The Jordan Story

James and Margaret Jordan Chapters

James Oscar in Chicago

by Dave Jordan

After divorce proceedings began in November 1911, James also left the Jordan home at 7237 Vincennes and moved in with mother, Elizabeth Priscilla Jordan. Elizabeth had previously lived in Madison with her son James Henry and Charles and her mother, but it appears that sometime after her mother died in 1908 she returned to Chicago to live in their turn-of-the-century neighborhood near Douglas Park.

In November 1911, the Cook County sheriff was instructed to find James for his court appearance. There were several attempts and finally the sheriff left a summons at 2049 W. 12th with James' mother in December 1911. There were subsequent summons' to appear before the court but James ignored them all and nothing ever happened. In 1915, the Margaret's court complaint against James was dropped due to lack of activity. Nothing else might have happed but Robert and Margaret had become more than friends and decided they wanted to marry. In 1919, Margaret initiated divorce proceedings. As part of the proceedings, several notices were put in the Chicago newspapers requesting James' presence but either James ignored them or never saw them. After a lack of response, the divorce was granted on June 19, 1919.

The address record for James, his brother Charles, and his mother is sketchy but it appears that Elizabeth P. Jordan resided at 2049 W. 12th from about 1911 through at least 1928. Periodically sons Charles and James are shown to be living at the address with her and it is likely that they all lived together throughout this period. James continued to work as an electrician at the Conway Building in Chicago through this period while Charles had various jobs from fireman, laundry worker to electrician. Their 75-year old mother Elizabeth was a laundress in 1923. James O. Jordan was not found with his mother and brother in the 1920 census and was found only once in the Chicago Directories from 1912 to 1928. Thus he continued his pattern of trying not to be found by using name changes, not responding, or not providing misinformation.

By 1931, this small Jordan family had moved a few blocks to 1107 S. Robey, a location near today's University of Illinois, Chicago Campus. On April 1931, Elizabeth P. Jordan died at age 84. There must have been some contact with these original Jordans in the 1920s as my Uncle Harold Jordan recalled that his grandmother made a great fruit cake and my father and Harold recall going to her funeral. In fact my father remembered walking down a dark narrow corridor in her home on her funeral day.

Upon his retirement from the Conway Building, James moved in with his son Herbert at 6934 S. Throop Street in Chicago. This was in the mid-1930s when James was about 67 years old. Here he had his son build an upstairs addition. However, the arrangement was short lived and about 1936 Herbert asked him to leave. My dad recalled the place was always a mess with newspapers all over and his mother complained that she had to cleanup and take care of a father-in-law who was demanding, messy and not very nice to her. It is unclear whether James ever paid all the money he promised to have the addition built, but Herbert rationalized it as compensation for ignoring his children financially after 1911.

After he left in 1936, there was little contact with James. My uncle Herb saw him on a street corner about 1940. His death certificate in 1947 indicates he was living at 6532 Maryland in Chicago. In 1947 at age 79 he was working as a stationary engineer at Marshall Fields and Co. in Chicago. It is thought that the Fields Co. owned the Conway Building, thus it appears James returned to his old company in his later years. Most likely the retirement money ran out, there was no family to support him and he needed to work.

At the end he depended on his membership in the Masonic organization and was admitted to the Illinois Masonic Hospital at 836 Wellington Avenue in Chicago on March 21, 1947 for his heart condition. He died a few days later on March 23, 1947 of myocarditis. He was 79 years old. Brother Charles took care of the funeral arrangements at Acacia Park Cemetery and Mausoleum. Brother James came down from Madison. However, it does not appear that any of his children were aware of or came to his funeral and all were in California at the time anyway as none were mentioned in his obituary. James was cremated on March 26 and the ashes were sent to Mrs. Mildred Esterhine at 6522 Maryland who lived a few houses down the street from James. It is not known who Mrs. Esterhine is or why she received his ashes. Mrs. Esterhine and the ashes is another mystery in a long series of mysteries about our James.

So passed the man who gave us our Jordan name and who got us to America, Chicago and beyond. Without him, we would not be Jordans and might yet be living in England. Our James was born as Joseph Canute Oscar Scholdberg in 1868 in the dock area of Poplar England to a Swedish merchant sailor and his English wife. He was named after his grandfather Joseph Steward and his father Knut Oscar Scholdberg. All seemed to get off to a good start but his father died unexpectedly at a young age of a heart attack in Alexandria in 1875 when young Oscar was just 7 years old. Within a year his mother had remarried and he was a stepson to her new husband James Jordan. Young Oscar retained his Scholdberg name though in this new Jordan family. By the mid-1880s though, there must have been some household tensions with the new father-in-law and/or the increasingly rougher and poorer Poplar neighborhood and teenage Oscar Scholdberg left for Chicago, where he probably stayed with his Uncle Charles Steward. Here he started a new life, changed his name to James Jordan, learned the electrician's trade and was a Master Mason by 1890. In 1893 he brought over his mother, grandmother and younger brothers, opening up a new life for them. In 1896 he married young Margaret Knowles and they had 5 children. Unfortunately, James and family life did not agree. He left home and family a number of times, became involved in spiritualism, and fought with his wife and ignored his children. By 1911, his wife and children left him and he moved back in with his mother and brother. Throughout this period though he maintained a good and steady job as electrician at the Conway Building (the Chicago Title and Trust Building at 111 W. Washington in the 1970s) and retired in the mid-1930s. Later he needed to return work to pay the bills. His life of not wanting to be found, creating aliases, providing misinformation makes all of us wonder about this man who got us to America and gave us our name.

Notes

1. Initial Web Publication Date: 9/16/2002
2. Modified:
3. Desktop Master file: Stories_Jordan