100 Year Old Weblog ~ News From 100 Years Ago That's New to You from Vintage Kansas City.com

August 1, 1908

HE WAS AFRAID TO GO HOME.

Robert Parker, Suing for Divorce,

Often "Sat Alone at Y. M. C. A."

In the divorce suit against his wife, Sidney, filed by Robert Parker in the circuit court at Independence yesterday, Mr. Parker states that when he returned home late at night, after attending to business affairs, his wife was always waiting for him, but not with love and kisses. He avers that the bric-a-brac and small articles of furniture often greeted him.

The evening volley from the front door got to be such a regular thing that Mr. Parker says he was really afraid to go home in the dark. Like the man in the song, his only refuge was the Y. M. C. A., and he often stayed there all night, he says, instead of risking his head by going home.

Labels: circuit court, Divorce, domestic violence, Independence, YMCA

July 31, 1908

HE'LL MAKE STRONG CHINAMEN.

Dr. M. J. Exner Is Going to Asia to

Teach Athletics.

Dr. M. J. Exner, for the last eight years physical director of the Kansas City Y. M. C. A., has announced that he will resign his position here to go to China.

Dr. Exner is a graduate of the Kansas City Medical college and the Springfield Training schook, where he made a reputation in athletics, playing on the famous football team of 1896, which was the only team to score on Yale that year. Dr. Exner played end on the football team and also distinguished himself in other lines of athletics. His work in Kansas City has been uniformly successful and he has gained the friendship of a great number of young men here.

In his new position Dr. Exner will make his headquarters in Shanghai, where the Y. M. C. A. is very strong and has a large number of native members. Dr. Exner has been making a study of the conditions among the Chinese in regard to physical education and exercise and he finds them deplorable.

Labels: doctors, YMCA

April 9, 1908

WALKING WEST ON A WAGER.

If He Goes 3,000 Miles in Sixty Days

This Youth Gets $450.

To walk 3,000 miles cross-country from New York city to San Francisco in sixty days is the task which a young man, who arived in Kansas City last evening, says he is now in the midst of on a wager of $450. The continental pedestrian, Frank McAllister, figures the total distance by wagon roads and railroad tracks at 3,000 miles, and that he must cover fifty miles each day to win the purse He is now about three days behind on his schedule, he says.

McAllister said last evening that he had walked from Pleasant Hill, Mo., yesterday, a distance of thirty-five miles. He plans to walk toward Topeka, Kas., today on the Santa Fe tracks, but may remain here a day to rest. He says, if he stays here today, he can be found at the Y. M. C. A. club rooms.

Labels: gambling, Topeka, visitors, YMCA

February 3, 1908

PROGRESS OF THE NEGRO.

Defined in Address Last Night by

W. T. Vernon.

In an address delivered to negroes at Allen chapel last night, W. T. Vernon of the United States treasury department said that the possibilities of the negro are encouraging to all those who desire a better era for these people. He claimed that the negro appreciates all the opportunities which may be opened to him. He declared that with the negro's freedom was made the most radical change in social order.

"The passage of the war amendments was necessary and just," said Mr. Vernon. "They prohibited peonage, defined citizenship, provided for the penalization of any state which should disenfranchise its citizens, and provided against this injustice on account of color. Then came the upward struggle of 4,000,000,000 people and as a result of such legislation and protection, the race has made achievements unparalleled in the world's history by any race similarly environed. From 1870 to 1900 the illiteracy of the face was decreased 43 per cent. At the close of the civil war the negro was without a home. In 1900, thirty-five years later, 372,414 were owners of homes of which 225,156 were free from incumbrance. He has nearly 30,000 school teachers, 500 young negroes pursuing special courses in the greatest institutions of learning in this and foreign countries, and he is paying taxes on quite $800,000,000 worth of property.

"Unbiased men will admit that such a record deserves encouragement, and gives just ground for the belief that he is daily becoming an appreciated, potent factor for good.

