USA > Kansas > Montgomery County > History of Montgomery County, Kansas > Part 3
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95
Haste was made to throw open doors and windows and change the stifling and pestilential air which was charged with the odors of death and decay. Had not this been done, the cause of the calamity would have been sooner discovered in the asphyxiation of some of the party. Further search disclosed that the wife and child. who were in the bed- room most distant from the fire, were still alive, though unconscious. The girl upstairs had been stricken while at her toilet and had fallen to the floor and died many hours before, as was indicated by the stage of decomposition that had been reached.
The efforts to resuscitate Mrs. Reed proved successful, but the child lingered only until Monday evening, when his young life went out. Mrs. Reed could throw no light on the cause of the awful tragedy, though she remembered that Mr. Reed had complained of feeling chilly after re- tiring and had got up and lighted the fires, which had been turned out. It was later that he had responded to the call to go for a doctor for the neighbor's child, after which, she said he had retired again.
Autopsies of the victims of this tragedy were held, and it was an- nounced that nothing inhaled into the lungs was responsible for it, and that in neither case was death due to asphyxiation. This was the dictum of a Kansas City expert who has never explained his blunder. The local physicians, Doctors McCulley, Masterman and Davis agreed that death was due to poisoning, and two of them said the symptoms were those of strychnine. From this, however, Masterman dissented. No people stood higher in the community than Mr. and Mrs. Reed, and so far as was known they had not an enemy in the world. Ilow or why they could have been poisoned was a mystery that batlled every attempt at solution. And vet. that they had been poisoned by something other than gas from the stove, every one was forced to believe. It was more than a nine days' wonder. It was a horror which was inexplicable. Speculation ran riot, and everything imaginable was surmised. To solve the problem, if pos- sible, it was decided to have a chemical analysis of the contents of the stomachs of the two adults and of Mr. Reed's brain as well. Dr. Davis accordingly took them up to Kansas City and the inqnest was adjourned to await the result. When word came on Saturday. a week after the
22
ITISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.
fatal evening, that no trace of poison could be discovered the mystery seemed deeper than ever. Many people were demanding that a test be made by subjecting dogs to the same conditions that prevailed in the house when the victims were found. The idea was that in some way the heated air had proved fatal. Scouting this suggestion, one of the physicians had asserted that a dog would live for a month in just such an atmos- phere as those fires had produced.
Unintentionally a test was made, however, in a way that set all doubt, as to the calamity being due to the fires in the stove, completely at rest. Mr. Reeds' married daughters, Mrs. E. L. Foster and Mrs. R. C. Barbee, had been summoned from New Mexico and Kentucky to attend the funeral. On the following Tuesday, Mr. E. P. Allen accompanied his wife and Mrs. Foster to the Reed house and lighted the fires to warm the rooms for them while they proceeded to look over the clothing in the bureaus and closets. Fortunately the outer door was left open. Each noticed that her eyes were smarting, but as the articles they were handling had become saturated with foul odors, they remarked that it would not do to rub them. Mrs. Foster soon complained of a smarting sensation in her throat also. A moment more and there was a strong twitching sensation in each side of her neck, and she felt her head drawn backward. She started for the open door and had barely reached it when she staggered, reeled and fell backward on the porch. Her head struck a post as she fell, and suffering from a terrible nausea she vomited profusely and became insensible where she fell. Subsequently there was observed frothing at the month and the same rouvulsive symptoms that had been manifested in Mrs. Reed's case, as she was being slowly brought back to life. Not only that, but in her case her hands had remained clasped for twenty-four hours, and her jaws were set so that it was with the utmost difficulty they were forced apart to permit the administration of nourishment.
There was of course no longer any doubt that, whatever had been the cause of the tragedy, it was still potent and might easily prove fatal to any one who should venture to enter that charnel house. One fact like this was worth a million theories in solving the problem of that awful calamity. The proposed experiment with living animals confined in the places in which the people had been found was now undertaken. On Wednesday, January 10th, Marshall Griffey got together three dogs and a cat, and under the superintendence of the sheriff and several physicians, they were locked up in the house with the fires burning. The dogs were in crates or cages, and in addition to placing them where the bodies had been found, a cat was fastened at the foot of the stairway.
