James Douglas Hunter (Douglas) was the third son born to Ronald MacLaurin Hunter and Josephine Catharine Earhart. His father Ronald was the first child born in America to his Scottish immigrant family and became a successful real estate broker in Duluth, Minnesota. Josephine's older Pennsylvania roots qualified her for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution. Douglas's oldest brother, John Cook, drowned at the age of 8 while swimming in a neighborhood pond. His surviving older brother, Laurin, was a well-mannered boy who attended local schools and grew up to live an exemplary life. As a teenager, Douglas was sent 150 miles south to the Galadad School for Boys in Hudson, Wisconsin, presaging his more nomadic journey through life. Upon graduating high school, he clerked for a hardware store in Duluth for a few years.
Between 1910 to 1914, Douglas was often feted in the Duluth Society pages for his acting, singing or dancing at parties attended by Duluth's young elite. As World War I erupted in 1914, Douglas was mentioned as a band musician. Later in 1914 he moved to Minneapolis where he was employed as a mail clerk in the Radisson Hotel. Here he experienced his first major brush with the law. He and two other men were arrested for stealing and receiving $2,800 worth of diamonds that Douglas took from the hotel mailroom. He was convicted of second degree grand larceny on February 4, 1915. It seems that his family was able to keep the story out of the Duluth newspaper, but it was prominently covered in Minneapolis and other regional newspapers. He was sentenced to serve one to five years in the state reformatory at St Cloud.
Douglas was drafted into military service in WWI in 1918 at the age of 26. He left Duluth for training at Columbus, Ohio on May 3, 1918. His musical experience paid dividends by qualifying him to serve as a band musician in his headquarters unit. He served with the American Expeditionary Force in France and saw action in the Meuse – Argonne offensive. His division was nicknamed "The Marching Division", which may sound like faint praise, but actually was in tribute to the long marches they logged in feint attacks to divert German units away from the real battlefield. While not directly participating in combat, no doubt he was exposed to the aftermath of suffering, death and destruction. He stayed in France after the war ended long enough to meet and wed fellow Duluthian Lucy Theodate Holmes at the A.E.F University in Beaune, Cote d'or, Burgundy. Lucy was four years his senior. No doubt Douglas knew about Lucy before meeting in France, since before America's entry to the war she was featured in Duluth newspaper articles for her Red Cross work. They were married on May 15, 1919 in France by U.S. Army Chaplain Francis K. Little.
The couple returned to America and settled in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where they repeated their marriage vows on July 11, 1919. Their first and only child, Ronald Douglas, tragically died minutes after birth on Christmas Day, 1919.
Douglas's application for a U.S. bonus payment for war service was nearly rejected for his lackadaisical responses to the questions on the form. Back in Duluth, Doug's father, Ronald, had fallen on economic hard times. He and Josephine were recorded as living in a boarding house in the 1920 US Census. Poverty did not suit Josephine. She spent the next decade traveling the world and residing near her well-off family members around the country, retaining her husband's surname, while he rebuilt his business in Duluth.
In October, 1920 Douglas's brother, Laurin, was married in Duluth at his wife's home, given the Hunters' difficult economic circumstances. He and his wife returned to Detroit, where he had already been working his uncle Harry Boyd Earhart, who made a fortune in selling special petroleum lubricants to the nascent automotive industry. Laurin hitched his star to his uncle's business and rose quickly, whereas Douglas struggled as an assistant manager in a Kalamazoo coating mill.
An odd set of circumstances transpired during the Hunters' last year of marriage. On May 12, 1922, the decomposed body of Fred M. Schoomaker, assistant cashier of the Three Rivers First National Bank (near Kalamazoo, Michigan) was discovered in his Fisher Lake cabin, dead of a single gunshot wound to the chest. He had disappeared on April 18, in the midst of an audit of the bank's books. $19,974.75 was discovered missing from his accounts at the bank, and a suicide note confessing to the theft was found next to his body. A grand jury was convened to investigate the missing money and death. The odd thing was that entrance to the cabin had gained through the front door, which had been checked by police soon after his disappearance and found to be locked. But the key was nowhere to be found on Fred's body or in the cabin. Neighbors recalled seeing a man and woman walking away from the cabin around that time and quickly driving off. The cabin keys were later discovered nearby in Fisher Lake by a boy wading there. By June, 1922, investigators suspected Mr. Schoomaker had been murdered. Lucy Holmes Hunter was called to testify at a grand jury convened to investigate the death because she witnessed her landlady's movements on the day of his disappearance – and the landlady acknowledged having had cash transactions with Mr. Schoomaker in the past. Coincidently, Douglas Hunter had grown up with an uncle in Duluth, James Cook Hunter, who was a prominent local bank cashier, a profession demanding trust because of the direct access they had to the bank deposits in those days. While there was some suspicion of the recently widowed landlady, the grand jury came to no definite conclusions. By January 1, 1923 Douglas and Lucy had separated, and on July 26, 1923 Lucy filed for divorce. Douglas had moved to Chicago by that date. The divorce was granted on November 24, 1923.
