Category: Helen Pinkerton

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Pinkerton, Hebe, Tobacco and Roses

Baby Shane collaged with an Ektachrome slide of an old castle shot by my grandfather, Sherwood Pinkerton, Jr., coming into the world with a history.

William Alexander Pinkerton, immigrant ancestor, was born around 1740 in Firth of Tay, Dundee, Scotland. In 1793 he was killed by Native Americans in Pennsylvania while he working in the fields, with his wife looking on in horror. Alexander, his son (1783–1837), was born in Allegheny County, and became a cabinet maker. After living in New Castle, Pennsylvania for a while, he took his pioneering family on a flatboat down the Ohio river and up the Muskingham, and settled in a new town called McConnelsville, Ohio. His son, David (1817–1894) became an Ohio district court judge, postmaster, and first Treasury Department comptroller in Washington DC. David died in Washington DC in 1894.

Capt. John Willson Pinkerton. Co A & B, 62nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry

David Pinkerton’s oldest son, John W. Pinkerton (1843–1922) fought in the Civil War. After the war, John W. became a wholesale grocer in Zanesville, Ohio. From there, he developed a new chewing tobacco formula, founding the Pinkerton Tobacco Company in 1887. He incorporated the company in 1901 with 945 shares of stock. 

It was an interesting time in history because concurrently, the notorious monopolist, James B. Duke, of North Carolina, was aggressively buying up tobacco companies and putting everyone who was not with him, out of business. Duke and his “Tobacco Trust,” the American Tobacco Company, tried to own the entire tobacco market,  unconcerned with breaking the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act, an anti-monopoly law that was enacted the same year David Duke incorporated his business. Duke was big trouble for everyone in the tobacco business, – from the growers to the factories – including the Pinkerton Tobacco Company.

How the Pinkertons came to Toledo

The Pinkertons of the Pinkerton Tobacco Company — four generations: John W., Sherwood Sr., Sherwood Jr. (my grandfather), baby Elise, Toledo, 1920.  John W. holding the baby.

This was never a family story, but I’ve discovered some unsavory monopolistic circumstances that led to the Pinkerton family’s move to Toledo.

It all began down in Zanesville Ohio in 1903 when the Pinkerton Tobacco Company’s treasurer, George Monypeny embezzled a sizable amount of money from the company. This loss of money and employee trust prompted John W. Pinkerton to sell his majority shares of stock to the Continental Tobacco Company in order to get George Monpeny and three other Monypeny stockholders out of his business.  Unfortunately, Continental was owned by the American Tobacco Company. 

All went well until January 1907, when John W. was summoned to New York to meet with the American Tobacco Company, when they told him that they were forcing control of his company. John W. was jaw-droppingly shocked.

And so, from that date on, the American Tobacco Company dictated what the Pinkerton Tobacco Company was to sell, where they could sell it, what size packages they could sell, and the price they could sell it for. It was all for the purpose of putting companies out of business or forcing them to sell their business to James B. Duke’s American Tobacco Company.

One of the casualties was the J. F. Zahm Tobacco Company in Toledo, which Duke and the Tobacco Trust forced out of the tobacco business in 1907. The president, Mr. Zahm was so troubled that one December afternoon in his office at the factory, he put a bullet through his head.

The former tobacco factory building, behind the former Swayne Field ballpark at Bancroft and Detroit Ave, is now a U-Haul storage facility.

14 months later, in 1909, at the direction of the Tobacco Trust, this same factory building became the new headquarters of the Pinkerton Tobacco Company. Those were the sad circumstances that brought the Pinkertons to Toledo. No wonder the effects of the tobacco monopoly were skipped over in our family lore. 

John W.’s oldest son, Sherwood Pinkerton Sr. (1867–1939) managed the factory to start. They manufactured chewing tobacco and Sunshine cigarettes.

