January 29: William McKinley, Doomed President

He was a devoted husband, a respected politician, and the third President of the United States to be assassinated. 

William McKinley Jr. was the seventh of eight children sired by William and Nancy Allison McKinley Sr., and was born on January 29, 1843 in the small town of Niles, Ohio.  His father – in practicing the family trade - opened and operated a small iron foundry, and his mother was a devoutly religious Methodist who was a leader in the small town.

The roots of William Jr.’s family tree shows that his forefathers had been early settlers in Pennsylvania, establishing their homes there in the mid-18^th Century.  Both of his grandfathers had fought in the American Revolution – on the side of the Colonial patriots.  But the ‘west’ of the day beckoned these early pioneers, and the family moved west to the territory of Ohio, settling in Lisbon – where his father met, wooed, and married Nancy Allison in 1829, eventually moving to and settling in Niles.

As a child William Jr. did what most of the youngsters of the day did… fishing, hunting, ice skating, horseback riding, and swimming, and helping his father in the foundry when he could, as well as the regular family ‘chores’ assigned to him.

 

However, the type of educational foundation that the McKinley’s wanted for their children was lacking in Niles, so they made a difficult decision. In 1853 William Sr. stayed in Niles to operate the family business, while his wife and children moved to nearby Poland, Ohio, so the children could attend Poland Seminary, a private Methodist school.  Because of this move, and the work-related long-term absences of his father, young William McKinley would be deeply influenced by his mother and his sisters. 

In Poland, he would give up most of the various sports and hobbies that he did, except playing ball, swimming and skating.  As much as he enjoyed the cool water of the stream, McKinley was not a good swimmer.  It was during one of his swimming expeditions that he got in water too deep for him, and had to be saved from drowning by a passerby. 

He also was a constant reader, and was fond of such poets as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier and Lord Byron.

William Jr. would graduate from school, and in 1860 enrolled at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania.  However, he became ill, had to return home, and by the time his health recovered, the family finances had declined to the point that he could not afford to attend school, so he earned money working as a postal clerk, and later as a teacher in a nearby school.

When the American Civil War started, McKinley joined the Twenty-third Ohio Volunteer Infantry.  He started as a private, eventually rising to the rank of brevet major.  As a Second Lieutenant he served on the staff of a future US President and fellow Ohioian, Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes, with whom McKinley would form a close bond that would continue throughout his political career.

In 1862, at the Battle of Antietam, McKinley was a Commissary Sergeant in Col. Ewing’s Brigade.  During the battle, he served every soldier in his regiment coffee and food – often placing himself under enemy fire to do so.  His future mentor, Rutherford B. Hayes, stated:

"Early in the afternoon, naturally enough, with the exertion required of the men, they were famished and thirsty, and to some extent broken in spirit. The commissary department of that brigade was under Sergeant McKinley’s administration and personal supervision. From his hands every man in the regiment was served with hot coffee and warm meats.... He passed under fire and delivered, with his own hands, these things, so essential for the men for whom he was laboring."

McKinley served for the entire war.  When the war ended and he was discharged McKinley returned to Ohio, studying law at Albany Law School where he passed the bar exam in 1867.  He began his legal practice at Canton, Ohio.  It was at a Canton picnic in 1869 that two great events occurred in his life:  he met and began courting his future wife, Ida Saxon (marrying on January 25, 1871), and he entered politics, running for county prosecutor on the Republican ticket.

His home life in the early 1870s was rocked by the loss of his two young daughters – Katharine, who died in 1875 at the age of 3; and Ida, who died in 1873 at the age of 4 months.  His wife, suffering from the loss of her two daughters and her mother within a short span of time, suffered depression and developed epilepsy, becoming an invalid who was totally dependent on her husband for her medical and emotional needs - and on pain-killing drugs.  McKinley was compassionate, giving patient devotion and loving attention to his wife.  After he was elected President, McKinley broke tradition, having Ida sit next to him at state dinners instead of opposite of him at the far end of the table, so he could assist her when needed.  McKinley’s friend and supporter Mark Hanna would comment concerning the President’s devotion to his wife: 

"President McKinley has made it pretty hard for the rest of us husbands here in Washington."

In 1876 McKinley ran successfully for the US Congress, serving from 1876-1882, then again from 1884 to 1891.  It was as the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee in 1889 that he drafted a strong protective tariff in 1890 – the McKinley Tariff – that was passed by the house, with unexpected results:  Because consumer prices skyrocketed under this Tariff, the angry voters rejected McKinley (and many other Republicans) in the 1890 elections. 

Returning home to Ohio, McKinley – though stunned by his defeat in his race for reelection to the House, ran for Governor of Ohio in 1891.  He won by a narrow margin, a tribute to the people’s respect for his morality and honesty.  He would go on to be reelected in 1894, despite the economic depression of 1893 – and partially because he, too, had been hard hit by the depression.  He had co-signed with a businessman who went bankrupt, and was responsible for the unpaid debt.  Basically, it took all of the McKinley money to pay off his friend’s debt, leaving the McKinley family in the same financial straits as many of their constituents.

As governor, he often supported labor rights during an era when many politicians refused to acknowledge that labor had any rights.  But, he also would use force when labor crossed the line and grew violent during a strike.

By 1896 McKinley was being seriously considered as the Republican candidate for the Presidency.  He had been a successful congressman, was governor of a crucial ‘swing’ state in elections, and was very popular with the voters.  He friend and advisor, businessman Mark Hanna, began a process of advocating McKinley with the Republican leadership so effectively that when the Republican convention was held in St. Louis, McKinley won the nomination on the first ballot.  His opponent: Democrat William Jennings Bryan. 

McKinley would run a ‘front-porch’ campaign.  Realizing that Bryan was an excellent orator that he could not hope to beat in a debate, McKinley decided to stay at home tending to the needs of his wife, and speaking from his porch to various groups that would visit him at his home in Canton, Ohio.  While Bryan went to see the people, the people came to see McKinley.

The 1896 election saw McKinley win by a clear majority.  The same story would be repeated in the 1900 election.