By 1925 Douglas moved back to Duluth to live with his father. He soon left the Midwest for the southwest and California for the rest of his life. On October 13, 1928 in Reno, Nevada he married Velma Bradshaw Malone, widowed by the suicide of her pharmacist husband. They moved to Los Angeles, where Velma died in a Berkeley hospital on August 22, 1930 from a long illness. The lack of any mention of Douglas in Velma's hometown obituary back in Reno indicated his dismal status with her family.
Already by November 7, 1930, Douglas found a new widowed bride in Jessie Elizabeth (Crow) Greiff in the town of Yuma, Arizona. By February 24, 1931, Jessie filed a scathing deposition for divorce, which detailed Doug's squandering of her bank savings on drunken partying with other women. She reported he took her on a non-stop, alcohol-fueled, high speed interstate overnight trip that had frightened her. She conceded that Douglas did buy her Christmas presents once – but later sent her the bill. Jessie's divorce was granted in Reno on May 25, 1931.
Doug's first wife, Lucy, and her new husband had moved out to Los Angeles, California by this time. Doug moved between Arizona, Nevada and California, and began to seek his fortune in brokering minerals or oil land rights. Rather than marrying widows or divorcee's for their money, Doug switched to selling them shares of property mineral rights. The only reason we know about this is because of Doug's later run-in with the Los Angeles County District Court following his participation in the McDonald Douglas Aircraft Co. sit-down strike in Santa Monica, California in February, 1937. The strike made national news and Doug was among the 237 union members arrested and tried for conspiracy and damage to property. After two trials, he and 21 others were convicted and he was sentenced to a $300 fine (higher than most) or 100 days jail time. Doug elected to skip paying the fine and return to Reno, Nevada. In July, 1938 Los Angeles authorities arrested him in Reno for violation of the Federal Securities Act and Grand Theft had him extradited back to Los Angeles. The four securities act charges were based on sales of securities (shares of a Yavapai, Arizona copper mine) to two women in California without a state license. The Grand Theft charges apparently stemmed from him accepting money and jewels in payment for the illegally-sold shares. His attorney argued that the only reason the securities violations were charged was Los Angeles District Court's desire to extradite him to back to LA and face his punishment for participation in the sit-down strike. But Doug pled guilty to charge IV on the securities violations, and spent the year of 1939 in the Los Angeles County jail. Records are sketchy, but it appears that sometime after his release in January, 1940, he met and married his fourth wife, Catherine M. Guenther, a never-married stenographer from Kentucky. Catharine had spent much of her adult life working in West Palm Beach, Florida, but had also some spent time in California. In 1941, he and Caroline were recorded in the Tucson, Arizona, city directory with his occupation listed as president of the National Petroleum Corporation. There was a company by that name based in New York that did not long survive, so perhaps Douglas's business was a branch office.
As America was swept into WW II in 1942, Doug was recorded on his draft registration form as working in Glendale, California for Aircraft Industries Corporation, while wife Caroline still lived in Florida. Later during the war Doug went back to working in the aircraft manufacturing industry for Grumman Air Equipment Corporation as a personnel officer at their main plant in Bethpage, New York. While living in Hicksville in February, 1944 he filed for membership in the Sons of the American Revolution, based on the family tree of his mother, Josephine.
When the war concluded, Doug and Caroline moved into a new home in Huntridge, North Las Vegas. Caroline's widowed mother, Minnie Lewis Guenther, moved in with them. Doug had finally become domesticated.
In November, 1947, Doug and Caroline drove to Saskatchewan, Canada so Doug could investigate heavy oil sand fields long known to exist around Lloydminster, while Caroline stayed with friends in Meadow Lake. The problem was that no one knew how to economically extract the tarry, sand laden goo. On November 20, while traveling back 500 miles from the Lloydminster oil fields on the Saskatchewan/Alberta border to rejoin Caroline in Meadow Lake, Doug slammed into the rear of a McKay Transport truck on the highway 2 miles outside of Paynton, Saskatchewan. The RCMP conjectured that he had been blinded by oncoming headlights. Douglas clung to life in the North Battleford hospital for three days before succumbing to his injuries on November 24 at the age of 53. Caroline had his body brought to Tucson and buried in the South Lawn Cemetery. Local VFW Post 549 procured a military bronze marker to commemorate his WW I service, and continued their service just recently by photographing it me for Find A Grave.
Shortly after Douglas's death, another American oil man, Glen E. Neilson, president of Husky Oil in Cody, Wyoming, successfully developed the Lloydminster tar sands fields. He became so famous that a public industrial park was named for him. Whether Douglas might have achieved similar results had he lived we will never know, but he was on the right path to finally making something successful of his life.
