Dorchester Illustration no. 2430 Louis Ferdinand Korb
At the Dorchester Historical Society, we are in the process of a year-long project to commemorate the 100th anniversary of World War I. Using a collection of photographs we have of WWI Dorchester residents, we will be featuring servicemen in a number of short biographies throughout the year. At the culmination of the project, we hope to produce an online exhibit that highlights these men and their service to our country.
Our next biography features: Louis Ferdinand Korb.
Written by Julie Wolf.
Louis Ferdinand Korb was born at 118 Longwood Avenue in Boston on May 17, 1887, the sixth child of Joseph Korb, a hairdresser from Bavaria, Germany, and Alice Towle of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, the daughter of Irish émigrés. Louis had one brother and nine sisters, the eldest of whom, Ellen, succumbed to diphtheria at age 2 in 1881. In the 1900 census, the Korbs’ Dorchester household at 1 Baker’s Court contained 14 members: Louis and his siblings, their parents, their mother’s sister, and two male boarders. Sisters Alice and Frances and their aunt were laborers at the Baker Chocolate Factory, as were many neighbors. The two boarders and Louis’s brother, William, were hairdressers like Louis’s father.
In June 1902, Louis graduated from the Gilbert Stuart School in Dorchester Lower Mills. Earlier that month, the Boston Globe had described a civic affair in Milton with “350 in attendance” at which Louis provided music. Snippets mentioning Louis’s presence as a pianist and song conductor at similar events were published throughout the decade. Later in life, through the 1920s and 1930s, such performances, particularly at events hosted by the Knights of Columbus (he was a member of Milton’s Bishop Chevrus Council), continued to garner press.
The century’s first decade brought terrible suffering to the Korbs. In January 1903, Louis and his sisters were “nearly asphyxiated” by a gas leak in their Baker’s Court home. Their father managed to rescue them, despite being nearly overcome himself. But there would be no stopping the calamities of 1908. In February, Louis’s sister Frances, 25, died “of accidental multiple first- and second-degree burns” sustained when an oil lamp in the family home at 1066 Washington Street exploded in her face. Six months later, in August, sister Mary, 23 (one of the Korbs’ two adopted daughters), was killed in a freak accident “when a driverless car ran amuck” in Franklin. Their mother, Alice, was also badly injured. The Korbs seemed to enjoy a degree of local standing, and interest in the story was high, the Globe running updates on Alice’s condition for some two weeks after the accident. In newspaper write-ups, Frances was described as “a belle of the Dorchester Lower Mills district”; Mary as “very popular among the [district’s] young set”; and their father as “one of [Dorchester’s] best known barbers.”
Louis remained in the family home through both of his parents’ deaths, his father’s in 1911 and his mother’s in 1915. (His sister Florence, 26, died two weeks after their mother, of lobar pneumonia.) 1066 Washington Street may or may not have been his address when he registered for the draft in 1917, his World War I registration card listing 2145 Dorchester Avenue, but his service card showing 1066. Thirty years old when drafted, described as single and afflicted with “heart trouble,” Louis worked as an organist at St. Mary’s Church in Quincy. Little is known about his service other than that he was a sergeant detective, general staff, in the Army’s relatively new Military Intelligence Division. He enlisted on August 29, 1918, and was discharged on April 24, 1919.
Following the war, in 1920, Louis moved to 48 Sanford Street in Lower Mills, the home of his sister Pauline and her husband, Watson Kilcup, a chocolate factory employee. Next door was their sister Alice and her husband, Louis Grefield, one of the barbers who had lodged in the Korbs’ childhood home. At this time, Louis resumed his long career as a piano teacher at 1177 Washington Street in Dorchester (possibly a music school) and became a piano salesman at Hallet & Davis at 179 Tremont Street in Boston, a job he held through at least 1937.
Louis’s stay with his sister was short-lived, and in 1921 he moved into 2195 Dorchester Avenue, the rented home of sisters Henrietta and Mary Erhard. This would be Louis’s home for two decades.
By the time Louis registered for World War II’s “Old Man’s Draft” in 1942, he was again living with Pauline and Watson, now at 28 Sanford Street. Still a salesman and teacher, he had a new employer: M. Steinert & Sons, Boston’s preeminent piano showroom at 162 Boylston Street. The store is still there today.
