Jack's Place Pool Parlor Ad - 1914 - who ran that place?

This ad for a Sutton pool hall was running in the Sutton News 100 years ago.

So who do you suppose this M. F. Foster might have been?

M. Frank Foster appears in the 1910 census living on Butler Ave. in Sutton apparently near Cedar St. If the census taker was catching homes in sequence then Mr. Foster's neighbor was Oscar Challburg with his wife Edith and little nine-year old Martin and his sister Adelina. Oscar was a real estate agent and there are many about town who remember Martin.

Back to the Fosters. M. Frank Foster listed himself as a barber so either he opened his pool parlor between 1910 and 1914 or maybe he had a barber chair in the corner of the pool hall.

Mr. Foster identified as a 33-year old widower. He was living with his three daughters: Fern, age 13, Opal, 10 and Gladys was 8. Merritt Foster was also in the household, the 35 year old single brother of M. Frank.

The Foster brothers had been born in Iowa. Their father had been born in Ohio and their mother in Iowa. The little girls' deceased mother came from West Virginia.

M. F. Foster was still in Sutton in 1920 and still living on Butler Ave. Twenty-year old Opal and her 18-year old sister Gladys were single ladies living with Dad and were both telephone operators. Frank's brother Merritt had moved on.

Further research finds that Miss Opal Foster married James Sheldon Barbee, a local Sutton veterinarian and by 1927 the couple had three children: James, Iris and Larry. Jim and Larry Barbee later took up their father's profession providing veterinarian services for the community for years, and years.

Yes, M. F. Foster of Jack's Place was Jim and Larry Barbee's grandfather.