Gaebler-Knight Family Papers

Collection

Identifier: A0543

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The Gaebler-Knight Collection is comprised of the papers of Adolph Nelson Gaebler (1863-1954), his daughter Anita Gaebler (1892-1977), and Anita’s husband Walter J. Knight (1881-1951). Adolph Gaebler’s papers are predominately business records, correspondence, and real estate papers. The papers of Anita Gaebler and Walter J. Knight are personal correspondence, mostly between the two of them before their marriage in 1914. The Adolph Gaebler Series includes business papers from a long series of entrepreneurial ventures which he launched and companies which he headed. The earliest of these date from 1883-1888 and are the books kept by Gaebler for a stenography correspondence school which he operated, first from his residence at 2607 Menard (in Soulard) and later from an office at 919 Olive Street. These accounts record student lessons, fees, and supplies. In 1887, Gaebler formed A.N. Gaebler & Co., which distributed “Independent” stylographic and fountain pens and operated from his Olive Street office. An order book for this company covering the years 1887-1888 survives. While studying medicine, Gaebler developed an abiding interest in chemistry which led him, after having already established a lucrative medical practice, to venture into the chemical business. In 1900, Gaebler formed the Hall Chemical Co., located at 602 N. 4th Street. This mail-order pharmaceutical business expanded, and in 1902 Gaebler moved it to 1421 Olive Street. In 1906, Gaebler formed another more diversified company, King Manufacturing Company, a larger mail-order firm. There are in the collection two catalogues issued by King, which offer a wide range of articles from fancy glassware to cosmetics and baking soda. There is also a catalogue from Lacassian Laboratories, a later subsidiary of King, which specialized in toiletries and perfume. Most of the business records in the collection have to do with Gaebler’s pharmaceutical business and King Manufacturing Co. in particular. As far as this company’s records are concerned, there are in the collection Minutes of Stockholders and Directors Meetings, 1943-1946; an order book, 1948-1954; and an account ledger, 1946-1954. There are also a series of records having to do with the formulas which Gaebler devised for the manufacture of his cosmetic and pharmaceutical products. There are eight formula books, the earliest dating from 1890, which list with an assigned formula number and index the formulas for all the products manufactured by first, Hall Chemical, then King Manufacturing Co. and Lacassian Laboratories. There are also applications, permits, and correspondence with the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of the Treasury. King Manufacturing Co. had to submit its formulas and labels to the Food and Drug Administration for verification, and during Prohibition a permit from the U.S. Department of the Treasury was required before “intoxicating liquor” could be used in any pharmaceutical product. Among Adolph Gaebler’s business papers is a series of correspondence and cancelled stock certificates from the R.H. Hunstock Chemical Company, which Gaebler took over in 1921 at a point of financial crisis in the company. It would appear that company funds from its South American accounts had been embezzled by one or more of the company’s agents. When Gaebler took over, all the company’s South American clients, whose payments had not been recorded on the Company’s books in St. Louis, were sent a form letter requesting that they forward to St. Louis their paid bank drafts, which would have had to have been endorsed by a company official. Copies of this correspondence with the replies from the clients (originally in Spanish with translations typed in) and the bank drafts were kept by Gaebler. The bank drafts had been endorsed by C.C. Engels, the president of the company. At least some of this money had been collected in Mexico by one Roman Alonzo, who had been acting