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"Bedford State Police Clamp Down on Two-in-one Liquor Joint and Bawdy House." Stringtown "sporting house" ends year's existence as quartet are brought to justice.

A raid upon one of Bedford County's "sporting houses" which netted the county jail four lodgers for a good many nights to come occurred the night of Thursday, April 6, at a lonely house on a dirt road in Stringtown, about six miles south of Hyndman.

The house was not lonely in one sense. A great quantity of liquor and four residents, Lester C. English, 26,  Ruby English, 19, his wife, Carl Nissen, 26, and Ella Wilhelm,  33, were all taken from the house. The liquor was destroyed. Wilhelm and Nissen were arraigned before Squire H. A. Clark, on charge of operating a bawdy house and violating liquor laws. Lester English was charged with violating the liquor laws, and his wife, Ruby, for being an inmate of a bawdy house. All were held for court on $800 for each charge, in default of bail. They are now in the county jail.

The raid followed the receipt at the Bedford State Police Headquarters of a large number of complaints against the place. It was reported that a large number of youths in the vicinity of Hyndman and elsewhere had contracted venereal diseases there. The raid of last Thursday followed a preliminary plain clothes investigation of the premises Monday night. Enough evidence was secured on this visit to warrant the raid.

Accordingly, two state police appeared at the house earlier in the evening of the raid, Privates DeWitt and Hanmore. In plain clothes they were in such a position to aid their fellow police if resistance were made by those inside. The police who made the raid, shortly before midnight, were Corp. Maroney, in charge of the others, Corp. Tevelin of McConnellsburg, and Constable Harry Fetters of Bedford. The night was stormy and the roads were in terrible shape. But for this it is likely that twenty or so arrests would have been made, not an unusual number of "inmates" and customers for this place.

Ella Wilhelm is a former resident of Hyndman and had operated the place at Stringtown for about a year. Carl Nissen who rents the house from a Frostburg man, tried to take the entire responsibility for the raid, but this chivalry was rebuffed by the police's certain knowledge that the woman had been in charge on previous occasions.  [Nancy's Note:  if they knew this, it makes you wonder how many times the policemen 'staked out' the place].  Carl Nissen claimed Columbus, Ohio as his home and said that he had been in Stringtown only about five months, where he had formed a partnership with Ella Wilhelm to operate the place. English and his wife said they were from California, and that they had tarried with the others about a month, long enough to get enough money to move on. All those arrested were taken to the State clinic in Bedford for a health examination. It is alleged that as the volume of the business at eh "resort" demanded many girls, recruits were gathered from the vicinity and afar.

The house of the raid is a frame one-story bungalow which sits back from Stringtown's one and only street some 150 yards, along a narrow dirt road. It contains four rooms.

The living room is oblong, containing in the center an oilcloth covered table. About this and on the lounges which lined two sides of the room, sat many a night those who drank the beer and liquor served up from the kitchen.  Behind the bar on the night of the raid police found enough liquor to equip a sailor's hotel. There were 56 quart and 38 pint bottles of home brew and 5 ½ pints of moonshine whisky. In the wood shed just out back of the kitchen 80 more pints of beer were dug out from their hiding place. Also in the kitchen they found a 20 gallon crock of home brew, together with bottling apparatus, all ready to be bottled. No equipment was found for the distillation of whiskey and the supposition is they bought it. [End of newspaper story]

Bedford Co., has produced two Mrs. Ella Wilhelms. 

Ella Mason Wilhelm, daughter of Jesse D. & Laura (Devore) Mason of Hyndman, Londonderry twp. Was born in 1882. She married (first name unknown) Wilhelm and lived in Youngstown, Ohio in the 1920's. Her mother continued to live in Hyndman after her father's death in 1922. The Bedford Gazette reported her visiting her mother in April 1923 and Dec.1924. Laura Mason moved to Youngstown to live with her daughter prior to her death in 1944. In 1920, Ella MASON Wilhelm lists herself as a widow and she has two daughters, in 1930 she's still on the exact same street (Mahoning St.) in Youngstown. In 1944, her mother Laura dies in Youngstown, at Ella's house on Mahoning St.. In short, all the records I have indicate that  Ella Mason Wilhelm seemed to be staying put in the same house in Youngstown, Ohio. There is no indication that she ever came back to Stringtown (near Hyndman) for one year in 1932-33 to run the above-mentioned establishment and then moved back to Youngstown to the exact same house. So this leaves us with only one possibility for the Ella Wilhelm who was arrested in 1933 - my Aunt Ella.

