Claude A. Lord (1889–1954)

Pottsville’s funeral-director mayor — sixteen years in office, a new City Hall, and the boulevard that carries his name. Markers: ★ verified against a contemporaneous or official record — a vital record, a dated page image, an official return, or a document Lord signed himself · ✔ confirmed by a retrospective or secondary source, chiefly his 1954 obituaries · ✎ corrects a common error · ⚑ open/caution.

Claude A. Lord was a Pottsville funeral director who served four consecutive terms as mayor of the city, from January 1, 1934 until 1950 — sixteen years, and a tenure the papers remembered as one of the most colorful in the city’s history. ✔ He was born in the town on March 13, 1889 and died there on January 6, 1954. ★ During those years the city built a new City Hall — the police floor inside it was the piece Lord wrote about as his own project — and modernized the street lighting. ✔ In his last four years the state agreed to build the long-sought boulevard east of the downtown, the voters approved a bond issue toward it, and construction began. ✔ Pottsville City Council named that road for him four years after his death. ★ His son G. Ryland Lord followed him both into the funeral business and into the county office where his own public life had begun. ✔

An undertaker’s trade

Claude Archibald Lord was born at Pottsville on March 13, 1889, to Harry W. Lord and Arabella (Sterner) Lord — the maiden name as his death certificate records it. ★

✎ Two figures repeated after his death are wrong. His own obituary in the Pottsville Republican said he was “born in Pottsville in 1890,” and the wire obituaries gave his age at death as 63. His Pennsylvania death certificate gives his date of birth as 3/13/1889 and his age as 64 yrs, and he twice swore to the same date himself: the draft registration card he signed in 1917 gives “March 13, 1889” and his age as 28, and the one he signed in April 1942 gives the same date and his age as 53. Three records, two of them in his own hand, against a newspaper’s round number.

The middle name comes from those same cards. He registered in 1917 as “Claude Archibald Lord” and again in 1942 as “Claude Archibald Lord,” though he signed both cards, as he signed everything else the record preserves, Claude A. Lord. ★ The death certificate carries only the initial. ⚑

He was educated in the Pottsville public schools and then went to Long Branch, New Jersey, to learn undertaking under John B. Flood, whom the Republican described as a prominent New Jersey undertaker and councilman. ✔ He worked for a time in Pittsburgh and returned home to the firm of Shoener Bros. ✔ That last he confirmed in his own hand: on his 1917 draft card, aged twenty-eight and living at 613 West Market Street, he gave his trade as “Undertaker” and his employer as “Shoener Brothers” of 110 East Market Street, with a wife and child dependent on him. ★ He was a graduate of the Eckels Embalming School in Philadelphia, and the Harrisburg Evening News reckoned him a licensed undertaker for forty-one years, which would date his licence to about 1913. ✔

He opened his own business at Third and West Arch Streets about 1924, by the obituary’s reckoning — though his son’s obituary would later date the firm to 1915, nine years earlier than that and two years before Lord’s own draft card still gave his employer as Shoener Brothers. ✔ For that corner there is a harder record: Boyd’s directory for 1928–29 lists “LORD CLAUDE A (Helen E), Undertaker 301 W Arch,” with “h do” — he lived at the business address. ★ Immediately above it stands “Lord Arabella E (wid Harry W) h301 W Arch,” his widowed mother at the same address, which on its own places his father’s death before 1928. ★ The certificate fixes it exactly: June 10, 1925. ★ The same volume lists him among the city’s undertakers. ★

By April 1942 he had moved to 410 Garfield Square — his draft card that month gives it as both his home and, with City Hall, his place of business, the two halves of his working life set down in one line. ★ The obituary says he transformed it into “one of the finest undertaking homes in the state.” ✔ By 1950 the city directory carries the firm as the Claude A. Lord Funeral Salon, “funeral home, undertakers, 410 Garfield sq,” with Lord himself still living at the address. ★ His son Ryland had taken a funeral director’s licence in 1941 and was working in the firm by then. ✔

The birthday those records fix was kept in style at least once. On Wednesday, March 13, 1935, more than two hundred people — the city administration and their wives, the school board, the press — sat down to a birthday dinner for the mayor at the Necho Allen Hotel, and presented him with gifts that included a grandfather’s clock and a portrait of himself. ★ He was turning forty-six.

The Lords before him

His father, Harry W. Lord, was born at Pottsville on September 26, 1864, and died there on June 10, 1925, aged sixty. ★ For many years he was the business partner of O. T. Sterner, with whom he conducted a paint and paperhanging business in the town. ✔ Arabella’s maiden name was Sterner too; whether she and the partner were related is unrecorded. ⚑

Harry’s own death certificate names his parents as Isaac Lord and Mary Maning, as the certificate spells her. ★ Isaac was born in Pennsylvania about 1821 — the 1880 return implies that year, the 1850 one implies the next — and worked as a carpenter. ★ The census of 1850 finds him in Pottsville South Ward at twenty-eight, with Mary, thirty, two small children in the house and fifteen hundred dollars in real estate; the census of 1880 finds him at fifty-nine at 215 6th Street, Mary recorded as his wife at sixty-one, and a fifteen-year-old son in the house — the Harry above, set down that year as Henry. ★ He died before Pennsylvania began registering deaths statewide in 1906, so no certificate names his own parents. ⚑

The town’s early record holds the family Isaac belongs to. Beers’s 1916 genealogical volume, in a sketch of another family entirely, names Elijah Lord, a pioneer settler of Pottsville buried in the Presbyterian cemetery, whose children were “Seth, Charles, Peggin, Henry, Jeremiah, Isaac, William and Frank, all of whom lived and died at Pottsville” — among them a Henry Lord, born at Pottsville on December 23, 1819, “a carpenter, and followed contracting to the end of his days.” ✔ Ella Zerbey Elliott’s Old Schuylkill Tales (1906) lists four of those sons — “Jeremiah, Charles, Isaac and Henry Lord” — among the town’s early builders and carpenters, and one of them, Charles, founded the planing mill that became the Sailor Planing Mill & Lumber Company. ✔ Beers gives that Isaac no dates, no wife and no children — the county’s orphans’-court file gives him a day in court. In April 1841 an Isaac Lord, “a minor above the age of fourteen years,” petitioned to choose his own guardian as “Son of Henry Lord late of the Borough of Pottsville”, deceased — Henry Lord being the name every lifetime record gives the settler Beers calls Elijah. ★ A minor of that description was born between 1820 and 1827, and Pottsville’s 1850 census holds exactly one Isaac Lord in that window: this article’s carpenter of the South Ward. ★ The settler’s own page carries the file.

⚑ Whether that petitioner and that carpenter are one man is the open link in this family’s record, and a fourth Pottsville generation turns on it. What would close it is a document naming Isaac’s father and his trade in the same breath — a church register, a deed, a will. None has surfaced. What stands in its place is the age window and a given name the borough’s censuses carry exactly once.

A Lord was in the coal country earlier still. Rupp’s history of 1845, the earliest for the region, puts a Shadrack Lord on Eagle hill among the first families at Port Carbon — named in the same breath as John Pott as “the pioneer settlers of this portion of the anthracite region” — and calls him “father of Mr. Lord at Bayhill.” ✔ ⚑ Nothing links him to Elijah, or to this family.