McKinley would follow conservative, protectionist policies at home during his administration, and benefited from the nation’s recovery from the Panic of 1893.  However, he is remembered more for his foreign involvement than for his domestic programs – despite the fact that during his 1897 inaugural address he said:

"We want no wars of conquest. We must avoid the temptation of territorial aggression."

However, a war of conquest did occur – with the SpanishAmerican War of 1898.  In defeating Spain, the Americans became an imperialistic power, gaining naval bases in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.  The Americans soon became embroiled in an intense Imperialism/Anti-Imperialism debate that would continue into the next century.  With the Spanish American War, the United States was no longer just a continental power – the country had far-flung interests and a developing world-wide trade network for the products produced by its burgeoning industry.

Under McKinley the US promoted the Open Door policy for opening up trade ports and opportunities in China for the US, and sent US troops to assist an international force in putting down the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900.  He also sought to begin a canal across Central America linking the Caribbean with the Pacific.

At home, McKinley dealt with the major economic issues of the day: establishing tariff rates to protect American industry; and ending bimetallism by signing the Gold Standard Act of 1900 – making gold the only standard for redeeming paper money became the dominant domestic focus.

In September 1901 McKinley was visiting the Pan-AmericanExposition in Buffalo, New York, promoting American innovation and industry – and what he had hoped would be the cornerstone of his second administration – trade reciprocity between America’s trading markets around the world. 

On September 6^th McKinley was shaking hands with a crowd of well-wishers when anarchist Leon Czolgosz took his turn in line and, when he was next to the President, pulled the trigger of a gun he had hidden in his hand with a large bandage.  McKinley was wounded, and it was hopeful that he would recover. However, he suffered a relapse and, on September 14, 1901, he passed away.  Czolgosz was later tried and executed.

The nation mourned McKinley’s death, and he was eventually interred in a massive mausoleum honoring him in Canton, Ohio.  His wife, Ida, who survived him by 6 years, was also interred there, as are the remains of his two infant daughters.

And so a new century was heralded with violence… and would become the century of violence.  McKinley was honored by the people of the day, although he is often forgotten – and underrated - in today’s world.   

RESOURCES:

CantonRep

Miller Center, University of Virginia

Vassar Projects

White House 

Wikipedia   

William McKinley 

William McKinley Museum 

PHOTO RESOURCES:

19-Year Old Sgt. William McKinley, Giles County HistoricalSociety 

McKinley Monument at Antietam Battlefield, National ParkService  

Mrs. William Mckinley, Vassar Project

1896 Presidential portrait of William McKinley, Wikipedia

1900 McKinley Campaign Poster, Atlantic Monthly

Assassination of McKinley, Culture Magazine

June 28: Clara Maass, Heroine the Fight Against Yellow Fever

Clara Louise Maass was born on June 28, 1876 in East Orange, New Jersey. She was the first of ten children, and was the daughter of Robert E. and Hedwig A. Maass, recent German immigrants to the United States.

Maass was kept busy during her childhood years, attending public school and accepting the responsibility of caring for her younger siblings. As she reached her adolescent years she became a “mother’s helper” to another family. A mother’s helper was employed help care for the house and children. In return for her work in the home, she was rewarded with room and board, and given time to attend school.

She completed three years of school at East Orange High School before leaving school at the age of fifteen to work at the Newark Orphan Asylum for $10 a month. This local orphanage accepted orphans from age two to ten. Maass would send half of her monthly wages home to help her family. She was compassionate and caring for her charges, striving to help them emotionally and physically.

Many women were entering the nursing profession in the late 19th century, following the footsteps of early woman professional nurses, Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton. They were symbols of compassionate womanhood and served as a guiding light to those who followed them. Both were legends and still alive in the 1890s – and were an inspiration to Maass..

Even though the minimum age for training to become a nurse was supposed to be twenty, Maass was only seventeen years old when she entered the recently created Christina Trefz Training School of Nurses in 1893. A nursing program had been institute in 1892 when two Red Cross nurses from Germany were recruited as teachers. Mrs.Christina Trefz, the wife of a local brewer, purchased lots and built Trefz Hall, which was designated as the “The School of Nursing”. The school was dedicated on November 30, 1893. The school was operated by the German Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, and was only the fourth such nursing school at that time in New Jersey – and the first in Newark. She would graduate among the first students to complete the course of study in 1895 after two years of intensive training, and went to work as a duty nurse at the German Hospital. In 1898 she was named as the head nurse of the institution, and was known as a hard worker and a person dedicated to the nursing profession. She was only twenty-one years old.

In 1898 the Spanish American War began. There was no Army Nurses Corps in existence at the time, so Maass volunteered as a contract nurse for the Army on October 1, 1898. She would serve in field hospitals with the Seventh Army Corps in several locations during the war – Jacksonville, Florida; Savannah, Georgia; and finally Santiago, Cuba. More soldiers would become ill or would die from disease during the Spanish American War than were wounded – and it was Maass’s job, along with the other contract nurses, to care for them. She dealt with malaria, typhoid fever, and dysentery until she was discharged from Army service on February 5, 1899.

In November 1899 Maass again responded to a call for contract nurses and was sent to the Philippines – newly freed from Spanish control during the war and now a part of a new fledgling American empire. There she served as a nurse with the Eighth U.S. Army Corps. As the Philippine Insurrection against American control grew, more American troops had to be sent to the region – and again faced the deadly danger of disease. While in the Philippines she cared for soldiers suffering from smallpox, typhoid, and yellow fever.

Maass had to leave the Philippines before the end of her contract – not because she contracted yellow fever, but because she contracted another tropical disease, dengue fever. She was shipped back to the United States to recover in May 1900. She would soon be attracted to work again in Cuba.

Yellow fever had become a huge problem with the American troops occupying Cuba. Dr. Gorgas, who held the post in Cuba of Havana Sanitary Officer, originally thought that yellow fever was spread through unsanitary conditions, and conducted a city-wide sanitation effort – which failed to stem the spread of yellow fever. The disease became so rampant that the U.S. Surgeon General organized the Yellow Fever Commission – chaired by Dr. Walter Reed - to investigate how the disease was spread. Their findings revealed that the disease was spread through the bite of the female Stegomyia mosquito which, after taking blood from an infected person, would infect others by biting them as well. Gorgas was given the task of clearing the mosquitoes out of Havana. However, he pursued a different line of approach: developing an injection to prevent the disease from occurring.

