John Frederick Rule

John Frederick Rule (1874-1962), was born in Vinton, Iowa, but was raised primarily in Des Moines, Iowa. His father was Alexander Hume Rule. He went to college in Des Moines and became an electrical engineer, but in 1899 he moved to Washington, DC, where he worked as an Examiner in the Patent Office of the Department of the Interior of the federal government for at least five years (1901-1905).

He then moved to New York City where he worked as a lawyer for an elevator company for some time. Around 1916, he moved to Toledo, Ohio, where he worked as a patent attorney (a specialist in patent law) for Corning Incorporated, a glass manufacturing company, for the rest of his working life. The Corning company has been in business since 1851 and is still a major corporation (see corning.com).

In 1906, John married Sarah "Sadie" Allen (1884-1920) of New Castle, Delaware. They had three sons:

• Ralph Gordon Rule (1907-1984)
• Elmer Allen Rule (1910-1981)
• Donald William Rule (1911-2005)

Sadie contracted an illness sometime before her marriage which weakened her heart to such an extent that she was given only a year to live at the time of her engagement. John knew about this but said he would rather spend a year with a woman he really loved even if she were to live just a year, so they got married and she lived fourteen more years. Sadie’s parents were Thomas Allen and Charlotte Geake and Charlotte’s parents were Martin and Sarah Geake of Bristol, England. Charlotte was born in Kingston, Ontario, in 1857 and emigrated to America from England in 1884 at age 23, but how she came to be born in Kingston is a mystery yet to be solved.

Sadie died 16 Nov 1920, seventeen days before her 36th birthday. She was pregnant with twin girls at the time of her death and wasn’t able to survive the pregnancy due to congestive heart failure. The twins also died. Her boys were 13, 10 and 9 at that time and her husband married his second wife, Harriet May Johnston (1885-1974), one year later on 21 Nov 1921.

Harriet’s father, William Franklin Johnston (1851- 1933), was a farmer in Cooper County, Missouri. He was twice elected as a Democrat to represent Cooper County in the Missouri House of Representatives in Jefferson City, Missouri, where he served for four years (1897-1900). He also served for twelve years as a Justice of the Peace of Prairie Home Township in his native county. In 1910, he moved to Warrensburg, Missouri, where he served for some time as a Police Judge and Justice of the Peace. Harriet’s sister Caroline (“Carrie”) served as a missionary in China from 1914 to 1942 along with her husband, Charles Eames.

Sources

• Philip Allen