Caroline's mother, Minnie, passed away in December, 1950 and was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Las Vegas. Caroline continued living at the house she and Douglas had purchased on Norman Lane in Huntridge. She worked as a realtor for a company named Desert Realty. Around 1953 she married Raymond Edward Van Horn. They divorced on November 13, 1956. Afterwards, Caroline retained the "Van Horn" name. She died on May 15, 1959 at the age of 55, after a brief illness. She was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in a registered grave, but with no marker. Ervin Ray Van Horn also died later that year in August. He was interred separately at Woodlawn Cemetery.
Between 1910 to 1914, Douglas was often feted in the Duluth Society pages for his acting, singing or dancing at parties attended by Duluth's young elite. As World War I erupted in 1914, Douglas was mentioned as a band musician. Later in 1914 he moved to Minneapolis where he was employed as a mail clerk in the Radisson Hotel. Here he experienced his first major brush with the law. He and two other men were arrested for stealing and receiving $2,800 worth of diamonds that Douglas took from the hotel mailroom. He was convicted of second degree grand larceny on February 4, 1915. It seems that his family was able to keep the story out of the Duluth newspaper, but it was prominently covered in Minneapolis and other regional newspapers. He was sentenced to serve one to five years in the state reformatory at St Cloud.
Douglas was drafted into military service in WWI in 1918 at the age of 26. He left Duluth for training at Columbus, Ohio on May 3, 1918. His musical experience paid dividends by qualifying him to serve as a band musician in his headquarters unit. He served with the American Expeditionary Force in France and saw action in the Meuse – Argonne offensive. His division was nicknamed "The Marching Division", which may sound like faint praise, but actually was in tribute to the long marches they logged in feint attacks to divert German units away from the real battlefield. While not directly participating in combat, no doubt he was exposed to the aftermath of suffering, death and destruction. He stayed in France after the war ended long enough to meet and wed fellow Duluthian Lucy Theodate Holmes at the A.E.F University in Beaune, Cote d'or, Burgundy. Lucy was four years his senior. No doubt Douglas knew about Lucy before meeting in France, since before America's entry to the war she was featured in Duluth newspaper articles for her Red Cross work. They were married on May 15, 1919 in France by U.S. Army Chaplain Francis K. Little.
The couple returned to America and settled in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where they repeated their marriage vows on July 11, 1919. Their first and only child, Ronald Douglas, tragically died minutes after birth on Christmas Day, 1919.
Douglas's application for a U.S. bonus payment for war service was nearly rejected for his lackadaisical responses to the questions on the form. Back in Duluth, Doug's father, Ronald, had fallen on economic hard times. He and Josephine were recorded as living in a boarding house in the 1920 US Census. Poverty did not suit Josephine. She spent the next decade traveling the world and residing near her well-off family members around the country, retaining her husband's surname, while he rebuilt his business in Duluth.
In October, 1920 Douglas's brother, Laurin, was married in Duluth at his wife's home, given the Hunters' difficult economic circumstances. He and his wife returned to Detroit, where he had already been working his uncle Harry Boyd Earhart, who made a fortune in selling special petroleum lubricants to the nascent automotive industry. Laurin hitched his star to his uncle's business and rose quickly, whereas Douglas struggled as an assistant manager in a Kalamazoo coating mill.
An odd set of circumstances transpired during the Hunters' last year of marriage. On May 12, 1922, the decomposed body of Fred M. Schoomaker, assistant cashier of the Three Rivers First National Bank (near Kalamazoo, Michigan) was discovered in his Fisher Lake cabin, dead of a single gunshot wound to the chest. He had disappeared on April 18, in the midst of an audit of the bank's books. $19,974.75 was discovered missing from his accounts at the bank, and a suicide note confessing to the theft was found next to his body. A grand jury was convened to investigate the missing money and death. The odd thing was that entrance to the cabin had gained through the front door, which had been checked by police soon after his disappearance and found to be locked. But the key was nowhere to be found on Fred's body or in the cabin. Neighbors recalled seeing a man and woman walking away from the cabin around that time and quickly driving off. The cabin keys were later discovered nearby in Fisher Lake by a boy wading there. By June, 1922, investigators suspected Mr. Schoomaker had been murdered. Lucy Holmes Hunter was called to testify at a grand jury convened to investigate the death because she witnessed her landlady's movements on the day of his disappearance – and the landlady acknowledged having had cash transactions with Mr. Schoomaker in the past. Coincidently, Douglas Hunter had grown up with an uncle in Duluth, James Cook Hunter, who was a prominent local bank cashier, a profession demanding trust because of the direct access they had to the bank deposits in those days. While there was some suspicion of the recently widowed landlady, the grand jury came to no definite conclusions. By January 1, 1923 Douglas and Lucy had separated, and on July 26, 1923 Lucy filed for divorce. Douglas had moved to Chicago by that date. The divorce was granted on November 24, 1923.
By 1925 Douglas moved back to Duluth to live with his father. He soon left the Midwest for the southwest and California for the rest of his life. On October 13, 1928 in Reno, Nevada he married Velma Bradshaw Malone, widowed by the suicide of her pharmacist husband. They moved to Los Angeles, where Velma died in a Berkeley hospital on August 22, 1930 from a long illness. The lack of any mention of Douglas in Velma's hometown obituary back in Reno indicated his dismal status with her family.