In the fall of 1900 Gorgas sent out a call for volunteer nurses to help deal with yellow fever cases. Maass was well aware of the symptoms and suffering that went with this dreaded disease. Having seen the effects of the disease first-hand in the Philippines, Maass had developed a special interest in yellow fever, and a special desire to see the disease eradicated.

In October 1900 she had sufficiently recovered from the effects of her case of dengue fever that she could volunteer to serve in Cuba. Because the quality of her work with yellow fever victims in the Philippines, Maass was accepted as a nurse with the Yellow Fever Commission. After she arrived in Cuba she saw – and was hopeful of – the experiments being conducted to develop the medicine necessary to stop the disease. In 1901 she volunteered to be a part of a plan to develop immunization serum by allowing the volunteers to be bitten by infected mosquitoes, have a mild form of yellow fever, which would then create immunity for the volunteer. While the volunteers were told that they might die in the course of the experiment, they were offered an incentive of $100 for being subjects of the test. $100 was a considerable sum in 1900 dollars. An additional $100 was paid if the volunteer became ill.

In March 1901 Maass submitted to being bitten by infected mosquitoes, and developed a mild case of yellow fever. However, though the scientists and doctors involved were convinced that the mosquito was the primary means of transmitting the disease, there was still some doubt. Not all of the subjects who had been bitten by the infected mosquitoes developed yellow fever.

On August 14, 1901, Maass again submitted to being bitten by infected mosquitoes. The doctors hoped that her earlier mild case of yellow fever would immunize her against the disease. Unfortunately, they were soon to be disillusioned in their hopes.

Maass became severely ill with yellow fever on August 18th. She would die from the disease that had no cure on August 24th at the age of twenty-five. She was buried with military honors in Colon Cemetery, Havana, and in 1902 her remains would be reinterred at Fairmount Cemetery in Newark, New Jersey.

While a number of the test volunteers did die as a result of the experiments, Maass was the only American, the only woman, and the only nurse to succumb to the disease. A public outcry soon put an end to human experiments.

Clara Maass and her heroic sacrifice might have remained as a little known sidelight of history except for Leopoldine Guinther. Guinther, who was a superintendent of Newark Memorial Hospital and a fighter in the war against yellow fever, saw a portrait of Maass and felt the need to be an advocate of recognition of her sacrifice. Through her efforts Maass’ original gravestone was replaced with a pink granite gravestone with a bronze plaque. In addition, the Newark German Hospital would be renamed the Clara Maass Hospital in 1952 to honor its former graduate. Finally, in 1976 a stamp would be issued honoring her, with the words “She gave her life” at the bottom. Clara Maass would be recognized and remembered for the heroine she was.

WEB RESOURCES:

American Association for the History of Nursing
Clara Maass Medical Center
Find A Grave
Google Books: Past and Promise
Old Newark
St. Matthews
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

Photo of Clara Maass, Office of Medical History, U.S. Army
Orphans Asylum, Old Newark Web
German Hospital, Old Newark Web
Side view of Clara Maass, Find A Grave
1976 First Day Cover Envelope with Stamp Honoring Clara Maass, American Association for the History of Nursing
Clara Maass gravesite, Find A Grave

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June 21: Joseph Rainey, First African American US Congressman

He was born a slave, freed, raised in the South, fled during the Civil War, and became the first black American to be a United States Congressman, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives for eight years.

Joseph Hayne Rainey was born a slave in Georgetown, South Carolina on June 21, 1832. His father, Edward, was a barber who shrewdly managed his monies, allowing him to purchase freedom for himself, his wife Gracia, and his children in the 1840s. After buying their freedom, the Rainey’s moved in 1846 to Charleston, South Carolina, where George provided a comfortable living through his skills as a barber by working at one of the top hotels in South Carolina, the Mills Hotel. The Mills Hotel had opened its doors in 1853 and soon achieved a reputation for excellence – and is still in existence today. In an unusual turn of events, George Rainey became prosperous enough by 1860 that he could afford two slaves of his own.

While not much is known about Joseph Rainey’s youth, it is known that he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps by becoming a barber himself. He did receive limited schooling. In the late-1850s, Rainey moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he met and married Susan – who was originally from the West Indies. They moved back to Charleston in 1859.

Rainey was twenty-eight years old when the American Civil War erupted in April 1861, with the shelling of Fort Sumter, Charleston, South Carolina – where Joseph Rainey lived and worked. Rainey was soon drafted by the Confederate government to work on the network of fortifications around Charleston Harbor. He soon moved from that labor into being a steward on a blockade-runner.

In 1862 Rainey and his wife secretly fled from their home, escaping to Bermuda for the duration of the war on a blockade-runner that traveled from Charleston to Bermuda. They settled for three years in St. George, Bermuda, where they earned a living – Rainey as a barber and his wife as a successful dressmaker. When a yellow fever epidemic struck St. George, the Rainey’s moved to Hamilton where Rainey worked as a barber and a bartender at the Hamilton Hotel.

Rainey and his wife returned to Charleston after the end of the Civil War. He soon became involved in Reconstruction politics.

In 1865 Rainey – accompanied by his older brother Edward – attended the Colored People’s Convention at Zion Presbyterian Church. The church was pastured by a missionary, Jonathan Gibbs, who has started a school for freed Blacks, and was a ten-year veteran of the abolitionist movement. Gibbs had been sent by the Presbyterian Board of Missions for Freed-men, and he would annoy white South Carolinians by hosting a convention that advocated rights for the newly freed slaves. As a result, he would be exiled to pastor a church in a more remote South Carolina county. Gibbs soon left South Carolina. Moving to Florida, he began a political career there that would enable him to become that state’s first Black Secretary of State.

