The Fort Wayne Road

 

Perhaps it was a mild form of presentism which struck me when pondering the early years of Timothy Kelly. Since he was a contemporary and co-worker of my father-in-law's great-grandfather John Kelly, I've been trying to discern whether there was any further connection between the two Kelly men. Finding information on Timothy Kelly, I hoped, could fill in a few blanks regarding how the two were connected.

Timothy Kelly's September 22, 1901, obituary in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette mention his work, back in 1857, on "the Fort Wayne road." Since I had been unable to find Timothy in census records before 1870, I was keen to locate his whereabouts. A sighting in the 1860 census, before his marriage to Ellen Hannan in October, might provide the names of his parents, or at least a mention of siblings.

Wondering what the "Fort Wayne Road" might have referred to—here I was thinking of something historic like Zane's Trace, admittedly a too-far stretch into the wrong period of history—I took my question about the road to the search engines. When the responses mentioned routes far too early for Timothy's participation in a construction project in 1857, I added that specific year to my search terms.

Suddenly, the results were no longer discussing the early roads of stage coach travel, but a far different kind of road: rail roads. Of course it made all the sense in the world, once my mind shifted to the realities of that era. Even more than that, putting it in context with a man who spent the rest of his working years employed by the railroads—oh, duh, how could I have missed it?

Stuck in my own timeframe.

The Fort Wayne Road, if you're curious, was part of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Rail Road, later reorganized as the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway. Fort Wayne, as a city, played a large role in the development of railroad lines through the midwest, something I should have surmised from my research visits to the city over the years. The Allen County History Center mentioned in a social media post that Fort Wayne was considered one of the most important railroad centers in the nation.

While it was helpful to get reoriented to what was considered the prime "road" in the city during that time period, knowing these railroad details didn't quite pinpoint where I might find young Timothy Kelly. The entire railroad operation extended westward from Pittsburgh through Fort Wayne and on to Chicago. In fact, researching the term, "the Fort Wayne road," I found one mention which identified the Fort Wayne Railroad Bridge as crossing the Allegheny into Pittsburgh—certainly far from Fort Wayne itself. If the entirety of the tracks was dubbed the Fort Wayne road, that would make pinpointing Timothy's location quite a puzzle.

On the other hand, mention of some of Timothy's family residing in Ohio might make more sense if the family had moved with the expansion of the work project. It might help to turn our attention to mentions of the Kelly family in various newspaper reports over time. 

Suits me to a "T"

Trying to reconcile conflicting reports about the start of the city of Lodi, California, has come down to two initials: that of Allen C. Ayers or Allen T. Ayers. Of course, since the names are so similar, it could have been a typo in George Tinkham's 1923 History of San Joaquin County that started the whole pursuit. Considering that the Tinkham volume amounts to 1,640 pages, one could cut the guy some slack on one silly initial. But just in case, I felt obligated to check out the references to the Allen C. Ayers who supposedly was involved in some key real estate transactions that eventually benefited the establishment of downtown Lodi.

We already learned yesterday that the similarly-named Allen T. Ayers had a middle initial representing the name Trimble. Attempting to find further information on his contemporary, the man supposedly named Allen C. Ayers, led nowhere. There are no census records for the county in either 1860 or 1870 showing the existence of a man by that name anywhere near the Elkhorn Township which eventually formed the city of Lodi. More to the point, every Allen Ayers listed in California's Great Register for San Joaquin County spelled out clearly the full name of Allen Trimble Ayers. No Allen C. to be found.

Considering that the four names mentioned in the land issue that persuaded a railroad company to build its line through the downtown area included not only Allen Ayers but that of another man—John U. Magley—who happened to live in A. T. Ayers' own household through two decades of census enumerations, it seems far fetched to assume that the Ayers name represented in the Tinkham volume was anyone other than Allen Trimble Ayers.

But what about any mention of the fourth man to be included in that railroad deal? Could anything be said for Ezekiel Lawrence, the name we've yet to examine, to connect him with John Hutchins, whose own biography prompted me to call this whole history into question?

Of course there can. Though once again, there is no biographical entry bearing the name of Ezekiel Lawrence, there were a few mentioned of the name tucked away in those thousand pages of history that can assist us.

