Jack
Livermore Watches 1887 Toledo Flood by Alan
Borer
Many of us have had a boss that made life miserable. From uncommunicative hermits to vociferous
tyrants, bosses have to be obeyed and monitored. The hardest ones may be the unpredictable
ones that change from one sort to another, from ferret to wolverine at the drop
of a hat. Supervisors flakey enough to
make it into written records are rare, but here are some fragments of a letter
written by a Toledo office clerk who had the cheek to write his of boss’s
quirks while the boss was in the room.
Here is the story.
In the wintry January of 1887, John A. Livermore (“Jack”
to his friends) was a bookkeeper in the employ of W. H. Boos, a “dealer in
wines and liquors” at 410 Monroe Street.
Jack also lived in the three-story building. At some point in the day on the 24th,
Jack passed a slow moment to jot a letter to his cousin Nettie in Kansas. The short letter began with a recap of the
recent Christmas holiday:
I
was sorry to learn that you did not have a more enjoyable Christmas. I received quite a number of presents and in
the evening went to the Opera House which was packed from top to bottom.
Doubtless Jack was referring to the Wheeler Opera House
at the northwest corner of Monroe and St. Clair, only a few steps from where he
boarded. Opened in 1871, the Opera House
was the place to take in a concert, play, or performance. Seating an audience of 1400, the Wheeler
hosted performances by many renowned singers and actors, including Edwin Booth and Sarah Bernhardt. The fortunes of the theater rose and fell
with the times. When Jack sat in a full
house on December 24, 1886, prices had recently been lowered. The Wheeler Opera House met the same fate as
so many Toledo buildings of the period, and was destroyed by fire on March 17,
1893. The Convention Center now covers
the intersection where the Opera House once stood.
If you was here this morning you would see a
lively time. Last night the ice busted
and the flood commenced most of the
bridges are gone. This morning wagons,
drays, trucks, and almost every thing that can be used are hauling goods to a
safe distance from the river.
Jack’s account of a flood on January 23, 1887 is
confirmed by contemporary news sources.
The Maumee River flooded pretty routinely in the nineteenth
century. Extensive and expensive floods
in Toledo occurred in 1881 and 1883.
Clark Waggoner, in his 1888 history of the city, speculated the city was
more liable to floods in that era because more buildings were being constructed
near the river, and that extensive ditching to drain the Black Swamp had caused
the river to rise.[i]
In
spite of the flood danger, Jack was amused at the antics of his boss:
My Boss is running
around spitting tobacco juice and trying to make small bets that the water
won’t touch him. . . . wouldent [sic] he look mighty glum to come back and find
this old whiskey shop full of water.
We are not told who the
boss was, or why he thought the rising water was no threat. William H. Boos
founded and ran the company which bore his name. Boos (1842-1920) was born in Toledo to German
immigrant parents. He entered the liquor
business with his father Mathias Boos, and also was a shareholder and eventual
director of the First National Bank. He and his brother founded the Toledo
Chewing Gum Company. Occupant of a
beautiful estate at 1403 Jefferson, Boos loved horses, “and derives
considerable enjoyment from behind a valuable and spirited team.”
But was the tobacco-spitting “Boss” that Jack complained
of William Boos, or one of Boos’s underlings?
Jack hurriedly finished, lest the Boss catch him goofing off.
Well here comes the
Boss swinging his arms in the air and his hair flying. So I must bring my letter to a sudden close
for I think there is something wrong.
That does not sound like a wealthy, Gilded Age Toledo
businessman. But we cannot really say,
nor can we know whether Jack Livermore was disciplined for writing a personal
letter on company time. As often
happens, the letter mostly captures a moment of time
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