The convention sought ways to advance “the interests of our people”, seeking educational benefits, jobs, and political influence. The effect of the convention was felt by Rainey when he became a member of the executive committee of the state Republican Party, and was elected in 1868 to represent Georgetown at the 1868 constitutional convention. That convention wrote a new constitution for South Carolina. During this time Rainey favored a poll tax – if the monies gathered were used for exclusively for public education. He also supported an effort to legalize the collection of debts contracted before the Civil War including debts incurred in the purchase of slaves. Neither of these ideas were approved in the new constitution. However, he successfully supported an amnesty bill which allowed former Confederate soldiers to regain their civil rights.

As a symbol of the growing power of Reconstruction in the South, Rainey was appointed as a brigadier general in the state militia and served as an agent in the State Land Commission. He also attended the 1869 State Labor Convention, which lobbied the General Assembly for pro-labor legislation to protect black workers.

In 1870 Rainey was elected to the state Senate of South Carolina, where he was soon appointed as the chairman of the senate Finance Committee.

Later that year – on December 12, 1870 - he was elected to fill a vacancy that opened in the U.S. House of Representatives when the House refused to seat Benjamin F. Whittemore. Whittemore had been censured by the House for corruption, and was re-elected by the people of South Carolina – after which the House refused to seat him.

Rainey would be re-elected to Congress several times, serving until March 3, 1879. He was the longest-serving Black Congressman until the 1950s when William L. Dawson broke Rainey’s record.

While in Congress during Reconstruction, Rainey consistently supported legislation designed to protect the civil rights of black Americans – especially those living in the post-Civil War South. He advocated passage of the 1872 Ku Klux Klan Act to rid the south of the organization. The act was signed into law by President Grant. Concerning the need for this act, Rainey stated:

“When myself and my colleagues shall leave these Halls and turn our footsteps toward our southern homes, we know not that the assassin may await our coming, as marked for his vengeance.”

He also supported a civil rights bill that was sponsored by Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, which outlawed racial discrimination on juries, in schools, on transportation, and in public accommodations. The amnesty bill passed in 1874 and the civil rights bill was enacted in 1875. He also was an advocate in Congress for Chinese and American Indian rights.

In May 1874 he would become the first black American to preside as Speaker pro tempore over the House. He also received seats on three standing committees: Freedmen’s Affairs (41st–43rd Congresses), Indian Affairs (43rd Congress), and Invalid Pensions (44th–45th Congresses, 1875–1879).

He would win reelection in 1876 against the Democratic candidate, John Smythe Richardson. Richardson would challenge the results of the election based on the grounds of intimidation of white voters by the federal soldiers and black militia that guarded the voting booths around the state. The challenge was rejected.

But Richardson ran again against Rainey two years later – this time as Reconstruction was coming to a slow and painful ending. This time he won, replacing Rainey in Congress on March 3, 1879. Reconstruction was over, and the whites regained political control of South Carolina.

Rainey returned to his home in Georgetown, South Carolina. He was appointed as an Internal Revenue agent in South Carolina on May 22, 1879, serving until July 15, 1881. Moving back to Washington, D.C., he was involved in banking and a railroad. He retired due to illness in 1886, moving back to Georgetown.

Rainey died in Georgetown on August 1, 1887, at the age of fifty-five. He was buried in the Baptist Cemetery in Georgetown.

He was a unique mixture of compassion and hard-headed reality. A successful businessman, he conducted himself with honor during a time when many in politics were solely seeking personal gain. He would be honored 118 years after his death when a portrait of him was unveiled and displayed in the Capitol in Washington, D.C., becoming the first portrait of a black legislator to be displayed in the Capitol. Perhaps his words, spoken to the Congress, best sums up Rainey’s post-Civil War efforts and beliefs:

“We are earnest in our support of the Government. We were earnest in the house of the nation’s perils and dangers; and now, in our country’s comparative peace and tranquility, we are earnest for our rights.”

WEB RESOURCES:

Bella Online
Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress
Black Americans in Congress
Black Past
Find-A-Grave
News In History
Online 1911 Encyclopedia
South Carolina Department of Archives and History
South Carolina Encyclopedia
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCE:

Photo of Rainey, Library of Congress
Photo of Rainey seated, Library of Congress
Rainey Home, SC Dept. of Archives and History
Portrait as a Congressman, House of Representatives
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May 3: Emmett Dalton, Bank Robber, Building Contractor, and Author

Emmett Dalton was born near Belton Missouri on May 3, 1871 – the eleventh of fifteen children in the family of Lewis Dalton and Adeline Younger Dalton. Not much is known about the early history of Emmett – but he did learn to read, write, and cipher, and as a teenager he had a good reputation among the townspeople who knew him.

When Emmett was around nine the Dalton family moved to Coffeyville, Kansas – which was later the site of a famed failed-robbery by the infamous Dalton Gang. In 1883, the Dalton’s moved near Vinita – then in Indian Territory, now part of the state of Oklahoma.

By 1887 the sixteen-year-old Emmett was working as a cowboy on at the Bar-X-Bar ranch, located near Vinita and the elder Dalton’s homestead. Several of his brothers – Frank, Grat, and Bob Dalton – became deputy U.S. Marshals, charged with upholding the law of the land. By and large they were reputed to be good officers of the law – brave, friendly, and polite. Emmett was able to join the posse’s occasionally formed to hunt down the outlaws and renegades that ran rampant in the Indian Territory during the late 19th Century. Frank Dalton would be killed by whiskey runners in 1887 while he was serving as a Deputy U.S. Marshal.

Emmett had formed a close attachment to his older brother, Bob – joining him both as a member of posses as well as serving with him as a guard. But, Bob was on the wild side, and in 1890 Emmett and his brother were arrested for “introducing intoxicating liquor into the Osage Nation on Dec. 25, 1889.” The 19-year-old Emmett was acquitted after a court hearing – he had accompanied Bob, but had stayed on the road and was not involved with the actual sale of liquor to the Indians. Bob was bound over for trial, but was released on bail and then did not show up for the trial in late 1890. During the time Bob was out on bail, Bob, Emmett and Grat Dalton sold some stolen horses – and after Grat was arrested, the other two Dalton’s left for California.