without authorization as the company’s Mexico City branch agent. According to Gaebler’s correspondence, there was no Mexico City Branch. The history of this company’s demise is obscure. Engel continued business in St. Louis as a local agent for an out-of-town manufacturing firm, so it is not at all clear who the embezzler actually was: the correspondence only identifies Alonzo as one of the “dishonest persons” in the employ of the company. In any event, by 1922 Hunstock Chemical Co. was no longer in business. Another of Adolph Gaebler’s many business interests was real estate, in which he invested with considerable success. The collection contains the various legal papers relating to his properties both in St. Louis and California. His major properties in St. Louis were: 14th and Olive, the original site of Hall Chemical and King Manufacturing Companies; 22nd and Locust, where Gaebler built a five-story building (still standing) to house King Manufacturing Co. and its subsidiary Lacassian Laboratories; 18th and Pine, sold to the Pontiac Hotel but Gaebler continued to hold the mortgage; and Union and Bircher, which was an industrial site, and the bulk of the papers relating to this property concern Gaebler’s agreements with the Terminal Rail Road Association of St. Louis on the construction of a side-track to service Gaebler’s buildings. Besides the legal papers and correspondence associated with these properties, there are in the collection two ledgers with detailed accounts for each of the properties. One ledger contains the St. Louis accounts, the other those for California. The remainder of the Gaebler-Knight Collection is the private correspondence of Anita Gaebler and Walter J. Knight. There is a series of letters to each of them from their own friends, dating back to 1904 when Anita was only twelve and corresponding with girl friends back east where she spent her summers. Many of Walter Knight’s correspondents were friends from Alabama or New York, where he attended a business college, or from Washington, D.C., where he worked for two and a half years. There is also a regular series of letters to Walter from his father between 1912 and 1916. Both Walter and Anita were effusive writers, and during their courtship, which lasted two years until their wedding in 1914, they wrote to each other almost daily, and on some days more than once, with letters posted in both the morning and evening mails. These letters are to a certain extent proper love-letters, but they are at the same time both newsy and witty. Walter travelled extensively on business in these days before he settled in St. Louis, and Anita was caught up in the swirl of St. Louis society. These letters make a period-piece of social trivia, seen through the eyes of the thoughtful (at times pensive) but energetic and ambitious Walter, and the bubbly, vivacious, and intelligent Anita. After their wedding, the correspondence between Mr. and Mrs. Knight fell off. After Walter settled in St. Louis, they were no longer separated for extended periods of time, and their letters were mostly from friends. A series of letters survive from Dr. Gaebler’s old secretary, Agatha P. Thompson (who figured prominently in Gaebler’s business affairs) to Mrs. Knight in 1953. Miss Thompson was still coping with business details (mostly household expenses as most of the Doctor’s business interests had been sold off in 1950), and reporting to his daughter in detail on the health of the elderly Dr. Gaebler, for whom she was still caring. There is a collection of Gaebler-Knight Miscellany: invitations and dance programs (from Anita’s career as an interpretive dancer), insurance policies and household papers from the Knight home at 6377 Pershing, as well as clippings of Walter Knight’s obituaries. There are address books and documents concerning Ernest Gaebler’s (Adolph Gaebler’s father) military career. There is a photocopy of a brochure written by Walter Knight, “Gravity Never Sleeps,” which lists the buildings engineered by Walter J. Knight & Co., published in 1937.