"The South today is struggling industrially with the rest of the world. The building up of this section can not be accomplished without the labor of the negro. These people, discriminated agaisnt, with thier schools diminishng, are not given an opportunity to do the best within them, and thus give to their country the splendid efforts which they could otherwise give. Blind indeed to right and justice -- blind to the best interests of our country is he who denies to any class of our citizens that which he asks for himself. As a race we must remember that education, sobriety, thrift and energy are the qualities which will give us success, permanent and lasting.

"While seeking industrial opportunity and progress in the business world, the spiritual side, which has to do with literature, art, science, culture and soul growth, should not be neglected. Here in the midst of a growing developing population, with less racial antagonisms and discriminations than are found elsewhere, I believe the race can rise to its highest possibilites. I would advice that we remain here and work out our destiny."

At Lincoln high school, Nineteenth and Tracy, Mr. Vernon addressed the colored Y. M. C. A. yesterday afternoon.

Labels: Civil War, Nineteenth street, race, schools, Tracy avenue, YMCA

September 2, 1907

MILTON J. OLDHAM HURT.

The Attorney Struck by a Passenger

Train and May Die.

Milton J. Oldham, 2905 Euclid avenue, an attorney with offices in the Scarritt building, was struck and dangerously hurt by a westbound passenger train on the Santa Fe railroad, at Turner, Kas., at about 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon.

Oldham had been visiting Mrs. Emma Moffett, of Turner, during the day and had just sepped behind one train, only to get in front of another. He was thrown several feet by the cowcatcher and was unconscious several hours. Mr. Oldham was put on board a Kansas City bound train and put in care of Dr. D. E. Clopper at Argentine. It was found that he sustained internal injuries, from which he may die.

Mr. Oldham was placed temporarily in the Argentine Young Men's Christian Association rooms last night, and will be sent to a hospital in Topeka this morning.

Labels: attorney, doctors, Euclid avenue, railroad, Scarritt building, Topeka, YMCA

July 10, 1907

THIS IS "LEMONADE DAY".

Railroad Y. M. C. A. to Give Annual

Drinkfest.

This is "lemonade day" at the Railroad Y. M. C. A. at the Union depot. Following a time-honored custom of the association, Secretary Parsons and his assistants will serve free lemonade to all who may visit the rooms today, and each man will be allowed to drink as much of the concoction as he may desire.

Once every summer, usually some time in July, the association takes this means of entertaining its members, and the affair has proved successful from a social standpoint.

Music and the usual table games help to make the day a pleasant one for the "railroad boys".

Labels: railroad, Union depot, YMCA

May 9, 1907

ONLY ONE KNOWN DEAD IN UNIVERSITY FIRE, THOUGH IT IS BELIEVED RUINS HOLDS ANOTHER BODY

GROPING HIS WAY THROUGH SMOKE FILLED HALLWAYS, GEORGES DeMARE BECAME CONFUSED AND LEAPED OR FELL TO HIS DEATH

WOMAN CANNOT BE FOUND.

Miss Aurora Wittebart Believed

To Have Perished in the

Doomed Structure

WOMAN FALLS FROM LADDER.

Through Blinding Smoke Fight for Life Waged.

The University building, at the northtwest corner of Ninth and Locust streets, was totally destroyed by fire yesterday afternoon, causing a loss of $125,000 on the building and resulting in the death of Professor Georges De Mare, head of the art department in Central high school, who jumped or fell from a window on the fourth floor of the burning building.

The body of Miss Aurora Wittebart is supposed to be still in the ruins.

The loss to the various tenants cannot be known with any degree of definiteness for some time. With the exception of Montgomery Ward & Co., who occupied the first two floors, most of the occupants of the building were musicians and artists. The Radford pharmacy occupied the room at the corner of Ninth and Locust, and the Kindergarten Supply Company occupied the room immediately to the west of the pharmacy.

The fire caused more excitement than any which has occurred in Kansas City in years, owing to the ancient architecture of the building and the large number of women who had studios in the building, and the fact that several hundred girls were employed by Montgomery Ward & Co. There were many sensational escapes and displays of heroism, the most notable being the rescue of Miss S. Ellen Barnes, a music teacher, by Fireman Charles Braun.

