Edd Lorig, born 1865

Edd Lorig, ca 1890

Edd Lorig was born toward the end of the American Civil War on 2 March 1865 in Mt. Pleasant, Henry County, Iowa.* He was the fifth child born to Henry and Katie Lorig and their only son. Walt Lorig remembered a few stories about his dad. The Lorig children went to Catholic grammar school and when Edd was about eleven years old he was apparently wrongly accused of something and punished by the priest. That incident caused him to run away from home. Walt didn’t know how long he was gone. He eventually did return home but would never go back to the school.

By the time he was about 14 or 15 years old he was working in the brickyard in Mt. Pleasant. He left Iowa and moved west arriving eventually in Seattle shortly after the Fire of 1889. His first job was on the Front Street cable car in Seattle. It was the only streetcar in Seattle at that time. The 1891 City Directory shows him as a Gripman Front Cable, Ry Co. In 1898 he is listed as a fireman on the West Seattle Ferry. By 1900 Edd is listed as a machinist for the S. C. Ry Power House. Then in 1901 he appears as an engineer for the G.N. Elevator Co. and a year later in 1902 he is again a machinist but with Wm Campbell and Son.

It was while he was working as a machinist that he met Hy Dygert. They got along well together and started their own business in Ballard. Edd did the mill work and Hy liked to do the boat and car work. So what little car work there was they did it and also they worked quite a bit on fishing boats. The name S. E. Sagstad keeps appearing on documents and as witness to marriages and I think this is where it connects since Sagstad was a boat builder and prominent in Ballard about that time period. Sivert E. Sagstad came from Norway to America in 1905 and may have distant connections to the Landaas family as well.

Edd and Hy owned and operated Shilshole Machine Works from about 1908 until 1915. Their shop was first in Ballard at the foot of 24th. Later they moved to 633 Westlake Avenue North. It is interesting to note that Shilshole Machine Works appears also as Lorig & Dygert some years and Shilshole other years. Edd’s eyesight began to fail but he continued to do machine work into the 1920s. By 1930 his eyesight was so poor he began working as a watchman and could no longer do the machine work he enjoyed so much. From the vision loss described by Walt we can guess that Edd more than likely had macular degeneration—losing the vision at the center of his eyes and only able to see out the edges unlike glaucoma where the outer vision is lost and what is left is referred to as tunnel vision. There is no complete cure even today for macular degeneration.

Lorig & Dygert aka Shilshole Machine Works, ca 1910

As it looks today as part of Pacific Fishermen's Shipyard**

Margaret Mae "Maggie" Lorig, born 1861

Maggie Lorig, ca 1883

Margaret Mae “Maggie” was the fourth daughter in the family of Henry and Katie Lorig. She was born in Mt. Pleasant, Henry County, Iowa on 8 February 1861 just at the beginning of the Civil War. She lived her entire, rather short life (she died at age 39 May 1900) in Iowa marrying Thomas LeRoy Ford on 21 July 1883. Jim Ford, who remained in the Mt. Pleasant area and farmed there, wrote that a large framed copy of this photograph of Maggie was still hanging in the family home 80 plus years after she died.

Thomas LeRoy Ford, ca 1883
[photo courtesy of Helen Ford Fuqua]

LeRoy, as he was known, was born 1855 and lived in the neighboring town of Trenton, Iowa. Maggie and LeRoy had seven sons, however, the youngest son, Guy, born in 1900, died before he was one year old. Considering that Henry and Katie had six children it is interesting to note that Maggie is the only one of their children to have what we would think of today as a large family. Anna and Mary did not wed and had no children. Lizzie had only one daughter. Edd had three children. Mattie had two sons. That makes a total of 13 grandchildren at a time in history when many families had 10 or 12 children and they could have, in theory, expected to have approximately 60 grandchildren. Mind boggling, isn’t it?

LeRoy and Maggie Ford with four of their six surviving sons, Earl, LeRoy "Bert", Ralph and Ray.

Six of the seven sons of Maggie and LeRoy Ford, from the left standing: Ray, 1887, Ralph, 1884, LeRoy "Bert", 1889. Sitting from the left: Earl, 1892, Charles, 1896, and Ellis, 1894.

LeRoy was married three times, first to Ellen Crouch in 1878. She died without issue in 1879. Maggie Lorig was his second wife and after Maggie died he married Laura Moore in 1906. He and Laura did not have any children and were later divorced. Maggie died in 1900 and LeRoy in 1916.