Already by November 7, 1930, Douglas found a new widowed bride in Jessie Elizabeth (Crow) Greiff in the town of Yuma, Arizona. By February 24, 1931, Jessie filed a scathing deposition for divorce, which detailed Doug's squandering of her bank savings on drunken partying with other women. She reported he took her on a non-stop, alcohol-fueled, high speed interstate overnight trip that had frightened her. She conceded that Douglas did buy her Christmas presents once – but later sent her the bill. Jessie's divorce was granted in Reno on May 25, 1931.
Doug's first wife, Lucy, and her new husband had moved out to Los Angeles, California by this time. Doug moved between Arizona, Nevada and California, and began to seek his fortune in brokering minerals or oil land rights. Rather than marrying widows or divorcee's for their money, Doug switched to selling them shares of property mineral rights. The only reason we know about this is because of Doug's later run-in with the Los Angeles County District Court following his participation in the McDonald Douglas Aircraft Co. sit-down strike in Santa Monica, California in February, 1937. The strike made national news and Doug was among the 237 union members arrested and tried for conspiracy and damage to property. After two trials, he and 21 others were convicted and he was sentenced to a $300 fine (higher than most) or 100 days jail time. Doug elected to skip paying the fine and return to Reno, Nevada. In July, 1938 Los Angeles authorities arrested him in Reno for violation of the Federal Securities Act and Grand Theft had him extradited back to Los Angeles. The four securities act charges were based on sales of securities (shares of a Yavapai, Arizona copper mine) to two women in California without a state license. The Grand Theft charges apparently stemmed from him accepting money and jewels in payment for the illegally-sold shares. His attorney argued that the only reason the securities violations were charged was Los Angeles District Court's desire to extradite him to back to LA and face his punishment for participation in the sit-down strike. But Doug pled guilty to charge IV on the securities violations, and spent the year of 1939 in the Los Angeles County jail. Records are sketchy, but it appears that sometime after his release in January, 1940, he met and married his fourth wife, Catherine M. Guenther, a never-married stenographer from Kentucky. Catharine had spent much of her adult life working in West Palm Beach, Florida, but had also some spent time in California. In 1941, he and Caroline were recorded in the Tucson, Arizona, city directory with his occupation listed as president of the National Petroleum Corporation. There was a company by that name based in New York that did not long survive, so perhaps Douglas's business was a branch office.
As America was swept into WW II in 1942, Doug was recorded on his draft registration form as working in Glendale, California for Aircraft Industries Corporation, while wife Caroline still lived in Florida. Later during the war Doug went back to working in the aircraft manufacturing industry for Grumman Air Equipment Corporation as a personnel officer at their main plant in Bethpage, New York. While living in Hicksville in February, 1944 he filed for membership in the Sons of the American Revolution, based on the family tree of his mother, Josephine.
When the war concluded, Doug and Caroline moved into a new home in Huntridge, North Las Vegas. Caroline's widowed mother, Minnie Lewis Guenther, moved in with them. Doug had finally become domesticated.
In November, 1947, Doug and Caroline drove to Saskatchewan, Canada so Doug could investigate heavy oil sand fields long known to exist around Lloydminster, while Caroline stayed with friends in Meadow Lake. The problem was that no one knew how to economically extract the tarry, sand laden goo. On November 20, while traveling back 500 miles from the Lloydminster oil fields on the Saskatchewan/Alberta border to rejoin Caroline in Meadow Lake, Doug slammed into the rear of a McKay Transport truck on the highway 2 miles outside of Paynton, Saskatchewan. The RCMP conjectured that he had been blinded by oncoming headlights. Douglas clung to life in the North Battleford hospital for three days before succumbing to his injuries on November 24 at the age of 53. Caroline had his body brought to Tucson and buried in the South Lawn Cemetery. Local VFW Post 549 procured a military bronze marker to commemorate his WW I service, and continued their service just recently by photographing it me for Find A Grave.
Shortly after Douglas's death, another American oil man, Glen E. Neilson, president of Husky Oil in Cody, Wyoming, successfully developed the Lloydminster tar sands fields. He became so famous that a public industrial park was named for him. Whether Douglas might have achieved similar results had he lived we will never know, but he was on the right path to finally making something successful of his life.
Caroline's mother, Minnie, passed away in December, 1950 and was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Las Vegas. Caroline continued living at the house she and Douglas had purchased on Norman Lane in Huntridge. She worked as a realtor for a company named Desert Realty. Around 1953 she married Raymond Edward Van Horn. They divorced on November 13, 1956. Afterwards, Caroline retained the "Van Horn" name. She died on May 15, 1959 at the age of 55, after a brief illness. She was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in a registered grave, but with no marker. Ervin Ray Van Horn also died later that year in August. He was interred separately at Woodlawn Cemetery.
