Lewis C. Carran
Lewis C. Carran has been a well known Cleveland citizen and prominently identified with the oil industry and oil business for a long period of years. He is a son of the late Robert Carran, who died recently in Cleveland more than a century old after having lived in the city for three-quarters of a century. The career of this notable Cleveland man is sketched on other pages. Robert Carran married Elizabeth Kneale, who died when Lewis C. was an infant.
The latter was born at Cleveland October 13, 1852, and was well educated, graduating in 1870 from Baldwin University at Berea and in 1874 from Knox College at Gambier, Ohio. For the past thirty-five years he has been in the oil business and for a number of years was head of the L. C. Carran Company, oil manufacturers. He owned and operated a refinery but about thirty years ago sold out to the Standard Oil Company and since then has been a dealer in wholesale oils. In 1874, on finishing college, he was appointed by the state commissioners as superintendent of instruction at the Ohio Reform School and filled that office two years.
Mr. Carran was a member of the Cleveland City Council from 1885 to 1889 and has always been a stanch republican. He is now a director of the Dime Savings and Trust Company, and was one of the earliest members and is still active in the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce. He also belongs to the City Club, the Willowick Country Club, St. Agnes Church, and is prominent in the Early Settlers' Association.
A very happy and appropriate honor was bestowed upon Mr. Carran when he was appointed by former Mayor Baker and subsequently by Mayor Davis to succeed his honored father as the official flag raiser on Cleveland day, September 10th of this year, for the anniversary of Perry's victory on Lake Erie. Judge Alexander Hadden, president of the Early Settlers' Association, also appointed him chairman of the program committee for the celebration of Perry's Day, an annual event which takes place on the Public Square at Cleveland. It was the late Robert Carran's express wish when he died that his son, Lewis, should succeed him as flag raiser and it was also by invitation of the City of Cleveland that Mr. Carran accepted the honor of carrying forward the tradition of raising the flag on the Public Square to inaugurate Cleveland Day. Together with this invitation went a letter from the Director of Public Service which contained the following words: "Your father performed this service for years and was the city's appointed custodian of this tradition. It is entirely fitting that its continued performance in the future be kept in the Carran family in memory and out of respect to him who initiated it."
The raising of the flag is an act symbolizing and rededicating Cleveland every year to the patriotism which inspired the founders of the city and the founders of the nation, and no family could exhibit more cogent proofs of patriotic sacrifice as a justification of the flag-raising honor than the Carrans. Robert Carran at the outbreak of the Civil war is said to have called his four bous home from college, and all of them responded to the invitation to join the colors and help reserve the Union. Three of them filled soldiers' graves. One of them was color bearer of his regiment and was struck down at the battle of Missionary Ridge. Reference to this was made by the flag-day orator in June, 1917, after L. C. Carran had for the first time officiated in his new duties after the death of his father. "We are gathered here," said Attorney J. J. Sullivan, "to pay a fitting tribute to the brave sons of `Old Man' Carran, who sent four sons to the Civil war and who for thirty-five years after raised the flag on Flag day, here on Public Square."
Mr. L. C. Carran married at Peninsula, Ohio, November 23, 1896, Miss Grace E. Cassidy, daughter of A. R. and Agnes (Doherty) Cassidy, of Peninsula. Her parents now live retired in Cleveland. Her father in his active days was a cheese manufacturer and had the largest business of its kind in Summit County, Ohio, operating in his time fourteen factories. Mr. and Mrs. Carran have three children: Agnes E., L. C., Jr., and A. J. Carran.
From Cleveland - Special Limited Edition, The Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago & New York, 1918 v.1