Staying with older brother Bill Dalton while in California, Emmett continued to follow Bob in illegal acts. Suspicion fell on the brothers after an attempted train robbery on February 6, 1891. While Bob and Emmett could not be positively identified by witnesses, they were hidden by their brother Bill, and when he was questioned they realized that the sheriff considered them as his chief suspects, and they headed to Indian Territory in Oklahoma. Emmett would later state that they were wrongly accused, and this false accusation – and reputation - had led them to really become train robbers.

As word spread on the Dalton’s, they decided that it was time to leave the country – but needed ready cash to do so. They came up with a daring plan – and would be the first to attempt to rob two banks simultaneously. The robbery was to take place in Coffeyville – their old hometown.

Five riders – Bob, Grat, and Emmett Dalton, along with Dick Broadwell and Bill Power – would ride into Coffeyville, Kansas, on the morning of October 5, 1892. They split into two groups – one for each of the town’s two banks, the C.M. Condon Bank and the First National Bank.

The raid was a failure, and with armed townsmen firing at them the bank robbers tried to flee. Four townsmen and four of the bank robbers were killed by a hail of bullets during a fifteen minute battle. 21-year-old Emmett, carrying a grain sack filled with $21,000 of money from the First National Bank in one hand and a Winchester rifle in the other, was wounded and captured. He had been hit in the right arm (crushing the bone), the left hip, and had almost 20 pieces of buckshot in his back.

Emmett stood trial in Independence, Kansas, in March, 1893. He pled guilty, and was convicted of robbery and murder of a townsman during the gun battle in Coffeyville. He was sentenced to life in prison, and would serve fourteen and a half years at the Kansas State Penitentiary, Lansing, Kansas. In 1907 he was pardoned by E. W. Hoch, the governor of Kansas.

The pardon was granted, in part, because a number of affidavits had been sworn to by the townsmen who had shot down the gang of robbers that Emmett could not have killed anyone – he was carrying the bag of money in one hand, and a rifle in the other, while trying to mount a horse for a get-away. Governor Hoch commented in his pardon:

“Believing that Emmett Dalton's youthfulness is an extenuation of his great offense, and believing that he has thoroughly repented of it and given evidence of this repentance in every possible way, and believing that a government without mercy is not strong but weak, and believing that Emmett Dalton will make a good citizen and live a good, clean, useful life, I have concluded to give him the opportunity.”

As he gave the pardon to Emmett, the governor reputedly told him,

“I do not believe that good government will suffer because of the fact that you are a free man.”

Emmett went back to Oklahoma and on September 1, 1908, married Julia Johnson Gilstrap in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. The newlyweds would settle in Tulsa where Emmett found work as a police officer. A few years later Emmett and Julia would move to California where he worked as a building contractor.

Emmett wrote two books – Beyond the Law in 1918 and, with the assistance of a Los Angeles newspaperman named Jack Jungmeyer, When the Daltons Rode in 1931. He would appear as himself in a silent movie produced in 1918 that was based on – and titled after – his first book.

Dalton passed away at the age of sixty-six at his home in Long Beach, California, on July 13, 1937. His body was cremated, and his ashes were buried at Kingfisher Cemetary, Kingfisher, Oklahoma. He was survived by his wife, Julia.

WEB RESOURCES:

Beyond the Law book
Coffeyville Raid
Find A Grave
HistoryNet
Kansas State Historical Society
Kaye Presland
Legends of America
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

After release from prison: Find A Grave

Newspaper sketch of Emmett Dalton: Kaye Presland
Emmett Dalton with his prison number: Kansas Memory
Beyond the Law: Google books
Emmett’s gravestone: Find A Grave
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April 22: Lewis Thornton Powell, Angry Attempted Assassin

He was young, strong, handsome, and the son of a preacher. Yet – hardened by four years of civil war, he would attempt to assassinate the U.S. Secretary of State in a plot hatched by John Wilkes Booth.

Lewis Thornton Powell was born on April 22, 1844, in Randolph County, Alabama. His parents were George Cader, a farmer, tax assessor, and later a Baptist minister, and Patience Caroline Powell.

Powell would be the sixth surviving child of the first eight children born to the Powells, who eventually had ten children. In 1847 his father was ordained into the ministry and moved the Powell family to Steward County, Georgia. All of the children were educated by their father, who served as the teacher at the local school.

As a child, Powell was quiet and introverted, a young boy who loved to read and study. He earned the nickname “Doc’ because he cared for sick animals. A change occurred, however when he was twelve. He was kicked in the face by the family’s mule. His jaw was broken, and when it healed, his jaw was more prominent on the left side of his face.

Around the age of fourteen, young Powell was heavily involved in Sunday School, prayer meetings, and other religious activities. He would conduct prayer meetings, was popular, liked to sing, and was a favorite of the ladies in the community.

In 1860 the Powell family moved to the outskirts of Live Oak, Florida. The sixteen-year-old Lewis worked supervising his father’s farm there, cognizant of the increasing tensions between the North and the South that would ultimately lead to the Civil War. On January 10, 1861, Florida seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy, and on May 30th the seventeen-year-old Powell enlisted in the Jasper Blues (Hamilton County), which later became Company I of the Second Florida Infantry.

Powell would see action in several major battles during the war. He served in the Army of Northern Virginia and was at the battles of Seven Pines, Second Manassas, Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Fredericksburg. On July 2, 1863, he was wounded in the right wrist at Gettysburg, and captured by the Union forces. At the Gettysburg hospital, Powell would become a male nurse, aiding the doctors in treating the wounded of both sides, and becoming so involved in his work that he began calling himself ‘Doctor Powell’. He was reported to be good at his work, and kind to the sick and wounded.

In September 1863 the prisoner-orderly was transferred to the West Buildings Hospital in Baltimore. At this hospital, aided by a female nurse he had met at Gettysburg who now worked at the hospital in Baltimore, Powell escaped, walking out of the hospital in a Union uniform provided by his female friend.