The earliest mention of Ezekiel Lawrence was when, in 1858, he provided some of his land, just south of the Mokelumne River, for a schoolhouse. The 1860 census confirms his location in Elkhorn Township, along with his wife Mary and two year old son William. By 1870, the census confirms the Lawrence family's continued residence there, with the addition of son George and daughter Nettie.

Similar to the story of fellow Lodian John Hutchins, Ezekiel Lawrence was from Canada—the province of Ontario, if we can believe his son George's report in his own passport application, many years later. Like the story of Allen Trimble Ayers, Ezekiel Lawrence must have come through El Dorado County, as well—the well-traveled route to Gold Country leading to "Hangtown," now known as Placerville, where Ezekiel and his wife Mary were married in 1857.

Despite his 1858 provision of land for the Lodi schoolhouse, Ezekiel Lawrence did not show up in the Great Register until 1867. The reason? The minute he officially became a United States citizen, the naturalized Ezekiel Lawrence immediately registered to vote on May 18, 1867 in Stockton, county seat of San Joaquin County.

The only other mention I could find of Ezekiel Lawrence was that of the roster of officers for a fraternal organization's lodge in Lodi. Though finding only a listing of his name as the treasurer for the Lodi lodge of the Odd Fellows may be disappointingly sparse, considering all that surely could have been said about the man, reading the rest of the list can provide some insight.

Now that we already know the name of the foursome whose influence was instrumental in setting the economic growth of their future city—Ayers, Magley, Wardrobe, and Lawrence—this list provides some perspective on relationships. Along with treasurer Lawrence, the I.O.O.F. lodge had, for their financial secretary, Allen T. Ayers. And listed among the lodge's charter members, according to the Tinkham history, was John Hutchins.

This, finally, provides the only context linking the four names together in their bid to persuade the railroad's consideration of a route through Lodi. In the meantime, we've explored the few details we could glean about four early leaders in the expansion of the city now known as Lodi.

Still, we can't simply be satisfied with this exploration into the friends and neighbors whose land tied them together at the start of the downtown Lodi area. We need to stay the course on our original objective. Researching these four men mentioned in the Tinkham history of Lodi is solely for the purpose of examining another claim: that there was a fifth man who, with "four associates," presented that offer of land to the Central Pacific. That other man was John Hutchins.

Above: Excerpt from the Map of the County of San Joaquin, dated 1895, as currently found at the United States Library of Congress, shows the property of Ezekiel "Lawrance" just south of the meandering path of the Mokelumne River; courtesy Library of Congress Geography and Map Division; in the public domain.

Initial Inquiries

Names containing only initials can be vexing for the ardent genealogical researcher. In particular, reading the history of the founding of Lodi, California, we find two mentions of the surname Ayers. One is A. C. Ayers, the other is A. T. Ayers. Close, but not necessarily the same individual.

In our continuing quest to rectify two tales of how the fledgling city of Lodi got its boost with the Central Pacific Railroad agreeing to build its line directly through the downtown area, we've been examining the biographical information on each of four men credited with the land donations influencing that change of plans. Behind that examination is the need to rectify the report in George Tinkham's History of San Joaquin County with that of his biography of another leading man in Lodi: John Hutchins.

So far, not only have we not uncovered any connection between John Hutchins and the first of our subjects—Reuben Langdon Wardrobe—but there was not much mentioned directly about R. L. Wardrobe in the entirety of the book's 1,640 pages.

As we'll see here, much the same can be said about the subject of today's post. There was no biographical sketch included by Tinkham for A. T. Ayers.

Worse, not only was there no specific entry for this man credited by Tinkham as making a donation of property to help clinch the deal which led to establishing downtown Lodi, but in some of the other entries about the surname Ayers, the author mentioned the name Allen Ayers. More troubling, sometimes that middle initial was a "C" instead of a "T."

If this indicates two different people rather than a simple typo in the text, which one was the right man? You know what that means: researching both names to see which one provides more reasonable indicators of representing the right person.

Fortunately, I decided to start with the name listed in the paragraph on the property donation, and looked for A. T. Ayers. First up, I discovered that A. T., like A. C., had a first name of Allen. That wasn't a promising start to this search.

If this is a troubling research problem for us, as far removed as we are from the event itself in the 1860s, consider how troubling it must have been to the man who might have had to constantly clarify which Allen Ayers he was. It wasn't long until I found A. T. Ayers' voter registration from 1866. The date of his registration was August 6 of 1866, showing him to be a thirty six year old farmer from Ohio, then living in the Elkhorn Township of San Joaquin County. Rather than simply relying on initials as at other times, his name was spelled out fully as "Allen Trimble Ayres."

