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In 1860 John James (1806–1893) and his son, Charles B. James
(1835–1918), operated a hardware store in Detroit,
then a city with a population of around 45,000.
John's first wife and Charles's mother, Emily
Watkins James (1818–1836), had passed soon after
giving birth to Charles. His second wife, Adeline E. Rutter
(1809–1882), raised Charles
alongside her niece and nephew, Sarah and Louis Dalby.* Growing up so close, like siblings but not,
it probably came as no surprise when Charles James and
Sarah Dalby (1841–1917) married in 1857. They would
have nine children during their sixty years together, all
born in the Detroit area. They lived long
enough to suffer the burial of six.
By 1900 Charles and Sarah
lived at 43 Erskine St. in Detroit with two
of their grown children — Worthington James, a
stenographer for the Lawrence Publishing Company,
and Gertrude Adeline James, their youngest.
When When John James retired, the hardware store was
closed and Charles James sr. went to work for
Russell, Burdsall & Ward Bolt & Nut. He
prospered. Their home on Erskine had been a
$7,000 purchase in 1898, (nearly $200,000 in 2017
dollars). Gone now, it was a three-story brick and stone structure
with ten rooms and a bath on a 25' x 100' lot. An
advertisement for the property described the bath as
luxurious, equipped with marble porcelain tubs. It
was finished in hardwood, had double floors, and
offered both gas and electric lights.
Their son and Iroquois
Theater fatality, Charles Dalby James jr. (1862–1903),
had followed his grandfather and father into the
hardware business. In 1903 he worked as a sales
representative for two companies: Sall Mountain Asbestos company
and Continental Varnish & Paint Co. Based out
of Davenport, Iowa, he traveled the Midwest
selling paint products and asbestos pipe insulation for large-scale
building projects at universities and other
institutions. Sall Mountain Astestos was
headquartered in St. Louis, mined in White County,
Georgia and maintained several offices around the
country, including one in Chicago, at 123-127
Ontario.
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It was not reported why Charles was in Chicago on December 30, 1903, but it
he may have been there on business with the Chicago
office of Sall Mountain. It is also not known if his
wife, the former Mildred Miller (1872–1948), was
with him in Chicago. The pair had married in1896 in
Missouri and had not yet started a family,
increasing the possibility that she traveled with
him over a holiday. Charles' body was found at St.
Luke's hospital and transported to Detroit for
burial. His afternoon funeral was held at his
father's home on January 2, 1904. At the Episcopal
church, the services were conducted by Reverend
Charles E. Woodcock. Pallbearers were Wells Utley,
Harry C. James, Fred R. Perry, George Baker, J.
Crapo Cristy, and William Hickey.
Both Chicago and Detroit issued death
certificates and a recently provided photo
from Find-A-Grave photographer Terry Lack verifies
his burial at Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit.
In the years after the fire
The Iowa State Traveling Men's Association advertisement cited
James' widow as the beneficiary of a $5,000 life
insurance policy payout in January 1904.
In 1908 Mildred remarried to another traveling
salesman — John Hopkins Stearns. They settled in
Madison, Ohio, and had one child, a daughter named
Harriet.
Sarah and Charles B. James passed in 1917 and 1918.
Gertrude kept newspapers updated on her travels; her
date of death is not known. Worthington died at age
seventy of heart failure and exposure in 1939 at the
Eloise Institution, the Wayne County, Michigan, poor
farm.
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