of the North Manchester Historical Society, Inc.

VOLUME XVI, NUMBER 4 (NOV, 1999)

Historic Homes Tour in North Manchester 1999

The homes on tour include Brian and Jennifer Pattison and Jay and Julie Tate on West Third Street, Steve and Valerie Golding on North Elm Street, Grandstaff-Hentgen Funeral Service Bender Chapel on West Main Street, Jeff and M.A. Hire on Singer Road, Dr. Ed and

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New this year is the escorted Candlelight Tour and Dessert on December 4, 4:30 - 8:30 p.m. The Tour will begin at the Strauss Center of the Peabody Retirement Community with a brief talk on the town's architecture. Small groups will then depart to visit the seven homes.

Later the 150 tour participants will return to the Strauss Center for desserts and coffee served by the North Manchester Garden Club. Music will be provided by Martha Barker, Kathy Geible and Carol Snodgrass.

The second day of touring the historic houses is Dec. 5, ll:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Headquarters for the Sunday tour is the Blocher Community Room at the North Manchester Public Library. Tickets, brochures, refreshments, memorabilia, and a slide presentation of homes from past tours will be available by the Historical Society.

Holiday Tour committee members include Laura Rager and Jeanne Andersen, co-chairs; Sheryl Bowman and Ruth Ann Schlitt, publicity; Steve Batska, artistic co-ordinator; Thelma Rohrer and Davonne Rogers, script co-ordinators.

Also, Betty Hamlin, tickets; Lois Geible, music; Grace Taylor, refreshments, Grace Kester, special arrangements; and Deb Emmert and Adele Westman, Saturday evening refreshments.

The house hostesses include Barb Amiss, Angilee Beery, Sally Krouse, Cheryl Wilson, Susanne Siebrase, Sharon Fruitt, and Shelly Strobel.

Pattison

Special interior features include transoms above doorways, original

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In keeping with their family tradition, the Pattisons will have a large formal Christmas tree in the parlor and the children's tree on the side porch. Local artist Fran Gratz will be decorating the home with natural dried flower and plant creations including wreaths, swags, and small trees. The unique creations are available at the Hospitality House Gift Shop.

Tate

A beautiful leaded glass window sparkles in the porch wall. Julie, who grew up in Wabash County, has loved antiques since a teen. Consequently, the Tate home is filled with not only family antiques but auction and antique shop treasures too. Julie kiddingly says she had to open the Eel River Antique shop on Walnut Street to house the overflow.

Interior highlights include oak floors, decorative columns, and woodwork, original inside wooden window shutters, and a charming breakfast room which has a bead board ceiling.

Albert and Mary Ebbinghouse purchased the home in 1907. It remained in their family for 80 years. Their daughter Doris and her husband Kurt P. Thoss owned the home from 1938 until Kurt's death in 1987. The Tates bought the house in 1994.

Christmas window and door swags and wreaths made with natural

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Golding

Heam added the living room fireplace, dormers, new shutters, and sided the exterior, thus changing it to a Colonial Revival house. The next owners, Pat and Crystal Snyder, added the family room, which has exposed ceiling beams from the old Sycamore Golf Course barn, attached garage, and master bedroom in 1972. A swimming pool was completed in 1980.

The Goldings purchased the house in 1993. They have blended family antiques with contemporary furnishings, and Valerie's stitchery and other crafts to make a comfortable home. Valerie loves to decorate for Christmas. Her angel and Santa collections are part of the lovely Christmas decor.

Grandstaff Hentgen

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Lawrence's son-in-law, A. C. Mills, built the library extension around 1900. The second owner was J. H. Bonner who owned a 

Todd's son-in-law, Mike Snyder, joined him in 1961. Ken and Kathie Grandstaff and Steve and Jan Hentgen acquired the business in 1992. One of their goals is to maintain the integrity of this fine old structure.

Special features include original inside wooden window shutters (discovered in the attic), stained glass with painted and etched birds in the double front doors, leaded as well as stained glass windows throughout, four marvelous fireplaces, some with ceramic tile trim, and all original cherry, oak, and walnut woodwork.