She Died of Suffocation?

Death by suffocation is thought to have been the fate of Miss Aurora Wittebart, and artist who had an office in the fifth floor of the building, and was there when the fire started. She was last seen by Miss Barnes just as Professor de Mare jumped to his death. She is thought to be the woman Mr. Farrel saw with de Mare, as he groped his way through the smoke to safety. De Mare leaped to death from a window leading out of her studio.

Miss Wittebart is the daughter of a glass manufacturer who lives at Coffeyville, Kas. She was only 22 years of age, and had been studying art and painting in Kansas City for several months, and was to have been married to George Jackson, an employe of the Missouri-Kansas Telephone Company.

Last to See Miss Wittebart.

"Just before I learned that the building was on fire Professor de Mare was in my studio," said Miss Helen Barnes last night. "We were talking about music and art, and finally he arose to go, saying that he was expecting a visitor in his studio. He walked to the door and opened it. A gust of black smoke burst through the open door, and it was then we realized that the building was on fire. Professor de Mare called to me to get out of the building immediately and started down the hall. I started to follow, but soon realized that I could not find my way through the dense smoke. I went to a window from where I saw Miss Wittebart standing at a window on the floor below. She was near the rear fire escape and I supposed she had descended. Professor de Mare had opened a window and was preparing, I thought, to mount the landing of a fire escape. I returned immediately to my studio and, raising a window, made a feeble attempt to call for help. the smoke strangled me, and I threw my purse out to attract the people below. That was needless, though, for I had been seen by the firemen, and at that time ladders were being rapidly placed to reach me. I saw the fireman who rescued me climbing upward. There was determination in his manner, and I seemed to realize when I looked upon his smoke-begrimed, upturned face that he would surely reach me. It was his determined look that strengthened me and seemed to give me new courage."

Cleveland Laid Cornerstone.

The building was constructed nearly twenty years ago for the Y. M. C. A., Grover Cleveland laying the cornerstone in 1887 during his first term as president. It cost $112,000, and after the Y. M. C. A. was compelled to relinquish it the building passed into the possession of the Pepper estate, being in turn sold to the Sunny Slope Realty Company. There was an insurance of $72,000 on the structure.

The first alarm was turned in a few minutes before 3 o'clock by O. W. Hoover, proprietor of the Kindergarten Supply House, next door west from the drug store on the corner. Mr. Hoover heard the girls employed by Montgomery Ward & Co. hurrying down the stairs and out of the building and soon afterwards smelled the smoke. He called up the fire department and was informed that no alarm of fire had yet been turned in. Mr. Hoover thereupon turned in the alarm.

Dr. William West, formerly a fireman and later a police surgeon, who ha an office in the Rialto building, saw the smoke pouring form the building and was one of the first physicians to reach the scene of the fire. He attended Fireman Braun, who rescued Miss Barnes, and did valiant and effective service throughout the fire in extending first aid to the injured.

300 Girls in a Panic.

The fire started in a pile of 8,000 pounds of hemp rope, which was stored in the pit of the building. Until recently the Kansas City Athletic Club had occupied the premises and it had made the basement and main floor a single room. Around this room ran a balcony. Montgomery Ward & Co. were occupying the room and in it they had a pile of hemp stored for immediate use. Without any warning whatever smoke began issuing from it and a crackling sound was heard. There were some of the 300 girls the mail order house employed in the Kansas City general offices, within two feet of the rope, and scores of them within sight. Immediately on hearing the sound of the crackling and seeing the little jets of smoke at the same moment, the girls began to tell each other there was a fire, and precipitously prepared to leave the place. O. Q. Massey and J. M. Miller, clerks, at the same time made a rush for the starting fire and tried to trample it out. Despite their efforts the fire gained on them, jets coming from twenty parts of the pile. A rumor that someone had stepped on a match, igniting it, is completely discredited by the evidence given by a dozen or more clerks who were sitting in the pit where the hemp blazed.

