several months in Mrs. Mercer’s home while taking treatments of Dr.
Haigh for the chronic ailment which caused her death. He had come
over weekly to pay the bills. And he therefore knew just where to find
himself another wife—provided.
Graduate Wetmore Public Schools—Class 1899.
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No, Girls—It’s not her Graduation Dress.
Artist’s Idea—1904.
Mother of Virginia, Ruth, John, and Betty.
The deliberating period was another trying time for the girls — but
after thorough consideration, mother and daughters were in complete
agreement. It would perhaps be best for all of them, especially for the
overburdened mother. And it was really good for all of them—the Halls
included.
The Mercer girls all finished their schooling in Wetmore. The two
younger girls could have gone with their mother—it was so arranged—but
they preferred to remain in Wetmore, most of the time. Jennie was
offered the chance to work for her keep in Conductor Carlin’s home in
Atchison, while taking a course in the Atchison Business College. She
soon switched to the home of her uncle Stewart Mercer (a tailor) and his
wife Mina, to act as baby sitter for little Esther, their first born.
The Spectator, by virtue of some timely solicitation by Jennie’s older
sister, and an advertising contract, contributed the tuition fee. Then
Jennie went to work for a grain commission company in the Kansas City
Board of Trade building. She worked in that one building as secretary
and bookkeeper for different grain firms for the remainder of her
life—more than thirty-five years. She never married.
Not that Jennie never had the chance. She turned down Danny Cromwell,
a Kansas City boy, after he had secured the license. His sister Kate, a
true friend and a very sensible girl, told Jennie that he had nothing,
that he was sickly, without prospects—and that she would do well to sack
him.
Then, too, Jennie had prospects of marrying her boss. But, after years
of happy anticipation — you could see it written all over both their
faces when they spent a vacation week with her relatives in Wetmore—it
developed that this romance also was fraught with intolerable aspects.
Her Romeo lived with, and was the sole support of an aristocratic mother
who was allergic to working girls. Oh, those aristocratic mothers!
A wise Nineteenth Century girl needed no advice. What think you a
Twentieth Century girl would have done?
Jennie was helpful in securing positions in Kansas City for her younger
sisters. Kathy worked as cashier and bookkeeper for the B. F. Coombs
Produce Company down by the market, at Fifth and Main. She married
Luther P. Hyre — and reared a family of three girls and one boy, in
Kansas City.
I think Kathy was the only one of the girls to inherit in a high degree
her mother’s Irish wit. I don’t care if she was my mother-in-law, Kate
Leonard - Mercer - Hall was a witty woman. And what’s more, I never
could understand the why of so much criticism of the mother-in-law.
Also, little Virginia Hyre, Kathy’s first born, was a bright kid. Note
this. Percy Worthy had gone to the farm with me to get a load of
posts. Little Virginia, my wife’s short three-year-old niece, tiny and
talkative, was taken along. The posts were in a small depression on the
edge of a cornfield. I lifted the little girl out of the wagon and stood
her on higher ground. She remained quiet while we loaded the posts.
When Percy started to pull out, the front wheels of the wagon hit soft
ground, sinking to the hubs, stalling his big bay team. He lashed the
horses—mildly of course—and yelled fearsome notes of encouragement.
Virginia set up a howl—screamed as if the lashes and frightening words
were falling on her little tender person. Percy climbed down off the
wagon to investigate. Virginia stopped her howling and said with broken
sobs, puncturing each word with her little right hand swinging up
and down, “I know what’s the matter, Uncle John.
You-just-got-too-many-posts!”
And again, nearly a year earlier, after the child had spent a month in
our home, Virginia’s mother had come out from Kansas City to take her
baby home. At the last minute, when they were seated in the passenger
coach, Virginia decided she did not want to leave us, and she tearfully
argued the matter with her mother—to no avail. As the train started to
move the little girl, tiny and tearful, standing up in the seat, thrust
her head and outstretched arms out an open window, and sobbed, “Uncle
John, don’t you want me?” That did something to me. The fact was, we
did want her. And I could have made the flying catch all right—but her
wardrobe would have gone on to Kansas City. Virginia came back to our
home, later, and started to school here, but she “fell out” with her
teacher—and was carted back to Kansas City again. “I just don’t like
Miss Peters” is all we could get her to say. Miss Myra Peters was the
primary teacher who had for many years been adored by the little tots.