James Douglas Hunter (Douglas) was the third son born to Ronald MacLaurin Hunter and Josephine Catharine Earhart. His father Ronald was the first child born in America to his Scottish immigrant family and became a successful real estate broker in Duluth, Minnesota. Josephine's older Pennsylvania roots qualified her for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution. Douglas's oldest brother, John Cook, drowned at the age of 8 while swimming in a neighborhood pond. His surviving older brother, Laurin, was a well-mannered boy who attended local schools and grew up to live an exemplary life. As a teenager, Douglas was sent 150 miles south to the Galadad School for Boys in Hudson, Wisconsin, presaging his more nomadic journey through life. Upon graduating high school, he clerked for a hardware store in Duluth for a few years.
Between 1910 to 1914, Douglas was often feted in the Duluth Society pages for his acting, singing or dancing at parties attended by Duluth's young elite. As World War I erupted in 1914, Douglas was mentioned as a band musician. Later in 1914 he moved to Minneapolis where he was employed as a mail clerk in the Radisson Hotel. Here he experienced his first major brush with the law. He and two other men were arrested for stealing and receiving $2,800 worth of diamonds that Douglas took from the hotel mailroom. He was convicted of second degree grand larceny on February 4, 1915. It seems that his family was able to keep the story out of the Duluth newspaper, but it was prominently covered in Minneapolis and other regional newspapers. He was sentenced to serve one to five years in the state reformatory at St Cloud.
Douglas was drafted into military service in WWI in 1918 at the age of 26. He left Duluth for training at Columbus, Ohio on May 3, 1918. His musical experience paid dividends by qualifying him to serve as a band musician in his headquarters unit. He served with the American Expeditionary Force in France and saw action in the Meuse – Argonne offensive. His division was nicknamed "The Marching Division", which may sound like faint praise, but actually was in tribute to the long marches they logged in feint attacks to divert German units away from the real battlefield. While not directly participating in combat, no doubt he was exposed to the aftermath of suffering, death and destruction. He stayed in France after the war ended long enough to meet and wed fellow Duluthian Lucy Theodate Holmes at the A.E.F University in Beaune, Cote d'or, Burgundy. Lucy was four years his senior. No doubt Douglas knew about Lucy before meeting in France, since before America's entry to the war she was featured in Duluth newspaper articles for her Red Cross work. They were married on May 15, 1919 in France by U.S. Army Chaplain Francis K. Little.
The couple returned to America and settled in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where they repeated their marriage vows on July 11, 1919. Their first and only child, Ronald Douglas, tragically died minutes after birth on Christmas Day, 1919.
Douglas's application for a U.S. bonus payment for war service was nearly rejected for his lackadaisical responses to the questions on the form. Back in Duluth, Doug's father, Ronald, had fallen on economic hard times. He and Josephine were recorded as living in a boarding house in the 1920 US Census. Poverty did not suit Josephine. She spent the next decade traveling the world and residing near her well-off family members around the country, retaining her husband's surname, while he rebuilt his business in Duluth.
In October, 1920 Douglas's brother, Laurin, was married in Duluth at his wife's home, given the Hunters' difficult economic circumstances. He and his wife returned to Detroit, where he had already been working his uncle Harry Boyd Earhart, who made a fortune in selling special petroleum lubricants to the nascent automotive industry. Laurin hitched his star to his uncle's business and rose quickly, whereas Douglas struggled as an assistant manager in a Kalamazoo coating mill.
An odd set of circumstances transpired during the Hunters' last year of marriage. On May 12, 1922, the decomposed body of Fred M. Schoomaker, assistant cashier of the Three Rivers First National Bank (near Kalamazoo, Michigan) was discovered in his Fisher Lake cabin, dead of a single gunshot wound to the chest. He had disappeared on April 18, in the midst of an audit of the bank's books. $19,974.75 was discovered missing from his accounts at the bank, and a suicide note confessing to the theft was found next to his body. A grand jury was convened to investigate the missing money and death. The odd thing was that entrance to the cabin had gained through the front door, which had been checked by police soon after his disappearance and found to be locked. But the key was nowhere to be found on Fred's body or in the cabin. Neighbors recalled seeing a man and woman walking away from the cabin around that time and quickly driving off. The cabin keys were later discovered nearby in Fisher Lake by a boy wading there. By June, 1922, investigators suspected Mr. Schoomaker had been murdered. Lucy Holmes Hunter was called to testify at a grand jury convened to investigate the death because she witnessed her landlady's movements on the day of his disappearance – and the landlady acknowledged having had cash transactions with Mr. Schoomaker in the past. Coincidently, Douglas Hunter had grown up with an uncle in Duluth, James Cook Hunter, who was a prominent local bank cashier, a profession demanding trust because of the direct access they had to the bank deposits in those days. While there was some suspicion of the recently widowed landlady, the grand jury came to no definite conclusions. By January 1, 1923 Douglas and Lucy had separated, and on July 26, 1923 Lucy filed for divorce. Douglas had moved to Chicago by that date. The divorce was granted on November 24, 1923.
