Tales from the trail by A.G. Patrick, New Era editor
(Compiled by Betty Jane Wilson, Valley Falls Historical Society President)
Prior to settling in Grasshopper Falls in 1856 and chalking up a vast amount of history for the town and Jefferson County, A.G. Patrick caught the gold fever and with nine others formed a company of wagons and oxen for a journey to the “Land of Promise” on the Pacific Coast. The company started from Green Castle, Indiana, on March 1, 1849, and reached “Hangtown,” (Placerville, Calif.) on September 3.
Decades later, Mr. Patrick shared recollections of his experiences with F.C. Scott, editor of the Valley Falls New Era (predecessor to the Vindicator).
Relating his many experiences, he recalled the incident of the Odd Fellows. In Patrick’s company was a man named Bob Hankins who belonged to the Fraternal Order of the Odd Fellows. In the same group was another Odd Fellow named Adamson. According to Patrick, “Between the two there was a constant quarrel, never agreeing on anything, and Bob had threatened a thousand times to kill Adamson.”
“To tell the truth, none of the company liked Adamson, and the fervent prayer of all was that Bob might muster up courage enough some day to commit the deed. . . One evening Bob and Adamson had a high old time and Bob came to us swearing vengeance, and that he was determined to kill Adamson the very next morning and wanted us to accompany him and see that the job was done. In agreeing to accompany Bob, it was with no murderous intent upon our part, but for the fun that might come out of it, knowing that when it came to a pinch he would flunk.”
Bob and Patrick, out early the next morning, found a secluded spot from which Bob could attack Adamson who rode his horse ahead of the wagons. Finally, he was seen half a mile off!
In Patrick’s words, “The closer Adamson got, the more Bob trembled. He had his pistol out, cocked and ready, and by the time Adamson got within twenty yards, somehow or other the thundering pistol went off, shooting Bob in the heel.
“He rolled and tumbled on the grass and made a terrible to-do. As Adamson rode up and dismounted, we looked for Bob to shoot, but instead he piteously cried, ‘Oh, Brother Adamson, I have shot myself! What in the world am I to do?’
‘Keep a good cheer, my brother’ said Adamson. ‘You can ride my horse and I will walk.’
“Bob bawled like a calf and with tears running down his cheeks, exclaimed ‘Oh, Brother Adamson, you are so good and kind to me. I don’t see how I will ever be able to repay you!
“While this was all going on, there we stood, a silent listener and spectator, we actually mean and dejected, fully determined never to be again inveigled to accompany one Odd Fellow to kill another. From that time on, the two Odd Fellows were loving as a pair of doves. That little episode fully convinced us ‘never give advice or act as mediator . . . !” A.G. Patrick
Galen Reichart, Glenn Lester, and Engelbert Heuertz will be museum hosts from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 22.
August 20, 2009
August 13, 2009
A.G. Patrick recalls Harry Hoover
compiled by Betty Jane Wilson, society president
A.G. Patrick was an 1856 Grasshopper Falls (Valley Falls) settler, avid abolitionist, adventurer, later postmaster, mayor, short-time editor of The Valley Falls New Era and one-time prisoner of pro-slavery sympathizers at Lecompton. He recalled events of his personal history with short sketches of well-known characters he encountered.
Of one Patrick wrote “Harry Hoover, in 1855-56 lived on the Delaware River about half way between Ozawkie and Valley Falls. He was arrested by U.S. troops and put with Hickory Point prisoners at Lecompton.
“He was a tall, uncouth looking specimen. He wore an old white fur, bell crowned hat, making him look at least seven feet tall, and in appearance not altogether unlike “Uncle Sam” as portrayed by pictures in papers nowadays.
“Hoover’s hair was long and unkempt, and the luxurious growth of it on his face hid everything but a low forehead, eyes and nose. His pants were altogether too short, and his feet no socks, but he wore an old pair of moccasins made out of green cowhide.
“After prison, he was a frequent visitor to the town (Valley Falls), always making his appearance barefooted. His droll and comical looks attracted the attention of the boys and they would follow him from place to place as vehement and noisy as a pack of hounds in a fox chase.
“Hoover was a regular glutton, the boys often chipping in and buying sugar and they liked to see how much the fellow would eat. He crammed down five pounds easily at a sitting. He had a good digestive apparatus, and a stomach like an ostrich, and to test the matter further, the boys gave up sugar, candies and the like, and tried him on eggs. Five dozen raw was an easy matter without any show of an overdose. Hard boiled ones were the next test, two dozen to begin with, and then another dozen added, and to cap the climax, on a wager, he crammed down another dozen, shells and all! A man with such a capacious and unbounded stomach, to fill him up was like pouring water down a rat hole.”
