The Midelburg family history in Logan

By Dwight Williamson

Ferdinand Midelburg.

The name almost sounds like royalty. And in many ways, perhaps the former Logan millionaire was the ‘king” of the theater business – at least in Logan County.

There is the community of Midelburg in the town of Logan that is located across the Guyandotte River near Stollings. And there used to be the Midelburg Theater, the building of which still stands vacantly adjacent to the streets of Dingess, Main and Stratton in downtown Logan. Some may recall that building to be the former home of the old Super “S” store. Then there is, of course, Midelburg Island, the home of Logan Senior High School since 1957. So, what is the connection? That is to say, why were those places named Midelburg?

The answer comes simply in the name of one Ferd (not Fred) Midelburg, who first appears on the land books of Logan County when he purchased property at Bronson Addition of Logan in 1919. However, Logan County Clerk records show that the property that was to become the once-popular Midelburg Theatre was purchased Oct. 4, 1917, by May S. Midelburg, Ferd’s first wife who died at the age of 35. By March of the following year, it was announced that architects C.C. and E. A. Weber of Cincinnati, Ohio, were planning the construction of “a $35,000 theatre three stories in height for Ferd Midelburg of Logan.”

The property, which at one time was known as “the barn lot” of the Buskirk family, was purchased by famous Loganite sheriff Don Chafin, who sold it to former Logan Circuit Court Judge J. B. Wilkinson in 1917, who then promptly sold it to Walter Lewis of Huntington. It was Lewis who sold the property to May Midelburg.

While the Midelburg Theatre was operating prior to 1925, it was not the first theater in Logan, but it was by far the most appealing to the community, according to all accounts of those who frequented the popular attraction. The first theater in Logan was known as the Bennett Theater and was located where the Peebles store now operates. It was owned by Charlie Bennett, who is rightfully credited with many things related to the development of the county, including the town of Logan’s first water company. The Bennett movie house featured silent movies.

Mr. Midelburg always signed documents as F. Midelburg, and it is his signature that appears as the Corporate President of Fairfield Land Co., which developed the property and sold various lots at what was named Midelburg Addition to Logan. A survey was done and a map of the property was recorded April 25, 1921. Logan was a booming place at the time, and Midelburg apparently saw the need for a more secluded neighborhood for those wealthier residents who sought to escape the noise and crime of the then crowded town that had become a city.

After the construction of a steel bridge across the Guyandotte to the property, many homes, some described as mansions, sprung up. Many of Logan’s elite relocated to Midelburg. By-laws described the community: “There shall be no houses or buildings, or rooms built for business purposes.” Further rules allowed for no “public garages or livery stables.” Homes had to be valued at $5,000 or more to be located in that neighborhood. In addition, rules of any deed acquired declared, “the said property shall not be sold, devised or transferred to any persons or person of African descent.” In a roundabout way, it was, more or less, the first “gated” or restricted community in Logan County.

It is doubtful that property owners knew at the time that the land was once used to seclude persons who had come down with leprosy, and later others, with smallpox. Long before coal made Logan, and even before Logan was named Logan, small boats took the ill to the site that became Midelburg. It was there they were quarantined and kept from the local society.

By 1921, Mr. Midelburg, at the age of 44, was an established businessman, who would later own a chain of Kentucky and West Virginia theaters. It was during autumn of 1921, about a year following the death of his first wife that Ferd Midelburg chose to re-marry. It was also at this same time – on his honeymoon – that he was arrested.

It seems Ferd had arrived in Cincinnati one Sunday morning around the end of October when he registered at the popular Sinton Hotel. That afternoon he met his finance, Edythe Levy, at the railroad station in Cincy and together they went straight to the hotel. A clergyman was summoned and the couple was united in marriage. The ceremony was performed in the parlor of the hotel and was reported exclusively in The Logan Banner. What was not told at the time was later revealed by the Cincinnati Police Department, as a trial was set for the newlywed on Nov. 14. A Cincinnati newspaper headline declared: “West Virginia Millionaire Arrested after Wedding.”

Though prostitution was rampant at most hotels in Logan during the 1920s, more notable places such as the Hotel Frederick in Huntington and the Sinton in Cincinnati had gleaming reputations to protect. So, on the night of the Midelburgs’ honeymoon, when the night watchman passing the hotel room of the Midelburgs heard a woman’s voice, he notified the night clerk, who ascertained that Ferd Midelburg had not registered a “Mrs.” at the front desk. The nightwatchman then went to the hotel door and knocked. “Is that woman in there your wife,” he asked?

For his answer, Midelburg “shot out his fist,” according to the police report, and “the clerk went sprawling.” Midelburg then slammed the door. He called up the hotel office and notified the telephone operator that “he was coming down right away.” A few moments later, Midelburg charged out of the elevator to the terror of the belated stragglers in the corridor. Police said he knocked over a potted palm tree, and then he attacked the clerk and the night watchman. Before being arrested that honeymoon eve, police reported that he “wrecked” two copying machines.