By 1925 Douglas moved back to Duluth to live with his father. He soon left the Midwest for the southwest and California for the rest of his life. On October 13, 1928 in Reno, Nevada he married Velma Bradshaw Malone, widowed by the suicide of her pharmacist husband. They moved to Los Angeles, where Velma died in a Berkeley hospital on August 22, 1930 from a long illness. The lack of any mention of Douglas in Velma's hometown obituary back in Reno indicated his dismal status with her family.
Already by November 7, 1930, Douglas found a new widowed bride in Jessie Elizabeth (Crow) Greiff in the town of Yuma, Arizona. By February 24, 1931, Jessie filed a scathing deposition for divorce, which detailed Doug's squandering of her bank savings on drunken partying with other women. She reported he took her on a non-stop, alcohol-fueled, high speed interstate overnight trip that had frightened her. She conceded that Douglas did buy her Christmas presents once – but later sent her the bill. Jessie's divorce was granted in Reno on May 25, 1931.
Doug's first wife, Lucy, and her new husband had moved out to Los Angeles, California by this time. Doug moved between Arizona, Nevada and California, and began to seek his fortune in brokering minerals or oil land rights. Rather than marrying widows or divorcee's for their money, Doug switched to selling them shares of property mineral rights. The only reason we know about this is because of Doug's later run-in with the Los Angeles County District Court following his participation in the McDonald Douglas Aircraft Co. sit-down strike in Santa Monica, California in February, 1937. The strike made national news and Doug was among the 237 union members arrested and tried for conspiracy and damage to property. After two trials, he and 21 others were convicted and he was sentenced to a $300 fine (higher than most) or 100 days jail time. Doug elected to skip paying the fine and return to Reno, Nevada. In July, 1938 Los Angeles authorities arrested him in Reno for violation of the Federal Securities Act and Grand Theft had him extradited back to Los Angeles. The four securities act charges were based on sales of securities (shares of a Yavapai, Arizona copper mine) to two women in California without a state license. The Grand Theft charges apparently stemmed from him accepting money and jewels in payment for the illegally-sold shares. His attorney argued that the only reason the securities violations were charged was Los Angeles District Court's desire to extradite him to back to LA and face his punishment for participation in the sit-down strike. But Doug pled guilty to charge IV on the securities violations, and spent the year of 1939 in the Los Angeles County jail. Records are sketchy, but it appears that sometime after his release in January, 1940, he met and married his fourth wife, Catherine M. Guenther, a never-married stenographer from Kentucky. Catharine had spent much of her adult life working in West Palm Beach, Florida, but had also some spent time in California. In 1941, he and Caroline were recorded in the Tucson, Arizona, city directory with his occupation listed as president of the National Petroleum Corporation. There was a company by that name based in New York that did not long survive, so perhaps Douglas's business was a branch office.
As America was swept into WW II in 1942, Doug was recorded on his draft registration form as working in Glendale, California for Aircraft Industries Corporation, while wife Caroline still lived in Florida. Later during the war Doug went back to working in the aircraft manufacturing industry for Grumman Air Equipment Corporation as a personnel officer at their main plant in Bethpage, New York. While living in Hicksville in February, 1944 he filed for membership in the Sons of the American Revolution, based on the family tree of his mother, Josephine.
When the war concluded, Doug and Caroline moved into a new home in Huntridge, North Las Vegas. Caroline's widowed mother, Minnie Lewis Guenther, moved in with them. Doug had finally become domesticated.
In November, 1947, Doug and Caroline drove to Saskatchewan, Canada so Doug could investigate heavy oil sand fields long known to exist around Lloydminster, while Caroline stayed with friends in Meadow Lake. The problem was that no one knew how to economically extract the tarry, sand laden goo. On November 20, while traveling back 500 miles from the Lloydminster oil fields on the Saskatchewan/Alberta border to rejoin Caroline in Meadow Lake, Doug slammed into the rear of a McKay Transport truck on the highway 2 miles outside of Paynton, Saskatchewan. The RCMP conjectured that he had been blinded by oncoming headlights. Douglas clung to life in the North Battleford hospital for three days before succumbing to his injuries on November 24 at the age of 53. Caroline had his body brought to Tucson and buried in the South Lawn Cemetery. Local VFW Post 549 procured a military bronze marker to commemorate his WW I service, and continued their service just recently by photographing it me for Find A Grave.
Shortly after Douglas's death, another American oil man, Glen E. Neilson, president of Husky Oil in Cody, Wyoming, successfully developed the Lloydminster tar sands fields. He became so famous that a public industrial park was named for him. Whether Douglas might have achieved similar results had he lived we will never know, but he was on the right path to finally making something successful of his life.
