African-American Halloween Party in 1901 Toledo

Picture is later, unnamed group

African-American Halloween Party in 1901 Toledo   by Alan Borer

I was randomly scanning some issues of the Toledo Blade for the year 1901.  I usually ignore the “Society” news, but this one caught my eye.  From the November 2, 1901 edition:
“Messrs. Henry and Edgar Hunt were the genial hosts at a Hallowe’en party given Thursday evening at their residence on Wisconsin street . . . .  Graphophone selections, Hallowe’en games and delicious refreshments completed the evening’s pleasure.”

An interesting bit of Hallowe’en lore from Toledo.  Halloween was just catching on in America at the beginning of the twentieth century.  Parties of this sort were emerging from the shadowy past of Irish and Scotts folk traditions.  An article from the Toledo Bee the following October detailing then-current Hallowe’en games suggested that  the party mentioned above might have included bobbing for apples, comic fortune telling with wax and mirrors, and other low key games, some of which are familiar to this day.

Then I noticed that the family throwing the party, as well as the guests, were African-American.  There were about 1500 black residents of Toledo in 1900, compared with a total city population of about 132,000.  This was before the migration of large numbers of African-Americans from the rural south to the cities of the industrial north.  Black Toledo in 1900 was small and if the Wisconsin street address was any indicator, at least some lived in mixed race neighborhoods.
Using the United States Census of 1900, taken just a year before the party, we can recreate bits of this lost world.  The Hunt family did indeed live on Wisconsin Street, although the name has changed to Woodland Avenue since 1900.  If you are unfamiliar with Woodland, it runs parallel to and south of Dorr Street between Hoag and City Park.  In 1900, the area was middle class working people.   Salesmen, machinist, railroad brakeman, teacher, printer – these were the jobs of the Hunt neighbors.

“Messrs” Henry and Edward Hunt, the hosts of the party, were brothers, 17 and 16 respectively.  They lived with their parents, Edward Sr., a native of the District of Columbia, and Nina Hunt, who was born in Canada.  Like many youth of the neighborhood, Henry and Edward were employed; both brothers were apprentice workers in a bicycle shop.  This is not surprising; they were growing up during the turn-of-the-century bicycle fad.  The Hunt brothers were working in the same bicycle popularity that two Dayton brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright, were running a bicycle shop.

Several other guests were listed in the original “Society” reference to the long-ago Hallowe’en party.  One of them was Georgia Bell.  Youngest of five daughters, she was 14 in 1901, living with her father, a plasterer, also on Wisconsin Street.  Effie (21) and Ella (16) Green lived with their widowed mother,   Frances.  Frances Green was a Canadian like Nina Hunt.  A total of twelve young people attended

We can trace Henry Hunt up to 1930.  He had finally married, after quite a long time as a bachelor, to a girl named Susie.  Susie was 38 to her husband’s 46, and was born in Alabama.  She may have come to Ohio as part of the great migration mentioned earlier.  Brother Edward followed Henry’s matrimonial example; in 1940 his wife was listed as Sarah, a girl from North Carolina.  Edward lived in Toledo until his death in 1944.  He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery.

Like most history, there are many more things we wish we could know.  What songs were played on the ‘graphophone’ (probably an early model Columbia phonograph)?  What refreshments were served?  Did the guests come in costume (probably not at this early date)?  These and many others cannot be recovered.  But they are fun to think about!