Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories: Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas — John Locke — John Shaqi
Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories: Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas
John Locke · en
Charley Hutchison’s father was a wealthy brewer back in Ohio. Charley
acquired the drink habit. When his family thought they had him shut off
from the liquor supply, he would sneak into the storage cellar, bore a
hole in a whisky barrel, and suck the stuff out through a straw.
Charley was sent out here, in the hope of curing him of the drink habit.
He was given a section of land on Wolfley creek, three miles northwest
of Wetmore—and supplied with money to improve the land. I think he was
then left wholly on his own. I do not recall ever seeing any of his
people out here.
Charley Hutchison came here in 1870, and was about 21 years old—a
modest, likeable young man. He spent most of his first year here, in
town. He lived at the Hugh Fortner Hotel—and while rooming there, lost
$500, which he had placed under his pillow. There was no bank here then.
When Charley loafed downtown—which was much of the time that first
year—he made my father’s shoeshop his headquarters. The shop was on the
north side of the main street, opposite John Clifton’s saloon on the
south side. Charley was really trying to taper off in his drinking,
and seldom entered the saloon. He tried to avoid the amenities of the
drinking gentry. He would sometimes, when alone, take one drink, and
then come across to the shoeshop.
Though not a relative of ours, John Clifton was the step-son of my Uncle
Nick Bristow, and he often dropped in at the shoeshop. My mother worked
with my father in the shop. She asked John Clifton to not encourage
Charley in his drinking. Clifton said “Hutch” was really doing fine, and
that he would help the boy all that he could.
Then a girl came down from the prairie country in the neighborhood of
what is now Goff—”Pucker Brush” it was called then—to work in Peter
Shuemaker’s new hotel. Anna Mackey was a nice looking girl—too nice
looking, Charley said, to go out with the landlord’s “drunken” son. It
really worried Charley. He said one day, “I believe I’ll try to stop
it.” He did. He married Anna. And never again did he take a drink. My
mother and Clifton both took credit for helping him over the hump. But I
suspect it was the girl from the prairie country who had transformed him
short off into an abstainer.
Charley Hutchison was the only one of several whom I knew that were sent
out here from the east, when this country was new, for a like purpose,
that made good. There was no finer man than Charley Hutchison—a
conscientious, upright Christian gentleman. Compared to “Jersey”
Campbell, a New Jersey drinking boy, located on the best half section of
land south of Goff, Charley Hutchison’s performance was phenomenal.
But then, maybe there never was an “Anna” in Jersey’s life. Charley
Hutchison sold his land to Fred Shumaker, and moved to Wetmore in the
early eighties. He built the home now owned by Mrs. James Grubb.