Shot Down in Cold Blood

I've been slacking on my KC history blogs, because I've known since last year that the second week of March would bring a monumental story that's been all but completely forgotten to  local history.  I've been saving my fingers for the typing of the days to come.  You see, I had "advance knowledge" that on the morning of March 9, 1870, the editor of the newspaper I've spent years transcribing would be shot and killed in the place which then served as City Hall.

Colonel John Wilder, Senior Editor of the Kansas City Daily Journal of Commerce, while talking with the City Clerk, was accosted by an armed man who told him to "get ready," then shot him in the chest with a revolver.  As police surrounded the assailant, the man drew another revolver.   With guns in both hands he held the lawmen at bay, but only for a moment.  Another offcer grabbed him from behind, disarmed him, and the murderer was taken away under heavy guard.  The Colonel, a Union veteran of the Civil War and a graduate of Harvard Law School, was dead within 20 minutes.

But why was Colonel Wilder assassinated?  Not everybody loved him or his paper.  In early March of 1870 elections were looming in Kansas City, and the Colonel's paper was unabashadly Republican.  The Journal would often times poke fun at the local reporters and editors of other KC papers, with accusations  of alcoholism, hypocrisy, plagiarism, and so on.  The Journal also never passed up a chance to hurl insults at Kansas City's rivals, Leavenworth and St. Joseph.  It's easy to see why there may have been some who disliked the man and his paper, but enough to commit the act of murder?

I can find no modern record of the life or death of Colonel Wilder.  Mentions of his assassination from histories written in earlier centuries give little detail as to the motive, hinting that the killing was over a "personal matter," possibly his involvement with a woman.   Col. Wilder's newspaper, which gave full columns to the (then) recent preliminary hearing of "Wicked Jenny," a prostitute implicated in a brothel murder, will be surprisingly tight-lipped with respect to the details of the grand jury investigation into the death of their departed Senior Editor.  The facts of this case were never laid out before a jury of the assailants peers, as the assailant died in jail awaiting trial following his arraignment.

L A Little is on the case, though.  Like any story that captures my interest, I will leave no stone unturned until I find all the answers, despite the fact that the matter has absolutely no relevance in this day and age and may well be of interest only to myself.  Happily, that's not always the case.

Ladies Night

The very first time I saw this picture many years ago

I knew that if the opportunity ever came up to go to Little Rock, Arkansas, I would swing it so that I would be there on Tuesday night.

Years later, I decided to go to Arkansas.  And sure enough, I worked it out so that I'd be in Little Rock for Ladies' Night at the Clinton Library.

I got my hair and nails done, took extra time putting on my makeup, and I dressed as sexy as is appropriate for a woman my age, then set out for a night of fun and frolick at the jumpin-est Presidential Library in America.

Imagine my disappointment when I got to the Clinton Library last Tuesday night, and found it shut tighter than a superglued pickle jar.  The place was as deserted as the men's room at a Justin Beiber concert.

Nothing in paragraph three is true.  In reality, the first time I saw the picture on top many years ago, I knew that if the opportunity ever came up to go to Little Rock, Arkansas, I would swing it so that I would be there on Tuesday night, so I could take the picture on the bottom and blog about my feigned disappointment at missing Ladies' Night at the Clinton Library.  'Cause that's how bloggers are, always thinking ahead, and on the lookout for real and manufactured things to blog about.

Now I'm off to put a big checkmark next to "Blog about the Clinton Library" on my Fantasy List, happy that the adventure was every bit as much fun as I imagined it would be (no doubt moreso for me than the reader).

Kindle Your Blog

I notice that none of my favorite local blogs are available on Amazon's Kindle, so I'd like to offer you this opportunity to be read by a wider audience and maybe earn some royalties as well.

How to get your blog on Kindle:

First, go to the website below and get yourself a Kindle publisher's account.  You'll need one even if you already have an Amazon account, but you'll need to use a different password.

https://kindlepublishing.amazon.com/

You'll need a screenshot of your blog that is 800x600 pixels at least.  If you don't know how to do that, hold your Ctrl key down and press the button on the top right of your keyboard that says, "Print Screen".  That will copy a picture of your site.  Then go into a graphics program like Paint, Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop, etc., and paste it.  You might want to crop out the address bar, etc. Save that picture; that's your screenshot.  Make sure it's under 1 MB.