Caroline's mother, Minnie, passed away in December, 1950 and was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Las Vegas. Caroline continued living at the house she and Douglas had purchased on Norman Lane in Huntridge. She worked as a realtor for a company named Desert Realty. Around 1953 she married Raymond Edward Van Horn. They divorced on November 13, 1956. Afterwards, Caroline retained the "Van Horn" name. She died on May 15, 1959 at the age of 55, after a brief illness. She was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in a registered grave, but with no marker. Ervin Ray Van Horn also died later that year in August. He was interred separately at Woodlawn Cemetery.
Between 1910 to 1914, Douglas was often feted in the Duluth Society pages for his acting, singing or dancing at parties attended by Duluth's young elite. As World War I erupted in 1914, Douglas was mentioned as a band musician. Later in 1914 he moved to Minneapolis where he was employed as a mail clerk in the Radisson Hotel. Here he experienced his first major brush with the law. He and two other men were arrested for stealing and receiving $2,800 worth of diamonds that Douglas took from the hotel mailroom. He was convicted of second degree grand larceny on February 4, 1915. It seems that his family was able to keep the story out of the Duluth newspaper, but it was prominently covered in Minneapolis and other regional newspapers. He was sentenced to serve one to five years in the state reformatory at St Cloud.
Douglas was drafted into military service in WWI in 1918 at the age of 26. He left Duluth for training at Columbus, Ohio on May 3, 1918. His musical experience paid dividends by qualifying him to serve as a band musician in his headquarters unit. He served with the American Expeditionary Force in France and saw action in the Meuse – Argonne offensive. His division was nicknamed "The Marching Division", which may sound like faint praise, but actually was in tribute to the long marches they logged in feint attacks to divert German units away from the real battlefield. While not directly participating in combat, no doubt he was exposed to the aftermath of suffering, death and destruction. He stayed in France after the war ended long enough to meet and wed fellow Duluthian Lucy Theodate Holmes at the A.E.F University in Beaune, Cote d'or, Burgundy. Lucy was four years his senior. No doubt Douglas knew about Lucy before meeting in France, since before America's entry to the war she was featured in Duluth newspaper articles for her Red Cross work. They were married on May 15, 1919 in France by U.S. Army Chaplain Francis K. Little.
The couple returned to America and settled in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where they repeated their marriage vows on July 11, 1919. Their first and only child, Ronald Douglas, tragically died minutes after birth on Christmas Day, 1919.
Douglas's application for a U.S. bonus payment for war service was nearly rejected for his lackadaisical responses to the questions on the form. Back in Duluth, Doug's father, Ronald, had fallen on economic hard times. He and Josephine were recorded as living in a boarding house in the 1920 US Census. Poverty did not suit Josephine. She spent the next decade traveling the world and residing near her well-off family members around the country, retaining her husband's surname, while he rebuilt his business in Duluth.
In October, 1920 Douglas's brother, Laurin, was married in Duluth at his wife's home, given the Hunters' difficult economic circumstances. He and his wife returned to Detroit, where he had already been working his uncle Harry Boyd Earhart, who made a fortune in selling special petroleum lubricants to the nascent automotive industry. Laurin hitched his star to his uncle's business and rose quickly, whereas Douglas struggled as an assistant manager in a Kalamazoo coating mill.
An odd set of circumstances transpired during the Hunters' last year of marriage. On May 12, 1922, the decomposed body of Fred M. Schoomaker, assistant cashier of the Three Rivers First National Bank (near Kalamazoo, Michigan) was discovered in his Fisher Lake cabin, dead of a single gunshot wound to the chest. He had disappeared on April 18, in the midst of an audit of the bank's books. $19,974.75 was discovered missing from his accounts at the bank, and a suicide note confessing to the theft was found next to his body. A grand jury was convened to investigate the missing money and death. The odd thing was that entrance to the cabin had gained through the front door, which had been checked by police soon after his disappearance and found to be locked. But the key was nowhere to be found on Fred's body or in the cabin. Neighbors recalled seeing a man and woman walking away from the cabin around that time and quickly driving off. The cabin keys were later discovered nearby in Fisher Lake by a boy wading there. By June, 1922, investigators suspected Mr. Schoomaker had been murdered. Lucy Holmes Hunter was called to testify at a grand jury convened to investigate the death because she witnessed her landlady's movements on the day of his disappearance – and the landlady acknowledged having had cash transactions with Mr. Schoomaker in the past. Coincidently, Douglas Hunter had grown up with an uncle in Duluth, James Cook Hunter, who was a prominent local bank cashier, a profession demanding trust because of the direct access they had to the bank deposits in those days. While there was some suspicion of the recently widowed landlady, the grand jury came to no definite conclusions. By January 1, 1923 Douglas and Lucy had separated, and on July 26, 1923 Lucy filed for divorce. Douglas had moved to Chicago by that date. The divorce was granted on November 24, 1923.
By 1925 Douglas moved back to Duluth to live with his father. He soon left the Midwest for the southwest and California for the rest of his life. On October 13, 1928 in Reno, Nevada he married Velma Bradshaw Malone, widowed by the suicide of her pharmacist husband. They moved to Los Angeles, where Velma died in a Berkeley hospital on August 22, 1930 from a long illness. The lack of any mention of Douglas in Velma's hometown obituary back in Reno indicated his dismal status with her family.
