The Cragin Mansion

The Cragin Mansion, circa 1902.

Along the streets of North Joplin, one can still find stately homes interspersed alongside modest bungalows, reminders of a bygone era. At 516 North Wall Street stands one of Joplin’s oldest surviving homes, Cragin Mansion. The mansion was built in the 1880s by Eber Alonzo “Lon” Cragin, a native of Vermont who became a successful attorney in Iowa, and later retired to Joplin. Cragin’s son, John A. Cragin, subsequently relocated to Joplin, intrigued by the business opportunities to found in the mining boom town. John A. Cragin soon found his niche, helping establish the First National Bank of Joplin. Both he and his wife Minnie became respected members of local society. Minnie was well known for her gracious hospitality.

Eber Alonzo “Lon” Cragin, the first Cragin to arrive in Joplin and builder of the Cragin Mansion.

Lon Cragin and grandson, John Howard Cragin.

The Cragins became even further firmly intertwined in the fabric of Joplin society when John A. Cragin’s sister Susan married Peter Christman of Christman Department Store fame. According to family lore, John A. Cragin was a silent partner in his brother-in-law’s business. The Christmans lived in the handsome mansion with both the Lon and John A. Cragin families in a multigenerational family household. Peter and Susan Christman, although childless, helped raise their nephew, John Harold Cragin.

Flower Parade in front of the Schifferdecker House with Minnie Pease Cragin (wife of John A. Cragin), seated on the left side of the front seat.

John A. Cragin, started as a cashier at the First National Bank and eventually became president.

In 1912, eighty-two-year-old Lon Cragin fell while raking leaves and passed away. After his son John A. Cragin died in 1924, Lon’s grandson John Harold Cragin moved into the family home. The young Cragin followed his family into business and finance, making a fortune in stocks before the Great Depression plunged him into debt, which, according to the family, he repaid and still managed to retain ownership of the family mansion. Despite the family facing serious financial challenges at a time of great uncertainty, Cragin’s cook Anna Bland always fed unemployed men who knocked on the back door of the mansion searching for a meal.

A family portrait in front of the home. From left to right: Pete Christman, Unknown Girl, Susan Cragin Christman, John Harold Cragin, son of John Adna Cragin (brother of Aunt Susie) and Euphemia Graham Cragin.

Harold Cragin (right) in his office located in the Empire State Building at 6th and Joplin St., Joplin, MO.

John Harold Cragin married and had three children, but the marriage ended in divorce. One daughter, Betty Jane, married and moved near Sarcoxie. John’s only son, John Marshall Cragin, went away to college and later to a 20 year career in the United States Army. Thus, Cragin and the last of his daughters, Lynn, lived in a home full of mostly unoccupied rooms until the outbreak of World War Two. She found employment as a draftswoman at Camp Crowder and many of the home’s rooms were rented to married servicemen and their wives from the 303rd Signal Battalion. Cragin’s daughter met her husband, a soldier named Prescott, when some of the home’s temporary occupants set her up on a blind date. The two became engaged and Lynn left Joplin for married life in California. The mansion, meanwhile, was put up for sale and purchased for $12,500 by a relatively young Bible college in October, 1944. The Ozark Bible College has called Joplin home ever since.

The first non-Cragin inhabitant of the home, the Ozark Bible College.


The church converted the mansion was into its new spiritual home. It served as a girl’s dormitory, housed classrooms, the cafeteria, and administrative offices. The residence was expanded in 1953 to add room for a large chapel, additional classrooms, and a library. A year later, 176 students attended classes at the college at 516 North Wall Street. In the 1960s, the college outgrew its space and moved to its present location and took the new name of Ozark Christian College. A church made the mansion its home after the college departed and since then, the former Cragin residence has played host to numerous religious organizations through the present day. It is now the location of the Neighborhood Life House. For over a century, the Cragin mansion has stood on North Wall Street, once home to one of the prosperous families of Joplin and now a home to the Joplin community, bridging the divide between the city’s past and its present.