Making his way back to Virginia, Powell gave up trying to find his old unit, and joined with Colonel John Mosby’s Rangers, a partisan guerrilla organization. While with the Rangers, Powell began spying operations for the Confederate Secret Service. It was during one of these missions that he met John Surratt – who would be one of the conspirators in the Lincoln assassination.

By 1865, the war was obviously moving toward a conclusion, with victory in sight for the North.
Powell was brought into a plan by John Wilkes Booth to kidnap President Lincoln while the President was attending a play at the Seventh Street Hospital on the outskirts of Washington. The kidnapped President was to be spirited to Richmond, and used as a bargaining chip in an exchange plan for Confederate soldiers. The planned kidnapping was called off when Lincoln cancelled his visit to the play.

After the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee on April 9, 1865 – and the revealing of plans by President Lincoln to let former slaves have the right to vote – a more deadly plan was hatched – this time to assassinate several top officials of the Union – Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward. Powell was again brought into the plan by Booth, and on April 13, 1865, Powell, John Wilkes Booth, George Atzerodt, and David Herold met in Powell’s room in a boarding house in Washington. It was there that almost 21-year-old Powell was given the assignment to assassinate Seward.

Seward had been injured in a carriage accident in early April, and was still recuperating at his home in Washington. During the evening of April 14th, Powell broke into Seward’s bedroom, stabbing at him repeatedly. The bandages on Seward’s injuries – a broken jaw and broken arm – saved his life by deflecting several knife blows. Powell also attacked those trying to rescue Seward – two of Seward’s children and Seward’s nurse, Sergeant George F. Robinson. Powell – outnumbered and in an alerted household, escaped, wounding a messenger who had arrived while Powell was escaping. After the trial, Sergeant Robinson, credited with actually forcing Powell to flee, asked for and was given the knife used by Powell in the attack.

Fleeing the city, Powell was thrown from his horse near a cemetery. He hid in the cemetery for three days, and then went to Mary Surratt’s boarding house - arriving just as she was arrested. Even though she denied knowing him, Powell found himself in chains and taken aboard a Navy monitor, the USS Saugus.

A military commission was formed to try Powell – foregoing the civilian trial by jury. Powell was tried under the name of “Payne” – a name he had used months earlier when he was arrested for spying by the Union and signed a loyalty oath to get released. He was defended by William E. Doster. Thirty two witnesses testified against Powell, and the evidence against him was overwhelming. Doster tried to claim that Powell was insane – which was rejected on the stand by Government witnesses. He then tried to claim that Powell was a soldier acting under orders – an argument that was rejected out of hand by the court.

Powell was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and treason.

Powell was executed on July 7, 1865, along with three other convicted conspirators – Mary Surratt, David Herold, and George Atzerodt. His body was buried in the penitentiary courtyard near the gallows where he was hanged. His body was re-interred several times over the years, and its present location is unknown. However, in January 1992 his skull discovered and identified in the Smithsonian Anthropology Department where it lay among mostly Indian remains that were being identified for return to their appropriate tribes. The skull, which had been tagged at some point in the past, was claimed by the nearest living Powell relative, and on November 12, 1994, was buried next to his mothers grave in Geneva, Florida.

WEB RESOURCES:

Abraham Lincoln Research Site
Alias Payne
Geneva History
Spartacus Educational
University of Missouri – Kansas City
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

Picture of Powell, Indiana History Digital Image Library
The assassination attempt on Seward, Wikipedia
Powell under Guard, Harpers Weekly, May 27, 1865: Son of the South
Booth and his Associates, Indiana Digital Image Library
Alexander Gardner’s picture of conspirators arriving at the gallows – Powell is second from the right, next to Mary Surratt, Indiana Digital Image Library
Powell’s gravesite, Waymarking

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March 2: Susanna Salter, First Woman Mayor

Susanna Madora Kinsey (nee Salter) was born on March 2, 1860, in near Lamira, Ohio. Her parents were Oliver Kinsey and Terissa Ann White Kinsey, whose Quakers ancestors were colonists in William Penn’s colony.

In 1872, when she was 12, her family moved to an 80-acre farm near Silver Lake in northeastern Kansas, where Salter attended public schools. Then, in 1880, she entered the Kansas State Agricultural College as a sophomore, being able to skip her freshman year because of college-level courses she took while in high school. She was forced to drop out of college just six weeks prior to graduate because of an illness.

While at college she met – and married – Lewis Allison Salter, the son of a former Kansas Lt. Governor, Melville J. Salter. Lewis graduated from college in 1879, and the couple were married on September 1, 1880. Two years later, after the birth of the first of their nine children, the Salter’s moved to Argonia, where Lewis would manage a hardware store. Argonia is in southern Kansas, and would be a city where Susanna would be involved in making history.

The first child born in Argonia was the Salter’s’ second child, Francis Argonia Salter, who was born in the spring of 1883. In 1884, Mrs. Salter’s parents moved to Argonia, where they bought the store in a partnership with Lewis so that Lewis could study the law with a local attorney and prepare for the bar exam.

In 1885 the town of Argonia was incorporated, and again history was made. Susanna’s father became the first mayor, and her husband, Lewis, became the city clerk. As city clerk, Lewis was responsible for writing the ordinances of the newly incorporated town.

In 1885 a bill was introduced in the Kansas state legislature to grant women the right of voting in municipal elections. Two years later the Kansas legislature passed the legislation, and governor John A. Martin signed it into law on February 15, 1887.

In Argonia, Susanna had become an active member and officer in the local W.C.T.U. (Women’s Christian Temperance Union), which had been organized in Argonia in 1883. With the passage of legislation allowing women the right to vote in Kansas municipalities, the Argonia chapter of the W.C.T.U. decided to make the enforcement of a state prohibition of liquor law a priority in the city election, which was to be held in 1887. Due to the absence of their president, Susanna presided at a meeting which selected a ticket of men whom the W.C.T.U. considered eligible for the city’s political offices – and who supported the W.C.T.U. agenda.

Some of the ‘wets’ in town – those men who opposed the ideas of the W.C.T.U. and favored the open sale of alcohol – held a secret meeting that developed a plan of Machiavellian proportions designed to defeat the W.C.T.U. and lessen the influence of that organization.

