On January 13, 2015 we recall the 107th anniversary of the Boyertown Opera House Fire. As in years past, I reflect on individual victims and their past and their families’ future. I feel that focusing on particular people helps me remember the 170 victims as real people instead of just one of those that died in the fire.
This year I am highlighting one of the young teen aged victims: Mary Ruth Guard. Her life gets cut short as a 13 year old victim.
Mary Ruth was the daughter of Laura (Reidenauer) and Curtis Guard, who were married in 1892. Laura was the daughter of Mary (Dellecker) and William Reidenauer. William died in 1877 and Mary married Franklin Rhoads.
Mary Ruth (who seemed to be referred to as Ruth most the time) was born on December 21, 1894. She had an older brother William, who was two at the time of her birth. William had been born December of 1892.
Laura and Curtis would have a third child, a daughter Dorothy, seven years after welcoming Mary Ruth into the world.
Laura (Reidenauer) Guard who was born on March, 14, 1874 and died on September 17, 1903, leaving three motherless children: Dorothy, 21 months, Mary Ruth age 8 years and William age 10 years.
According to the Boyertown Democrat of October 7, 1905 we find that Curtis, the husband of Laura and father of the children met an untimely death. From the newspaper article:
Curtis Guard, aged 35 years, of No. 727 North Ninth Street, Reading was found lying between the fast and slow-speed tracks of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad by an Italian workmen about thirty yards above the entrance to the Lessig works, Pottstown, early Tuesday morning. He was either struck by a train or fell from it and from the terrible injuries that he received death must have been instantaneous.
Guard at one time lived in Boyertown and he was a good musician and formerly played a bass horn in the old Keystone Band. He is survived by a mother, Mrs. Catharine Guard, three brothers, Thomas, William and Edgar, and three children, William, Ruth and Dorothy. The oldest 12 years and the youngest is 6 years of age. His wife was Miss Laura Reitnauer, daughter of Mrs. Franklin Rhoads of Boyertown. She died two years ago and since then his two youngest children have been living with their grandmother in Boyertown. Guard had not been seen by any of the family for the past two weeks.
The remains were brought here from Reading on the 9:30 a.m. train, and conveyed to the Methodist Church, where services were held, after which interment was made in the Union Cemetery.
I find the tragedy that these three children have experienced so sad. I cannot even try to imagine the grief that Laura’s mother Mary (Dellecker) Reidenauer Rhoads must have felt. She and her husband, Franklin B Rhoads, had to step into the parent rolls of her grandchildren.
At the time of the opera house fire, Mary Ruth was a seventh grader, Grammar B, at the Boyertown School and a member of the Ebeneezer Methodist Sunday School. She and her sister Dorothy lived with their grandparents. It is not known where her brother William (who was 15 years old) was living, but my best guess would be with his aunt and uncle (Paul and Annie Geiger) since he shows up as living with them in the 1910 census records. Dorothy also shows up living with Aunt and Uncle Geiger in 1910.
I didn’t find any articles of who went to the play with Mary Ruth; I only know she didn’t make it. Does anyone know? Did her grandmother take her and her sister? If we review Mary Ruth Guard’s death certificate, we learn she was 13 years 10 months and 24 days old and her death is listed as “Burned while in audience when fire broke out.”
Mary Ruth was buried from the residence of her grandmother, Mrs. Franklin Rhoads.
According to The Philadelphia Press the report on the Funeral was stated:
“The obsequies for Miss Ruth Guard were pathetic in their brevity. Rev. Samuel Dout read the burial service at the girl’s home and, followed by a single carriage occupied by members of her family, the girl’s body was driven to Fairview. “
“As the hearse and carriage went by, the streets were lined with people who were waiting for it to pass. All heads were bared while the cortege passed. Many followed to the cemetery where several hundred mourners witnessed the initial interment of the catastrophe.”
Despite all of this tragedy and the fact that the mother and father had also died, the rest of the family continued.
Step grandfather Franklin Rhoads would live until 76 years of age, dying in June of 1915. He was employed as a teller in the Boyertown National Bank
We find listed in the Reading Eagle in October of 1918 that Dorothy Katherine Guard, the youngest daughter of Laura and Curtis, died of pneumonia in Philadelphia at the age of 16 years. At the time she was attending Strayer’s Business College. The newspaper also commented on her cheerful disposition and in turn she had ” … a large circle of friends, who feel her loss keenly.”
The obituary also included the fact that she was survived by a brother William of Reading, PA and that she was buried at Fairview Cemetery.
Mary Ruth’s grandmother, Mary Reidenauer Rhoads, died January 30, 1920 at the home of her daughter Mary Geiger in Philadelphia. Services were conducted at Fairview Chapel and then she was buried on Fairview Cemetery.
Following Brother William through census records, other legal documents and obituaries, we can piece together that William married Elizabeth Victoria Lenich on August 28, 1913. He and Elizabeth had two sons, Kenneth and Paul. We find in 1930 he was a candy maker at Luden Inc., a candy factory in Reading. (The Luden Candy Factory had been owned by the Dietrich family at that time and made a wide variety of candy confections as well as its widely known cough drops.) William Guard died in April of 1970 in Reading PA just 9 months after his wife died. By the time William died he had five grandchildren and nine great grandchildren.
Special thanks to Mary Jane Schneider Lentz, Betty Burden and Lindsay Dierolf for information for this article! If you have any information to share on this family or any other family involved with the fire please contact me at Boyertown19008@gmail.com.