Since we had already reviewed the story of one of the original Lodi settlers selling his land to "Allen Ayers," it was good to have this clarification, for in another section in the Tinkham volume, the name had been given as Allen C. Ayers. At this point, with a full name to research, I could more closely track the decade-by-decade movement of this Allen Trimble Ayers.

And that, I did. Starting with the 1880 census and working my way backwards in time, I found an "Allan T. Ayres" in Elkhorn Township, along with his wife Julia and teenaged daughters Estelle and Coralin. In the same household was an interesting addition: the presence of John U. Magley, immigrant from Switzerland, who just happened to be one of the four men mentioned as having donated land to bring the rail line through Lodi. Magley's residence in the Ayers home made me wonder whether he and Ayers were related by marriage.

Checking the 1870 census, I found Allen Trimble Ayers in much the same location: Elkhorn Township in San Joaquin County. Still in the household with his wife Julia and two daughters—both of whom were born in California, showing us that A. T. Ayers (well, at least his wife) was in the state as early as 1863—he also had a spot in his home for that same John U. Magley. In fact, the home site had enough room for horses, mules, cows, and a few pigs, as A. T. Ayers kept his 150 acres in winter wheat and barley.

Even before that point, Allen Ayers and his wife were in California in time for the 1860 census, although not living in Lodi. Julia and Allen Ayers were then living in El Dorado County, which, though not part of our story today, provides a hint about who his parents might have been, despite a name as common as Allen Ayers. Though A. T. Ayers originated in Ohio, he may not have traveled to California alone. There was a Stephen Ayers from Vermont listed not only in El Dorado County, but also on the Great Register on the same page in Lodi as Allen Trimble Ayers in 1866. Besides this, in census records including location of the father's birth, Allen always gave his father's birthplace as Vermont, same as this Stephen Ayers.

While many links can be found online purporting to have found Allen Trimble Ayers' place of burial outside California, a locally published book by a former member of our own genealogical society provides a clue that A. T. Ayers' wife and also his (likely) father were buried in a location south of Lodi which is now a defunct cemetery.

Known as the Live Oak Cemetery, its demise provides the kind of story that genealogical researchers seldom appreciate encountering. Apparently, some of the bodies of those buried at the Live Oak Cemetery were moved to a new burial place east of downtown Lodi, decades afterwards—but not, possibly, all of those originally buried at Live Oak. The newer burial place, known as Lodi Memorial Park, contains a memorial plaque for those re-interred from the Live Oak Cemetery. Whether Stephen Ayers' remains are at the newer resting place or the original burial grounds is hard to tell, though someone created a Find A Grave memorial for him indicating the answer is the Lodi Memorial Park.

As for the son, Allen Trimble Ayers, who knows what became of him. There is a memorial on Find A Grave speculating he somehow wound up in Nebraska and was buried there, but I do not feel confident of that conclusion—at least, not yet. A. T. Ayers' one daughter married a man from Stockton—Walter Eugene Ladd—whose family name was significant in his hometown then, as it is now. What became of the second Ayers daughter or her father, I can't say, but it is likely that they, like some of the other property owners from the early days of Lodi, moved out of the area long before George Tinkham ever considered omitting their mention from his ponderous history.

Shipped in the Knock-Down

After the survey had been made through Lodi, A. T. Ayers, John U. Magley, R. L. Wardrobe and E. Lawrence petitioned the railroad company to locate a station on their land. As a bonus, the three owners first named agreed if a station was there built and a town laid off, to give the railroad every odd lot in the proposed town and a railroad reservation of twelve acres in the center of the town.

George H. Tinkham, History of San Joaquin County California

It is clear, from looking at an 1895 map of California's San Joaquin County, that R. L. Wardrobe held property close to the downtown area of Lodi, and yet, trying to find any entry featuring the heading of his name in George Tinkham's biographical entries of the leading men of the county, there is none to be seen.

Reuben Langdon Wardrobe was indeed in San Joaquin County as early as November 13, 1866, the date in which he reported his residence to be Elkhorn Township, when he registered to vote. And yet, as instrumental as his role was reputed to be in securing rail service for the growing town of Lodi, he merited not much more of a mention in Tinkham's volume than a section of a paragraph in an entry about the son of his brother, Samuel Valorious Wardrobe.

