Charles C. Patton Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

University of Illinois at Springfield
Norris L Brookens Library
Archives/Special Collections
Charles C. Patton Memoir
P278C. Patton, Charles C. b. 1916
Interview and memoir
4 tapes, 315 mins., 76 pp.
Charles C. Patton, electrical engineer, discusses Springfield in the early and mid
20th century: his family, Sangamo Electric Company, service with the U.S. Navy
during WWII, the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation and politics.
Interview by Eugenia Eberle, 1992
OPEN
See collateral file: photocopies of articles.
Archives/Special Collections LIB 144
University of Illinois at Springfield
One University Plaza, MS BRK 140
Springfield IL 62703-5407
© 1992, University of Illinois Board of Trustees

CHARLES C. PATTON MEMOIR
COPYRIGHT @ 1992 SANGAMON STATE UNIVERSITY, SPRINGFIELD. ILLINOIS
All rkbnsarwd. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic
or m ~hanjd~ including photocopying and recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without
pcrrn~oaion in writing from the Oral Hicbry Office, hngunon Sub University. Sprindiald, Illinois 62794.9243.

PREFACE
This manuscript is the prodcut of tape-recorded interviews
Eugenia Eberle for the Oral History office, Sangamon State LJniversit
in the winter of 1992. The material was also transcribed and edit
from the tapes.
Charles Christopher Patton was born January 6, 1916 in Springfield,
Illinois, and graduated from the University of Michigan in 1939 with
a degree in electrical engineering. He grew up in the stimulating
atmosphere of the elite of Springfield. The great, grandson of
Charles Lanphier, editor and owner of the Illinois State Register, ;
his life revolved around illustrious histskiam. His father was the '
founder of the Springfield Medical Group, and a leader in the community.
The third of four sons, Chris was employed by the Sangamo Electric
Company in the Engineering Department before Wll. He served four
years in the United States Navy as an Anti-Submarine Warfare Expert ,
and returned to Springfield in 1946 where he resumed his employment
with the Sangamo Electric Company developing patents until he retire
in 1977, Chris is an avid sailor and an accomplished horseman. H
is an early member of the Lewis 6 Clark Trail Heritage Foundation
and author of "Glory to God and the Sucker Democracyv1.
Eugenia Eberle grew up in Haverford, Pennsylvania where she earned an
athletic scholarship to the University of Virginia. Her interest in
Journalism allowed her to write for the Arab News while living in
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for six years with her husband, now at SIU.
hther of four grown children, her civic interests and involvement in
hseum Studies have led her into a fascination with Oral History.
Readers of this oral history memoir should bear in mind that it is a
transcript of the spoken word, and that the interviewer, narrator and
editor sought to preserve the informal conversational style that is
inherent in such historical sources. Sangamon State TJniversity is not
responsible for the factual accuracy of the memoir, nor for views
expressed therein; these are for the reader to judge.
The manuscript may be read, quoted and cited freely. It may not be
reproduced in whole or in part by any means, electronic or mechanical
without permission in writing from the Oral History Office, Sangamon
State University, Springfield, Tllinois, 62708.

January 28, February 4,11,25, March 5,12, 1992 in his h
29 Linden Lane, Springfield, Illinois, 62707.
Eugenia Eberle, interviewer
Chris, what is your real name?
Charles Christopher.
And, were you named after someone?
I was named after my father's roommate in college.
Who was that?
His name was Dr. Christopher Parnall.
Where was he from?
He was from New York State.
Where did your father go to college?
University of Michigan. Graduated in 1902.
Did he know him forever, through the years? Did you know him
well?
I think they met in college and they knew each other and were
very close ever since. Both are dead now, of course.
Q. What year were you born?
A. I was born in 1916, January 6th.
Q. Where were you born?
A. I was born in Springfield in my father's house on ~elanQ
Avenue. I
Q. And what number in the family were you?
A. I was the third child.
Q. Who was before you?
A. My oldest brother is Bob, and my next oldest brother w+s Jim
and my youngest brother is John.
Q. So there were four boys, no daughters?
A. No daughters.
1
I
!
I
I

And what are they doing now?
Well, my oldest brother is retired, next brother is de
youngest brother is retired.
Then there's Bob.
He w as my oldest brother. He's retired
What did he do?
He was a dactor.
Here in Springfield ?
Hare in Springfield. He was in business with my father
And then, what did you do ?
2
d and
A. I was an electrical engineer. Graduated from the University
of Michigan in 1939. Went to work for the Sangamo Electric
Company.
Q. Is that in existence today?
A. No. It was bought out by Schlumberger which is a French
outfit whose home offices are in Paris, France.
Q. How did you feel about that?
A. Well, I thought it was terrible that Springfield shoul
i
lose
that kind of manufacturer and a good deal of this was the fault
of Springfield.
Q. Was it political?
A. It was a question of wages, mostly.
Q. What year was that?
A. What year was what?
Tad""
Q. What year did they close? were they bought out?
A. 19. . 1 was 62 at the time, so when was 162. My
not working. . .it was 1978. That's when I retired. The c mpany
was bought two years earlier, 1976.
Q. What exactly was this company you worked for?
A. It was a manufacturer, primarily, of watt-hour meters The
watt hour meter is the meter on the side of your haus{ that

i
measures the amount of electricity you use. But, they als were
deeply involved in capacitors, and in tape recorders and in sonar
equipment. We got deeply involved in sonar equipment duri g the
war (WWII). Started before the war, actually, with confracts
from the Canadian Government to build Navy equipment for "nti-
Submarine Warfare.
Q. So you went there right after the war? j
A. No, I went there before the war. I graduated in '39, and
went to work immediately and I didn't go into the service until
August, 1942.
Q. Tell me a little bit about your childhood. Did four boy^ get
into a lot of scraps?
A. Oh, I suppose. We were. . . all of us, but my oldest
brother, were born in that house at 1645 Leland Avenue. MY
father built the house. It's a Georgian style brick house
designed by George Helmle, who was a friend of ours, and built in
1912,. I believe. So my oldest brother, Bob, wasn't born there.
He was born in the house on South 5th Street which still stands.
But the rest of us were born in that house. Babies weren't born
in hospitals then. They were delivered at home.
Q. Now, South 5th Street was close to the Dana House?
A. No, the Dana House is on Lawrence and 4th, which is a long
way from South 5th.
Q. Was your father, . .what is your heritage exactly. Cou'd
1
you
give me a little genealogy?
A. Wall, my father's mother was the oldest child of Char es H.
Lanphier who was the owner/editor of the Illinois State Re inter
here in Springfield. He came from Auburn or outside of A burn.
He grew up on a farm there. So what more do you want? 1
Q. I want a little bit of Scottish history. Scotch-Irish
history.
A. Well, I don't have much. The Patton line were Scots, but
after helping colonize the Ulster Plantation in Northern Ireland,
they intermarried with the Irish, and became known as Scotch-
Irish. I think they were mostly Orangemen and in the early
1700's I guess, they moved to the United States. So theq were
here quite early.
Q. What about the old farm house in Ireland that still exis ?
A. What you're talking about is Croghan, this picture
the northwest corner of Ireland. One of the
I
i
T

family lived there. I think, William Patton, son of
Patton, who lived in a manor called Springfield.
Q. Have you ever visited there?
A. No, I have not. I've been in Ireland during the wa
only up in Belfast.
Q. Do you have any aspirations to go see this little farmh
A. No, I have no aspirations to leave the United States.
8. You've had enough of the rest of the world.
James
, but
use?
A. Yes, I've seen enough, There's lots to see in the United
States still that I haven't seen.
8. You are right, and more people should realize that. What was
your mother like?
A. Well, she was a very. . . she was Irish. Her father came
from Ireland, directly. Her father, Robert W. Jess, was, what
should I say, raised in County Down, and he hopped a freighter
for the States and landed in New Yosk, went to work in a brick
yard and then, when they didn't pay him, he emigrated west, and
ended up in Springfield where his older brother, John, ran a
candy store on Washington Street between 4th and 5th, and then
from Springfield, he went out and got a jab in Riverton in the
coal mines. I guess, he did pretty well because he en+d up
owning several coal mines. He had seven children, and died at
forty nine of appendicitis. In those days, they didn't knoM what
appendicitis was. He was out of town on business and in a hptel.
He wrote letters to his wife describing his condition,
this we could deduce that he had appendicitis. The
he wrote said that his pain had subsided and that he
c~nsiderably better. That, of course, was when
burst. The next day, he was dead, but he did
little old Irishman.
Q. When were your parents married?
A. They were married in 1904, I think it was. Here in
Springfield.
Q Wow did they meet?
A. Oh, bath lived here in town.
Q. Oh, they were both from Springfield?
A. She. . . (gets up to show me a silver engraved piece
.this was a gift, a wedding gift. 1904. She lived in a hou

the corner of 2nd and Lawrence. The house still stands.
office building now. And he lived in the house on
Street. I guess he met her at the many parties and
they had in those days.
Q. Somewhere along the line there's a relationship between
Lanphier and your grandfather.
A. My paternal grandmother was a Lanphier. She was the daughter
of Charles Henry Lanphier who was the editor of the Illinois
State Register. My earliest recollection was of my father coming
home from WWI. He was a surgeon, and joined the Army and spent
most of the war in Chattanooga taking care of the solders who
were stricken with the influenza in 1917, and he said they just
died like flies, and that they carried them into the hospital as
fast as they could carry them out. He didn't sail for Prance
until Armistice Day on November 11, 1918, and he was over there
for about nine months. He did do some surgery in taking care of
some of the wounded solders, but mostly it turned out to be a
nice vacation trip because he got to tour around Fran~e and
Belgium. He even went over into Switzerland and down into Italy.
He came back, as I said, in about August 1919, so he wasn't over
there very long. I remember when he came home, we went to the
railroad station in the family automobile which, I believe, was
an old Oakland, and of course, I was only about three and a half
at the time.
Q. What's an Oakland? Never heard of an Oakland.
A. It's an Oakland automobile. It's an old, old kind
I
of
automobile. And I, of course, was not real impressed wjth my
father because I probably didn't remember him, but was
impressed with the problem we had with the automobile, gett'ng it
started to go home, and then my father, . . I think it as an
open touring car, and I remember him reaching in the fr nt to
pull some levers, probably a choke and the throttle, and then
going araund to the front, and cranking the damn thing to et it
started. I don't remember much more about that, but I do
remember John Pershing. He was my hero, and I read everything
that came out in the newspapers, and the books that were printed
about WW1. I read about John Pershing. He was the Commander in
Chief of the Allied Forces in France, and he was the one who,when
they landed, said "Lafsyette, Nous sornrnes ici." And I remember
having a large rota-gravure picture of Pershing hanging on the
wall in my roam. But some of the other early things that I
remember was the way I was dressed, I had to wear panty^ aists
with long stockings, It had snaps on the pantywaist to hol d the
stockings up, and I hated the pantywaist, I remember. And over
that was a kind of a blouse which was almost like a dress.
Q. Little Lord Fauntleroy?