The Cragin Mansion in 2012, home to the Neighborhood Life House.

Cragin Mansion in 2012.

Photos and family history courtesy of Cragin descendant, Galyn Prescott Metcalf and John M. Cragin.

Visiting their childhood home in 2011, Lynn Cragin Prescott and her brother, John Marshall Cragin.

The Kansas City Bottoms: Part I

Landreth Park Joplin MIssouri
The north end of Joplin’s Main Street is quiet today. The Joplin Union Depot sits abandoned, visited only by aspiring graffiti artists and the historically curious, hoping to catch a glimpse of Joplin’s glory days in the weathered, intricate designs of architect Louis Curtiss. With the arrival of winter, Landreth Park is empty, save for the urban wildlife that call it home. Joplin Creek, the one constant in the ever changing landscape over the last one hundred years, remains. If only its silent waters could tell stories of the contentious rivalry between East and West Joplin, the mining operations that clouded its waters, and of the numerous families who lived in dire poverty along its banks in what was once known as the “Kansas City Bottoms.”

The name Kansas City Bottoms, according to one source, was derived from the Kansas City Southern Railway. Dolph Shaner, however, argued that the name “Kansas City Bottoms” came about because, “Kansas City and Independence, Missouri, capitalists, headed by John H. Taylor, purchased 120 acres of land extending from Fourth Street north three-fourths of a mile along Joplin Creek. The land being owned by Kansas City men, the valley at that point was dubbed ‘Kansas City Bottoms.’”

Attorney Clark Claycroft was one of Joplin’s earliest residents. Toward the end of his life he recalled that, “[John B.] Sergeant made the first big strike of lead ore in Kansas City bottoms, near the mouth of what now is known as Sunshine Hollow.” Veteran well driller Perry Crossman provided more detail, stating in an interview, “Late in the fall of 1871, I made a contract with John H. Taylor of the Joplin Mining and Smelting Company to drill a hole in a pump shaft in the Kansas City Bottoms. Charles Glover, now with the Joplin Globe, drew up the contract for Taylor and myself. That was the first hole ever put down to make a test for ore, and it ended in limestone.”

The area quickly became a magnet for men who sought to make a fortune in the lead and zinc industry. The Joplin Creek valley became inundated with hundreds of would-be miners who lived in tents, constructed crude shanties, or slept out in the open to stay close to their prospective strike. Joplin resident Dolph Shaner remarked that where Landreth Park is now located, “there once existed many, many mine dumps; all are now filled, leveled, and covered with grass.”

As mining operations left the Joplin Creek valley and spread out across the region in search of rich lead and zinc deposits, one might think that story of the Bottoms was over. It was not. As the population grew, two rival entities, East and West Joplin, sprang into existence. The bottoms connected the main streets of East and West Joplin and soon turned into a battleground between young men who fought on behalf of their town’s honor. We will leave it to the reader to pick up a copy of Shaner’s book to read in detail about the fistfights and rivalries that took place.

Stay tuned for Part II of the Kansas City Bottoms…

Toilers of Darkness

In the following story that we have presented in its entirety below, an anonymous Globe reporter writes in a florid style that one no longer finds in the pages of today’s newspapers. The article demonstrates a style of journalism that no longer exists as editors now demand clarity and conciseness, not flowery run-on sentences. One rarely thinks of the people who work the night shift, but as this article shows, little has changed since the turn of the century. We still rely upon the police, the fire department, security guards, janitors, and twenty-four hour fast food restaurants to look after us in the wee hours of the morning. And, as the reporter neglected to mention, far more women may have worked the night shift than he realized, only as soiled doves in Joplin’s red light district.

“In the hours of darkness, while thousands of Joplin people are wrapped tightly in the arms of Morpheus, hundreds of others are toiling for those who are unconscious of what is going on around them at that hour, keeping the big mill of life in one continuous grind.