Deputy coroner, and a first defeat

Lord entered public life in 1928, when he was appointed deputy coroner of the Pottsville district — the obituary’s account of it. ✔ The office is his in the record that same February, twice, and by a hard road: the Republican and Herald of February 1, reporting the death of his eleven-year-old son Creighton, calls the boy the son of “Deputy Coroner and Mrs. Claude A. Lord, of Pottsville,” and the Republican’s inquest notice three days later gives the boy’s father, Claude A. Lord, a well known undertaker, “also a deputy coroner in charge” of the Pottsville district. ★ He was keeping his undertaking business at Third and West Arch through those same years. ★

Three months later the office took him into the Skidmore case. Patrolman Morgan E. Skidmore was shot on duty on April 16, 1928 and died that day — the only line-of-duty death the Pottsville department’s memorial roll lists, and its own page tells that story. ✔ Two days afterward the Republican, reporting a question over a gun found at the dead man’s house, set down who had been in it before the body was brought home: “The only persons who visited the home of Skidmore before the body was taken there was Deputy Coroner C. A. Lord, Harry Bushar and a Mr. King” — the last two accompanying Lord. ★ That report gives the deputy coroner by initials alone. Reading them as his rests on the February notices, which carry Claude A. Lord in full in the office, and on Boyd’s directory for 1928–29, whose Pottsville pages carry no other Lord with those initials. ⚑ What he did at the house, the reporting does not say.

A year later he ran for mayor and lost. In the city election of November 5, 1929, under the headline “Dengler Is Elected,” the Republican’s table of the total city vote records Dengler 3,567, Lord 3,159 — a margin of about four hundred. ★ The table marks Lord’s name “D” and John B. Dengler’s “R-C.” ★

Those letters record the party columns a candidate’s name stood in, not a declaration of party membership — worth keeping in mind here, because Lord’s ballot lines moved. He stood on the Democratic line alone in 1929; on both tickets in 1933; on the Republican line in 1937; on both again in 1941; and the nomination he lost in 1949 was the Republican one. ★ His own party allegiance goes unrecorded, and this page assigns him none. ⚑

Elected on both tickets, 1933

Four years later he ran again, and won on a ballot that made partisanship beside the point. “Claude A. Lord, nominated on both the Republican and Democratic tickets was named Mayor of Pottsville in the election of Tuesday,” the Republican reported on November 8, 1933. ★ The same front page carried a Republican sweep of the county and the repeal of Prohibition, which Schuylkill County voted five to one. ★ Elected to council the same night was F. Pierce Mortimer, himself a former mayor — a surname that returns at the end of this story.

Lord took office on January 1, 1934, and held the office for four consecutive terms, until 1950. ✔

Three re-elections

The three re-elections that followed each had a different character.

1937 was the fight. Under the headline “Lord, Lynaugh and Moore Win By Over 1400 Majority as City Remains Soundly Republican,” the Republican reported that “the Pottsville City Administration was continued in power by a majority of approximately 1400.” ★ Lord ran on the Republican line this time, against the Democrat David Reeves, and carried the city by 1,495. ★

It was close enough to keep both camps up all night. “It was not until a late hour this morning that David Reeves conceded his defeat,” the paper reported. “Mayor Lord had claimed victory by about 1500 after the first few precincts were returned. Friends staged an automobile parade around the city when his election became assured.” ★ The mayor took the returns at City Hall — in the building the city had moved into that spring. ★

1941 was no fight at all. “In the city there was no contest, Mayor Claude A. Lord being elected unanimously on both tickets,” the paper recorded under the heading “No Fight in City,” the same being true of the two councilmen elected with him, James A. Lynaugh and Frank Youngfleish. ★

1945 returned him for the last time: “LORD ELECTED FOR 4TH TERM,” with the sitting councilmen and school directors re-elected alongside him. ★

Sixteen years

What his contemporaries remembered first was the manner. He was “known throughout the state and nation as one of the most colorful of chief executives,” his obituary said, and he “played the role of Mayor and entered the political action that went with the office with zest.” ✔ Everyone knew him “for his theatre parties for children, for his bombastic utterances at Council meetings, for his friendship with the great and for what appeared to be a never failing source of energy” — and at social gatherings “he laughed loudest when newspapermen sang song parodies ribbing his administration.” ✔

The paper’s editorial the next day put the same thing more drily: “Lord believed in advertising himself and Pottsville. He was eminently successful in both endeavors.” ✔

A third Thanksgiving

The Harrisburg Evening News credited him with creating “a third Thanksgiving Day in 1940,” and that one can be run down exactly. ✔ The autumn of 1940 fell in the middle of the national quarrel over the date of the holiday. From 1939 President Roosevelt had proclaimed the second-to-last Thursday of November rather than the last, the states had divided over which day to keep, and some kept both; in 1940 the proclaimed day was November 21 and the traditional one November 28. ✔ Most Pennsylvania towns were preparing to keep both.

Pottsville, the Allentown Morning Call reported, “is going them just one better. Residents of that city will give thanks no less than three days!” ★ The extra day was Lord’s. By proclamation he set aside December 5, 1940 as a civic thanksgiving marking the completion of the Aetna Steel plant, an industry moved from Brooklyn that was to employ 250 men at the start. ★

It is a fair miniature of the man: asked to choose between two Thanksgivings, he proclaimed a third, and pinned it to a new payroll.

The building program

Behind the manner was a building program, at least as the same editorial reckoned it up: “The first half of his administration was an era of great accomplishment in Pottsville. Then a new city hall was built, the street lighting system was modernized and Pottsville in many ways became a real third class city.” ✔

The city moved into its new City Hall in April 1937, and the Republican’s account of the move puts Lord at the centre of it: “Mayor Lord personally conducted close friends and representative citizens through the new building, assisted by the entire staff of municipal employees.” ★ The paper described a building “of three stories and 120 feet square, constructed of Indiana sandstone,” whose first floor held the mayor’s suite and the police department together, and whose entrance vestibule overlooked Centre Street. ★ The building’s own history is told separately.

The police floor was his particular project, and he wrote about it himself. In an essay for the reissued Police Historical Book of Pottsville, titled “The Evolution of an Idea,” he described taking office in 1934 to find a force of “fourteen men enrolled and two substitutes,” capable enough but “handicapped by the lack of co-operation and the absence of interest in them.” ★ In planning the new City Hall, he wrote, “I was able to inject into the plans, many of my own embellishments so that the Department of Justice in this City should have a home second to none” — and a basement “equipped as it is with locker rooms, modern gymnasium, shower rooms, recreation room, ordnance room and a revolver and rifle range the entire length of the building.” ★ By the time he wrote, the force stood at “thirty-five men actively under arms.” ★ The department’s own long history runs through that floor.

The war years

During the Second World War, his obituary recorded, Lord “was proud of his feat in writing, organizing and producing ‘Club Americana’ at the high school stadium to raise funds for Christmas boxes to all Pottsvillians in the armed forces.” ✔ The same account credits him with the American Legion Certificate of Merit for outstanding service and the VFW Citizenship Medal for civic affairs. ✔

The boulevard

The achievement that outlasted him came at the end. “During the final four years of Lord’s sixteen as Mayor the state finally agreed to build a boulevard through the city, voters approved a $450,000 bond issue and work was finally launched on a project that had been sought for more than two decades.” ✔ It was the state that built the road; the city’s part was the bond issue and, as the obituary put it, having “joined with the highway department in construction of the boulevard.” ✔

It was known simply as Pottsville Boulevard. ★ The road ran east of the city’s centre, and the published route history of the highway — traced from Pennsylvania Department of Highways maps — has it carrying U.S. Route 122, the bypass that took the through route off Centre Street. ⚑

The mayor absent

The last stretch of the sixteen years he did not serve. Councilman Frank W. Youngfleish — director of public parks and later director of finances, elected to Council alongside Lord in 1941 — “was acting mayor during the illness of former Mayor Claude A. Lord for two years,” Youngfleish’s own obituary recorded in January 1953. ✔

The contemporary record catches it in progress. At the Council meeting of March 1949, the Republican noted, “there were no fireworks. With Mayor Claude A. Lord absent, Acting Mayor Frank Youngfleish announced at the outset of proceedings that henceforth he would be ‘an active Mayor’ and if and when exchanges of personalities developed he would recess or adjourn Council meetings.” ★

The illness goes unnamed, and the two years undated. ⚑ What the record does show is that by the spring of 1949 the mayor who had presided over Council for fifteen years was absent from it, and another man was keeping order in his place.

