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Editor’s Note: Several holidays exist to honor our veterans and active duty military personnel, Veterans Day on Nov. 11, and Armed Forces Day, May 17. But, Memorial Day is set aside to remember those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our nation. In today’s article, we remember two brothers from Mason County who died serving our country during World War I.
By Rob Alway, Editor-in-Chief
Leveaux Memorial Park
Leveaux Memorial Park is a small, subtle park that sits just south of Ludington Avenue, between Staffon and Madison streets. The park is meticulously maintained by the Mason County Garden Club along with the City of Ludington’s Department of Public Works. It was dedicated as Leveaux Memorial Park 100 years ago this year. In 1925, the City of Ludington renamed East End Park it in honor of brothers Emery and Cosmer Leveaux, and first generation Americans, who died serving their country during World War I.
Forty-eight Mason County residents lost their lives serving in military service during World War I. The greatest loss came to the Leveaux family.
Karl Johan Olsson Leveaux (1866-1969), known locally as John, was born in Stockholm, Sweden and immigrated to the United States in 1888, settling in Ludington. He changed the family name from Olsson to Leveaux.
Emma Johnson (1868-1922) was also born in Sweden and immigrated to the U.S. in 1882. The Leveauxs lived on Buttersville Peninsula, likely in an area on the northern tip commonly known as Fin Town, as it was mostly occupied by people of Scandinavian descent.
Karl and Emma had six children: Jennie (1890-1922), Emery Eric Johannes (1893-1917), Cosmer Magnus (1896-1918), Amy (1901-1952), John F. (1904-1989), and Carl L. (1903-1993). According to the 1910 U.S. Census, Karl was a farmer.
Emery Leveaux
Emery Eric Johannes Leveaux was born in October 1893. He was the first person in the Leveaux family to enter service and he was the first Mason County resident to die in the conflict. Emery was a Merchant Marine and was killed, at the age of 23, after a German submarine attacked the ship he was serving on in the North Sea, two weeks prior to the U.S. formally entering the war.
On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson spoke to a joint session of Congress to request a declaration of war against Germany. Wilson cited Germany’s violation of its pledge to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, as well as its attempts to entice Mexico into an alliance against the United States. On April 4, 1917, the U.S. Senate voted in support of the President’s request. The House of Representatives concurred on April 6, thus entering the U.S. into World War I.
The European war had begun on July 28, 1914 when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. The U.S. had attempted to remain neutral. But, German submarine attacks on merchant vessels, including American merchant vessels, were the motivation behind President Wilson’s request for the declaration.
One of the victims of those German attacks was merchant marine Emery Leveaux of Ludington. On March 21, 1917, Leveaux, 23, was working as an oiler aboard the SS Healdton, an oil tanker operating in the North Sea.
The Healdton was owned by Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. She was initially called the Purelight and was originally owned by Purelight Steam Ship Company, LTD. She was built at Greenock & Grangemouth Dockyard Company in Scotland and was launched as the SS Purelight on July 1, 1908. She was 369-feet long with a breadth of 50.9 feet and a depth of 27.3 feet. She had a single screw, driven by a three-cylinder triple expansion engine made by John G. Kincaid & Co. of Greenock, Scotland. In 1911, her ownership transferred to Pure Oil Co., which had belonged to the Pennsylvania Trading Company, AG, a German Company.
The SS Healdton
In 1914, Purelight was equipped with submarine signaling and wireless telegraphy. When the war began in August 1914, she was in Hamburg, Germany.
In 1916, the Standard Oil Company of the USA acquired the ship and renamed her Healdton, re-registering her from Hamburg to New York.
She had left Philadelphia on Jan. 26, 1917 with a cargo of 6,200 tons of kerosene, heading for Rotterdam, The Netherlands. She was laid up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, from Feb. 9 to March 9, 1917 when she set sail for Bergen, Norway. She then left Bergen on March 20 heading to Rotterdam.
The words “Healdton – USA” were painted in white letters several feet high amidship on both sides of her black hull. At night, the letters were illuminated.