They decided to draw up a list of candidates identical with that of the W.C.T.U. – only with Susanna Salter’s name in the mayoral slot. Their thought was that the men in the community would not vote for a woman – nor would many of the W.C.T.U. members. In the end, the W.C.T.U. would, so the plan proposed, be politically embarrassed and would lose some of its influence as a political organization. Susanna Slater’s name was chosen because she was the only W.C.T.U. officer living within the city limits, and therefore eligible to run for mayor.

The election laws at the time did not require advance notice of candidacy, so the plotters ran off their copies of the ballot just before the April 4th election. Because of this, neither Susanna nor her family knew that she was on the ballot.

Surprise and shock greeted the early voters on election day when they saw a woman’s name as candidate for mayor. Word soon spread, and the chairman of the Republican Party in Argonia quickly determined what had been done and organized a delegation to visit Susanna. They found her in her yard, hanging up the laundry. They explained what had happened, asking her if she would accept the post if she won. She agreed.

The delegation spent the day explaining the situation to voters, and worked in the city to get out the vote. Lewis Salter – who was one of the early voters – was reported perturbed when he discovered that his wife was on the ballot, and more so when he returned home and found out that she had consented to be the mayor if she won the election. He eventually consoled himself with the event, even calling himself “the husband of the Mayor”.

Accompanied by her parents, Susanna went to the polls around 4 PM. As was customary for the day, she did not vote for herself – leaving the position of mayor on the ballot unmarked.

Showing that the ‘best laid plans’ can go astray, Susanna Salter was elected mayor of Argonia – and the first woman mayor in the United States. The official notice of the election stated:

ARGONIA 4/6/87
DORA SALTER, Argonia

Madam

You are hereby notified that at an election held in the city of Argonia on Monday April 4/87, for the purpose of electing city officers, you were duly elected to the office of Mayor of said city. You will take due notice thereof and govern yourself accordingly.

WM. H WATSON MAYOR

F.A. RUSE Clerk Pro. tem.

There were also five members of the town council elected – three of whom had been in on the plot to embarrass the women of the W.C.T.U.. Reportedly the new mayor had no trouble with the council during her yearlong term. She stated at the first meeting:

“Gentlemen, what is your pleasure? You are the duly elected officials of this town, I am merely your presiding officer."

The council and the mayor got along during their yearlong term. No new ordinances were passed – though it was a time of continued adjustment and application of the city ordinances that were created a mere two years earlier. One sad note during the term of Susanna: one of her children was born during her term as mayor, and died in infancy.

There was quite a bit of press coverage of the election of a woman mayor – both national and foreign newspapers came to the small Kansas town, interviewed the people, attended council meetings – each reflecting the view of their editors as to whether a woman mayor was a good or a bad thing. One item of continued interest was that Susanna was only 27 years old when elected to office. Another was that the position paid one dollar annually.

When asked about her future ambitions in politics by one of the eastern newspapers, Susanna replied:

"No, indeed, I shall be very glad when my term of office expires, and shall be only too happy to thereafter devote myself entirely, as I always have done heretofore, to the care of my family."

Susanna did not run for office again after her year in office expired. She and her family would leave Argonia when the Cherokee Strip was oned in 1893 where Lewis filed a claim on land near Alva, Oklahoma. In 1903 he sold the farm and moved to Augusta where he practiced law and established a newspaper.

Lewis died in 1916, and Susanna moved her family to Norman, Oklahoma, so her youngest child could attend the state university there. She would pass away at the age of 101 on March 17, 1961, and is buried in Argonia, Kansas.

A political ploy had backfired, electing the first woman mayor in the United States. She accepted the job she had not applied for, and made history.

WEB RESOURCES:

Kansas Historical Quarterly
Kansas State Historical Society
KTWU interview transcript
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

Portrait of Suzanna Salter, age 27: Kansas Historical Society
Portrait of Suzanna and her husband: Kansas Historical Society
Map of Sumner County, 1887: David Rumsey Collection
Salter home in Argonia: Salter House Museum
Letter notifying Suzanna of her election as mayor: Kansas Memory

Portrait of Suzanna Salter at 94: Kansas Historical Society

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February 26: John Harvey Kellogg, Crown Prince of Cereal

Very likely most Americans recognize the name – it’s seen every time one visits the breakfast cereal section of the grocery store. But the man behind the development of a new style of food for breakfast cereals was a pioneer in the wellness movement - but not a partner in the company that made corn flake cereal famous.

John Harvey Kellogg was born on February 26, 1852, in Tyrone, New York. He would move to Battle Creek, Michigan at an early age with his parents, John Preston and Ann Jeanette Stanley Kellogg. His parents were devout Seventh-day Adventists, and this would have a bearing on John Kellogg’s life, occupation, and fame. His father operated a broom factory there where Kellogg would work with his father. He also served as a ‘printer’s devil’ in various publishing houses in Battle Creek.

He had a public education, working his way through the public schools of Battle Creek, then attending Russell T. Trall’s Hygeio-Therapeutic College for five months, then Michigan State Normal School (now Eastern Michigan University), and finally receiving a M.D. degree from the New York University Medical College at Bellevue Hospital – where Kellogg graduated at the age of 23 in 1875. Some credit the beginning of biomedicine to Kellogg, based on his graduation thesis What Is Disease? – which reflected the natural hygiene beliefs of his mentor, Russell Trall.

He would continue his education by studying in Europe at various times between 1883 and 1911. His movement into the medical profession was promoted and provided for by two people he had worked for as a teenager: James and Ellen White, two of the founding members of the Seventh day Adventist church. As a physician, Kellogg would become an advocate of the views of the Adventist Church, especially those considering the dietary approach to healthy living.

He would start editing the Adventist’s Health Reformer newsletter in 1872, and after graduation from medical school he began working at the Adventist’s Health Reform Institute in Battle Creek. He was twenty-four years old when he became the superintendent of it in 1876, and would rename it the Battle Creek Sanitarium in 1878, designing it as a place where people could learn how to stay well. Eventually the ‘Sans’ would become a center for the rich and famous to visit. He also renamed the Health Reformer, which became the Good Health magazine.

