Zeno graduated from Falls City High School in May 1893 and entered the University of Nebraska at Lincoln the following September.  In the fall of 1896, his family moved to Paonia, Delta County, Colorado, but Zeno continued his studies at the University in Lincoln.  He graduated in June 1897 with a BS degree in electrical engineering, but then went back to the University the following fall to pursue graduate studies.

The 1898 University of Nebraska Yearbook lists Zeno as the Left Guard on the football team, a member of the Palladian Literary Society, and as a “pledged member” of the “Matrimonial Club.”  In that listing, his name appears to be paired with that of Miss Jessie Stanton.  A similar listing, showing him and Jessie as pledged members of the Matrimonial Club, appears in the University’s 1900 yearbook (even though, as far as I can tell, neither of them was still attending the University in 1900).

In the fall of 1898, Zeno was appointed to be a “scholar” in the Physics Department, and he received an MA degree in Physics in June 1899.  He soon adapted his Master’s thesis for presentation at the meeting of American Association for Advancement of Science the following August.  His title was “Note on Hysteresis Curves Determined by a Yoke with Broken Magnetic Circuit; On the De-Magnetizing Effect of Currents in Iron when Electro-Magnetically Compensated.”

In September 1899, Zeno turned his attention to less esoteric pursuits, when he began teaching science at the high school in Beatrice, Nebraska.  With the end of the school term the following May, he returned to Lincoln “for the summer,” arriving there just in time to be recorded in the 1900 census (as “J. E. Crook”) as a roomer in the household of W. Adamson.  Occupation of “J. E.” was listed as “Sch. Teacher.”

The following fall, Zeno did not return to Beatrice but instead took on the position of “principal and instructor in sciences and mathematics” in the public schools of Auburn, Nebraska.  Once again, he kept his teaching position only for the duration of the school year and then hired on as the manager of Auburn’s newly established lighting and power company.

On 7 August 1901, at Lincoln, Zeno finally married Jessie Louise Stanton, in a ceremony well described in the Nemaha County Herald.  Newspaper reports had shown them attending parties together as early as 1895, and the above-mentioned listing for the University’s “Matrimonial Club” suggests that they may have been engaged as early as 1898.  Jessie had been born 1 March 1873 at Decatur, Burt County, Nebraska, the daughter of Oscar S. and Emma J. (Benjamin) Stanton.  However, she was just 6 years old when her father died and 8 when her mother died, leaving her and her younger sister as orphans.  I do not know who raised her after that.

Clearly, Zeno and Jessie met while both attending the University in Lincoln.  Jessie earned her B.A. degree in 1899, at the same time that Zeno received his Masters’.  For the next two years, while Zeno was teaching in Beatrice and Auburn, Jessie was teaching English in Fairbury, Nebraska.

After marriage, Zeno returned to Auburn with his bride, to continue his work at the lighting and power company, but after just 4 months, they were on their way to Chicago, where Zeno had taken a position in the testing department of the Western Electric Company.  I have no information about their lives in Chicago, except that their daughter Eleanor was born there:

• Eleanor Crook, 1902–1994 (married Charles Achille Dietemann).

Zeno and Jessie remained in Chicago until September 1907, when Western Electric sent Zeno to Denver to manage a new plant they had established there.  The move to Denver put Zeno within easy visiting distance of his parents, up at Paonia, in the mountains of Colorado.

The 1909 Denver City Directory shows Zeno living at 217 South Ogden St. in Denver and lists his occupation as electrical engineer.  The 1910 Directory shows the same address but a significant change in Zeno’s occupation:  he is listed as President of the Pressure Cooker Company.  That company, according to the same directory, was at 332 Broadway St. in Denver.

The year 1910, indeed, marked a turning point in Zeno’s life.  As suggested above, he left his job at Western Electric and opened his own company marketing a new kitchen appliance that proved to be especially well suited for cooking in the high altitudes of Colorado.  It has been commonly claimed in the family, and even in a few newspaper articles, that Zeno invented the pressure cooker, but that may be overstating his contribution.  The concept of using high-pressure steam to reduce cooking time had been pioneered in 1679 by the French physicist Denis Papin, and various devices employing the technique were used in canneries and commercial kitchens through much of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Zeno’s main contribution, apparently, was developing and marketing the first high-pressure cooking device that was practical for use in private homes.  He also may have invented the name “pressure cooker.”  Previous devices of the sort had been described by names such as “steam digester” and “steam-tight cooker.”

Early in 1910, Zeno began promoting his pressure cooker in Denver and all around Colorado.  He introduced it to the Domestic Science Department of the Agricultural College in Fort Collins, which began featuring it in Home Economics courses and public outreach courses both in Fort Collins and around the state.  Instructors there were impressed that “a five pound pot roast and a mess of lima beans can be cooked as tender as can be within the space of one hour.”