Next, you'll need a Masthead that will show on the top of your blog when it's read on Kindle.  It needs to be no larger than 430x50 pixels.  Kindle is viewed in black & white (grayscale) so you won't need for this to be in color.  If you need help with this, email me and I'll hook you up  :)

Then, at the Kindle publishing site, log in and click the button that says, "Add Blog".  Enter your blog's RSS feed and the information requested about your blog, upload your screenshot and your masthead, click "Save", and then publish your blog.  It might take a couple of days to get it listed on Amazon.

And there you go!  Promote your Kindle blog with on your website with your Amazon Associates ID included, and you can earn a commission on anything your subscriber may also purchase while at Amazon.  It's a win/win, and certainly worth try.

Forward to the Past

Slowly I make my way through the migration from FTP publishing to hosting on Google's Blogger servers.  I'm getting used to subdomains and DNS changes and CNAMES and the like, things I managed to avoid like the plague in my first decade of amateur online publishing. 

Time to move into the 21st Century, right?

Not really.  I struggled and suffered so with the new Blogger format as a way to facilitate bringing the news of the Nineteenth Century to readers today.  Now, those hungry for the latest headlines from 1870 will be able to access them via their feed readers and so on.  Introducing the new and improved...

1870 was a really exciting time in KC history, if one gets excited about such things.  The Civil War was behind them, the railroads and stockyards were thriving, and horse-driven streetcars were facilitating the growth of a young metropolis which wanted nothing more at that time than to be bigger and better than her rivals of Leavenworth and St. Joseph. But one of the biggest changes taking place in 1870 is the grading of the streets.  In 1870 the city was literally being flattened.  Before the streets were graded, buildings along the road used to sit high upon hills and cliffs.  Here's what Baltimore Avenue looked like, for example:

 

After the streets were graded, that same scene looked very much like it does today:

My favorite thing about the news from 1870 is that I'm typing the words from Col. Van Horn's paper, back when he was running the show.  If you click on his name above, you can learn a lot about one of Kansas City's foremost statesman.  My favorite Col. Van Horn story isn't found there, though.  It was taken from his obituary in 1916, concerning the time when he, as Mayor of Kansas City during the Civil War, left town unexpectedly one day:

When Mayor Van Horn left the city the “secessionists” loudly proclaimed that he had fled to avoid the consequences of his well known Unionist sympathies. But when he returned at the head of federal troops and organized a loyal battalion, becoming post commander of the military post of Kansas City as well as chief executive of the civil municipality, a different tune was heard.

The humorous part of the story extends over into the dual personality of Colonel Van Horn who, as post commandant, cordially aided and abetted the efforts of Mayor Van Horn to maintain peace and order. It is doubtful if any mayor ever received heartier support from the military authorities than did Mayor Van Horn at the hands of then Major Van Horn, post commandant.

One of the greatest services rendered by Colonel Van Horn to this immediate community and to the entire West was his action in bringing about the occupation of Kansas City by Union forces, thus saving not only Kansas City from immediate capture by the Confederates but, in the judgment of impartial historians, preventing the overthrow of Kansas itself and its loss to the cause of freedom. Colonel Van Horn himself always modestly minimized his own part in this series of events, but the verdict of history has long been that Kansas City and Kansas owe him a debt which no possible honors that could have been heaped upon him could have ever measurably repaid.

So enjoy the old news from Col. Van Horn's paper, published daily, Monday through Saturday, as I get around to it. 

Falling in Love with Tony Curtis

Though I am a life-long fan of old movies, Tony Curtis didn't really hit my radar until a few years ago, when I saw this brief video tribute he made to Cary Grant (another of my life's few true loves) for Turner Classic Movies. I became a super-fan that day. Watch this; it's good:


There is an "up" side to falling in love with old movie stars (besides a wealth of cinema classics to be discovered and treasured) ... it gives me more people to look forward to meeting up in Heaven, when my work is done here. Between visiting with my lost loved ones and friends, Sam Lieberman, the Princess of Wales, my ancestors, and a countless list of historical characters and dead celebrities (in that order), I shall be very busy on the other side of the Pearly Gates. It's just as well I will have all of eternity to undertake this.

Rest in Peace Tony Curtis.