Source: Valley Falls News Era, Jan. 25, 1902
A.G. Patrick was an 1856 Grasshopper Falls (Valley Falls) settler, avid abolitionist, adventurer, later postmaster, mayor, short-time editor of The Valley Falls New Era and one-time prisoner of pro-slavery sympathizers at Lecompton. He recalled events of his personal history with short sketches of well-known characters he encountered.
Of one Patrick wrote “Harry Hoover, in 1855-56 lived on the Delaware River about half way between Ozawkie and Valley Falls. He was arrested by U.S. troops and put with Hickory Point prisoners at Lecompton.
“He was a tall, uncouth looking specimen. He wore an old white fur, bell crowned hat, making him look at least seven feet tall, and in appearance not altogether unlike “Uncle Sam” as portrayed by pictures in papers nowadays.
“Hoover’s hair was long and unkempt, and the luxurious growth of it on his face hid everything but a low forehead, eyes and nose. His pants were altogether too short, and his feet no socks, but he wore an old pair of moccasins made out of green cowhide.
“After prison, he was a frequent visitor to the town (Valley Falls), always making his appearance barefooted. His droll and comical looks attracted the attention of the boys and they would follow him from place to place as vehement and noisy as a pack of hounds in a fox chase.
“Hoover was a regular glutton, the boys often chipping in and buying sugar and they liked to see how much the fellow would eat. He crammed down five pounds easily at a sitting. He had a good digestive apparatus, and a stomach like an ostrich, and to test the matter further, the boys gave up sugar, candies and the like, and tried him on eggs. Five dozen raw was an easy matter without any show of an overdose. Hard boiled ones were the next test, two dozen to begin with, and then another dozen added, and to cap the climax, on a wager, he crammed down another dozen, shells and all! A man with such a capacious and unbounded stomach, to fill him up was like pouring water down a rat hole.”
Source: Valley Falls News Era, Jan. 25, 1902
July 09, 2009
The Octagon Hotel
by Clarke Davis
Valley Falls had an octagon-shaped hotel called The Octagon in the 19th century.
It was built by a frontier doctor who came here long before the railroad and only four years after Kansas Territory was opened to white settlers.
Librarian Kay Lassiter has now discovered in her reading why he built an eight-sided structure. It was simply the “in thing” at that time.
In Paul Collins’ “The Trouble with Tom,” a book about Thomas Paine, she discovered Orson Fowler, a phrenologist and social reformer who lectured and published a lot from 1834 to 1889.
Besides convincing people to be vegetarians, he also thought they should live in eight-sided houses, which he promoted as a “Home for All: Or a New, Cheap, Convenient, and Superior Mode of Building.”
Collins writes, “Scattered across the United States to this day are a motley collection of half-baked gingerbread Victorians built by Fowler’s disciples. They go by local nicknames like the Bandbox, the Inkwell, or — less imaginatively — the Octagon House.”
Fowler looked to nature for the perfect shape and found mostly spherical things like an egg. But building a house and bending the wall like a barrel, he thought, would be too difficult. But local carpenters were skilled enough to build an octagon.
Fowler also looked back to Thomas Jefferson who built an octagonal house for his daughter with a pair of octagonal outhouses.
They allowed more windows, thus were lighter and healthier and good health was necessary for the moral improvement of the world.
The octagon was a hit. Henry Ward Beecher built one, P.T. Barnum built one. Clarence Darrow spent his childhood in one. The group that Fowler appealed to mostly was doctors and ministers.
The movement spawned the Vegetarian Settlement Company that had the intent to build an Octagon City in Kansas. Prospective settlers committed $50 to $10,000 into the enterprise, but utopia would escape them. The expected fairyland turned into death and dispair.
Dr. Lorenzo Northrup began building an Octagon House in Valley Falls in 1858. It was located in Block 21 where the Ryan Shaw Body Shop and Old Elevator saloon are now in operation.
The foundation and corners were stone and the walls a mixture of concrete and stone. The rooms were finished with black walnut. The house was built for a residence, but became a hotel with Dr. Northrup as the proprietor.
Northrup designed the house himself. Each side of the octagon was 16 feet. It was two stories high with a basement, eight gables, a cupalo, and observatory. There were 20 rooms in the house.