A. No, it wasn't Lord Fauntleroy. And I remember the long
stockings and the high buttoned shoes, and we had button
I don't know whether you remember button hooks, but they u ed to
button up the shoes. You reached through the hole witd this
hook, grabbed the button, pulled it through the hole. Thbt was
before we had laces. I didn't like buttoned shoes either. ! But,
most of all, I didn't like pantywaist. And then, I remeqber I
had a sailor suit with a dickey, and I didn't like the dickey and
the big collar. I did like the whistle that went with the suit,
and I remember that. As I grew up, I remember there were several
in the neighborhood who were my age. One who lived across the
street was Marnie Lanphier, whose father was president of the
Sangamo Electric Company. Across the street, also, was Henry
Bum, whose father owned the Illinois Watch Company, and he was
my age. And then there was, over on the other end of the block
on Wiggins and Ruth Place, the Connellys. Jack Connelly was my
age, and his father ran the Connelly Chevrolet Company h+re in
town. He was a Chevrolet dealer, and we were all quitefclose
when we were young and played together a lot.
I remember we had a. , . my father had a chicken coop where
he raised chickens, and he had a cow for milk for the kids, and
he raised rabbits for the purpose of determining whether ladies
were pregnant or not and he raised guinea pigs. He had hired a
man who lived in the garage. The hired man was a handsome
Irishman with a white mustache, and he spoke with an Irish
brogue,and he smoked a pipe, a corn cob pipe, I think, and I
remember the little house he lived in, a little room that he
lived in, in the garage that just smelled very strongly of
tobacco, but he was a good gardener, he milked the cow, and he
killed the chickens for sunday dinner, and he taught me hqw to
kill the chickens, how to wring their neck, and I would o out
there and wring their necks and watch them flop all over. Then
one day, the cow kicked the gardener whose name was Tom Co ners.
Broke his arm and so we got rid of the cow and didn't have a cow
anymore. That was the last of the cow. 1
I remember one night, a bunch of the neighborhood dods got
together and broke down the fence into the rabbit warrdn and
killed all the rabbits. That was the end of the rabbit 4hing.
And we had a sand pile out in back of the garage (incidentally,
the house was right on the edge of the city). The city limit line
went along the west side of the yard, so there was nothing
between our house and the Illini Country Club, just an empty lot.
There was a sand pile out there, and I remember playing in that
sand pile. We all had little trucks and cars and thiqgs we
pushed around. We had, I remember, specifically a Fqrdson
tractor that was propelled by a spring which you would wind,up by
pushing the thing backwards, then letting it go. I suspect we
got this Fordson tractor from Mr. Connelly whose Chevrolet
Company was next door to the Ford Agency there on 4tH and
Jackson. Frank Jennings ran the Ford Agency, and he alss sold
tractors, I gueas, and I think that's where the Fordson t actor
toy came from. 4

Mr. Connelly also employed a colored man by the
eaT
nqme of
Moore, and Mr.Moare lived on Leland Avenue just
MacArthur, which at that time was called W e s t Grand Avenue. Mr.
Moore had a son who was our age, a colored boy, and his na e was
Arnold. Arnold played with us all the time, went to schoo with Of
us, and he was the only colored boy in our class at school. We
went to the Butler School and when I entered the first grade at
the Butler School, the building which stands there now, was just
being completed. The first grade was convened in what was called
the "portable school house" on the corner of the lot there. It
had been moved from the corner of MacArthur and South Grand
Avenue, the south west corner, and my
school in that building when it was
dawn to where the Butler School was
older brother had gone to
there. Then it was moved
being built and the first
grade started out in the "portable school house." After sqveral
weeks of the ''portable school house" the first grade was moved
into the new building, and I remember the teacher lining up all
the kids. Everybody had to carry books or something, and we all
went in a line, one after the other, from the portable school
house into the new school and into our new first grade class.
That portable school house was subsequently taken down again and
moved onto the property where the current Springfield High School
now is. It was moved onto the north side of the property and was
used as a school for sickly kids. Kids who might have had
emphysema or respiratory diseases went there because there were a
lot of windows in this portable school house, and they always
left them open. Kids who went there had to have naps, two or
three times a day, and milk, and they were taken care of
differently than the other kids. I suspect that, that. . . I
don't know whether that portable school house is still there now
or not, but there is a building there. It may have been torn
down and destroyed.
Q. So w ere you the first class in Butler School about 1922?
A. W e were the first, First Grade Class in Butler School, and
then we went through the sixth grade. Then we moved to Lawrence
School because Butler School only had six grades. We went two
years t o Lawrence School then we moved to the junior high school
which was the old high school before the current Springfield High
School building was built. It was just a block east, where the
internal revenue people are now. We went far one year in that
building, then we moved into the new high school building where
we had the remaining three years of high schoal. The freshmen
were called "cooties1', so all the "cooties" lived in that old
building. It has been torn down. It looked like a castle with
minarets. It was a brick building, big, four stories, I believe,
had a gymnasium on the top floor. I played on the football team
in high school, played tackle, and we happened to have a good
team in those years, and we wan what was called "The Big Twelve
Conference". In those days, we won a ll three years, and after we
left, they lost the next year.

Q. Well, you must have had something to do with that?
A. Well, I played tackle, I did my part. We had a lot o
that were pretty good.
8
kids
Q. How about those friends of yours? Lanphier, and. . . were
they on the same team? Did they play?
A. No. Henry Bunn, who lived across the street from me, was my
age. His father, as I say, was the owner of the Illinois Watch
Company which was the founder of the Sangamo Electric Compgny. .
. and I won't go into the story of that, but Henry had an older
brother named Jacob, and Jacob was my next older brother's age,
and he had a younger sister whose name was Millie, and I think
she is still alive, but the rest of the Bunna are all dead. But,
Mr. Bunn died. Mr. Bunn was a very close friend of my father's
and also a close friend of Rob Lanphier's who lived next d ~or to
Mr. Bunn, across the street from us, and Mr. Lanphier was, of
course, my father's cousin, and they used to play golf at the
Illini Country Club, and none of them were very good. At that
time, the holes. . . the layout of the golf club was not the same
as it is now. But anyhow, they'd get along to about the 9th hole
and that was right alon$ side of Jake Bunn's house, and they
decided they'd better go over to Jake Bunn's house and have a
drink before they finish golf, and of course, they'd,never
finish, but they had a good time.
Q. Were they instrumental in getting the club put together?
A. The club was there before they came. I don't think they were
the originators of the Country Club. I
I
think the Countr Club
was originated by an older generation.
Q. It's that old then?
I
A. Oh, yes. And, Mr. Bunn finally died, and I don't know w at it
d was he died of, but I remember, for weeks, he had the hiccu s and
he couldn't get rid of them, and he finally died, and he d ed in
1926. And his wife, then sold the Illinois Watch Company to the
Hamilton Watch Company for seven million dollars, and thpn the
crash came in 1927. So, she ended up in pretty good shape, and
my friend Henry, whom we all called Hen, was a very ingcniaus
kind of guy, and you wouldn't know he was a rich boy because he
was always working on mechanical things and getting dirty and
what not, and we built all kinds of carts and little automobiles,
we called them "chugs" and various kinds of things, tree houses
and caves, and he was always part of it. I remember one tiqe, he
was building something, and he had a piece of wire that he anted
to cut aff, so he took the piece of wire, got an ax, la I d the
wire on the stump, and took the ax to cut off the wire'and
instead of that, he cut off the end of his finger. He took the
end of his finger and put it in his hand and ran into the house

to his mother and said, "Hey,mom, what'll I do with it?" nd of
course, Mrs. Bunn about fainted. Fortunately, my fath 4 r was
home, so they went across the street to my father and my dather
took the end of his finger and stuck it back on with some
adhesive tape, and the damn thing grew. (laughter) That wqs his
experience there.
Q. Was he able to use it?
A. Yes. He just cut off the end of it, beyond the end of the
first knuckle. He was very mechanical. Had a little motor driven
automobile called the t'Redbug". Brought it from Bud Vredenberg.
It had four wheels and a platform, and the fifth wheel on the
back on which was mounted onto a gasoline engine and a driver
that drove the fifth wheel, we ran all over town with that, and
as he grew older, he didn't go to high school here. He was sent
away to Lawrenceville. Only common people went to high school,
and he didn't do very well, and they brought him back home, and
while I was in high school, I suppose in my senior year, he
bought himself an airplane. It was a WACO, W A C 0. That was a
type of bi-wing airplane with open cockpit, one cockpit in the
front of the other, and two wings. He learned to be a pretty
good pilot, and he used to call me up on the telephone and say,
"hey, come on, let's go out fly ing." So we'd go out to the
southwest airport which was out south of Wabash on Old Cbatham
Road, in between two railroad tracks. It's all built up with
houses now, and they have some of the old airport buildings still
there. Anyhow, I'd go flying with him and back in those days,
there weren't any laws against aerobatics, so he wouldn't
hesitate to try all the wing-overs and the loop-the-loops,
Immelmanns, and spins. Oh, it made me sick, spinning in.
I remember one time, he called me up and said, "Hey,, come
on, I've got to go down to St. Louis and swing
i
the co pass.
Well, swinging the compass meant that you had to calibra e the
compass. It was done in St. Louis where they had a concre e pad
with a big circle on it, with an X in the middle of the c rcle.
You put the airplane in the circle and lined it up with th line
that pointed north, then you got in your plane and you s t the
compass. And that was. . . but going down there, he'd g down
hedge-hopping. And I mean Literally hedge-hopping. Over the
telephone wires, over hedges, up and down, and he didn't have to
navigate. He'd just follow the Chicago-Alton railroad. That's
what took us there. That's what Lindberg did. I repember
Lindberg coming over. Of course, he didn't use the same aihport,
he used another airport which was. . well, it wasn't an
airport, it was just an empty field out west of town.
remember watching him fly the mail over in this big. . . Wtll, 1,don't I
remember what kind of an airplane it was, but I remember t was
painted green and the pilot sat way back in the tail, and 1 t had
exhaust pipes an it, and it always came through from Chicago in
the late evening, taking the late Chicago mail to St. Louis and
the flames from the exhaust pipes were visible as he went over.