Hire

They have added the inviting front porch, resided the exterior, added the family room and three car garage and remodeled the living and dining rooms, kitchen, bathrooms, and upstairs. M.A. has

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Both Jeff and M.A. are long time collectors of all kinds of interesting things like Hires Root Beer and Mickey Mouse memorabilia, wall 

Of special note will be Christmas trees decorated in unusual motifs of Victorian, antique kitchen gadgets, and Mickey Mouse figures. Two antique sleighs from M.A.'s late father Cletus Rager's collection will be on display in the front and back yards.

Miller

The Millers have filled their spacious home with wonderful family antiques including furniture that traveled by covered wagon from Pennsylvania and a treadle sewing machine purchased with proceeds from selling a cow.

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Architectural highlights include original oak floors and woodwork throughout, french doors, built-in bookcases flanking the fireplace and in the study, and an inviting window seat in the dining room.

Taylor

Interesting architectural features include poplar woodwork, stucco walls, unique door archways, and brick fireplace flanked by built-in bookcases.

The home is a treasure trove of family antiques such as great grandmother's oak drop leaf table and iron bed and grandmother Taylor's marble top washstand. Other antiques are auction finds, some of which Tim has painstakingly restored.

An added feature on the Sunday tour from 1 to 1:30 p.m. will be

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Stefan Kaufman, 1921-1963

By Allan D. White

People are curious about the lives of refugees. Their interviews in the paper draw our attention. We understand that the course of Stefan Kaufman's life changed forever when Hitler's rise to domination forced Stefan at age 17 from a job as an apprentice metallurgist and eventually to seek a new homeland.

Stefan Georg Kaufman was born on August 9, 1921, in Berlin and was resident there the first 17 years of his life, later going to the Quakerschool Eerde Ommen at Overijsel in Holland. He continued his schooling in Holland and his Manchester College matriculation papers mention he had, in 1939, taken the examination for the School Certificate of Oxford, England. Our student writer in "INTRODUCING" tells us that Stefan's early travels took him to Switzerland, France and England.

Stefan's mother, Edith, was born into the Kohn family, the head

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The older son, Peter, was educated at Swarthmore College and converted to Catholicism and later Quakerism, before his ordination as a minister of the Church of the Brethren. For a short period he served the Church of the Brethren in Akron, Ohio. It was Peter who introduced Stefan to the Church of the Brethren and Manchester College.

Peter later earned a doctorate in psychology at the University of Wisconsin and was married to a psychiatrist. The two of them were returning home after a visit with the mother when their car was "sucked up" between two trucks, out of control on ice, and the couple was killed.

Stefan said his first glimpse of America was on February 2, 1939, when their boat docked in New York. After some months to find his bearings and some advice from his brother, he enrolled at Manchester College The date of his matriculation here was March 13, 1940.

Edith Kaufman had relatives who had already come to the United States as had the Kaufmans' sons. Within months of her husband's death from infectious pneumonia and with the help of a friend she was able to get their crated belongings out of Germany. She left with $50 and a carefully hidden diamond ring. Her path was not direct but passed to neutral Switzerland, then to Sweden and London, England, where she was living when Stefan enrolled at Manchester College.

At first Mrs. Kaufman stayed in New York with those who had ensured her entry into the country and put the furniture into storage, which cost money she did not have. Finally the storage company told her, "It has to go!" Stefan was aware that Max and Sara (Sally) Mertz Allen had just bought their house at 607 East Miami Street. When he approached them, he said, "You have a house with no furniture. I have furniture but no house" and then proposed that the 7500 pounds of personal property be moved from storage to North Manchester. The Allens were still living in the college apartment house which stood on College Avenue west of the old Eikenberry dorm, where A. Blair

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The 7500 pounds turned out to be 9000 pounds and arrived while Max was away for a week-long faculty retreat at Camp Mack! When Sally found she had to come up with the $25.00 to cover the cost of additional freight to the Mayflower movers, she secured an advance on Max's salary from A.R. Eikenberry, treasurer, and then rented a vacant apartment in the second apartment house. The furniture when moved into the apartment was piled wall-to-wall, so that one literally climbed over boxes to get into the room.

The first time that the Allens met Edith Kaufman whom they invited to dinner, they hired Pauline Smith (later Mrs. Ralph Delk), a Manchester College student, to help serve. They said that at one point Pauline was trying to light the oven and had let gas build up inside. When she struck that match, the resulting "poof" singed her hair and eyebrows.