Ella Robina Welsh, daughter of Henry & Cora Welsh, was born 3 March 1887. She married Clyde Mason Kennel 07 April 1908. Their only child, daughter Virginia, was born five weeks later on 18 May 1908. In 1923, Clyde divorced Ella as she was then living in open adultery with Frank Wilhelm. Ella was 36, Frank was barely 20. The divorce proceedings are fabulous, Clyde must have brought half the town in to testify, and clearly Ella and young Frank were the talk of the town. The divorce was final 15 Dec. 1923. She married Frank Wilhelm in Cumberland, Maryland on April 16, 1924 once he finally turned 21 and was able to marry without parental consent. On the marriage license they both still list their residence as Hyndman, PA. I cannot find Frank & Ella anywhere on a 1930 census. As an heir to her mother estate in 1937, she is listed as Ella Wilhelm living in Cumberland, Maryland.  However, sometime between 1924 and 1933, it looks like Frank disappeared from the picture. By the time of her death in 1958, Ella had married William E. Kemp and was living in Cumberland, Md. She is buried beside her parents in the Cooks Mills Cemetery without any of the above-mentioned husbands.  Her first husband Clyde (who died in 1963) is buried several miles away in the Palo Alto Cemetery. Frank Wilhelm is an unknown, and William Kemp was still living at the time of Ella's death.

Court records from the 1933 arrest of Ella Wilhelm list no witnesses. Ella plead guilty to the liquor law violations and the count of running a bawdy house was dropped. Nor did anyone bail her out.  She sat in jail from the time of the arrest to the court plea. Ella & Karl Nissen  were charged on four counts: (1) manufacture of liquor, (2) possession of liquor,  (3) sale of liquor & (4) maintaining a bawdy house.  [Note: all misdemeanors]. Both plead guilty to the first three counts only.  The fourth was dropped. L.C. English was only charged with the three liquor violations, it seems he was the bartender for the establishment. He plead guilty. Ruby English was charged only with prostitution, she did not plead guilty but she did not contest (nollo contesto). All four were sentenced to 18 months in the county jail to be paroled after 27 days.  The arrest was on April 6 (when they went into jail since they couldn't make bail) and they were released on May 19, 1933. So they spent about 33 days in the county jail.

So those are the facts and they tell quite a tale already. But naturally a story like this leads me to speculate why she would do such a thing.  I think that Ella had thrown over a seemingly stable home for a "boy toy" in 1923.  Times were good in the '20's, why not? It seems though that Frank then tossed her aside some time before 1932 (since he's clearly nowhere to be found in '32) and by then it was the depression and she had no means of support. She was already branded a fallen woman in the town with a scandalous divorce.  I think times got tough and she did the best she could to support herself. And since her own father Henry Welsh had died of syphilis in 1924, I'm sure she knew just how easily men were willing to spend money on that sort of thing.

Several things seem odd about Ella's first marriage to Clyde, Virginia was born about 5 weeks after they got married.  She was their only child in 15 years of marriage.  I see two options: 1) Something went wrong with the birth and Ella was never able to have any more children. 2) Clyde didn't really like women and that's why there were no more children.  There are actually several items that point to me thinking Clyde was gay. Is this wild conjecture? Sure.  But hear me out. After their divorce in 1923, Clyde lived the next 40 years as a bachelor.  Something men rarely stayed in those days. Also, what reason would Ella have in 1923 to go running around with a 20 year old? I think Clyde clearly never touched her. I'm further thinking that Virginia may not even have been his.  Perhaps Ella was in trouble and Clyde saw a convenient way to both do a chivalrous thing for Ella and cover up his own preferences.  In his divorce petition he indicates that she also committed adultery "with divers other persons to your petitioner unknown."  If she'd been stepping out for quite some time with many men, then why wait 15 years to divorce her?  I think it was because he didn't want to dissolve his cover marriage. Since Clyde worked for the railroad, (whether gay or straight), he could get his kicks somewhere out of town and no one would know. Ella however, was right there in town, and by 1923, had clearly become the talk of the town.  He had no choice but to divorce her once she actually moved out to live with Frank.