He was arraigned on two charges of assault and battery, malicious destruction of property and disorderly conduct. There is a Logan Banner account published days later which said hotel personnel apologized to the Loganite for the confusion that led to the altercations.

The Midelburgs, who later owned homes in Logan and Charleston, had no children between them, but adopted a daughter, Ruth Thalheimer, who was named in the will of Mr. Midelburg, who died May 30, 1950. Interestingly, Midelburg left $2,000 each to two of his favorite employees, Alex DeFobio and D.B. Bailey. DeFobio, a former employee at the Midelburg Theatre, would later operate his own Logan theater (Capitol) and is well remembered as an avid John F. Kennedy supporter during the election of 1960.

Midelburg’s successful life included paying in 1937 $90,000 to Don Chafin and former Logan Circuit Judge Robert Bland for Main Street property in Logan that would become the Logan Theatre. Chafin had bought the same property in 1920 for $45,000. Today, that property is well utilized as the Coalfield Jamboree for various entertainment purposes.

The Midelburg-Logan Holding Company and the C&M Theatrical Co., Inc. were owned by the Midelburgs when during World War II in 1943 the property described as the “Big Island” was placed in the name of the theater company. Midelburg had bought part of the property while the Depression was still going on in 1934 and another portion in 1939. At the time of the purchase, there were two islands located where now Logan Senior High School, Logan Middle School and Logan Elementary are located. The Logan Public Library and several athletic fields also comprise the 43-acre Midelburg Island.

Midelburg Island, which was formerly called Hatfield Island, was, of course, the site of the raid on the Indian village of Shawnee tribe leader Aracoma in 1780, which led to her death and internment in the Indian burial grounds that were located in a large portion of downtown Logan, including beneath Midelburg Theatre itself.

In 1900, at a building construction site on the 100 block of Stratton Street, workmen uncovered an “unusually eight-foot deep” Shawnee grave site. It was then believed the skeletal remains and buckhorn beads around the neck of the young woman were those of Aracoma. It was also reported that the remains were found “at the bend of the Guyandotte” where with her last dying words she had asked to be placed, facing the setting sun.

On March 18, 1889, Elias Hatfield bought the “Big Island” from Oliver Perry, who had obtained it from Anthony Lawson, Jr., the son of the first man to open a trading post in what is now Logan, known then as “The Islands.”

J.T. Fish, deceased former Logan businessman and a member of the now-defunct Logan Park Board – which was responsible for the maintenance of “the Island” as late as the 1980s – said once during a Park Board meeting that he and Harry Gay Jr., who inherited his father’s mine operation at Mt. Gay, helped build up Midelburg Island to its present height by dumping slate there from the Mt. Gay coal site. Many years prior to Logan Senior High School being built, the property was looked at as first an airport when it was still called Hatfield Island, and later as a housing development for the town.

The Logan Civic Association in 1951 paid $102,000 for the historical property, which is also known as the first settlement by frontiersmen in the immediate area when in 1793 James and Jacob Workman built a home there and raised fields of corn, before moving on.

While there remains yet untold history involving Logan and its “Island,” readers, who may have already known much of its written history, should feel wiser in knowing that it should forever bear the name of Midelburg – named after a gentleman who got arrested on his honeymoon.

Midelburg died in Florida in 1950 at the age of 73 and was buried in a large family plot in Charleston, West Virginia.

Like Mr. Midelburg, deterioration takes its toll on everything, from humans to concrete buildings. The former home of the Midelburg Theatre, which was purchased by Farris David Sayer for $40,000 in 1962, and then remodeled as the department store known as Super S, has recently become dangerous due to falling bricks onto the sidewalk and street.

Now comes the news that Mr. Sayer, 83, of Charleston has also died. Sayer, at one time a very important businessman in Logan, along with brothers, Alex and David, passed away Friday, Feb. 22, in Charleston. The Sayer family is the current owners of the old theater building that is so much a part of Logan history, including murders that were committed on streets directly in front of it, as well as being the location of the last place Mamie Thurman was seen walking before she was viciously murdered.

Ironically, the one woman whose name shall live in infinity in Logan County history, was, according to trial records, last seen walking on the same small sidewalk right where the building itself is dismantling.

For obvious safety reasons, the sidewalk is now blocked off.

Although engineering experts will undoubtedly determine the building’s future, I can relate to readers that the late Mike Uriosite, who bought structures in Logan and razed several of them, told me that he desired to buy the building, but that it would need to be torn down. Urioste, who also obtained the historical White and Browning building in Logan, declared that building to be structurally sound and even had a new rubberized roof placed atop it.

Unfortunately, like Mr. Midelburg, the Sayer brothers, Mike Urioste, the Aracoma and Pioneer Hotels, and many older buildings in Logan, death continues to change the town’s future by exterminating its past.

Dwight Williamson is a former writer for the Logan Banner. He is now a Magistrate for Logan County. He writes a weekly column for HD Media.

Published with permission.

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