One source put the cost at $20,000 but it took several years to build and the doctor wasn’t sure how much he did have invested in the home. It was completed in 1865 and became a hotel in 1872.
The doctor owned the bottom farm east of his house and here he started a brickyard, made brick and got together many cords of wood. The floods of 1858 sent the whole business down the river.
The Octagon House was destroyed by fire March 5, 1905.
Dr. Lorenzo Northrup, one of the pioneer physicians in Kansas and one who figured prominently with the early history of Jefferson County, was a native of New York. He was born May 10, 1819.
According to history recorded by the Valley Falls Historical Society, his maternal grandfather was a musician in the Revolutionary War. Lorenzo was educated at the Homer Academy in New York. In 1840, he entered on the study of medicine, attended the Willoughby Medical School, and in 1843 commenced to practice.
His first practice was in Ravenna, Ohio. At this time the treatment of strabismus, or cross eyes, was in its infancy. Northrup was among the first to introduce it into practice, and became very successful. He attained a wide reputation for proficiency as an anatomist, and skill as a surgeon. He removed from Ravenna to Limaville, Ohio, continuing his practice there for a time, thence to Newcastle, Pa., and after a temporary sojourn, returned to Limaville, residing there until 1853, when he came to Kansas.
He located in what was then Grasshopper Falls, where he successfully practiced medicine and surgery. In 1857, he built a schoolhouse here, and employed a teacher at his own expense, so deeply was he interested in the education of not only his own family, but the children of his neighbors. This was the first school in the town, and was conceded to be the first in the county.
He was a member of the school board for four consecutive terms, and largely through his exertions and contributions the first stone schoolhouse was built.
Politically, the doctor was a Whig and a strong Anti-slavery man. When he came to Kansas he identified himself with the Free-state party and acted with the Republican party, since its organization.
He married Jane Gray Brooke, of Ellsworth, Mahoning County, Ohio, in 1844. She was the daughter of James Brooke. Her grandfather Brooke was a citizen of Maryland and was the first man in the state to manumit his slaves, being compelled under the then existing laws of the state to become responsible for their conduct.
Dr. Northrup and wife had five children, Hester M. B., Elmer B., Kirtland B., Daniel B., and Kate.
Valley Falls had an octagon-shaped hotel called The Octagon in the 19th century.
It was built by a frontier doctor who came here long before the railroad and only four years after Kansas Territory was opened to white settlers.
Librarian Kay Lassiter has now discovered in her reading why he built an eight-sided structure. It was simply the “in thing” at that time.
In Paul Collins’ “The Trouble with Tom,” a book about Thomas Paine, she discovered Orson Fowler, a phrenologist and social reformer who lectured and published a lot from 1834 to 1889.
Besides convincing people to be vegetarians, he also thought they should live in eight-sided houses, which he promoted as a “Home for All: Or a New, Cheap, Convenient, and Superior Mode of Building.”
Collins writes, “Scattered across the United States to this day are a motley collection of half-baked gingerbread Victorians built by Fowler’s disciples. They go by local nicknames like the Bandbox, the Inkwell, or — less imaginatively — the Octagon House.”
Fowler looked to nature for the perfect shape and found mostly spherical things like an egg. But building a house and bending the wall like a barrel, he thought, would be too difficult. But local carpenters were skilled enough to build an octagon.
Fowler also looked back to Thomas Jefferson who built an octagonal house for his daughter with a pair of octagonal outhouses.
They allowed more windows, thus were lighter and healthier and good health was necessary for the moral improvement of the world.
The octagon was a hit. Henry Ward Beecher built one, P.T. Barnum built one. Clarence Darrow spent his childhood in one. The group that Fowler appealed to mostly was doctors and ministers.
The movement spawned the Vegetarian Settlement Company that had the intent to build an Octagon City in Kansas. Prospective settlers committed $50 to $10,000 into the enterprise, but utopia would escape them. The expected fairyland turned into death and dispair.
Dr. Lorenzo Northrup began building an Octagon House in Valley Falls in 1858. It was located in Block 21 where the Ryan Shaw Body Shop and Old Elevator saloon are now in operation.
The foundation and corners were stone and the walls a mixture of concrete and stone. The rooms were finished with black walnut. The house was built for a residence, but became a hotel with Dr. Northrup as the proprietor.
Northrup designed the house himself. Each side of the octagon was 16 feet. It was two stories high with a basement, eight gables, a cupalo, and observatory. There were 20 rooms in the house.
One source put the cost at $20,000 but it took several years to build and the doctor wasn’t sure how much he did have invested in the home. It was completed in 1865 and became a hotel in 1872.
