Appalachian History

Parcel post was one year old. The Pennsylvania Railroad ran six crack trains daily, right through the middle of town, headed for St. Louis or New York, not counting a dozen locals to Pittsburgh or Columbus. You stood under the shed of the station, enviously peering into the Pullman diners as supercilious patrons dipped into their soup and stared at you out there in the dark. Some day, you promised yourself, you’d sit in a diner too and stare too.

A nickel bought a shoe shine, a hamburger with onions, a box of Uneeda Biscuit, and a pound of soup beans. A pair of steel-rimmed spectacles from Doc Bougher cost a five dollar bill. Coal was 10 cents a bushel, dug out under the town itself by the High Shaft Coal Company. The best ice cream you’d ever taste, no matter if you lived to be a hundred, cost 25 cents a quart.

The people in 1914 took their politics, religion and their patriotism seriously. The Elks, K. of P.’s, the Masons, and the K. of C.’s were Very Big socially. So was the G.A.R. and Women’s Relief Corps, although their ranks grew thinner and thinner on Decoration Day.

331 South Seventh Street, Steubenville, OH, several blocks over from where this piece's author George A. Mosel grew up, typifies the look of the neighborhood he describes.

Thousands, young & old, thought nothing of toiling up Market Street hill to Union Cemetery on foot to hear some windbag froth at the mouth over the bravery of the boys at Gettysburg or San Juan Hill.

Automobiles were still pretty risky things to some people. They hadn’t learned to trust them much. Babies were conceived at home and not on a vacation trip to Niagara Falls or in a Tourist Cottage on the Lincoln Highway. Old folks died home-style. The shades were pulled down in the front parlor and services were held there and not in an antiseptic Funeral Home ten squares away.

The phonograph was coming of age. The little square boxes with the cornucopia horn and revolving disks were going out and “His Master’s Voice” was coming in. At Erwin & Robinson’s, you could squander your hard-earned money on “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” which had come out back in 1911, or on “It’s a Long Long Way to Tipperary”(1912); “Peg ‘o My Heart”(1913). If you wanted to be strictly up-to-date you’d go for the very latest songs, “The Missouri Waltz” or “When You Wore a Tulilp.” The really ‘hot’ record was “The St. Louis Blues.” Harry Lauder’s “Roamin’ in the Gloamin’” was a prime favorite on records.

Home was more than a place where they had to take you in, no matter what you did. Families did things together. They played games, sang songs; they went to church en masse; they fought and argues with one another and they entertained their friends under the family roof tree instead of the country club.

Not much spectacular ever happened on North Fifth. The people just wouldn’t allow it. No big fires, or robberies, juicy divorce cases or scandals that I can recall.

That is not to say life was one soft bed of roses. There were many a heartache back of those austere front doors. Babies died too young and old folks turned into vegetables. A favorite diagnosis of sudden death was “acute indigestion,” known now as a coronary thrombosis. The people were beset by the fears and desperations of a long lingering illness, unemployment, and a poverty-stricken old age, without the modern blessings of Social Security, Relief Checks and free nursing for the aged. Many lived low on the hog.

But they put on a brave face to the world. They “made do,” bearing the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune with the quiet courage of their forefathers.


from Through a Rear-View Mirror, by an ex-child of the city of Steubenville, Ohio. George A. Mosel, publ. by Hamilton I. Newell, Inc., Amherst, MA, 1963

As long as I can remember there has been a Spies Jewelry Store in Steubenville, OH. The one I am thinking of now was on Market Street across from Beall & Steele's Drug Store. Spies was not ordinarily important to a boy, since it sold only a lot of worthless stuff like solid gold breast pins, shiny diamonds and jeweled combs.

Came a Christmas when I was in the money and I decided to go all out and buy mother a really fancy present instead of giving her one of those fat old pin cushions we made in school, or a button hook with genuine pearl handle for 10 cents from Billy Beerbowers.

By "in the money" I mean I had 75 cents to blow in on mother. The word "Spies" came to mind. In my family it was a solid gold word, denoting the very best. With nose pressed to glass, I appraised the costly wares in the window. Inside, everything was very dignified and quiet, like in church, as fine ladies and gentlemen fingered the watches and brooches.

