Go back to the reading about Harry’s development into a showman.
In 1890, Harry took a job managing a brand-new thousand-seat opera house in Englewood, which opened in the summer, only for it to burn to the ground within 6 months (there is that connection with fire, again). Beginning his long, and eventually deadly association with pyrotechnics, H.B. also became the Chicago agent for one of the foremost firms in the world – J.S. Pain and Company of London. He would become increasingly involved with fireworks over the years.
By the turn of the century, H.B. had expanded his operations well beyond Chicago. He had always traveled extensively as part of managing and promoting his entertainment acts, even, according to a family story, maintaining a private train car to make it easier to stay on the road and avoid the cost of hotels, the gold standard for high-profile businessmen at the turn of the century.
During his travels, he sometimes brought along his wife Nettie (maiden name Jeanette Smith), whom he had married back in 1881, and even his daughter Margaret, who would have been around 10 by then. A frequent and favorite destination was San Diego, California, where the musical instrument business was just taking off.
Now he expanded his projects into many lines of business.
He co-owned the patent for an innovative automated camera that developed and dispensed the photograph, an early form of the modern camera booth, invented by James Powers.
Harry also became a prominent part of the New York music scene with an office on Broadway, joining the artsy-theatrical-bohemian Pleiades Club, and partnering with producer Louis W. Buckley. He even served for a time as the broker in Chicago for selling stocks in mining companies.
Most significantly for our family, he created the Thearle Music Company based in San Diego around 1900. The story is that his younger brother Ernest was suffering from health problems and was considering moving to California. Harry was working on a deal with the Steinway Brothers who were looking for a West Coast distributor. He brought Ernest with him in his rail car when coming to San Diego to discuss the deal with George Birkel who owned a music store but was ready to get out of the business. Harry wound up purchasing the business, bringing in his brother Fred (my great-grandfather) and other partners (such as family friend Charles Knights), and naming Ernest as the president, who stayed on in San Diego and eventually moved his family there.
Over the years, this created a strong connection between the brothers and their families’ activities in Chicago and San Diego. Harry even maintained a home in San Diego himself, used by his wife Nettie and daughter Margaret; they received frequent visitors from the Chicago Thearles.
Go on to read about Harry’s artful productions of spectacular disasters.
Sources
- Cheltnam, Charles Smith, The Dramatic Year Book for the Year Ending December 31, 1891, Trischler and Company, London, 1892, available at http://books.google.com/books?id=ZEjOAAAAMAAJ on 5 January 2014
- “A Chicago Theatre Burned”, The New York Times, 5 December 1890
- Marriage License, Harry B. Thearle, 1881
- 1910 Census available at https://www.ancestry.com/mediaui-viewer/tree/10702367/person/6060404614/media/31111_4327298-00158 on 18 April 2020
- “The parlor of the Pullman Palace Car”. ullstein bild via Getty Images, available at https://www.curbed.com/2018/2/1/16943216/pullman-private-railroad-car-history on 28 March 2020
- “Automatic Photographic Apparatus”, U.S. Patent Office, US754090, available at http://www.google.com/patents/US754090 on 5 January 2014