S. V. Wardrobe, it seems, had been traveling back and forth from his home in Massachusetts to the spot of his intended  new property in California, a ranch in the "Live Oak" section of San Joaquin County. Realizing that lumber in the new country was "very scarce," on his next trip back to Massachusetts, S. V. Wardrobe arranged for his brother, a carpenter by trade, to frame an entire house—though admittedly tiny, at twelve feet square—which was then "shipped in the knock down" around the Horn to California.

That brother, incidentally, was Reuben Langdon Wardrobe.

The two brothers had the dismantled house shipped up the delta from the San Francisco bay to the port at Stockton, and they then hauled it to the Live Oak property near Lodi. While S. V. Wardrobe remained on that property long enough for two of his sons to be born there, Reuben Wardrobe apparently moved to Elkhorn Township, acquiring land of his own—some of which eventually played a role in enticing the Central Pacific Rail Road to opt for the survey report which favored a line through the developing town of Lodi.

As for Reuben Wardrobe, that is about all that is mentioned of his role in the growth of the city of Lodi. By 1900, according to census records, he was living farther south in Riverside County. Unfortunately, digitized copies of that census cut off the name of his wife, but marriage records show he was married in 1875, to Mary A. Dixon, back in San Joaquin County. Finding the family in the 1880 census, still back in the vicinity of Lodi in San Joaquin County, with children aged much older than the five years of his marriage at that point indicates Mary was at least his second wife. Voter registration records indicate he may have left the county as early as 1886 and apparently stayed in that southern location of the state until the date of his death in 1908.

Perhaps it was because his last days were spent, not in Lodi, but far removed from that location of his brief legacy as a founding father that we see no separate entry for Reuben Langdon Wardrobe in the annals of Lodi's history. Except for that fleeting mention of the role played by his decision, along with others, to put up land in exchange for the future prosperity of the town where he once lived, there is little passed down to us about the part R. L. Wardrobe played in that offer which clinched Lodi's future.

Above: Along with the names of Elkhorn Township property owners E. Lawrence and John Hutchins, we see the parcel just south of the downtown area of Lodi bearing the name of R. L. Wardrobe, one of at least three local men who influenced the proposed route change of the new Central Pacific Railroad line from Sacramento south to Stockton in 1869. Map courtesy Library of Congress Geography and Map Division; in the public domain.

Keeping an Eye on the Neighbors

A story about a neighbor may help open up the chapter for us in the Lodi settlement's beginning years, as we puzzle over not only who got here first, but who could rightfully claim an instrumental role in establishing the future city's financial well-being.

We may have several variations of the tale of just how the Central Pacific railroad route actually came to be directed through the nascent downtown area of Lodi, California. We have one report which seems to indicate that John Hutchins was the prime influencer who lobbied to bring the railroad route through downtown Lodi, but another rendition mentions the names of Ezekiel Lawrence, Reuben Wardrobe, A. C. Ayers, and John Magley.

While we will consider each of these men's stories in the next few days, a bit of a backstory—about a neighbor—may help to set the stage today. In the telling of this brief vignette, you will see some familiar surnames pop up.

The neighbor was named John Fry Layman. Born in Ohio in 1834, he married in 1861 in Davis County, Iowa, and after the 1862 birth of his firstborn, Joseph, moved his family to California. The story was that John Layman had intended to head to Washington, but after stopping in the central valley of California for a few days' rest, changed his mind and, making a trade of one of his teams of horses for some land—160 acres, to be exact—settled in the area that eventually became Lodi.

Though the land was rugged and required much work to clear—let alone plant, or set up work buildings or a home—John Layman eventually added more land to that original acreage. He bought enough additional land from a man named R. L. Wardrobe to bring his total holdings to 240 acres, but eventually thought better of the prospect of these holdings. He sold the entire acreage and moved south to another city in the valley.

Depending on which version of the story you believe, Layman either sold his land to Allen Ayers, or to both Allen Ayers and R. L. Wardrobe. The transaction was completed in 1867. 

Meanwhile, north of Lodi, the engineers of the Central Pacific Railroad Company were scoping out the best route for a line from Sacramento, the state capital, to Stockton, a city directly to the south of Lodi, which served as the county seat. Of three possible routes surveyed, the proposed best choice ran to the west of Lodi, near another town called Woodbridge.

