Mae Hildora Hansen Foss
Andrew Hansen was born in 1867 near Skien, Norway. Two years later his family left for America and settled in Chicago. The family arrived in time to witness the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Welcome to America Hansen family.
Andrew, at a young age, had started learning the skill of a cabinet maker with his father who was also a minister. In 1888 he married a Norwegian girl and started raising a family. At this time, for an unknown reason, he changed his surname to Foss.
By 1900 Andrew was running a cigar factory and living near the south branch of the Chicago River on the far south side of town. But, apparently the marriage was not going well and Andrew got divorced. One daughter went to live with him and his other two girls stayed with their mother.
Oldest daughter Mae Hildora stayed with her mother after the divorce. To support her family, she went to work as a book stitcher. Her mother, a younger sister and her were now living just east of Humboldt Park northwest of downtown Chicago. Also living in the neighborhood was a young man named Leland Simpson.
Leland was 2 years older than Mae. He was an electrician with Western Electric that had a huge new plant in nearby Cicero. He may have been connected to a forgotten historical event called the Eastland Disaster.
The SS Eastland was a passenger ship based in Chicago and used for tours on the lake. Western Electric had booked the Eastland and four other ships for a huge company outing on the 23rd of July 1915. The Eastland, after just being loaded with passengers, rolled over onto its side while tied to a dock in the Chicago River. A total of 844 passengers and crew died in what was the largest loss of life from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes.
You can read all about the disaster at this website...
Leland and Mae married December 11, 1916 and moved just south of Humboldt Park to the nearby Garfield Park neighborhood. Mae spent her time at home raising their son and daughter.
In1927 the new Arrow Playing Card Company, manufacturer of card and board stocks, was incorporated. They started up in a factory at 800 S. Sibley street (now called Ada Street) next to Vernon Park (now called Ariggo Park).
Vernon Park in the 1930s
The card company shared the building with the Murphy Bed Door Company. You know them, they are the ones that make the bed that folds up into the wall. At this time they were using this building for making metal space saving kitchen cabinets called Murphy Cabranette Kitchens.
In 1927 the economy was doing well. Nobody foresaw that The Great Depression was beginning. Fortunately for the Simpsons Mae decided to go to work at the new playing card company about a mile from their home. At this time they are living next door to Leland's mother, brother and a cousin that also worked at the card factory. Mae must have impressed the people at Arrow Playing Cards because she is soon a Forewoman in the payroll office.
By April 1930 the Great Depression had started. Six months earlier the stock market crashed and people were starting to feel the pressure financially. One way to get money was to rob a company and today, April 11th, was payday at the Arrow Playing Card factory.
Three masked gunmen with sawed off shotguns burst into the payroll office that afternoon. Up front they hit the cash register where Max Hamburger gave up $150 ($2,500 today) and got $20 ($325 today) from William Unruh.
But Mae had the pay envelopes for 50 girls on her desk totaling $1,200 ($20,000 today). Acting quickly she tossed the envelopes under her desk and blocked them from view. In a rush to get out before the cops came the robbers failed to see the envelopes. Mae saves the day.
In 1930, the company has arranged for an increase in capital from $60,000 to $120,000, ($2 million today) for general expansion at 734-754 Mather Street, (Now W. Lexington) before it becomes the Arrco Playing Card Company in 1935. This is less than a mile east of the factory in a building formerly owned by the American Cutlery Company. The offices are relocated to 310 S. Racine Avenue on the other side of Vernon Park. Mae goes with them.
The Racine location was the same large corporate headquarters as the Regensteiner Corporation. The Regensteiner Corporation was a major colortype printing firm led by the inventor of the four-color lithograph press, Theodore Regensteiner. Regensteiner started the Arrow Playing Card Company. The business would remain in this complex through Ted Regensteiner’s death in 1952, with expansion next door to 1224 W. Van Buren in 1971. During the ’60s, Arrco also acquired two divisions of its own: the Northbrook All Plastic Playing Card Co. and Gallant Knight, Inc., a manufacturer of chess sets. Both of those businesses were run out of suburban Northbrook, IL.
In the 1980s, the Regensteiner Corp. still had about 300 employees, and continued to churn out Arrco Playing Cards, along with portions of major magazines (including Time and Newsweek) and catalogs for the likes of Marshall Field and L.L. Bean. The printing business was quickly de-stabilizing, however, and the descendants of Theodore Regensteiner were ready to sell.
In 1987, much of the business was divided up and conquered, with Grolier Inc. taking over the children’s book publishing operations and a group of investors buying the last remaining Chicago printing plant. In a less publicized move, the Arrco Playing Card Co. was also sold off to its rival of 60 years, the United States Playing Card Company. The USPCCo kept the Arrco name alive for a while, but by the end of the century, the beloved brand had largely vanished entirely,
Mae Hildora worked for Arrow/Arrco for almost 20 years.
(Many thanks to her grandson for sharing this photo)