At 8:15 p.m. on March 21, 1917, she was 23 nautical miles north by east of the Terschelling lightship offshore of Holland, traveling at 10 knots (11.5 mph) when an explosion hit her port side amidship, wrecking her engine room and knocking her electric generator out of action, disabling all her lights. A second explosion then hit her bunkers farther aft, which started a fire. The ship listed to port and settled by her stern. Two crewmen were killed by being trapped below decks.
Dutch torpedo boat Hr.Ms. G-13
The crew prepared to lower lifeboats. One capsized shortly after being launched, killing all but one of its occupants. Capt. Charles Christopher later stated the boat was cut from its tow line prematurely. The captain and 12 other men abandoned ship in a second lifeboat and eight, including the chief officer, abandoned in a third lifeboat. The ship sank about 20 minutes after the explosions.
Capt. Christopher said he saw a submarine surface 100 feet away and then dive again.
At 8 a.m. the next morning, the steam trawler Java sighted the sail of the Number 2 lifeboat, containing the captain, and went to investigate. At 2 p.m. that day, the Royal Netherlands Navy torpedo boat Hr.Ms. G-13 found the third boat and took the survivors to Terschelling. Two of the men in the third boat were naked, as their clothes had either been blown off them or had burnt off them following the explosions. One of the sailors had died of hypothermia before he could be rescued.
Later that day, the Dutch steam trawler Ocean found the first boat. It had capsized, but one crewman had righted it and climbed aboard.
Among the 21 dead, 13 were U.S. citizens including the second officer, third officer, third engineer, and Ludington resident Emery Leveaux.
Little biographical information about Emery exists. Since his siblings attended and graduated from Ludington High School, one would assume he did as well, likely in 1910 or 1911.
Cosmer Leveaux
Cosmer Magnus Leveaux was born March 1896 in Ludington. Cassy, as he was called by his high school classmates, was small in stature, as is evident in his senior quote in the 1913 Ludington High School “Oriole” yearbook: “Valuable goods often come in small packages.”
After high school, he attended Michigan Agricultural College (now Michigan State University) where he earned a degree in forestry, graduating in 1917. His MAC friends called him Joe. He had been engaged to Hildah Cummings, who was enrolled in the college’s bacteriology department. At MAC, he was active in the Cadet Corps, fencing, the forestry club (Xi Sigma Pi) and Alpha Epsilon fraternity.
Cosmer Levaux’s name can be found on two memorials at MSU. One at Williams Hall, honoring MAC’s fallen soldiers and another at the school of agriculture.
A newspaper account about the Levaux brothers stated that Cosmer joined the Army to avenge his brother’s death. He joined Battery C of the Michigan National Guard Field Artillery, which became part of the U.S. Army 119th Field Artillery Regiment, 32nd Infantry Division, the famed Red Arrow Division.
The U.S. 32nd Infantry Division was formed from the Army National Guard units from Michigan and Wisconsin and fought primarily during World War I and World War II.
Two months after the U.S. declared war on Germany, the 32nd Division was activated at Camp MacArthur, Waco, Texas. Wisconsin furnished approximately 15,000 soldiers while another 8,000 came from Michigan. The division was made up of the 125th and 126th Infantry Regiments and the 127th and 128th Infantry Regiments, as well as three artillery regiments within the 57th Field Artillery Brigade.
The 32nd Division arrived on the Western Front in France in February 1918. It was the sixth U.S. division to join the American Expeditionary Force under Gen. John H. Pershing.
According to military records, Cosmer Leveaux departed for France on a military transport from New York City on Feb. 26, 1918. At some point he was promoted from private to corporal.
The 32nd Division’s shoulder patch, a line shot through with a red arrow, symbolizes the fact that the 32nd Division penetrated every German line of defense that it faced during World War I.
On July 15, 1918, 23 German divisions attacked towards Reims, France with the hopes of drawing Allied troopers away from Belgium. This was the beginning of what became known as the Aisne-Marne Offensive. The Allies were able to halt the German advance two days later. With the German advance stalled Allied commander Ferdinand Foch launched a counteroffensive that included the battles of Soissons, Chateau-Thierry, and Belleau Wood.
The Allies, including significant help from the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), fought a fluid offensive battle using tanks and other new technologies.