It is not often that the average person gives a thought to those who are laboring during the hours of the night, after their daily toil is completed.  Some hurry home to a hearty supper and a pleasant evening with the family, while others remain to enjoy a good production at the local theater or visit with a friend, but few of those think of others, who are at that very hour preparing to take their places and keep the great machinery of life well lubricated, so that it will run again the next day without a hitch.

It will be of extreme interest and will, no doubt, cause great surprise to thousands of Joplin people to know that more than 1,000 inhabitants of this city work throughout the entire night, besides there are hundreds of others who devote half the night to labor.

In its slumber the city must still be supplied with heat, light and water, its homes must be protected from fire, its streets and stores must be guarded and food for thirty-five thousand mouths must be prepared before the dawn.  And all of this work and much more must fall to the lot of the toilers of darkness.  Year in and year out, the city as a great workshop never rests period.  While the day working people of Joplin are seeking relaxation, and while later hundreds of homes are quiet in slumber, a small army of tireless men and boys, and some cases women, is swaying back and forth in the nightly routine of their work, keeping up the great gind.

While thousands of Joplin people are sleeping, hundreds of miners are at work, bakers make bread for the slumberers to consume the next day; messengers boys hurry in every direction, firemen jump from their cots at the sound of the gong, ready to protect the sleepers from the ravages of fire; officers pace the streets in an effort to keep order; telephone girls are always on the alert to answer midnight call and hundreds of others stop only long enough to eat their midnight luncheon and then continue until dawn gives them the signal to retire.

Janitors and porters spend the weary hour of the night with their brushes and mops, preparing the hotel lobbies and business blocks for the next day’s work.  Often times, these creatures are overworked, and they are helped in some cases by their wives, sisters and friends.

Night scenes among the railway employees are filled with variety.  The hours of these night workmen are long, most of them coming on duty at 6:30 o’clock in the evening and working until that time in the morning.  In the switching yards, the night visitor may see the most interesting side of railroading.  In stations along the line, there are yard clerks, watchmen, roundhouse employees, car checkers and night operators.  The Missouri Pacific employs a force of 15 men during the night.  This includes a baggage man and operator at the passenger depot, yardmen and roundhouse employees, who are kept busy with the engines, keeping them clean and in repair.  The Frisco employs 16 and the Kansas City Southern nearly as many.

In Joplin there are at least a half dozen restaurants kept open throughout the entire night.  Waiters, cashiers, cooks and dishwashers have little time during these long hours for idleness.  In the saloons, which are never closed until the lid smothers the lights early Sunday morning, there are at least two men — the bartender and the porter.  Some places employ three men, and even four men during the night.

A large number of private watchmen work during the night.  Almost every person knows of the 14 patrolmen who guard the city by night, few stop to think of the many, who, in factories and stores, tramp ceaseless, only stopping at intervals to rest.  Some firms have old men for the work of watchmen, and others only employ young men.  The work is lonely and the hours are long, and in many firms the watchmen are on a constant tramp.  Next is the squad of regular officers, whose work is just as tiresome — but with much more variety perhaps, than that of the private watchmen.  Some are patrolling gloomy alleys, while others are watching the stores and residences, always ready to defend the lives and possessions of their sleeping brothers.

Electricians may be summoned to fix broken wires.  Often times they have to climb roofs and fire escapes [while the] working world is asleep, is an experience of unusual interest.

For a spectacular sight, one should visit a foundry.  During the day it may be interesting, but at night when in dark and dangerous places, where only great care makes the feat possible.

To visit the industrial places of Joplin night, when a weird quietness hangs over the city, and the day-darkness settles over the city, the scene is one of splendor.  At present, however, there are few foundries working night shifts.

Among the unceasing of the night are the dozen or more cab and baggage drivers of Joplin.  It matters not whether the weather be warm or cold, rain or snow, these fellows go just the same.