1 I guess sometimes he landed in Springfield, but not always.
Well, anyhow, Jack Connelly, who was one of the other kids,
the three of us were born the same year, also became inte ested lo
in aircraft, and he learned how to fly. He became a heliqopter
pilot and flew helicopters during the war, and after the war, he
also flaw helicopters in the east until he retired. He's dead
now, but he flew for Wiggins Airways, which is out in
Massachusetts, and used the helicopters for flying along the
power lines, and spraying herbicides on the cranberry bogs.
However, as I was going to college, Henry was, I don't know what
he did. . . I think he went out west to school somewhere for a
couple of years, but anyhow, when the United States gat inho the
war, or before the United States got into the war, he joinad the
Canadian Air Force, teaching kids how to fly airplanes. Whqn the
United States came into the war, he transferred from the Canadian
Air Force to the United States Air Force and went into flying
fortresses. Well, before he left his squadron in Canada, he
decided to give a party for all these kids. He went into town, I
think it was Toronto or Montreal, I can't remember, but he went
into the biggest hotel, went to the manager and said, "I want to
rent your second floor for the weekend."
The manager looked at this young man and said, "Do you have
enough money to pay for it?"
And he said, "Well, yeah."
"Do you have any references I can call?"
Well* you can call my banker down in Springfield." At the
time, it was Jib Bunn, his uncle, who was President of the Marine
Bank
And so, this hotel manager called the Marine Bank and asked
for the President, and said, "There's this young man here who
wants to rent the second floor of our hotel for the weekend. Can
he pay for it?
And Jib said, "If that young man wants to buy your hotel,
this bank will stand behind him." (laughter)
So he rented the second floor, bought all the booze, apd he
gave these kids a big party before he left. He then went! into
the United States Air Force, and was in training for fpying
fortresses, the B17. He was a pilot, and as the pilot was o 1 his
last crass country training flight, taking off from an air ield
in Kansas, the plane iced up and crashed on take-off. Kille
ten of them. So that was the end of him. At the time,
already Joined the Navy, and was in Boston at the Charle
Navy Yard when 1 got word that he'd been killed. Too bad, '
he was quite a guy. Well, what else do you want to know?
Q. While you were in the service, what kind of experience
you have? Did you ever meet anyone that might be of interes
A. Well, I joined the service in August of '42, 1 guess it
and I'd been working for the Sangamo Electric Company and
some work with Anti-Submarine Warfare Devices that the Sa
Electric Company was making far the Canadian Navy, and also

for the United States Navy. They put me into the Anti-Sub arine
Warfare instructors school in the Charlestown Navy Yakd in
Boston. I didn't go into any basic training at all, jus went
from civilian life right into the Navy as an Ensign. I went
through that school, then I was sent to a school in Key West,
Florida, then I was sent from there to school in San Diego, and
then back to Boston, and then I was sent to sea. I was on the
staff of a task force commander. His name was Headden. He was a
Captain with a temporary rank of Commodore. They had the rank of
Commodore during the war, but don't have it any more. He was the
head of a task force of fifteen destroyers that we used for
convoying troops and munitions across the Atlantic. Well, I'm
getting ahead of myself. Before I was attached to him, I was
attached to a Destroyer, the USS TILLMAN, for my first war
cruise, and we went across the North Atlantic to England in the
winter, and it was rough! It was just terribly rough. It was so
rough that most of all our chinaware was broken by the time we
got across, and I remember we went up to the. . . we were
convaying troops on big troop ships, and they went fast. As a
matter of fact, they went so fast that the destroyers could not
zig zag and keep up with them, so we just went straight. It was
so rough, you couldn't do much with your sonar, so mostly what
we'd do was to look out for mines, and we did spot quite a few
mines, and blew 'em up. But we came around the northern tip of
Ireland and into the Irish sea, and deposited the troop ships at
Liverpool. We then went up the Irish sea, and tied up in Belfast
Harbor. A strange coincidence, there was a young man at the
Sangamo Electric Company who worked in the maintenance
department, and his name was Agee, Bill Agse. Anyhow, we tied up
in Belfast. .
END OF SIDE ONE. TAPE ONE
. . . Chinese fashion. Chinese fashion means that you tied up
along side, bow to stern. And we tied up outboard of two lother
destrayers, and I looked across to the next destroyer to u
there was Bill Agee standing there. He was a sailor.
quite a conversation there for a little bit.
Q. From ship to ship?
A. From ship to ship. And I haven't seen him since. Don't know
what happened to him. We got to go ashare there in Belfast.
They had the yellow alert up most of the time we were there.
That meant there was a likelihood of an air raid, so all the
ships had to have a ready gun manned, but we still were a e to
go ashore for a little bit af a leave and the doctor, I thi k it
was, and T went ashore and wandered around Belfast. Then, we
took one of those funny little trains out into the countr side
and stopped at some little town, and I don't remember wha the
name of it was, and stopped and went into a pub to get a eer.
There weren't any other people about, there was just the Iri hman
T

there and the Irish waitress that brought us the beer.
talking with her and I asked her if there were any other
we
Americans around,and she said, "Well, only the dark ones.
she was talking about were the negro troops, that were appa#ently
stationed up around that part of Ireland.
Q Negro troops?
A. These weren't troops that were all negro, they were just
troops that had a lot of negroes in them along with white p4ople.
They weren't like in the Civil War where you had .negro
battalions.
Q. There were American troops in Ireland?
A. Yeah, they were stationed there. . . this was before the
invasion of France, of course, and they were building up the
troops for the invasion.
It was Thanksgiving Day, I remember, when we tied up. The name
of the ship was the USS TILLMAN. She was a relatively new
destroyer which had been named after a previous destroyer by the
name of TILLMAN which was so old, she'd been scrapped in 1930, 1
think it was. It so happened that my father's cousin, Alf
Lanphier, who was an Annapolis graduate, was the Captain of that
ship when she was de-commissioned. So it was quite a coincidence
that my first ship would have the same name as his. Anyhow, we
tied up, and when all the lines were fast, the Captain called all
the officers up to his quarters. He said he thought we ought to
have a drink to celebrate Thanksgiving and to celebrate having
made it safely across the Atlantic. He had a carton of these
little bottles of whiskey in his stateroom, which was illegal,
because liquor was not allowed aboard US ships, although $t was
allowed on British ships. So we each had a little bottle of
whiskey and we drank
1
to our safe arrival and to Thanksg ving.
And then he got feeling sorry for the crew because they idn't
have anything to celebrate with. The Captain called the m dical
officer over and said "well, go fix something up for the rew,"
The medical officer went down to his medical supplies an got
these five gallon tins of pure grain alcohol, went in o the
galley where they had these huge stainless steel tubs for haking
mashed potatoes, and began to pour the alcohol in and cans of
grapefruit juice and cans of grape juice, and anything else he
could get his hands on, and there were no cups left aboard
because it was such a rough crossing that all the cups were
broken. But they did have stowed away some soup bowls. 80 the
crew got soup bowls and lined up around this tub of alcohol and
dipped in,and you can imagine it wasn't very long before the crew
was so drunk, that if there'd been an air raid, they wouldn't
have gotten a shot fired, I'm sure. It was really quite comical.
But anyhow, everything went all right.
We had expected to return to New York, but our orders were
changed and we were assigned escort duty for a convoy of broops

going into the Mediterranean destined for the invasion of qicily
and Italy. We weren't supplied with enough food for an exQended
cruise, no we stocked up with what they had in Ireland whidh was
mostly fish. But, I remember coming in to New Yark, it was so
foggy, we couldn't see anything, and as we crossed the. . . I
guess it was the gulf stream, and came out of the gulf stream,
the air changed real fast, and dropped about twenty degrees in na
time at all, and we were watching the depth finder and you could
see the continental shelf as we came across it till we knew where
we were, and then we came into New York Harbor, tied up in the
Brooklyn Naval Yard, and I went ashore. I remember I had a
horrible craving for orange juice. See, w e didn't have a lot of
fresh fruits aboard. Orange juice seemed to be the best thing I
could get hold of as soon as I could when we got ashore, so I
went into Union Station, went up to a restaurant, short order
counter or something, and got a glass of orange juice. It didn't
taste as good as I thaught it was going to, but it was good.
Then, I went on and got a room in the Hotel Commodore. My
father's cousin, Alf Lanphier, at that time was head of the port
of New York, he was working for the Navy, and he lived there in
New York City, and so I went to see him at his apartment. He
took me out to dinner, and we went to a play. I forget what it
was. South Pacific, I think it was, but I'm not sure.
Then, after that cruise, I was assigned to a Task Force
Commander. His name was William Headdan from Tennessee, and he
was as graduate of the Naval Academy, Annapolis, and I gather
that when he was in school, his nickname was "ZekeH,and they
called him llZeke" because he was from Tennessee, but durisg the
war, his code name on the radio was "Zeke". I was assigned to him
as his Anti-Submarine Warfare Specialist. I was on his staff,
and there were four people on his staff. We had me as an Anti-
Submarine Warfare Officer, a Communications Officer, and
Intelligence Officer, and, can't remember what the other guy was,
but there were four of us, and we would move from ship to ship.
He's have his flag on one destroyer and we'd be with hip, and
then maybe the next convoy, he'd have his flag on another ship.
I remember, one time we came back from a convoy we'd been on
in the Mediterranean, I believe, and we tied up in Norfolk,
Virginia. We were waiting for another convoy to be assembled to
escort across to the Mediterranean. This was a time when the
United States Forces were driving Rommell out of North Africa
into Sicily and then into Italy. While we were tied up, waiting
for this anvoy to be assembled, there was a destroyer that was
assigned 9 o our task force as the flag ship, and it had just come
out of the South Pacific. It had been caught down there, when
the war began in the Pacific, and it had been down there for over
a year just running mail between the islands, and it was @n old
destroyer built just after WW1. It was a riveted construction,
not welded. They'd decided to bring her back to the States for
overhaul, and when the ship landed in California, guess it was
San Diago, they lost quite a few men over the hill. The men got

