Historic Pelham: Has One of the Most Enduring Pelham History Mysteries Been Solved? The Mystery of Charles A. Voight!

On August 8, 1909, a man named Fontaine Fox arrived with his wife at the Pelham Station in the Village of North Pelham. The couple hopped on the rickety little trolley that met all the trains.

The little trolley shuttled back and forth, at that time, between the Pelham Station on the New Haven Line and the Pelham Manor Station on the New Haven Branch Line. In 1909, the rattletrap trolley click-clacked along tracks laid on Wolfs Lane to Colonial Avenue where it turned toward New Rochelle. It traveled along Colonial Avenue for a few hundred feet, then turned east onto Pelhamdale Avenue along which it traveled to its final stop near the Branch Line railroad trestle above Pelhamdale Avenue. From there, the trolley operator reversed the trolley and returned along the same route to the Pelham Station. (The following year, 1910, the trolley line was extended all the way to the end of Pelhamdale Avenue at Shore Road.)

On that summer day in 1909, Fontaine Fox and his wife were on their way to visit their cartoonist friend, Charles A. Voight, who lived in Pelham Manor. On the couple's brief trolley ride, as Fox later described in numerous letters and magazine interviews, Fox was struck by the folksy trolley operator with his Airedale beard, the idiosyncratic and rickety little trolley car known locally as the "Pelham Manor Trolley," and the concept that the little trolley met all the trains. Fontaine Fox was so inspired by the ride that he created caricatures of the trolley operator, whom he named "Skipper," and the rickety little trolley that he called the "Toonerville Trolley that Meets All the Trains." From there he created the wildly successful comic strip entitled "Toonerville Folks" that ran in syndication for the next forty years and made Fox a famous and wealthy man. As Fox stated in one interview:

"After years of gestation, the idea for the Toonerville Trolley was born one day up in Westchester County when my wife and I had left New York City to visit Charlie Voight, the cartoonist, in the Pelhams. At the station, we saw a rattletrap of a streetcar, which had as its crew and skipper a wistful old codger with an Airedale beard. He showed as much concern in the performance of his job as you might expect from Captain Hartley when docking the Leviathan."

Source: A Queer Way to Make a Living, The Saturday Evening Post, Feb. 11, 1928, p. 6.

Example of Sunday Comic Strip "Toonerville Folks" by

Fontaine Fox Featuring the Toonerville Trolley and its

Skipper. NOTE: Click on Image to Enlarge.

For decades, one of the most enduring Pelham history mysteries has been the location of the Charles Voight home that Fontaine Fox and his wife visited on August 8, 1909. Today's posting to the Historic Pelham Blog attempts to shed light on that question.

Charles Anthony Voight was born in Brooklyn on April 28, 1887. He showed artistic talent as a youngster and dropped out of school at the age of fourteen. He became a member of the art staff a the New York World, a New York City newspaper, and did freelance advertising art work on the side.

Voight became an early comic strip artist. Eventually he became best known for his long-running comic strip entitled "Betty." According to one brief biography:

"In 1908, he drew his first comic strip, Petey Dink, for the Boston Traveler. When [the comic strip] moved to the New York Herald it became simply Petey (sometimes titled Poor Little Petey). He also drew for the New York World, and for Life, he created a series titled The Optimist.

The Sunday page of his popular glamour girl strip Betty began April 4, 1920 in the New York Herald, there was no daily strip. Comics historian Don Markstein described the strip and characters [as follows]: Betty Thompson's life was filled with cocktail parties, cotillions and affairs of that nature. She wore all the latest high-class fashions, amply displayed by Voight's lush, stylish and highly individual illustration. While Tillie the Toiler, very much a working girl, may seem to have little in common with Betty, they had one strong point of similarity. Both went through handsome dashing men by the carload. . . ."

Source: "Charles A. Voight" in Wikipedia -- The Free Encyclopedia (visited Jan. 2, 2017).

The comic strip Betty ended its run in 1943. Thereafter Voight created art for comic books. He died on February 10, 1947.

Voight and his wife, Nina, lived in Pelham Manor for a time. The million-dollar-question, of course, is "where did they live on August 8, 1909."

Recently, while researching World War I draftees from Pelham, New York, I ran across a newspaper reference to the drafting of Charles A. Voight in July, 1917. According to that record, Voight's address at the time was "541 Rochelle Place" in Pelham. It turns out that there was no such address in Pelham at the time. A quick review of World War I draft registration records, however, quickly revealed that on June 5, 1917, Charles Anthony Voight lived at 514 Rochelle Terrace in the Village of Pelham Manor. (See immediately below.)

World War I Draft Registration Record for Charles

Anthony Voight of 514 Rochelle Terrace in Village

of Pelham Manor. NOTE: Click on Link to Enlarge.

The address is a starting point, of course, but certainly does not answer the question of where in Pelham Voight lived eight years earlier when Fontaine Fox visited him. Thus, the 1910 Federal Census for Pelham was next consulted. Neither Charles Voight nor his wife Nina, however, may be found anywhere in Pelham in the 1910 U.S. Census. Nor has research yet revealed either of them anywhere else in the United States in the 1910 Federal Census. If correct, this suggests, of course, that as was so often the case, they were among the members of the population who were missed in the census count that year.

This leaves us to review the 1905 and 1915 New York State census counts to try to find Charles Voight and his residence.

Sure enough, the 1915 New York State Census shows Charles A. Voight and his wife, Nina, living with a live-in servant (a cook) in the Village of Pelham Manor at 457 Pelham Street. There no longer is a street in Pelham Manor named Pelham Street. That street once was located essentially where today's Monroe Street runs between Hunter Avenue and the end of Monroe Street. The area was profoundly changed by the construction of the New England Thruway (I-95) through the neighborhood during the 1950s. (See map detail immediately below.)

Detail from Map Published in 1910 Showing Location of

Pelham Street in Lower Left Quadrant of the Detail.

Source: "Part of the Town and Village of Pelham Manor"

in Bromley, George Washington, Atlas of Westchester

County, New York, Vol. 1, p. 18 (Philadelphia, PA: G.W.

Bromley & Co., 1910). NOTE: Click on Image to Enlarge.

Detail from 1915 New York State Census, Westchester County,

Pelham, Assembly District No. 2, Election District No. 2, Page

14 of 21. (Note: Access via this link requires paid subscription).

NOTE: Click on Image to Enlarge.

The Voight home at 457 Pelham Street in 1915 was very near the terminus of the Pelham Manor trolley in 1909 when Fontaine Fox took his fateful ride. That fact, of course, is encouraging. It turns out, however, that Voight and his wife seem to have moved into the home at 457 Pelham Street some time after 1909. At the very least, someone else was living in that home in 1910.

Returning to the 1910 U.S. Census for Pelham, it is possible to find the home located at 457 Pelham Street and identify the occupants of that home at the time the census was taken in May, 1910. There were five residents in the home: Felix J. Rush (father and head of household), Centa Rush (wife), Marie G. Rush (daughter), Philomena S. Rush (daughter), and Joseph Dirnago (a brother-in-law). Neither Charles Voight nor his wife is listed. Thus, it would seem that the couple did not live there in 1910 and may well have moved into that home at a later date.