Danville and Montour County have been home to a number of people who made names for themselves and in some instances, amassed fortunes in other parts of the country. Such is the case of Harry L. Kramer.

In reading a July 1909 Danville Intelligencer newspaper story on a visit to Danville by Kramer and his wife, I learned of his business successes that included mineral springs, a candy-coated laxative, an advertising agency with offices in New York and Chicago, along with zinc and lead mines in Joplin, Missouri.

 Born Aug 26, 1861, at Keokuk, Iowa, Harry was the son of Frederick and Rebecca Crawford Kramer, and his father, F.L. Kramer, ran a mercantile business in Danville for several years. His younger sister Agnes was also born in Iowa, but married Frank Schoch of Danville, and is buried in the local Oddfellows Cemetery. Their daughter Isabel was the longtime librarian of the Thomas Beaver Library in Danville. She died in 1973 and is also buried with her parents at the Oddfellows Cemetery off of Bloom Road.

Early in Harry’s life, the family made its way west and eventually settled in the state of Indiana. Kramer’s success was described in detail in a 2015 article in the Hoosier State Chronicles, Indiana’s Digital Newspaper program. The story’s author, Stephen J. Taylor, said Kramer was a shrewd businessman and a great promoter.

“In 1890, the 29-year-old entrepreneur, who lived in Attica in Fountain County, attracted investors and started up a health resort at a spot near the spectacular Fall Creek Gorge in neighboring Warren County.

Built around a mineral spring discovered in 1884 by Civil War veteran Samuel Story (a victim of severe arthritis who noticed his ailment getting better when he sloshed around in the mud), the lavish hotel Kramer constructed first went by the name Indiana Mineral Springs, then as the Hotel Mudlavia, after the soothing mud-baths offered there. A service town that popped up next door to the resort took the name of its postmaster, Kramer, and is still on the map, though the hotel has faded into legend.”

Taylor continued,” Kramer’s sprawling Mudlavia health spa attracted the rich and famous — including boxing champion John L. Sullivan, Indianapolis poet James Whitcomb Riley, and Hoosier songwriter Paul Dresser. Papers lauded it as “one of the finest sanitariums in the United States.” Mudlavia ranked with the great mineral baths at French Lick, Indiana; Bedford, Pennsylvania; and Hot Springs, Arkansas.”

The article said that Kramer’s chocolate-coated laxative, packaged under the name Cascaret’s, was touted as the tasteful answer to the old bottle of castor oil. “Closely tied to Kramer’s investment in this tranquil health spa in the luscious Hoosier woods was his other main business interest: a sugary substitute for the dreaded dose of castor oil once administered by American mothers everywhere. This was Kramer’s nationally famous “candy cathartic,” Cascarets.”

As I mentioned, Kramer was a great promoter, with his face and his laxative advertisements found in newspapers and leading magazines all across the country. The key ingredient to the cleanout remedy was buckthorn bark from a tree known as the cascara, found in the Northwest United States, and shipped to Kramer’s Indiana pharmaceutical company. According to the detailed Indiana newspaper story, “The name and popularity of the sugar-coated laxative became so widespread that it entered the popular vocabulary. A polo team in Anderson, Indiana, took the name “Anderson Cascarets” around 1904. In New York City, night-workers at banks began to be known as “Cascarets” because they “work while you sleep.”

A December 1947 article in the Danville Morning News reported Harry Kramer promised to provide all the uniforms and equipment for a local baseball team known as the Actives, in exchange for having the name “Cascarets” emblazoned on their uniforms. That gift to the local team came with a lot of hoots and derisive remarks from the fans attending those games.

In April of 1909, a few months before he visited Danville, Kramer was in Atlantic City and bought the entire stock of an art store on the Boardwalk. Facing off against several other wealthy bidders, he bought the entire inventory for $15,000. He remarked, “I have always desired to be prepared for Christmas. This time I’ll bet I have to go around without having to worry about next December.”

During his automobile trip to Danville in July of that year, Kramer and his wife arrived in a chauffeur-driven Winton. Made in Cleveland, Ohio, Winton was one of the first American companies to sell a motor car. In 1912, Winton became one of the first American manufacturers of diesel engines. (Wikipedia)

Kramer remarked that he had visited Danville seven years earlier in 1902, and at that time, there were no paved streets in the borough. Trolley lines were not yet built, and the idea of municipal lights and sewerage was just being discussed. He noted the many improvements that had been made. Kramer also said that after leaving his home in Indiana for the trip, which included stops in Detroit and Buffalo, he found many paved roadways. However, Kramer noted with pride that the stretch of macadam highway between Elmira, New York, and Danville was the best state road he had traveled on.

His mother, Sarah, died in Danville at the home of her daughter in 1911. The body was returned to Richmond, Indiana, for burial.

Upon his retirement, Harry L. Kramer lived in Lafayette, Indiana, and died in 1935 of an apparent heart attack while visiting the Department of Motor Vehicles in that city. The inventor of Cascarets, and owner of the mineral spring and the Mudlavia Hotel, is buried at Lafayette’s Greenbush Cemetery. He was fondly remembered by many friends he had in the Danville area.