Mrs. Kaufman called Max "Boss" and Sally "Little One" and had an earthy sense of humor. Max happened to slip the old Pennsylvania Dutch word, shyster, into the dinner conversation which caused Mrs. Kaufman to howl with laughter. During her five-week stay here the Allens taught her as many handicrafts as possible to help her adapt to her new life in the United States, but it was a practical nursing course she took which helped place her. Dr. Ladoska Z. Bunker talked to medical friends of hers in Chicago and was able to secure for Edith Kaufman a lucrative position as a live-in nurse for a wealthy mental patient in the patient's home.

Stefan chose a major in chemistry and minor in physics. He was also a serious piano student. As the 1943 interview said "he rode to campus fame via the piano." Beginning at age seven with European teachers, he studied here with Miss Martina DeJong. The 1942 yearbook portrays him with a tie and dark jacket, lips set intently and his head tilted over the keyboard of a grand piano. He roomed in a house on Wayne Street but was allowed to come and go at the Allens, as one of the family, to practice. When he practiced he did so with intensity and leaned near the keys. He continued to practice until the end of his life

He was president of the Music Appreciation Club his first year

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I nearly missed a companion story among the copies of Kaufman articles I was skimming through, until, recognizing the name "Marius Livingston," our Beethoven playwright above, I read that he also had fled Germany and arrived in the United States in 1935. After a year at Ashland College he transferred to Manchester College where he studied with Kaufman, Eva Loewenfeld and Sabine Heller, the names of two other refugees who chose Manchester College at that time 

In May 1941 when the German Club put on a variety program for a biweekly meeting. Kaufman did a piano solo on a programme shared by a humorous play interpreted by Vance Sanger, Kathleen Maphis, Wilmer Eley; a vocal solo by Jane Bechtold; and a quartet selection arranged by Galen Frantz. The faculty sponsor was Professor Fraulein Helen Slabaugh.

Stefan's mother could also entertain in her own right. The 1941 Aurora reports she made one German Club meeting "unforgettable" in an account of her experiences as a German refugee. At another Stefan delivered a stirring oration - in German - while his "intelligent audience" tried with varying degrees of success to keep up.

During the 1940-1941 academic year Kaufman had served as the German department assistant and in his senior year physics department assistant. We note that Charles Koller, also of the Class of 1943, served as chemistry department assistant for three years.

Koller reminded us, although not directly related to our topic, that Sabine Heller lived at the Allens who rented rooms to college students. Sabine was among a group of young ladies who had earned the nickname of "goats" during their year in the dorm. The dorm mother, apparently tired of the girls' pranks, had applied the term. Their relationship with the Allens was entirely different, however, especially after the birth of Allen's daughter, Janet, when the girls became part of the family, and then the Allens had seven built-in babysitters!

Scientist alternated with artist: the Oak Leaves announced on March 13, 1942, that Tri Alpha (drama organization) had chosen roles

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He was also then establishing his reputation as a writer of music and pageants At the 1942 Homecoming he debuted his miniature "grand" opera, "The Tempest - Not by Shakespeare." Kaufman called it a heroic farce "with much noise and little point"! In the story the king is moved to wrath when he learns from a nursery rhyme that all his horses and all his men cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again. The music punishes the insulting poet who wrote "such blasphemous nonsense."

The parts of the king and the poet were done by Stephen Blickenstaff and Howard Luginbill. Helen Cook and Frances Gibson stroked the king's ego with the playing of harps and singing, and, essential to all operas, there was dancing, provided by Erna Pottenger, Maxine Bauer, and Dorothy Phillips.

Kaufman produced a second, a Christmas pageant, directed by Professor Sadie Wampler. Presented at Walnut Street Church of the Brethren on December 20, just before the 1942 Christmas break, it was a large choral musical with group and solo singing, involving many of the church and college music organizations.

Professor D. W. Boyer, Mrs. Liegh Freed, Mrs. L.W. Schultz, Mrs. C.S. Morris and Professor Paul Halladay conducted. The central figure, Christopher, in various episodes was played by Ervin Hoff, Carl Waldo Holl Jr., Carlton Halladay, Henry Esbensen, John Hamer, James Renz, Arlo Gump. Paul Halladay played the role of the pilgrim.