How terrible the casualties of the greedy monopolist. And to be forced into submitting to their whims.  Yet back then, at least John W. could see the light at the end of the tunnel. The anti-trust lawsuits had been making their way through the courts, beginning with Teddy Roosevelt’s election in 1904. Finally, in 1911, by order of the Supreme Court, James B. Duke’s monopoly, the American Tobacco Company was divided into three companies, and Pinkerton Tobacco became a subsidiary of Liggett & Myers. John W. Pinkerton resumed control of his company, and the monopoly-busting of 1911 led way for the booming economy of the Roaring Twenties.

American Tobacco Company and Its Sixty-Five Subsidiaries Are Bumped By the Supreme Court, The Cincinnati Enquirer, May 30, 1911
American Tobacco Company and Its Sixty-Five Subsidiaries Are Bumped By the Supreme Court, The Cincinnati Enquirer, May 30, 1911
John W. Pinkerton’s City Point, Florida home. John W. Pinkerton was about 76 when he retired and moved to Florida. He died shortly after, in 1922 at age 79. (Sherwood Sr. also moved to City Point, Florida, after his wife died in 1920. He died there in 1939. He went into the citrus fruit mail order business.)

A family business

Sherwood’s oldest son, Sherwood Pinkerton Jr. (1893–1980) was my grandfather. He turned 16 in 1909, the year the family moved to Toledo. They lived at 2510 Parkwood. Sherwood, a 1912 graduate of Toledo Central High School, graduated from the University of Michigan in 1916 with a degree in chemical engineering.

Sherwood served in the Ordnance Department of the U.S. Army during World War I. While stationed in Washington D.C., he met Helen Moyer. (“The first time I saw her in 1918, my inner voice said, she’s the one,” my grandfather would tell us.) They got married on a Tuesday in June 1919, towards the end of the Spanish Flu pandemic. They built a house in 1927 in the new Toledo neighborhood of Westmoreland. They had four creative daughters – one who became the inspiration for my website, artistsoftoledo.com, my mother – Audrey Pinkerton Gentieu (1922–2009).

Sherwood Jr. ran the family business for many years, becoming president in 1940, and retiring in 1959. He developed new chewing tobacco flavors.  He put the first woman on the board of directors and instituted an employee retirement plan. After Sherwood retired, the company moved to new facilities in Owensboro, Kentucky. John W.’s greatest legacy to his family, his chewing tobacco company, managed to sustain three generations of the Pinkertons, all because monopolies were busted in 1911.

Sherwood Jr. had a blessed life, seemingly free of the business problems his grandfather faced. Besides personally enjoying the chewing tobacco he cooked up and brought to market, Sherwood Jr. and his family embraced the finer side of life, such as photography and roses. John W. bequeathed to my mother and my grandparents a life of grace and happiness. In turn, my Pinkerton grandparents were, to me, a major source of security and affection, and somehow I inherited the photo gene.

Sherwood Pinkerton’s Peace blooms, a few of many different strains of roses that he cultivated and photographed.

John W. would say to his grandson, Sherwood Jr., that retirement isn’t good for some people, if you lack activities you will shrivel up.

Sherwood proved to be excellent at retirement, as he cultivated roses for 17 years after he retired, and for at least 31 years before. Sherwood was Toledo’s first Rosarian. He gave up his rose garden in 1976, when, in their eighties, he and Helen decided they had to downsize and move into an apartment. Their health declined after that. Helen died on November 22, 1978, and Sherwood, who could barely live without her, died on New Year’s Day, 1980.

The Pinkertons lived in an elegant Georgian Revival house at 1978 Richmond Road. They created four beautiful gardens in their artfully landscaped bi-level yard, including a formal rose garden, an informal rose garden, a shade garden, a goldfish pond, a fountain, and a greenhouse. They had a Florida Room in the house. Their house was filled with never-ending curiosities and memorabilia from their long lives, stuck in the rafters, in the attic, in every corner, nook and cranny. It was a treasure hunt for their 13 grandchildren to explore.

Sherwood and Helen Pinkerton in their greenhouse, The Blade, April 8, 1973
I made this photocomposition of Helen and Sherwood Pinkerton and their house. It was featured on the cover of Our Grandmothers, an anthology of photos and essays by photographer-granddaughters compiled by Linda Sunshine, published by Stewart, Tabori & Chang in 1997.

