter and envelopes end up underneath the bathtub?
Of course there are the speculations that it could have ended up there because of Rose’s wallpapering or her son-in-law’s flooring business, but they all leave a lot of open questions.
Was the letter actually forwarded to Jim from Zanesville?
Yeah, we did take the envelopes out and put them together and they fit like a glove, but they may not actually have been mailed together, and the envelope to Jim may just be another envelope under the same tub. There’s also no way to confirm whether Jim even saw the letter.
What is the letter is actually about?
Well, because Will was so vague, any speculations, like the ones Jessi just laid out, are just that: speculations. We can’t confirm that the “home” is actually the Children’s Home, or that the “matter” is their dead son Roy. This letter from Will is obviously in response to a prior letter, because he starts with “I got your letter and I am well.” So, unless we can find Rose’s letter, or any others that possibly came before, all we have are speculations.
For that matter, we can’t fully confirm who Will is, either. William Downey does seem like the most likely suspect but, to be honest, it could have been any other Will living in Dayton in 1920.
And finally, did Rose and Will ever actually meet?
Personally, I like to think that they did, and all went well with whatever they were meeting for, but that’s just my optimistic viewpoint. Only Rose and Will would be able to confirm anything.
Over the course of the two years that I’ve been researching and doing interviews for this series, one person stayed front and center the whole time, both in my mind and in the story itself: Rose.
Rose was quite the woman. She unfortunately found herself in abusive relationships and had children with three different men, but she kept living with or without them, raising her children and burying others.
Even though her husband Jim had a job on the railroad, they apparently still struggled financially. She did peoples’ laundry, wallpapered, and took in borders. Her oldest daughter Bertha also took in laundry and, as Clarissa said, Rose’s youngest daughter Clara worked at Krug’s Bakery, even though she was underage. It seems like she was a smart and resourceful woman who did everything she could to stay afloat — traits that were adopted by her daughters.
Jessi sees her that way too. It wasn’t just her strength dealing with abuse from men in her life — it was her resilience and ability to push forward.
Jessi Sievers: “...this is going to sound odd… she was the one, for whatever reason, she was who I connected with in this. So, which is probably why you have the most about her. But yeah, she was kind of my person.”
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George Drake, Jr.: Towards the end of my time making this series, Vicky found a picture of Rose and said she’d send it to me. I had conjured up an image of her in my mind that had changed and morphed the more I learned about her as a person, and from the physical descriptions Vicky’s mother Eileen provided. So, I wasn’t sure what to expect.
But then I got it.
It’s a black and white picture. Rose is older. She’s standing next to a magnolia tree sapling in the front yard of Eileen’s house, a barn-shaped home with a big stone chimney — you can see a bench swing peering out from behind her. She’s wearing a long white skirt and white sweater. And, as Vicky puts it, she’s “looking at a magnolia bloom on the tree [as if] she’s just reflecting on life.”
I never knew Rose personally, but this is how I want to remember her.
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George Drake, Jr.: To see scanned images of the logs from the Children’s Home, newspaper clippings, and more, visit the website, www.fifthandludlowpodcast.com.
There you can also find the show on iTunes and other outlets to subscribe to the podcast.
When you get to iTunes, please, please take a moment to rate and review the show. Those stars and short reviews really do go a long way in getting Fifth and Ludlow heard by more people.
Theme and other music used in Fifth and Ludlow is by Mustafa Shaheen.
Logo and branding is by Peter Diaczenko.
This series was made possible by a generous grant from the Montgomery County Arts & Cultural District with assistance from Culture Works.
Additional funding is from 91.3 WYSO.
Episode editor is Katie Davis. Additional content assistance from Ruth Reveal and Craig Shank.
Special thanks to the Hollingsworth Family, Rose’s family members Vicky, Eileen, and Clarissa, and Jessi Sievers for their help with this episode, as well as Dayton Access Television for giving us a place to record Rose’s family.
I’m George Drake, Jr. Thanks for listening to Fifth and Ludlow.
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