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Louis’s address fluctuated in records between 28 Sanford Street and 18A River Street a few blocks away. Whichever was correct, both were his sister’s. Following the war’s end, Louis, still employed, cruised extensively to Latin America: to Colombia aboard the SS Santa Paula in 1947; to Havana and Guatemala aboard the SS Talamanca in 1950; and possibly to Cuba (again), aboard the SS Veragua, in 1951. In 1955, he sailed to Europe aboard the RMS Queen Elizabeth and returned three weeks later, flying from Rome to Boston via Trans World Airlines.
In 1957, Louis ventured closer to home: to Manhattan. It was there he died on August 31, 1957—”suddenly,” according to his obituary. He was 70 years old. Following a Solemn High Mass at St. Gregory’s Church in Dorchester, he was buried at Roslindale’s Mount Cavalry Cemetery, as his parents and three sisters had been decades before him.
SOURCES:
-Ancestry.com. 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930 and 1940 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2004.
-Ancestry.com. Massachusetts City Directories [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2005.
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-Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, Passenger and Crew Lists, 1820-1963 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2006.
-Ancestry.com. New York, New York, Death Index, 1949-1965 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2017.
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-Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
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– “By Prof James Mahoney, Lecture to Be Given Sunday at Catholic Literary Union, Charlestown.” Boston Globe, February 21, 1913: 13.
– “Cardinal Dedicates West Quincy Church: Thousands Present at Impressive Ceremony in the Beautiful New Edifice of St Mary’s Parish, Built Entirely of Native Granite,” Boston Globe, October 1, 1917: 9.
-“Dorchester District.” Boston Globe. June 6, 1902: 5.
-“Dorchester Lower Mills Council, K. of C. Elects.” Boston Globe, September 15, 1927: 11.
-“Dorchester Lower Mills K. of C. at Communion.” Boston Globe, May 9, 1927: 8.
-“Driverless Auto at Pythian Camp: One Woman Killed and Five Persons Injured at Franklin Field.” New Castle (Pennsylvania) Herald, August 5, 1908: 10.
-“Eight Lives in Jeopardy: Nearly Asphyxiated by Gas in Dorchester: Korb Family Saved by the Father’s Awakening,” Boston Globe, January 26, 1903: 1.
-“Explodes in Girl’s Face.” Boston Globe, February 3, 1908: 7.
-FamilySearch.org. Massachusetts Births and Christenings, 1639-1915, database, 14 June 2016.
-FamilySearch.org. Massachusetts Deaths, 1841-1915, database with images.
-FamilySearch.org. Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1626-2001, database with images.
-FamilySearch.org. United States, Veterans Administration Master Index, 1917-1940, database, 5 December 2018.
-FamilySearch.org. United States World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918, database with images.
-FamilySearch.org. United States World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918, database with images.
-FindaGrave.com. Louis Ferdinand Korb.
-Finnegan, John Patrick, and Romana Danysh. Army Lineage Series: Military Intelligence (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1998), 21-39.
-“Gilbert Stuart School: Members of Graduating Class at Dorchester Lower Mills Present Bust of Longfellow.” Boston Globe, June 26, 1902: 3.
-“Girl Killed by Explosion of Oil Lamp: Pretty Frances Korb Dies at City Hospital in Terrible Agony; Father Was Also Burned.” Salina (Kansas) Evening Journal, February 15, 1908: 8.
-“The Globe Latest: Highland District.” Boston Globe, January 8, 1907: 2.
-“Greater Boston News Briefs and Personal Paragraphs: Dorchester District.” Boston Globe, November 20, 1933: 8.
– “Korb.” Boston Globe, September 3, 1957: 46.
-“Lower Mills Ass’n to Have Banquet.” Boston Globe, October 18, 1930: 18.
-“Miss M. Korb’s Mother Worse: Name on City Hospital Dangerous List: Daughter’s Death in Auto Mishap Unknown to Her.” Boston Globe, August 7, 1908: 3.
- Steinert & Sons: Our History.
-Public Documents of Massachusetts: Being the Annual Reports of Various Public Officers and Institutions for the Year 1903,” Published by the Secretary of the Commonwealth, vol. XI (Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co. State Printers, 1904), 98–99.
-“Was Engaged to be Married: Mary Korb Victim of Runaway Auto. Her Sister Frances Also Met Death by Violence,” Boston Globe, August 5, 1908: 1.