Rusk Residence

Rusk Avenue Residence

1 March 1907: Henry Francis Fisher (1856-1939), a founding attorney with the firm Fisher, Spears & Sherwood, owned this fine house at 1617 Rusk and Jackson Street. He and his wife Bertha Auguste Veith (1863-1927) married in 1881 and raised a family of 2 children, Leola and Henry. They moved into the house about 1899 when Leola was 14 and Henry was 10, so the children grew to adulthood there. The legal firm’s law office was a floor above the lobby of the Union National Bank Building at Congress and Main.
Reference: Houston’s Heritage Using Antique Postcards by Joy Lent, published by D. H White & Co., Houston, TX, no date.

22 February 2014: In 1962 the Port of Houston Authority built the World Trade Center Building, the 12 story structure on the left, now the Westin Houston, a hotel largely serving the needs of baseball fans attending Minute Maid Park [Enron Field] across the street. The spire of Annunciation Catholic Church built in 1884 by Nicholas J. Clayton lies dead center, with the façade of the Incarnate Word Academy in front, also designed by Clayton in 1906. Sadly, this structure with its exceptional molded brickwork was demolished and replaced in 2017 by a new building, the first stage of which is here visible on the right. This loss represents a preservation tragedy on a par with the demolition of Ursuline Academy in Galveston, another splendid lost Clayton building.

Postmarked: Boston, Mass, Fenway Station; 1 March 1907 Stamp: 1c Blue Green Ben Franklin #300

To: Mrs. T. S. Jackson
2 Javett Pl., Utica, N. Y.

Message: At sociable Wed. night at Union Church heard John Andrews, a Scotchman, recite & read from Robbie Burns, very good. A lady played a violin very nicely. Then had ice cream & cake in a lower room around a grate fire. Tonight heard last two numbers of a recital at Faelten Pianoforte School four pieces in all two of which I enjoyed very much indeed “Dame Frost” by Bendel & “Midsummer Nights Dream” by Mendelssohn.
Louis 2-28-07

The owner of the house at 1617 Rusk, Henry Fisher, moved there from 1618 Commerce about 1899 when the corner of Commerce and Crawford was in the “Quality Hill” section of town, Houston’s first elite residential area. Fisher’s father, Henry Francis Fisher (1805-1867), was born in Cassel, Germany, son of Englishman Henry Francis Fisher and a German mother. Young Henry was educated in Germany, made his way to Liverpool and tended the books for a large mercantile establishment. He immigrated to Houston, TX in 1837 shortly after its founding where he bought and sold Texas lands. As Consul for the Hanseatic League to the Republic of Texas in 1842, he contracted to bring 600 German families so settle in Texas. The arrived in Indianola, and brought their families overland to establish the cities of Fredericksburg, New Braunfels, and Comfort, TX, a few stragglers remaining in Indianola, Victoria, Seguin, and Gonzales. He was entrusted personally by Sam Houston to manage communications between settlers and the Republic of Texas, and was fluent in German, French, English and Spanish. In 1845 he married Mary E. Bonzano, German born daughter of Italian Nikolaus Antonio Bonzano, and widow of Henry Kessler. He died in Weisbaden in 1867, but his grave is unknown. His son was 11 when he was orphaned, and. his widow brought Henry and his sister Amelia to adulthood in Houston. Mary Bonzano Fisher died in 1879 and was buried in Glenwood Cemetery with a grave marker, “Citizen of the Republic of Texas.” Henry, Jr.[actually the Henry III] moved his family to California before 1920, where he died in 1939 and was buried in Forest Lawn, Glendale in what became a family compound holding his wife and two children: Judge Henry Francis Fisher (1856-1939), Bertha A. Fisher (1863-1927), Leola Fisher Getz (1885-1967), and Henry Francis Fisher, IV (1889-1964).

Henry Louis Jackson was 28 when he sent this postcard to his mother in Utica, NY from the Fenway Station Post Office at 132 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston. This was just steps from his apartment at #11 Belvedere, an iconic Boston Brownstone still rising 4 stories in a neighborhood much changed. The Post Office is now Berklee College of Music, and high rise buildings tower over the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Boylston Street, the Massachusetts Turnpike bisecting the neighborhood a block north. Louis was a 1905 graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology staying on as instructor there. As a young man of 19 he had volunteered for a 2-year term to serve in the Spanish-American War, taking ill in Honolulu before returning to rejoin the 1st Infantry. After his tour was over he returned to New York, he attended at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY 1900-1903, about 10 miles southwest from Utica where his parents lived, a liberal arts college with a solid classical curriculum of Greek, Latin, Natural History, Chemistry and Mathematics.
His father was Thomas S. Jackson (1854-1927), who made a fine living in Utica as a bookkeeper and insurance agent. Louis was his only child, who seems to have had a special rapport with his mother Elizabeth Anna H. Squires (1857-1914) over cultural and musical matters. Louis was 5’ 7” with blue eyes and brown hair, a young man who valued the liberal arts and sciences. He mentions cultural events at Faelton Pianoforte School then located at 30 Huntington Avenue, a 12-minute walk down Belvidere and Huntington. Union Church was about as far from home, a fine church built in 1872 by Alexander Rice Esty at 485 Columbus Avenue. [In 1949 a congregation founded by formerly enslaved abolitionist Rev. Samuel Snowden in 1818 rebranded Union United Methodist Church and relocated to the building, beginning a focus on civil rights which included hosting the NAACP convention which voted to pursue Brown vs. Board of Education.]
Where Louis got the postcard “Residence on Rusk Avenue” is not certain, but the home at 1404 Rusk in Houston was not built until 1904 at a time when Louis was a student in Boston. Perhaps it came into his hands from a friend and reminded him of home [2 Javett Place, built in 1890, was a large home with 7 bathrooms and 4 baths when it last sold in 2009 for $1,000,000].
Seventeen months after sending the postcard, Louis married Bertha Taggart, a 34 year-old young woman he had met when he moved into #11 Belvidere where she was a music teacher. Like Louis, Bertha was an only child, daughter of David Bayless Taggart (1846-1874) and Harriet A. Carey. David had moved to Iowa after his father George Taggart died in Hopedale, Harrison County, OH in 1879. Bertha was born in 1873, her father died in 1874 when she was an infant. Hattie found lodging with her sister and 2 nieces in Davenport where Bertha grew to adulthood. She and her widowed mother moved to Boston from Iowa about 1895-1900. A man of science, Louis must have cultivated an interest in music and the literary arts under the tutelage of his mother, and in Boston Bertha could direct him to the cultural events around town.
Subsequent to their marriage in Boston, they moved around the Western States before coming back to New England. In 1910 he worked as Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, bringing his mother-in-law into the home. In 1915 when his daughter Helen Louise was born, he was State Chemist of Idaho in Boise. As WWI began he was commissioned 1st Lieutenant in and appointed instructor at the Laboratory Department of Medical Officers Training Camp, serving in Ft. Oglethorpe, GA, Camp Dix, NJ, and Camp Dodge, IA from Nov 16, 1918 to Aug 12, 1919, and was discharged August 30.
He resumed his career as a teacher and by 1920 was Professor of Industrial Chemistry at Rhode Island State College in S. Kingston, Washington County, R.I. There they remained through 1930 and 1940 working as a college professor and later chemist for the State of Rhode Island. They had two children, Helen Louise (1915) and Robert Taggart (1928-2005). Henry Louis Jackson died in 1947 and Bertha died in 1954. They are buried at Old Fernwood Cemetery in South Kingston, Washington County, Rhode Island. His mother had died in 1914, and father in 1927; they are buried in Forest Hill Cemetery in Utica, NY.