The doctor owned the bottom farm east of his house and here he started a brickyard, made brick and got together many cords of wood. The floods of 1858 sent the whole business down the river.
The Octagon House was destroyed by fire March 5, 1905.
Dr. Lorenzo Northrup, one of the pioneer physicians in Kansas and one who figured prominently with the early history of Jefferson County, was a native of New York. He was born May 10, 1819.
According to history recorded by the Valley Falls Historical Society, his maternal grandfather was a musician in the Revolutionary War. Lorenzo was educated at the Homer Academy in New York. In 1840, he entered on the study of medicine, attended the Willoughby Medical School, and in 1843 commenced to practice.
His first practice was in Ravenna, Ohio. At this time the treatment of strabismus, or cross eyes, was in its infancy. Northrup was among the first to introduce it into practice, and became very successful. He attained a wide reputation for proficiency as an anatomist, and skill as a surgeon. He removed from Ravenna to Limaville, Ohio, continuing his practice there for a time, thence to Newcastle, Pa., and after a temporary sojourn, returned to Limaville, residing there until 1853, when he came to Kansas.
He located in what was then Grasshopper Falls, where he successfully practiced medicine and surgery. In 1857, he built a schoolhouse here, and employed a teacher at his own expense, so deeply was he interested in the education of not only his own family, but the children of his neighbors. This was the first school in the town, and was conceded to be the first in the county.
He was a member of the school board for four consecutive terms, and largely through his exertions and contributions the first stone schoolhouse was built.
Politically, the doctor was a Whig and a strong Anti-slavery man. When he came to Kansas he identified himself with the Free-state party and acted with the Republican party, since its organization.
He married Jane Gray Brooke, of Ellsworth, Mahoning County, Ohio, in 1844. She was the daughter of James Brooke. Her grandfather Brooke was a citizen of Maryland and was the first man in the state to manumit his slaves, being compelled under the then existing laws of the state to become responsible for their conduct.
Dr. Northrup and wife had five children, Hester M. B., Elmer B., Kirtland B., Daniel B., and Kate.
July 02, 2009
Celebrating the 4th
Compiled by Betty Jane Wilson, president
“There is in the juvenile heart a respect for the traditions of the Fourth (July 4), which no municipal neglect, no public indifference, no ill-timed respect for the peace and comfort of adult mankind can ever stifle, and until the race of boys is wholly extinct, The Fourth will never be forgotten,” declared S. Weaver, Editor of the July 9, 1874 issue of the Kansas New Era reporting the Independence Day activities of Grasshopper Falls (now Valley Falls).
The editor continued “We had a celebration of the fourth, in fact it commenced on the evening of the third, when Old Mc. and the rest of the boys set the ball in motion by opening a box of torpedoes . . hence all through the night of the third the cracking of torpedoes, the furtive popping of crackers on the streets and in dry goods boxes and the occasional bark of a rusty pistol undergoing preparatory trial, drove the drowsy God from the eyelids of our wakeful citizens. . . as usual, the shooting ordinance had been suspended so that we might trust the boys, the firecrackers, the small cannon, and the fifty-cent pistols to secure for us all a day of orthodox peril and discomfort . . .
“About eleven o’clock the merchants closed their doors and the procession headed by a band of horsemen and keeping step to the excellent music furnished by the Cornet Band, took their line of March for Frazier’s Grove where the truly interesting and enjoyable part of the day’s exercise took place.
“The weather was excessively warm and the roads very dusty, but despite all the disadvantages, the celebration taken as a whole, was a complete success. The speaking, especially that of Capt. George T. Anthony, was excellent. The music of the band was first-class, while the ladies and gentlemen of the Glee Club covered themselves with glory.
“The booths and stands and the grounds all around seemed to be doing a fair business. We should judge that the stand of the First Baptist Sunday School took in the most money. The Congregational Sunday School had the most artistic and inviting stand and the booth on the ground. The Methodist Sunday School had quite a large stand presided over by Weatherholt and Frazier. . .
“There were one hundred and twenty-seven loaded vehicles (city hacks not included) counted as they left the grove against one hundred and eighteen last year.”
The Valley Falls Historical Society museum will be open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Saturday, July 4.
“There is in the juvenile heart a respect for the traditions of the Fourth (July 4), which no municipal neglect, no public indifference, no ill-timed respect for the peace and comfort of adult mankind can ever stifle, and until the race of boys is wholly extinct, The Fourth will never be forgotten,” declared S. Weaver, Editor of the July 9, 1874 issue of the Kansas New Era reporting the Independence Day activities of Grasshopper Falls (now Valley Falls).
