BRANDON — Whenever I drive around Knox County, I see buildings that catch my attention and make me want to know a little of the history of said structures.
Of course, most of the time, it’s a passing fantasy that slips away in the busy hustle and bustle of research for future History Knox columns. But once in a while, I luck out.
On Granville Road in Brandon, there is a house that has always caught my eye. It has decorative cut-out shapes on the upper and lower porches of the two-story house.
Unlike the typical décor of the period, which tends towards flowery points in the earlier steamboat Gothic style, or the boldly asymmetrical lines of the later Queen Anne Victorian style, these decorative pieces use cut out “x” and “+” shapes, as well as one circle in the top center.
The way the cutouts are shaped, they almost look like early 8-bit computer graphic shapes. But a postcard I recently discovered shows that the stylishly blocky shapes are no digital-era decoration. The postcard is dated 1911, and it is from Mount Vernon photographer H.S. Moffitt.
The postcard itself is the photographic proof for an image that Moffitt had taken of the house in Brandon. In the image, a man is standing by a fence in front of the house. That man is presumably the addressee of the mail, W.D. Chambers.
William D. Chambers was 49 years old at the time of the photograph, living with his mother in Brandon. The 1910 census lists William as widowed, as was his mother. They are both listed as farm managers under their occupation, which reflects the properties the family owned outside of town.
William Chambers is listed as the owner of farm properties on Blackjack Road, on the northern side of Delano Run. His name also pops up for a while around this time in old newspapers for the buying and selling of properties around Brandon.
Photographer Moffitt asks Chambers to approve the picture or instruct him to lighten or darken it, then to notify how many copies of it he would like made.
It is unknown if Chambers approved the photo, let alone whether he actually ended up ordering copies of the postcard. If he did, then there may be other copies of it floating around in the world. If not, this may be a one-off. I’d certainly say, for my opinion, that it could be a little lighter to actually show Chambers’ face.
While William Chambers lived until the 1930s, he certainly had some challenges to deal with in this period of his life. Not only was he the widower of a bride, Cora, that he had only married in 1895, his mother passed away just a few years after this photo was taken. Not only that, but he had a younger brother with problems.
Elmer Chambers also lived near Brandon, at a farm on Sharp Road, where he was married with a few children. But he made sensational headlines in 1913 when he had a mental breakdown and fled the house, forcing the family and other searchers to comb the area for him.
A report in the Democratic Banner ran the headline: “DEMENTED: Man Escaped from Home Found in Woods.” Elmer had wandered in a daze for over three hours:
Mr. Chambers, whose affliction has been of long duration, escaped from his home this morning, his whereabouts being unknown by the members of the family. A search was instituted and the unfortunate man was discovered in the Ash woods south of the city. No amount of persuasion could induce him to come out and, as a last resort Chappelear’s ambulance was called.
This had a frightening effect on Chambers and he readily got into a buggy and was driven home. It was necessary, however, to have the ambulance drive alongside of the buggy as this seemed to have an intimidating effect on the unfortunate man.
When the article says “south of the city,” I presume they mean from the point of view of Mount Vernon. Therefore, Elmer must have wandered north in a confused or delusional state in the general direction of Mount Vernon.
Ash Woods may be the wooded area shown in the 1896 Caldwell Atlas of Knox County on the Elizabeth Ash property, in Clinton Township, adjacent to the Miller Township line, just east of where Blackjack Road crosses the railroad tracks. Now, who or what “Chappelear’s ambulance” was, I have no idea.
I found one other reference to such a thing in a Lima newspaper from 1910, so it may simply refer to an Ohio ambulance company, or perhaps it is a particular kind of vehicle.
Judging by the effect of extreme fear this conveyance brewed in Elmer Chambers, I wonder if he was suspicious of the newfangled technology of automobiles, which were noisy contraptions in the early years of the 20th century. Or, more ominously, it could be that he recognized an ambulance as being the sort of vehicle which could “take him away,” as in transport him to a state asylum.
Later census reports, however, report him at home, so perhaps Elmer was able to keep his demons at bay. He lived another three decades before he passed away.
Anyone with further information about the history of the Chambers in and around Brandon is welcome to contact me here. The house in the postcard likely predates the Chambers’ ownership, for it appears to sit in the spot on the map from the 1896 Caldwell Atlas which was property owned by one J.C. Hartsock.
This appears to have been Jesse Hartsock, who was the Brandon postmaster for a spell in the 1880s and 1890s, before he moved to Mount Vernon. In the 1871 Caldwell Atlas, the owner of the property is William Lockwood. If he was the original builder, perhaps it should be known as the Lockwood House.
The difficulty is in judging the age of the distinctive stylistic touches in the architecture, such as the double porches and the cutout shapes. Those could also have been added later to a pre-Civil War structure, as the remainder of the house reminds me of the plainer Federal style, which would date back to the 1820s and 30s.
Whatever the case, it is a lovely house, and I was delighted to scare up a little of the history with which it intersected.
