Matt Miller’s Treasure

In the early spring of 1897, Matt Miller of Joplin was the recipient of what may have been the first armadillo in Southwest Missouri.  Miller’s friend F.D.  Bancroft of Von Ormy, Texas, sent Miller the armadillo as a gift.

Armadillo

Image of an armadillo via the Library of Congress

The Globe reported that the armadillo was, “eighteen inches long and a foot tall.  It is covered with a shell something like a turtle, has four legs long enough to reach to the ground, at the bottom of which are four feet that look something like a cross between a hoof and a cat’s paw.”

Miller described it as a, “land bird, strictly omnivorous and carnivorous.  It eats mice, snakes, lizards, ants, and other beasts and vermin.” He added, “The ladies are invited to call at my office and see it.  Sleeps by day and runs around hunting something to eat at night.” Miller, already proud of his gift, boasted, “It will dig into the ground faster than a man can with a spade, and when he gets in he spreads his armor out against the sides of the hole s o that a team of mules can’t haul him out.  All are urged to come and see him and it won’t cost anyone a cent.”

Source: Joplin Globe, Library of Congress

Jim Grassman, He Sold Hot Tamales

The men and women of Joplin have answered the call of duty for decades.  In 1917, Joplin resident James “Jim” Grassham attempted to enlist in the regular army but was turned away.  The government, however, had good reason to reject the eager recruit: he was eighty-one years old and was missing his left foot, having lost it to a Confederate bullet in Lancaster, South Carolina.

Jim Grassham was a colorful figure who may not have lingered long in Joplin long enough to appear in the census, but he left behind an interesting interview in the Joplin Globe.  Grassham was known for selling hot tamales out of a tin pail on the streets of Joplin.  He stood out in his white apron, little blue cap, and spectacles.  Most prized of all was his “twinkling, happy smile.” Perhaps that’s why many chose to call him “Dad.”

Main Street, Joplin

Jim Grassman wandered the streets of Joplin selling his hot tamales.

According to Jim, his father arrived in American in 1777 with the Marquis de Lafayette.  His father, described as a “mere boy,” was allegedly at Yorktown being treated in a field hospital for wounds when the British General Cornwallis surrendered.  The elder Grassham was unable to return to France due to his wounds.  A Jewish Virginia revolutionary soldier took Grassham in and nursed him back to health.  Grassham courted and married the man’s daughter.  Together the couple had several children, including eight boys.

Jim told the reporter his father lived to be 104, which might be attributed to the fact that he drank wine he imported from his relatives back in France.  He said, “Father didn’t talk much about the revolution.  There were many important things happening after the revolution that seemed more important to him than the revolution itself.  The development of the was his hobby and he advised all his boys to go west and get land and we all went to Kentucky and then to Tennessee and some of us to Arkansas after the war.”

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, four of the boys joined Union forces, while the remaining four signed up with the Confederacy.  At the age of 28, Jim left his wife and four children and joined Company I of the Third Kentucky Cavalry (US).

After serving four years, four months, and twenty-nine days without a scratch, Jim and his fellow cavalrymen were skirmishing with Confederate troops at Lancaster, South Carolina, when a bullet “stung” him in the ankle.  He said that the wound did not hurt, but his pride must have for he was taken prisoner after he was shot.  He was taken by Confederates “to Salisbury and later to Libby prison, and then was taken out on a prison ship off Annapolis and there he was when the war ended.” It was then that blood poisoning set in.  Because he did not receive proper medical attention, Jim’s foot had to be amputated.  According to Jim, he did not “allow the doctors to give him chloroform or any kind of ‘dope’ and the operation didn’t hurt until they ‘cut the leaders’ (tendons) and then he ‘just naturally raised hell with them.’”

After the end of the war, Jim received a fifty dollar pension from the government and a rubber foot.  He took the advice of his father, who had always advised his sons to go west, and settled in Arkansas.  Over the years, he married four times and had fourteen children.  His last wife, who was seventy-eight, had been blind for two years when the Globe reporter interviewed Jim.  He said he owned some farms in Arkansas, some Liberty Bonds, and sold the tamales “just to be doing something” as well as support his wife, tubercular son-in-law, daughter, and several grandchildren.  One of his daughters had eleven children; another had nine, all girls.  At least four of his grandsons had enlisted in the regular Army, two of whom were bound for France as part of Pershing’s American Expeditionary Force.