An interested crowd lingered about the house all day watching the experiment. Some climbed to the roof of the kitchen from which the dog in the girl's room up stairs could be closely observed. It was noticed
23.
HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.
that the fire in the sitting room was acting qucerty, the blaze from the gas coming out of the door for several inches and showing a reversed draft. Step by step the mystery was being cleared up. On the roof it was hally noted that while a large volume of heated air was coming from the kitchen chimney, the one from the sitting room remained cool, and no draft of any kind was perceptible. The chimney had been choked up by the mortar which had fallen in when it was repaired and pieces had continued to fall until there was no longer any vent.
By half past two in the afternoon the dog in the sitting room was in convulsions and the one up stairs had begun to show signs of distress and was frothing at the mouth. From this time on the crowd of inter- ested sight-seers increased, and there was a constant concourse of bng- gies and wagons in the street. The dogs were not rendered suddenly un- consejous, as Mrs. Foster had been the day before, but suffered one spasm after another, each of them exceedingly severe. In the intervals between the convulsions the animals lay panting, the one near the stove with his tongue protruding and very rapid respiration. At half past seven this dog died, and just before midnight the last signs of life were observed in the one up stairs. When the animals were taken out on Thursday morn- ing, the dog in the bed room was still living, but it lay sprawled and stiffened with convulsions so that its recovery was deemed impossible and it was shot. The cat alone survived and with its proverbial hardi- hood ran away as soon as liberated and phinged its head repeatedly into a vessel of water, as if to free itself from the poisonous effects of the air it had been breathing for twenty-four hours.
An autopsy of the dead animals was made by Doctors MeCulley, Cha ney and Davis, which resulted in disclosing the cherry-red appearance of the blood that is noted as one of the marked indications of poisoning by carbonie oxide, a gas that is formed in large quantity wherever there is imperfect combustion of fuel in a stove. This gas is not immediately fatal and its evil effects consist chiefly in shutting out oxygen. though it has a positive deleterions quality also.
The mystery was at last fully solved, and in the ten years since there has never been another fatality in the county from poisonous gasses de- veloped by natural gas stoves. Though learned at such a terrible cost, the lesson proved effective beyond expectation.
A further demonstration of the deadly character of this carbonic oxide gas was made at the office of the Independence Gas Company the same week, which will prove both interesting and instructive in this con- nection. In the plumbing shop stood a stove with no pipe. the products of combustion being allowed to pass off into the air of the room. Placing a board over the hole for the pipe, at the top of the drum. the produets of combustion were confined in the drum. In a short time. with the stove door open, the flames would project two or three feet and burn with the
24
HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.
reddish hne of imperfect combustion. If then the stove door was closed, the tire would soon go ont entirely, there being no oxygen to support combustion. Had the stove in Mr. Reed's sitting room been of this sort, the only result of the stoppage of the flue would have been to put out the fire: but with the mica panels in its door broken, the flames came ont as when the stove door at the shop was open, and the air grew more deadly every moment.
Visitors at Mr. Reed's a day or two previous to the tragedy had no- ticed that the air was bad ; but it did not become deadly until the vent in the chimney was entirely closed. and he was such a sufferer from catarrh that he did not detect the changed character of the air as the fatal gas began to poison it.
Why Did Pomeroy Trust York?
BY H. W. YOUNG.
That "truth is stranger than fiction" is among the most trite of prov- erbs. And yet, that it is the facts of human life rather than the wildest vagaries of the romancer that appeal to us more powerfully as weird, strange, wonderful, or inexplicable, is evidence of the infinite versatility of nature. The materials that go to make the warp and woof of events are often the most unexpected, and are ever blended in any way that sets at naught the greatest foresight and the wisest predictions. Indeed, the more one reads and studies the lore of the past and the fiction of the present, the more fully will he he convinced that all there is of interest or value in the creations of the novelist is the truth they contain.
