Echoes of Purple and Gold

By Jack Keefe

In Echoes of Purple and Gold, Jack Keefe stacks local history like cordwood, telling forgotten tales and making odd connections that people no longer suspect.

What school kid hasn't heard--or heard about--the story of Ichabod Crane in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"? He was both fictional and real. The fictional Crane is the one everyone knows about. But there were also two real ones. One was a military man in the nineteenth century; the other had a lot of influence on central Illinois.

How many times has anyone ever heard the surname Magoun? The name is all but gone now from the city he called home. But he was once a household name until his bank went under. Arguably, it killed him.

What about General Custer and Seventh Cavalry? They didn't just magically appear in Montana to make history. First, they had to water their horses in Illinois. The general even had to do some birthday shopping there.

Most people already know colors don't make a noise. But when you read the title chapter of this book, you'll understand the phrase.

Echoes of Purple and Gold has stories you might think you know: high school colors, sinking ships, a hanging, and a central Illinois man who put Zane Grey on the literary map.

Add a toddler who was run over by a train and still telling about it a lifetime later, the city's fattest men enjoying an enormous meal the night before Thanksgiving, plus the magic of railroads coming to town. They have never been presented as they are in this book.

All these things make for history, memories...and echoes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662444654

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Echoes of Purple and Gold

Jack Keefe

Copyright © 2022 Jack Keefe

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

Originally published by Page Publishing 2022

Cover design by Neil Andrew A. Nanta

Front cover photo by Jack Keefe:

Anglers Lake, Bloomington, Illinois

Author photo by Janet Cunningham Keefe.

Front cover, chapter titles, and selected other pages requiring major headlines appear in Goudy Old Style, by Frederic Goudy, born March 8, 1865, in Bloomington, Illinois.

ISBN 978-1-6624-4464-7 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-4465-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Twenty-Four Dinner Guests: An aggregation of human jumbos never before equaled outside a circus tent

The Bloomington Hotel Scene of 1882: Why the Fat Men's Dinner Was a Public Relations Coup

Chapter 7

The Heafer Ponds: Looking Deeper: An Echo of Purple and Gold

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Tuning in John Brodhead, Alias Al Cameron

Engineer Pearce, Conductor Helmer, and the Vandalia Line

Chapter 11

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Glossary

Notes, Quotes, and Footnotes

Sources Consulted

About the Author

Index

This book is dedicated to my wife, Janet Cunningham Keefe, who as copy editor has already read it more times than anyone should be asked to.

And to the everyday people in these chapters, most of whom didn't know they were making history.

Prologue

Some stories endure because of their endings, others for their beginnings. Still others live on for a small event or quote that outlives the rest of the tale. In this book you'll find some of each.

As a writer, I have always been influenced by Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story and by Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon River Anthology. The People's Almanac by David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace plus The Book of Lists by Wallechinsky, Wallace, and Amy Wallace are also in that mix. And more recently author Erik Larson, who blends ordinary and extraordinary characters to create incredible but authentic stories. It's true: ordinary people do extraordinary things, and both Harvey's and Larson's characters prove it. But Masters's Spoon River characters don't. Beginning on page one, they're all dead. However, their mundane lives—and their secrets—shine throughout his work.

In Echoes of Purple and Gold, I have selected forgotten stories that barely made it to the next generation in their telling. For example, who knew that General Custer stopped in Bloomington, Illinois, on his way west? Or that an unlikely street name—Magoun Street—honored a man whose name was a household word in town until he was virtually killed off by a local bank failure? And who knew the backstory of the Bloomington High School colors?

These stories have been around ever since they happened. But unless you read Gleanings, the semiannual journal of the McLean County Genealogy Society, you probably didn't see them. The lone exception to this collection is the title chapter, Echoes of Purple and Gold, which appeared in its original form in the Pantagraph on June 25, 1989. The chapters in this book contain a lot of newly discovered facts since their publication as journal articles.

Each of these yarns—all of them true, I promise—had to be considered through a few filters before they made it into this book. Are they relevant today? Yes, some of them are. Do the stories break any new ground from when they were first told? Again, some do. Does anyone really want to read about the backstories of local history?

To be sure, we're about to find out. Happy reading!

Jack Keefe

Chapter 1

SONS OF ICHABOD CRANE

A True Tale of Roots, Shoots, and Legacies

The hour was late. A chill was in the air. And so was fear.

Ichabod Crane—Master Itch, as his rival Brom Bones called him—was itching to get home before something happened. Before anything happened. But too soon he found it was too late, and the notorious Headless Horseman was bearing down on him with a vengeance in his eyes.