When asked about his long life, Jim said he didn’t use tobacco, although he used to before “the doctor made me cut it out several years ago and I never went back to the habit.” He still took a nip of whiskey, usually during rainy weather.  Jim claimed that he had suffered a bout of pneumonia but whiskey helped him pull through it “like a young colt.” Jim observed that a person should keep busy and be an optimist.

Jim reflected, “I’ve been busy ever since I was a kid.  Every member of my family has been the same way.  My father was a hard worker, a great ‘producer,’ as we used to call a man who succeeded.  My brother, who is 89 years old, works at blacksmithing and he stands at his anvil every day.  He lives in Tennessee now.  I think its hard work and a cheerful disposition that keeps anyone going.  I don’t feel that I’ve aged a bit in fifty years.  I don’t think much of fads about what you eat or drink to live long.”

He then told the reporter he wasn’t sure if he was going to stay in Joplin much longer due to the rainy weather as he “doesn’t like too much rain.” Although he lived in Chitwood, Jim could be seen walking the streets of Joplin any night “ready to exchange a witticism or a laugh with anyone.”

Source: Joplin Globe

Joplin’s Potter’s Field

“Every wooden headstone in the potter’s field bears a name — some name.  No one guarantees it to be the correct name, but the name is there just the same.”

The unknown dead were the unwanted in Joplin just a few years after the turn of the century.  For those who perished in the city, without anyone present to claim their body, there were several cemeteries to be laid to rest.  For those unfortunates who died without any present to witness to their name or identity, a specific place in the earth was reserved.  It was located in Potter’s Field, a traditional name for burial spots for the poor and forgotten.  Joplin’s Potter’s Field was found at the western fringe of Joplin’s westernmost major cemetery, Fairview Cemetery.  There the dead rested beneath a landscape dominated by mines, from the mining houses to the chat piles.  It was a barren and lonely place.

The Potter's Field in Joplin, Missouri

A sketch of Joplin's Potter's Field.

The Joplin News Herald reflected on the visitors to the pauper’s cemetery, mothers in search for sons, brothers looking for brothers.  There was one exception, the News-Herald reported.  Husbands rarely, if ever, sought their wives in Joplin’s potter’s field, though it was surmised that sometimes it was husbands who sent their wives there to sleep amid the mines.

Source: Joplin News Herald

Federal Grant Money to Fund Efforts to Get More Buildings on Historic Register

Reported here in the Joplin Globe, Joplin has received $6,500 in federal grant money from the National Historic Preservation Fund.  The purpose of the grant will be to assist in getting the 800 and 900 blocks of Main Street listed as a historic commercial district.  A quick drive down Main Street will quickly bring attention to the fact that this stretch of downtown has the most complete section of historic buildings after the 400 to 700 blocks.

Such funding is essential in helping to preserve and restore Joplin’s architectual heritage.

The Heaviest Men in Joplin

In 1896, the Joplin News Herald reported a friendly competition of one town deciding to best another in the size of their men.  As obvious by the measurements below, the term “heaviest” implied something more than just the width of one’s girth.

Weight Lifter from Turn of the Century

An example of a weight lifter from turn of the century

“Mr. W.L. Richards, noticing in a paper from his old town in Nebraska a list of seven residents whose height were six feet or over, with an aggregate weight of 1,318 pounds, set about to pick out a dozen citizens of this vicinity who excel in altitude and avoirdupois. A short canvas secured the following list, which he handed to the Herald:

J.R. Vancil 187 pounds

H.J. Vancil 198 pounds

G.L. Vancil 181 pounds

E.L. Vancil 187 pounds

E.S. Vancil 181 pounds

J.M. Vancil 207 pounds

W.R. Hacker 180 pounds

J.B. James 195 pounds

John Dill 209 pounds

Tony McCarty 200 pounds

Galen Spencer 220 pounds

H.H. Sansom 214 pounds

These twelve men are all six feet tall or over. The aggregate weight is 2,359 pounds, an average of a little over 196 pounds each. The venerable H.H. Sansom leads in height with six feet three inches. J.B. James comes next with six feet two and one-half inches. Each of the others is six feet or over.