The editor continued “We had a celebration of the fourth, in fact it commenced on the evening of the third, when Old Mc. and the rest of the boys set the ball in motion by opening a box of torpedoes . . hence all through the night of the third the cracking of torpedoes, the furtive popping of crackers on the streets and in dry goods boxes and the occasional bark of a rusty pistol undergoing preparatory trial, drove the drowsy God from the eyelids of our wakeful citizens. . . as usual, the shooting ordinance had been suspended so that we might trust the boys, the firecrackers, the small cannon, and the fifty-cent pistols to secure for us all a day of orthodox peril and discomfort . . .
“About eleven o’clock the merchants closed their doors and the procession headed by a band of horsemen and keeping step to the excellent music furnished by the Cornet Band, took their line of March for Frazier’s Grove where the truly interesting and enjoyable part of the day’s exercise took place.
“The weather was excessively warm and the roads very dusty, but despite all the disadvantages, the celebration taken as a whole, was a complete success. The speaking, especially that of Capt. George T. Anthony, was excellent. The music of the band was first-class, while the ladies and gentlemen of the Glee Club covered themselves with glory.
“The booths and stands and the grounds all around seemed to be doing a fair business. We should judge that the stand of the First Baptist Sunday School took in the most money. The Congregational Sunday School had the most artistic and inviting stand and the booth on the ground. The Methodist Sunday School had quite a large stand presided over by Weatherholt and Frazier. . .
“There were one hundred and twenty-seven loaded vehicles (city hacks not included) counted as they left the grove against one hundred and eighteen last year.”
The Valley Falls Historical Society museum will be open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Saturday, July 4.
June 14, 2009
Brother, sister reunited after 62 years
by Frank Shrimplin
John “Jack” Ireland, 82, and his sister Alma Miller, 84, were reunited April 29 after having lost track of each other for 62 years.
John and Alma are the children of Jack and Elizabeth Ireland, born in Birmingham, England. Both parents are buried there.
At the beginning of World War II both joined the military. Alma joined the Arterial Auxiliary Territorial Service and served as a radar operator in the Royal Artillery. John joined the Scottish Black Watch, the Royal Regiment of Scotland, without his father’s consent or knowledge.
John was only 16 years of age. When his father found out, he told the service officer that his son was not 17, the legal age. With his father’s consent he was able to stay as a “Boy Soldier” serving as a drummer boy or similar activity, John explained. He stayed in Scotland after the war.
During the war Alma met Arnold C. Miller of Valley Falls, son of Walter and Edna Miller. The couple traveled many places around the world. They met on a train when she went to visit her parents while he was on leave from Italy. They lived in Philadelphia at one time.
Alma and their 4-year-old daughter, Jackie, lived in Valley Falls for about 15 months in an upstairs apartment at the Charles and Grace Olden residence on Frazier Street. Alma worked for Coleman IGA grocery store. She and her daughter left to join Arnold in Japan in 1963 just a few weeks before the tragic death of the Olden couple by a gas leak March 9, 1963. Alma says she feels fortunate to have left beforehand.
Alma and the children visited her parents and John in 1947, the last time they would see each other until April 29 when they were reunited in Kansas City. They corresponded with each other infrequently then lost track of each other. John’s wife died seven years ago and both Alma and he thought the other had died.
John was a professional entertainer as a comedian and singer for 30 years, played in the Palladium in London three times. Once he was on stage in a show featuring Dale Shannon, well-known in Britain as a legend vocalist.
Just over a year ago John, living in Scone, Perthshire, decided to try to find his sister. He contacted the Salvation Army Family Tracing Service. Within two weeks he was able to contact her in Topeka. Since April 2008 John had phoned Alma every day. It took three months to obtain a passport to come to United States.
Newspapers heard of John’s success in finding his sister and he was featured repeating along with doing TV interviews. In the air terminal he purchased a newspaper with his photo in it and a woman seated nearby noticed the photo and recognized that it was John.
She notified a Kansas City television station from the air and the cameras were waiting when the brother and sister were reunited. John was stepping on American soil for the first time.
Alma wanted to visit the Valley Falls Historical Society and the cemetery on Memorial Day weekend. She made arrangements with Betty Jane Wilson, president of the society, to view the uniform of her husband, Chief Warrant Officer Arnold C. Miller, that she had donated a few years ago.