The fifth term he did not get

He wanted a fifth term and stood for it. At the primary of September 13, 1949 the city turned him out: “George S. Heffner was nominated for Mayor … by decisive majorities at the primary election in Pottsville,” the Republican reported the next day. “Thus the 16 year control of the city administration was snatched from the hands of Mayor Claude A. Lord who aspired to a fifth term.” ★

The paper’s own reading of the defeat was that the field, not the record, undid him: “The contest was rather muddled in the minds of the voters due to the four cornered opposition the Mayor encountered. Lord was able to muster his full strength but the opposition was divided in four parts.” ★ He had lost the nomination, not a general election — sixteen years ended in his own party’s primary. He left office in 1950. ✔

The five children

He had five children, and the Philadelphia embalming school he had gone through — Eckels — took two of them in turn, one of his sons and one of his daughters. ✔ Only the son made a career of the trade; the daughter’s life went another way.

G. Ryland Lord was born at Pottsville on March 26, 1921. ✔ He finished Pottsville High School with the class of 1939, went to Eckels, and took his funeral director’s licence in 1941; he was in the firm from then, and ran it until he retired in 1992. ✔ The war came in the middle of it: he served as an Army medic, at the Normandy landings and in the Hürtgen Forest, and was a Purple Heart recipient. ✔ Then he took up his father’s first public office. Claude had entered politics in 1928 as deputy coroner of the Pottsville district; Ryland was deputy coroner from 1945 to 1956, and went on to be prothonotary of Schuylkill County (1956–64), chief assessor (1964–67), and executive director of the county housing authority until 1993. ✔ He died on May 24, 2010, aged eighty-nine. ✔

Jacqueline Lord Shields was born at Pottsville in 1923. ✔ She went to Pottsville Area High School, Sullins College, Syracuse University and the Eckels School of Mortuary Science, and took a masters-plus-thirty from Lehigh. ✔ She taught as a certified reading specialist in the Blue Mountain School District and tutored reading privately. ✔ Twice she ran for the state House in the 125th District. ✔ She had married Charles Shields of New Philadelphia, and she died on July 25, 2012, aged eighty-eight, at her second home in South Carolina. ✔

The third to outlive him was an adopted daughter, Eleanor — Elinore in her brother’s obituary, Eleanor in her sister’s — married to Edmund Schlitzer and living in Pottsville. ✔ She died before May 2010, when her brother’s obituary named her among those who had gone before him. ✔

The two who did not outlive him were J. Creighton Lord and Patricia E. Lord, whose fuller names survive in their brother’s obituary rather than in their father’s. ✔ The stone in Charles Baber Cemetery spells the son out: James Creighton Lord. ⚑

Creighton, the eldest, died on January 31, 1928, aged eleven. He was coasting at Third and Race Streets when his sled ran into an automobile; the driver, J. Malville May of Pottsville, carried him to a physician, who found him injured internally, and he died before he could be got to a hospital. ★ He was buried from the house at 301 West Arch Street that Saturday, after a Mass of High Requiem at St. Patrick’s Church, in Charles Baber Cemetery — “a delegation of boys, twenty-one in number, all close companions and playmates,” among the hundreds who came. ★ The county coroner, Dr. T. C. Fegley, said he would hold an inquest and conduct it himself; the boy’s father was the deputy coroner for the district. ★

✎ His father’s obituary puts that death in the wrong place and the wrong year. In 1954 it has the boy “killed about 17 years ago by an auto at Third and Arch Sts.” Seventeen years would be 1937 — and Third and Arch is the corner the same obituary gives for Lord’s own funeral business, the one Boyd’s directory numbers 301 West Arch. The contemporaneous papers give the last day of January 1928, the inquest notice gives the corner of Third and Race, and the stone in Charles Baber Cemetery carries the years 1916 and 1928. It is the same obituary that gives his father’s birth year as 1890 and his first election as 1932.

Death

Claude A. Lord died at his home at 410 Garfield Square at 1:20 in the afternoon of Wednesday, January 6, 1954, aged 64. ★ He had been in apparent good health the day before and complained of not feeling well that morning. ★ His death certificate records the cause as myocardial infarction, four hours, arising from coronary atherosclerosis, with renal hypertension of four years’ standing among the contributing causes — the “heart attack” the papers reported, set down in a physician’s hand. ★

He was survived by the three children named above and by five grandchildren; Creighton and Patricia had gone before him. ✔ His wife, the former Helen Dormer of St. Clair, outlived him by sixteen years, and lies in the same mausoleum. ⚑ He had worshipped at Trinity Reformed Church. ✔ He was buried on January 9, 1954, in Union Cemetery at Schuylkill Haven, as the certificate records. ★ His Find a Grave memorial adds that the burial was in the mausoleum. ⚑

“In tribute to the memory of former Mayor Lord”

Four years after his death, Pottsville City Council took up the road. At its meeting on the night of Tuesday, February 11, 1958, council voted unanimously to rename Pottsville Boulevard as Claude A. Lord Boulevard, “in tribute to the memory of former Mayor Lord who headed the city 16 years.” ★ The resolution was introduced by Mayor Michael A. Close; the motion was made by Councilman Mortimer and seconded by Councilman McKeon. ★ ⚑ The 1958 report gives no first name. He is very likely the F. Pierce Mortimer elected to council on the same November night in 1933 that first sent Lord to the mayor’s office, though nothing on record joins the two. (The 3–2 vote recorded on the same front page belonged to a separate quarrel over the Pottsville Water Company’s rates; on the boulevard the council was of one mind.) ★

✎ The renaming is often dated to the 1960s — Wikipedia’s article on Pennsylvania Route 61 says so, on the strength of a 1970 state highway map, which can only show that the name was in place by 1970. The council record puts it at February 1958.

Two things are worth keeping straight about the street that carries his name. It is not the street beside the City Hall of his administration: that building’s entrance looks onto Centre Street, as the 1937 account of the move describes it. ★ Claude A. Lord Boulevard is a separate thing — the highway corridor east of the city’s centre, signed today as South and North Claude A. Lord Boulevard. ⚑ And the route number it is known by today came later than the name: by the published route history of the highway, the road carried U.S. Route 122 when it was built and when it was renamed, and became Route 61 only with the 1963 renumbering. ⚑ The name itself has long since passed into ordinary official use: the Pennsylvania Bulletin printed a Pottsville business address on the boulevard in 2009. ★

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Sources

• Certificate of Death, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Health — Claude A. Lord, File No. 8841 (Pennsylvania, U.S., Death Certificates, 1906–1972; Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, via Ancestry) [subscription]
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  The official state record, read from the certificate image. "Name of deceased: CLAUDE / A. / LORD." Date of death Jan. 6, 1954; "Date of birth 3/13/1889"; "Age (in years last birthday) 64 yrs"; birthplace "Pottsville, Penna."; usual occupation "Funeral Director," self employed; residence 410 Garfield Square. "Father's name: Harry W. Lord." "Mother's maiden name: Arabella Sterner." Cause of death: "Myocardial Infarction" (interval 4 hrs) due to "Coronary Atherosclerosis," with "Hypertension, Renal" of four years as other significant conditions. Burial 1/9/54 at "Union Cemetery," Schuylkill Haven. This certificate — not the obituaries — settles the birth date and the age at death, and it gives the middle name only as the initial.