As near as can be estimate, there are thirty restaurant employees laboring during the entire night and about the same number at the hotels.  The hotels employ a night clerk, one or two porters, as many bell boys, an engineer and sometimes a helper for the latter.  From 20 to 25 saloon employees are at work, and in more than 100 concentrating mills, that operate at night, about 500 men tramp to and fro to their work as the sun rises and sets.  Engineers, electricians and watchmen are kept busy at the lighting plants, there being about 12 in all.  One postal clerk operates at the post office between the hours of six o’clock in the evening and four in the morning, when he is relieved.  About six telephone girls remain at the boards from 10 o’clock at night until 6 in the following morning.

Three of the bakeries work night shifts, there being a score or more of breadmakers all told.  14 firemen stay ready to respond to their calls, and three telegraph operators at are at work in the Western Union and postal companies’ offices.  Three or four messenger boys work throughout the entire night, and often times others are summoned to help the boys with their messages.

The Globe a force of 26 men, who all work until the grey hours of the morning.  From 2 to 4 nurses are on the alert at St. John’s hospital.  The Wells Fargo Express company employs two men during the night, and many others grind out their work night after night.

To give complete details about Joplin’s toilers of darkness would be almost an impossibility, but there is one other fact highly worthy of notice.  While women have, to some extent, usurped the places of men in many occupations and callings of the day, the sterner sex has yet a monopoly on night work.  Except for the telephone operators, there are few women night workers.  It is estimated not more than 5% of the night workers are women.”

 

Source: Joplin Daily Globe

Joplin’s Mining Queen

“All Joplinites who remember the palmy days of ’90, ’91, and ’92 will call to mind the exciting scenes and incidents of those times, and the prominent actors then upon the stage, which made this city the talk of the country,” the Globe recalled in 1897, upon learning that Mrs. M.C. Allen was to be committed to the state insane asylum in Nevada, Missouri.

Mrs. M.C. Allen, Joplin’s “Mining Queen,” was a conspicuous figure in local society. In 1889, after divorcing her husband, she arrived in Joplin from Indiana. As part of her alimony agreement she received a one hundred acre tract of land near Blendville. In a short time, she leased the land to Frank, Harry, and John Snyder. Together, the Snyder brothers developed the land into a profitable mining operation. It was reported that in 1890, 1891, and 1892 the Snyders paid Mrs. Allen $42,000 in royalties.

Allen, however, was ambitious. In 1893, she earned the sobriquet “Mining Queen” when she “took possession of the tract herself and operated it successfully for a period of fifteen months, during which time her income from her operations was from $500 to $600 per month.” Allen bore her new nickname with “such regal extravagance as to excite both natives and visitors alike.”

Mrs. Allen began to indulge in the purchase of “blooded horses” and “imported dogs.” She paid for $50 photographic portraits of her dogs, reserved the finest lodgings at local hotels, and began dabbling in wheat speculation with Frank Snyder. But the good times came to an end when the bottom fell out of the wheat market and both Allen and Snyder were financially ruined. Her one hundred acre tract of land was mortgaged in Kansas City for $5,500 and mortgaged a second time in Crawfordsville, Indiana, for an additional $1,800. The mining land was gobbled by investors from Minnesota for a mere pittance. When the dust cleared, Mrs. Allen was left with $1,000.

Dissolute, Allen moved first to Kansas City, then later to St. Louis where she opened a boarding house. But she could not forget her glory days in Joplin and returned, determined to rebuild her fortune. “Sickness and mental troubles” took their toll on Allen, however, brought upon by “the constant brooding over her losses.” Her despair caused her to hallucinate and lash out violently, despite being cared for with “a kindness and sympathy which her unfortunate situation fully justifies.”