While Henderson, Massey and Miller were trying to stamp the fire out, Mrs. Lucille Baker, in charge of the squad in that particular room, began getting her forty subordinates out of the place. Manager W. P. Walker had 200 girls at work in what once was the swimming pool. Their only avenue of escape was to walk toward the burning hemp and up a temporary staircase. In the most amazing manner, the manager succeeded in getting the clerks to stand perfectly still until they could march out of the place in twos, and in that manner he got every one of the 200 out of the pit and to the street level without the slightest confusion. There was every possibility of a jam at the staircase, which could only have resulted in a great loss of life.

Labels: cornerstones, death, doctors, Fire, Kansas City Athletic Club, Locust street, Ninth street, retailers, Rialto building, YMCA

May 2, 1907

TO KILL BABY, TOO?

WAS THIS THE PURPOSE OF MRS.

GALBRAITH, A SUICIDE?

CHILD TELLS HER OWN STORY.

SAYS MOTHER WANTED HER TO

TAKE SOME "MEDICINE"

This Turns Out to Have Been Carbolic Acid -- Coroner Says Too

Much Was Taken to Substantiate Theory of Accident --

A Note Missing.

Many mysterious things have developed since the body of Mrs. Mary S. Galbraith was found in her home, 1610 Lister avenue, Tuesday night by her 3-year-old baby Mercedes. It seems now, from what her oldest child, Gladis, 5 years old, says, that Mrs. Galbraith made careful preparations for death. She left a note for her brother-in-law, Clay Galbraith, which cannot be found. From the child's story, lisped in broken sentences yesterday to the neighbors, it is inferred that Mrs. Galbraith may have tried to take Gladis with her.

Little Gladis said that shortly after the postman left the home Tuesday afternoon, which would have been about 3 o'clock, her mamma was reading a letter. The child said she read it over and over and cried bitterly while she was doing so. Then she called Mercedes, the baby, to her and, giving her a penny, sent her to the grocery at Seventeenth and Lister to buy candy. The grocer said she got it and went out to play.

Gladis said then that her mother wrote a letter to "Uncle Clay." After that, still weeping, she went to the bath room and took Gladis with her. The child says that her "mamma opened a bottle of medicine and wanted me to take some. I didn't like it and wouldn't take it," she added. "Then she gave me the letter to give to Uncle Clay and told me to run on out and play. She took a big dose of the medicine and went in her room and fell on the bed."

Little Gladis went out to play with her sister, Mercedes, and several other children. In her play she said one of the boys took the note to "Uncle Clay." The whole neighborhood was searched yesterday, but no trace of the note, which could explain everything, could be found.

It was after dark when Mrs. Charles Parsons found the little sisters playing out in the cold and took them to their kitchen door and placed them inside. They ran upstairs just as the front door opened and Clay Gallbraith, the dead woman's brother-in-law, arrived from his work at the Y. M. C. A. headquarters. He heard little Mercedes upstairs in her mother's room crying, "Wake up, mamma. I tan't wake my mamma. She won't talk to Mercedes any more." When Mr. Galbraith passed the door he saw the baby on the bed with the dead mother, patting her face and hugging her pulseless body. He called a doctor and the coroner was summoned.

The bottle of "medicine" of which Gladis spoke was found in the lavatory in the bath room. It was carbolic acid. Dr. O. H. Parker, deputy coroner, held an autopsy at Forster & Smith's morgue yesterday, and reported that carbolic acid had been taken in too large a dose for it to have been a mistake or an accident.

"Do you reckon she wanted to take Gladis with her?" many of the neighbors were asking yesterday. "Why did she send Mercedes away?" The little daughter said that her mother burned the letter she had been reading which "made mama cry." There was no trace of it to be found yesterday.

J. A. Galbraith, husband of the dead woman, was reached by wire at Dallas, Tex., and is expected home at 8 o'clock this morning. The arrangements for the funeral will be made after his arrival. The coroner said there was no need of an inquest, as he was satisfied as to the cause of death.