Others in the cast were Mrs. Carl Holl, Mrs. D.C. Reber, Howard Keim, Robert Neher, Kay Ronald, Liegh Freed, Dr. M.C. Morris and Don Netzley. Max Allen was the organ accompanist.

Kaufman's "informal" recital in the college chapel on Easter Sunday 1943 may have been so announced because of the later-than-usual starting time, 8:30 p.m. That accommodated students and faculty members returning from the combined college choirs' Easter program at the Church of the Brethren. Our pianist played recital pieces which were hardly "informal, " such as, Handel's Passacaglia; Mozart's Sonata in C Minor (two movements) and Allegro from his Concerto in A Major; Bach's Fantasia Chromatica; and Beethoven's last sonata (in C minor). And the whole of it sublimely benefited

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Earlier, at the winter concert of the Manchester Civic Symphony, he was lauded for his solo performance of Mozart's Concerto in A Major with the orchestra which was directed by Samuel L. Flueckiger. In those days the orchestra's concerts were held in the auditorium of the old Central High School which stood where the new North Manchester Public Library is located. Evening concerts began at 8:15 p.m.

In its publicity for the concert the News-Journal reported that Kaufman had appeared with the civic symphony orchestra twice before: in 1941 he performed the Beethoven Fourth Concerto with the orchestra and in 1942 Haydn's D Major Concerto. He gave many programs: he did one for North Manchester Rotary Club, others for the college chapel series and the Christian Church, and others which have gone unheralded. He appeared as a soloist for the 1943 convention of Federated Women's Clubs in Wabash. They appreciated his talent and considered him "the finest pianist ever to take a course in music at the college."

The paper lamented that that recital on Easter Sunday would probably be Kaufman's last appearance "for some time," as he had accepted a teaching fellowship at the University of Wisconsin for the fall of 1943, that is, after his graduation, with distinction, from Manchester College on May 1, 1943. 

His graduate degree was granted by the University of Wisconsin after which he joined the Argonne National Laboratories near Chicago in 1951. He was an atomic physicist at Argonne. Stefan lived with his mother in an apartment house built for them in Downers Grove, Illinois, by a Japanese architect. Because Stefan became the president of the local Community Concert series, they frequently entertained guest soloists after the performance.

And, then, touching our sense of disbelief and moral grief, we read that the lives of those who had once fled to peace and security drew to a tragic halt. After the death of Peter Kaufman and his wife, Stefan and his mother took a world trip to forget their loss. Thereafter, on May 14, 1963 according to the brief memorial in the College Bulletin,

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The Allens and Martina DeJong attended the memorial service for the Kaufmans in Downers Grove. Max remembers that the eulogies seemed to concentrate on the tragedy of the Kaufmans' lives. Since he had known them, he began to feel frustration and despair and then was moved to stand up, where they sat, and spoke his own eulogy which emphasized the good in their lives and how they had been able to make good from tragedy.

The settlement of the estate left minor bequests to relatives with whom the Kaufmans were not close. It was Stefan's wish that a sizable endowment be made to the music department, in the name of the Stefan Kaufman Memorial Scholarship Fund, and another to Martina DeJong. Max and Sally Allen inherited the remaining household effects and personal belongings, including a number of fine European antiques and Stefan's piano.

The Manchester College Bulletin, June 1963, published a brief, factual memorial to Kaufman, at the end of his life, while the reporter at the beginning of our article wrote about the man as potential: "He has been an honor student during his sojourn at Manchester; but more than cold A's and B's," we read, "Stefan will leave a rich contribution to cultural and intellectual life on the campus" and in the community.

Special Gratitude: Mr. Max I. Allen, MC professor emeritus in art, and the late Sara Mertz Allen, interviews; Dr. A. Ferne Baldwin, MC professor emerita and college archivist, research assistance; Dr. Ladoska Z. Bunker, M.D. Ret., interviews; Mr. Stephen A. Batzka, MC professor of art, research assistance; and Dr. Charles Koller, retired chemist, phone conversation.

Sources: Aurora, the Manchester College (MC) yearbook; Manchester College Bulletin; Manchester College Catalog; North Manchester News-Journal; Oak Leaves, the MC newspaper.

Note: Kaufman is the spelling found in Manchester College matriculation records.

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