.I so tired of being down in the South Pacific, they wanted to go
home, so they'd just jump ship. The ship then went down
through the Panama Canal and up to Norfolk, and every plac they
stopped, why they'd lose men over the hill.
Q. They just left?
A. They just left,. and were deserters.
Q Well, didn't they track them down?
A. I suppose they did which is unimportant to my story.
She was assigned to us as a flag ship, and so, while we were
waiting in Norfolk Harbor, this Task Force Commander, Commodore
Headden, got a hold of me and said, "Now, I want you to ride this
ship, I'm going to send her up to Casco Bay for exercises,"
Casco Bay was up in Maine, and this was a good place where ships
went to practice gunnery, anti-submarine warfare, and all kinds
of other exercises. He said, "I want you to ride her. Get me
know how she does." So, For ten days, I rode this destroyer up
to Casco Bay and we went through all the anti-aircraft firing
exercises, and the shore bombardment. There's an island out
there that we blew up. I guess the Navy blew it up regularly with
gunnery practice. We had fire drills, and anti-submarine warfare
drills, and anything else you can think of. Then we came back.
I was not much impressed with this boat. The moral was bad. It
didn't have a PA system in it. Word was passed by the bo's'n
going up and dawn the various decks blowing his bo's'n's pipe,
signalling the crew what they should be doing. It did have a
general quarter's alarm, which was a bell system, but go PA
system. Their anti-submarine warfare equipment was in teqrible
shape, and was old to begin with, and it hadn't been maintqned,
and their gunnery practice was terrible.
When we got back to Norfolk, I reported to the Task Force
Commander, and told him what I'd seen, and he said "All right,
I'll call an inspection." So he called an inspection on this
ship, so he went aboard, and I guess, spent four hours inspecting
this ship,. and he found a broken tooth in the reduction gear.
He decided that the ship was not battle worthy and that he
not take it, which was his privilege to do, so he telegraph Fould d to
Cinclant, that's the Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Fleet,
and he eajd, "This ship is not battle worthy, and I wila not
accept her as my flag ship." So he left her, and he moved his
flag onto a little DE, and we went across the South Atlantic with
a convoy, with he and his staff on board this little DE.
Needless to say, it was crowded. And when we got to gbout
opposite the Azores, we picked up a distress signal from this
ship. The ship's name was the USS WARRINGTON. She had gottPn in
a storm, south of Bermuda, not sure whether it was in the Betmuda
triangle or not, but she got into this storm and her main deck
broke open right over the main electrical panel, ~horte:~:ur the
electrical panel, and all power to the steering went

oadside to the seas and capsized. They lost almost all. She
had been aesigned to a coastal convoy by Cinclant, and that's why
she was there, south of Bermuda. I had arranged for a friqd of
mine who I had met at the Anti-Submarine Warfare Instructors
School to go aboard this ship to help them with their anti-
submarine warfare practices and to help them with maintaining
their equipment and their depth charges and that sort of thing,
and he was lost.
[After the war, I was talking with a friend in Springfield
about the SS WARRINGTON, and he said he remembered the incident.
He had been on a baby flat-top at the time and his ship was sent
aut to rescue, and as a matter of fact, when they arrived on the
scene, he was ordered to command one of the lifeboats thqt was
put over the side to pick up survivors. He said the sea was full
of sailors in their life jackets and they all looked to be alive,
but when they pulled alongside each and hauled him aboard, there
was nothing left below the waist. The sharks had gotten them
all.] Anyhow, we went into the Mediterranean, and at that time,
the Germans were in France, and we had to go through the Straits
of Gibraltar of course, to get into the Mediterranean. Morocco
was across the Straits from the Rock of Gibraltar which was held
by the British, but Spanish Morocco was neutral. Of course it
was full of German spies and these spies, of course, would see
these convoys coming through the straits, and they'd radio up to
the German Air Force up in Brest of France, wherever they were to
say, "There's a big convoy coming through the Straits". Well,
the next night, we'd get hit every time by these bombers that
would come down from France.
I remember one time when we got hit one night and this was
when I was on the TILLMAN, and we had a troop ship that got hit
in the stern by a torpedo. It was launched by a German bomber
and she was disabled and she was in a sinking condition, and it
was a dark night, you could barely see the moon through the haze,
and there was a heavy swell which was the aftermath of
storm, but the sea was oily, slick with those huge swells, d we
$ had to proceed along the coast of North Africa past Or big and
Algiers through a channel that was marked on our maps th@t was
clear of mines, as so we were restricted as to where we could go.
I expect this channel was maybe a mile wide, but we had to stay
in the middle of the channel, and I remember. . . the radar
picking up,these aircraft coming in to attack the convoy, and I
remember the ships firing with tracer bullets. The air was just
full of tracers. Every ship was firing and they were even firing
at the moon because they couldn't see the aircraft. They just
knew that the radar was saying that it was at such and such a
bearing.
But, at any rate, this troop ship was hit at the stern with
a torpedo and began to sink, so they began to abandon ship. The
ship I was on was not the flag ship. We were sent to go aver and
rescue these people, do what we could. They were trying to
abandon ship and they had gotten life boats aver in heavy spell,
they'd gotten a lot of life rafts out, and we pulled along1 side

1
of this big ocean liner, the SANTA HELENA, but with the heavy
swell, everything was all right when the two ships rocke the
same way, but when they began to rock against each other, w were
pounding the hell out of the super structure on the dest oyer.
The destroyer was much lower than the troop ship so we had to
pull away, and we, we let them all abandon ship in these life
rafts, and the life rafts all had sea water activated lights on
them so when the life raft was thrown into the water, the sea
water activated this little light and it would start blinking and
the ocean was just full of blinking lights all over everywhere.
So we started moving around from life raft tom life raft, picking
up people out of the water. The modus operandi was to come along
side of the life raft and then a big bos'n's mate would stand
astraddle of the rail, and as the ship rolled, the wave carried
the life raft up, almost level with the deck. See,
deck on a destroyer is very low to the water anyhow.
the after
Then this
bos'n would grab some guy by the scruff of his neck and put his
hand under his crotch and hoist him aboard. Then, he would wait
for the next wave and get the next guy, and this worked just
fine.
We began pulling people in, and we came along side one raft
and began the same procedure. The bos'n leaned over and grabbed
this guy by the neck, shoved his hand in his crotch and started
to hoist him aboard and there was this horrible scream and he
dropped him, and it turned out these weren't solders at all,
these were Canadian Army nurses (laughter) and, of course, they
were all dresaed in the same uniform as the soldiers, you
couldn't tell one from another. This poor gal didn't appreciate
getting a sailor's hand stuffed in her crotch. And so, we pulled
around again and came along side again, and got them aboard with
a little decorum, and we had a ship full of women and they were
all scared of course, and they were all worried about their
trunks an board this ship with all their clothing and what 1 not.
There was this one guy who had gotten crushed between the life
boat and the liner as they were launching, and he
badly hurt, and we got him aboard, and the nurses were tryi
TIetty g to
take care of him. Of course, we wers assuring these girls, that
everything was all right, that we were going to take cate of
them, that we would get their trunks for them. There was a. . .
we had ocean going tugs stationed along the North African coast
just for this purpose and a tug came out from Phillipsville,
North Africa, and latched on to this liner and towed her into
port, and we stayed with her and escorted her. I remember getting
into port there, and she was already in the harbor, and they wers
trying to get her up to a dock to tie her up, and the next thing
I heard was everybody was shouting, "Let go, let go, let go,'' and
she went down right there in the middle of the harbor, so we did
lose everything. But these troops, these girls. . we
transferred them to another ship, and they eventually were
deposited up into Italy, Naples, I think, without their cla hes.
The only thing they had was what they had on their back. S met
Dickerman w as in the Army, and he was in Italy at the time and
i

4
says he remembers when theae nurses. . .see, Street was a d ctos.
. . he remembers when the nurses came and didn't hav any
clothes. . .and the last he saw of them, they were h ddled
together in an open field with not even a pup tent, and o, it
was a small world.
Q. So then you went home?
A. Well, we went back on and tied up in the harbor at Bizerte.
Bizerte is where Rommell took off from North Africa into Sicily
and he had just been driven out of Sicily and we were tied up in
Bizerte. And there's a big lake there in Bizerte, and in order to
get into this lake to tie up, you had to go through a rather
serpentine-like channel. Bizerte had been bombed by the United
States Air Force, and a submarine had been sunk right at one of
the turns, and I remember how close it was to get by this aunken
German submarine, or maybe it was Italian. I don't know, to get
into the Lake Bizerte to tie up and wait for a convoy of empty
ships to go back, and we did get through and tie up. They didn't
allow anybody to go ashore until they got shots for bubonic
plague. Apparently, the bubonic plague was found there in North
Africa. Bizerte was full of Italian prisoners of war and the
countryside was full of all kinds of destroyed military stuff.
Tanks and trucks and what-not. And, there were two other guys
and I who decided we'd like to see the countryside, and so we
commandeered a command car. This command car is an open touring
car, and it sat up real high and had big wheels on it, and we
were all dressed up in our Navy uniforms, white caps, touring
through North Africa on this Army command car with smoking tanks
on either side of the road, with people telling you, "Just
get off the road because there are mine fields everyw
Well, we were able to get down to Tunis, and we had lun
Tunis and there wasn't much to eat as I recall. A little
some cheese, and bread. I remember the glasses on the tab
this restaurant we went into were made out of coke bo
They'd taken coke bottles and cut the top of them off an
glasses out of them. They didn't have anything else.
Well, then we decided to go up to see the old Roman t
Carthage which is right there, and we drove up the road hop
find Carthage. Of course, the people there, the natives,
French, and I remember we weren't sure we were on the right
track, and 80 we stopped some peasant man along side of the mad
to see if we were going in the right direction, and in my very
best frsnch, I asked him, "Es ceci la via a Carthage?" I
remember what he said, He said, "Ea que vous parles le
francais?" He didn't understand me a bit. But finally 1 got
over to him and he said, "Yeah, that was the road to Carthage,
and if we just went on, we'd come to Carthage", and we did come
to Carthage. We got out and we wondered around these ruin@ and
we saw the old baths and the tiled and the terraces and whajt not
and 1 remember picking up a few of these blue and white tile
putting them into my pocket. I also ran across a kid. The

must have been eight or ten years old and he was selling poman
coins that he had found in the ruins, so he says, and so I
bought some Roman coins from him. Don't know what happe&d to
those. I brought them home, but they've disappeared so&how.
Well, it wasn't long after, I don't know how many more convoys I
rode going across the South Atlantic into the Mediterranean, but
quite a number. Then came VE Day, and there wasn't any need for
convaying any more. So I was assigned to the Anti-Submarine
Warfare Development Detachment in Port Everglades, Florida.
That" the port for Fort Lauderdale, and I spent the rest of the
war there and in Key West. They had an Anti-Submarine
Development Base there.
Q. And how long was this, exactly?
A. I was in just about four years. I don't know how many trips
I made across the Atlantic, but quite a few. I rode various
ships in the Task Force. The Task Force Commander would say,
"Now, I want you to go over and ride such and such a ship and
help them with their sonar and let me know how they do," so he
kept transferring me out at sea from one destroyer to another and
the way we did this was that the convoy always had a tanker, an
oil tanker along, and when the destroyer I was on would come
along side the tanker to fuel, they would transfer me from the
destroyer to the tanker by a breeches buoy. So I'd get over
there on the tanker and wait for the next destroyer, the ane he
wanted me to ride, to come along to fuel, and then he'd transfer
me from the tanker back to this other destroyertby breeches buoy.
Well, it was like getting on dry land to get aboard that tanker
'cause it was so steady compared with destroyers. You could put
your coffee cup on the table and it wouldn't slide off. I
remember looking back at the destroyer along side of us I'd just
come off of and she was pitching so wildly that I could see
daylight through a third of the way back from her bow. I hadn't
been particularly bothered by it, and I was used to it when I was
on the destroyer, but I remember that tanker was just like
getting on dry land. Quite a difference.
Q. Have to steady your feet?
A. Yup. I didn't transfer by breeches- buoy near as much as the
doctor did. We had one doctor for each task force and convoy.
We would be convoying over a hundred merchant ships with fifteen
destroyers as an anti-submarine shield. Never did we have a
crossing, but what there wasn't an appendicitis somewhere qn one
of those @hips, and the poor old doctor, had to get transfqrred,
you know, any time, day or night, and he did. He got sent across
on that breeches buoy quite a lot.. I felt sorry for him, ;but I
guess he made it. We made quite a number of convoy trips &ross
the South Atlantic into the Mediterranean and I remember,
approached Gibraltar, we came in fairly close to shore, a10
North African Coast, and I'd stand up on the bridge and g
18