He married Ella Eaton of Alfred Center, New York, on February 22, 1879. While the couple was childless, they made a goal of providing funds for the education of deserving children, and would virtually raise about forty children in their fifty-room home before Ella died in 1920. Over the years the Kellogg’s would adopt seven of the children.

At ‘Sans’ Kellogg would advocate a health program consisting mainly of a gain-based vegetarian diet. He also advocated things that we hear about today: diet, exercise, fresh air, sunshine, good posture, and dress, along with hydrotherapy. He was an early holistic doctor – practicing a plan for wellness in a time when antibiotics were largely unheard of. He took an early stand against caffeine, meat, alcohol, and tobacco. Some of his ideas can be found in the forward to a booklet titled “The Simple Life In A Nutshell”:

“Biologic living means health, comfort, efficiency, long life.

It means good digestion, sound sleep, a clear head, a placid mind, content and joy to be alive.

Live out of doors. Do your work under the trees instead of behind doors and opaque walls. Dig in the garden, explore the woods and hills. Follow the brooks, watch the squirrels in their gambols and learn the songs of the birds.

Fix up a sleeping porch or balcony and so take an outing all night long and every night, and don't move inside when frost comes. Outdoor sleeping is the best life-preserver known.

And live on the "fat of the land." Forget breakfast foods and culinary delicacies. Abjure flesh pots and "sea food." Find your whole bill of fare in the garden,—peaches, apples, luscious grapes, plums and pears, lettuce, green corn, celery, greens, tomatoes, melons, nuts, and all the rest of the luxuries which Mother Earth supplies. Revel in salads and berries, and green stuffs untouched by fire. These dainty foods abound in vitamins, and vitamins are the real elixir of life discovered at last in this twentieth century.”

Concerning the importance of grains in a vegetarian diet, Kellogg wrote that natural "foods abound in vitamins, and vitamins are the real elixir of life discovered at last in this twentieth century."

Kellogg’s medical and philosophical background – as well as a timely accident - created the momentum for him and his brother, Will, to form the Sanitas Food Company in 1897. The invention of flaked grain-based cereal occurred through an accident. The two brothers had invented several foods made from grains. The grains were forced through rollers to make long sheets of dough. One day they were called away while cooking wheat and when they returned, the wheat seemed over cooked. However, they decided to put the wheat through the rollers anyway – and each wheat berry was flattened into a thin flake. They had discovered ‘flaked’ cereals.

The typical breakfast of the wealthy in the late 19th century was eggs and meat (while the poor had porridge, gruel, and other boiled grains), the Kellogg’s would advocate whole grain cereals as the major breakfast diet. They were not the first to produce a dry cereal – that honor goes to Dr. James Caleb Jackson who created the first dry breakfast cereal, which he called Granula, in 1863. But they did bring corn flakes and wheat flakes to the dry breakfast cereal market.

Unfortunately, older John Kellogg treated his less-educated and younger brother Will more as an employee than a partner. That, combined with Will wanting to add sugar to the corn flakes, led to a split between the two brothers. In 1906, Will started his own company, the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, which eventually became the Kellogg Company, triggering a decades-long feud over the rights to cereal recipes. John then formed the Battle Creek Food Company to develop and market soy products.

Kellogg was also an inventor, receiving over thirty patents for his various inventions. These inventions included the electric blanket, the universal dynamometer (for testing the strength of muscles), and the electric light bath – as well as some improved medical instruments for the surgeons to use.

He also was a prodigious author, writing over fifty books concerning health advocacy, as well as numerous magazine articles. He also promoted what he believed in, becoming one of the primary founders in Battle Creek of the American Medical Missionary College and the Battle Creek College. He also organized a School of Home Economics and a School of Physical Education – carrying his beliefs into the classroom.

He continued his practice as a skilled surgeon into his seventies, and often operated with no fee on those who could not afford surgery. He warned that smoking caused cancer – decades before the link was discovered.

While he had been highly involved with the Seventh Day Adventist Church for 2/3rds of his life, the church would expel him in 1907 due to his divergent views on the Bible and his belief in pantheism, the belief that there is a divine presence in all living things. As the twentieth century got underway, he had split from his family, forsaken the use of the Kellogg name on cereal products, and split from his church.

With the coming of the Great Depression, the ‘Sans’ would fall on hard times, and go into receivership, and Kellogg’s Battle Creek Food Company would fall on hard times. Also, many of his more extreme ideas would be increasingly criticized by the public and the press.

Kellogg was on his deathbed when he tried to reconcile with his brother – even writing a letter admitting that he had been wrong in his earlier treatment of Will, and in fighting Will in court for the cereal rights. However, his secretary - entrusted to mail the letter - never did, and John Kellogg died without being reconciled with his brother.

After suffering through three days of pneumonia, John Harvey Kellogg died on December 14, 1943, at the age of 91. His wife, Ella, had passed away in 1920. They are buried at the Oak Hill Cemetery, Battle Creek, Michigan.

William Shurtleff would write perhaps the best overall description of John Harvey Kellogg:

"Kellogg was a dynamo of human energy, a personification of the work ethic, who needed only 4 to 5 hours of sleep a night, went cycling or jogging every morning, dictated 25 to 50 letters a day, adopted and reared 42 children, wrote nearly 50 books, edited a major magazine, performed more than 22,000 operations, gave virtually all of his money to charitable organizations, loved human service, generally accomplished the work of ten active people, and lived in good health to age 91."

WEB RESOURCES:

Faqs.org
Find A Grave
Natural Health Perspective
New York Times obituary
NNDB
Wikipedia


PHOTO SOURCES:

Woodcut print of John Kellogg, Wikipedia
Photo portrait of John Kellogg, Natural Health Perspective
1910 Corn Flakes Advertisement, Wikipedia
Picture of Kellogg in the early 20th century, NNDB
Kellogg family gravestone, Find A Grave picture by Scott Michaels
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