Grover and Millie Brown in the Louisville City Directories

Where did Grover and Millie Brown live in Louisville?

Using information from City Directories and some other records, we can track where Grover and Millie lived and worked while they were in Louisville.

1941 - 1946

As mentioned in a previous post, after they were married, Grover moved in with Millie at her father's house at 1308 Rufer Avenue. 

After her father's death, only Grover and Millie were living there until their first child, Linda, was born in May 1942. The Rufer address is on her birth certificate.

1946-47

The next record that I found for them was in the 1946-47 city directory. (There were no directories published between 1942 and 1946 due to the war.) 

1946-47 Louisville City Directory, page 137

In 1946, they lived at 986 Barret Avenue, and Grover worked at the Old Inn Bar. By this time they also had two more children, Peter and Julia.

The Old Inn Bar was at 600 West Main Street. The photo below of the Old Inn Bar sometime between 1956 and 1966 (courtesy of University of Louisville Digital Collections¹).

Old Inn Bar - between 1956 and 1966

I really want to know what happened to the Rufer house. According to several city directory listings and the 1940 census, Peter C. Tschudi owned the house. On the census, the value of the house is given as $1,600. 

I imagine with her brothers off to war that it would have been difficult for Grover, the bartender, to afford the mortgage on the house (assuming there was one, which I think is a safe assumption). I would like to find some kind of records on that house to find out what happened there.

I mentioned in a post about City Directories that these books usually included a street directory. Sometimes we can gather some additional information from the street directory.

Below is the street listing for this address.

1946-47 Louisville City Directory, page 1154, Barret Avenue

The Browns lived behind Mathias Mueller, who was a barber. The building is no longer there, but several other buildings from that era are still there. The buildings on this block of Barret tend to have businesses in the front and residences in the rear. So, there was probably a barber shop there too.

Notice that John Kratz lived two doors away, at 982 Barret. John was married to Edythe Tessman (aka Aunt Edy) who was Millie's cousin. I will post what I have found about her in a future post.

Also living at 982 Barret in 1946 were Millie's two brothers. Again, more to come on them in another post. 

1948

The Louisville city directory was not published in 1948. However, in 1948 Millie had a stillborn son, Phillip Michael Brown. The cemetery record for his burial says that they resided at 667 Armory Place.

I wanted to see what was in that area at the time. Since there was not a directory for 1948, I looked in the 1946-47 directory. But there was no listing for 667 Armory Place. Next I looked at the 1949 directory. Then there was the Headline Bar & Grill and two residents.

1949 Louisville City Directory, page 1054, Armory Place

Maybe they lived above or behind the Headline Bar.

Today, that address on Armory Place no longer exists. The location is now part of the Louisville Courier-Journal campus. Maybe that is why the bar's name was Headline.

1949

The 1949 city directory shows Grover living in the Clarksdale Housing Project; no address was given.

1949 Louisville City Directory, page 126

We already saw something about the Clarksdale Housing Project in my post about the Brown family in the 1950 Census. In that census, the family's address was 639 East Walnut Street. I looked up that address in the 1949 street directory and the address was listed as vacant.

For the Clarksdale Housing, the directory said, "For occupants see es Jackson, Hancock, Clay and ws Shelby also Fehr Av and ns E. Walnut between Jackson and Shelby." (Es, ws and ns mean eastside, westside and northside respectively.) I looked at all of these streets and I did not find Grover Brown.

My assumption is that they resided at 639 E. Walnut.

Grover is now a bartender at John W. Isling Restaurant which was located at 1012 Barret Ave.

1950

There was not a city directory published in 1950. But, as noted above, we know from the 1950 census that they lived at 639 East Walnut Street.

1951-52

The 1951 and 1952 city directories list Grover living at 639 East Walnut Street. 

1951 Louisville City Directory, page 122

1952 Louisville City Directory, page 134

In 1951, Grover is working for John J Kratz (the same one as mentioned above) as a bartender at 1400 Goss Ave. His employer is not provided in 1952, but he is still a bartender.

1953

Grover is not listed in the 1953 Louisville City Directory. This collaborates with information from my mother. She remembers the family moving from Louisville to North Olmsted, Ohio in the autumn of 1952. Thus he was listed in the 1952 directory, but not the 1953 directory.

Unfortunately, the Cleveland directories in this timeframe did not include most suburbs, like North Olmsted. 

Conclusions

In the roughly ten years that Grover and Millie lived together in Louisville, they lived in at least four places: Rufer, Barret, Armory Place and E. Walnut. That seems like a lot of moving around for a young family with four children. It must have been some rough times.

I have more information to put together on some of the other family members who were in Louisville at this time, including: Margie Brown (Mokley), Edythe Tessman, Peter H. & Frederick Tschudi. Stay tuned for more on them in future posts.

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^{1. "Photographic Archives," University of Louisville Libraries, Digital Collections (https://hyku.library.louisville.edu/ : downloaded 25 September 2022), image, "Old Inn restaurant and bar, Louisville, Kentucky," ID: 4cdff572-D1f6-4332-8b3a-90a770f5a096; Martin F. Schmidt Photographs of Louisville, 1956-1966. ↩}