• Certificate of Death, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania — Harry W. Lord, File No. 64284 (Pennsylvania, U.S., Death Certificates, 1906–1972; Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, via Ancestry) [subscription]
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  The official state record for the subject's father. "Harry W Lord"; birth date 26 Sep 1864, birthplace "Pottsville, Pennsylvania"; death date 10 Jun 1925 at Pottsville, Schuylkill; death age 60. "Father: Isaac Lord." "Mother: Mary Maning." Certificate Number 64284. This is what carries the paternal line back a further generation — the 1954 obituary names Harry, and this names Harry's own parents — and it replaces the 1928 city directory's negative evidence (a widow at the same address) with an exact date of death.

• 1880 U.S. Federal Census, Pottsville, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania — Isaac Lord household (National Archives microfilm T9, roll 1193, p. 475b, enumeration district 226; via Ancestry) [subscription]
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  The household at 215 6th Street, dwelling 179: "Isaac Lord," 59, self (head); "Mary Lord," 61, wife; "Henry W. Lord," 15, son — the subject's father, entered under Henry rather than Harry. Father's and mother's birthplaces both Pennsylvania. Independently corroborates the parentage given on Harry's death certificate, from a record taken forty-five years earlier and by a different hand.

• 1850 U.S. Federal Census, Pottsville South Ward, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania — Isaac Lord household (National Archives microfilm M432, roll 827, p. 387b; via Ancestry) [subscription]
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  Dwelling 189, family 193: "Isaac Lord," 28, occupation "Carpenter," real estate valued at 1500; "Mary Lord," 30; "Isaia Lord," 3; "Albert Lord," 0. Birthplace Pennsylvania. Isaac is already head of his own household here, which is why this record establishes his trade and his standing but not his parents — a point the page states rather than glosses.

• 'G. Ryland Lord' (obituary), Republican and Herald, Pottsville, May 26, 2010, p. A9 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
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  The obituary of the subject's son, read from the page image and summarised here rather than reproduced (a 2010 newspaper is in copyright; this page cites and links rather than republishes). It gives his birth at Pottsville on March 26, 1921 and his death on May 24, 2010 aged 89; his parents as Claude A. and Helen E. Dormer Lord; Pottsville High School class of 1939, then Eckels Mortuary School in Philadelphia; a funeral director's license in 1941 and the running of the family firm until his retirement in 1992; Army service as a medic in the Hürtgen Forest and at the Normandy invasion, and a Purple Heart; and a public career as deputy coroner 1945–56, prothonotary of Schuylkill County 1956–64, chief assessor 1964–67, and executive director of the county housing authority 1967–93. It names as predeceasing him his sisters Elinore Schlitzer and Patricia E. Lord and his brother J. Creighton Lord, and as surviving him his sister Jacqueline Shields. It also states that his father established the firm in 1915 — a date this page does not adopt; see the note on the 1954 obituary and the 1917 draft card.

• 'Jacqueline Lord Shields' (obituary), Republican and Herald, Pottsville, July 27, 2012, p. A16 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
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  The obituary of the subject's daughter, likewise summarised rather than reproduced. It gives her birth at Pottsville in 1923 and her death on July 25, 2012 aged 88, at her second home in Conway, South Carolina; her parents as Claude A. Lord — whom it calls a legendary Pottsville mayor — and Helen Dormer Lord; her schooling at Pottsville Area High School, Sullins College, Syracuse University and the Eckels School of Mortuary Science, and a masters-plus-thirty from Lehigh; her work as a certified reading specialist in the Blue Mountain School District and as a private reading tutor; and two campaigns for state representative in the 125th District. It names her predeceasing siblings as G. Ryland Lord and Eleanor Schlitzer, both of Pottsville, and Creighton and Patricia Lord, "who each died at an early age." Note the spelling: this obituary has Eleanor, her brother's has Elinore.

• Schuylkill County Orphans' Court — petition of Isaac Lord, son of Henry Lord, to choose a guardian, April 1841 (Estate Files, 1841; Pennsylvania, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1683–1993, via Ancestry) [subscription]
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  Read from the file images (film 005549994, images 458–459, in the Schuylkill > Estate Files, 1841 section). A printed petition form filled in manuscript: "THE petition of Isaac Lord Son of Henry Lord late of the Borough of Pottsville in said county, deceased, RESPECTFULLY SHEWETH, That your petitioner is a minor above the age of fourteen years, and hath no guardian to take care of his person and estate," praying to be admitted to make choice of a guardian; signed Isaac Lord, witness Edw Owen Parry. The verso is docketed "Petition of Isaac Lord for Guardian 1841" with the court's order of April 17, 1841 at Orwigsburg admitting the petitioner's choice of Samuel Sillyman as guardian. A minor above fourteen in April 1841 was born between 1820 and 1827 — squarely on this article's Isaac, the one Isaac Lord in Pottsville's 1850 census. The same file holds the widow Susanna Lord's petition counting Henry's "issue Eight Children" and a matching choice-of-guardian petition by a brother, Jeremiah; the full file is set out on the Elijah Lord page.

• I. Daniel Rupp, History of Northampton, Lehigh, Monroe, Carbon and Schuylkill Counties (Harrisburg: Hickok and Cantine, 1845), p. 273 (Internet Archive)
  License: public-domain

  The earliest county history, on the first settlers around Pottsville: "At the present Port Carbon, several families had settled; these were Mr. Stitzel, known in his day as 'Der Zimmerman,' i. e., the carpenter; Shadrack Lord, father of Mr. Lord at Bayhill. Shadrack had settled on Eagle hill. These families, with Mr. Pott, were the pioneer settlers of this portion of the anthracite region." The same passage places Nicho Allen — so spelled — at the Big Spring on the Broad Mountain, in the house "known as the 'Black Cabin.'" Searched and negative for any Lord in the lumber trade, any Lord in partnership with Mr. Pott, and any Lord founding New Philadelphia. The same three searches are negative in Ella Zerbey Elliott's Old Schuylkill Tales (1906), the 1876 Historical Sketch of Pottsville, both volumes of Beers (1916) and the biographical (second) volume of Schalck and Henning (1907), none of which names Shadrack Lord either — though Elliott DOES name four other Lords as early Pottsville carpenters (see the Elliott entry). The historical (first) volume of Schalck and Henning names him once — as "Shadrach Lord," closing its repetition of Rupp's settler roster in the Pottsville chapter (vol. I, p. 257) — and adds nothing about him. The index entry "Lord, Henry 687" is printed in both volumes of Beers; the page itself is in volume II (see the Beers entry below).

• J. H. Beers, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania: Genealogy — Family History — Biography (Chicago: J. H. Beers & Co., 1916), vol. II, p. 687 (Internet Archive)
  License: public-domain

  Inside a sketch of the Shellhammer family, the Lord genealogy this page could not otherwise reach: "Elijah Lord, Mrs. Shellhammer's grandfather, was a pioneer settler in Pottsville, and died in the borough. He is buried in the Presbyterian cemetery. His children were: Seth, Charles, Peggin, Henry, Jeremiah, Isaac, William and Frank, all of whom lived and died at Pottsville." And of one of them: "Henry Lord, father of Mrs. Shellhammer, was born Dec. 23, 1819, at Pottsville, and passed all his life there, dying Feb. 7, 1889, as the result of injuries received in an accident. He was a carpenter, and followed contracting to the end of his days." Four of Elijah's eight sons — Jeremiah, Charles, Isaac and Henry — are the four Lords Elliott lists as early Pottsville carpenters, so the two sources describe one family. Beers gives Isaac no dates, no wife and no children — the gap the April 1841 orphans'-court petition closes from the record side (see the petition entry above, and the Elijah Lord page for the full file). The index entry "Lord, Henry 687" is printed in BOTH volumes; the page itself is in volume II.