After a brief spell as Kathy’s assistant with the Coombs Company,
Jessie came back to try country life again. She married Will Hall, her
step-father’s son. One time when Myrtle and I were visiting the Halls
they took us to a Masonic program and supper in Powhattan. I was sitting
with Mr. Hall when a friend of his from Hiawatha asked, “Who is that
pretty girl in red over there with your son?” Mr. Hall said, drolly—he
was a slow talker when he wanted to be impressive—”Well, she is my
wife’s daughter; and my son’s wife.” The friend looked puzzled for a few
seconds, then said, “I get it.”
I shall now have to drop back once more. At this time Myrtle Mercer was
working in my printing office, and she and Jessie were living in the
home place down by the creek. My brother Theodore and his wife Mattie,
living on my Bancroft farm, had given Myrtle a Great Dane puppy. It grew
into a very large dog. With Vic as protector, the girls felt secure in
their rather isolated home between the timber and the tracks. Hoboes
were numerous along the railroad in those days. The girls were not
bothered by tramps, with Vic around.
Historically noted, the pup’s mother, aided by a visiting male dog of
like breed from over near Hiawatha, had got herself in bad repute by
taking down a stray cow that had come into the front yard where the
tender spring grass made better pickings than were obtainable on the
roadside. After being poorly wintered, roadside pickings were the cow’s
only chance for sustenance. The cow was the property of a roving family
consisting of father, mother, and five kids, that had wintered in the
Jake Brian farm house a half mile away. The cow was trespassing, of
course—but there were the kids to be considered. My brother paid the man
for the cow. He already had possession of her. She was still down in his
front yard. But in time, she got up—and was driven with other stock six
miles to Uncle Bill Porter’s pasture for a summer’s outing. She never
got back.
When the pup was brought to town, the record of the old dogs
followed—and as he grew to be a monstrous dog he was feared by some
people who knew him only by his breeding. Then the town got a mad-dog
scare. Vic was reportedly seen fighting with the suspected mad-dog
down in the lower part of town—on “Smoky Row.” The informer recanted
later—but that did not help matters after Vic had been killed by order
of the City Marshal. I think the dog’s overly-advertised ancestry had
marked him for annihilation. Thus, “the sins of the parents were visited
upon the son” to the extent of needless distrust.
Vic was a good dog.
Myrtle said she couldn’t believe her dog was seen fighting with another
dog on the town-side of the tracks, as he was never known to leave the
home alone. But she felt that it was best to be on the safe side. And
then too an order was an order. She wished that it had come a week
earlier, so as to have saved her the dollar tax she had paid the City
Marshal for the privilege of keeping Vic another year. It was a tragedy
that the girls’ watchdog was to be killed because of that false alarm.
Here I will put in a word on my own hook. I knew Ed Lazelere had stuck
the pup headfirst into a rubber boot and given him a treatment designed
to keep the dog at home. It really worked. In his mature years Vic was
never known to leave the premises alone, and seldom with either of the
girls. His one mistake in his puppy days was when he followed Myrtle,
unbidden, to the Lazelere home.
Frosty Shuemaker was detailed to do the shooting. I went along to help
get the dog away from the house. Vic was in the back yard in the shade
of an apple tree. He wouldn’t budge for us. Myrtle came to the back
door, and said she would have Jessie lead him over to the creek bank
west of the house. Frosty and I went around to the front of the house,
and then west on the outside of the yard fence to where there was an
opening in the enclosure.
Jessie and the dog came running. Vic stopped broadside opposite the
opening, and was knocked down with a single charge from Frosty’s
double-barreled shotgun—when Jessie was halfway back to the house. She
did not look back. She held in until the booming report of the shotgun —
then let out a terrific squawk. We dragged the dead dog outside the
yard fence and left it in a weed patch. Vic was now the City’s dog. The
Marshal would get a dollar for burying him.
Back at the house Myrtle, red-eyed and sorrowful, asked me what had
become of Jessie? I found the kid in a patch of marijuana over by the
east line of the grounds, lying face down—crying her heart out. And I
think I dropped a few tears, too. You know, there are times when you
can’t fight them back.
COMPLIMENTARY TO THE “KIDS” Here, I wish to pay my respects to the
“Kids” — all “Kids.” And especially the children born of parents living
in my home—separate apartment—with whom I have had close and pleasant
association.