 
Zeno and Jessie held public demonstrations at the shop on Broadway three afternoons per week, and they also traveled around the state, demonstrating the cooker at women’s clubs and other public meetings.  It proved to be very popular, judging from the rave reviews in several newspapers.  See, for instance, the Rocky Mountain News article at right.

The excitement over the success of Zeno’s new business enterprise may have been tempered by a touch of tragedy in the family.  That is, a tombstone at Denver’s Fairmount Cemetery bears the name of James S. Crook and a single date:  April 4, 1912.  The stone is right next to Zeno’s own stone and has an identical design.  Hence, it seems likely that this marks the grave of a son of Zeno and Jessie, who was born and died on a single day, but I have not found any official records or newspaper reports that confirm this speculation.

As Zeno’s business prospered, he and Jessie both gained considerable prominence in Denver society.  Zeno joined the Lions Club, joined the Denver Civic and Commercial Association as a “manufacturer,” and was appointed secretary of the Nebraska Alumni Club of Colorado, to which Jessie also belonged.  Jessie helped organize a fund-raiser for the Home for the Adult Blind.

Denver city directories show that Zeno and Jessie moved half-a-dozen times between 1910 and 1925, always to rented houses within easy walking distance of their shop on Broadway.  After Zeno’s father died in 1921, Zeno’s mother moved down to Denver and rented a house on South Emerson St., in the same neighborhood where Zeno and Jessie lived and worked.  Then, early in 1926, Zeno and Jessie moved into their own newly built, spacious home at 1040 South Franklin St., facing Denver’s Washington Park.  That home became the site for many gatherings of the Nebraska Alumni Club, the Washington Park Garden Club, and the Denver Assembly of the Order of the Rainbow Girls.  Jessie became very active in the Garden Club and, in 1928, was elected president of the club.

The home on South Franklin was also the venue for the wedding of Zeno and Jessie’s daughter Eleanor to Charles Dietemann in September 1927, with more than 100 guests in attendance.  The 1930 census shows Zeno and Jessie in that home along with Eleanor and her husband.  The younger couple remained there until 1933, when they moved into their own place about half a mile away.  A few years after that, 1936, Charles took a job teaching art at the University of Illinois, so he and Eleanor moved to Champaign, Illinois.

Around that same time, Zeno’s mother moved in with Zeno and Jessie at the house on South Franklin.  She was past 80 by then and, of course, may have needed some extra help.  She lived to be 86 and passed away in that home in January 1942.

Throughout the 1930s and into the early ‘40s, Jessie remained very much involved with the Washington Park Garden Club, the Rainbow Girls, and the Order of the Eastern Star (as noted by frequent mentions in Denver’s newspapers), and she and Zeno continued participating in the Nebraska Alumni Club.  They also made frequent driving trips back to eastern Nebraska to visit friends and relatives in that area.  After 1936, of course, they often traveled as far as Illinois to visit Eleanor and their two grandsons, making stopovers in Nebraska coming and going.

The 1950 census shows Zeno (age 75) and Jessie (77) still at 1040 S. Franklin, though Zeno apparently had sold his interest in the Pressure Cooker Company by then.  The census lists no occupation for either of them then, but shows that Zeno has some income from investments.  According to the Denver City Directory of 1951, the Pressure Cooker Company was then owned by Joseph T. Chinery.

Zeno and Jessie again traveled east to Illinois, with stops in Nebraska in 1950 and ’51, returning from the latter trip in September 1951.  On 22 October of that year, Zeno suffered a sudden heart attack and died at his home.  Four days later, he was laid to rest at Denver’s Fairmount Cemetery.  The Rocky Mountain News carried only a short funeral notice, but a lengthier obituary appeared a couple of months later in the University of Nebraska's alumni newsletter (both shown here).  An additional item in the News on 31 October (p. 6) noted that Zeno’s estate was valued at $27,000, to be divided equally between Jessie and Eleanor.

Jessie remained in the house on South Franklin Street for several years after Zeno’s death.  A Denver City Directory shows her living there as late as 1961, but she is not listed in the next available directory, from 1964.  It was probably around this time that she moved to Champaign, Illinois, where Eleanor and Charles were living, although all I know for sure is that Champaign was her place of residence when she passed away on 14 May 1971.  (She actually died at a nursing home in Mattoon, Illinois, but she was identified as a resident of Champaign.)  Newspapers in Mattoon and Decatur, Illinois, carried brief obituaries, and her body was returned to Fairmount Cemetery in Denver.  However, she was not buried next to Zeno, but her remains, instead, were entombed in a mausoleum about 1,000 feet from Zeno’s grave site.

If you can suggest any corrections to the information above or provide any further details about the lives of Zeno, Jessie, and their descendants, please contact me at the address shown in the image below:

Thanks,      
     —Pete Martin

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