Edward Erswell
Edward E. Erswell (born July 5, 1846 on the Atlantic crossing; died January 28, 1910 in Birmingham) was a cabinet maker and undertaker in early Birmingham.
He was the son of Charles Erswell, a superintending architect who worked for the United States government. His mother, the former Mary Ann Snow, died in 1847. Erswell grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and attended public schools there before going on to Baldwin University in Berea, Ohio. He left school after six months, though, to join a wagon train crossing the plains. He made it as far as Fort Kearney, Nebraska before sickness forced him to return east. He pursued a variety of activities over the next several years, including stock trading, book sales, patent medicines, and some time at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
He then settled on the trade of cabinet and furniture making and went into business in Winchester, Virginia. When his partner left him, Erswell began working with a touring stage magician from Baltimore, Maryland named "Professor Collins". The tour prospered and Erswell received permission from the United States government to "secure a party of Indians" from the west to exhibit at fairs in the south.
Erswell came to the infant city of Birmingham in the spring of 1872 and married the former Catherine E. "Kitty" Smith of Elizabethtown, Kentucky that same year. He set up shop as a cabinet builder, taking on the construction of a stage and equipment for Frank O'Brien's Sublett Hall as his first contract. He founded the Erswell Company and remained in the city through the 1873 cholera epidemic, engaged primarily during that time in building coffins as well as providing the services of an undertaker.
He continued in that trade through the 1880s, adding furniture, wallpaper, window shades and carpets to his retail offerings. Over the following years, Erswell invested successfully in real estate. He was active in the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. He served as Grand Patriarch of the Birmingham Encampment No. 21, and as treasurer of the Grand Encampment of Alabama.
Edward and Kitty Erswell had five children: Henry, Edward, George, Nellie and Maude. The couple outlived all five, but did welcome a granddaughter, Aileen Kirkman, daughter of Samuel and Nellie Kirkman, in 1885.
Erswell died at his home on 21st Street North in January 1910 in the course of a long illness. and is buried in the Erswell vault at Oak Hill Cemetery.
References
- City Directory of Birmingham and Gazetteer of Surrounding Section for 1884-5 (1884) Volume II. Atlanta, Georgia: Interstate Directory Company
- Dubose, John Witherspoon (1887) Jefferson County and Birmingham, Alabama: Historical and Biographical Birmingham: Teeple & Smith, Publishers; Caldwell Printing Works.
- "E. Erswell Is Dead" (January 29, 1910) Montgomery Advertiser, p. 7
External links
- Edward E. Erswell at Findagrave.com