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
Then, later, Charley Locknane, Jay W. Powers, and Jim Liebig, undertook
to popularize the spring—and incidentally, make some money for
themselves. They invested considerable money in improvements. Locknane
was a budding promoter with considerable nerve—and a pull with the
railroad. He caused a special excursion train to be run out from Kansas
City, $1.50 fare for the round trip. Also, Charley organized a Girl Band
of twenty pieces, which furnished music for the opening picnic—and many
occasion thereafter. The Girl Band gained national acclaim. Locknane was
State Deputy for the Modern Woodmen of America—and took his Girl Band to
the Head Camp at Colorado Springs in 1901, and to Minneapolis in 1902.
The members were: Dora Geyer, Mollie Neely, Nora Shuemaker, Mabel Geyer,
Phoena Liebig, Iva Hudson, Daisy Terry, Blanche Eley, Kate Searles,
Truda Berridge, Edith Lapham, Pearl Nance, Maude Cole, Jennie Scott,
Belle Searles, Grace Maxwell, Ruby Nance, Myrtle Graham, Mrs. Ella Rice
and Mrs. Carrie Glynn, of McLouth, Kansas, were numbers five and six
in the line-up as written on the back of an enlarged photograph now in
possession of Mrs. P. G. Worthy—formerly Myrtle Graham.
The dance pavilion was well patronized between celebrations—and the
town populace turned out of evenings for a stroll to the spring. It was
really popular. Then a flood, an unusually big flood, swept the park
clean of all improvements. The large frame dance-hall came to anchor on
a projection of land on the present Bill Winkler farm nearly a mile down
the creek. The town jester said that as the pavilion floated away the
piano was automatically playing “Over the Ocean Waves.”
The mineral spring is still here—but that’s all.
At one of the big celebrations about the turn of the century a farmer
brought his family to town in a spring wagon. He tied his team on the
town-side of the picnic grounds, leaving a three-year-old child asleep
in the wagon. When the parents returned after taking in the picnic,
the child was gone. Then the picnickers began a search which lasted
throughout the night. All roads were covered for four or five miles
out. One searching party went four miles west on the railroad track—then
turned back, believing a small child could not travel that far. The
section men out Wetmore found the mangled body of the child in a small
wash by the side of the railroad about a half-mile beyond the point
abandoned by the searchers. An early morning freight train had bumped
it off a low bridge. Then there was much speculation as to how a small
child could have traveled that far—even hints, unwarranted suspicion, of
foul help. Then there was a story afloat about the conductor whose train
had struck the child. When told of the killing, it was claimed, he cried
and said had he known a child was lost along the track he would have
walked ahead the train.