It was determined that she should be sent to the state insane asylum at Nevada. When she arrived in Nevada, the Nevada Mail reported the following story:

“A pathetic incident occurred when Mrs. Allen of Joplin was brought to the asylum to be confided. She had been a woman of wealth, which had been dissipated with a lavish hand. Among her acquisitions was an imported dog which had been procured and trained at great expense…When the unfortunate was brought by her friends and an officer to this house of refuge for the mentally afflicted, her faithful dog accompanied the party.

She did not want to depart from her canine companion, and the mute appeal of the dumb animal to be permitted to stay with her was touching. [Asylum] Superintendent Robinson’s kind heart was moved…he permitted the little fellow to become an inmate and it occupies the room with its mistress, as faithful in companionship, loyal in love, and devoted to his friend as in the days of her luxury and social prominence…”

Thus was the end of Joplin’s first “Mining Queen.”

Check Out Views of the Asylum here.

Creepy book of drawings by an asylum inmate here.

A Soiled Dove Returns

Florence Woodson was hailed as one of “the most notorious denizens of the north end.” She had spent “many long and tedious hours behind the bars” and “years in dives of ill fame” when her mother appeared in Joplin and forced her to return home. Florence, it was said, had left her home in Springfield years before and journeyed to Joplin’s tough North End where she found work as a soiled dove. She soon gained the reputation as one of the “toughest of the tough.”

When her mother arrived, she found her daughter in jail, held on a charge of prostitution. Their meeting was “a heart rending scene” as Florence’s mother told her that Florence’s father had died from grief after she left home. Florence promised to leave her life on the streets and return home to Springfield. She was released from jail and left Joplin. It was rumored that she had indeed returned to the straight and narrow, but she eventually returned to Joplin, hoping to visit the “scenes of her dissipation” while on an excursion to nearby Carthage.

Florence, however, found that Joplin’s North End had changed. Many of the “resorts” were deserted; some even partially destroyed. Once the scene of “music, dancing, and wrong-doing galore,” reform-minded middle-class women had led a somewhat effort to drive the prostitutes, gamblers, and criminals from the North End, many of whom were African-American.

The police, alerted to Florence’s return, arrested her in a rooming house on Main Street. She begged that if released she would never return to Joplin. The judge fined her $5 and costs before releasing her. Florence reportedly caught a train back to Springfield. One more soiled dove had come and gone, but there would always be more to fill the bars and boarding houses of Joplin.

Source: Joplin News-Herald

What Did You Do During the War, Grandma?

Joplin Police Chief Joseph H. Myers

During the height of World War One, a covert raid was launched by the Joplin Police Department on behalf of the federal government. Chief of Police Joseph H. Myers, Assistant Chief of Police Charles McManamy, Chief of Detectives William F. Gibson, and an assortment of “street sergeants” met under the cover of night at the police station. Few, if any, of their colleagues knew about the raid. Chief Myers was concerned some of his men might tip off the intended targets.

At eleven o’clock at night, the men set out in squads. Their orders: to raid all rooming houses on Main Street and arrest all female occupants. In a complete surprise, the chief and his men successfully carried off the raid. One hundred and forty two women were taken into custody and taken to the Joplin Police Department. Once there, they were examined by “city physicians under the direction of Dr. R.B. Tyler,” Joplin’s commissioner of health and sanitation. Those assisting Tyler were Drs. W.H. Lanyon, J.B. Williams, D. R. Hill, and R.W. Amos. Of that number, fifty five women were  detained on suspicion of having a venereal disease.  They were to be held for observation and would be released only  after they showed no signs of a sexually transmitted disease.

After the raid and subsequent examinations, Dr. Tyler told a reporter that “Joplin is unusually clean. Few of the girls detained will be required to remain in the detention home.” He estimated that at least ten percent of the women arrested were afflicted with venereal disease. Curiously, as the sun rose in the sky over Joplin, eight women voluntarily  surrendered themselves at the police department for examination.