He was born north of Valley Falls June 1922, graduated from Valley Falls High School in 1940, and served in the Army 20 years including duty during World War II and Korea. He died Dec. 2, 1999.
John, Alma, daughter-in-law Helen Quiett, Meriden, wife of the late Arnold C. Miller Jr., Alma’s son and now married to Gary Quiett, and Helen’s daughter, Jennifer, were in the group visiting the museum.
In researching the story, this writer found five stories on the Internet of John being able to find his sister. The Sun, a Scottish newspaper April 29 reported in the lead remarks, “A Scots war hero is set for a tear-filled reunion with his long-lost sister…more than 60 years after they last met.”
The article shows a photo taken in 1943 with both of them in uniform. John is quoted, “Alma and I were close, but the war broke us up in 1939.”
When the Salvation Army woman contacted Alma she recalled saying, “Well who is it? And she said your brother. I could have just fainted ’cause I thought he was dead.”
Neither John nor his sister wanted to fly. Alma swore off plane rides after her husband’s military career and John had never been on one.
At the end of one interview John says, “It’s marvelous isn’t it? Life is new for us now. Knowing each other”
Alma has a sister-in-law, Lorena Harden, in Topeka. Her husband, Wade, now deceased, used to run a pool hall in Valley Falls. Alma has a son, Frederick Miller, in Liberal, her daughter, Jackie McEntire, lives in Topeka.
John “Jack” Ireland, 82, and his sister Alma Miller, 84, were reunited April 29 after having lost track of each other for 62 years.
John and Alma are the children of Jack and Elizabeth Ireland, born in Birmingham, England. Both parents are buried there.
At the beginning of World War II both joined the military. Alma joined the Arterial Auxiliary Territorial Service and served as a radar operator in the Royal Artillery. John joined the Scottish Black Watch, the Royal Regiment of Scotland, without his father’s consent or knowledge.
John was only 16 years of age. When his father found out, he told the service officer that his son was not 17, the legal age. With his father’s consent he was able to stay as a “Boy Soldier” serving as a drummer boy or similar activity, John explained. He stayed in Scotland after the war.
During the war Alma met Arnold C. Miller of Valley Falls, son of Walter and Edna Miller. The couple traveled many places around the world. They met on a train when she went to visit her parents while he was on leave from Italy. They lived in Philadelphia at one time.
Alma and their 4-year-old daughter, Jackie, lived in Valley Falls for about 15 months in an upstairs apartment at the Charles and Grace Olden residence on Frazier Street. Alma worked for Coleman IGA grocery store. She and her daughter left to join Arnold in Japan in 1963 just a few weeks before the tragic death of the Olden couple by a gas leak March 9, 1963. Alma says she feels fortunate to have left beforehand.
Alma and the children visited her parents and John in 1947, the last time they would see each other until April 29 when they were reunited in Kansas City. They corresponded with each other infrequently then lost track of each other. John’s wife died seven years ago and both Alma and he thought the other had died.
John was a professional entertainer as a comedian and singer for 30 years, played in the Palladium in London three times. Once he was on stage in a show featuring Dale Shannon, well-known in Britain as a legend vocalist.
Just over a year ago John, living in Scone, Perthshire, decided to try to find his sister. He contacted the Salvation Army Family Tracing Service. Within two weeks he was able to contact her in Topeka. Since April 2008 John had phoned Alma every day. It took three months to obtain a passport to come to United States.
Newspapers heard of John’s success in finding his sister and he was featured repeating along with doing TV interviews. In the air terminal he purchased a newspaper with his photo in it and a woman seated nearby noticed the photo and recognized that it was John.
She notified a Kansas City television station from the air and the cameras were waiting when the brother and sister were reunited. John was stepping on American soil for the first time.
Alma wanted to visit the Valley Falls Historical Society and the cemetery on Memorial Day weekend. She made arrangements with Betty Jane Wilson, president of the society, to view the uniform of her husband, Chief Warrant Officer Arnold C. Miller, that she had donated a few years ago.
He was born north of Valley Falls June 1922, graduated from Valley Falls High School in 1940, and served in the Army 20 years including duty during World War II and Korea. He died Dec. 2, 1999.
John, Alma, daughter-in-law Helen Quiett, Meriden, wife of the late Arnold C. Miller Jr., Alma’s son and now married to Gary Quiett, and Helen’s daughter, Jennifer, were in the group visiting the museum.
