George and Arnolda (von Oven) Jatho; click to see an enlargement including daughters Olga, Maryliese, Pauline and Georgia, photographed at the back of their home at 2 Doughty Street, about 1914.
The Colgate manufacturing plant in New Jersey with its then-famous octagonal clock. George Jatho was one of the company's top salesmen.
George, an insurance and merchandise broker, and later a successful salesman for the Colgate soap company, was born in January 1857 in Charleston. He met Arnolda von Oven, according to family, when the young lady (originally from Oldenburg) was trying to buy a cabbage and couldn't remember the English word for it.
George, who knew a little German from his own family background, stepped in to help her. Arnolda was so entranced with the young man that she deliberately went back to the market the next day, hoping that he'd be there. He was...and a romance was born. They were married on April 6, 1881. Their marriage was recorded both at St. John's Lutheran Church and the German-language congregation of St. Matthew's German Lutheran Church.
George and Arnolda had seven children, all born in Charleston: Georgia, Arnolda,
Herbert,
Maryliese, Ruby, Pauline Marcella and Olga. At left, from a hand-tinted
photo circa 1888, are Georgia, Maryliese and Herbert.
Baby Arnolda, Herbert, and Ruby died very young and are buried at Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston. The other four daughters survived to adulthood and along with their aunt, Pauline Jatho Foster, preserved a number of documents and photos related to our Jatho family history. Mrs. Foster died in 1926 and bequeathed her memorabilia to her nieces.
George's and Arnolda's daughter Pauline married William Magwood, of the well-known Magwood shrimping clan in Charleston, in 1917. Her sister Olga married Louis DuBose Quin in 1920; an engagement announcement from the Atlanta Constitution in in the list at left. Their mother Arnolda Sr. died in 1918, father George in 1924. St. John's Lutheran Church, where he was an active volunteer, wrote a heartfelt tribute to him.
Georgia, who never married, and her sister Maryliese shared the family home at 2 Doughty Street until Georgia's death in 1941. Maryliese then married Robert S. Tiedemann, a South Carolina native, and she died in 1974. Many family members are buried in the Jatho family plot at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston.