By 1918 the Osterhoudt's were back in Los Angeles at the same address of 1936 E. 77th Street, but would eventually move to 8011 Crockett Boulevard, a few blocks away. This might have been the end of the story of Elmer Osterhoudt's interest in radio, just another boyhood hobby set aside. However, the young Elmer was very resourceful. Since it was illegal for a civilian to own radio apparatus, he joined the Navy and became a Radio Mechanic!
 

Elmer was born in the Scotts Mills Precinct of Oregon on October 6, 1899, the son of Wilbert and Minnie Osterhoudt. Wilbert (also known as William) was a farmer, carpenter, and a cabinet and furniture maker. According to the 1900 census, the family lived on the farm of Charles Higby Osterhoudt, Wilbert's father. Wilbert's mother, Elizabeth Woodruff, had passed away in 1896. Also on the farm were two of Wilbert's brothers, Henry and John. Cyril Wilbert Osterhoudt, Elmer's brother, was born on April 17, 1901.

Note: To be more precise, Elmer wrote on his 1942 draft card that he was born in Butte Creek, Oregon. Butte Creek was incorporated into Scotts Mills in 1916. He was apparently born on his grandfather's farm near the town of Scotts Mills but not in the town itself. A mortgage document from June 7, 1887 states this farm is where the actual Butte Creek intersects the "county road leading to Silverton". The property line ran down the the road, but followed Butte Creek for a short distance in the north. The county road, now route 213, or Cascade Highway, is about one mile north of Scotts Mills. Adjoining the southern end of the Osterhoudt farm was a farm owned by Cornelius Woodruff, Elizabeth Osterhoudt's father. Also, 10 acres of the Osterhoudt farm were owned by Elizabeth's sister, Sarah Coffin. A 1929 map of the Butte Creek area shows a plot of the Osterhoudt farm still owned by Elmer's aunt, Luella Dicken. (See this.)

The population of Scotts Mills at the time was about 100. There is no birth certificate for Elmer, as none was needed in 1899. Cyril obtained a "delayed" birth certificate in 1942. On it, he claimed he was born in Silverton, Marion, Oregon, about 5 miles from Scotts Mills. Silverton was larger than Scotts Mills, with a population of 656 in the year 1900. A natural assumption is that Minnie went to Silverton so Cyril would be born in a hospital, but there was no hospital in Silverton until 1918. From this we my surmise that Cyril was also born on the Osterhoudt farm, and he listed the largest town near the farm on his birth certificate. Charles, Elizabeth and Minnie are buried in Miller Cemetery, which sits almost exactly between Silverton and Scotts Mills. Today, most of the area is still open farmland.

Sometime around 1902, Charles Osterhoudt, Wilbert, Minnie, Elmer, John and Henry left the farm and moved to Spokane, Washington. Cyril was probably with them but ended up living with Wilbert's sister Nellie McConnell and her husband Charles. The McConnell farm was right outside of Scotts Mills.
 

Entry from the 1903 Spokane, Washington City Directory. The house in the listing, built in 1889, still exists.

From Spokane they moved to Yakama City. Charles died there in April of 1903. Minnie Osterhoudt died of typhoid fever in September 1903 at the age of 27. A lone newspaper article hints that Elmer and Cyril had a three month old brother named Clarence who died two weeks after their mother died (see page 12). Wilbert, Henry, John, and four year old Elmer moved to Vancouver, Washington. From there they moved to Eugene, Oregon. (It may have been around this time that Cyril was sent to live with the McConnell's. All we have to go on is the 1910 census.)

On July 27, 1904, John Osterhoudt married a girl named Lillie S. Shields in Vancouver Washington. They lived on a 160 acre homestead near Enterprise, Oregon. John listed himself as a farmer in the 1910 census.

Elmer wrote in MRL Data Sheets Vol. 6 that his father owned a planing mill in Eugene. (A planing mill takes boards from a saw mill and turns them into finished lumber.) Actually, Wilbert didn't own the mill outright, he had a partner named Jim Smith. The company name was "J H Smith & Co," according to the city directory. The mill was a few blocks from the Willamette River near Skinners Butte, where the mill race met Eighth Avenue. Henry Osterhoudt also worked at the mill.

The 1910 census shows that Wilbert and Elmer lived at 205 8th Avenue in Eugene. This was the actual address of the planing mill, named "Eighth Avenue Planing Mill." The mill was also known as "Eighth Street Planing Mill." Wilbert's brother Henry, his wife Fanny and their son Darrel rented a house a few blocks away at 316 East 15th Street. In 1912, John, Lillie and their children moved from Enterprise to 593 8th Avenue in Eugene. John then worked at the mill, along with Wilbert and Henry.
 

Entry from the 1911 Eugene City Directory. Henry has moved from East 15th Street to West 10th Street. The street names change from East to West at Willamette Street, and the new address places his residence much closer to the mill.

Cyril was reunited with his father and Elmer sometime between 1910 and 1912. An article in the Eugene Guardian states that Wilbert had married Lela May Smith in 1911, and the 1914 City Directory shows they lived at 656 E. 8th Avenue. However, it seems Wilbert was abusive, and he encouraged both Elmer and Cyril to act unkindly towards her. Lela May went into hiding and filed for divorce in June of 1914. The divorce was granted on August 18, 1914.
 

Entry from the 1914 Eugene City Directory.

Was Lela May Smith the daughter of James H. Smith, Wilbert's partner? After some investigating, it has been determined she was not.  There was a Lela May Smith in Eugene who was the daughter of James Smith, but it was a different James Smith. He was James L. Smith, a farmer who died in 1907. This other Lela May Smith married Clark H. Hileman in 1903 and was still married to him when she died in 1933. Lela May Smith Osterhoudt's mother's name was Nancy. The 1920 census states that James H. Smith, 67, of 205 8th Street in Eugene City, was married to Jessie D. Smith, 48 (not Nancy). His occupation was "Carpenter in a planing mill."

 

Wilbert Osterhoudt and Jim Smith at the Eighth Avenue Planing Mill 1909. Click for full size. Construction of the mill began on October 10, 1908 and it opened a month later.

Left to right: Jim Smith, Wilbert Osterhoudt, Mr. Basinette, Henry Osterhoudt, John Edwin Osterhoudt. Click for full size.

Fun facts: Wilbert was 5'8" tall. Henry was 5'9" and John was 5'8". (Information  from a census document from Marion County, Oregon, 1895) When this picture was taken Wilbert was 39 years old, Henry was 44 and John was 34.

The 1910 census shows that Henry Osterhoudt, his wife Fannie (or Fanny) and his son Darrel lived at 316 East 15th Street in Eugene. Darrel was born in 1903 in Cottage Grove, Oregon, about 21 miles south of Eugene. He would have been a few years younger than Elmer and Cyril. This is interesting because the 1903 Spokane, Washington city directory shows Henry Osterhoudt was in Spokane with his father and brothers that year. 1903 was also the year that their father Charles and Elmer's mother Minnie died in Yakama City. Fanny's maiden name was Woodruff. Henry and Fanny were distantly related before they were married. Wilbert, John and Henry's mother's maiden name was Betsy Woodruff. Henry's grandfather on his mother's side, Cornelius Woodruff, and Fanny's grandfather Brock Woodruff were brothers. Henry and Fanny both had the same great grandfather, Asa Woodruff. The only other information we have about Henry is that he died in 1920 at the age of 56. At that time he was a farmer who owned a farm in Hopewell, Oregon, about 90 miles from Eugene but only about 20 miles from Scotts Mills. In 1922 Fanny moved to Portland with Darrel, who graduated Benson Polytechnic High School in 1924. Sometime after 1927 Darrel bought a tiny house at 3381 S. Francis Street, and he and Fanny lived in it for the rest of their lives. A voter registration card shows that Hazel May Osterhoudt, daughter of John and Lillie, lived with them in 1936. Hazel married Eldee Buhite in 1939 and they moved to Washington County, outside of Portland. (Their son, Edwin John Buhite, was a member of The Cat Whisker Society in 1990 and mentioned his cousin Elmer Osterhoudt in one of their newsletters.) Also living at the Francis Street address in the 1940s was Hazel's brother, Merrill Osterhoudt. Merrill joined the Navy and spent 20 months in the Pacific during WWII. Fanny died in December of 1967 at the age of 92. Darrel died 11 months later at the age of 65. He was a foreman working for the Portland City Parks Department and had just retired that June. He had been there since 1932, the year Elmer Osterhoudt created Modern Radio Laboratories. Henry, Fanny and Darrel are all buried in Hopewell Cemetery. Each has the same type of tombstone, and they are lined up in a row. Hopewell is located where two roads intersect in an area of ranches, farms and a winery. It has two churches, a cemetery, a little store that sells coffee, and a sign that says, "Thank You For Visiting Hopewell." It's considered an "unincorporated community" and there are very few houses in the area. Who would have been there in 1967 and 1968 to bring Fanny and Darrel back from Portland to be buried next to Henry Osterhoudt? Who in Hopewell would even remember them? If Fanny and Darrel lived in Portland for 45 years or so, why aren't they buried in Portland? I can offer a theory: Fanny had in her will that she wanted to be buried next to Henry. Darrel would have taken care of this if he was able. Then Darrel died, and since he had no wife or children it may have been Elmer's cousins, the children of John and Lilly, who laid him to rest with his parents. Some of them, including Hazel May, still lived in Oregon and Raymond Osterhoudt lived in Portland.

In 1912, when Elmer was 13 years old and living in Eugene, he traded in three empty beer bottles for the deposit and bought a 10¢ book named "The Star Toymaker." Using the plans from this book, Elmer and Cyril built a tin talking machine, bird houses, motors, waterwheels, stilts, telegraph sounders, electric bells and dry cells. They would also go to garages and acquire discarded dry cells from Model T Fords to power their projects. At one time they had about 100 of them connected together in series for "a sparking good time." When the cells became depleted they figured out how to chemically rejuvenate them using a saturated solution of Sal Ammoniac.

They also used the cells to set off their cannon, which was made of a foot long pipe 1" in diameter, mounted on a 2" x 6" board. One end was closed off with a big bolt and had a slot sawed into it to hold the end of a lamp cord. They charged it with Potash and Sulfur and sent an electric current through the lamp cord. According to Elmer, they once stuck the handle from an old umbrella into it, and it was blown out with enough force to drive it through a wooden box.

Handbook 8, Radio Kinks and Quips, contains the following three sentences: "At home, my brother and I used to drive our poor Dad nuts. We had an Edison Cylinder record phonograph. We used to reverse the belt and run it backwards."

Accounts of how to make a canon out of a 1" gas pipe, how to rejuvenate dry cells with Sal Ammoniac, how to reverse the belt on an Edison phonograph, and even how to acquire depleted batteries from automobile garages can be found in Popular Mechanics magazines that were published prior to 1912, so it seems Elmer may have been reading Popular Mechanics in addition to The Star Toy Maker.

According to Elmer, they sometimes threw their old dry cells out their 2nd story window at their dogs below when the dogs were "celebrating." What is interesting about this sentence is that the Osterhoudt's had dogs at the mill. Elmer and Cyril built "grass sleds" and used them to sled down Skinners Butte, which rises 250 feet above the surrounding city. Skinners Butte is still a recreation spot today.

Near the base of the Butte was a mill race connecting to the Willamette River. The mill race crossed 8th Avenue at the location of Wilbert Osterhoudt's mill at 205 8th Avenue. (There were several planing mills at the time in the immediate area.) Skinners Butte was only a few blocks away from the mill. On top of the butte were the charred ruins of an observatory which had been dynamited in 1905, so it must have been a great place for kids to explore. Also on the butte were two reservoirs, the larger one holding 2 million gallons of water for use by the fire department.

Downtown Eugene, Oregon in 1903. Skinners Butte rises in the background. On top of the butte can be seen the observatory. Elmer and Cyril probably walked down this very street. There are few, if any, of these buildings still standing as they've been replaced with modern structures. The Osterhoudt & Smith planing mill site became the location of Eugene City Hall in 1964. The building was demolished in 2015 and the site is now a large parking lot.

Eugene was home to the University of Oregon. See this map.
The Osterhoudt planing mill is at the bottom of Plate 16 of the 1912 Sanborn Fire Insurance maps. Link
Plate 16 can also be viewed here.

On August 14, 1915, one year after his divorce from Lela May, Elmer's father married Alice Elsie Shields, the sister of his brother John's wife, Lillie. By this time Wilbert and Alice had a daughter named Wilda Frances Osterhoudt. Lela May had asked for 1/3 of Wilbert's property and $25 a month alimony during the divorce. The Lane County History Museum states that the J. H. Smith & Co mill stopped operating in 1914, the year the Osterhoudt's were divorced. It's impossible to know the exact chain of events, but Wilbert and Alice left Eugene, taking Elmer, Cyril and Wilda with them. They were married in Santa Ana California, and would spend the rest of their lives in Los Angeles.

Elmer and Cyril eventually had six half-brothers and sisters, though two sisters died young; Nora died of Whooping Cough when she was almost 4 years old, and Ada May died of pneumonia the day before her second birthday. (See Page 12 for a list of siblings.)
 

The Los Angeles 1916 Long Beach City directory lists W A Osterhoudt as a  woodworker at Jones Sash and Door Company, located at 1101 West Broadway. The "W A" would be William Arthur. Unfortunately it doesn't list his address, but the 1915 directory lists an Alice Shields at 922 W. 6th Street, not far from the Jones Sash & Door address. Neither of these addresses exist today, and we don't know if the listing is the correct Alice Shields, since her name would have changed to Osterhoudt in August of 1915.

Entry from the 1913 Los Angeles City Directory. This address is in the Long Beach area.

A "Navy Type" loose coupler from 1921. (It's a "loose" coupler because the coil on the right slides in and out of the box, which houses a larger coil. Taps on the large coil are connected to the switches on the front.) Elmer's loose coupler may have resembled this one, but there is no way we'll ever know. It is just shown here as an example.

NOTE: A spark gap transmitter basically transmitted bursts of static. These bursts were created by rapidly opening and closing the connection to the low voltage side of an induction coil. Elmer used the spark plug coil from a Ford, possibly a Model T. (The coils were so plentiful that you can still buy one today.) The tone was determined by how quickly the circuit was interrupted, and this is probably what Elmer's AC doorbell was used for. The rotary spark transmitted a higher pitched tone, but it was still just a controlled form of static.

When Elmer wrote that he "proceeded to jam up the air" he wasn't kidding. These signals were so broad that two transmitters operating within a short distance of each other would drown each other out, blanketing the airwaves with noise.

	A Ford Model T spark plug coil and an antique doorbell. Of course, it wouldn't have been antique in 1919.
Not all Model T coils look exactly like this one, but they are similar. The Ford Model T had four coils, each one in a wooden box. Millions of Model Ts had been produced by 1919 so there were plenty of coils to be had. There is a vibrator mounted on the top to create a high voltage spark, but Elmer used the doorbell (hopefully, minus the bell).

The "Pacific Radio News" issue of May 10, 1920 lists Elmer as holding the radio call letters 6NW. He is also listed in "The Consolidated Radio Call Book" from May, 1922 and the "Citizen's Radio Call Book" dated November 1922, with the same call sign.

Listing in the May, 1920 issue of "The Consolidated Radio Call Book"

According to "Amateur Stations of the United States," in 1920 and 1921 Elmer had a 1000 watt station at 8011 Crockett Street in Los Angeles. Elmer later wrote that the power was actually 500 watts. The June, 1922 edition of the same publication shows that Elmer's call letters had been reassigned to J. F. Upchurch of Vallejo, California.
 

 

Osterhoudt entry in the 1920 Los Angeles City Directory.

An entry in the Los Angeles 1920 City Directory shows an E. G. Osterhoudt working as a laborer at Hammond Lumber Company. Both his father and his Uncle John (who lived in the same house with Elmer) were carpenters, and would probably know if a job became available at a lumber yard. Though Hammond Lumber was about four miles from his house on Crockett Blvd, Alameda Street was only a few blocks away. A trolley car could have transported him up Alameda Street in less than a half an hour.

As for his roles at Majestic Electrical Products and U. S. Motor Company, Elmer never mentioned these in his writings, nor did he ever mention working in a lumber or paper mill, nor did he mention how hard it was for a veteran to find a job after the war.

Likewise, he never mentioned that in 1920 he was a member of the California Academy of Sciences.

The January 1920 US Census shows Elmer working for a power company in Fresno, CA as a wireless operator. In June of 1920, he traveled to San Francisco hoping to land a job as a radio operator aboard a ship. He arrived on a Saturday. By Sunday he was down to his last $20. By Monday he was employed at Southern California Edison Company as a wireless operator.
Apparently, he wasn't there very long.

According to Elmer's application to the Society of Wireless Pioneers, in 1920 he was at the RCA wireless station at Marshall, California, about 40 miles north of San Francisco. Today the station is an historic landmark in a park-like setting, but when Elmer was there it was surrounded by barren coast land. He was only there a week. In July of 1920 he finally obtained a wireless operator position aboard a ship.
 

	This crop from the 1920 Compton Union High School Alumni page shows Elmer as a 1918 graduate. He's working for Standard Oil. (Watts, CA is where he lived when he attended the school.) Notice that Elmer Stevens, whom we believe is the neighbor boy who brought his radio to Elmer Osterhoudt in 1915 (see top of page), is a plumber.