• J. H. Beers, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania: Genealogy — Family History — Biography (1916), vol. I, pp. 606–607 (Internet Archive)
  License: public-domain

  In a sketch of Conrad K. Hock, on the Pottsville planing mill: "He has ever since been associated with the planing mill and lumber business, which is now one of his principal interests. It was established originally by Charles Lord, the firm afterwards becoming Weed & Sailor, and a number of years ago it was incorporated as The Sailor Planing Mill & Lumber Company." The Charles Lord of Elliott's carpenter list and of Elijah's children, in the lumber trade. Recorded because it corrects this page's own earlier claim to have searched and found no Lord in that trade — it also means a Lord lumber business did exist in Pottsville, a century after the settlement Rupp describes and with no shown connection to it.

• Ella Zerbey Elliott, Old Schuylkill Tales: A History of Interesting Events, Traditions and Anecdotes (Pottsville, 1906), p. 295 (Internet Archive)
  License: public-domain

  On the town's early tradesmen: "The early builders, contractors and dealers in mountain stone, and carpenters were: Charles Gillingham, Adam and Daniel Eiler, Jeremiah, Charles, Isaac and Henry Lord, Capt. Isaac Lykens, Isaac Severn, John McBarron and Hugh Dolan and Daniel Old." Four Lords, at the trade the 1850 census gives the Isaac Lord of this article — and two of the given names the family carried. Elliott is a 1906 retrospective and names no dates, no addresses and no relationships, so it establishes that Lords worked as carpenters in early Pottsville and nothing further; it does not connect them to one another or to this family. Searched and negative for Shadrack Lord.

• Registration Card, Claude Archibald Lord, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania (U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918; National Archives, via Ancestry) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  Self-attested and signed "Claude A. Lord." "Name in full: Claude Archibald Lord"; "Age, in yrs: 28"; home address "613 West Market, Pottsville, Pa."; "Date of birth March 13, 1889"; "Where were you born? Pottsville"; "What is your present trade, occupation, or office? Undertaker"; "By whom employed? Shoener Brothers"; where employed, "110 East Market Street"; dependents, "Wife + Child." The earliest record consulted here that carries the full middle name, and an independent confirmation of both the birth date and the Shoener Bros. connection.

• Registration Card, Claude Archibald Lord, Local Board No. 1, Pottsville (U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942; National Archives, via Ancestry) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  The "old man's registration" of April 27, 1942, self-attested. "Claude Archibald Lord"; place of residence "410 Garfield Square, Pottsville, Schuylkill, Penna."; "Age in years: 53"; "Date of birth March 13, 1889"; place of birth "Pottsville, Schuylkill"; person who will always know your address, "Mrs. Helene E. Lord, 410 Garfield Sq."; employer, "Self"; and — the line that catches him in both of his working lives at once — "Place of employment or business: 410 Garfield Sq. & City Hall, Pottsville." Pins his move to Garfield Square to no later than April 1942.

• Pottsville, Pennsylvania, City Directory, 1950, p. 182 (U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995, via Ancestry) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  "Lord Claude A (Helen E) (Claude A Lord Funeral Salon) funeral dir 410 Garfield sq h do," and the firm's own display line: "LORD CLAUDE A FUNERAL SALON … funeral home, undertakers, 410 Garfield sq tel 3 or 6." The source for the business's name, and for his still living at the address in 1950, the year he left office.

• 'Claude A. Lord Is the New Mayor,' Pottsville Republican, November 8, 1933, p. 1 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  "Claude A. Lord, nominated on both the Republican and Democratic tickets was named Mayor of Pottsville in the election of Tuesday." The same front page carries the banner "Republicans Carry County 20,000 Majority / National Prohibition Amendment Repealed," a sub-head "Gangloff, Evans And Enterline Winners In Big G. O. P. Victory," and a column headed "REPEAL WINS IN SCH. CO. 5 TO 1." It also records that F. Pierce Mortimer, "former mayor and school director was named to council as was James A. Lynaugh, former fire chief of the city" — the same Mortimer who would move the 1958 motion naming the boulevard for Lord.

• 'Lord, Lynaugh and Moore Win By Over 1400 Majority as City Remains Soundly Republican,' Pottsville Republican, November 3, 1937, p. 1 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  The 1937 re-election. "The Pottsville City Administration was continued in power by a majority of approximately 1400. Claude A. Lord was elected Mayor by that majority while Councilmen Aaron Moore and James A. Lynaugh ran consistently with him and slightly exceeded the Mayor's majority." The city-vote box lists "LORD (Republican)" against "REEVES (Democrat)" and gives "Lord's majority—1,495." On the night itself: "It was not until a late hour this morning that David Reeves conceded his defeat. Mayor Lord had claimed victory by about 1500 after the first few precincts were returned. Friends staged an automobile parade around the city when his election became assured. The Mayor received the returns at the City Hall while the Reeves vote was received at the Democratic headquarters."

• 'No Fight in City' (municipal election returns), Pottsville Republican, November 5, 1941, p. 1 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  The 1941 re-election, in full: "In the city there was no contest, Mayor Claude A. Lord being elected unanimously on both tickets. The same was true of James A. Lynaugh and Frank Youngfleish for Council." Also the first record here of Frank Youngfleish's election to City Council.

• 'Lord Elected for 4th Term,' Pottsville Republican, November 7, 1945, p. 1 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  Headline and sub-head: "LORD ELECTED FOR 4TH TERM / Present Councilmen and School Directors Reelected." The story opens, "Mayor Claude A. Lord was elected for a fourth term by the citizens of Pottsville, candidate on the Re[publican] …"

• 'Pottsville to Observe 3 Thanksgiving Days, The Odd One Dec. 5,' The Morning Call, Allentown, November 19, 1940, p. 8 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  The story behind the "third Thanksgiving." "A double Thanksgiving this year will be prevalent in most cities and towns in this State since observances are planned for both Nov. 21 and 28. But Pottsville is going them just one better. Residents of that city will give thanks no less than three days! Some will enjoy the holiday on Nov. 21, some on Nov. 28 and others on both days. But the 'big day' will be a special Thanksgiving observance set aside in a proclamation yesterday by Mayor Claude A. Lord for Dec. 5, which date marks the completion of the Aetna Steel plant. Residents will give thanks for the inception of this new industry, moved from Brooklyn, which will employ 250 men at the start."

• 'No Fireworks' (City Council proceedings), Pottsville Republican, March 12, 1949, p. 1 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  Council met without the mayor: "There were no fireworks. With Mayor Claude A. Lord absent, Acting Mayor Frank Youngfleish announced at the outset of proceedings that henceforth he would be 'an active Mayor' and if and when exchanges of personalities developed he would recess or adjourn Council meetings." The dated evidence that Youngfleish was acting in Lord's place by March 1949.

• 'Heffner Wins for Mayor; Reeves and Schlottman Victors for Council Seats,' Pottsville Republican, September 14, 1949, p. 1 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  The end of the sixteen years: "George S. Heffner was nominated for Mayor, and David H. Reeves and John E. Schlottman for City Council, by decisive majorities at the primary election in Pottsville. Thus the 16 year control of the city administration was snatched from the hands of Mayor Claude A. Lord who aspired to a fifth term. The contest was rather muddled in the minds of the voters due to the four cornered opposition the Mayor encountered. Lord was able to muster his full strength but the opposition was divided in four parts."

