Chaseland in the Spotlight

A Society wedding, two powerbroker families of industry and real estate, a factory rising from a farm: for a moment in the first decade of the 1900s, the "Chaseland" neighborhood seemed destined for a rapid ascent to fashionable prosperity.

In 1900, the future Chaseland subdivision was still a rectangular strip of farmland between High Street on the west and the railroad tracks just beyond what is now Indianola Avenue on the east. The plat was just south of Worthington, which was still a village at that time. A streetcar line provided passenger service from Columbus to Worthington running along what is now High Street.

Some 80 years before, Rev. Philander Chase had arrived in Worthington in 1817 to minister to St. John’s Episcopal Church. For a few years, Chase ran a school for boys on the approximately 150 acres of farmland he had purchased just south of the village. By 1825 or so, he had severed ties with the community, disbanded his school and departed for Knox County, where he founded Kenyon College. To judge from occasional classified ads published in the "Columbus Evening Dispatch" in the 1890s, the area was already casually referred to as "Chaseland" by the end of the 19th century.

Things perked up in 1902 with the news of a huge modern pottery factory coming to Chaseland, with significant investment by Columbus developer James M. Loren. According to the June 18, 1902, edition of the "Dispatch," the announcement of the factory "caused quite a flurry along the line of the Columbus, Delaware & Marion interurban road."

The previous day, the "Dispatch" had reported, "Ground will be broken next week for the big new building to be erected by the Columbus Pottery company, east [sic] of Cleveland, Sharon Township and close to Worthington.

"The building will be modern in construction, and will manufacture all kinds of pottery now made at Zanesville.

"Two hundred employees, many of them from Zanesville, will work there, and ten acres of ground just east of the Big Four [railroad] and the short line tracks have been purchased by the company.

"A railroad station will be built in front of the plant, and there is ample room for spurs and side tracks."

Columbus property developer and attorney James M. Loren served as the pottery company’s vice president. In addition, Loren organized the shareholders in the new Columbus Land and Improvement Company, with Loren in charge of platting and developing the Chaseland neighborhood.

"Right on the heels of the pottery plant project, comes another big plan to subdivide a mile of land, running from High street to the Big Four and Short Line railroads, and to lay it out in lots, with a big park in the center to be known as Sharon Park. There will be three streets [Chase, Lincoln, Stanton] through the center of the tract from High to the railroad and on High Street will be an interurban railway station of modern construction. This will give the new subdivision two steam roads to the east and the Columbus, Delaware and Marion interurban road on the west.

"The subdivision will be known as Chaseland-- the Bishop Chase farm, and it is situated about three-fourths of mile south of Worthington," the "Dispatch" reported.

By October 1902, the former Chase farm had been divided into 608 lots. Residential lots were 40 feet wide at the western end of the subdivision and 35 feet wide east of Sharon Park toward the pottery factory. The pottery plant was fully operational by 1905.

By the time he took on the Chaseland project, Loren was already an experienced property developer who appreciated that Columbus would grow northward with the presence of The Ohio State University and a streetcar line to Worthington. He and a partner had platted the East North Broadway neighborhood in Clintonville in 1890. The area is still known for its grand homes, wide lawns and wooded streets. During the two decades surrounding the turn of the century, he platted and sold lots in a number of subdivisions around the university, Victorian Village and Clintonville.

Though it is not clear how the Loren and Jeffrey families met, the Society pages of the "Dispatch" confirm that they moved in the same social circle that formed Columbus’ wealthy elite.

A generation before Chaseland, Joseph A. Jeffrey had partnered with banker F.C. Sessions to invest in the development of coal-mining equipment. In 1878, they formed the Lechner Mining Machine Company. In 1880, they reorganized, naming the new business the Jeffrey Manufacturing Company, to be run by Joseph. The huge factory occupied more than 30 acres in the area now known as the Milo-Grogan district near interstates 71 and 670. According to company history, by the early decades of the 20th century Jeffrey Manufacturing was the largest producer of coal-mining machinery in the world.

By the turn of the century, many of Columbus’ most affluent families lived on what was then the far east side of the city, their mansions clustered around the Franklin Park area. Robert Jeffrey, one of Joseph’s two sons, built the Jeffrey Mansion for his family’s home in 1905. In 1908, the Village of Bexley was incorporated, another step in the wealthy migration east.

Meanwhile, in 1906, Joseph Jeffrey, the mining equipment company's founder, purchased 75 acres of land only about a mile south of Chaseland that would later become "Old Beechwold." Joseph's property extended west from High Street to the Olentangy River and south from Rathbone Road. He built two substantial homes there, with the house at 150 W. Beechwold serving as the family’s country house on his rural estate.

The Loren and Jeffrey families were united in 1906, when James and Annabel Loren's daughter, Mary, married J. Walter Jeffrey, son of Joseph and Celia Jeffrey. The couple's engagement, announced in March, featured frequently in the "Dispatch" Society pages as Loren was feted at luncheons and tea parties. The couple were unusually well educated for their day. The groom was a 1902 graduate of Williams College, his fiancée a graduate of The Ohio State University and member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. According to the "Dispatch," since Loren's graduation she "has been actively engaged in settlement work, having been president of the Young Ladies’ Playground association for some time. Mr. Jeffrey is also very much interested in settlement work, and identified with the Godman Guild Settlement House."