Already by November 7, 1930, Douglas found a new widowed bride in Jessie Elizabeth (Crow) Greiff in the town of Yuma, Arizona. By February 24, 1931, Jessie filed a scathing deposition for divorce, which detailed Doug's squandering of her bank savings on drunken partying with other women. She reported he took her on a non-stop, alcohol-fueled, high speed interstate overnight trip that had frightened her. She conceded that Douglas did buy her Christmas presents once – but later sent her the bill. Jessie's divorce was granted in Reno on May 25, 1931.
Doug's first wife, Lucy, and her new husband had moved out to Los Angeles, California by this time. Doug moved between Arizona, Nevada and California, and began to seek his fortune in brokering minerals or oil land rights. Rather than marrying widows or divorcee's for their money, Doug switched to selling them shares of property mineral rights. The only reason we know about this is because of Doug's later run-in with the Los Angeles County District Court following his participation in the McDonald Douglas Aircraft Co. sit-down strike in Santa Monica, California in February, 1937. The strike made national news and Doug was among the 237 union members arrested and tried for conspiracy and damage to property. After two trials, he and 21 others were convicted and he was sentenced to a $300 fine (higher than most) or 100 days jail time. Doug elected to skip paying the fine and return to Reno, Nevada. In July, 1938 Los Angeles authorities arrested him in Reno for violation of the Federal Securities Act and Grand Theft had him extradited back to Los Angeles. The four securities act charges were based on sales of securities (shares of a Yavapai, Arizona copper mine) to two women in California without a state license. The Grand Theft charges apparently stemmed from him accepting money and jewels in payment for the illegally-sold shares. His attorney argued that the only reason the securities violations were charged was Los Angeles District Court's desire to extradite him to back to LA and face his punishment for participation in the sit-down strike. But Doug pled guilty to charge IV on the securities violations, and spent the year of 1939 in the Los Angeles County jail. Records are sketchy, but it appears that sometime after his release in January, 1940, he met and married his fourth wife, Catherine M. Guenther, a never-married stenographer from Kentucky. Catharine had spent much of her adult life working in West Palm Beach, Florida, but had also some spent time in California. In 1941, he and Caroline were recorded in the Tucson, Arizona, city directory with his occupation listed as president of the National Petroleum Corporation. There was a company by that name based in New York that did not long survive, so perhaps Douglas's business was a branch office.
As America was swept into WW II in 1942, Doug was recorded on his draft registration form as working in Glendale, California for Aircraft Industries Corporation, while wife Caroline still lived in Florida. Later during the war Doug went back to working in the aircraft manufacturing industry for Grumman Air Equipment Corporation as a personnel officer at their main plant in Bethpage, New York. While living in Hicksville in February, 1944 he filed for membership in the Sons of the American Revolution, based on the family tree of his mother, Josephine.
When the war concluded, Doug and Caroline moved into a new home in Huntridge, North Las Vegas. Caroline's widowed mother, Minnie Lewis Guenther, moved in with them. Doug had finally become domesticated.
In November, 1947, Doug and Caroline drove to Saskatchewan, Canada so Doug could investigate heavy oil sand fields long known to exist around Lloydminster, while Caroline stayed with friends in Meadow Lake. The problem was that no one knew how to economically extract the tarry, sand laden goo. On November 20, while traveling back 500 miles from the Lloydminster oil fields on the Saskatchewan/Alberta border to rejoin Caroline in Meadow Lake, Doug slammed into the rear of a McKay Transport truck on the highway 2 miles outside of Paynton, Saskatchewan. The RCMP conjectured that he had been blinded by oncoming headlights. Douglas clung to life in the North Battleford hospital for three days before succumbing to his injuries on November 24 at the age of 53. Caroline had his body brought to Tucson and buried in the South Lawn Cemetery. Local VFW Post 549 procured a military bronze marker to commemorate his WW I service, and continued their service just recently by photographing it me for Find A Grave.
Shortly after Douglas's death, another American oil man, Glen E. Neilson, president of Husky Oil in Cody, Wyoming, successfully developed the Lloydminster tar sands fields. He became so famous that a public industrial park was named for him. Whether Douglas might have achieved similar results had he lived we will never know, but he was on the right path to finally making something successful of his life.
Caroline's mother, Minnie, passed away in December, 1950 and was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Las Vegas. Caroline continued living at the house she and Douglas had purchased on Norman Lane in Huntridge. She worked as a realtor for a company named Desert Realty. Around 1953 she married Raymond Edward Van Horn. They divorced on November 13, 1956. Afterwards, Caroline retained the "Van Horn" name. She died on May 15, 1959 at the age of 55, after a brief illness. She was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in a registered grave, but with no marker. Ervin Ray Van Horn also died later that year in August. He was interred separately at Woodlawn Cemetery.
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