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Dry-goods merchant; president of the Rurode Dry Goods Company
On the record
Ernst C. Rurode, a son of Henry and Katherine (Hoyer) Rurode, emigrated from Hanover in 1854, spent a period in New York City and then at Terre Haute, and came to Fort Wayne in 1860. With John MacDougal and L. B. Root he opened the dry-goods store Griswold names the New York Store. Following Root’s death in 1897 Rurode became the sole owner of the business, which continued as the Rurode Dry Goods Company, with Rurode as president, his son Ernst C. Rurode Jr. as vice president, and Charles A. T. Krimmel as secretary and treasurer. He was also president of the Fort Wayne Hotel Company, which owned the Anthony Hotel. His wife, Emeline Wilson Peddicord, died 2 May 1916. The younger Rurode, born in Fort Wayne on 18 July 1885 and educated at Culver Military Academy and at Lawrenceville, rose through the company to its treasurership and married Delia Rossell on 10 June 1910.
Sources: Griswold, Pictorial History of Fort Wayne, vol. II (1917), Rurode sketches, read first-hand. The Memorial Record of Northeastern Indiana (1896) carries an independent sketch confirming the Hanover birth, the 1854 emigration and the 1860 arrival with Root; it names the firm Root & Company, where Griswold names the store the New York Store. The company’s own history, “60 Years Young” (1920), is held by the Allen County Public Library.