Dates

1883-1954

Creator

Gaebler, Adolph Nelson, 1863-1954 (Creator, Person)

Conditions Governing Access

The collection is open for research use.

Conditions Governing Use

For permission to publish, quote from, or reproduce material in this collection, please contact the Archives Reference Desk at archives@mohistory.org. Copyright restrictions may apply. The researcher assumes full responsibility for conforming to the laws of copyright.

Biographical Sketch

Adolph Nelson Gaebler was born in St. Louis in 1863. His father Ernest Gaebler was a native of Saxony, Germany. Like many German immigrants in St. Louis, Ernest Gaebler was a staunch Unionist in the Civil War. He served with an artillery regiment of the Missouri Volunteers. After the war, Ernest Gaebler worked for the U.S. Postal Service as a mail carrier and made his home in what is now known as the Soulard neighborhood at 2607 Menard. At the age of 15, Adolph Gaebler left public school, and in 1879 he went to work for the Haydock Brothers Carriage Co. at Chouteau and 3rd Streets as a bookkeeper. In 1883, he became the assistant bookkeeper at Todds & Stanley Mill Furnishing Co., 917 N. 2nd St., and began his own stenography correspondence school, which he ran from his home on Menard St. In 1885, the City Directory lists Gaebler as “stenographer” and indicates that he had moved from Menard to 2712 S. 13th St. In 1887, he had moved into an office at 919 Olive where he opened up his own stenography/business school, which he maintained until he decided to take up the study of medicine. Gaebler attended the American Medical College in St. Louis, and graduated from there in 1890. He set up his practice, first at 710 Olive then in 1892 at 5916 Von Versen. In 1893, he moved again to 6032 Cates, where he lived until 1902 when he moved to 4361 Westminster Place. From 1904-1905, the Gaeblers lived at 5237 McPherson, and in 1906 they moved to what was to remain their home until the doctor’s death in 1954, 5336 Cabanne. In 1900, Adolph Gaebler launched his first chemical business the Hall Chemical Co., located until 1902 at 602 N. 4th when Gaebler moved it to his property at 1421 Olive. In 1906, Gaebler expanded this business, forming the King Manufacturing Co., a more diversified mail-order firm. In 1917, Gaebler moved King to a new five-story building at 22nd and Locust Streets, where the business remained up to Gaebler’s retirement. In 1921, Gaebler took over another chemical company, R.H. Hunstock Chemical Co., which had been founded by a chemist, Robert H. Hunstock, in 1905. In 1917, Charles C. Engel, formerly president of Engel Paper Box Specialty Co., was brought in to head Hunstock Company, now with a grandiose flag of “Exporters and Manufacturers.” By 1921, the company had suffered a major financial scandal and its accounts were in chaos. Apparently, the funds paid by its South American clients had been embezzled. When Gaebler took over as president of Hunstock (with his own faithful Miss Thompson serving as the company’s new Secretary-Treasurer), he immediately had a form letter sent out to all the South American clients whose payments had never been recorded in the company’s books in St. Louis, requesting their paid bank drafts so that the endorsements could be verified. Several of the customers indicated that they had made their payments to one Alonzo Ramon, who had presented himself to them as Hunstock’s agent in Mexico City, where he had established a “branch” and from where he corresponded with the company’s clients in South America, specifically directing them to make their payments to him directly. Gaebler’s letter to the clients disavowed Ramon and insisted that payments be made directly to St. Louis and that only correspondence or invoices signed by himself or his secretary, Miss Thompson, be honored. The bank drafts, which Gaebler had requested from the clients, had all been endorsed by C.C. Engel as president of the company. Whether Engel was himself involved in the embezzlement scheme (Gaebler’s form letters only allude to unspecified “dishonest persons”) is unclear. There is a letter from Gaebler to a lawyer inquiring as to the possibility of attaching Engel’s stock from Engel Paper Box Specialty Co. This may refer to an attempt to recover Hunstock’s losses from Engel, but there is no evidence that Engel was ever prosecuted, and after Hunstock dissolved in 1922, Engel moved on to another business. Besides the chemical business, Gaebler invested heavily in real estate in St. Louis and in California. As early as 1895, he started buying up property in St. Louis. That year he purchased a lot at Woodson and Lackland for $15,000. The same year he bought the lot at 22nd and Locust, on which he was to build the King Manufacturing Building. The purchase price was $22,500. The building was completed in 1917. In 1908, Gaebler bought an undeveloped site at Union and Bircher for $23,662 and began a complicated project to develop the site with an agreement with the Terminal Rail Road Association of St. Louis to build a side-track to service the buildings he intended to construct. The project dragged on, and by 1927 the Terminal Rail Road attempted to cancel the agreement because nothing had been done with the site. A new agreement was reached in 1948, and Gaebler was able to sell the property to the Metal Goods Corporation in 1950 for $140,000. In 1916, he acquired a lot at 18th and Pine for $35,000 from the Suffolk Realty Co. In 1923, he sold this to the Pontiac Hotel for $100,000 while retaining the mortgage on the property. In 1946, Gaebler sold the property to Nick and Christ Goulias for $42,000. In the 1920s and 1930s, Gaebler started to buy up property in California. In 1923 and 1924, he purchased four tracts in Santa Monica, Carlsbad in Palisade Heights, Poway Tract in San Diego, and a lot at Redondo Beach for which he paid a