Her Hand in Marriage

Staying in the greater Chicago area through the decades, Bridget Kelly Creahan’s grandson, Charles Creahan, apparently continued his association with what became the Calumet Foundry and Machine Company. After his March 7, 1914, marriage to Mabel Eckstrom—daughter of Swedish immigrants August and Annie Wilson Eckstrom—the young couple eventually became parents of two daughters, Helen May and Joan L. Creahan.

While undoubtedly, Charles’ demanding business schedule landed him within the same quandary as many other successful men—juggling a non-stop schedule at the office with cries for more attention at home—eventually, he and Mabel found themselves passing through those landmarks of parenthood.

While we can only guess as to the events filling and influencing their private lives, we can at least watch the decennial census records tick off the progression of time with governmental regularity. There in the 1920 census—a document drawn up by an enumerator who possessed what, arguably, amounted to the worst handwriting I’ve encountered on a census record—Charles, Mabel, Helen and Joan were listed in East Gary. By 1930, the family was listed in a household within the city of Gary—having either moved, or having seen the city limits expand to engulf their home—with Charles still listed as Secretary of the foundry with which he had been associated since its reorganization announcement back in 1916.

Just before the 1940 census tally began, though, the Creahan household experienced the inevitable. Ohio-born Robert Lee Woods had somehow found his way to the Chicago area and gotten to know Charles Creahan’s oldest daughter, who by now was in her early twenties.

A brief entry buried on page fourteen of The Hammond Times on Wednesday, September 21, 1938, told the inevitable tale—as well as providing a corollary snippet concerning Charles’ own rising fortunes.

CHARLES CREAHAN, president of the Calumet Foundry, gave his daughter, Helen, in marriage last Saturday when she became the bride of Robert Lee Woods in Gary.