B. F. Lichty & Sons, Waterloo

Jacob Smith > William Custer Smith > Mary Madora Smith married BF Lichty

60th Anniversary, 1938

Mary Madora "Dora" Smith was the second child of my great-great grandparents, William Custer Smith and Mary Ann Munson. She was born on 23 Jul 1859 in Hazel Green, Grant County, Wisconsin. Shortly after  reaching her majority, she married Benjamin Franklin "B.F." Lichty who hailed from Somerset County, Pennsylvania, in 1878 in Janesville, Bremer County, Iowa. They resided in Elma, Howard County during the early years of their marriage.

Dora and B.F.'s first son, Norman Arthur "N.A.", was born 1879, within months of their marriage.

Original East High School, 1910

Their next child, Claude Smith Lichty, was born in 1887. Their final child, Verne Elias, was born in 1893. In 1902, they set up house in Waterloo and eventually lived on lower Franklin St in East Waterloo. Sometime shortly after that, BF opened his business, "B. F. Lichty & Sons" which specialized in sheet metal fabrication at 720-722 Water St. All of the boys attended East High School.

The business thrived through the 1910s to such a degree, they had to expand. They built a new facility at 1127 Sycamore in East Waterloo and the business remained there until it closed. At that time, Waterloo had 116 manufacturing plants in the city. Lichty & Sons had 16 employees. That building is still standing and is currently owned by the City of Waterloo. In the 1920s, in what was a nice middle-class neighborhood, the Lichty's built an adorable brick bungalow where they resided for the remainder of their life at 1202 Mulberry St. The area now is run down and while the house still stands, it is in need of restoration. That was a 2-block walk for the Lichty's from plant to home every day. The business maintained a respectable reputation and was able to continue operating through the depression and World War II.

Lichty & Sons, built 1913, 1127 Sycamore St

Young Verne was a star athlete at East High School  He attended the Waterloo Business college beginning in 1911 to prepare himself to work with his father and brothers in the business. At Christmas time of 1913 while playing basketball at the Waterloo YMCA, he injured his leg. In early 1915, he went to the Mayo Clinic and learned his leg injury had turned into a sarcoma after a surgery. In  May of that year, his left leg was amputated below the knee at Presbyterian hospital in hopes of putting the cancer in check. He then walked with crutches. Verne married in 1918 and had a daughter, Dorothy Anne, with his wife Anna Geyer Lichty and was expecting another child when he fell ill with a recurrence of cancer. He died at home at age 27. The son he never met, Verne Edward, born in May of 1921, served in the US Navy on the USS Auk, a minesweeper that saw heavy action, and left the service as a Boatswains's Mate 2nd Class. He worked as a tool and die maker at John Deere before having a massive heart attack while bowling at Maple Lanes (which still stands) in 1959 and died. Daughter Dorothy Ann lived with her mother in Northern California until her mother died in 1979. She married for the first time at age 51 to Welles Halley Crawford in Santa Clara, California.

In an article published in 1922, the company was located at 922 Sycamore, just a couple blocks down from the previous location. There had been a slump in business, business picked up again and there was a scarcity of both materials and labor due to the building boom. They were by then employing 20 people.  Sometime in the 1920s, N. A. Lichty and his wife moved to California. N.A. spent six years there and it appears that Mrs. Margaret (Kildee) Lichty remained behind and they divorced prior to
N. A. returning to Iowa, where he was president of the company until his death at age 56 in 1935.

He had one child, Evan, who died in Butte County, California in 1985. Evan enlisted in the US Army in 1943 and retired from the service in 1963.  The information I could find so far indicates he was a Seabee Chief Metalsmith in the US Navy. Evan's first wife was Ethyl Ruth Merrill, whom he married in 1926. He married Ina "Geraldine" Stewart next. They had three sons, two of whom survive. His family was stationed in Tokyo in the mid-1950s but his family spent the bulk of its time living in the Bay Area of California and eventually in Butte County.

Claude's son, Wilfred Franklin Lichty, suffered from diabetes and died of complications at age 20 in 1931. Claude and his wife Lulu divorced and he remarried. He continued to work in the family business until after his father's death and retired from the business in 1950. He died in 1953.

Dora died in 1941 at age 81 and B.F. died in 1945 at 87, both of complications of age.

An Aside

B.F. had a brush with the law in 1930 when he was interviewed about the violent death of a

Murder victim F.R. Smart, center

reclusive, divorced, elderly implement and real estate dealer of his acquaintance named Francis Robert Smart. Lichty was one of the last people to have contact with Smart.  Mr Smart had dined with the Lichty's on the night he died along with his stepson and his wife. About 10 o'clock that night,  just 45 minutes from the time estimated as time of death, Mr. Lichty called Mr. Smart to inquire about a wallet that had been misplaced by one of the other guests. The murder received no coverage in the Waterloo paper and appears to remain unsolved, with robbery as a motive. Mr. Smart was known to keep large quantities of cash in his office/residence. 

An inquest was set for today into the slaying of F. R. Smart, 77, implement and real estate dealer, whose bullet-riddled body was found in his office-bedroom late Saturday night.

Clutching in his hand a chunk of iron casting, and slumped against the wall opposite the door that apparently had admitted his assailant, the body of the recluse was discovered by a neighbor, Johannes Hanson, at 10:45 o'clock Saturday night. 

A deck of cards, half-played, indicated to police that the old man had been interrupted as he was playing solitaire. Aside from evidence of a scuffle, officers could find no clews (sic) or fingerprints.

Robbery was evidently the motive, investigators believe, for Smart was know to have as much as $500 at a time in his living quarters, which also served him as office. The amount that he might have had with him Saturday night was undetermined, nor was it ascertained whether anything was missing. That Smart had tried to protect himself, led the officers to believe that his attacker was not prepared to find the victim at home.

Bullet holes slanted upward into the body, indicating the assailant had been floored and had shot supine. Three empty shells from a .32 automatic were found on the floor."

Mason City Globe Gazette, 14 Apr 1930, pgs 1 and 2 

The County Coroner declared it a murder by persons unknown on the following day. No further information was published about the crime, indicating it was never cleared from the books.