Researching your eBay win

Today I won an eBay auction for an F.A.Clauberg straight razor. The tang was marked "S.H.Straub" and Kalamazoo, Mich. The coffin box that was included was marked on the outside "Grand Rapids B.S. Company" for a barber supply company apparently.

Curious, I did a web search on S.H.Straub and found that Samuel H. Straub was the proprietor of a rubber stamp & stencil store in 1899, later a sporting goods and guns, ammunition, and also barber supply store, still located at 220 East Main Street in Kalamazoo. This was in the 1906-7 business directory. No doubt the Grand Rapids Barber Supply company provided this razor engraved with Mr. Straub's name on it, perhaps to thank him for the barber supply items he sold from his store. During this period his home was at 217 Seminary.

The 1900 Michigan census lists him as 41 years old, (born 1859 Ohio) and married to his wife Minnie, 40 born NY. Samuel didn't last too many more years. He was listed in the 1910 census but by 1915 his wife Minnie was listed in the city directory as a widow. (Samuel died April 22, 1913) Minnie later owned a 2nd hand store in 1926 and died in 1929. Both are interred at Riverside Cemetery in Kalamazoo.

The eBay seller I purchased this from was listed in Traverse City, MI so the razor has never traveled too far from Kalamazoo, a mere 170 miles in the roughly 100 years since Mr. Straub passed away.

The whole search and findings of the history of this razor was a lot of fun....I wonder, have any of the rest of the forum members ever done this?

bill

Great story :)

I've never come across a razor with a personalized engraving, but I did do a bit of research on a Parker 51 set that I bought a number of years ago. Come to find out that the pen set belonged to a woman who lived just outside of San Francisco her entire life.

This has nothing to do with razors however years ago I won a Gold colored coin on Eboy. I think I paid around $40 for it and no one seemed to know anything about it. It has a steam loco on it and I recognized a jungle motiff and the southern cross in the sky. I was able to determine on the web that it was a commemorative coin, solid gold to celebrate the building of the first railroad across the Amazon Jungle in 1912. Some very interesting history. Less than 100 were ever made. It was actually a pocketwatch fob.