During the first five years of Montgomery county's history, the most striking events, seen with the clear perspective of almost a third of a een- tury's distance are the Bender tragedy and the exposure by Senator A. M. York of the attempt made to purchase his vote by United States Senator S. C. Pomeroy, who was a candidate for re-election. Another less im- portant, but still remarkable event, was the location of the Osage District land office at Independence. That there could be any connection between events so entirely dissimilar, or that one of them should stand to another in the relation of cause and effect, would seem to be especially unlikely. And yet not only was this the case, but we find one name-and that of a man who was unquestionably the foremost citizen of Montgomery county in those early days- coming to the front in all three of those events. It was only the fact that Dr. William York was the best known of the Ben- ders' victims, and that it was his disappearance which led to the search that brought their crimes to light that connected Senator York with that tragedy in 1873. What an eventful period that was for our Senator be- tween January 1872 and July 1873. llow much of thrilling personal experience was crowded into it.
25
HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.
When in the early winter of 1872 the mayor and council of the city of Independence decided to leave no stone unturned to secure the removal of the United States land office from Neodesha to their own town, they raised $3,000 for the purpose and sent Senator York to Washington to engineer the deal. What he did there he shall tell in his own language, as it is recorded in the report of a legislative investigating committee at Topeka, testifying before which on January 31st, 1873. the Senator said : "] was authorized as an attorney or agent of the town of Indepen- dence. by the mayor and conneil of that place to visit Washington last winter. and to do all I conld to get the land office located at Indepen- denve. I think I left for Washington in January, 1872; anyhow I knew Mr. Caldwell was at home. being absent through the holiday recess. I took with me a letter of introduction from Mayor Wilson to General MCEwen. I visited Messrs. Pomeroy and Lowe frequently with reference to the land office removal, and had consultations with the Kansas dele- gates in Congress separately and collectively, and could do nothing for a long while. I also called on Secretary Delano and ascertained from him that Mr. Pomeroy had the control of such orders. I then saw Mr. Pome- roy again and wanted him to promise that the office should be removed when the "strip bill" passed, but he told me it could not be done, and advised me to return home. This conversation I think was in February. However, I have a record of all my conversations with the delegation and with every member thereof. I recorded the conversations immediately after the respective interviews occurred. Thereafter I called on General McEwen and presented my letter of introduction, and as our companion- ship grew he made me acquainted with the details of the Alice Caton scandal and showed me the original affidavits, similar in every respect to the printed affidavits circulated in this city recently. And now let me say here that I did not countenance the circulation of these affidavits during the late Senatorial canvass, but did remark to a friend that they were word for word of the original affidavits which I had then and have now in my trunk. After reading these affidavits in General Me- Ewen's presence, I received permission to keep them, and the following evening called to see Senator Pomeroy at his private residence in Wash- ington. 1 found him in the middle parlor. I think there were three parlors or reception rooms in his house, communicating with each other by folding doors. Senator Caldwell was there that evening and other gentlemen, and, I think, several ladies. Seeing Senator Pomeroy occu- pied, I requested the privilege of an interview at his committee room early the following morning, and the Senator said he guessed the com- pany would then exense us, and he invited me into the back parlor. We went to the further side of the room and sat down close together, my chair facing him. I said: Senator, you have all this time failed to ap- preciate the earnestness of my demands for the removal of the land office
.26
HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.
to Independence, and now I want to show you some documents that will, I think, appeal very forcibly to yon.' And thereupon 1 took from my pocket the affidavits referred to and showed them to him. He commenced reading and soon his face began to change color. I leaned forward and put the question direct to him: Did you go to Baltimore (naming the day) ; did you stop at Barnum's hotel?' He said he did. I then asked him if Alice Caton went to the same city the same day and stopped at the same hotel. He said she did go to Baltimore that day, and he thought she stopped at Barnum's hotel. I asked him if he did not room in No .---. He said he could not recollect. I asked him if there was not a door directly communicating between his and her room. He denied that there was, and said he slept with a young man that night whose name he did not remember. At length he agreed to have the land office re- moved on the first of April, preferring that the scandal should not be revived as coming from a respectable source; and the land office was removed to Independence according to agreement."