Rumor had it that the owner of the land over which the proposed route was to pass in Woodbridge refused to grant right-of-way, and was considering demanding excessive payment for "damages."

Perhaps it was not simply brilliance which induced five Lodi businessmen—with or without our John Hutchins—to seize the moment and make a proposal the railroad company couldn't refuse. Among those businessmen were the two landholders named in local history as having just acquired that centrally-located land of John Fry Layman, conveniently near the site of Lodi's downtown development. We'll see what we can discover about these men, tomorrow.  

Back and Forth

While many researchers prefer to delve into their direct line of ancestry, it sometimes becomes helpful to keep an eye on what's been happening on those collateral lines—the families of the previous generation's siblings. That turns out to be the case in tracking the whereabouts of the Elko, Nevada, high school graduate we were once introduced to as baby Fay.

In 1939, Fayetta Mae Randall was attending school in Nevada. By 1940, however, she was a married woman in northern California—married, incidentally, to a man born and raised in California, not Nevada. How did they meet?

Admittedly, we've already seen that baby Fay once lived in San Francisco, but we also saw that that was a short-lived residence during her toddler years—hardly the time of life for a budding romance. The rest of her childhood was spent in Elko. What was the nexus?

The man she married, Joseph Olindo Panuzzi, was the son of Italian immigrants Pasquale and Carolina Panuzzi, who, not surprisingly, operated a grocery store in the unincorporated area of Contra Costa County. Ever since their arrival in America, the family had been in the same northern California county.

It took some exploration through baby Fay's family tree to discover that there were other connections between her Nevada family and the Bay area. Back at the time of the 1920 census—that same year in which Fayetta lived in San Francisco with her parents, Charles and Hallie Kleckner Randall—baby Fay's maternal grandmother had shown up in a census record in California, not in the expected Nevada where the woman's husband and other children resided. By 1920, Hallie's sister, Fay's aunt Birdie, had married, then divorced, then remarried her husband in nearby Alameda County, and apparently needed assistance with the household, including her infant twins.

In that year of family upheaval when Hallie's mom was across the Bay in Oakland with Birdie and her husband, Percy Calcote, Mrs. Kleckner had brought along her son Clifton, then only eleven. I'm sure, upon his mother's return home to Elko, Clifton went with her. However, by the time of the next census, he was back in California, a single working man residing in San Francisco.

If it weren't for one detail in the 1940 census, we wouldn't have known that, in the midst of those years in which Clifton showed up as a resident in San Francisco, he actually spent some time back home in Elko. Fortunately, that one census question—"In what place did this person live on April 1, 1935?"—revealed that he was back in Elko.

He wasn't the only one in his household who was back in Elko in 1935. By 1940, Clifton was married, and his wife had also stated that she had been living in Elko in 1935. Could it have been upon the couple's return to California that Fayetta traveled with them? 

Though Fayetta's young uncle, the newlywed Clifton, was back in San Francisco, that was not for long. By the end of the year, and at the age of only thirty one, Clifton was dead, succumbing on Christmas Eve, only two days after his wife's death, from injuries sustained when their car was struck by a Southern Pacific streamliner.

Clifton's older sister, the twice-married Birdie, had once again divorced her husband, returned to Elko, married another man and subsequently moved to Washington, so she was no longer a connection to California. The rest of the Kleckner siblings had remained in Elko. Not until decades later would Fayetta's mother return to California. But for the mystery nexus between Clifton's niece Fayetta and the son of an Italian immigrant in Contra Costa county, Fayetta would probably have been back in Elko, as well. 

Alta's Baby Brother

It was quite a gift, when opening the bag in which I had stashed the orphaned photographs I had rescued from an antique store in northern California, to realize that I had not only purchased one photograph of little Alta Barnes, but several of her family. While the original picture showed Alta with her older sisters, the one I want to share with you today features Alta again, but this time it was she who was the oldest of three siblings. The other two—her next younger sister Helen and baby brother James—stood in front of the same building where her own likeness had previously been captured about one hundred years ago, but this time, Alta was the teenager. And, unlike the earlier pose, this time she was smiling.

We'll discuss the little girl in this more recent photo later, but today, I'd like to focus on the baby in this portrait—mainly because of the corresponding discovery, in that archive of newspapers I found yesterday, of that baby brother's obituary nearly fifty eight years later.

