Hi everyone!
Hugh must've unsubbed from the list at some point so his message never made it to the
list. I'm posting it for him concerning Ellsworth's.
Rick B
----- Original Message -----
From: hugh robertson
To: RobertsonChai(a)aol.com ; INSTJOSE-L(a)rootsweb.com
Cc: Diveferret(a)yahoo.com
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 6:07 PM
Subject: {not a subscriber} Re: Ellsworth's Department Store
I don't know what the store was called before Mr. Ellsworth aquired it but according
to my father it started as a trading post in the eighteen fifties, I think it had a French
name, and I believe that Mr. Ellsworth aquired it from the origional owner's family.
RobertsonChai(a)aol.com wrote: This is not a specific query: I'm just looking for
connections.
Do any of you old-timers remember the Ellsworth's Department Store, on Michigan
Avenue, which was in business from the 1890s until about 1950?
My grandfather, Robert Robertson, a Scottish immigrant, was the managing partner of
that store from about 1910 until it sold to Wyman's in the early 1950s. Some years
later, Wyman's blew up in a gas explosion.
At its height during the 1920s, there were 75 employees, and my grandfather and the
Ellsworths were well-known, successful figures in South Bend and Mishawaka. I was told
that for its time, the store was very snazzy and sophisticated, often compared to Marshall
Fields in Chicago. However, others have told me that after WW2, its old-fashioned,
customer service image diminished during the great postwar, self-serve consumer age.
My father was ready to take over the reins of management, when a dispute between the
Robertsons and the Ellsworths forced the sale of the store. My family moved away to
Pennsylvania in the mid-1950s, when I was six years old, when prospects were getting bleak
for industrial South Bend, and now my Hoosier memories of South Bend and Mishawaka are
faint, but still very nostalgic.
Yet my parents never stopped talking about South Bend, and of all the old friends they
had there, and Christmas cards flowed on and on, for more than thirty years. I can think
of at least a dozen of these families: WYCAMP, BUTTARS, HOFFMAN, O'NEILL (descendants
of the once-Governor), HAYNES, LIMENGROVER (sp.), GRANT, PONTIUS and others.
My father, Hugh Robertson, attended Bettell Elementary school (I have a classroom
photo of him and his classmates, circa 1920), and was quarterback for South Bend High in
1928. Knute Rockne was a family friend, and personally designed a helmut for him , to
allow him to play football wearing glasses. He attended Northwestern, but he also did a
summer at Notre Dame.
One of my father's earliest South Bend memories was banging kitchen pots and pans,
out in the street on Mishawaka Avenue, at the announcement of the Armistice in November
1918.
My mother, Naomi Irvin, who grew up on St. Peters Street, came from an old farming
family, the Irvins of North Liberty. This was a Scots-Irish family from Pennsylvania by
way of Ohio, which had some ties to the Amish and the Brethren sects, but my mother's
mother was a Irish Catholic.
We have almost no family in St. Joseph County now, except one of my mother's
cousins' grandsons, who contacted me (because of my genealogy posts) recently. His
grandfather was Richard Irvin, a decorated veteran of D-Day, who died in South Bend in
1985.
(My mother said that five of her South Bend high school beaus died in one week in
June, 1944).
I have a lot of material concerning the Ellsworth store, including photos of an annual
downtown parade they once sponsored during the First World War and after, plus photos of
company parties in the 1920s, and a lot of interesting documents. I am planning to
donate them to the local historical society someday.
But meanwhile, does anyone remember the Ellsworth store, or the 1920s downtown cinema
my grandfather was a partner in, The Temple Theater?
My brother, who lives in Hawaii, visited South Bend the summer before last. It was
the first time either of us had been there in nearly forty years. After visiting all the
old haunts of my parents and our childhood, and former homes where we and my grandparents
lived, he pronounced it one of the friendliest, most liveable places in America, with an
architectural tradition and a way of life to be envied.
As a newer contributor to this board, I say thanks for listening! Anyone with an
anecdote or a family connection to what I've posted, please reply to my private e-mail
address. My mailbox is always open!
---Bob Robertson
Napa Valley, California