Complimentary to MY LITTLE PAL
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Also, I was brought up with kids—ten in my father’s family; eight of
them younger than me; all boys but the last one. And then, too, after
my marriage, the wife’s nieces, Josephine, Donna, and Lucile Cole;
Virginia, Ruth, and Betty Hyre; and Mary Jane Hall, were in turn very
much in our home—which, altogether, has instilled in me a profound
respect for the kids. Girls preferred.
Cloy spent the first five years of her life in my home—separate
apartment. When she was about one year old, I often carried her down
town and got her an ice cream cone. She was just beginning to walk, that
awkward period when a child has to spraddle and step fast to hold its
equilibrium. At times when she would be with her mother on the settee
at the north end of the 22-foot front porch when I might choose to come
around from my apartment to the south end, she would make known to her
mother her desire to be put down on the floor, and she would come cooing
with outstretched arms for me to pick her up. And while she could not
talk, her mind was, I’m sure, on a cone somewhere down town. I never
aimed to disappoint her — but one time when I had been working in my
Rose Garden and was plenty tired, I tried to talk her out of it, put her
off. She could not understand all I was saying, of course—but she caught
the general idea all right. Never again did she come a-cooing to me with
outstretched arms. This is not to say we did not get more cones.
When Cloy was about four years old, she had a line-up for me to
participate in a social activity of the family. I said, “No, Cloy, I
couldn’t do that—I don’t belong. She said, “Well, gee—you’re one of us,
ain’t you?”
image5
When hardly five years old, Cloy found me, at night, standing on the old
National Bank corner. She asked me if I would give her a nickel—said she
had one nickel, and wanted to buy a 10-cent lipstick at the Wells store
for her mother. I said, “Cloy, your mother does not use lipstick.” “Oh
yes she does,” said Cloy, “the kind that don’t show.” I did not have a
nickel, and offered to go with her to the Wells store. She said, “Can’t
you get the change at the drugstore?” I said, “Come along, I’ll get
it for you,” and headed for the restaurant operated by her father and
mother and her aunt Genevieve Weaver. As we were passing the drugstore,
she said, “Get it in here.” I said, “No, let’s go to the restaurant.”
She said, “Well, bring it to me here”—and she sat down on a bench.
When I gave her the nickel, she skipped across the street to the Wells
store—and I went back to the restaurant. In a little while she came in
with her purchase, grinning. She opened it, and proceeded at once to
paint her fingernails right before her parents, still grinning. Nellie
said Cloy had “deviled” them for that extra nickel to get the nail
polish — and that they had turned her down. It was plain then why she
had said to me, “I knowed durn shore if I’d find you, I’d get it.”
I could keep on writing about this kid until the “cows come home”—but I
won’t. This paragraph shall suffice. We were coming up from town, hand
in hand, when Cloy, fairly bubbling over with good cheer, said to me,
“You never did let me see in your rooms.” I said, “Well, come in now
and take a good look.” When inside, she said, “Gee, it stinks in here.”
Defendant pleads nolo contendere.
These two fine little youngsters have been in my home—separate
apartment—since time began for them. And I’ve instilled in their heads
the ice cream cone habit. Their mother has told them that they must
not ask for the cones—but together we’ve worked out a way around that.
Whenever I meet Karen, bright-eyed and smiling, in my path, I say to
her, “Well, go in and tell your mother.” I never know how she gets it
over to Marjorie—but we are always off at once, usually with a mighty
active little trailer not far behind. When brought into my presence in
the yard, before she could talk, Karen, doubtless thinking of a cone,
would point the way down town and then run ahead for about a rod. When
this did not bring the desired results, she would take me by the hand
and lead the way, humming like a contented kitten sometimes purrs.
When hardly three years old, Karen’s mother sent her, with an older
little girl from across the street, on an errand down to Hart’s store.
They both “fetched up” at the restaurant where I get my meals. They
found me “in” — but Karen, in the lead, did not give me so much as a
single look. They marched on past me, climbed — with much effort — onto
the counter stools. Charlie Shaffer asked them a couple of times what
they wanted — but they just stared. Charlie then glanced over toward me,
laughing, which was equivalent to saying, “You take ‘em, ” and then I
had gotten over my laughing spell, I called Karen over to me, and asked
her if they would like cones.