The littlest one in this photograph was labeled Jimmie on the reverse of the picture, but he was officially known, in an adultier version of his toddler self, as James D. Barnes. Jimmie arrived in the Barnes family at the start of a new year, on January 24, 1920. He likely left all too soon for his family at the relatively young age of fifty eight, dying in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where he and his wife Jean had made their home.

Thanks to the library archives of The Arkansas City Traveler, the April 22, 1978, issue included a brief summary of Jimmie's life for those back home in Kansas who remembered him. His obituary clearly identified him as son of Forrest and Clara Barnes, listed his birth date and even where he attended grade school and high school.

Thankfully, the obituary also identified for us the married names of his sisters. Mollie was now Mrs. Moore, Nellie had become Mrs. Crouse, and Helen—the young child in the photo below—grew up to become Mrs. Burchell. Of course, we had already discovered Alta's married name, Williams, but the obituary helped steer me clear of my original speculation that perhaps the illness-plagued Nellie had not survived to adulthood.

Of course, seeing someone whose life seemed cut short—James died at age fifty eight—always causes me to wonder what might have happened. I look for details on what life might have been like for the person I'm researching. In James Barnes' case, his obituary provided some of the details, but it was through pursuing his wife Jean's name and the name of her business that I located the details to further explain James' story.

His obituary explained that

He was employed by Santa Fe Railway for 27 years in the clerical department and...was a veteran of World War II.

That, however, doesn't necessarily explain what might have devastated his health. I needed to delve further into this man's life story.

James Barnes seemed to be a business-minded person, since he "opened Jean Barnes Gift and Book Store" in Oklahoma City, back in 1960. Just in case the store was still in business, I decided to Google it. That was a good hunch. It provided me two memorials for Jim's wife, who had subsequently remarried and kept the bookstore running for many years afterwards. Among other gleanings, one mentioned that Jim had died "after a battle with lung cancer" and that the couple had originally moved to Oklahoma City in the 1940s, when Jim was transferred there by the Santa Fe Railway.

James Barnes seemed to have been generous in a practical sort of way, having a note in his obituary that the "family requests a memorial in his name to the elevator fund" at the Oklahoma City church he and his wife attended. What was more remarkable was discovering that Jim had not just one memorial posted on Find A Grave, but two. There was one for a headstone found at the cemetery back in Kansas where many of his family members were buried; the memorial inscription is shared with one for his sister Helen.

The other is a memorial found at his adopted home, Oklahoma City, in which James Barnes' name is inscribed with that of many others, under the heading:

In grateful remembrance of those who are laid to rest here. They bequeathed their mortal remains to further medical education and research in Oklahoma.

Above: Photograph of Alta Barnes Williams of Silverdale, Kansas, with her younger sister Helen and baby brother James D. Barnes; undated Azo Post Card circa 1922; currently in possession of the author.

Deciphering the Details

It's inevitable, when researching information on family history from past centuries, that we'll encounter terms and descriptions that seem so foreign that they are of no help at all in allowing us to better understand the world in which our ancestors lived. Face it, the world back in 1880 or even 1908 was a vastly different place than the one in which we now live. Activities of daily life became a collection of terms and tasks far different than ones we use today. Sometimes, the difference is so huge, we end up walking away without having the slightest idea about things that, to our ancestors, were so commonplace.

In researching my family's history, that's when I start asking questions.

Reading the reports on the untimely death of John Blain in Paola, Kansas, in 1908 had that same effect on me. Take, for instance, the court description of the main train track curving "round that cobhouse to the eastward." Cobhouse? I had to look that one up. (Apparently, the term either refers to a "flimsy unstable structure" or a small building "constructed of mud, clay, and straw."

Granted, I could have inferred a similar meaning from the context of the article, but I just wanted to know specifically what the term might have meant at the time it was used.

But it was another phrase that really pushed me to look it up instead of settling for an educated guess. Remember the part which mentioned that John Blain, in turning to see who was calling to him, was then "struck by the pilot beam of the engine."

What's a pilot beam?

I realize there are those who are so taken with the history of railroads that their enthusiasm for the subject has led them to either spend thousands of dollars on collectibles or spend countless hours consuming every last detail about the topic. I am not one of those people, so please forgive my ignorance. I had to go look up what a pilot beam might have been.