In researching the story, this writer found five stories on the Internet of John being able to find his sister. The Sun, a Scottish newspaper April 29 reported in the lead remarks, “A Scots war hero is set for a tear-filled reunion with his long-lost sister…more than 60 years after they last met.”
The article shows a photo taken in 1943 with both of them in uniform. John is quoted, “Alma and I were close, but the war broke us up in 1939.”
When the Salvation Army woman contacted Alma she recalled saying, “Well who is it? And she said your brother. I could have just fainted ’cause I thought he was dead.”
Neither John nor his sister wanted to fly. Alma swore off plane rides after her husband’s military career and John had never been on one.
At the end of one interview John says, “It’s marvelous isn’t it? Life is new for us now. Knowing each other”
Alma has a sister-in-law, Lorena Harden, in Topeka. Her husband, Wade, now deceased, used to run a pool hall in Valley Falls. Alma has a son, Frederick Miller, in Liberal, her daughter, Jackie McEntire, lives in Topeka.
June 04, 2009
Arthur Strawn, personal recollections
Compiled by Betty Jane Wilson, historical society president
The late Arthur Strawn, historian, graduated from Valley Falls High School May 26, 1943. He reached his 18th birthday March 13, 1943, was classified 1A (subject to military draft) and faced the possibility of induction into service prior to completion of his senior high school year. His high school principal and a draft board member obtained deferent from service, since he had only 3 months remaining to graduate with his class. Following graduation, he found work and following are excerpts from his personal history:
“I did go to work for a local farmer, doing as I had for the last three summers, helping with field work, mainly putting up hay and shocking wheat. I went to work for George Tucking for one dollar a day and room and board. I shocked all his wheat and did chores morning and night. I could not have worked for a better person. Mrs. Tucking provided the best food I had ever enjoyed up to that time and I felt very much like I belonged there. Even their two little girls treated me like I was one of the family.
When it was threshing time, I worked in the fields pitching bundles (unloading shocks of wheat on the wagon) I was the only one working in the field except Don Marsh who was working for the Valley Falls Vindicator, our local weekly newspaper. It was our job to load the hay wagon fast enough to keep the threshing machine running. Hot and heavy work, but I was young and strong.”
Arthur learned wages were better in Central Kansas and with help of friends, left his dollar-a-day job, without notice, and worked near Newton, Kan., for $5 for an eight-hour day. In return for his board and room, he baby sat for his employers’ children. He wrote:
“I only worked a short time before I received my draft notice to report for induction on June 28th. I quit my job and they (friends) took me to Newton where I bought some new clothes and more important, a new linoleum for our living room at home. I took the bus to Valley Falls with $35 in my pocket. I was a rich man, I thought. The new linoleum they promised to deliver the next time they came east. . . On June 28th, Wayne Green (friend) and I reported to the draft board at Oskaloosa.”
The Valley Falls Historical Society Museum will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday, May 23, and Sunday, May 24, immediately following the 123rd Valley Falls High School alumni covered dish dinner at noon at the Delaware Township Hall, and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday, May 25. Saturday’s hosts will be Anna Irwin, Lucile Smerchek, and Dalene Senn.
The late Arthur Strawn, historian, graduated from Valley Falls High School May 26, 1943. He reached his 18th birthday March 13, 1943, was classified 1A (subject to military draft) and faced the possibility of induction into service prior to completion of his senior high school year. His high school principal and a draft board member obtained deferent from service, since he had only 3 months remaining to graduate with his class. Following graduation, he found work and following are excerpts from his personal history:
“I did go to work for a local farmer, doing as I had for the last three summers, helping with field work, mainly putting up hay and shocking wheat. I went to work for George Tucking for one dollar a day and room and board. I shocked all his wheat and did chores morning and night. I could not have worked for a better person. Mrs. Tucking provided the best food I had ever enjoyed up to that time and I felt very much like I belonged there. Even their two little girls treated me like I was one of the family.
When it was threshing time, I worked in the fields pitching bundles (unloading shocks of wheat on the wagon) I was the only one working in the field except Don Marsh who was working for the Valley Falls Vindicator, our local weekly newspaper. It was our job to load the hay wagon fast enough to keep the threshing machine running. Hot and heavy work, but I was young and strong.”
Arthur learned wages were better in Central Kansas and with help of friends, left his dollar-a-day job, without notice, and worked near Newton, Kan., for $5 for an eight-hour day. In return for his board and room, he baby sat for his employers’ children. He wrote:
“I only worked a short time before I received my draft notice to report for induction on June 28th. I quit my job and they (friends) took me to Newton where I bought some new clothes and more important, a new linoleum for our living room at home. I took the bus to Valley Falls with $35 in my pocket. I was a rich man, I thought. The new linoleum they promised to deliver the next time they came east. . . On June 28th, Wayne Green (friend) and I reported to the draft board at Oskaloosa.”