In 1921 there was some sort of strike, which backfired. The radio operators lost $20 a month, and on July 21, 1921 Elmer ended up on a lumber scow named the "Willamette."  Apparently, life aboard the Willamette wasn't very pleasant due to the light ship lurching in the waves. Elmer wrote that he got six meals a day; "three down and three up." A good part of his time was spent "hanging over the rail." A Radio Service Bulletin dated October 1, 1921 lists a "Willamette" with a transmitter range of 200 miles. It had a Gray and Danielson radio. Gray and Danielson, also known as Remler Company, was founded in 1918 in San Francisco, so this seems to be the correct ship. (Searching on the Internet for "Willamette" will lead you down many strange paths.)

On August 31, 1921, Elmer was aboard the tug named "Sea Lion." In a newspaper article published by the Oregon Daily Emerald on November 29, 1921 it states that radio operator Elmer G. Osterhoudt is working aboard the tug "Sea Lion," plying up and down the Pacific coast, where he is also studying botany and physiology. (He was taking a correspondence course from the University of Oregon at the time, ergo the newspaper article.) By September 28, 1921 he was working aboard the SS Atlas, an oil tanker owned by Standard Oil of California.

	The tugboat "Sea Lion," built in 1920 at the Main Street Iron Works, San Francisco, CA.
	On September 28, 1921, Elmer was in the radio room of the SS Atlas, owned by Standard Oil Co. of California.  (This photo was taken at the Standard Oil facility in Ketchikan Alaska at an unknown date.)

                            Entry from Radio Service Bulletin, US Department of Commerce, January, 1915. Page 12.
                     (NOTE: Marconi Wireless was incorporated into the Radio Corporation of America in October, 1919)


By June 17, 1922 Elmer worked aboard the F. H. Hillman, an oil tanker built in 1921 at the Alameda Works Shipyard, also owned by Standard Oil of California. From July 3, 1922 to September 4, 1923 he worked aboard the "El Segundo," an oil tanker built in 1912 and owned by Standard Oil. Though the SS Atlas, the J. A. Moffett, the F. H. Hillman and the El Sugundo were owned by Standard Oil , Elmer actually worked for RCA. Elmer wrote that in the 1920s he reported to a Chief Radio Operator named Dick Johnson, who worked for RCA. On the next page is a letter Elmer wrote while aboard the ship, signed "care of Radio Corporation of America."

Aboard ship, Elmer was known as "Sparks," a common nickname for the radio operator. Elmer said that he "quit" in 1923. By then, almost every other ship on the Pacific coast was a Japanese cargo ship. Elmer wrote, "After an OP spends several years at sea, he gets sick of the monotony of sea life and looks for a land station job." In a contradiction, Elmer also wrote in Radio Operating as a Career "If you spend a few years at sea - you'll never get off - it is so fascinating."

Afterwards, he became "official janitor" (his own words) in a drug store, and contemplated the idea of owning his own drug store. Elmer wrote, "I had a lot with my 6NW on the back." which he sold for $1000. With that and the money he saved while at sea (he called it Ship money), he opened a store. Thankfully, it wasn't a drug store.

                                                              "I had a lot with my 6NW on the back." - Elmer Osterhoudt

MRL MYSTERY: Three separate publication list 6NW as being located at 8011 Crockett Blvd. This was the address of the Osterhoudt residence, presumably owned by Elmer's father. How did Elmer have a "lot" that he could sell at that address? What does "a lot with my 6NW on the back" actually mean, and was it worth $1000?

It's possible that in the early 1920s some of the properties on Crocket Blvd were empty lots. Elmer could have purchased one and built a ham shack on the rear of the lot, ergo "6NW [was] on the back." Around 1927 the Osterhoudt's moved from 8011 to 8019 Crockett Blvd. These two properties ARE RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER. Was 8019 Elmer's lot? Did he sell it to his father in 1924? A 1924 edition of the Los Angeles Daily News shows that $1000 for a lot was about right.

Is "a lot with my 6NW on the back" a figure of speech? If it meant his radio equipment, he sold it for the equivalent of over $18,000 in 2025 dollars. His amateur license (6NW) which he acquired in 1917 expired in May of 1922. He resigned from RCA as a radio operator in 1923. Did he build a state of the art ham radio station worth $18,000 while also being at sea for most of those years? Would the technology available at the time have cost that much?

The November 1923 issue of Radio Age reported that S. P. Stocking, whose call was 9AZH, had his station equipment stolen. It was valued at $1,500. Because of this report we know Elmer's equipment alone could have been worth $1000.

"A lot with my 6NW on the back" was either his radio station or a piece of real estate. Whatever it was, he got $1000 for it.