My head scarcely came to the counter top, but finally Mr. Spies saw me. He was a pudgy little man, and I can still see his disembodied head peering at me thru heavy spectacles. My eye had singled out a tray of hat pins in the window. It was brought out. Some of the hat pins were modestly jeweled with tiny seed pearls, a few with fine filigree work, others plain ovals waiting to be monogrammed.

But one alone took my eye-it boasted a magnificent blazing ruby, as big as a robin's egg, set in a fancy frame. I was sure it was absolutely genuine. Spies never sold imitations, did they? I asked the price. $1.25. The tag was old and shopworn.

I gazed longingly at the hat pin as Mr. Spies momentarily waited, then he said, "You chuss keep on looking, son, I'll be back". Customers came and went. The minutes melted into almost an hour, when the proprietor no doubt began to think about his supper. I told him I wanted this pin but had only 75 cents to pay for it. He suggested cheaper ones, but I said, "I want this very one. It's for my mother and she won't think it's good unless it comes from your store."

Mr. Spies glowed. He lived for words like that since he was proud of his reputation. His daughter and helper (Miss Lulu or Miss Marie) saw me and whispered to her father. He came around in front of the counter, and saw all of me for the first time.

"You Chimmie Mosel's boy, yes?" he asked.

"Yes sir, but how about the pin?"

"Vell, I tell you vhat. You chuss give me the 75 cents and take the hat pin. Here, I put it in a fine box for you with my name on it."

There wasn't a prouder boy in all Steubenville when I gave mother that hat pin with the blazing ruby on top. She wore it many times, mostly at night, to visit my grandmother or Aunt Emma Ewing, but never to church where there were very many people around.

It never occurred to me to wonder why.


Under the Buckeye Trees, by George A. Mosel, publ. Hamilton I. Newell Inc., Amherst, Mass., 1962

The Calvin B. Doteys, a wealthy and greatly respected family, had a very fine old home with spacious grounds on South Third Street. Old Mr. Dotey made his fortune in, and was president of, the Jefferson Iron Works in the lower end of town. He had a daughter Molly, who became the one and only titled person in Steubenville. Long before I was born, it was said a German, Baron Lagerfelt, came to town and married Molly. Only a few months later he left his bride and skipped to parts unknown, taking with him most of his wife’s fortune. He never returned, and so far as I know, all the Doteys, probably Baroness Lagerfelt included, felt it was good riddance.

Another child of the Calvin B. Dotey family was Harry. He wore his hair long, played the piano and pipe organ, and never worked a day in his life. He left the Episcopal Church and became a devout Roman Catholic. Among his many eccentricities was his adoption of the name Harry Linwood Marie Dotey y Carr. He wore gaudy scarves and ascot ties, pink shirts, flashy suits, and always carried bright yellow gloves. A large Catholic medal on a heavy silver chain hung ostentatiously from his neck. With very large jeweled rings on both fingers and thumbs and heavy bracelets with lockets, he attracted attention wherever he went.

It can well be imagined what a stir such a person created in a small sleepy town over sixty years ago. He loved to ride for hours on the old streetcars engrossed in reading books and magazines. A great student of art and an accomplished musician, when grand opera came to Pittsburgh, Harry Dotey always bought two seats and appeared at every performance. He placed his hat, gloves, coat and cane on the adjoining seat. Music lovers in the city of Pittsburgh wondered who the strange man was sitting alone on the aisle.

Both he and his sister, the Baroness, did a tremendous job at squandering the money which their father had worked so hard to accumulate. The walls of the old house on South Third Street were hung with rare paintings, and the home was filled with priceless objets d’art. Most of these treasures were bought from the Wunderly Brothers of Pittsburgh, who for generations have owned an epecially fine art store. One of the Wunderly Brothers told me years ago that Harry Dotey’s knowledge of art was amazing. He bought extravagantly and was notorious for never paying his bills. About the time the Wunderlys felt forced to bring suit against him, he would come into the store and pay a long outstanding bill. But, according to Mr. Wunderly, when he left the Gallery he invariably had bought additional treasures, and owed the Wunderlys an even larger amount than when he came in.