(That is, if he'd had any eyes, but he didn't even have a head. He'd lost it—blown away in the revolution long ago. So now he roamed the night with only a pumpkin in one hand and the reins of his swift, powerful horse in the other.)

And as Ichabod Crane and his own horse Gunpowder fled for the safe haven of the churchyard across the bridge ahead, alas, something did happen.

*****

The Roots: Jesse Merwin, The Original of Ichabod Crane

The Ichabod Crane connection is the first of two connected stories that form this chapter. The second story is not often told, if at all. Simply put: after old Jesse Merwin, what happened next?

Nineteenth-century author Washington Irving's finances ebbed and flowed. They were ebbing when, writing under the pen name Geoffrey Crayon, he published The Sketch Book. (How tempting to say Crayon-Sketch Book—Get it?) Irving/Crayon's book was a literary hit. And within its pages, this backstory hides.

Irving created Ichabod Crane, Brom Bones, the Headless Horseman, and a cast of other characters in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow short story in about 1820. It was Crane whom Bones mocked as Master Itch as the two vied for the hand of Katrina Van Tassel, the rich farmer's daughter. As the tale builds to a climax, the Headless Horseman hurls the pumpkin at Ichabod Crane in a late-night chase. The schoolmaster vanishes at the bridge, never to be seen again.

Jesse Merwin, a real-life schoolmaster, was Irving's original Ichabod Crane. This connection has been known for years, but mostly it gathered dust on the back shelf. The real-life Merwin lived in Kinderhook, New York, and became a good friend of Washington Irving during their days as young men. Their connection is documented through their own letters and numerous Merwin family sources.

The Shoots: Asher and Washington

Jesse Merwin, 1784-1852

public domain

Jesse Merwin was born in Milford, Connecticut on August 25, 1784. He settled in Kinderhook, New York, and lived there until he died on November 8, 1852. His wife was the former Jane Van Dyck. They were married October 8, 1808, and were parents of ten or eleven children (accounts differ).

For those who go digging with just a lightweight computer mouse or a more serious library card, his story is well and often told. But what about all those Merwin children? If you live in McLean County, Illinois, chances are your life has been touched by at least one of them, or his legacy.

Padua in 1963: depot gone, sign remains

Author photo

Asher

Two of the Merwin sons came west, some twenty years apart, and settled in McLean County. One was a farmer and manufacturer, the other a businessman who made money by serving farmers.

Asher Merwin was well established in New York State. He was a farmer, tinkerer, and carpenter and had moved back to Kinderhook from Windham in 1850. He set up a lumber business and a factory, known as the Merwin & Company Combined Manufacturing Company. But it burned in 1856.

Bringing his wife and family west, Asher bought land in 1856 and farmed along McLean County Road 1300N (an eastern extension of Bloomington's Oakland Avenue) about three miles east of Bentown. The spot Asher purchased was actually called Fairtown, which has since disappeared from the maps. He was well established years before the Civil War broke out, with holdings amounting to 240 acres. In the 1874 McLean County atlas he was referred to as a farmer and stock raiser, but his orchard was abundant as well. The atlas features a sketch of his farm noting the thousand apple trees.

On his farm Asher had a wagon shop and machine shop to go with the house and barns. He wasn't much of a joiner but he was involved nonetheless. He was at one time the highway commissioner for Padua (now Dawson) Township; he was a founding director of a farmer's insurance company. And he built Fairtown School, adjacent to his farm. The little school district was formed in 1866 on a 10–2 vote, and the location was approved by a vote of 9–3. To construct the little country school building, Asher Merwin was paid four hundred dollars.

The Merwin farm was near Ellsworth, but closer to the future site of Padua Station. Ellsworth, at the east end of the township, was founded when the Lafayette, Bloomington and Mississippi Railroad went through. That left Padua Township farmers and shippers with a choice: ship from Ellsworth, several miles distant, or from outside the township.

Asher and his friends were not amused.

Adding to their outrage was this: Padua Township citizens had voted thirty thousand dollars in bonds to help finance the railroad. The very existence of Ellsworth was a slap in their bearded faces. Two founding fathers of Ellsworth (Almon B. Ives and Jonathan Cheney) were influential and had land. But they were also directors of the railroad! And some of that thirty thousand dollars was going into their pockets.

The deal was done, and the deck was stacked in Ellsworth's favor.

So the neighbors took action. Allen Hendryx gave some land in the middle of the township, where the railroad crossed the highway that connects Leroy and Lexington. Then Hendryx, Asher Merwin, and four other men launched a campaign to get a station and switch at the proposed town site on the Hendryx land.