Their oldest son, Ralph, was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) an organization for descendants of Civil War soldiers and since Henry Lorig did not serve it logically seemed as if his other grandfather, Lloyd Ford, must have served in the War even though he was born in 1818 and would have been in his 40s during the war years. It also turned out that there was a Quaker heritage on the Hunt side of the Ford family and that would make Lloyd more likely to be a dissenter rather than a soldier. Quakers were by and large abolitionists and therefore pro Union even though they were also pacifists and did not fight as soldiers. Helen Ford Gisser put together and self published an undated extensive genealogical record of the Foard, Forde, Ford families. The binding had disintegrated and the entire thing was in pieces; nevertheless, I did look carefully through her accounts to see if any mention was made of Civil War service by any of the Ford men. LeRoy would have been a child and clearly not old enough to serve at age 6 to 11 years of age. The only other relative I could think of was Maggie’s uncle Adolph Schloeder who did serve as a Union soldier and was severely wounded. I don’t know if an uncle would have been a close enough relative to justify membership so it remains a mystery as to how and why Ralph joined the GAR.

Helen Ford Fuqua shared these photographs that had been in Ralph’s collection (her father). They are not of very good quality but are interesting as historical pictorials of that era.

Ralph Ford in his GAR uniform.
[photo courtesy of Helen Ford Fuqua]

The Fords owned and lived in the old Lorig home on Locust Street in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa for at least three years. Later Ralph Ford purchased the old Lorig home and lived there for a while with his wife. LeRoy Ford also lived in the old Ford home in Tenton, Iowa, that was said to resemble the Lorig house.

Old Ford home in Trenton, Iowa.
[photo courtesy of Helen Ford Fuqua]

Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska as well as the Dakotas produce so much food, not only corn and wheat but also soybeans, tomatoes, spinach, and other vegetables. Wheat, corn, alfalfa, rye, and barley would been the major crops a hundred years or so ago. Today farmers have large air conditioned threshers but when the Lorigs and Fords were living in Iowa they were using mules, oxen, or the steam powered thresher shown here. It would have been the newest convenience that the farmers used and would have seemed an amazing labor saving device compared to reaping and threshing by hand. Even though our families lived in town they most likely hired out to help during the harvest times.

Old steam threshing machine.
[photo courtesy of Helen Ford Fuqua]

Ralph Ford as a small boy.
[photo courtesy of Helen Ford Fuqua]


LeRoy "Bert" Ford with horse and buggy.
[photo courtesy of Helen Ford Fuqua]

Ralph with the Fire Department water hose truck.
[photo courtesy of Helen Ford Fuqua]

Mary M. Lorig, born 1859

Mary Lorig, ca 1880s

Mary Magdalene Lorig was the third daughter of Henry and Katie Lorig. She was born 1859 after the family arrived in Iowa but before they were settled in Mt. Pleasant, Henry County.

Mary and Maggie, her younger sister, were the daughters who stayed at home. It appears that Mary never married. Like her sister, Lizzie, she is listed as a dressmaker on the 1880 Federal Census for Iowa. She and Maggie are the ones who kept house for their father until Maggie died and he moved to Chicago. As far as can be determined Mary remained in Mt. Pleasant.

After Katie’s death in 1893 Henry stayed in the old home then about four years later in 1897 he deeded the property over to his daughter Maggie who was married to (Thomas) LeRoy Ford for $400.00. They had a large family of seven sons. Henry stipulated in the deed transfer that he was to retain the right to continue to live in the house and was to receive any income there from during his lifetime. He later moved sometime shortly after 1900 to Chicago where two of his daughters, Lizzie and Mattie were then living.

After Maggie died in May of 1900 the Lorig family home then was deeded over for $30.00 to her sister, Mary, who kept it until 1918 when it was transferred back to Maggie’s son, Ralph Ford for $800.00 by A.W. Kinkead. For a while I thought that perhaps Mary had wed A. W. Kinkead as his name appears on the transfer of property but it turned out that Mr. Kinkead was a lawyer and that was why his name appeared on the records. It is evident by the disparity in transfer amounts that the Fords could afford to pay close to the actual value of the property but that Mary was more or less given title and made a tidy profit if she was still alive when it went to Ralph. The death record for Mary has yet to be located so it is not possible to tell if this transfer by Mr. Kinkead was made after Mary died or if she moved or perhaps later married and decided to sell it to her nephew.

The property is described as Lot 1, block 12 in the Commissioners First Addition of the city of Mt. Pleasant. The address was listed as Locust Street. There was a kitchen garden in which they grew many of their own vegetables. Oral reports also indicated that they had a cow and probably chickens as well even though the house was in town. Walt Lorig remembered his father, Edd, saying that the house itself was constructed of hardwood (black walnut and oak, Walt thought) and that it was still standing as late as the mid 1950s. It is not, however, still standing today.

Historic Harland Hotel in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa
[postcard courtesy of Jim Ford]

The town of Mt. Pleasant looks very different today than it did when Mary Lorig lived there. One of the remaining historical buildings is the Harland Hotel. Jim Ford, a descendant of Maggie and LeRoy Ford, sent this card several years ago as an example of the local architecture during the 19th century.