On 7 August 1918 the 32nd Division was relieved in the front by the 28TH Infantry Division. In the fighting that occurred since July 30, the German line was forced steadily back, over difficult ground, from the strongly fortified position on the Ourcq River to the Vesle River, a distance of 12 miles. The American attacks culminated in the 64th Infantry Brigade’s capture of the important town of Fismes, on the Vesle River on Aug. 7, and the 63rd Brigade’s capture of the important German railhead on the Vesle on Aug. 4.
During the past week the Division had captured 18 villages and fortified farms, captured four pieces of heavy artillery, five pieces of light artillery, 10 trench mortars, 28 machine guns and hundreds of rifles. The division had faced three German divisions in the offensive: the Fourth Prussian Guards, the 200th and the 216th.
Cosmer Leveaux’s gravesite.
One German officer and 96 soldiers were taken prisoner. The 32nd Division casualties were 4,597 losses from all causes, including: killed and died of wounds, 797; severely wounded, 1,153; slightly wounded, 2009; gassed, 618; missing, 12; captured, two officers and six men.
Among those dead was Cosmer Leveaux, who died on the Chery Chartreuve battlefield, Aisne, on Aug. 10, 1918. Ironically, Cosmer’s high school classmate, Edwin H. Ewing (1894-1918), died just five days earlier in battle (his story will be told separately). Cosmer was killed by shrapnel when German artillery hit the gun Cosmer was operating with 11 others, who also were killed.
By August the Allies had totally eliminated the German salient and had started on the road to the end of the war.
Emery Leveaux was buried at sea while his little brother, Cosmer, was buried at Oise-Aisne American Cemetery Fere-en-Tardenois, France. His grave is located in Plot D, Row 34, Grave 12.
On May 18, 1925, the Ludington City Council passed an ordinance to change the name of East End Park to Leveaux Memorial Park. Since March 1952, the park has been cared for by the Mason County Garden Club.
In addition to Leveaux Memorial Park, the now defunct Ludington Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) post was named in honor of the Leveaux brothers.
Editor’s Note: Previously-published historical articles about the Leveaux family state that Emery and Cosmer had a sister who served as an Army nurse during World War I. Some of this information has been contradictory, as some accounts state that sister Amy served and others state that sister Jennie served. Some articles also state that she died of influenza during the war and during the Spanish Flu epidemic.
Jennie Leveaux was born on Oct. 13, 1890 in Pere Marquette Township and died on May 30, 1922. Amy was born Feb. 21, 1901 and died on March 10, 1952.
The 1916 Ludington High School “Oriole” yearbook lists Amy as a freshman, who would graduate with the class of 1919. The 1920 U.S. Census shows both Jennie, 30, and Amy Leveaux, 18, living with their parents in Pere Marquette Township.
A 1952 Michigan State College alumni publication memorializes Amy Leveaux Schroeder, who had passed away on March 10, 1952. The memorial states that Amy Leveaux, who was originally from Ludington, had graduated from Michigan Agricultural College in 1925 and was married to Frank J. Schroeder. She and Frank had resided in Great Valley, NY since 1935 and had one son.
Jennie did pass away at the age of 31 in New York City and it is possible she passed away from complications of the Spanish Flu.
Emma Leveaux, matriarch of the family passed away on Aug. 21, 1922 of chronic bronchitis. She was 54 years old. Karl “John” Leveaux died on March 2, 1969 in Middleport, NY at the age of 103. He likely lived near his son, John, who resided nearby, also in upstate New York. John died in 1989. Carol Leveaux, the youngest child of John and Emma Leveaux, lived in Maryland and died in 1993.
Sources: Mason County Historical Society Rose Hawley Archives, Newspapers.com, Ancestry.com
The Mason County Historical Society is a non-profit charitable organization that was founded in 1937 that does not receive any governmental funding. It owns and operates the Port of Ludington Maritime Museum in Ludington, Historic White Pine Village in Pere Marquette Township, and The Rose Hawley Archives and the Mason County Emporium and Sweet Shop in downtown Ludington.
For more information about donating to and/or joining the Mason County Historical Society, visit masoncountymihistory.org.
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