Judge John McManamy (Also former Joplin Police Chief)

For those fortunate enough to escape detention, they were brought before Judge John McManamy and charged with “improper conduct.” Apparently many, if not all of the women, pled guilty and paid a $10 fine. They were then released on “parole” with the understanding that they were to report weekly to Chief Myers or to Desk Sergeants Dave Isbell or Verna P. Hine. The women would have to report their current address and whether or not they had been “working.”

Police Matron Wathena B. Hamilton and Assistant Matron Minnalin McKenna were to assist women find gainful employment if requested.

Shockingly, it was reported:

“Investigations conducted by the police at the instance of officials of the war department resulted in the obtaining of approximately twenty names of wives of soldiers and sailors in government service, either in Europe or in American  cantonments. Should they be found to be of questionable character, reports will be made to the proper officials and  their allotments stopped, if their husbands request it.”

Talk about government intrusion!

Hell Hath No Fury Again

Shrill screams pierced the air. Residents who lived in the vicinity of Sergeant and Fourth Streets emerged from their homes at two o’clock in the afternoon to investigate the horrific screams. Two women were struggling in the street. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that one woman had the upper hand as she “had seized the other by the hair was applying a whip vigorously over her head and shoulders. Hence the screams.”

Spectators intervened and the two women were separated. The woman who wielded the whip, Mrs. John Essry, turned herself in to Officer Robinson. She explained that her husband had been courting Miss Anna Rosser, a young woman who still lived at home with her parents on Sergeant Avenue. After she discovered that her husband had taken Miss Rosser on a Sunday buggy ride the preceding week, Mrs. Essry decided that revenge was the best course of action.

She drove to the Rosser home and pretended to be looking for a young woman to work for her selling samples. While in the street, Mrs. Essry drew her whip and began beating Miss Rosser.

But the beating was not enough. The following week, Mrs. Essry once again unleashed her fury against Miss Rosser. This time she returned to the Rosser home armed with rocks. She began to bombard the house with rocks, breaking windows. The Rossers escaped out the back door and ran to a neighbor’s home as Mrs. Essry continued to assault the Rosser home until she managed to break down the door. Finding no one inside, she went to the neighbor’s home, but was given an evasive answer.

Mrs. Essry was not finished. She returned to the Rosser home, picked up a hatchet, and smashed what she could. “Doors, windows, furniture, stove and household fixtures” were destroyed. Spectators watched her frenzied hatchet attack but did not intervene. Joplin police officers arrived and took Mrs. Essry into custody.

She quickly bonded out of jail “as public sympathy is strong in her behalf. Her neighbors speak highly of her in her struggle to maintain five small children almost wholly without aid from her profligate husband.” Her husband’s advances towards Miss Rosser had driven her “wild.”

The girl’s mother had attempted to keep the two apart, but the girl “is at that giddy, gosling period when a waxed mustache, soft talk, and a musk befogged handkerchief would turn her head more in a minute than maternal precept could right in a day.” It was said that Miss Rosser had left town.

Rochester Kate

train tracks in Joplin

In the winter of 1907, Joplin received a visit from “Rochester Kate” a female hobo who ran away from home sometime in the late 1880s at the tender age of twelve. She claimed to have visited “in every state and territory in the union and made two trips through Europe, paying her way in the steerage once and hiding in the hold the second time.” According to Kate, her fare “across the Atlantic in the steerage was the only money she ever paid for transportation in her life.”

The world traveler, who was in her early thirties, arrived in Joplin via a car on the Kansas City Southern freight train. As the train passed the Frisco crossing she jumped off and walked into Joplin through the Frisco yards. She must have been an object of curiosity as the Globe noted she “despises dresses and wears a pair of corduroy trousers.” When interviewed by a Globe reporter, she was wearing a “very heavy sweater of good quality” and a coat. The only giveaway as to her gender was her long hair of which she was “very proud.”

