Building a life

In 1901, Reading, Pennsylvania native, Osmond Bernard Humma (1879-1970), was elected valedictorian of his Saint Louis College of Pharmacy graduation class.* Two years later found him operating a drug store at 4372 LaClede Avenue in Saint Louis.

He was also working on the romance side of his life. His lady friend, widow Martha Ellis Lawrence (1872-), lived in Chicago with her twelve-year-old daughter, Anita A. Lawrence (c1891-).  Her late husband was Edward Wells Lawrence (1853-1894), a banker and traveling sales representative for C. H. Fargo.  Edward had died of typhoid fever after a three-week illness.

Escaping from the fire

It is not known where the party was seated at the Iroquois but Osmond suffered minor burns. That suggests they were on the first floor.

When the fire started, Osmond reportedly took one girl under his arm and put another over his shoulder. According to his draft card, he was a slender 142-lb man, 5' 11" tall; presumably the child was small and young enough to make that feasible. No mention was made of Martha's escape but when Osmond, Martha, Anita and one of Anita's friends got safely to the ground in Couch Place alley, they realized the third child wasn't with them. As Osmond searched in the alley for the girl, a woman was knocked off the fire escape platform above and landed on Osmond, causing a bruises to his back. I was not able to learn if the third child escaped.

Growing a business and a family in Sheldon, IL

Two years later, Osmond was managing a drug store in the Gaff building at the corner of LaSalle and Quincy Avenue in Chicago. He married Martha that year and during the next two years Martha bore two daughters, Mary Catherine and Martha.

In 1909, Osmond and two other men invested $10,000 in a new creamery company in Sheldon, naming it the Iroquois Creamery Company.   (Because it was in Iroquois county, Illinois, nothing to do with the theater fire.)  No evidence that it got far off the launching pad. Drugstores were the family business.  Osmond's brother and nephew, each named Henry and nicknamed Harry, owned several stores in Metropolis, IL.

A try at making his own inventory

In 1916 Osmond managed the Evanshire Drugstore in the Evanshire Hotel in Evanston, IL, as well as a working to develop O.B. Humma Laboratories Inc.  His lab patented a powdered product for upset stomachs, named Bismo, as well as a sugar coated laxative tablet named Laxa-Tabs.  His partners in the corporation were Leonard J. Grossman and Emil N. Farkas.  The lab seems to have gone no farther than the Iroquois Creamery.

Daughter Anita has a hard time hanging on to her money

In 1918 the Humma family lived in LaGrange, IL when Martha's daughter, Anita, then aged twenty-seven, and two years into her second marriage, to Henry Hollingsworth Pett, sued her mother and stepfather.†

Anita accused Martha and Osmond of having manipulated her into signing off on a $200,000 inheritance from a granduncle, Albert J. Averell.‡  Anita had married four years earlier and soon regretted it.  Distraught, she asked her mother and stepfather for help in getting a divorce. 

Reading a bit between the lines, it seems the threesome transferred ownership of her inheritance to hide it from her husband during the divorce, but by 1918 Anita was dissatisfied with her parents handling and accounting of the monies.

Five years later, in 1923, she was back in court, suing Pett for divorce.  She said he had persuaded her to put $140,000 into a joint account and that Pett then gave up his acting job and over the next four years spent $53,000 of her money.  When she refused to continue supporting him, he left her.  It appears she prevented one man from taking her inheritance only to give a large portion of it to another man.

Martha and Osmond divorce

In the 1930s Martha and Osmond lived in Lyons, Illinois, with one of their daughters (see accompanying photo of their home). Their marriage ended sometime between 1930 and 1940, after which time Martha rented a room in a home in Evanston and Osmond moved to Mesa, Arizona, possibly living with their oldest daughter.  Martha described herself as a widow even though Osmond was still living.

Where did Martha go?

Other than Osmond's name in a survivor list in his sister's 1947 obituary, Osmond and Martha disappeared from newspapers after 1918. I was unable to learn the year of Martha's death or if Osmond operated a drug store in Arizona. The degree to which they disappeared is odd but the difficulty probably lies in faulty information about Martha and Anita.  I was not able to verify birth information for either of them, or even their 1900 census information.  Marta was still alive in 1948, living in an apartment in Evanston.

Discrepancies and addendum

* Founded in 1864, the Saint Louis College of Pharmacy is still in operation.  During Osmond Humma's time at the school, it was located at 2108 Lucas Street.  Nine years earlier it had graduated its first female student, Augusta Bock.

† In her divorce petition, Anita gave Pett's name as William Henry Pett rather than the Henry Hollingsworth Pett on their marriage certificate but neither name connects to an actor.  Perhaps he had a stage name.

‡ Albert J. Alverell (1824-1896)  
After captaining steamships on the Sacramento River in California in the 1850s (including the McKim, New World and Senator) much of the time to keep supplies running during the Gold Rush, Albert returned to Chicago and made a fortune in real estate.  At his death he left behind an estate valued at $1,580,000 ($42 million today).  The portion inherited by Anita was that bequeathed to her father, Edward Wells Lawrence.  Albert was Edward's uncle, the brother of his mother, Mary S. Averell Lawrence.

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