While preparing yesterday’s post about the Ashbolt children meeting the stars of the “Our Gang” comedies, I wondered: just who was William E. Ashbolt, their father?
It turns out that Mr. Ashbolt was truly a man for all seasons: family man, newspaperman, politician and orchardist.
Read all about this unique man and his accomplishments in this article that ran in the Lorain Journal at the time of his death on March 30, 1943.
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WM. ASHBOLT DIES OF HEART ATTACK AT 51
Former Ohio Legislator Stricken Early Today in Hospital
SERVED 4 YEARS
Veteran Newspaperman Won Wide Acclaim as Orchardist
Fifty-one years old, Ashbolt was taken ill Saturday, but was believed recovering when the sudden attack occurred. He died at 12:50 a. m.
25 Years a Newsman
Ashbold went into politics in 1933, when he was elected to the state legislature, after more than 25 years as a newspaperman in Lorain, Cleveland and Columbus during the latter years of which he acquired and developed the Ashbolt Orchards on Foster Park-rd, south of Lorain.
He served as Lorain-co state representative from 1934 to 1942, but dropped out of the legislature at the conclusion of his 1940-42 term to run for county auditor, a race he lost to Auditor Frank Ayres.
On Jan. 4 he was appointed to city council to fill the vacancy created when Councilman-at-Large Leslie M. Burge took up his seat in the state house of representatives.
Started Work at 16
Ashbolt, born in Lorain, the son of a pioneer Lorain family, started making news when he was 14 years old, by walking to Columbus and return. While in Columbus he paid a call to a newspaper and by the time he was 16 had landed a job as copy boy on the Ohio State Journal, a Columbus morning newspaper.
Possessing an uncanny ability to ferret out news stories, he soon became a reporter and eventually returned to Lorain, where he worked a total of some 20 years on the Lorain Times-Herald.
He also worked several years on the Cleveland Times, in the course of which he ‘covered’ both Washington news and Columbus state offices. It was during the time that he was employed on the Cleveland Times that he was a member of the press section which accompanied a Coolidge campaign train on a cross county tour in 1924.
Started Orchards
After the Times ceased publication, he returned to Lorain, working as a newspaperman for the Times-Herald and started his orchards, which now include 4,000 peach and cherry trees. Just coming into maturity is a 1,000-tree orchard of sweet cherries, which Ashbolt characterized as one of the largest sweet cherry orchards east of the Rocky Mountains.
One of the ex-state legislators favorite pastimes was reminiscing of his days in newspaper work and of the fast and furious “news breaks” of the “roaring 20’s” and the reportorial fights during the days when the Times-Herald and Lorain Journal were in competition in Lorain.
Since consolidation of the two Lorain papers, Ashbolt had worked for brief intervals for The Journal doing special assignments and filling in at times of emergency “to keep his hand in as a newspaperman.”
Fought Redistricting
In the legislature, he is best remembered for his battles against congressional redistricting bills that would have been contrary to Lorain county’s best interests, his successful fight to have sale of all intoxicating drinks, including 3.2 beer, restricted to persons 21 years old or over, and his co-sponsorship of the Whittemore-Ashbolt which enabled installment payment of taxes by hard-pressed property owners.
Ashbolt, who had enjoyed exceptionally good health all his life, suffered a heart attack in 1938, which was followed by an attack of sciatic rheumatism which kept him confined for many months afterward. He was not [illegible] recovered when he ran for his legislative post in 1940, but in the past year believed that he had regained his strength and health.
He was a member of the Lorain Congregational church, was a 32nd degree Mason, and was affiliated with the Lorain Elks, Eagles, Moose and Pythian Sister lodges and American Legion post 30.
Body Taken Home
The legislator lived at 1025 4th-st. Survivors include his wife, Mrs. Gertrude Ashbolt, former head of relief administration in Lorain, and two sons and two daughters.
The sons are Pfc. William A. Ashbolt, now in the U.S. Marine corps, stationed at Kearney Mesa, San Diego, Calif., Allen, at home, and Mrs. Cornelius Yingling and Mrs. Russell Warman, both of Lorain.
Also surviving are four sisters, Mrs. William Cable, Lorain, Mrs. Roy Gordon, Croton, Conn., Mrs. Dvid Weins, and Mrs. Fred Newton, both of Lakewood. Five grandchildren also survive.
The body was to be taken late this afternoon to the Ashbolt residence. Funeral arrangements are incomplete pending word from his son in the Marines.
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An article in the Van Wert Times Bulletin on August 14, 1945 examined how the late William E. Ashbolt, thought his efforts at his orchard, had hoped to take “two of the biggest headaches out of the annual canning chore of Northern Ohio housewives.”
As the article noted, Ashbolt “was born on a farm in Lorain County and the cleaning and skinning of peaches, and the gremlin task of pitting cherries when canning season rolled around were things he never forgot.”
One of Ashbolt’s solutions was to install "a large tent with open sides at his Detroit Road farm and in this tent he built a conveyor system that washed the cherries three times in ice water while girls sorted them to pick out any that were imperfect.”
"Crowning achievement of the newspaperman turned orchardist was a giant pitting machine housed in the middle of the vast tent top."
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| Advertisement from the Amherst News-Times of July 9, 1935 |
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| Advertisement from the Amherst News-Times of Sept. 24, 1937 |
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| Advertisement from the Amherst News-Times of August 20, 1942 |
6 comments:
Wonder where his orchard was?
I knew Bill Ashbolt the son a little. Always struck me as being a fine gentleman.
Where exactly were the orchards?
Theresa
I don't know for sure, (I'm sure Dan will research the exact location) but I would guess that the orchards were located on Cooper Foster Park road between Oberlin Avenue and Broadway. The area just west of Broadway has housing that was built after World War 2 and has names such as Orchard hill Drive, Appleseed Drive, Cherrywood Drive, and most tellingly, a short road off of Cherrywood named Ashbolt Drive. The orchards may have been on both sides of the road.
Aha! Thanks!
Theresa
I’m Wm E Ashbolt’s grandson. I didn’t see this article until my nephew sent it to me today. My grandfather’s cherry orchards we’re along the north side of Cooper-Foster Park Road, east of Ridge Hill Cemetery and on and all around what is now Cherrywood Drive. It went back to Calvary Cemetery. His peach orchards were where Mike Bass Ford is now, in Sheffield. Before he died in 1943, he told my step-grandmother not to sell his peach orchards because a state Highway would be going through the center of them one day. In 1967, when RT. 2 opened, his peach trees stood on both sides of the highway by Mike Bass and by the Theatre parking lot on the other side. As a side note, he saw my grandmother on stage with her brothers and sister as they were Vaudeville singers and dancers from Philadelphia know as the “Four Dancing Lubin’s”. They fell in love and married in 1912. My mother and her sister were born from that marriage; however, my grandmother died in the Flu Epidemic of 1918 at 24 years old. My step-grandmother served as a nurse, from Lorain, in the US Army in France during WWI. One last point, my great-greandfather, Wm E Ashbolt, Sr.’s farm was where Cromwell Gardens are today and he had Ashbolt Ice Co. at Broadway and West Erie Ave. around 1900. Gary Yingling - No. Ridgeville
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