They did this by a pertinacious [persistent] system of coaxing, badgering, threatening, begging and buying; they finally got a station by agreeing to put up the buildings, which was done on Allen Hendrix's [sic] land in section 17… as related in one county history.

Everyone had a stake in that battle. Now the farmers would have a closer shipping point for grain. And Asher could also ship his apples from Padua. So could Hendryx, who had seven hundred trees of his own. The locals built a depot and the railroad built the siding. Town lots and streets were surveyed. Slowly, the properties at Padua Station sold.

The call of warmer climates, money to be made, and a chance to start over touched the Merwins in 1884. Asher, now sixty-six years old, and his brother W. I. Merwin had bought several thousand acres near Palatka, Florida, about seventy-five miles south of Jacksonville. The Atlantic Coast Line Railroad already ran through the land and had a little station named Francis to serve the vicinity. Asher had scouted the land and planned to grow oranges on it. And, of course, sell them.

At three o'clock in the morning on January 6, 1885, Asher's family and a few in-laws boarded an eastbound train for the journey to Florida. Some of the family stayed behind, including W. I., who was the storekeeper in Padua.

Asher was married to Elizabeth Ham (1819–1885). The Hams apparently came west with the Merwins from New York and had an acreage next to Asher's in Dawson Township. Elizabeth, who had evidently joined Asher in Florida only a couple of weeks previous, died in early July. Asher remarried, taking Jennie Miller as his bride, but he also outlived her by ten years.

The Florida life was good to the Merwins. Asher made occasional return visits to McLean County, some of them probably social but also to confer with W. I. on matters relating to the land they owned together in Florida. In 1893 Asher and Jennie took in the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, but stopped on the way to visit W. I. and his wife Mary in Bloomington.

Accounts show Asher was fit for a man his age but in declining health. In the summer of 1909, he was lying in a hammock and fell out. Then sometime later he fell on the piazza (porch) at his son's home. That second fall, it is believed, hastened his death.

Warner & Beers 1874 Atlas of McLean County

A telegram came from Florida to Illinois family members saying that they should come as soon as possible to be at his bedside. But before they could leave, a second telegram arrived telling of the old man's death. The Pantagraph obituary said he died principally of old age. But a Florida obituary blamed that fall from the porch.

When he died, seven of Asher and Elizabeth's children were still living. One son, George Merwin (1844–1918), stayed in Illinois and took over the farm at Padua. Both George and his wife Maggie O'Neall (1846–1927) are buried at Bentown.

Years after Asher's passing, Pantagraph contributor and Bloomington attorney S. P. Robinson recalled the plow making and wagon building that went on at the Merwin farm. And he added that Asher had developed a two-horse corn cultivator that a farmer could ride while controlling the plows with his feet. However, the arrival of the LB&M Railroad put the Merwin factories out of commission, Robinson wrote.

Asher and both his wives, Elizabeth and Jennie, are buried in the West View Cemetery in Palatka, Florida. Among the notable people buried there is William Dunn Mosely (1795–1863), the first Governor of Florida.

Washington

(Washington Irving Merwin, that is)

Washington arrived in 1876 and was a businessman in Padua, two miles east of Holder on what was by then the Lake Erie and Western Railroad. Upon arrival he was forty-two years old, with a wife and seven children.

It is worth noting that Washington and his wife, the former Mary Reynolds, had two children who died very young: Elizabeth Jane and Frank. Little Frank died in 1876, before the family left Kinderhook for Illinois.

Old Jesse Merwin's youngest son came up in the school of hard work. He attended school in Kinderhook, served seven years on the town board, and ran a store there. He sold out and moved to New York City, where he had a large grocery on the Bowery.

During the Civil War, Washington was in ill health and hired someone to take his place instead of going into the army himself (it was legal to do so). He went back to Kinderhook. Writers of the time thought it unlikely that he would have been drafted, however.

Business was good in Kinderhook, but it was taking its toll on Washington. He had been in farming, hardware, and baking. Under these conditions and with a second child now deceased, he quit the hometown in 1876 moved to McLean County, where Asher was already established.

By the time Washington got to Illinois, the LB&M Railroad had been running for several years. And at age fifty-eight, brother Asher wanted to wrap up his local affairs and move to Florida. But since Washington was only forty-two, he had other plans, and much of his old energy was back.

From the time he arrived in Padua Township he put it on the map. Together with his nephew George, he bought town lots in Padua. He bought the general store and became the hamlet's leading merchant, trading in grain, livestock, coal, and lumber.

He shipped about 250,000 bushels of grain from Padua every year to New York, Massachusetts, and Canada. That averages to almost 800 bushels a day, allowing for Sundays off. Some weeks he would ship as many as 1,500 bushels.