The Valley Falls Historical Society Museum will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday, May 23, and Sunday, May 24, immediately following the 123rd Valley Falls High School alumni covered dish dinner at noon at the Delaware Township Hall, and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday, May 25. Saturday’s hosts will be Anna Irwin, Lucile Smerchek, and Dalene Senn.
May 28, 2009
Harvest memories
by Betty Jane Wilson, society president
Titled “Intended for an introduction to a movie of wheat harvest” and reminiscent of his youth laboring in the harvest field, the late historian Arthur Strawn, wrote the following:
“These are the golden days of Kansas. Hot work with the bodies of men at golden brown from labor in the sun. One wonders if the people of today with their labor in the shop and factory and homes with air conditioning are better for all their comforts, or are these men working hard and sweating in the sun, cooled by the prairie breezes of a summer day, later relaxing in the cool of the evening under the shade of the big trees and perhaps making a freezer of homemade ice cream, not the human that God intended them to be.
“The water boy bringing a jug of cool, sweet water from a well. How many of us remember a drink of that water that rivaled all the Cokes and Kool-Aid ever made.
“Threshing was a time for the gathering of the neighbors — when the harvest table was loaded down with the products of the farm and gardens. The women labored as hard in the kitchen preparing a feast for their men at dinner time as the men working in the fields or feeding the separator.
“This is the true gold that Coronado sought in Kansas in those far off days when this bountiful land was the home of the buffalo and the Indians. There was gold here, but its seekers were 400 hundred years too soon. It took the early-day pioneer who traveled to this country by covered wagon, enduring untold hardships from the heat, drought, and loneliness of this great country to break the virgin Prairie and plant the trees that now give the shade around these farm homes.
“These courageous people were the people whose hard work and sweat finally discovered ‘the real gold’ of these limitless prairies and left a heritage that today’s people can only strive to equal.
“Here on the farm of a man who is as ripe in years as his grain, and like his grain has brought to fruit a harvest of memories that no man today is likely to have in the years that are to come.
“This picture shows a way of life that is gone — a way of life even if full of hard work, had other compensations that were perhaps greater than any man today can boast. This way of life was a gracious life that was slow enough that a man had time to reflect upon what life meant and what God had done for him.”
Maxine Hefty and Geneva Lonard will be historical society museum hosts from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, May 30.
Titled “Intended for an introduction to a movie of wheat harvest” and reminiscent of his youth laboring in the harvest field, the late historian Arthur Strawn, wrote the following:
“These are the golden days of Kansas. Hot work with the bodies of men at golden brown from labor in the sun. One wonders if the people of today with their labor in the shop and factory and homes with air conditioning are better for all their comforts, or are these men working hard and sweating in the sun, cooled by the prairie breezes of a summer day, later relaxing in the cool of the evening under the shade of the big trees and perhaps making a freezer of homemade ice cream, not the human that God intended them to be.
“The water boy bringing a jug of cool, sweet water from a well. How many of us remember a drink of that water that rivaled all the Cokes and Kool-Aid ever made.
“Threshing was a time for the gathering of the neighbors — when the harvest table was loaded down with the products of the farm and gardens. The women labored as hard in the kitchen preparing a feast for their men at dinner time as the men working in the fields or feeding the separator.
“This is the true gold that Coronado sought in Kansas in those far off days when this bountiful land was the home of the buffalo and the Indians. There was gold here, but its seekers were 400 hundred years too soon. It took the early-day pioneer who traveled to this country by covered wagon, enduring untold hardships from the heat, drought, and loneliness of this great country to break the virgin Prairie and plant the trees that now give the shade around these farm homes.
“These courageous people were the people whose hard work and sweat finally discovered ‘the real gold’ of these limitless prairies and left a heritage that today’s people can only strive to equal.
“Here on the farm of a man who is as ripe in years as his grain, and like his grain has brought to fruit a harvest of memories that no man today is likely to have in the years that are to come.
“This picture shows a way of life that is gone — a way of life even if full of hard work, had other compensations that were perhaps greater than any man today can boast. This way of life was a gracious life that was slow enough that a man had time to reflect upon what life meant and what God had done for him.”
Maxine Hefty and Geneva Lonard will be historical society museum hosts from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, May 30.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)