Going in search of this information was not an easy process, given my complete lack of understanding about locomotives. The handy-dandy drawing of the "Commonwealth Locomotive Pilot Beam with Flexible Buffing Gear" in the 1922 Locomotive Cyclopedia of American Practice, for instance, told me nothing. There was no scale to the drawing, nor any diagram with a red arrow and the directions, "insert pilot beam here."

I need that kind of guidance when attempting to understand my ancestors' world.

Nor did the entry I was directed to in the 1906 Locomotive Dictionary, despite its being billed as "An Illustrated Vocabulary of Terms which Designate American Railroad Locomotives." When I googled the term "pilot beam," I was directed to the page fourteen definition for "bumper beam." As a subheading to that term, the dictionary described pilot beams as "the term applied to the same part [bumper beam] when the locomotive is fitted with a pilot."

Thanks.

Eventually, on page fifty nine, I found an explanation which made a bit more sense—but only after wading through more verbiage. Here's how the book defined "pilot":

An inclined pointed structure of wood or iron bars fastened to the front bumper of a locomotive to remove obstructions from the track.

Oh. And then the dictionary provided the part that translated to our era:

Formerly called cow catcher.

Formerly called cow catcher? I've never heard of a pilot on a locomotive, but at least I've heard of a cow catcher. So the pilot beam must be something which affixed to the cow catcher. Great. So now I can disabuse myself of any visuals of the man being gored to death by a literal beam somehow protruding from the front of a locomotive like a gladiator's spear.

Taking the time to ascertain the exactness of terms we're not currently familiar with can help paint a clearer picture of the specific episodes in our ancestors' lives. While a 1908 term like pilot beam might not be that outdated, the terms of centuries past sometimes yield us curves which we're not sure how to field. Learning how to talk the lingo of our ancestors' contemporaries can sometimes open our eyes to the impact of those everyday realities in the lives of the people we are researching.

Above: Undated photograph of the Missouri Pacific Railway locomotive engine number 152; image number RG005_77_27_0714 courtesy the Missouri State Archives via Wikipedia; in the public domain—with a mighty fine specimen of a pilot included, if I say so myself.





 

How it Happened: Version Two

In trying to piece together a cogent history of the life of the man whose picture I rescued from a local antique store, it turns out that, once again, we find that life stories seem always to include the unexpected. When we started, all we knew was that the subject's name was John Blain, and that he sat for his likeness at a photography studio in the small town of Walnut, Kansas, sometime during the 1880s.

More to the point, once we discovered the tragedy that had befallen this man in the prime of his life, we've been presented with two versions of just what happened to lead to his demise. You already know my bias against trusting, wholesale, contemporary newspaper reports. In John Blain's case, due to the nature of what befell him in 1908, we have the opportunity to examine two different versions of what actually happened.

From a summary of the appeals process, published in volume 184 of The Southwestern Reporter, we learn that John Blain's widow, serving as administratrix of his estate, had filed suit for $10,000 against the Missouri Pacific Railway Company for the death of her husband. While the summary, on page 1142 through 1143, mentioned that the suit was brought according to provisions under Kansas state statutes, the case was actually heard in the state of Missouri. No reason was given for this, though it appeared that, based on Missouri law, the outcome was not to be what the widow might have hoped.

Through the summary, we once again see details we've already learned through the newspaper report we discussed yesterday: that John Blain was a man of forty four years of age, that he was engaged in the lumber and furniture business in Centerville, Kansas, and that he received his fatal injuries in the city of Paola, Kansas.

That's pretty much where the similarities stop. The court cases, presumably extracting their evidence from witnesses on the stand, provided more detail about the incident—but also details that may or may not have lined up exactly with what we've learned from the Wichita newspaper account.

The summary in The Southwestern Reporter first included some background information, setting the scene:

Peoria street, in Paola, runs east and west across the tracks of three railroad systems all parallel and lying within a strip of about 200 feet. About 24 passenger trains on those roads cross that street within that many hours, and many more freights. As those tracks are approached from the east the first is a switch of the defendant [Missouri Pacific] running to an elevator standing just west of Peoria street and just east of the switch. Next comes the main track of defendant. Between it and said switch on the north side of the street is a cobhouse used in connection with the elevator. The main track spoken of above curves round that cobhouse to the eastward. About four blocks north of Peoria street is the defendant's station. The regular passenger train was due there at 11:40 a.m.