great big powerful binoculars that they had, and take a tour of
North Africa by binoculars as we went by. We would see the
orange groves, and the houses, white houses and red-roofed
houses, and we tried to imagine what else there was that we
weren't seeing, but anyhow, it was quite interesting. The sea
was fairly calm as we were approaching Gibraltar and we'd just
sit up there and take a tour of North Africa and Morocco as w e
went through. We'd go past Gibraltar and put the binoculqrs on
Gibraltar and try to figure out what the fortifications were
like. Never did go ashore in Gibraltar.
Did get ashore in Oran because of an attack that was made on
the convoy after we had passed through Gibraltar and one of the
destroyer escorts was hit by a torpedo, amid-ships that blew her
up. She was hit in the forward engine room, or forward boiler
room, I don't know which, but it really destroyed the ship. It
didn't sink but it buckled the deck so the deck was all heaved
and she was towed into the harbor at Oran, and I remember the
ship I was on was escorting her and we went into Oran harbor, and
tied up close to her, and I remember going ashore and walking
along the dock along side of her, and I even went aboard her and
looked at the result of this terrible explosion that hit the
forward engine room and it buckled the deck. It was heaved up
like a. . . well it. . . the deck looked almost round, it was
heaved up so. And while I was there, somebody was down on the
water in a rowboat, and they were rowing the rowboat inside the
hole that the torpedo made in the ship, and pulling out the
bodies. The hole was so big they had no trouble with this little
punt, rowing inside. W e l l , subsequently that ship, I think it
was the HOLDER. . . subsequently, that ship was towed back to the
United States. They patched up the hole, course they couldn't do
anything about the machinery, but they patched up the hole and
they towed her back to the. . .I think it was the Brooklyn Navy
Yard. There also had been another destroyer escort that had been
hit by a torpedo in the stern, Towards the latter part of the
war, the Germans had developed what we called an acaustic
torpedo, a torpedo that had a listening device on it and it was
launched out of the submarine and circled, and when it heard
propeller noises, it aimed for the propeller noises, sa they
would always hit the ship in the stern and blow up the stern.
This particular destroyer escort was hit in the stern, and on the
stern were all the depth charges, and they were blown up and
thrown over the forecastle and clear out over the bow of the
ship. Fortunately, they didn't hit the ship, but she was
disabled and eventually towed back to the United States. They
put her in the same dry dock with this other ship that had been
bit amidships, and they cut the stern off of one and moved it
over, and welded it on to the other one and made a whole ship out
of the two. I can show you a picture of that. Why don't you
shut that off. [He describes the photos of these torpedoed
ships]. I guess that was done in the Brooklyn Navy yard. I
didn't see the operation myself, I just saw the pictures in this
"All Hands" information bulletin of July, 1945.

Q. Too bad there aren't any pictures of the one that buck1
A. There could be, but I don't have them.
Q. What happened to the acoustic torpedo listening device which
heard the propeller noises?
A. This is called the German T5 Torpedo and it was a very clever
device that the Germans developed to help sink more ships. They
didn't have to have the torpedoes aimed exactly right and hit the
ship. They could sand the torpedo out and it would circle and
then when it heard propeller noises, it would head for the
propeller noises and eventually hit the ship. It would always
hit the ship in the stern and was very successful. After VE Day,
I was assigned down to the ASW unit in Key West. Down there, we had a captured German submarine, and a number of these captured
T5 torpedoes, and we were assigned the task of experimenting with
and writing a report on the effectiveness and function of these
acoustic torpedoes. We tried this out by actually firing the
torpedoes from the German submarine against some of our own
destroyers. Course the torpedoes were set to go beneath the ship
and not actually hit it. We had dye bags tied onto the torpedoes
so that we could see what the track was. I suppose you've seen
some of this green dye that's used in the water, sometimes to
mark things, and I guess it was an eosin. I'm not sure.
But anyhow, I was assigned to the task of making a report on
the effectiveness of these T5 torpedoes, and the way we did this
was to send one of our destroyers out to act as a target, and we
sent out the German submarine with the acoustic torpedoes aboard
and with the dye bags tied onto them, and then we'd go out with a
helicopter and with a photographer and we'd over the sce e and
when the torpedo was fired, we could see the track and we ' 1 take
pictures of it as it circled, and then finally heard the noise of
the propeller, and headed for the propeller. The helicopteq was
not as effective as we'd want because it took quite awhile o get
from Key West to the operating area and so we'd have very ittle
time left before we'd have to come back because we were running
out of fuel. I don't know whether you realize it or not, but the
Navy, during the war, had no helicopters. The only service that
had helicopters was the Coast Guard, so I was assigned a Coast
Guard helicopter and a pilot to fly me around to take these
pictures. We found it was so ineffective that we finally got a
blimp squadron, and a blimp squadron was assigned to me for the
purpose of doing this. I'd go up on these blimps and in a blimp,
you can stay up a long time. You head the blimp into the wind,
you know, and throttle down the engines and stand perfectly still
in one spot, and the blimp had a gondola on it that was big
enough so you could get up and walk around, or sit down qt the
table and have lunch or some of the crew could sleep ih the
bunks, and it had a plastic bubble in front of the gondola where
I could sit below the knees of the pilot. I had a microphone and
radio communication with the ships. I could see from this bplbble
1

everything below us. It was just like playing on a chess
!
ard.
There were these destroyers and torpedo retrieving boats a the
submarine, all out there on the ocean, and I could call t m up
on the radio to do this or do that, and tell them when to fire.
We had the photographer aboard who would take the pictures f the
green tracks made by the dye bags. It was a lot of fun. I'd
never been in a blimp before, but they really were a lot of fun
to be on.
Q. They're not using blimps now are they? I
A. Yeah, I believe they still do. There was only one blimp
squadron that went overseas during the war, and that was a
squadron that was sent over to the Straits of Gibraltar with what
they called a MADD detector which was a magnetic device that
detected anomalies in the earth's magnetic field. As the
submarine would go through the Straights, it mads a deflection in
the earth's magnetic field and this magnetic detector on the
blimp detected it, so the blimps patrolled at low altitudes back
and forth and back and forth across the Straits. That was the
only squadron that was sent over seas. I never did know whether
they ever detected a submarine or not, but there's no doubt that
the German submarines did go in and out of the Straits. There
was quite a current down in the straits, Down at a certain level
the current would go one way and on another level, would do the
other way, so if you got at the right depth, you'd just coast
through the Straits on the current without making much noise.
At one time, I was, I don't remember, I guess it was after
the work at Key West, I was transferred back to Port Everglades
in Florida. Port Everglades is the port for Fort Lauderdale, and
there was a Coast Guard Station there.
END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE TWO
I'm going to aound like my father. . . you going now?
The German submarine, MENACE, was a terrible thing in the early
part of the war. It just destroyed an awful lot of ships and an I
awful lot of raw material we were sending across to Britain. In I
1942, they were sinking ships at the rate of about one hundred
and thirty a month. Now that's a lot of ships sunk and a lot of
material last and a lot of people lost and there had to be
something done about it very quickly, and the British had already
started a scientific survey to see what could be done and they
had a. . . an office called the, called ASDIC, which was Anti-
Submarine Detection Investigating Committee. That was the name
of it, and they started experimenting and developing sonar
equipment and means of attacking and destroying Qerman
submarines, and as we got into the war, we began to develqp the
same sort of thing and we called it the Anti-Submarine Wqrfare
Unit, and it's purpose was to develop equipment and megns of
destroying the submarines so that we could stop this ter ible,
terrible loss of life and material which was going on. And there
4
1
1

were several units. One was down at Key West. One
1
as in
Boston, one was out in San Diego. And when I, when I had 'oined
the Navy, I was sent first to Boston to what they call d the
Ahti-Submarine Warfare Instructors School, and then from t ere I
was sent to key west to the Anti-Submarine Warfare ~chooi down
there, then sent to San Diego to the Anti-Submarine Warfare
School there, and then back to the Anti-Submarine Warfare School
in Bostan. And they had recruited certain kinds of people to go
to this school and to learn all that was being developed about
anti-submarine warfare so that we could transmit it to the ships
at sea. Go out with the ships at sea and train them and tell
them how to make submarine attacks and how to use the sonar
equipment and how to sink submarines.
Well, this was a pretty succeseful venture because the
United States did a magnificent job of developing new and better
sonar equipment, echo ranging equipment, and means of destroying
the submarines which included, not only the depth charges, but
the ahead thrown weapons call the "hedgehog" and the "mousetrap".
And, we also developed a means of defeating some of the methods
and equipment that the Germans used to sink ships like the T5
sonic or acoustic torpeda that I've told you about. We developed
a counter measure for that which was called a "Foxer". ft was
spelled FXR but pronounced "foxer" and what it was, was a gevice
that was towed behind the ship, maybe one hundred fifty feaq, two
hundred feet behind the ship. It consisted of two metal rods
that were fastened together at the ends at about one half inches
apart, maybe three quarter inch in diameter and when they were
pulled through the water, they vibrated against each other and
made a terrible noise, and this noise attracted the acoustic
torpedo so that the torpedo didn't go for the propellers of the
ship,. but went for this "foxer". And it was successful. and. .
. but the Germans had developed a device for fooling the sonar.
They had what they called a "pillenwerfer" which was something
like an alka seltzer pill that they ejected from the subqarine
that made a lot of bubbles, a great mass of bubbles ,which
reflected the ping of sonar equipment, and the sonar operators,
they hoped, would echo-range off of that, and not detect the
submarine. Well, this was a little confusing at first, but we
soon learned that you could tell the difference between the
bubbles and the submarine by the frequency of the return signal.
The moving target would have a different pitch than the fixed
target, known as the doppler effect, so they could tell the
difference, and after awhile, the "pillenwerfer" was of no use.
Well, all of these things put together, the ASW instructors
went out to sea on ships to train the sonar team and the training
facilities that were on shore, all combined to reduce the apount
of ship losses by quite a bit so that by 1943, we were loking,
instead of one hundred and thirty ships a month, we were 1 sin
only fifty, and we were sinking quite a few submarines,; like
maybe ten or twelve a month, and we were beginning to win the war
in the Atlantic. So, some of the sonar equipment and development
was being done by the Sangamo Electric Company. And they First
P