Labels: children, Deputy Coroner Parker, Lister avenue, Suicide, undertakers, YMCA

May 1, 1907

STILLED IN DEATH.

EVEN BABY'S VOICE BRINGS
NO REPLY FROM MOTHER.

ASKS UNCLE TO WAKE HER.

LITTLE MERCEDES GALBRAITH

FINDS PARENT BEYOND HELP.

Traces of Carbolic Acid Indicate Poison as Cause of

Death -- Whether an Accident Is Yet to Be De-

termined -- Brother Is Attracted

by Child's Cry.

"Mamma! Mamma! Wake up, mamma, please wake up an' talk to Mercedes!"

When Clay Galbraith, a clerk at the Y. M. C. A. general offices, entered his home at 1610 Lister avenue at 7:30 o'clock last night, he heard his little 3-year-old niece, Mercedes Galbraith, calling to her mamma in a room on the second floor. Mr. Galbraith started to his room and as he passed the door he saw the child on the bed with its mamma.

"My mamma won't wake any more an' talk to me, Uncle Clay," the little one said. "You wake her."

Mr. Galbraith stepped into the room, thinking his sister-in-law asleep, but noting the deathly pallor on her face he ran to the home of Mrs. Willis Dunkerson and told her of his suspicions. Dr. A. R. Greenlee was called, but Mrs. Galbraith had been dead possibly five or six hours, he said.

Dr. Greenlee summoned Dr. O. H. Parker, deputy coroner. He found Mrs. Galbraith lying partly clad across her bed. Her shoes and stockings had been removed as if to prepare for a bath and all the soiled leinen in the house was in a laundry bag by the kitchen door. The neighbors told of a sick spell which Mrs. Galbraith had suffered in December last and suggested natural causes for her sudden death. In the lavatory in the bath room, however, Dr. Parker found a bottle labeled carbolic acid. The cork had been removed with a hair pin. The bottle was empty. Dr. Parker also said that the dead woman's lips showed traces of carbolic acid.

Mrs. Mary S. Galbraith was 34 years old. She was the wife of J. A. Galbraith, a traveling man for the National Surety Company. Her huysband left home last friday and is now somewhere in Texas. Wires were sent last night to try to locate him. There are two children, Gladys, 5, and Mercedes, 3 years old.

The neighbors said that the little ones were out at play all afternoon and some suggested that perhaps their mother had put them out. About 7:30 Mrs. Charles Parsons, a neighbor, saw them out in the cold and took them to a rear door and had just placed them inside when she heard the front door open. When she asked, "Who is that?" thinking it might be their mother, the little one replied, "It's Uncle Clay." She then ran on through the house and up to her mamma's room. Mr. Galbraith spent a mooment below before he heard Mercedes crying that she3 could not awaken her mother. The children were taken in charge by neighbors last night and have not yet been informed of their mother's death. An autopsy will be held today to determine the exact cause of death, but Dr. Parker said that from all external appearances and evidences found in the house he was of the opinion that Mrs. Galbraith's death had been due to carbolic acid poisoning.

"I will not be able to state until after the autopsy," he said, "whether death was an accident or suicidal."

Labels: children, Deputy Coroner Parker, doctors, Lister avenue, Suicide, YMCA

March 7, 1907

MAYOR'S FATHER IS ILL.

He Was Forced to Stop Off Here on

His Way to His Home.

George Beardsley, father of the mayor, and whose home is in Champaign, Ill., was taken ill while in Texas looking after a land deal and on his way home was compelled to stop over and go tot he residence of the mayor to be nursed and treated by a physician. It was at first feared that Mr. Beardsley, who is 70 years old, had contracted pneumonia but it was thought last night that the diagnosis had been incorrect and that he is suffering from a bad cold only. Having received this assurnace Mayor beardsley went to Jonesboro, Ark., where he will address the state meeting of the Y. M. C. A. today.

Labels: illness, Mayor Beardsley, YMCA