Now that the description has set the stage, the narrative went on to introduce the main player, our unfortunate John Blain.

Just at noon Blain was proceeding west on the sidewalk on the south side of that street. When he had crossed the switch track and got within 8 or 10 feet of defendant's main track, had he looked westward, he could have seen a train on that main track a distance of 400 or 500 feet. The regular passenger train south bound left the station just at noon, gave two long and two short whistles when about 400 feet from Peoria street, and continued ringing the engine bell from that point until it crossed the street....

This is where the description seemed incredible, making me wonder why it happened the way it did.

Blain proceeded straight ahead without looking for the approach of any train. He was in about two feet of the defendant's main track when someone called to him. He looked back, and, while doing so, was struck by the pilot beam of the engine and knocked about twenty feet.

Right there, at that point in the narrative, I find so many issues that prompt questions. Why, for instance, did he not look before crossing the tracks? Was he not responsive to all the din around him? Was it precisely for such a reason that his ears became deaf to the very signal that was supposed to warn him away? And why was someone calling to him at such a precarious point? Was it, ironically, to warn him to "Look out"?

As a sad postscript to the blow-by-blow, the case summary added,

For about two years there had been an electric bell at that crossing, but for a great portion of the time it had been out of repair, and was out of repair and not working on the day in question.

Although an oversight such as that, on the part of a defendant, would surely now have played a significant role in determining the outcome of the case, that was not so for Mrs. Blain's appeal. The $10,000 she was seeking—depending on which inflation calculator used, representing in today's economy anywhere from $239,000 to $261,000—was not to be awarded to her. The prime determining factor:

When a person, capable of seeing and hearing, in broad daylight, attempts to cross a railroad track in front of a rapidly moving train, without looking or listening for such train, and is struck by it and injured, his own negligence is the proximate cause of his injury....

Despite conceding, in the court's report, that "it was negligence in the defendant to allow the electric bell to be out of repair," that was not enough of a contributing factor to sway the court's decision. Apparently, the indiscretion of the victim of the injury trumped any negligence on the part of the corporation, according to the laws at that time in the state of Missouri, and the widow's appeal was unsuccessful.

That result, of course, put the mother of four young children in a precarious position of her own.   

How it Happened: Version One

Determining just what occurred to cause the tragic death of John Blain seems a straightforward process, if you rely on only one version of the story. There were, however, at least two different accounts of what happened, back in 1908 in Paola, Kansas. While it is possible that the truth is closer to an amalgamation of the two versions, let's take a look at each one separately.

First, we'll look at the document which was published closest to the time of John's death. It's an article from The Wichita Beacon, appearing on page seven of the Tuesday edition on June 23, 1908. If you are a Newspapers.com subscriber, you can view a digitized version of the original here.

We've already reviewed the report's opening paragraph yesterday. Under a headline blaring, "Lived Three Days," the article explained, beginning with the second paragraph, that

At Paola, Mr. Blain was compelled to change cars. After he left the train, he was struck by the engine of an outgoing train and received fatal injuries on his head, back and chest. He was immediately removed to the office of a physician where his injuries were given proper attention. As soon as Mr. Blain was able to be moved he was taken to his home. Upon his removal to his home he steadily grew worse, suffering both from external and internal injuries. Word was received in the city yesterday by his sister that after suffering intensely from his injuries for three days that he had died.

That was the complete report on the actual episode, according to The Wichita Beacon. The article continued with a note about his survivors—his wife and four young daughters, as well as the "sister" in Wichita and her daughter. It concluded with a note that "the body will be taken to Walnut, Kans., for interment."

After learning that the man spent the last few days of his life in such agony, you will not be surprised to learn that John Blain's widow found reason to bring suit against the railroad company operating the locomotive which had struck her husband. Perhaps her legal counsel was convinced there was a basis for a wrongful death case.

That case against the Missouri Pacific Railway Company wound its way through an appeals process up to the Missouri Supreme Court and was not resolved until nearly eight years after the June day in 1908 when John Blain was struck down by one of the company's locomotives.

Above: From the 1903 edition of Poor's Manual of the Railroads of the United States, showing the lines of the Missouri Pacific Railway Company. Among the tangled lines, the one dropping southwest from Kansas City heads first to Paola. The city name is written sideways, making it harder to locate on the map. Image courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.