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The Chillicothe Voice

Harry Wyman and The Square Deal Garage Conclusion

May 30, 2023 02:03PM ● By Gary Fyke

As told last month, George Foote hired mechanics Nelson Brownfield and then George Thornberg to manage the Square Deal Garage. Each of those men left to follow other dreams and Paul Staab briefly became Foote’s partner. By March 1918, Wyman bought the Square Deal Garage. Meanwhile, Wyman’s personal life was also changing. On September 6, 1917, he married Alta Irene Merritt, a local Chillicothe woman. That bond was cut short on January 8, 1919, when influenza claimed Alta and their infant son George Edward.

Records seem to indicate that the Square Deal Garage was still situated in the C.A. Nelson Livery Stable and Wagon shop on Chestnut Street. In 1922, Wyman moved the business to Pine Street where Wm. Mead had built a building and added a section to accommodate Wyman’s growing auto mechanic business. Wyman had also made a change in his personal life when two years and one month following his wife’s death, he married Lulu Calvin Tate on February 7, 1920. Lulu was a 28-year-old widow with a five-year-old son named William Hubert Tate. Lulu’s husband Jesse Tate was killed as a result of a tragic accidental gun discharge in 1915. Lulu and William lived with her father Charles Calvin on his farm in nearby Northampton. Harry and Lulu were married in February 1920 and lived at 232 N. Fourth Street in Chillicothe. That address is 1014 N. Fourth Street today but the house has been torn down and the lot is now part of the Circle K Service Station property.

Wyman continued the business, changing the brand of automobile dealerships several times over the coming years. In 1928, he moved the garage to the NE corner of Second Street and Elm Street. By April 1935 advertisements showed ownership of the business was Tate and Wyman. Later in that year, their lease was lost and another move was made. From there, they moved to the Stakely Building on Chestnut Street, which is the same location where the Best Garage was originally established in 1910. Wyman bought the building in 1938 and closed his business when he sold the garage and building to Kenny Koch in October 1942. Harry Wyman died May 21, 1951, and Lulu Wyman passed away in November 1963.