Washington Merwin was one of the first men in the area to have a new hay press: he could compress hay into a freight car and ship it to other markets. He made tile in an operation that kept twelve men working and four kilns hot.

He was station agent for the railroad, selling passenger tickets and arranging for freight cars to be picked up and delivered. But there's no indication he also handled the telegraph operator duties. In busy locations the railroads had two people handling those jobs.

He was also the postmaster and justice of the peace.

And he had a telephone, according to one newspaper blurb. In nineteenth-century Padua, population maybe one hundred, almost no one had a phone.

In his time, Washington Irving Merwin was clearly a good man to know.

But Bloomington's eventual gain was Padua's loss. In 1884 Washington sold the Padua store and the tile works and moved to Bloomington. He acquired a house at 1001 North Prairie Street, and went back into the grocery and butcher business. One of Washington's partners was Walker Boulware, a young man of good reputation. In 1886 young Boulware married Washington's daughter Mary.

Of course, there would be telephones in Bloomington too. Washington had them installed in his home and grocery store. He probably reasoned it was good business to have phones at home (dial 215) and work. The grocery store (dial 139), at 237 East Front Street, got a phone first and advertised the number in the paper. The home phone was installed a year later.

And yet, Washington still wasn't done with agriculture. He sold his Prairie Street home and bought a farm about two miles west of Bloomington. The old health problems still nagged, however, and he was forced to leave the farm in 1891.

Once he was back in Bloomington, Washington built a house and resettled. The house, at 1302 East Grove Street, was past the city limits and had no house number at first. But the little city of Bloomington was slowly pushing eastward, and the new Merwin house would be inside the city limits soon enough. Washington kept greenhouses about a mile east of his home and personally tended them.

Washington, it seems, fought illness for his entire life. The move from Padua was health-related. He bought the Florida land with Asher partly because he thought he'd like to spend the winter there. He sought treatment in the hot-water spas at French Lick, Indiana. For all these health-related moves, a singular mention of muscular neuralgia in 1892 is the only hint as to the exact nature of his ailments.

Author photo

He had two more moves left in this life. Washington and his wife once took a prospecting trip out west and were attracted to Colorado. It agreed with his health and they had family there. So in about 1902 they moved to Colorado Springs and then to Canon City, home of their daughter and her husband. He died there in 1912 at the age of seventy-eight.

Washington was brought back to Bloomington and buried in Evergreen Cemetery near his son Clarence and his family's final resting places. Then in 1943, after thirty-one years, Washington's son Louis Merwin had his parents' remains moved to the family plot in Park Hill Cemetery, where they lie today. Louis was a board member and cofounder at Park Hill. Louis's brother Clarence and family remain at Evergreen.

Washington's Children: The Legacy Begins

From his marriage to Mary Reynolds on December 3, 1856, came nine children. James, Mary Boulware, Clarence, Catherine (Kitty), Louis B., Ada, and Leonard lived to adulthood. Of these seven, Clarence is remembered as a cofounder of Centennial Christian Church. He was a traveling salesman for J. F. Humphreys, a grocery wholesaler in Bloomington and who once owned his own grocery store.

Louis and his children left the most historic tracks. Louis made overalls by trade, but he was also president of the Model-Paris Laundry, Park Hill Cemetery, and the Manufactured Ice and Cold Storage Company. It was Louis who married Miss Jessie Davis, a granddaughter of Town of Normal and Pantagraph founder Jesse Fell. Miss Jessie's father was Hibbard Davis, then publisher of the Daily Pantagraph, the leading newspaper in town.

The Davis-Merwin marriage opened doors in publishing and eventually broadcasting for Louis and his children. Louis and Jessie's son Davis Merwin became publisher of the Pantagraph, taking over for his ailing father-in-law. He eventually quit the Bloomington paper to become publisher and part owner of the Minneapolis Star.

When Davis left for Minneapolis, his brother Loring Merwin took over as publisher of the Bloomington paper and emerged as a sometimes-correspondent on world affairs in his later years. He was also president of Bloomington Broadcasting Corporation, which owned and operated WJBC radio.

But there was more. In 1917 Grace Inman, a teacher at Bloomington High School, organized a short story club for students. Toward the end of the 1917–1918 school year, Heather Merwin, daughter of Louis and Jessie, was recognized as having written the best story. But that was all: she was just recognized for her work. (Stand up, accept applause, then take your seat again.)

Well, someone apparently decided, we'll just see about that.

Heather's mother Jessie began sponsorship of a trophy and cash award to the winner of the best short story competition the very next year. And from 1919 until the 1960s the Merwin