Deisel-Wemmer employees amid stacks of cigar boxes at the company’s facility on North Main Street in the 1890s. A fire in June 1894, thought to have started from a small gas stove used to dry out tobacco, gutted the room, destroyed the company’s stock and forced a move to the 100 block of West Wayne Street to a site later occupied by the Meadow Gold Dairy.
Courtesy of Allen County Historical Society
The wedding on that soft April evening in 1911 was the “brilliant event” of the post-lenten season in Lima society, according to the Lima Morning Star and Republican-Gazette.
“The Colonnade, the palatial Deisel home at Elm and Cole streets, was a blaze of light and a bower of floral beauty last night when at half past six-o’clock the second daughter of the household, Emma Louise, became the bride of Alfred Ernest Wemmer,” the newspaper wrote April 21, 1911.
Under the headline “To the Strains of Sweet Lohengrin Love Plights Troth,” The Lima Daily News declared that the “beautiful ceremony binds Deisel and Wemmer families into one.”
In many ways, the Deisel and Wemmer families were bound together long before, in the words of The Lima News, “the orchestra swung into the beautiful strains of the Lohengrin wedding music” as the wedding party entered the third-floor ballroom of the Deisel home, perfumed with “the fragrance of hundreds of lovely flowers.”
It was the fragrance of cigars that had bound the Deisel and Wemmer names three decades earlier.
Emma Louise was the daughter of Henry Deisel Sr.; Alfred Ernest was the nephew of William and Henry Wemmer. Deisel and the Wemmer brothers were the principals in Lima’s Deisel-Wemmer Company, which over the years made millions of cigars and made Deisel and the Wemmer brothers rich. In 1914, Deisel’s home, the Colonnade, was judged to be the most expensive in Lima; William Wemmer’s estate on West Market Street on the site of today’s Allen County Museum was the second most expensive.
Henry Deisel Sr. was born in Germany in 1862 and came to Lima at the age of 19. “He had received a good education and had been instructed in the cigar-making craft and soon after locating in Lima in 1881, found employment at his trade with Henry Sonntag, a pioneer in that business in Lima,” The Lima News wrote in November 1932.
Sonntag, himself a German immigrant who had arrived in Lima around 1867 after living for a short time in Kenton, opened the city’s first cigar-rolling plant in the Public Square, according to a June 1959 story in The Lima News. Sonntag’s business, the newspaper added, “prospered in Lima and he hired an immigrant youth who had just arrived from Germany to work in his cigar rolling industry.” That youth was Deisel.
“He remained with Mr. Sonntag for two years and then was employed for a year by another firm but by 1884, he was prepared to go into business for himself,” The Lima News wrote. He was also prepared to marry, which he did in 1884 to a German immigrant named Emma Wolf.
Deisel and his wife worked long hours hand rolling cigars in their home. They would make the cigars by day and Henry would sell them at night. As the popularity of the cigars, dubbed “Henry’s Best,” grew Deisel hired 10 men to help him and by 1886 was selling his cigars out of a shop on North Main Street.
With growth, however, came problems. The workers went on strike in 1888 and Deisel was forced to bring in some partners to deal with the effects of the strike. Enter the Wemmer brothers, William and Henry, who, like Deisel, were German immigrants trained in the art of cigar making.
Like Deisel, William Wemmer was born in Germany 1862 and came to the U.S. at the age of 19 “in search of better industrial conditions than prevailed in his own section of Germany,” according to the News. He lived for eight months in New York before moving on to Delaware, Ohio. “There he engaged in the cigar business for nearly five years which he continued later at Toledo, coming to Lima in 1889,” The Lima News wrote. He married Helen Rickert, who died in 1918. His brother, Henry Wemmer, was born in Germany in 1865, came to the U.S. in 1884, arrived in Lima in 1889 and, in 1893, married Fredericka Sauter.
“William Wemmer was the packing foreman and Henry Wemmer assisted Deisel in selling the cigars,” the Lima Citizen wrote in August 1963. “Still the demand grew for the popular locally made cigars.” Deisel moved his operation one block south on Main Street but, in 1894, a fire broke out in the plant and destroyed most of the building and stock.
Forced to move again, Deisel relocated to the 100 block of West Wayne Street across from the Allen County Courthouse. “That fire may have been a blessing in disguise,” the Citizen noted. “The Wayne Street plant enabled the company to expand its operations even more. By the end of the year there were about 250 workers turning out about a dozen brands of cigars.” In 1899, Deisel-Wemmer contracted for a new building at 435 N. Main St., adjacent to the Pennsylvania Railroad. The building was completed in April 1900.
“By 1904 sales had reached such a peak that additional room was sorely needed,” the Citizen wrote. “The Main Street plant was enlarged by adding another wing on the back. The first out of town building was located in an old mill in Wapakoneta. It was bought in 1906.” In 1907, Deisel-Wemmer acquired the site formerly occupied by the American Cigar Co. on the northwest corner of Elm and Main streets. Soon there were plants in Van Wert, Sidney, Findlay, Toledo and Fostoria, St. Marys, Bellefontaine, Bucyrus, Celina, Minster, Ottawa, Sandusky and Upper Sandusky.
In 1929, the Gilbert Cigar Company merged with Deisel-Wemmer, forming the Deisel, Wemmer and Gilbert (DWG) Corp. with Gilbert taking over operations and moving the corporate offices to Detroit. Deisel and the Wemmer brothers retired from active roles in the company.
Deisel an accomplished musician, continued working as choir director at First Evangelical and Reformed Church on Wayne Street and was a sponsor of many musical events in Lima. He also enjoyed riding his horse every day through Lima’s streets and it was on one such ride in November 1932 that the 70-year-old suffered a fatal heart attack after his horse was spooked by a tractor on Allentown Road.
William Wemmer, who was known for his persistence, energy and prudence, was living in Indianapolis with his second wife, Emma Kevers, when his longtime business partner died in Lima. The 70-year-old Wemmer, who had heart problems, died the following day, before hearing of Deisel’s death.
“His death came almost exactly 24 hours after the sudden death of Henry Deisel Sr., with whom Mr. Wemmer was associated in the cigar manufacturing business for more than 30 years,” the News wrote Nov. 30, 1932. “Because of his critical illness, no attempt was made to inform him of the death Tuesday of his former associate and close personal friend.”
Henry Wemmer, the last survivor of the three men who founded DWG, died in his home at 934 W. Market St., on March 22, 1940. He was 74 years old.
Alfred Wemmer, the son of a third Wemmer brother, Frederick, had come to the United States from Germany in 1904 to work at Deisel-Wemmer as a clerk while attending night classes at the old Lima College. He rose to the position of chairman of the board of DWG, staying with the company for more than 50 years. He died in Lima at the age of 78 in September 1961.
Emma Louise Deisel Wemmer, who had married Alfred Wemmer in 1911, died at 105 in July 1994.
DWG moved into a new plant on Bible Road in Bath Township in the summer of 1963 but struggled and was dissolved at the end of 1967. DWG successor, the R.G. Dun cigar company, returned to the old DWG quarters at 435 N. Main St. in June 1968 but went out of business in 1990.
The old North Main Street plant still stands, the words “Deisel-Wemmer” over the entrance.
SOURCE
This feature is a cooperative effort between the newspaper and the Allen County Museum and Historical Society.
LEARN MORE
See past Reminisce stories at limaohio.com/tag/reminisce
Reach Greg Hoersten at [email protected].
