Grandview Heights Moment in Time
In August 2002, Tom DeMaria, a Grandview Heights/Marble Cliff Historical Society trustee, and I had the honor and pleasure of visiting with former Grandview resident Frances (Nesbitt) Winegarner at her retirement home when she was 93 years old.
The visit was scheduled as an outreach by DeMaria to find out more about an interesting photo in our society archives, which was duplicated several times in various donated memory books from Grandview residents.
The photo (inset top left) was of a young girl dressed in a flowing wrapped gown with a crown of flowers in her hair. It was taken in 1924 at the corner of Lincoln Road and First Avenue during the Grandview Field Day celebration. It turns out that the girl in the photo was Frances Nesbitt, a sophomore in high school, dressed to represent the Goddess of Peace for the parade.
Frances was one of four children born to Louise Howell and Frederick C. Nesbitt of 1049 Grandview Ave., just across from the current Municipal Building (the address originally was 1087 Grandview.) The other children were Betty, Fred and Nancy.
Frederick was the son of James and Lizzie Nesbitt of West Broad Street, and Louise was the daughter of Frank Byers Howell and Ella Allison.
Frank Howell built his Tudor-style home at 1082 Broadview Ave. and subsequently gave houses and land as wedding gifts to their three sons and only daughter, Louise. The houses were built between Broadview and the west side of Grandview Avenue. (Much of Frank Howell's land was redeveloped in 1957 as Broadview Terrace.)
Frances and Betty were participants in the field day celebrations from the time they were in elementary school. They frequently were mentioned in newspapers articles as being members of the local Blanche Field dance troupes, playing parts in numerous tableaus, and riding on various floats in different roles.
Betty married William F. Aschinger, Jr., whose family owned and operated the Columbus Showcase Co. on West Fifth Avenue.
Frances graduated from Grandview High School in 1926 and from Ohio State University in 1930 with a degree in social administration (social work). She married Barr Gailard (Gail) Winegarner of Bexley in 1933, and they had five sons.
Initially, Barr joined his family’s undertaking business and operated the Winegarner Funeral Home on East Main Street until a fire destroyed the building in 1934.
According to Frances, "The family barely escaped the burning building in the sub-zero night with only the clothes on their backs."
Opportunity presented itself to the young couple when a college friend of Barr’s asked him to manage his soap company while he attended to family business out of state. Barr Winegarner acquired the business, named Powdered Products Corporation, and the company became a key local player in the soap market.
The family later moved to 48 acres of land northwest of Wilson Bridge Road in Worthington. Their large home on the property often was referred to as the Midgley Cavern House, because of an array of elaborate tunnels in the bluff behind the house, finished in stone and accessible from both the woods and the basement.
The house was built by Thomas Midgley Jr., a prolific inventor with more than 100 patents, including for the invention of synthetic rubber, freon and tetraethyllead, the Ethyl fluid additive for leaded gasoline. Barr and Frances bought the home in 1945 after Midgely accidently strangled himself with another invention of his, a mechanism to move his polio-affected body from bed to wheelchair. The home was razed in 1965 to provide for the construction of part of Interstate 270.
Frances Winegarner died in October 2003.
A portion of this article was excerpted from an article by Tom DeMaria in the autumn 2002 issue of Viewpoints, the newsletter of the GH/MCHS.
This article originally appeared on ThisWeek: Grandview Heights Moment in Time