Her little head went up and down a couple of times. They got their
cones, and went out pleased. And I was pleased, too. When the annual
Wetmore Fair was in progress I found Karen, slightly more than four
years old, sitting primly on a bench among strangers at the down-town
end of the block on which we lived, and I sat down by her. She proudly
told me she had on a new dress — a little yellow creation—which I
later suspected she had been told to keep clean. I told her she looked
nice—and this she accepted with true womanly grace.
It also developed that she had been permitted to go thus far only in
advance, to await the coming of her mother and Harry—but she did not
take the trouble to tell me this. I asked her to go with me to the
drugstore for cones. She hesitated a moment as if she were remembering
something—and then declined to go, but she said, “I thank you for asking
me.”
On my return from the post office, I observed the little yellow dress
was still on the bench—and, as Karen had been so nice about it, I
stepped into the drugstore and bought a couple of cones, aiming to
pick her up on my way home. Then, too late, I realized my mistake. The
children saw me with the cones as they turned the corner with their
mother enroute to the program on the Fair grounds in the next block.
With apologies, I gave the cones to Marjorie, thinking to make her
jointly responsible for messing up her children.
Well, the next day when we were getting cones at the drugstore, I asked
Karen if she had gotten her new dress soiled with the cone last evening.
Karen laughed—and said, “You know something. Daddy and mamma ate the
cones—but mamma gave me one bite.” I did not hear from Harry on this
score, but assumed matters had been properly taken care of. The moral
is: Never give a kid a messy treat after mama has cleaned it up for
public appearance.
ANOTHER BRIGHT LITTLE STAR The little Fresno, California miss was
ushered into my presence. My sister then went back outside to continue
with the watering of her flowers. Standing off at a reasonable distance,
Connie Jean Moser, from across the street at 1010 Ferger, said, “Aunt
Nannie told me to come in and get acquainted with Uncle John.” Attracted
at once by the little visitor’s proud carriage, pleasant expression of
face, and trim little body not burdened with too many clothes, I told
her that for me this should be a real pleasure.
Little girls, from three to six, in all their innocence, have always
made a hit with me. This is not to say I do not appreciate them when
they are older. But in general they lose a lot when they get smart.
And here now was beauty and apparently innocence at its best. A little
reserved at first, Connie Jean declined my invitation for her to sit
with me on the sofa, where I had been writing on a tab. She climbed into
a chair, twisted, and got settled with her little bare feet sticking
straight out at me. She told me her name, her age, and where She
lived—and that she had a boy friend named David.
Not wanting to lose an interrupted thought, I picked up the tab and
wrote a few lines. This done, I now found Connie Jean Moser, four years
old, sitting close up by my side, on the sofa. She asked me to read what
I had written. I said, “Oh, Connie, you wouldn’t understand it.” Then
she commanded, peremptorily, “Read it!” I told her I was writing a
book, and if she would promise to read every word of it when she got big
enough that I would send her the book.
“Oh, a book,” she said, happily, a light breaking in upon her
understanding, “I could take it to school like Oralee.” Oralee Johnson,
ten years old, is Connie Jean’s next door neighbor. I told Connie that
Oralee, when four years old, had paid me several rather affectionate
visits when I was in Fresno six years ago—but Oralee was getting too big
for that now.
“Yes,” she said, “Oralee is big. ”
Connie Jean squirmed and twisted on the sofa, as children will, causing
the straps sustaining her little sun-suit to slip off her shoulders,
annoying her to the point of alarm. I said, “Don’t let the straps bother
you, Connie—you will not lose your suit.” She smiled, and her blue eyes
opened wide. “If I would lose ‘em,” she said, “it would be too bad—got
nothing under ‘em.”
A very good man once said, “Suffer little children to come unto me.”
LLEWELLYN CASTLE Published in Wetmore Spectator—Seneca Courier-
Tribune—Goff Advance—Topeka Daily Capital—October, 1931
By John T. Bristow
A half century ago England got rid of some of her surplus inhabitants
by sending them over to this country to “root hog, or die” as the old
saying is. They drifted in here “like lost leaves from the annals of
men.” Colonies were planted in numerous sections of Kansas. Nemaha
County, with her great sweep of vacant rolling prairies, inviting,
snared one of those colonies.