In reply to a question by a member of the investigating committee as to the means he employed. Colonel York said he thought "they were questionable, but the people of Independence sent me to Washington to get the land office and I got it."
It has always been a wonder how so astute and experienced a pol- itician as Senator Pomeroy could put himself so entirely in the power of a political enemy as he did when he placed those packages of bills in York's hands to buy his vote, especially in view of the fact that York was made secretary of the anti-Pomeroy organization in the legislature, of which W. A. Johnson, afterwards Justice of the Supreme Court, was chairman. The story told above by York throws a flood of light on this question. York was not a stranger to Pomeroy. The latter naturally had concluded that the Montgomery county man was as unscrupulous as he was himself, and that he would employ any means, no matter how "ques- tionable" to accomplish the purposes he had in view. York had black- mailed him into locating the Osage land office at Independence, and he had evidently set him down as a bird of his own feather. That the man who would extort a favor for his town by a threat to expose Pomeroy's moral corruption to his constituents, would be any too good to pocket $8,000 as the price of a vote for the same reprobate in the joint convention never seems to have occured to that statesman. He would not have trusted a stranger in any such way, but a peddler of scandal! Why not count him safe?
So it is that but for the removal of the land office to Independence it is entirely improbable that York would ever have been in a position to "expose" Pomeroy's corruption. Thus strangely are events linked to- gether That York was an honest man is attested by his civil war record. He was made captain in a negro regiment and offered an opportunity to
27
HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.
line his pockets by putting fictitious names on the pay roll, and defrand- ing the ignorant negroes of their pay. This he sternly refused to do. and he was in consequence promoted to be lieutenant colonel, whence his title.
It was in the same year. 1873. and only three months later, that York was again brought into prominence in an entirely different way, by the discovery of his brother's body in that well-plowed garden of the Benders'.
The Montgomery County High School
During the fall and early winter of 1896 there was some talk about the establishment of a county high school at Independence, and mention was made of the matter in the newspapers, as one which might come he- fore the legislature. On the 3d of February, 1897, a bill was introduced in the Senate by Senator Young, providing that a high school for Mont- gomery county should be established at Independence. to be carried on under the provisions of the general high school law of 1886. The same bill was introduced in the House by Representative Fulton, February 4th, 1897. Immediately on the introduction of this bill in the Senate, the people of the county were notitied of the fact through the columms of the Star and Kansan, and invited to express their opinion in regard to it in the following words, which will be found in "The Editor's Letter," written from Topeka by the Senator from this county, and published on February 5th, 1897:
A bill to establish a county high school at Independence was intro- duced in the Senate this morning. I should like to hear a general ex- pression from the people of the county as to the desirability of providing facilities for higher education at home. thus saving a portion of the large sums now paid to send young men and women of our county to distant institutions of learning.
Both the Senator and Representative from this county received a large number of letters urging the passage of this special act. and favor- ing the establishment of the school. while neither one of them received a communication opposing it. The bill was held up for a time in the Senate committee, but when it became apparent that the people inter- ested were making no opposition to the proposed school. it received a fav- orable report. It passed the Senate on February 20th. 1897, without a dissenting voice, by a vote of 22 to 0. In the House there was some op- position to the bill in committee of the whole. Representative Weilep, of Cherokee county, speaking against it, but it was recommended for pas- sage February 27th, 1897. and on March 20, 1897, it passed that body by a vote of 97 to 1, the Senate bill in the meantime having been substituted for the House bill. It was signed by the governor March 5th. 1897, and
28
HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.
became a law by publication in the official state paper on March 12th, of the same year.
Just as soon as the bill had been passed, however, considerable opposition to the school was developed in certain sections of the county, norally in Sycamore, Cherry. Drum Creek, Louisburg and Cherokee townships. Meetings were held to protest against the establishment of the school, and petitions were widely circulated requesting the county
THE MONTGOMERY COUNTY HIGH SCHOOL
commissioners to appoint as trustees men known to be hostile to the school. and who would, it was thought, take no action to carry out the provisions of the law.