The six Vancils are brothers. It is very rare that one family contains so many fine specimens of physical manhood.”

Source: Joplin News Herald, Library of Congress

Life as a Hello Girl

In 1910, the Joplin News-Herald ran a story about the advantages of working as a “Hello Girl.” The News-Herald remarked that while it might not be fun to “sit up to a switchboard and come in contact with the varying dispositions of several hundred people each day” there were “some things about the work of the central girl at the Home Telephone company’s office in this city that probably come to no other working girls in town.”

Hello Girls operating the telephone board

Hello Girls operating the telephone board

Despite hearing about “heartless corporations” the News-Herald assured readers that this was not the case with the Home Telephone Company located in a building on Joplin Street.  Since 1906, girls were treated to an on-site “culinary department and lunch rooms.” The News-Herald reporter, unable to curb their enthusiasm, gushed, “A lunch room and a kitchen in the telephone plant!” On “pleasant days” a light lunch was served, but when the weather turned bad, regular dinners were served that were, “equal to those of the best restaurants in town.” Girls were guaranteed a free lunch twice a day.

When the operators were at work on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other holidays, the company served large dinners in the company dining room so that the girls could at least have a hot dinner during the holiday.  Empty stomachs and “improper food”, the company believed, could affect an employee’s disposition.  Lunches and holiday meals meant, “congenial employment, pleasant surroundings, and the saving of considerable money in the course of a year.”

Even more astonishing, at least at this time in history, was the fact that the company also had “baths, individual lockers, and a rest room, or sitting room” that was overseen by a “regularly employed matron.” Should a girl seem exhausted or ill, she would be sent to the rest room or home.  Mrs. R.L.Whitsel, the company’s matron, was hailed as, “experienced and efficient.”

A telephone operator circa 1911.

This unnamed telephone operator from 1911 is representative of telephone operators of the time.

If the weather was nasty, the company paid for closed carriages to pick up girls at their homes to bring them to the office.  Once their shift was over, a carriage would transport the girl safely back to her home.  The company’s management realized that “healthy, happy, and well cared for girls are more likely to be cheerful and pleasant to their patrons and more prompt in service than girls who are overworked and neglected.” Wet clothes were considered “hard on the disposition and health of the girls and the telephone company prefers to have its employees happy and cheerful, even if that means occasional bills for carriages.”

Given the number and types of jobs available in Joplin at the time, it appeared that if a young woman could secure a job as a Hello Girl, she found herself with a relatively comfortable means of income.  It also represented a time period when society felt that young women deserved an extra amount of protection from the theoretical evils of the business world, where vicious characters lurked to take advantage of young, innocent women.  Never the less, this legacy of care from the Victorian world seemed to offer some of the women of Joplin a safe and inviting place to work.

Source: Joplin News Herald, 1910

Remnants of the Connor

When Joplin’s finest hotel and one of her great architectural gems vanished from the cityscape in 1978, it did not mean the complete disappearance of all traces of the fabled institution.  For those wishing to find glimpses into the Connor’s architectural past, there are at least three pieces of the Connor spread across two locations in Joplin today.  They are decorative pieces of the exterior of the Connor, which like the interior, were stripped from the hotel prior to her expected demolition.

The first two pieces can be found in the same location that they arrived at around 1907, when delivered to the Connor to be placed upon her exterior.  They are at the Joplin Public Library at 3rd and Main.  The Connor property was purchased by the city in the 1970’s with the express intent of demolishing the hotel to build a new library on the spot.  It’s regrettable that the Connor could not have been renovated for the same task.  As a tribute to the marvelous building that the library replaced, two friezes from the exterior of the Connor were set on the west facing wall of the library on the parking lot (Inside, the library devotes a glass cabinet to the history of the Connor).

A frieze from the Connor Hotel

A frieze from the Connor Hotel

The frieze is joined by another, which at first glance appears identical.  However, closer scrutiny will show slight differences between the two pieces of artwork.

One of the two friezes from the Connor Hotel

One of the two friezes from the Connor Hotel

Below is a close up of the Connor prior to the addition of its annex.  Note the friezes above the windows.

Close up of the Connor Hotel

Close up of the Connor Hotel with friezes over the window.