got into the sonar business before the United States was in the
war by getting a contract from the Canadian Navy to build what
was called a "sound range recorder" which ia a device that
recorded the echoes that came back to the sonar equipmen and
plotted them against time, and you could measure the ran 4 e and
the rate of change of range, and this gave a good indicatqon of
when the depth charges should have been dropped. Well, thqt was
a big help to the escort vessels and then Sangamo later goti into
the manufacture of echo ranging equipment and they made the first
PPI, Planned Plot Indicator, sonar equipment, which, in essence,
ensonified the ocean in all directions at the same time, and then
looked directionally for the echo, and this equipment could be,
or this information could be displayed on a PPI screen so you
could look at the echo and see where it was with respect to your
ship. There was a lot of intensive work done on that, and
towards the end of the war, they finally got these. This, the
Sangamo Sonar equipment, onto some of these ships. And there was
at least one submarine attack made by this equipment off of the
east coast, I think, up near Boston, and they did sink a
submarine with it.
At any rate, that was the business I went into when I went
into the Navy. That was the anti-submarine warfare
business. And that was what I did for the escort vessels, that I
rode on these convoy trips, and although, I never saw a
submarine, other ships did, and I helped the other ships that I
was on, to get their equipment operating properly and get their
depth charge teana trained so that they could get their depth
charges fired promptly when it was require. An I suspect that I
did some good, but after VE Day, that was after we licked the
Germans in Europe, the whole focus of the anti-submarine warfare
was switched to the Pacific but it wasn't really the same
challenge there, cause the Japanese didn't have too many
submarines. But we kept the research work going, and at Key
West, there was a lot of research done, and I already alluded to
some of the work that was done with the T5 torpedo, We did other
work which, I guess, some of it is still classified. And there
was still work being done up in Boston at the Charlestown Navy
Yard and at Harvard. And, instead of being sent to the Pacific,
I was sent after VE Day, down to Key West and to Port Everglades
where we had another Anti-submarine warfare experimental station.
Port Everglades, as I said, is the, was the port for Fort
Lauderdale. And there was a Coast Guard Station there, and w e
took over the Coast Guard Station, or rather we operated out of
it, and the Coast Guard enlisted personnel who kept up the base
and did some of the services for us and the Coast Guard pars",
which were the women in the Coast Guard. They kept up the
quarters and ran the mess, made all the meals and served all the
meals to the people,and they were a bunch of good kids that we
had at Port Everglades. We had, at one time, an Italian captured
submarine that we used to do some experimental work and we had
the entire Italian crew with it. And the enlisted Italiam crew
stayed in the enlisted quarters of the base and the Officers

stayed in the officers quarters on the base, and we had g ite a
nice relationship with them, and they were a bunch of nice, t-' guys.
Didn't speak too good English, but we got along and we played a
lot of pool. But, in some ways the Italian crew was betber to
work with than the United States submarine crews we had because
the Italian crews would take their submarine down to whatever
depth we wanted to go and they'd stay there all day. It'd get
awfully hot down there, and they'd stay down there until we'd
tell them to come up. But, our submarine crew would bitch to
beat hell if we wanted them to go below fifty feet, so we used
the Italian submarine quite a bit. You know, we'd send them
down, then we'd use various kinds of echo range equipment to echo
range off of him and gather a lot of important data.
8. How many sonar experts were there? Besides yourself?
A. Oh, I don't know. There must have been several hundred. I
really don't know. In the class that I was in, there were about
ten, f think. And I have a picture of those [he looks about for
the photo I have already seen]. They got distributed all over
the world. 1 met same of them over in the Mediterranean. They
were over there on shore, operating what we called "attack
teachers," which were devices on share that simulated this sanar
equipment, but . . .and the Sangamo Electric Company made some of
that. It was equipment that had a screen on which was projected
a destroyer, and also a submarine, and we had the exact
equipment, echo ranging equipment, that was on board ship,
attached to this attack teacher, and the same echo ranging
equipment, that was on board the submarine, was also attached to
this equipment, so we could take a destroyer crew, and a
submarine crew. and put them on this, and it would make exactly
the echo ranging sounds and what not, and they could fight each
other, and learn how to take evasive actions and that sort of
thing. And these attack teachers were stationed in several places
in the Mediterranean. I think there was one in Oran, and I think
there was also one in Bizerte. And I knew the people who ran
them. And then, there was the one guy who was from thq same
school that I had arranged to have to go on board the USS
WARRINGTON to help them with their anti-submarine warfare, and he
got lost at sea. I really don't know how many of these people
there were.
Q. Do you suppose you had something to do with the service using
the Sangamo Electric Company?
Q. Were there other companies used as well?
A. Well, there were other companies that were used.
Submarine Signal Company was used. General Electric was
Westinghouse was used. They all made various p[arts of

equipment, and it was really a magnificent effort by the inwstry
of the United States ta come up with all this stuff in the 'short
time that they did. They certainly did help win the war./ But
after VE Day, there wasn't too much use left for all these +ople
except to continue experimental work on determining what tp do
under various circumstances where. . . you see, echo-rangink is a
very frail art. It's very difficult to get information dut of
the ocean cause the ocean is so variable. Thermal layers in the
ocean, that is where the water changes temperature at various
depths of the ocean. It isn't the same temperature all the way
down, and there are thermal layers that will reflect sonar
signals so that a submarine could get beneath a thermal layer and
could not be detected. And there are also salinity layers where
changes in salinity would deflect the sonar signals. Submarines,
if they knew about them, could use them to avoid detection. Far
instance, off the Amazon River, for out over a hundred miles,
there's a layer of fresh water that lays on top of the salt
water, and this salinity gradient would reflect sonar signals so
that you couldn't get down below it.
Well, after VE Day, we continued experimenting with, and
trying to learn more about the art of ensonifying the ocean, and
trying to get back the information. We knew that you could get
long range signals with explosions, For instance, they could be
heard for long distances if they got down deep enough. But even
today, the art of, and it is an art, of echo ranging and
detection is pretty frail at best, it's not nearly as good as
radar, for instance, that's used in the air. So now where m I?
Q. Well, have you come home yet?
A. I came home in June of 1946, I guess, from Key West. I think
that was the last station I was in. And they were still
work down there, and after VJ Day, they had a hell of a
trying to keep people in the service to continue
operations. Everybody wanted to go home, including
they wanted to offer me an increase in rank if I'd stay anpther
three months, and I said "To hell with them." (laughter) bind I
came home. But they were desperate.
The trade school boys, which were the. . . we called the
trade school boys which were the boys who went to Annapplis,
which were the Navy men, not the reserve people, all deserve a
lot of credit for what they did during the war, and what they do
during peace time, because they keep the Navy together, and they
keep the ships going, so that in war time, the Navy Reservists
can fill in the positions for them and help. . .
I
if we d'dn't
have the Navy boys, it would be a terrible thing, and I give them
all a lot of credit. But they had a hard time at the end of the
war trying to keep all the bases going, and all the ships oing
and everything else after everybody wanted to go home. We I 1, I
don't want to talk about the war anymore.
Q. Well, let's come home then. Did you come back to the Sa gamo
b

Electric Company?
A. Yes, I came back to the Sangamo Electric Company and we
t
t to
work for them in the Engineering Department and did a lot of wark
with developing various electrical devices, Still did wor in
the sonar department. Did a lot of work in developing 1arge.tape
transports that the Government wanted and I mean these were: tape
transports that had two inch tape with maybe two hundred tpacks
on them. And, I worked on other devices related to power
transmission and measurement of power, and I developed several
patents for the company that don't benefit me any, but that'p all
right. They belong to the company, and I guess ' this
Schlumberger, who now own the Sangamo Electric Company, also
owns all those patents and is using them, perhaps.
Q. If the Sangamo Electric Company was so productive, what was
it that made them sell out? Was it after the war?
A. Oh yeah, they sold out in 1978, I think it was. They sold
out far money. Schlumberger bought them cause they affered them
a good price. The stockholders got turned off, That's a whole
different matter.
Now, I should tell you about some other things that are
interesting. I got interested in Lewis and Clark because my
sister-in-law saw an article in Holiday Magazine, I think it was,
where the Four Winds Tour Agency out of New York was going to try
out a new tour which was to follow the Lewis and Clark Trail from
St. Louis to Astoria, Oregon.
Since I hadn't been up in the Northwest very much, and was
always interested in History, it sounded like a good deal, so I
applied for it and it was the first tour for that, and there were
only twelve people that went on the tour, so we had a good time.
And one of the people was a fellow by the name of McGilvra, a
Lewis and Clark buff, and he went along as the Lewis and Clark
historian to tell everybody what went on as we followed the track
of Lewis and Clark from St. Louis, up the Missouri River and all
the way, almost, 1 guess, to the source of the Missouri River
across the mountains to the beginnings of the Snake River, and
then down the Snake River to the Columbia River to Astoria,
Oregon where Lewis and Clark finally ended up. Spent the winter
there and then cams back the next year. It was quite a trek, and
one of the most important, interesting things about was the
amount of information Lewis and Clark recorded in their journals
at the behest of Tom Jefferson, and they did have an awful lot of
information, not only about the Indians, but about the flora and
fauna, mineralogy, and geology of the United States, which wasn't
known at that time.
They started off in 18. . . what was it. 1804, 1 thinkb and
they came back in 1806. They spent the first winter in 'fort
Mandan in North Dakota, and the second winter out at Fort
near Astoria, and the next year, the next spring they
The trip back, of course, was pretty fast cause they

