Munn's

05 June 1916: Wiley Cooper Munn brought his successful business from Weimar in 1905 to join Gustave Antoine Mistrot to form Mistrot-Munn Company dry goods store at Congress and Travis. The Munn family lived at 2901 Main near some of the most prosperous Houston businessmen, including Jesse Jones and Joseph P. Carter. Reincorporating in 1913 as sole owner, he erected the 5-story Dow Building on the northeast corner of Capitol and Travis to house W C Munn Company which sold dry goods from 1913 until 1938, the year that Munn died and Wards took over the space. Wards occupied the building until 1961 when they closed their downtown store; the building was demolished shortly afterwards. On the far left, the Milby Hotel occupies the southeast corner of Texas and Travis.

22 April 2013: JPMorgan Chase Center, accessory building for the 75-story JPMorgan Chase Tower across Travis Street, occupies the site where the W C Munn Company once sold clothing and other dry goods. The center’s 20 floors include parking for over 2000 cars, as well as offices for various support activities for the tower, as well as retail outlets on the first level. Designed by I. M. Pei, the accessory building and tower were completed in 1982 as Texas Commerce Tower. Long-time Houstonians will remember Hurricane Alicia the year after completion, in which the building lost windows and Travis Street was blocked by glass and debris from offices high above, but fortunately no one was harmed at street level.  ​

Postmarked: 5 June 1916; Houston, Texas 
Stamp: 1c George Washington #405 
To: Miss Mary Real 
Coal City,  
Ind.  
Message: June 5 – ‘16 
Dear girl – do I owe you a letter or do you me? Have you seen mama yet – she is sure having a good time. Go see her if you can, Are you in school? How is everyone – Love Cletus –  

Cletus Opal Frump was 18 when she wrote this postcard to her friend Mary Eleanor Rea back in the tiny town of Coal City, Owen County, IN. Cletus had been married about a year and a half and was traveling to Houston with her husband, Edward Lelonnie Bennett, and their five-month old daughter, Clemodene Franklin. They may have been checking out Houston’s job market, or traveling there on a leisure trip to see the Gulf of Mexico. 

Her correspondent, Mary Elizabeth Rea, was just a year younger, still single, the daughter of Charlotte R. Baumgartner and George Lewis Rea, farmers near Coal City. Mary had brothers John L. (9 years older), Carl F. (8 years older), Leo Troy (6 years older); sadly her mother had lost 3 infant brothers who died young (1893, 1984, 1898) and an older sister Ruth who died at 10 when Mary was 8 years old. 

Cletus was the fourth child of Mary Ann Orman and “Doctor” Dick Frump, a farmer in Clay County, IN a few miles west of Coal City, so named for the industry which first drew settlers there in the mid 19th century. Cletus (had an older brother, Carl Elzever (1886), sisters Ethel Margaret (1890), who married David Staley and raised a family, and Florence (1893), who married Carlton Vice and raised a family. The Frumps, the Staleys, the Vices, and the Reas were all farming families. 

Cletus and Edward married when he was 20 and she was 16 on December 19, 1914. Edward was the son of John Monroe Bennett and America L. Walker formerly farmers in Tazewell County, VA. Edward and Cletus would have three more children after Clemodene: Opal Vee (1917), Bernice I. (1924), and Lloyd E. (1927). In their first years of marriage, they were moving every few years, living in Nebraska City, NE (1916), Butterfield, Hot Springs County, AR (1917), before coming back to Indiana where they settled in Indianapolis (1930, 1940). Edward worked various jobs as a laborer in a packing house (1920), foreman in a carpenter shop (1930), and manager of a coal company (1940). Cletus died in 1968 and is buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Greenwood, Johnson County, IN, and Edward died in 1984 in Florida and is buried beside his wife. 

Mary Rea married Hermit Darewood Alkire in 1921, the eldest child of Everett Wilson Alkire, with younger brothers Oscar O. (1909), Orval L. (1913), and Lloyd Paul (1914). Their mother, Maime Keller, died in 1918 and Everett married Nora Story, widow of James (1851-1908), bringing stepbrothers R. K. Story (1905) and Mark O. Story (1908) to the family. Mary and Hermit Alkire had a son, Donovan R. Alkire in 1923, and a daughter Gwenavere in 1932. Hermit worked as a steam shovel operator in 1930. Neither Mary nor Hermit lived past 40, Hermit died in 1934 and Mary in 1936, their minor children then living with their Uncle Troy Rea, a state road patrolman in Owen County. They are buried in Rea Cemetery, a small family cemetery with only 36 internments going back to Hermit’s grandfather Samuel Rea (1790 – 1859).