Verva and Charles Lutz

My Dad and his brothers knew that their Aunt Verva had died in a fire, and that her children had come to live with their grandparents, but knew little more than that. However, I've always been very interested in the circumstances of her death. And whatever did happen to her husband?

Verva Leslie Simpson age 16

Verva was born on September 27th, 1891, likely on the family farm a few kilometers north of Holdrege, Nebraska. She obtained her teaching license in 1908 from the McCook Junior Normal School. These schools were a Nebraska innovation to train up a sufficient number of teachers to meet the ever increasing demand. 

In 1913, Verva had married Charles Robert Lutz, five feet, six inches tall, a medium build, with grey eyes and black hair. The only son of Robert and Elizabeth Lutz, he had four sisters, three older, and one much younger. His parents were from Pennsylvania; his father a carpenter, his grandfather a brick mason. Charles' mother would die only two years after his marriage, in 1915. Her obituary praised her for being a respected woman of faith. His father soon remarried and he and his wife would move west, first to Colorado, and then to Oregon. 

After Verva and Charles married, they moved to Dundee, Minnesota, where their first two children born: Robert Simpson in 1914, and Elnora Alta Mae in 1915. They then moved about Nebraska at least a few times, as Charles sought jobs as a mechanic in places such as lumber yards. They had four more children: Eloise Jeanette in 1917, twins Meredith Charles and Mary Beth in 1921, and Constance June in 1922. 

The accident that claimed the life of Verva Leslie Simpson Lutz was horrible but straight-forward. She died in February 1923 at the age of 31, attempting to start a fire with gasoline. ​

This type of accident was not unheard of in 1923. Homemakers sometimes used gasoline and kerosene to start fires in their stoves or to burn garbage in the yard, and clothing was far more flammable than today. In that year, 4,491 people in the United States died due to burns, 6% of all accidental deaths. However, almost 70% of those victims were children under 10 years of age. Verva was only 1 of 230 women in the United States, age 30 to 39, to die of an accidental burn or scald, which was not the result of a conflagration.

After Verva's tragic death in 1923, her parents, Thomas and Emma Simpson, would take all the children back to Saskatchewan. Whether they insisted, or Charles requested, is unknown. However, we do know that Charles very soon moved out to California and that he would never return for them. 

Four years later, in 1927, Charles married 34-year-old Marie Etta Hibbs, née ​Payne, a widow with three daughters, age 14 to 19. He would claim it was his first marriage. Charles and Marie would rent a residence in a suburb of Los Angeles, California, where Charles worked as an auto helper mechanic. 

They were married for about eight years, but tragedy would strike again. On August 6, 1935, Marie was canning fruit, which involved sealing the jars with hot wax.  The pan of wax on the stove caught fire, and then Marie caught fire. She very soon died of her burns. Present at the accident was Mrs. Frances Horton, who extinguished the fire. ​

Frances Horton was born Florence Elizabeth Lutz in 1899 and was the much younger sister of Charles Lutz. After their mother had died in 1915, Florence lived in Nebraska for at least two more years. In an unknown order, she changed her name to Frances, moved to California, and married Frank Manning sometime before 1930. That marriage apparently did not last because she married Roy Hugh Horton in 1932. 

Roy was tall and lean, standing 6-feet, with blue eyes. He had been born in Arkansas but had grown up in Arizona, where he had a criminal record for theft, having helped himself to a supply of batteries. After serving his sentence, Roy married and had three children.  However, only a few years later, he and his wife divorced, and he relocated to California, where he worked as a truck driver. In 1934, he was found guilty of not providing child support. 

Almost 11 months after Marie Lutz died, on July 2, 1936, Charles Lutz and Roy Horton picked up Frances from a beauty salon shortly before noon. Frances squeezed into the front seat and sat next to the front passenger door.  Moments later, to avoid a machine backing away from the curb, Charles abruptly swerved the car. The passenger door flew open, and Frances pitched from the vehicle, striking her head on the pavement. She died of a fractured skull. An obvious accident, there was no inquest. 

​Charles Lutz would remarry in 1937 to Margaret Cain, a widow with several grown children. After working over two decades as a mechanic, Charles would change careers and become a plumber. He and Margaret owned a single-family home in 1940, but only two years later they had moved into a more expensive neighbourhood a few blocks away. A few years after that, they moved to another pleasant house on a quieter street. Charles, 65, and Margaret, 72, died within a few months of each other in 1956. 

All six of Charles' and Verva's children appear on the 1926 Canada Prairie Census with Thomas and Emma. Sadly, Emma died in 1932, when the children were still only age 10 to 18, but their aunts still lived nearby. I'm not certain what became of most of the Lutz children, only being able to find twins Meredith and Mary Beth.

According to his granddaughter, Meredith attempted to join the Canadian Air Force during World War II, but they found that he was not a Canadian citizen and deported him. He instead joined the U.S. Army. After the war, he lived briefly with his Uncle Everett in Roseville, California, but he soon moved east to Michigan, where he married Esther Gale and raised a family.  He died in 1992. 

Mary Beth moved to Saskatoon, where she married Alexander Crerar in later life. She died in 1984.