D.D.M. and William were miserable in Nebraska.  They slept in a loft with the four step sisters and were not treated well by their stepmother. Jack Quinan, retired professor of Art History at U.B., curator of the Darwin Martin House and co-founder of the National Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, has written extensively about D.D.M., and last I talked to him last Fall, he was nearing completion of a biography of D.D.M. However, he has already written much already about him.  He quotes an unfinished autobiography of D.D.M., in Frank Lloyd Wright's Martin House Architecture as Portraiture, where D.D.M. said, "Willie and I were rather frequent victims of the blues in those years and often cried ourselves to sleep."  D.D.M. referred in a letter to Willie in 1880, to his step-mother as "a dirty greasy bitch."  (see p. 228 of Jack's book).

So it comes as no surprise that D.D.M. seized his first opportunity to flee Nebraska.  Brother Frank, who was employed by the Larkin Soap Company as a soap salesman in New York City in 1878, invited D.D.M., at age 13, to come live and work with him. They sold soap from a horse drawn wagon on the streets of N.Y.C., and after a short time, moved to Boston, Massachusetts to continue their sales in a fresh market.  D.D.M. wrote of a visit to Boston by J.D.L., describing him as a "quiet spoken young man with a black full-beard in his thirties."  Daniel Larkin, grandson of J.D.L., in his biography of J.D.L., comments, "The sight of young Darwin working the wagon for the slingers must have stirred memories of his own days as a young boy working to help support his mother and his siblings.  John always had a soft spot in his heart for a boy who was energetic and willing to work.  When he found out that Darwin was making only three dollars a week, he promptly raised the lad's salary to five dollars."

            

Bert Hubbard, in the meantime, was developing new marketing techniques.  One of the changes resulted in shutting down the soap slinging sales and, instead, shifted to selling to retailers or in response to mail orders.  As a result, Frank was transferred to the mid-west.  On August 7, 1879 Frank showed up in J.D.L.'s office in Buffalo with now 14 year old D.D.M. in tow to ask J.D.L. to give his little brother a job.  After a short interview J.D.L. recognized the potential of this sad boy. He hired him, not for the factory, but to assist J.D.L. with bookkeeping, which J.D.L. had been doing by himself up till then. Clearly there was something resonant in J.D.L.'s heart with young D.D.M.  J.D.L. immediately called his wife, Frank, to come to the 663 Seneca offices to pick up Willie and D.D.M. and they all picnicked that evening in Delaware Park as a celebration.

            

D.D.M. then moved into a nearby boarding house in this strange city, surrounded by rowdy railroad workers and having no friends or family nearby. Thus began about 45 years of employment of D.D.M. at Larkin Soap Co. where he eventually became its corporate secretary and shareholder at a salary that was one of the highest in the nation at that time.

         

During those early years, D.D.M. was not only working full-time, but also taking classes at school and studying late into the night. His only social life was generally with Bert Hubbard's family with whom he would occasionally go on outings. Bert also gave him theater tickets and let him use his library card. He made friends with an assistant bookkeeper who had been hired by the company and also with one of his fellow boarders who worked as a railroad brakeman.

            

One of D.D.M.'s most known accomplishments at the company was in 1883, converting the enormous ledgers in which mail orders were recorded, to a custom made index system.  For two months D.D.M. transferred 96,000 customers' names and addresses and orders into the index . He was rewarded by a pay raise to $12 per week! Two years later he improved the system by replacing it with a library-style card catalog system, again transferring all the data. Those cards became a design element of the Larkin Administration Building where Frank Lloyd Wright included built-in card catalogs drawers into the walls.

It was in 1885 that D.D.M. met and began wooing 15 year old Isabelle Reidpath whose family owned a store on Seneca Street. He sustained the family emotionally as Mr. Reidpath became ill and eventually died.  He proposed to Isabelle in 1887 and they married in 1889, moving into a Queen Anne style house they had built on Summit Avenue in the Parkside area.  D.D.M. disliked the house, but he and Isabelle entertained family and friends there often. Their two children, Dorothy (1896) and Darwin R. (1900) were born there. But D.D.M. had a dream of bringing together his siblings to live near him. For a time his father, at D.D.M.'s invitation, had lived in Buffalo and then moved into the Summit Avenue house, but he eventually moved back to the Midwest in 1891. Brothers Frank and then Alta also came to Buffalo for a short time in 1895, Frank, Alta and sister, Delta (with her husband, George Barton) all lived in Buffalo. Only the Bartons stayed.

            

In the meantime, LSC continued to grow. D.D.M.'s staff grew to 26 in 1888. Bert demanded that he be bought out of his stock in LSC and resigned as an officer so he could carry on his affair with a school teacher.  His wife, Bertha, was J.D.L.'s sister, so emotions were deep. D.D.M. had been very close to him and their friendship was to survive though not with the same volume of contact.

            

In 1894 D.D.M. had a serious nervous breakdown. With J.D.L.'s empathy and support, he took eight weeks off to rest at a spa in Virginia.  On his return his earnings continued to increase and his assets reached over two million dollars by 1907.

          

LSC needed to expand and creating an Administration Building separate from manufacturing functions, was determined to be the best way to expand. In 1902 brother William, in Chicago, was communicating with D.D.M. about helping him build a house in Chicago. On September 13, 1902 the two brothers met with Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park. The attraction of FLW and D.D.M. to each other was immediate. (And, of course, FLW, like D.D.M. and J.D.L., had lost his mother as a child and had had a rather unhappy childhood).