• 'Claude Lord Dies; Mayor 16 Years,' Pottsville Republican, January 6, 1954, p. 1 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  "Claude A. Lord, Pottsville funeral director and the city's Mayor from January 1, 1934, until 1950, died suddenly at his home 410 Garfield Square at 1:20 this afternoon. The ex-mayor died of a heart attack. He was in apparent good health Tuesday but complained of not feeling well this morning." Under the sub-head "Was Widely Known": "Known throughout the state and nation as one of the most colorful of chief executives Lord played the role of Mayor and entered the political action that went with the office with zest." (The paper set no comma after "chief executives"; this page supplies one where it breaks the sentence.) "Everyone knew Claude Lord for his theatre parties for children, for his bombastic utterances at Council meetings, for his friendship with the great and for what appeared to be a never failing source of energy. At social gatherings he laughed loudest when newspapermen sang song parodies ribbing his administration." The front-page column ends mid-sentence: "Although he was defeated in a try for a fifth term as Mayor, the 16 years he was in office were years when the city modernized its light-" — continuing on page thirteen. Carries a portrait captioned "CLAUDE A. LORD ...colorful ex-mayor succumbs."

• 'Claude Lord Dies—' (obituary continuation), Pottsville Republican, January 6, 1954, p. 13 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  Summarised rather than reproduced. A 1954 newspaper is not public domain and this note renders on the page, so §IV.5 applies: cite and link, and copy only what the prose actually quotes. THE COLUMN completes a sentence broken off on page one — the sixteen years were the ones in which the city modernised its lighting system, erected a new city hall and "joined with the highway department in construction of the boulevard." It then runs through the life: the paper's own version of his birth, "born in Pottsville in 1890," son of the late Harry and Arabella Lord, his father long a business partner of O. T. Sterner in a paint and paperhanging business; the local public schools; Long Branch, New Jersey, to learn undertaking under John B. Flood; a spell working in Pittsburgh; then Shoener Bros. at home. It dates his own business at Third and West Arch to "about 30 years ago." and puts the move to Garfield Square about twelve years before his death, a place he made into "one of the finest undertaking homes in the state." It records the Eckels Embalming School, the 1928 deputy-coronership, the 1929 defeat by John B. Dengler, Trinity Reformed Church, his marriage to Helen Dormer of St. Clair, the American Legion Certificate of Merit and the VFW Citizenship Medal, and that during the war he "was proud of his feat in writing, organizing and producing 'Club Americana' at the high school stadium to raise funds for Christmas boxes to all Pottsvillians in the armed forces." THE SURVIVORS — the passage this page turns on, and which no earlier note carried: three surviving children, namely G. Ryland Lord; H. Jacqueline, wife of Charles Shields of New Philadelphia; and Mrs. Edmund Schlitzer of Pottsville, the last an adopted daughter; five grandchildren; and then, verbatim, "A son, Creighton, was killed about 17 years ago by an auto at Third and Arch Sts. and a daughter, Patricia, died in infancy." THE WIFE IS NOT IN THAT LIST — the column reports the marriage to Helen Dormer earlier, in the past tense usual for a living spouse, but does not name her among the survivors; her own Find a Grave record, which dates her death to 1970, is what carries her survival on this page. THE COLUMN IS WRONG ABOUT CREIGHTON in both particulars: seventeen years before 1954 is 1937, and the boy died January 31, 1928, at Third and Race — Third and Arch was the family's own corner. THE COLUMN ALSO MISDATES the first election, giving 1932; it was November 8, 1933, as the same paper's own front page records. This is a retrospective account of a life, not a set of vital records, and the page marks what rests on it accordingly.

• 'Claude Lord: A Colorful Mayor' (editorial), Pottsville Republican, January 7, 1954, p. 4 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  "When Claude A. Lord was Mayor of Pottsville, this city and its chief executive were known the length and breadth of the state. Lord believed in advertising himself and Pottsville. He was eminently successful in both endeavors." On the record: "The first half of his administration was an era of great accomplishment in Pottsville. Then a new city hall was built, the street lighting system was modernized and Pottsville in many ways became a real third class city. During the final four years of Lord's sixteen as Mayor the state finally agreed to build a boulevard through the city, voters approved a $450,000 bond issue and work was finally launched on a project that had been sought for more than two decades."

• 'Claude A. Lord, Ex-Mayor, Dies' (United Press), The Times-Tribune, Scranton, January 7, 1954, p. 2 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  "Claude A. Lord, 63, who served four consecutive terms as mayor of Pottsville, died yesterday afternoon at his home. Lord, a funeral director, was mayor from 1933 to 1950, but lost the Republican nomination in his bid for a fifth term." The wire dates his mayoralty from the election, where the Pottsville paper dates it from the term. Gives his age at death as 63.

• 'Claude A. Lord Dies In Pottsville Home,' The Evening News, Harrisburg, January 7, 1954, p. 10 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  "One of the most colorful mayors in Pottsville's 150 year history died suddenly yesterday at his Garfield Square residence. Claude A. Lord, 63, who created a third Thanksgiving Day in 1940 here, died from a heart attack about 1:20 p.m. A Pottsville native, he was a licensed undertaker for 41 years and held the mayoralty post from 1934 until 1950." The source of the 1940 Thanksgiving item, which is not corroborated elsewhere in the sources gathered here.

• 'Birthday Dinner and Dance Held for Mayor Lord Wed.,' Pottsville Republican, March 14, 1935, p. 11 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  "More than 200 members of the city administration, their wives, members of the Pottsville School Board, members of the press, and invited guests attended the Mayor's birthday dinner at the Necho Allen Hotel on Wednesday evening." The Wednesday in question was March 13, 1935 — a contemporaneous fix on the day of his birthday. The mayor was presented with several gifts, among them a portrait of himself and a grandfather's clock. The account states no age, so it does not settle the disputed birth year.

• 'Boy Killed While Coasting,' Republican and Herald, Pottsville, February 1, 1928, p. 5 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  The contemporaneous account of the death of the subject's eldest son, read from the page image, in full: "Funeral services were being arranged today for Creighton Lord, 11-year-old son of Deputy Coroner and Mrs. Claude A. Lord, of Pottsville, who was fatally injured in a coasting accident on Race street last night, when his sled crashed into an automobile driven by J. Malville May, of Pottsville. May took the injured lad to a physician, who discovered the boy had been injured internally. He died before he could be rushed to a hospital." Two things this settles. It is the earliest record consulted here that names Claude A. Lord IN FULL as deputy coroner — the office the 1954 obituary reports second-hand — and it dates the son's death, which that obituary misplaces by nine years, to the last day of January 1928. Note the direction of the collision: the boy's sled ran into the car.

• 'Burial of Creighton Lord: Who Met Death in a Coasting Accident — Playmates at Funeral,' Pottsville Republican, February 4, 1928, p. 1 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  Read from the page image. The story gives the parents as "Claude A., and Helen Lord" and continues: "who was almost instantly killed late Tuesday afternoon while coasting on Race St., took place on Saturday morning from the Lord residence, 301 West Arch St., and was very largely attended. A Mass of High Requiem was celebrated at St. Patrick's Church at 10 o'clock by Rev. Joseph Toye, who performed the rites of absolution. The interment was made in Charles Baber Cemetery." And: "Among the hundreds of people who attended the funeral was a delegation of boys, twenty-one in number, all close companions and playmates. They visited the Lord home and viewed the remains of their departed comrade who was summoned into the other world by an untimely and tragic death." The Tuesday was January 31, 1928. The two contemporaneous accounts differ on how quickly the boy died — this one has him almost instantly killed, the Republican and Herald of February 1 has him carried to a physician and dying before he could be got to a hospital — so this page carries the date and the circumstances and not a time of death. The residence given here, 301 West Arch Street, is the address Boyd's directory carries for the family.