down river all the time. Well, I joined this organizatioq, and
this opened up a whole new vista to me, and, almost ever$ year
since then. I've gone to the annual of the Lewis and Clark Trail
Heritage Foundation, which always meets at some point alodg the
trail, and they have programs, and little side trips pertaining
to various camp-sites that Lewis and Clark had, and various
places where they went along the trail, and it's been most
interesting, and I've gotten to see a lot of the Northwest, not
only North and South Dakota, but Montana and Idaho, and a long
Washington and Oregon, and then on down to Wyoming. Anyhow, in
becoming acquainted with Mr. McGilvra, I, at his recommendation
went to a ranch in South Montana in the Tobacco Roon Mountains,
and 1 spent some time there with a fellow by the name of Fred
Mawwar. He was a rancher who had been a sailor on a torpedo boat
in the Pacific during the war. We got along quite well toqether
and I went several summers to his ranch to help with his cattle
drives. He raised cattle and, in the Spring, he would inseminate
the cows and then turn them loose on the, what they called the
bench which was a flat below the Ruby Mountains, which was west
of the Tobacco Routes, and all spring, the cattle were grazed on
the new grass an this bench, and they would drive the cattle up
into the Ruby Mountains, up eight, ten thousand feet where we
knew there were nice green pastures up there, and they spent all
summer up there, and then they'd bring them down in the fall and
put them in the barns for the winter. Well, the cattle drive was
lots of fun for me.
There were about five different ranchers who got them
together and pooled their cattle together far this drive and they
rented the land up in the mountains from the Government and they
would start the drives in about June, latter part of June, and
then round them all up off of this bench which was ten or fifteen
miles long and twa or three miles wide and gathered them all
together and drive them up through a pass that was very n rrow,
maybe forty or fifty feet wide. It was steep walls on ither
side, and we'd run them up through this pass and up t rough
various trails, up the mountain and distribute them ut in
i
various pastures on the way and after that when we got th cows
all settled, they hired one professional cowboy who would stay
with the cat61e all summer long and he would ride from pasture to
pasture and take care of any injured cattle and animals and he'd
drive off predators and that sort of thing, but he spent the
summer up there, he and his wife, just riding from pasture to
pasture taking care of the cattle, shooting coyotes and that sort
of thing. It was beautiful country. We'd get up there eight to
ten thousand feet and look out over the valleys, see for miles
and miles and there was this old place there where you couJd see
to the West, or the East to Virginia City where there were the
Gold mines in Virginia City in the early days. And there were
the bad guys who would rob the stages carrying the *O1r
Virginia City up the trail to Helena where the gold wasltaken
from there and processed, I guess.
Also to the West was a, you could see a town w hi~ was
t

called Dillon, and southwest of Dillon was. . . trying to,think
of the name of it, right now I can't think of it, but anyhow,
they also got gold up from that gold field to Dillon anp went
from Dillon up the stagecoach route along the Beaverhead River
and then would join the trail up to Helena, so these bad guys
would sit up there and watch the trails, both from Virginia City
and from Dillon and whenever a stagecoach would appear, why they
would signal down to their cohorts that a stagecoach was coming
and they would rob the stagecoach.
Well, one day, Fred Massar and I decided we'd. . we'd heard
rumors that they had a cabin up there where they'd watched the
stagecoach, and we decided to go up to find it and so we got our
horses and his wife and a couple of other ladies and myself on
horseback and we went right straight up the East face of the Ruby
Mountains. The East face of the Ruby Mountains was just as dry
as a bone. There was a lot of scrub, fir around there, but there
wasn't any grass, you couldn't find any water or any woods or any
springs and we went right straight up until we got to the top and
at the top we could see down the West face, and it was pretty
green. There was water on the West face for some reason or other
but when we looked down the East face and we didn't see anything
green at all except in one spot, There, apparently, was a spring
there and it wasn't very far from the top and we had a feeling
that their cabin must be there cause there must be a spring
there and so we went down and sure enough we found this old cabin
which had rotted away and there was a spring there, and this must
be the place where they stayed and they kept one guy on top where
he could see both ways but they camped out where the spring was
and had a little cabin there. I'm not sure that was their cabin
because, even though the logs were rotted, I looked at the nails
and the nails were round nails, not square nails and so it seemed
that the cabin might have been built by some loggers some later
years because if the nails had been square, that would have been
the nails used st the time they were mining there at Virginia
City. But, it was an interesting trip, and it was a bi$ of a
ride up and down that mountain, particularly in one day. i
Q. True cowboy.
A. Well, I was along with the cowboys, and the cowboys really
were boys. They were kids around ten, eleven, sixteen years old,
sons of the ranchers. They were the ones who did most of the
work. Course the ranchers themselves were along, they were older
men, but it was the kids who did mast of the work and of course
they grew up with the horses, they knew how to ride and,the
how to handle the cattle. I just went along for the ride.
I did. . . I pushed a lot of cattle around and whistled at
&. Now, about how old were you, when you were riding with !these
kids?
A. How old were the kids?

8. No, how old were YOU with the kids.
A. How old was I at the time? I suppose I was fifty, But*I did
this for a number of years, and. . .
Q. When did you stop riding?
A. Oh, about five years ago. It got where it was too painful.
I had problems with my back, with arthritis, and it just got too
painful to do that. But I did ride across the Lo10 Trail, the
most difficult part of the Lewis and Clark trail. Where Lewis
and Clark had the most trouble, was getting across the mountains
about where Missoula, Montana is, across into Idaho, and I. .
The Lo10 Trail is a prehistoric Indian Trail used for centuries
by the Columbia River tribes to cross the mountains to the
buffalo country where they could get buffalo to provide
themselves with food and clothing for the winter, then come back
over the mountains to winter along the Columbia River. There was
a packer on the Idaho side. He said he would like to start a tour
there across the mountains. He'd get people to ride across and
I was on the first tour with him, and we went across the most
difficult part on horseback, and it was a delightful ride. It
was difficult, and it was interesting because we saw all the
sights that Lewis and Clark recorded as they went across on
horses. They'd gotten horses from the Shoshone indians and
packed across the trail there.
I did that twice and it's interesting, On the first trail
ride that the outfitter did, he was only able to attract four
people and there were two ladies from Lewiston, Idaho, I think
both of their husbands were doctors, but they were divorced, I
don't know. But the third lady was a lady I knew, who came from
New Jersey, and was with the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage
Foundation. She was a very good photographer and so I convinced
her to go along with us to take pictures, and she disappainted me
because she forgot to bring her colored film. All she had was
black and white. Made me mad as hell! But we crossed anyhow,
and she took a lot of pictures. Two years later, there was
another lady from the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation
who had been the secretary of the Foundation and who wanted to do
this ride and was trying to get enough people together so that
they, so that the people, who ran it could make enough money to
pay for it. It didn't seem as though they were getting enough.
So she called me up and asked "Would I like to came and do it
again?" So I said, "sure", so I went again. Well, they had a
whole bunch of dentists who were going to go, but their plans
pooped out, and we ended up, again, with just me and the three
girls. So, both times I went, it was just me and three girls.
Well, I guess I was fortunate, and I have some pictures of
Well, the point where Lewis and Clark first saw, was the d
of the Columbia River, and knew that they were on their w
hill to the Pacific was called Sherman's Peak. When you'd
an the Sherman's Peak, you could see the headwaters

Columbia River and the Snake River. And I've got same pic$ures
of the three ladies and myself sitting on the highest
Sherman's Peak, both times. Let me see if 1 can find thzzkf::
you. (He gets up to retrieve it from his book shelf)
This Lewis and Clark Foundation started in 1969, I think it
was. It was originally a government committee to help preserve
the sites along the trail of Lewis and Clark, the committee had
outrun its life and no some of the other people who were
interested decided to carry on by forming what they called the
"Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundationn whose purpose was the
same, to preserve the sites along the Lewis and Clark Trail.
There were eleven states that the Lewis and Clark Trail went
through, and, there were, of course, many campsites along the way
cause it took them two years to make that trip. And there are
Lewis and Clark Organizations in each state who try to preserve
and locate the campsites along the trail and the Lewis and Clark
Trail Heritage Foundation has a meeting every year somewhere
along the trail or in some cases, a place that is related to
Lewis and Clark, like one year, we had a meeting in Philadelphia.
Philadelphia was, of course, the place where Tom Jefferson sent
Lewis to learn about astronomy and navigation and about flawers,
flora, and fauna to prepare himself for the exploration.
But, anyway, I think one of the most interesting meetings we
had was in. . . you know, I can't think of the name of that
little town up in Montana. It was Glasgow, which is a small
town in the northern part of Montana, almost to the Canadian
border, where the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation
Members who lived in Glasgow, put on the meeting for that year.
They decided at that meeting, that they w ere going to serve the
same kind of food that Lewis and Clark had, so they sent their
members out to gather the vegetables that Lewis and Clark might
have found along their way, and they got bear meat and beaver
tail and deer meat and all the various kinds of things, and the
berries they picked to make berry pies and that sort of thing, it
really was quite good, and they did a gaod job. And they had. .
. the girls had gotten together and made a guilt. Each member
made one square with something about Lewis and Clark on it and
they put it all together and raffled the quilt off that evening.
And I happened to win it, and, of course, I didn't have any use
for the quilt so I gave it back to them and said, "Well, now
raffle it off again and make some more money".
END TAPE TWO. SIDE ONE
Last I heard, the thing was sold for a thousand dollars. Some
lady had bought it from this person in Glasgow and had resqld it
for a thousand dollars. I don't where it is now, but it's:value
continues to increase, I guess. That was, I guess, th
meeting, autside of the Philadelphia meeting, that we had f
Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, and after

over, Boo McGilvra and my nephew and I drove back to Buttb, the
northern route, stopping at different places where he ha4 some
connection worked, or had a ranch or had some experience. H told
a lot of stories that were very interesting. Well, what o you
want now?
(Pulling over a box, he began to open and explained) These
are letters I'd written to my mother during the war and many of
them are V Mail. Do you know what V Mail is? All the armed
services overseas developed this method of reducing the bulk of
the letters being sent home, and yet get them home quickly by
air-mail by microfilming the letters that the soldierg and
sailars wrote. We provided a form which was an eight and & half
by eleven sheet, on which you could write your letter home. And
they would then, overseas, take this letter and microfilm it, and
then fly it back home, and when it got back to the United States,
the film was printed, and the letters, the size of about four by
three were mailed to the addressee.
That way they saved a lot of bulk, cause there really wasn't
a lot of space available on the aircraft going from Europe to the
United States. There wasn't the kind of aircraft service that we
have today. The space was valuable. So all the letters written
overseas got microfilmed and sent back in tiny rolls of fi m and
then reproduced. And that's what V Mail was. I'm surprise f more
people don't remember V Mail. It was a good thing.
Q. Were other people as careful as you?
A. You're talking now about censorship. We were told that we
could not say certain things. We couldn't reveal, for instance,
what ship we were on or where we were going or where we were or
talk about any of the engagements we had or the armaments we had
and, this was a difficult thing to do because it meant that, . .
when you wrote home to your family, about all that you could say
was that you were well, and that was all. You couldn't say where
you were going or when you were coming back home or what yo* were
doing. So the V Mail that was provided on the ship was ad guate
f for that. The letters aboard ship that were written by the crew
were all censored by somebody on board ahip. The office s all
took turns being censors, and I censored for a while and it was
an unpleasant task to have to read the private letters gf the
crew and have to cut out certain portions of it in case thqy had
said something they shouldn't have. It wasn't a job that apybody
liked, and I had my share of it, I guess.
Well, what else do you want? Shall 1 tell you about. , . in
going through some of those letters that I'd written to my @other
during the war, and. . .she had saved them for me. It brought to
mind an experience that I had in 1946, I guess it was.
In 1946 when I was stationed down in Key West whe e the
Anti-submarine Warfare Development Detachment of the At antic
fleet was at the Naval Operating Base at Key West where w were
doing experimental work on T5 Torpedoes along with echo oint,
the very fragile part of echo ranging with sonar equipment Many
i
0