Rochester Kate told the reporter, “I’ve been moochin’ since I was a kid. One day I got mad at Ma and got on a freight that was standing on a side track back of our shack. We hadn’t gone far when the brakey [hobo slang for brakeman] spotted me and put me off at the next stop. A guy let me ride on a wagon with him back home and I got a beating.”

But wanderlust was in Kate’s blood and she soon took to the rails again. She remembered, “I kept running off after that and when I was about 15, I guess, I lined out one day and didn’t come back. I couldn’t stand staying around a place very long after I lined out the first time. I mooched up to Buffalo and got a job in a factory and saved up a little and mooched it to Chicago on the blind most of the way, and I been a going since.”

The reporter observed, “Aside from the professional slang words picked up on the road, Rochester Kate does not use the rough language that would be expected from such a life, nor is her appearance as rough as would be thought.”

Kate would not tell the reporter how long she planned to stay in Joplin or where she was headed next, saying that “she did not care to have the police know too much about her movements, as she had spent too many days in jail for vagrancy.”

Source: Joplin Globe, 1907

Alice Frances Britten, Globe Newsgirl

Although we often look back nostalgically on the days of the newsboy, there were also newsgirls, although it “was a department of activity not often invaded by girl folks.” Alice Frances Britten, an eleven-year-old newsgirl, was a welcome sight to the miners who lived in the Castle Rock and Brickyard Crossing neighborhoods of Joplin.  The sprightly young girl, who was described as having bright blue eyes, met the “early morning electric car from Joplin at the crossing between Midway Park and Oakland” to pick up her bundle of papers which she then carried to the homes of “the miners and gardeners of the region.”

Alice Bitten, Joplin Globe newsgirl

A sketch of Alice Britten

Originally from Texas, Britten came to Joplin where she “endured the restraint of city life, and as a result was not strong and rugged a year ago when she first undertook the task of representing The Globe in the Brickyard Crossing neighborhood.” But after a year of delivering the paper in sun, sleet, and snow, she radiated health and vitality.

Her meager earnings were deposited in a savings account “of no mean or inconsiderable proportions” which added “zest and incentive to the long and sometimes tiresome tramp over the narrow and difficult trails of the hill country.” Miners made sure to pay her for their subscriptions which was not always the case of the intercity newsboy who often got ripped off by customers.  She even delivered papers when not attending the Range School where she “fought out the difficult problems of the multiplication table and the nominative case.”

The Globe observed, “It has been said that heaven lies about us in our childhood, and surely this mythical land comes very near the Globe‘s ‘girl newsboy’ as she communes with Nature during these bright spring mornings.”

Four years later in 1910, Alice F.  Britten was living on Royal Heights Road in Jasper County, Missouri, with her parents and siblings.  Her father, William, was a building contractor for mining companies, as were her three brothers.  Her mother, Ida, listed her occupation as a farmer, while her sister, Nora, taught school.  Alice, however, did not have an occupation listed.

In July, 1913, Alice Britten married James Higgins in Jasper County, Missouri, and disappears from the historical record.  No matter where Alice ended up, she surely never forgot her time as a young newsgirl, carrying the Globe to the rough and tumble mining neighborhoods where she was warmly greeted.

Source: The Joplin Globe

Vada Corbus – Joplin Miners catcher

We recently covered Vada Corbus, a woman ballplayer who sought to play for the Joplin Miners.  By the permission of John Kovach, college archivist at St. Mary’s College, we secured a much better photograph of the near trailblazer.  The photograph comes from Mr. Kovach’s book, Women’s Baseball, (Images of Baseball).   For more on women in baseball, check and see if the traveling exhibit, “Linedrives and Lipstick: The Untold Story of Women’s Baseball,” is coming near you (or arrange to have it visit your local museum or history institution!).

Vada Corbus - Joplin Miners

Vada Corbus - Joplin Miners - personal collection of John Kovach.

Source: John Kovach’s “Women’s Baseball.”