At Christmas Harry and the Baroness sent the most elaborate and expensive presents to all their friends, including my father and mother. They were always beautifully wrapped and tied with wide satin ribbon in tremendous bows. For many years a framed picture of a nude was turned to the wall on the floor of our bedroom closet. Harry and the Baroness had given it to my father and mother, but my parents immediately relegated it to the darkness.

Unfortunately, old Mr. Dotey made my father guardian of his two spendthrift and eccentric children. Father had a terrible time with them. Harry could have made a little money by playing the church organ for pay, but he pretended righteous indignation when any such degrading suggestion was made to him. The Baroness finally died, and poor Harry lived on for several years in the Massillon Insane Asylum, which while he wasn’t actually insane, seemed a more suitable place for him to end his days than in the Jefferson County Poorhouse.

When Baroness Lagerfelt signed herself in to the poorhouse, it made national news. Here’s a June 17, 1909 writeup from the New Orleans newspaper L’Abeille de la Nouvelle-Orleans.

Father, who was the epitome of generosity, preached economy to us incessantly, and frequently held Harry Dotey and his sister, Baroness Lagerfelt, up to us as horrible examples of what happens to people who spend more than they should. The Dotey family’s going from riches to rags and the Poorhouse was a shocking example. Father told us that when the old Dotey home was dismantled, the third floor was filled with the most expensive and beautiful toys which Mr. and Mrs. Dotey had bought for Harry and Molly when they were children. This great store of playthings, any one of which would have made some child happy, was allowed to accumulate dust over the years. The old colored man who spent his life working for the Dotey family had many children of his own, but in the end Harry Dotey stood adamant over him and watched closely to see that every sacred article which he had enjoyed in his childhood was burned, so that no lesser child could defame it.


Father and his Town A Story of Life at the Turn of the Century in a Small Ohio River Town, by Wilma Sinclair LeVan Baker, Three Rivers Press, 1961

“Well, if it isn’t Jimmy Roberts, where have you been the last two years? I have asked people about you but no one seemed to know,” inquired Mary as she spied Jimmy at the door.

“Why---hello Mary! It sure is good to see you again. I don’t believe I have seen you since graduation night two years ago last June. I have been working for the Transport Power Company ever since I left college. Most of my work has been traveling and out of doors. I started out as a surveyor and that was the reason no one knew much about me. But now I’m an electrical engineer in the General Office. Isn’t that great? Where have you been all this time?”

Unidentified couple. Based on period costume and age of couple could be a couple much like Jimmy & Mary.

“Oh me? I worked several places the summer following my graduation but for the past eighteen months I have been working for the Company at Chicago. I am a private secretary for the General Manager and that is the reason I’m here. Here comes Mr. Walsh and I will have to go now, but I’m staying at a friend’s house, Mrs. J.W. Kenny, 642 S. Pine St. in Cleveland and I wonder if you would like to call---maybe this evening?”

“Do you really mean it, Mary? Gee, I’d be tickled to death. Sure I’ll come, and this evening too. I never---“

“Well, so long Jimmy, I’ll see you this evening,” said Mary.

“So long, Mary,” replied Jimmy.

After that Jimmy Roberts was a different man. Immediately after dinner he went to his room to get dressed for the evening. He sang all the while he was getting ready. It seemed as though the world was all laughter and sunshine to him.

A happy man it was that strolled down Pine St. dressed up in his very best, and his mind very rapidly turning over recollections of the afternoon’s incidents. He took the card, which Mary had given him with her address on it, to make sure of the right house.

1912 postcard view of Market Street at night, Steubenville, OH.

At half past eight he was rapping on Mrs. Kenny’s door. Mary answered the door. They talked all evening of many things that had happened since their graduation. Each one told of his or her particular incident.

That night Jimmy couldn’t sleep. Too many things were on his mind. He was so happy to think that it wouldn’t be long until Mary would be his own.


---excerpt from “Jimmy Roberts,” by Virginia Hopkins
Harding Bee Hive
Printed and Published Weekly by the Students of Harding Junior High School
Steubenville, OH
Jan. 22, 1903



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