The third subject of this post is a lion’s head located across town from the Connor’s location and can be found on the campus of Missouri Southern State University.  Specifically, the lion’s head, which snarled above the main entrance of the Connor, is placed on a short brick wall in front of the Spiva Art Gallery.

A lion's head from the Connor Hotel

A lion's head from the Connor Hotel

And now a full frontal view of the lion, which would have been seen by the men who affixed it to the exterior of the Connor, as well as those who took it down.

A front on view of one of the Connor's Lions

A front on view of the Connor's Lion Head

Know of any other remnants of the Connor?  Please feel free to comment or write us to let us know!

Follow Up On the Defeat of Proposition A

Prop A

One of the local news channels recently ran a story about the recent defeat of Joplin’s Proposition A.  Perhaps the most troubling line from the story was, “Museum workers believed Proposition ‘A’ was something voters would approve so they did not come up with Plan B.” This is disheartening if true.  The museum now finds itself the focus of public ire at a time when it needs the support of the community if it is to keep its doors open.

Perhaps even more disheartening was the footage of the museum’s disorganized and chaotic museum collection.  This, as we have said before, is simply unacceptable.

According to the website Save Memorial Hall, the current Joplin Museum Complex budget is $150,000 (another source cites $216,000).  Unfortunately, the website does not break the numbers down farther than that, and because we’re not journalists here at Historic Joplin we have made no attempt yet to find out how the money is spent.  Therefore we do not know how much money is dedicated to staff salaries in comparison to archival materials such as Hollinger boxes, archival sleeves, and shelving.

The Joplin Museum Complex charges visitors $2.00 per adult, $5.00 per family, and offers free admission on Tuesdays.  Free admission on Friday is sponsored by Freeman Health System.  Why not raise the price of admission a dollar, even two dollars?

It certainly will not raise the amount of money that the museum is currently seeking but it may help at a time when the Joplin Tri-State Business Journal reported last month, “[Director Brad] Belk said the museum is currently struggling to remain open because every dollar coming into the complex is earmarked to be spent, and financial reserves are being accessed to pay for annual operations.  He also said the complex is limited in resources within its current building in Schifferdecker Park.”

In the story reported by KOAM-TV, Joplin Museum Complex volunteer Anne Jaros was quoted as saying, “When we were working there last fall a huge donation was brought in – just huge – and I don’t know where it all is.”  If we had to guess, the financial gift Ms.  Jaros mentioned is probably already spent.  The question is, was it spent wisely?

Well I Never!

During the summer of 1917, Joplin Police Desk Sergeant Walter Finch answered the telephone to find an upset woman on the other end of the line.  The woman demanded that the police immediately send officers to her neighborhood.  Finch, puzzled, asked the caller what the emergency was.  He was informed that, “There are some women near here who are wearing trousers and I want the police to stop it.” Sergeant Finch, not knowing what to do, asked Joplin Mayor Hugh McIndoe for advice.  McIndoe responded, “Well, this is a new era for women, and if the garments are not improper I see no reason why the women should not wear them.” Detective Charles McManamy and Police Sergeant Ezra Hull were sent to “censor the garments.”  Upon their arrival at the residence, the two officers observed two women in overalls.  The two men conferred.  McManamy was agreeable to women in pants; Hull disagreed.  McManamy won out and the two women were told “they could continue to attire themselves in the ‘new era clothes.'”

Woman in Overalls

By the Second World War, it'd become quite more socially acceptable for a woman to wear overalls.

Source: The Joplin Globe, Library of Congress

Developments on the historic Saginaw Round Barn

Last month, one of the historic barns of the Joplin area, a round barn located just south of the city near Saginaw, was severely damaged in a spring blizzard.  We covered the article on the barn then, and now bring to you a new development.  At the time, the owners of the barn had believed the structure had been fatally structured and all that remained in its future was a bulldozer.  Since then, the owners have been in contact with the State Historic Preservation Office about it nominating the barn for the National Register of Historic Places.  If this were to happen, the owners would eligible for tax credits which could be put toward restoring the barn.  Granted, being listed on the National Register is not a magic cure all.  Joplin’s most impressive and perhaps, most fabulous building, the Connor Hotel was also on the National Register, after all.  For now, we can only hope for the best.

See this link for the Globe article on recent developments, as well an antique picture of the barn.