The Pinkertons held an estate sale in 1976 and moved out of the house.

Grandfather contemplating his mortality, with Hebe and her eternal youth displaced from her pedestal and destined elsewhere, October 1976.

In their living room was a neoclassical marble statue of Hebe, the goddess of beauty and youth, and wife of Hercules. Hebe is the one, in case you are interested, who brought the nectar (the drink of eternal youth and immortality) to the feasts.

The statue came from Italy, a family heirloom passed on to Sherwood by his Great Aunt Julia who picked out the statue with her U.S. Ambassador husband while on an overseas trip. Julia died and bequeathed it to Sherwood in 1911, the same year of the federal trust-busting that would benefit the Pinkerton family for the rest of their lives and on to the new generations. Next to the fireplace in their living room, Hebe appeared nonchalantly and purely incidentally in family photographs over the fifty years they occupied the house.

Then one day Hebe was picked up by movers and shipped to their daughter Julia, in Portland, Oregon. I captured that moment, one of my first black and white photographs, because the moment felt like a dichotomy, my grandfather letting her go.

My father flying me like an airplane, Hebe floating along side.
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My grandmother, Helen Moyer Pinkerton

In 1997 I was invited to write about and submit a photograph of my grandmother for the book, Our Grandmothers, which was an anthology of the grandmother photos and memoirs by 74 granddaughters who are photographers. Amazingly, my photo was chosen by jury for the cover, and the jury included such heavyweights as Kathy Ryan, Photo Editor of the New York Times Magazine; Michelle Stevenson, Photo Editor of Time; and Michele McNally, Photo Editor of Fortune.

I was in great company, some of the other photographers were Sylvia Plachy of the Village Voice, Margaretta Mitchell, author of Recollections: Ten Women of Photography (1979) and long time ASMP leader; Helen Marcus, President of ASMP at the time I joined and she sponsored me; Deborah Willis, photographer, author, curator and scholar; and Annie Leibovitz, who is so cool, she didn’t even have to write anything.

22 years ago, I wrote down my impressions of my grandmother and her amazing house that was full of stuff, but now I can see her legacy, through my mother, to my daughter.  I marvel at my new discoveries of my sweet, strong Mennonite-rooted grandmother.

Helen Moyer Pinkerton was descended from Mennonites in Germany who were persecuted and fled to Switzerland, finally settling in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 1742. Her father, Joseph W. Moyer, the fifth generation of the American Moyer lineage, moved to Washington DC, where he worked in real estate. Her mother was also from a fifth generation American Mennonite family, originally from Palatinate. My grandmother comes from a 100% Mennonite background, the first generation born of a family that broke away from their Mennonite community. Wow, I just realized that.

Audrey and Helen Moyer, sisters, standing next to their grandmother, Catherine Hepler Freed in Lansdale, Pennsylvania ca. 1903

Helen was worldly, born in Washington, DC in 1892. She had two sisters. They had an older brother who was accidentally shot in a hunting accident at the age of 14 on the banks of the Potomac.

Helen graduated from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York with a degree in fashion design some time before 1918, when she met Sherwood Mortley Pinkerton Jr., who was in the Army, passing through Washington DC. “When I saw her in 1918, my inner voice said, she’s the one,” my grandfather would tell us. They were married on June 10, 1919, in Washington, DC.

They settled down in Toledo, Ohio, where Sherwood took his place in the family business founded by his grandfather, John W. – the Pinkerton Tobacco Company. The company began in Zanesville and moved to Toledo in 1909, having built a factory right on Swayne Field, behind the ballpark that opened that same year.

Helen gave up a fashion design career in New York, but she made up for it in her four creative daughters.

My mother, Audrey Moyer Pinkerton, was the second born, in 1922, and a child prodigy. She painted her entire life. This newspaper article even mentions that she had had continuous lessons with Karl Kappes starting at age nine! And there she is in the photo, painting a large canvas, no doubt carrying out a Karl Kappes painting assignment to copy a Thomas Gainsborough, or something.