• 'Inquest Into Boy's Death,' Pottsville Republican, February 4, 1928, p. 11 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  Read from the page image; the column sits tight against the gutter, so a few line-initial words are supplied from context and this page quotes none of them. The notice reports that Coroner Dr. T. C. Fegley of Tremont said on the Friday night that he would hold an inquest to inquire into the death of Creighton Lord, who "met death while coasting at" Third "and Race Sts.", and that Fegley would conduct it personally; no date had been set. It then identifies the boy's father: Claude A. Lord, a well known undertaker, "also a deputy coroner in charge" of the Pottsville district. This fixes the corner of the accident — Third and Race, not the Third and Arch of the 1954 obituary, which is the corner the family lived on — and is the second contemporaneous record naming Lord in full in that office.

• 'Find Skidmore Gun At Home,' Pottsville Republican, April 18, 1928, p. 2 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  The continuation, from page one, of the reporting on the death of Patrolman Morgan E. Skidmore, read from the page image: "Mrs. Skidmore, in speaking of the finding of the gun, is positively sure her husband did not have two guns. She also stated that she is sure a gun was not on the kitchen cabinet prior to the bringing home of his body. The only persons who visited the home of Skidmore before the body was taken there was Deputy Coroner C. A. Lord, Harry Bushar and a Mr. King, the latter two accompanying Lord when he notified" — the sentence carries on past the fragment read here, and this page does not rely on its ending. The report names the deputy coroner by initials only. What licenses reading them as this man is the February 1928 reporting above, which twice names Claude A. Lord in full as the deputy coroner in charge of the Pottsville district; Boyd's directory for 1928–29 carries no other C. A. Lord. The page claims for him only what this report documents — that he was at the house before the body was brought there — and nothing about the investigation beyond it.

• James Creighton Lord — Find a Grave Memorial no. 57254782 (Charles Baber Cemetery, Pottsville)
  License: reference

  A memorial created in August 2010, independently of the subject's own, giving the son's full name as James Creighton Lord, born December 15, 1916 at Pottsville, died January 31, 1928 aged 11, buried in Charles Baber Cemetery; his parents are linked as Claude Archibald Lord and Helen Elizabeth Dormer Lord and his sister as Patricia Elizabeth Lord. It carries a photograph of the stone, which reads JAMES CREIGHTON LORD over the years 1916 and 1928. Cited here for the birth date and the full given name, which the newspapers do not carry; the death date and the burial rest on the contemporaneous reporting above, which the stone agrees with.

• 'Thanksgiving: Another FDR Experiment,' Prologue (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)
  License: reference

  The National Archives' account of the change President Roosevelt made to the date of Thanksgiving, kept from 1939 through 1941: the President proclaimed the second-to-last Thursday rather than the last, states divided over which day to keep, and some observed both. For 1940 the proclaimed day was November 21 and the traditional last Thursday was November 28 — the two days the Allentown Morning Call reports Pennsylvania towns preparing for. Cited for the national background only; every Pottsville fact on this page comes from the Pottsville and Allentown papers.

• 'Dengler Is Elected; North Mountain Goes To The Democrats,' Pottsville Republican, November 6, 1929, p. 1 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  The "TOTAL CITY VOTE" table for the city election of November 5, 1929 gives "Dengler—R-C … 3567" and "Lord—D … 3159" — Lord's only ballot line that year was the Democratic one. The letters record the party columns a candidate appeared on, not a declaration of party membership.

• 'F. Youngfleish Dies; Ex-City Councilman / Served For Time As Mayor,' Pottsville Republican, January 22, 1953, p. 1 and p. 26 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  The page 26 continuation: "He served two terms in City Council as director of public parks and also director of finances. He also was acting mayor during the illness of former Mayor Claude A. Lord for two years." The obituary neither dates those two years nor names the illness. Frank W. Youngfleish of 1500 W. Norwegian Street died January 21, 1953.

• 'Council to Protest Water Rate Boost; Rename Boulevard,' Pottsville Republican, February 12, 1958, p. 1 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  "City Council by a 3-2 vote last night approved a resolution protesting a proposed increase in rates by the Pottsville Water Co. Unanimously it voted to name the Boulevard the Claude A. Lord Boulevard in honor of a former mayor. The resolution was introduced by Mayor Michael A. Close." The 3–2 vote was the water-rate protest; the boulevard vote was unanimous.

• 'To Re-Name Boulevard,' Pottsville Republican, February 12, 1958, p. 5 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  "Council approved a resolution renaming Pottsville Boulevard, Claude A. Lord Boulevard in tribute to the memory of former Mayor Lord who headed the city 16 years. It was submitted by Close with all voting in favor. The motion was made by Mortimer (IR) seconded by McKeon (R)." Establishes the road's original name — Pottsville Boulevard — and the date of the council action, Tuesday, February 11, 1958.

• 'New City Hall Now Occupied,' Pottsville Republican, April 16, 1937, p. 8 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  The contemporaneous report of the move into the new building: "Mayor Lord personally conducted close friends and representative citizens through the new building, assisted by the entire staff of municipal employees. It is of three stories and 120 feet square, constructed of Indiana sandstone with red cedar Tennessee marble and aluminum ornamentation." On the building's entrance: "On the first floor the vestibule from the entrance overlooking Centre St., has a terrazzo floor finish, with beautiful central figured design." And on that floor's occupants: "On this floor are the quarters of the police sergeant and general information bureau; the Mayor's suite, comprising his private office and reception room; press room, quarters of the treasurer, assessor and housing of the police department."

• Boyd's Directory of Pottsville, 1928–1929 (Internet Archive)
  License: public-domain

  "LORD CLAUDE A (Helen E), Undertaker 301 W Arch, h do" — he lived at his business address; the capitalized entry is the directory's paid-advertiser style. The classified undertakers' list carries "LORD CLAUDE A, 301 W Arch" alongside W. S. Fermier, J. W. Reiley Jr., and Weber's Funeral Home. Immediately above his entry: "Lord Arabella E (wid Harry W) h301 W Arch" — his widowed mother at the same address, which independently places his father's death before 1928. The directory lists only the county coroner, Theo C. Fegley, and no deputy coroners. NEGATIVE SEARCH, run over the volume's full OCR text: the Pottsville pages carry twenty-eight Lord entries, and the only other man among them with a C initial is "Lord C Hager (Emma) driver h717 Laurel" — there is no second C. A. Lord in the city. That is what licenses reading the initials-only "Deputy Coroner C. A. Lord" of the April 1928 Skidmore reporting as this man. The street guide's "West Arch st, W from 201 N Centre to city limits" puts the 301 address in the block beyond Third.

• Claude A. Lord, 'The Evolution of an Idea,' in Police Historical Book of Pottsville, Schuylkill County, Penna. (reissued edition, late 1930s), Pennsylvania Digital Archives
  License: public-domain

  Lord's own signed account of rebuilding the police department and of the police quarters he put into the new City Hall: "With fourteen men enrolled and two substitutes, I found the men to be capable and efficient in their duties but handicapped by the lack of co-operation and the absence of interest in them"; "In planning the new City Hall … I was able to inject into the plans, many of my own embellishments so that the Department of Justice in this City should have a home second to none"; the basement "equipped as it is with locker rooms, modern gymnasium, shower rooms, recreation room, ordnance room and a revolver and rifle range the entire length of the building"; and "thirty-five men actively under arms." Internally dated by its closing line, "After serving five years in this office."

