Eliza “Mother” George

by Tom Castaldi

Eliza Hamilton George was born in Bridgeport, Vermont, in 1808 and married W. L. George before coming to Fort Wayne sometime prior to 1850.  In that year, one of her daughters, also named Eliza, married another young newcomer to the city, Sion Bass, who had arrived from Kentucky in 1849.  Sion Bass joined the army in 1861 at the outbreak of the Civil War and helped to organize the 30^th Regiment of Indiana Volunteers; he was chosen to be its first commander.  At the battle of Shiloh in April 1862, Sion was killed leading a charge of his regiment against Confederate lines.

Portrait of Eliza George

 The loss of her son-in-law and the news of the terrible suffering of Union soldiers everywhere made a great impression on Mrs. George.  Early in 1863, at 54 years of age, she applied for duty in the Sanitary Commission, the forerunner of the Army Nurse Corps.  Her value as a nurse was quickly realized in the rapidly overflowing hospitals in Memphis, her first duty station.  Here she soon was commended enthusiastically by those for whom she worked, from the beleaguered doctors in the field to Indiana’s Governor Oliver P. Morton.  Her special care of the soldiers caught the imagination of the Indiana press as well.  An Indianapolis newspaper, for example, told of the occasion she sat for twenty hours with a young frightened soldier, holding ice against his bleeding wound.  Whenever she tried to have some one relieve her, the boy so painfully begged her to stay that, “she forgot her own weariness and applied the ice again.”  When shells were falling in and around the hospital tent, she picked up the wounded and, one by one, in the face of enemy fire carried them in her arms to safety.

Near the end of the war, “Mother” George – as she had come to be called affectionately by the soldiers – was assigned to the army hospital in Wilmington, North Carolina.  There, at the same time, came nearly eleven thousand newly freed Union prisoners of war.  Mother George gave herself completely to relieve the suffering of these men, but in an outbreak of typhoid among the troops, the exhausted Mother George contracted the disease and died on May 9, 1865, scarcely a month after the end of the war.  Her body was brought back to Fort Wayne where she was buried with full military honors in Lindenwood Cemetery, the only woman to have been so honored there.  Later that same year, the Indiana Sanitary Commission and the Fort Wayne Ladies Aid erected a monument in her memory in the cemetery.  A weathered granite shaft with the simple inscription on its face that reads, “Mrs. George” still stands in a triangular space near her actual grave site across the way in the Col. Sion S. Bass family plot.

 

Mother George's monument in Lindenwood Cemetery

Fort Wayne maps of both 1874 and 1895 show a street named for her that later was changed to West Brackenridge.  According to Harold Lopshire at ARCH, a grocery store building was erected in 1864 by Joseph Nohe at the corner of Broadway and George Street.  Today, along Broadway there is no longer any evidence of a street celebrating the memory of Mother George except a marker embedded high on the building wall of the once grocery store, now carpet retailer, that reads, “George St.” 

 

Marker across the street from the History Center

To honor the memory of Eliza George, however, a marker was placed on the north side of East Berry Street between Barr and Lafayette that is near the site of her first home in Fort Wayne.  It was erected in May of 1965 by the Fort Wayne Civil War Roundtable.  Prior to the Civil War, Eliza George moved in with her daughter and son-in-law at 509 West Washington.  It was an address she or Sion Bass would never return to and live out their otherwise promising lives.  Mother George died never to know of her great fame or of a legacy placing her among the important women contributors to American history.

This post originally appeared in Fort Wayne Magazine “Along the Heritage Trail with Tom Castaldi” –

Scheduled for December 2006 but Published February 2007.

Allen County Historian Tom Castaldi is author of the Wabash & Erie Canal Notebook series; hosts “On the Heritage Trail,” which is broadcast at 6:35 a.m., 8:35 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. Mondays on WBOI, 89.1 FM; and “Historia Nostra” heard on WLYV-1450 AM and WRRO 89.9 FM. Enjoy his previously published columns on the History Center’s blog, “Our Stories,” at history centerfw.blogspot.com.

 

Jane Alice Peters aka Carole Lombard

by Tom Castaldi

Jane Alice Peters became one of America’s favorite movie stars in the 1930s as Carole Lombard.  She was born in Fort Wayne in 1908 and spent the first six years of her life in the shingle-style house on Rockhill Street (built in ca. 1905).  Her grandfather was John Clouse Peters, one of the founders of the Horton Washing Machine Company, and her mother, “Bess” Knight, was a vivacious and strong actress descended from “Gentleman Jim” Chaney, an associate of the notorious robber baron of the 1880s, Jay Gould.

   

Jane Alice fondly remembered her young days in Fort Wayne, attending the Washington Elementary School a few blocks to the south and playing rough games with her brothers, “Fritz” and “Tootie.” She remembered most vividly, however, the great Flood of 1913 when, under the direction of her mother, Bess, her house became a rescue center for flood victims, among other reasons, because the family had one of the only telephones in the area. Jane Alice remembered helping her mother collect supplies, run errands, and help care for those displaced by the rising waters.

Jane Alice and her mother left Fort Wayne in 1914, eventually settling in Hollywood.  At age 12, she made her film debut and by 1924 was a glamorous actress for Fox Studios.   

She changed her name to Carole Lombard, in recollection of an old family friend, Harry Lombard, a one-legged relative from Fort Wayne living in California.  Her dynamic Hollywood career was highlighted by roles in Mack Sennett films, steamy romances, marriage to William Powell, exotic parties, outstanding comedy roles in major movies opposite the best actors in the business, and, finally, marriage to Clark Gable.

           

Carole Lombard died in a plane crash on January 16, 1942, while promoting a war bond drive soon after the beginning of World War II.

Side Bar--Older Historical Marker Text:

CAROLE LOMBARD

In this house on October 6, 1908 was born Jane Alice Peters, daughter of Fredrick C. and Elizabeth Knight Peters. She took the professional name of Carole Lombard and became one of the most important figures in the motion picture industry.

Erected by the City of Fort Wayne, Indiana, under the direction of Mayor Harry W. Baals, January 1, 1938 on the occasion of her appearance in David O. Selznick’s Technicolor production, “Nothing Sacred.”

From Fort Wayne Magazine, “Along the Heritage Trail with Tom Castaldi” – May June 2004 No. 6, p. 80