The couple married on June 5, 1906, in the chapel of the First Congregational Church on East Broad Street. None other than Dr. Washington Gladden, the nationally renowned advocate for social justice, performed the ceremony. This quite remarkable man had, with the help of Joseph Jeffrey’s wife Celia, founded the settlement house now known as Gladden Community House in Franklinton.

The day before the wedding, the "Dispatch" announced that James Loren, the bride’s father, had given her a house known as the residence of Philander Chase on Lincoln Avenue in Chaseland. The headline "One of Miss Loren’s Wedding Gifts" ran above an image of the house. It was captioned, "This pretty residence in Chaseland, which was the boyhood home of the late Governor Salmon P. Chase, has been presented to Miss Mary Loren as a wedding gift from her father, James M. Loren," concluding with "Mr. Jeffrey and his bride will spend the summer at their country home." The "Dispatch" had run the same image a week before titled "The Boyhood Home of Late Salmon P. Chase at Chaseland, North of Columbus." That caption does not refer to the new Mrs. Jeffrey, instead stating, "This picturesque place, now much remodeled, was a log house, the home of Bishop Chase, founder of Kenyon College; he was an uncle of Salmon P. Chase, and at the age of 11 the latter came from Connecticut to Chaseland to make his home with his uncle." Worthington historians Robert and Virginia McCormick proposed that the Chaseland house could have been, behind all the subsequent alterations, the log cabin that Bishop Chase hastily built for his family in the autumn of 1817. Salmon Chase, Philander Chase's nephew, had a lengthy political career, serving as Ohio governor, U.S. senator, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under Lincoln’s team of rivals, before becoming Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1864.

It seems that the young Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey lived in their Chaseland home more or less year round, to judge from the luncheons and teas frequently hosted by Mrs. Jeffrey there. Where she and her peers went on vacation, what celebrities or out-of-town guests they hosted, what the entire wedding party wore-- the "Dispatch" covered it all. Columbus' social elite lived in glass mansions. By today’s standards, the newspaper's reporting can seem by turns intrusive, fawning, even lurid.

Less than six months after the Loren-Jeffrey wedding, Chaseland experienced a significant setback. In November 1906, a fire partially destroyed the Columbus Pottery Company operation. Amid the usual bickering over insurance and other lawsuits, the original investors did not have the funds to revive the business. According to the "Dispatch," "The company is financed by local people largely, quite a number of Worthington people being stockholders."

Tragedy struck the Jeffrey family as well. In 1908, Mrs. Jeffrey gave birth to a daughter, whom they named Mary Loren Jeffrey. Mrs. Jeffrey gave birth again in July 1909. Her three week-old son died at their home in Chaseland. The "Dispatch" reported that "Mrs. Jeffrey is very ill at Grant hospital." On July 28, the "Dispatch" reported that "Mrs. Walter Jeffrey is still critically ill at Grant Hospital, where she submitted to an operation on Monday. A consultation of physicians, among them a noted specialist from Cincinnati was held at the hospital Tuesday afternoon, after which it was stated by them that her chances of recovery were extremely doubtful. Her suffering is extreme, but cannot be relieved." She died on August 23, aged 28.

Chaseland may have already lost some of its luster as a sure investment by the end of the first decade of the 20th century. The pottery company had been at least partially rebuilt, but it changed ownership several times before closing for good in 1925.

In 1920, the first year that ownership records are available from the Franklin County Auditor, the Chase house on East Lincoln Avenue was the property of Mary Loren Jeffrey, the daughter of J. Walter and Mary Jeffrey. It's not clear if the Jeffreys used the house as more than a country house after Mary's death. From 1928 to 1930, the developer James M. Loren kept a handwritten record of the Chaseland lots and their owners. Mary L. Jeffrey is listed as the owner of lots 72-77, with the note "Old Chase Home."

J. Walter Jeffrey remarried in 1913. By this time, he and his wife had returned to the fold of wealthy elites living in the Old Town East and Franklin Park neighborhoods. In the "Dispatch" story about his second marriage, Walter is described as "vice-president and general manager of the Ohio Malleable Iron Company and is assistant secretary of the Jeffrey Manufacturing Company. His father is president of both companies." By 1926, Walter and his wife Margaret, along with little Mary Jeffrey and a younger half-sister, were living at 303 N. Parkview in Bexley, near the Jeffrey Mansion built by his brother, Robert.

In 1914, Joseph Jeffrey, founder of Jeffrey Manufacturing Company, sold his Beechwalde (a.k.a. Beechwold) country estate to Charles H. Johnson, a prolific property developer on Columbus’ north side.

Chaseland's development seems to have stalled in the 1920s. In the records James Loren kept from 1928-1930, there are many blank spaces in the "current owners" column. It’s possible some of the lots had never sold at all. Loren died on February 13, 1936, at age 86, as the result of an injury he'd suffered after being struck by a car in front of his home on December 10 of the previous year.

J. Walter Jeffrey went on to serve as a major in World War I. Upon his return from France, he resumed his duties as an executive with the Jeffrey Manufacturing Company. He was active in various local charitable organizations and clubs, including the Athletic Club, Columbus Country Club, Rocky Fork Country Club and the Columbus Club. He died November 21, 1953.