• Wikipedia, 'Pennsylvania Route 61'
  License: CC-BY-SA-4.0

  States that "The section of PA 61 through Pottsville was renamed Claude A. Lord Boulevard in the 1960s," citing a single source — the 1970 Pennsylvania Department of Highways official map. A 1970 map can establish only that the name was in place by 1970. Also describes the road today: "the road becomes South Claude A. Lord Boulevard," with the name changing to North Claude A. Lord Boulevard after East Norwegian Street.

• Wikipedia, 'U.S. Route 122 (1935–1963)'
  License: CC-BY-SA-4.0

  "In the 1940s, US 122 was realigned to bypass Center City Pottsville to the east along Pottsville Boulevard between US 209 in Pottsville and south of St. Clair" (citing the 1950 Pennsylvania Department of Highways map), and refers to "multilane Pottsville Boulevard (now Claude A. Lord Boulevard)." Records that US 122 was decommissioned in 1963, when the section between Reading and Sunbury was designated PA 61.

• Pennsylvania Bulletin, Vol. 39, No. 27 (July 4, 2009)
  License: reference

  An official Commonwealth publication carrying the street name in ordinary administrative use: "Miller Bros. Construction, Inc., 112 Claude A. Lord Boulevard, Pottsville City, Schuylkill County."

• Officer Down Memorial Page — Patrolman Morgan E. Skidmore, Pottsville Police Department
  License: reference

  The memorial roll entry for the officer whose death the April 1928 reporting above concerns: Patrolman Morgan E. Skidmore, Pottsville Police Department, end of watch April 16, 1928 — the department's only listed line-of-duty death. Cited here only to identify the case; the killing itself is told, with its own sources, on this site's Pottsville police page.

• Claude Archibald Lord — Find a Grave Memorial no. 253697652 (Schuylkill Haven Union Cemetery)
  License: reference

  A user-contributed memorial giving his full name as Claude Archibald Lord, his birth as March 13, 1889, his death as January 6, 1954 aged 64, and his burial in the mausoleum at Schuylkill Haven Union Cemetery; it names his parents as Harry W. and Arabella E. (Sterner) Lord and his wife as Helen E. née Dormer. Its readings have since been borne out by the records that actually govern them — the Pennsylvania death certificate for the birth date, age, parents and burial, and the 1917 and 1942 draft registrations for the middle name — so it is cited here as a lead that proved sound rather than as authority. The mausoleum is the one detail still resting on it alone. The memorial also links his wife's own, which dates her April 9, 1894 to February 26, 1970 and places her in the same mausoleum: she outlived him by sixteen years, which is what supports this page's statement that she survived him — the 1954 obituary reports the marriage but does not list her among the survivors.

Frequently asked

Who was Claude A. Lord?

A Pottsville funeral director who served four consecutive terms as mayor of Pottsville, from January 1, 1934 until 1950 — sixteen years. During his administration the city built its new City Hall and modernized the street lighting, and in his final four years the state agreed to build the long-sought boulevard east of the downtown, voters approved a $450,000 city bond issue, and construction began. That road was named for him four years after his death. He died on January 6, 1954.

When was Claude A. Lord Boulevard named, and why?

Pottsville City Council voted unanimously at its meeting of Tuesday, February 11, 1958 to rename Pottsville Boulevard as Claude A. Lord Boulevard, "in tribute to the memory of former Mayor Lord who headed the city 16 years." The resolution was introduced by Mayor Michael A. Close, and the motion was made by a Councilman Mortimer, whom the 1958 report does not give a first name. The road was the one begun in Lord's last term: as the Pottsville Republican put it on his death, "the state finally agreed to build a boulevard through the city, voters approved a $450,000 bond issue and work was finally launched on a project that had been sought for more than two decades."

Was the boulevard renamed in the 1960s?

No. The council action was February 11, 1958, reported in the Pottsville Republican the following day. Wikipedia's article on Pennsylvania Route 61 dates the renaming to "the 1960s," but its only support for that is a 1970 state highway map, which can show that the name was in place by 1970 without excluding an earlier date.

Is Claude A. Lord Boulevard the street beside the City Hall built during his administration?

No — they are two different streets. The City Hall the city moved into in 1937 has its entrance on Centre Street. Claude A. Lord Boulevard is the highway corridor east of the city's centre, signed today as South and North Claude A. Lord Boulevard and carrying Route 61. By the published route history of the highway, the road carried U.S. Route 122 when it was built and when it was renamed for Lord in 1958; the PA 61 designation dates from the 1963 renumbering.

When was Claude A. Lord born?

At Pottsville on March 13, 1889. His Pennsylvania death certificate gives the date as 3/13/1889 and his age at death as 64, and he swore to the same date himself twice — on the draft registration card he signed in 1917, aged 28, and again on the one he signed in April 1942, aged 53. His obituary in the Pottsville Republican said he was "born in Pottsville in 1890," and the wire obituaries gave his age at death as 63; both are wrong.

Who were Claude A. Lord's children?

Five. Two died young. James Creighton Lord was eleven when he was killed on January 31, 1928: he was coasting at Third and Race Streets and his sled ran into an automobile, and he was buried from the family's house at 301 West Arch Street in Charles Baber Cemetery. A daughter, Patricia, died in infancy. Three survived him. G. Ryland Lord (1921–2010) followed his father into the trade — Eckels, a funeral director's license in 1941, and the family firm until he retired in 1992 — and served as deputy coroner, then prothonotary and chief assessor of Schuylkill County, and ran the county housing authority; he was an Army medic in the Hürtgen Forest and at Normandy, and a Purple Heart recipient. Jacqueline Lord Shields (1923–2012) also went to Eckels, took a masters-plus-thirty from Lehigh, taught as a certified reading specialist in the Blue Mountain School District, and twice ran for the state House in the 125th District. The third was an adopted daughter, Eleanor, the wife of Edmund Schlitzer of Pottsville. Five grandchildren survived him as well.

How far back does the Lord family in Pottsville go?

Three generations stand on state death certificates, all of them in Pottsville. Claude A. Lord's father was Harry W. Lord, born at Pottsville on September 26, 1864 and died there on June 10, 1925; Harry's own certificate names his parents as Isaac Lord and Mary Maning, so spelled. Isaac Lord was born in Pennsylvania about 1821 and was a carpenter: the 1850 census has him in Pottsville South Ward at twenty-eight, and the 1880 census has him at fifty-nine at 215 6th Street with his wife Mary and their fifteen-year-old son — the Harry above, entered that year as Henry. Isaac died before Pennsylvania began registering deaths statewide in 1906, so no certificate carries his own parents, and how much further back the family goes is a question the article takes up.

What was Claude A. Lord's full name?

Claude Archibald Lord. He registered under that name for the draft in both 1917 and 1942, but signed himself Claude A. Lord, and that is how the press and the city directories always rendered him. His death certificate records only the middle initial.

Why did Claude A. Lord stop being mayor after sixteen years?

He lost his own party's primary. Seeking a fifth term, he was beaten for the Republican nomination on September 13, 1949 by George S. Heffner, and the Pottsville Republican reported the next day that "the 16 year control of the city administration was snatched from the hands of Mayor Claude A. Lord who aspired to a fifth term." The paper attributed the loss to a divided field rather than to the record: "Lord was able to muster his full strength but the opposition was divided in four parts." He had also been seriously ill — by March 1949 he was absent from Council and Councilman Frank Youngfleish was acting as mayor in his place. He left office in 1950.

What was the "third Thanksgiving" of 1940?

An extra civic thanksgiving Lord proclaimed for December 5, 1940. That autumn the country was split over the date of the holiday, and most Pennsylvania towns planned to keep both November 21 and November 28; Pottsville, as the Allentown Morning Call put it, "is going them just one better." Lord's proclamation set aside a third day to mark the completion of the Aetna Steel plant, an industry moved from Brooklyn that was to employ 250 men at the start.