On this day in 1954, a gentleman named Carl Leonard Wehrle dropped dead from a heart attack in our house.  It was a week before Christmas – how awful that must have been for his family, especially his wife Gwendolen.  Her brother J. R. Tibbits cleared the land that makes up our 5.28 acres and built the home for the couple, who had practically just moved (October 1948).  They only got to enjoy their beautiful new cape together for five years.

The grandson of German immigrants from Darmstadt, Werhle worked his way up through the Ramsey Chain Company in Menands to be the organization’s secretary and comptroller, overseeing the organization’s budget and other financials (Ramsey is still in business today, now headquartered in North Carolina).  He was extremely active in town as a firefighter, scout leader, churchgoer and player of many musical instruments.  More than one old-time resident I’ve interviewed remembers him as “important.” He and Gwendolen had two daughters and in the early 1940s owned an English bulldog named Mike who liked perfume, bacon, flowers and barking at airplanes.

Before they moved here – which in that era was almost like moving to the country even though it was only a mile down the road – the couple had lived their entire married life at 23 Elsmere Avenue, a lovely 1831 Romantic-Italianate farmhouse that Carl’s parents inhabited before them.  Still standing today, his father Charles bought it when he moved his family from Albany after scoring a job as a freight station clerk for the D&H Railroad.  So gorgeous, and so strange that the empty nesters chose – well into their 50s – to double their square footage with a brand-new house and maintain five times the amount of property.

Plus, putting the land deal together was likely no joke.  They had to purchase two separate parcels of land, owned by the same person but both in probate.  An executor was named but died before the estate was dispersed.  The trustees of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church of Albany were then named as executor, so the poor Wehrles had to deal with an entire board as opposed to a single person just to buy the properties, let alone manage what would be required from town officials in terms of joining the properties, getting permits, surveys, and even razing the old Bender home on the site (a story in itself, as the original home was likely the original farmhouse of Revolutionary War Lt. John Leonard, who is buried somewhere on the Hamagrael Elementary School property).

Their decision also seems odd since the couple had everything they needed within walking distance from their old digs near the underpass at Herber Avenue.  They were active members of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, which is right across the street, and Carl was a fire commissioner with Elsmere Fire Department (also across the street). The general store was still operating a few doors down at 9 Elsmere and Mullens Pharmacy was just a bit further at the corner of Delaware Avenue.

The final weirdness for me is that Carl sold the family’s summer home on Sacandaga Lake, in the Town of Day, just prior to building their new one here.  Why?  Who knows?  After his death. Gwendolen remarried to George Adams, who some will remember as the owner of Adams Hardware, which is now where I Love Books stands at Four Corners.  She lived to be almost 100!  Her granddaughter, Carla Pelton, is a BCSD graduate (Class of 1967) who grew up on Alden Court and would have been only five when Carl died.  In fact, she was born just a few short months after they moved into their new but short-lived home.  She lives in Florida now… maybe she could shed some more light on this story, because I feel like my family owes her grandparents a huge debt of gratitude, because if not for that seemingly offbeat, post-war decision to start fresh in their 60s, 116 Elsmere might look quite different today, and we’d probably be living elsewhere.  I remind them of that whenever I visit their graves at Bethlehem Cemetery.  The whole family is there, right up near the informal entrance before the intersection or Kenwood and Elsmere, where I literally stumbled upon their headstones one day before I ever really started researching them.

I don’t know where he died in the house – all I know is that there’s a spot in the back bedroom that is always colder than the rest of the room.  Noticeably colder – inexplicably chilled – and no matter what we do you can also catch a whiff of cigar smoke in the room now and again.  Maybe Carla would know?

All this just to say, rest in peace Mr. Wehrle!  Knowing a little about the life you lived makes living here that much more fun.  I will try really hard not to have a heart attack right before Christmas (or ever).