total of $56,565. In 1933, Gaebler purchased a second lot at Redondo Beach for $7,000. Although he improved these properties, Gaebler clearly was using his California real estate as a tax shelter, and he sold off the properties at a substantial loss – losses which were carefully recorded on his Income Tax returns. His Santa Monica property purchased in 1924 for $26,000 was sold in 1937 for $3,325. His two Redondo Beach lots, purchased in 1923 and 1924 for a total of $15, 065, were sold off in 1943 for $2,000. The Carlsbad property, purchased for $8,500 in 1924 was sold in 1946 for $3,660. The only property which Gaebler realized a profit on its sale was his Poway tract in San Diego, bought for $14,000 and sold in 1948 for $15,000. Gaebler was clearly in on the debt side of the California real estate boom. Adolph Gaebler was twice married. He married his first wife Clara Converse from Vermont in 1886, and she died soon after in 1887. Perhaps her premature death contributed to Gaebler’s decision to take up the study and practice of medicine at that time. Immediately upon graduation from the American Medical College, Gaebler remarried on June 11, 1890, to May Borngesser of St. Louis. Their only child Anita was born in 1892. May Gaebler died in 1940. Adolph Gaebler retired from business in 1950 at the venerable age of 87, and he died in his home four years later in 1954. Anita Gaebler was born on January 11, 1892, in her parents’ home on Von Versen Street in St. Louis. She attended Mary Institute and studied dance at Jacob Mahler’s Dancing School. She performed in various amateur “interpretive” dance recitals given by Mahler and his daughter Rosaline Mahler Pufeles. In 1914, Anita danced in the Pageant and Masque in Forest Park on the stage constructed over the lagoon at the foot of Art Hill. Anita Gaebler travelled widely with her parents. She accompanied them on a trip to the far west in the early 1900s, a trip that brought them to the still primitive camps of Alaska. Like so many other St. Louisans of their class, the Gaeblers summered in New England, in their case in Maine at York Beach and Bald Mountain. In 1912, Anita with a party of young women travelled through Europe. They sailed from New York on January 10 on the S.S. Adnalie and returned at the end of September 1912 on the S.S. President Lincoln. Their itinerary included Egypt, Italy, France, and Switzerland. Anita Gaebler was a popular young woman to whom several men gave their attentions. In 1914 after an extended courtship often carried on across great distance via an almost daily correspondence, Anita Gaebler married Walter J. Knight, a young and ambitious civil engineer who had worked with Dr. Gaebler on many of his real estate development projects. Walter J. Knight was a native of Evergreen, Alabama, and studied Civil Engineering at Alabama Polytechnic Institute. He acquired his early professional training in the engineering department of the Eastern Railway of Alabama in 1903. He attended Eastman Business College in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1904. Between 1905 and 1907, Knight worked for the Engineer Commissioner of Washington, D.C., as a draftsman, transitman, and computer on various bridge construction projects. In 1908, he accepted a position with the Gilsonite Construction Co. of St. Louis (offices in the Wainwright Building) as a reinforced-concrete engineer. Knight left the Gilsonite Co. in 1913 because, as he explained in his letter of resignation, “my opportunities with the Gilsonite Co. are evidently very limited.” Walter Knight established his own consulting firm, first in Chicago then in 1915 in St. Louis as Walter J. Knight & Co., with his office in the Wainwright Building. Knight established a national reputation in structural engineering and collaborated on the design of many St. Louis landmarks including the Southwestern Bell Telephone Building, The Bevo Bottling Plant at the Anheuser-Busch Brewery, the St. Louis Mart and Terminal Warehouse, and the Continental Building as well as several of the buildings on the campuses of Washington University and the University of Missouri. The Knights made their home in University City at 6377 Pershing. They had three children: James (b. 1915) who died in World War II; Ahden (Mrs. Stanley F. Hampton); and Andrea May (Mrs. John William Peil), the donor of the collection. Walter Knight retired from his business in January 1950 and died of liver disease on July 26, 1951. For many years, Anita Knight was an active member of the Mayflower Society, the Missouri Historical Society, the Artists’ Guild, the St. Louis Woman’s Club, the Writers’ Guild, and the Wednesday Club. She directed plays for amateur theaters; wrote short stories, dramatizations, song lyrics, and scripts for radio programs; and received awards for poetry from the Writers’ Guild and the Wednesday Club. Anita Gaebler Knight died in her home on Sunday night, January 2, 1977.

Extent

5.6 Cubic Feet ( (12 boxes))

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Arrangement

The collection is arranged by subject within each of the three series: the Adolph N. Gaebler Business Records Series with subseries of General Business, Ledgers, Pharmaceutical and Cosmetic Formulas, and Real Estate; the Anita Gaebler and Walter J. Knight Correspondence Series; and the Miscellany Series.

Physical and Technical Requirements

There are no physical or technical restrictions.

Donor Information

The Gaebler-Knight Collection was donated to the Missouri Historical Society by Mrs. Andrea Knight Peil on February 2, 1983, and February 1, 1984. Accession numbers 83-0055 and 83-0067 apply to the collection.

Separated Materials

Photographs from the collection, mostly vacation snapshots, have been transferred to the Photographs and Prints Department and may be found in the Anita Gaebler Knight Collection (P0432).