When the commissioners met in April, 1897, they took the matter np, and it was agreed among them that as there were six trustees to be selected, there should be two appointed from each commissioner dis- triet. The board of commissioners at that time consisted of P. S. Moore, of Independence; John Givens, of West Cherry; and David A. Cline, of Parker township. The two latter felt that the sentiment in their dis- stricts was against the school, but were unwilling to attempt to nullify
29
HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.
the law by making the appointments petitioned for. From the northern district Revilo Newton, a banker of Cherryvale, and M. L. Stephens, a farmer of Lonisburg township. were named. neither of whom were thought to heartily favor the school at the time of their appointment. For the middle district William Dunkin, of Independence, a lawyer and capitalist, and Thomas Hayden, a farmer of Liberty township, were selected. From the southern district, J. A. Moore, a farmer of Caney township, and E. A. Osborn, a stockman, of Coffeyville, were chosen. Both Dunkin and Hayden were enthusiastically in favor of the school. Moore also favored it, while Osborn was not only opposed to it, but took little interest in the matter, attended but a few of the meetings, and de- elined to be a candidate at the following election.
So far as the six trustees were concerned, the Board was equally divided between the friends of the school and those who were less fav- orably disposed toward it, but the law making the county superinten- dent a member of the board cr-officio and its chairman. prevented a dead- lock at any time. The board met for the first time on April 22d, 1897, and organized by electing Revilo Newton secretary and Wm. Dunkin treasurer.
Under the general high school law, a site for the building was re- quired to be furnished without expense to the county. On May 28th the board accepted the offer of the city of Independence to furnish a piece of ground 300 feet square, comprising a block of land in the southwest corner of out-lot 5 for this purpose. It was also stipulated in the con- iract with the city, that a sewer connection should be furnished withont expense to the county. On the following day it was voted to make to the county commissioners a certified estimate of six mills on the dollar as the amount of tax needed to ereet a suitable building. On this proposition the six trustees were tied, thice of them, namely : Messrs. Osborne, Now- ton and Stephens, being in favor of making the levy two mills a year for three years. The six-mill proposition was, however, adopted by the decid- ing vote of President Dallison. At this meeting H. M. Hadley, of Topeka, was elected architect of the board.
On September 7th the plans and specifications prepared by Mr. Hadley were accepted and the board advertised for bids for the construc. tion of the building in accordance therewith.
At a meeting held on October 28th, ten bids were submitted for the whole or part of the work, and on the following day the bid of M. P. T. Ecret to erect the building for $19,547 was accepted; also the bid of W. A. Myrick, to furnish the heating and ventilating appratus and to do the plumbing for gas and water, for $3,530. This made the total contract price for the building $23.077.
Meanwhile the opponents of the school had not been idle. They had en.ployed Hon. T. J. Hudson, of Fredonia, as their attorney, and on Sep-
30
HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.
tember 14th. 1897. they filed in the district court of the county, a petition asking for a restraining order to prevent the levying or collection of the tax for the building, and to forbid the trustees from doing anything further looking toward its erection, or the establishment of the school. Lewis Billings, of Drum Creek, and seventeen others, were named as plaintiff's in this petition.
The case came on for hearing at the November term of court, and on the 29th day of that month Judge Skidmore granted the injunction prayed for, fortifying his action by an extended opinion. The ground on which this order was asked and granted was the claim that the special act establishing the school was unconstitutional. for the reason that a general law was applicable. This point had been raised in the supreme court and overruled when the babette county high school was established by a similar special law ; and two of the three judges who concurred in that opinion were still on the bench. so that the chance of winning the rase in the final ontcome did not seem especially promising. Neverthe- less, Judge Skidmore reversed the supreme court with a great deal of alacrity, and the work of the trustees came to a standstill, while the case was carried up to the supreme court.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.