The settlement known as the old English colony was on section
twenty-five, in Harrison township, five miles northwest of Wetmore. The
section was purchased from the Union Pacific railroad company by the
Co-operative Colonization Company, of London, about 1870.
The London Colonization Company had about six hundred members. They drew
lots to determine who would be the lucky—or unlucky—ones to come over
first, expenses paid.
John Fuller, John Mollineaux, George Dutch, John Radford, Charles
McCarthy and John Stowell were the original six to enter upon the duties
of conquering this land—virgin wild land it was. Except John Stowell,
all these men had families, but they did not all bring their families
over at first.
An eight-room house was built in the middle of the section and all
managed to live in it for a while. It was called Llewellyn Castle.
Later, lean-tos were built on two sides of the big house, and finally,
some smaller buildings were erected around the original house. The men
were supplied, meagerly, with funds to equip the farm.
The idea of the Company at first was to make a town in the center of the
section, and cut the land up into 10-acre tracts. They seemed to think
that ten acres would make a respectable sized farm. The town of Goff,
a mile and a half away, got started and the Colony town project was
abandoned. Also the 10-acre farm plan was changed to forty acres. The
lumber for the improvements was unloaded at old Sother, a siding on
the railroad a mile and a half south of the Colony section. There was a
postoffice at old Sother. Nothing else. Not even a station agent.
Later arrivals of the Colonists included the Wessels, Beebys, Perrys,
Coxes, Ashtons, Trents, McConwells, G ates, Morden, Hill, May, Conover,
Weston, Helsby, Weeks, Mrs. Terbit, and others. Still later, other
members of the Colonization Company come over after the local Company
had ceased to exist –gone bankrupt, it was charged, because of the
extravagant management of the non-producing misfits sent over here to
start operations. At this late date it could not be ascertained just what
was the text of the contracts between the parent company and the
members sent over here. But the impression is that if all had gone well
additional lands would have been acquired to accommodate other members.
The members, however, kept on coming regardless of the lack of advance
preparation.
They scattered out on other lands, mostly around the Colony—usually
40-acre tracts. They were miserably poor. And the privations were many.
Mrs. Terbit, having no mode of conveyance, used to walk all the way in
from the Colony and carry home on her shoulder a 50-pound sack of flour.
Isaac May settled on the 40-acre tract one mile south of Wetmore, which
is now the home of George W. Gill. May lived in a dug-out. John Stowell
settled on the north eighty of a quarter five miles southwest of
Wetmore—known as the Joe Board place, and still later owned by Charley
Krack.
George Cox settled the south eighty, which is still in the Cox
family—now owned by George’s son Fred, of Goff.
The Colony project was a glorious and ignominious failure from the very
first, with romance and intrigue ever in the ascendancy. Those poor
Englishmen were as green as the verdant prairies of springtime that lay
all about them. And the inexorable hand of Fate pressed down on them
heavily. They were besieged by droughts, grasshoppers, prairie fires,
blizzards, rattlesnakes—and, worst of all, an abiding ignorance of all
things American. When Llewellyn Castle was torn down in later years, a
den of rattlesnakes—twenty two in number—was found under the house.
Tom Fish told me that the snakes were offer heard flopping against the
floor, underneath, while the house was occupied.
Those poor misfits had not a chance. And it was little short of criminal
to send them over here so empty handed and so illy equipped for the
duties imposed upon them. But they were now all a part of the big,
sun-filled Golden West. And they were too poor to go back.
Many are the causes advanced for the downfall of the Colony project, but
the one cause on which all seem to be unanimous, more or less, is that
“They were a bunch of rascals.” This is probably an error—or partly so,
at least.
Internal friction with a very shady but treeless background undoubtedly
played its part. But I would rather suspect that the main cause was
ignorance, or to put it more kindly, a lack of knowledge. Tom Fish, our
faithful mixer of British-American juris-prudence—three times Justice of
the Peace backs me up in this contention. Says Tommy, “They just didn’t
knower anythink about farmin.” Our Tom attended their meetings back in
London at the Newman street-Market street headquarters.
But whatever the facts, and admitting that there were among the
Colonists no replicas of the man who walked along the Galilean shores
two thousands years ago, still I do not subscribe to the general belief
that those Colonists were all rascals.