In 1953, probably when my mother was pregnant with me, she painted a portrait of her aunt and namesake, Audrey (which I was named as well.) The painting was an amalgamation of two photos – source material that I recently recognized – a photograph of my grandmother, ca. 1918, and a photograph of the two sisters, whereas my mother used the body of her mother in the first photo and the face of Audrey in the second photo, to create a romantic portrait of her mother’s beloved late sister, a flapper who was married to the “Jazz Minister.”  My mother gave the painting to her mother, whereupon it hung in their Westmoreland dining room, across from the Anna Hale Buckingham ancestor painting.

Thanksgiving, 1961 at the Pinkertons. Paintings on the wall are of Sherwood’s great grandparents, Alvah Buckingham and Anna Hale Buckingham.
Painting of Audrey hanging on the dining room wall opposite the ancestor painting of Anna Hale Buckingham. December 1958. My sister, my two cousins, and me.

Then the painting hung in our Brooklyn apartment when our daughter, Anna was growing up. Anna was 21 when she used it in a photo series of self-portraits satirizing the Ten Commandments. One of Anna’s special talents is in her styling, and she has always loved fashion. Dressed in clothing reminiscent of a Dutch painting (Mennonites originated in Holland in the 16th Century, but that’s totally irrelevant), she held under her arm the painting of Audrey by Audrey for her rendition of “Do Not Steal.”

Anna won a prize for this photo in the Toledo Museum of Art’s annual 94th Toledo Area Artists’ Exhibition, in 2013. The photo was featured in The Blade and it inspired a solo show at the Paula Brown Gallery in Toledo. Anna sold editioned prints of the photo, and other photos, as well the entire set of 10 Commandments photographs. It was right after college, and she earned enough money to lease a pre-war apartment in New York.

The 10 Commandments series was published as the 10th Matte Magazine. The Museum of Modern Art’s periodicals curator bought it for the museum’s collection of millennium magazines.  The series was also published online in 10 countries and in the Korean print magazine, Blink. The 10 Commandments were exhibited in Anna’s first New York solo show, in 2016.

I used the painting in 2009 for the logo of artistsoftoledo.com, which I created to honor my mother, who died that year. The painting in the logo represents the beginnings of the Toledo Museum of Art, when George W. Stevens placed a painting on the floor in front of a “filtched” chair to sit down rich folks and espouse the virtues of building of a museum to hang the painting, enticing them to donate money to build the museum.  But I have digressed…

Now, back to my grandmother:

My grandmother talked on the phone with my mother for hours a day. This was her phone booth, in the hallway by the staircase of their house, around the corner from the kitchen.
My grandparents in their living room at Christmas. To the left is the painting made by my mother at age 14, which you can see her actually painting in the above newspaper clipping from 1937. On the right are 11 cases of my grandfather’s Kodachromes, that were fortunately given to me when they moved out of their house in 1977, and from which this very picture originated – maybe from that middle box on the left.
My grandmother posing with Agda, her Swedish maid. The two appear to have a very strong bond between them, as they both look so intentionally defiant in the photo, and my grandmother is holding her sash.
My grandmother posing in their garden in a dress that she made. In fact, she probably made all of her clothes. She was 100% Mennonite, new-agey, sophisticated and educated with a fine art degree in clothing design.
With my grandfather, who was an avid photographer and gardener in his retirement.
Looks like Christmas 1957, one year before the painting on the left was replaced by the painting of Audrey. My dad is sitting on the left, my brother on the right, and I am sitting in my mother’s lap playing the accordion.
The Pinkerton home on the corner of Richmond Rd and Woodruff in the Westmoreland neighborhood of Toledo, a Georgian Colonial Revival house that my grandparents built in 1927 and lived in for fifty years. My grandmother died in 1978 at age 86 on Thanksgiving, and my grandfather followed her on January 1, 1980, also at age 86.  (My mother too was 86 when she died, in 2009.)  When we moved back to Toledo in December of 2008, there happened to be a Westmoreland house tour, and their house was featured. My brother and sister and I got to see the inside of the house again, but there was a big something missing. It seemed so small, without them in it.