Adolph and his parents were born in Hungary and
immigrated to America in 1862. In 1903 he
lived with his two sons, three daughters and two of
their spouses at 4233 Prairie in Chicago, a
still-standing ten-room beauty in the Grand Blvd
area, built in 1898. His wife, the late Fannie
Weber, had passed in 1895.
Adolph was the son of Abraham
and Fannie Fischel Weber. His late wife was also named Fannie, Fannie Kahn (1844-1895). Before retirement he'd been a tailor, liquor merchant and
president of Calumet Furniture.
In the years after the fire
In mid-1909, six years after the fire, Adolph and Leona filed suit against Marc Klaw and Abraham Erlanger, seeking $10,000 in
damages for Adolph and $25,000 for Leona. Nothing more was reported about their suits but it is unlikely they prevailed
given that dozens of others were dismissed in the Federal Court.
Adolph died the following year, seven years before Leona's marriage.
His obituary reported that he had been a charter member of the David Fish Lodge #130 of the Independent Order of
B'nai B'rith
(I.O.B.B.) as well as a member of the Austrian-Hungary Benevolent Society.†
|
|
Furniture was the family business
Adolph Weber was president of Calumet furniture at the time of his death in 1910. Another of his daughters, Clara
Weber, in 1899 married Joseph Greenwald* who built the General Furniture Company in Chicago. (Brother Emanuel
Weber, also married a Greenwald.) Leona's later husband, Henry Baum, would eventually work for Joseph in his furniture
company and Adolph's son, Edward, rose to become a vice president at General Furniture before going out on his own in
1935.‡ General Furniture grew by 1933 to twelve large stores, promoted as "Chicago's Greatest Chain of Furniture
Stores." The Greenwald's prosperity led in 1922 to a 14-room mansion in Kenwood. In 1941, following the early death f Joseph B.
Greenwald in 1929, and Clara in 1940, their children sold the chain to a company outside Chicago.
In 1917 at age twenty-nine, in services held at her sister Clara's home, Leona married Henry Baum of Kansas City, MO.
A year later, their only child was born, Marjorie Lee Baum (pictured above). Henry died at age fifty-nine, and Leona spent the last three decades of
her life as a widow. At her death, only one of her seven siblings survived.
|
Discrepancies and addendum
Newspaper reports immediately after the fire confused names, addresses and relationships between Adoph and Leona Weber with another pair of victims —
John and Carrie Weber. 1904 newspapers reported that
Adolph's wounds came as he tried to save his wife. Adolph's wife Fannie had been gone for eight years in 1903 and I found no evidence of his having
remarried. The story was therefore about John Weber trying to rescue his wife, Carrie, or Adolph Weber, trying to rescue his daughter, Leona.
Initially, some Chicago newspapers reported that Adolph and/or Leona lived at non-existent addresses on Cortland and Courtland streets but later reports had
them at their actual address at the time, 4233 Prairie.
Some early newspapers incorrectly reported Leona's age as sixteen.
More about Calumet Furniture. fire at Calumet Furniture in June 1895, destroyed $20k of the firm's inventory, along with six other businesses
in/near the building on 92nd street at the corner of Houston. It is not known if Adolph was involved with the company then. In the spring of
1912 a structure at the same intersection, known as the Bacon Block, on the southeast corner, was purchased by General Furniture for $60,000 and became the
site of one of its stores. The structure included Bacon's Hall, site for club events, church services and other south Chicago gatherings.
* These Greenwald's do not appear to have been related to another family of Iroquois victims, the
Joseph Greenwald family.
† The David Fish Lodge was
organized in 1869 as the Jonathan Lodge; the name
later changed in honor of charter member, David
Fish. The membership in 1910 was around 400.
‡ In 1935, Edward Weber
formed the Weber-Kushen furniture Company by
purchasing the Edward Zagel Furniture Company,
located at 6201 S. Halsted at the corner of 62nd
street. A second store opened in 1939.
In the 1940s, he brought together nine other Chicago
stores to form the Style Crest Association, a buyers
syndicate.
|