Necrology of Toledo's Woodlawn Cemetery
Thomas Henry Tracy*
Thomas Henry Tracy was born in Bowling Green, Ohio, July 13, 1859, to Joseph Rex and Hanna (Burdick). Tracy received his primary and secondary education in Bowling Green public schools and attended Normal College in Mansfield, Ohio. He studied law at the firm of Bissell & Gorrill and was admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1883. Eventually, Bissell & Gorrill made Tracy a partner and he remained with the firm for ten years.
On April 1, 1892, Tracy entered into a partnership with Harry E. King. The firm of King & Tracy practiced both general and corporate law in all of the courts in northern Ohio. King retired in April of 1914 and Tracy became senior partner at Tracy, Chapman & Welles, the largest, most prominent law firm in Toledo in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Tracy took a special interest in the growth of Toledo's cultural, economic, political and educational institutions. He served as director and attorney for the Toledo-Edison Company, and the Toledo & Indiana Railway Company. He was a member of the Toledo Board of Education and he assisted the Toledo Republican Party. In 1889 Tracy accepted an appointment as a trustee for the Natural Gas Department of Toledo where he participated in the planning and construction of the city's natural gas plant.
Tracy married Laura E. Pratt of Weston, Ohio, on January 1, 1885 and the couple had five children. Thomas H. Jr., born June 15, 1890 in Toledo, attended high school in Asheville, North Carolina and then the University of Michigan. He later became president of Tracy Auto Sales Company, a distributor of cars.
Thomas H. Tracy, Jr. went to work for the Toledo Screw Products Company. During World War I he was engaged in government work in connection with the manufacturing of munitions. He became the vice-president of Airway Electric Appliance Company, a manufacturer of vacuum cleaners and electric motors. In 1921, he became the district agent for the Earl & Stevens Motor Cars. He eventually built up a large sales organization and became the sole agent in his district for the cars. He organized his business under the name of Tracy Sales Co., Inc.
Tracy married Bess Whitaker of Toledo and the couple had three children. Bess died in 1919. He was remarried to Ruth Haviland on May 10, 1920. Tracy died September 9, 1929 at the age of 39. His father died December 27, 1933 at the age of 74, and his mother died October 9, 1952.[John M. Killits, ed., Toledo and Lucas County, Ohio 1623-1923, vol. 3 (Chicago: S.J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1923), pp.96-97; Charles S. Van Tassel, ed., Men of Northwestern Ohio (Toledo: Hadley Printing Co., 1898), p.31; and Charles S. Van Tassel, The Story of the Maumee Valley, Toledo, and the Sandusky Region (Chicago: S.J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1929), pp.613-614].
* This image was changed on a correction submitted by Mr. Larry Leach (a great-grandson of Thomas Henry Tracy). The previous image showed Doria Tracy (shown below). Toledo's Attic apologizes for this error and the inconvenience it may have caused.