of these experiments which we did out at sea, involved
1
aking
just reams and reams of data, which had to be analyzed a d put
together in a form that might make some sense, and we had a
mathematician who was sent down to us from MIT to do thi work
for us. He was a civilian, and kind of a heavy set, fat little
guy, dark hair, had a heavy dark beard and he looked Jewish to
me. His name was Arthur Steinberg. He lived in the La Concha
Hotel. Room 424, as a matter of fact. The officers who
were doing the experimental work lived on the Naval Operating
Base in the officers quarters and they had an officer's mess
there, too. We'd go out to sea everyday on an experimental ship,
and this guy would go along with us. He would observe a11 the
tests we made, watch us collect the data, then, when we came back
to the base, he would analyze the data far us. He would
generally have dinner with us in the officer's mess before
returning to his hotel room.
Well, shortly after he came aboard, I was contacted by a
member of the ON1 which is the Office of the Naval Intelligence,
and they told me that this guy, Arthur Steinberg, was a Russian
spy and that they wanted me to keep track of him. What they were
trying to do was to find out where he was passing his
information. They were able to track him when he was off the
base, the naval base, to see what he did and who he contacted,
but they couldn't keep track of him while he was on the Navy base
and when he went out to sea, and wanted me to do that, so I
agreed to do that, to keep an eye on him, and they said he had a
little black book that he kept notes in that they'd dearly love
to get their hands on, and know what he was taking down. But I
took on the job of watching this fellow, and nobody else on the
bass, not even the commanding officer, knew that I was doing
this. I watched him when we were out at sea, and I watched him
when we were on the base. When he left the base, the ON1 eople
took over and watched him when he was off the base. I nev r did
get a chance to look at his little black baok, and I nev r saw
him do anything untoward, but there w as one little incident which
was amusing to me.
1 We had an officers mess, and I guess there were maybe eight
or ten navy officers who were attending this mess, an one
evening we were having supper and Steinberg was having $upper
with us, which he generally did, and my roommate, who was also an
officer in the Navy, started a conversation which eventually got
around to talking about Russian spies, and somebody said, "Well,
for all we know, there could be a Russian spy sitting right
here." It was true indeed, and I knew it, and this Russian spy
knew it, but he never blinked and I never blinked and nobody ever
said anything more about it. But, it was very true that that
should have happened. Well, at any rate, the ON1 had taken the
room next door to his at the La Concha Hotel there in Key;West,
and they had his room bugged. I guess they had microphorps on
the wall so they could hear everything that went on in histroom.
I wasn't there. But I suppose they listened to him snore aad all
the other noises that he made, but whether they heard anxthing

1
else, I don't know, but they did intercept his mail. They had a
little apartment house that was way off on the other side f the
island and I remember it was there on the other side of t e old
cigar manufacturers. They took me over there once and were
telling me all this and how they intercepted his mail an how
they took the letters out of the envelope without unsealing it.
And they showed me how they did that. What they did, they took a
pair of tweezers and went into a corner where there's a little
opening that wasn't sealed on the flap, and they grabbed hold of
the edge of the letter and they'd start rolling it and they'd
roll it up into a roll until it was about the size of a pencil
and pull it out that hale, and then they'd read it, then roll it
back up and put it back in. Nobody could tell that the letter
had been looked at. That was fascinating. Well, one day a
telegram arrived for Dr. Steinberg. We called him doctor. I
guess he had a doctors degree in mathematics or something, and a
telegram arrived from MIT asking him to come back immediately.
It said, and I'm reading from the telegram which I saved for
some reason, it said, "To Arthur Steinberg, care of Surface
Division, ASDEVLANT, section Base, Key West, Fla. March 16,
1946. Imperative. You report to me at MIT, Cambridge, as soon
as you can get here. Preferably Monday, March 18. Wire me when
you can arrive. Signed Philip M. Morse, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology." Well, when he got this telegram. . . of course,
the ON1 knew about it because the telegraph office had been
instructed to let them know if he had received any telegrams, and
they talked to me and they said, "We're just going to let him go
and we'll keep track of him at all times, and we'll pick him up
when he gets to MIT." And so, they. . . the air service out of
Key West was, was rather limited and it was awfully hard to get
passage from Key West to Miami. It was always booked up and you
had to get reservations ahead of time, but, what do you know,
when this guy applied for passage to Miami, he got it
immediately. The ON1 had seen to that, and when he got off the
plane in Miami, there was another ON1 person there to keep track
of him till he got onto another plane to run him back up to
Cambridge. Well, that was the end of the spy business and
nothing more had been said to anybody about it until it was. . .
after March 26, which was a couple of weeks later. The whole
story of the Canadian Russian spy business came out in the
Chicago Tribune, and this guy, Arthur Steinberg, was named in
that story as being one of the Russian spies sent down here to
spy on the United States Navy. He was a graduate of McGill
University and, I understand that was a hothead of Communists
people at that time, and he was recruited by a Russian, by the
name of Colonel Zabotin who was with the Russian Embassy in
Canada, and, well I guess. . . I never heard what happeqed to
this guy. I guess he was picked up and either departed, 'r sent
to jail, but anyway that was the last I heard af that C
1,
nadian
Spy story. It was a big story at the time, and it was br ken by
King, who was the Premier in Canada at that time. The C nadian
Government had discovered that the Russian Embassy was in e spy

usiness and had recruited these people, and they broke! the
story. I guess that's all I have to say about that.
Q. Chris, what was your homecoming like? In 1946.
A. I came home, and I guess, I came home on the train from
Chicago, having been ushered out of the service and my next older
brother met me at the train and brought me home, and of course, I
was greeted by my family, and it was a nice homecoming, but there
weren't any parades, there weren't any speeches, any banquets.
There was no celebration that I was ever involved in with coming
home. As a matter of fact, the change from Military Service to
Civilian life depressed me for awhile. Things weren't the same
at home as when I left. Most of my friends had similar
experiences as I did and we had, and I guess, grown apart and
never had the same relationship we had before. In a way, I found
it quite depressing. I went back to work after a vacation, I
went back to work at the Sangamo Electric Company and had a very
satisfactory job and worked a lot in sonar devices, which the
Sangamo Electric Company continued to do a great amount of work
and development in sonar for the Navy. I guess they made probably
the finest sonar equipment that was ever made, but that's all
gone now. And they continued with that kind of work until I was
retired. I guess all the work that I did, was turned over to the
Navy and I guess, the people who bought Sangamo Electric
continued ta develop sonar equipment, but were not really very
successful, as far as I know.
8. What happened to the friends that you had before you left?
Did they come back as well? Are Connelly and Henry Bunn. . .he
had been killed, right?
A. Many of my friends had been killed in the war. As a matter of
fact, a large percentage of my particular neighborhood had been
lost. One was Henry Bunn, but Jack Connelly who had been one of
my friends, had flown a helicopter during the war, had gotten
married and moved away from Springfield, so he wasn't been on the
scene. And, many of my other friends were of an age that had
gotten married just because of the pressure of the war, and they
had their own lives, and the crowd that we had before the war
seemed to have broken up and many of them disappeared. Many left
Springfield, and there wasn't the same kind of companionship of
the old gang, so to speak, left. New associations had to be made
and. . . it wasn't a very happy homecoming, as far as I was
concerned although I was happy to see my family and get home from
the service and to get back to work, but the old relationships
were gone. They were just memories. Springfield had changeid.
Q. In what way?
A. Well, the people had changed. The War changed loqs af
things. The people in the four or five years of the waq were

older, considerably older than five years because of Itheir
experiences and the whole atmosphere of, say, college day? was
gone.
Q. Well, they say you can't go back.
A. You can't go back. That's right. We didn't go back. Made
new associations. We didn't have the parties that we used to
have, the dances. There just wasn't the interest, people didn't
have the interest to do that any more.
Q. Well, what was the post-war interest?
A. I guess, it was the men coming back to their wives and
families and trying to get started making a living and that's
what was going on. Before the war nobody was even marrield and
didn't have any wives, so it was entirely different, a different
group of people and their interests were different.
Q. Did you miss the excitement of the war years?
A Being in the service. . . well, there was a lot of
satisfaction to it. I'd made a life far myself in the service,
and T1d had a certain amount of authority, and I had a certain
amount of knowledge about things, and being an officer in the
service had it'a perks and things, and I was proud to have been
in the Navy.
Now I want to tell you how I got into sailing. I gueqs it
all started when I got to know Lew Herndon, who was iq the
neighborhood when I was a kid but he was fourteen years yojunger
than I. He was one of twins of Dick Herndon and Hennietta
Herndon and it so happens that, we were on the Board of Deacons
at the First Presbyterian Church. Richard Grabel was the
minister at the time and Richard Grabel had gotten this idea of
making a home for Presbyterians, an old folks home for
Presbyterians, out at the Sanitarium, the Palmer TB Sanitarium
that existed out on old Chatham road and Lawrence Avenue. He got
some of us Deacons to go out there to start cleaning the place
up, get it ready to take some old folks in to live there. A d so,
I got very involved with the Presbyterian Home and I sp 3 nt an
awful lot of time painting and chipping and doing all kinds of
things out there. Lew Herndon also came out and helped and his
wife, Bobbie, came out and helped. That was the first time I had
met her, and we got to be quite good friends. Bobbie had been
interested in sailing when she was growing up on the Hudson
River at Nyack, in New York. She had sailed in "Lightnings" with
her father. She and Lew belonged to the Yacht Club, and they had
tried to sail Lightnings there, and the Lightening class
went to pot, I told them that I had learned to sail on a
and that the guy whose Snipe I had learned to sail on,
building another kind of boat that was all fiberglass.
the first fiberglass boat in the country. Ha built it in

His name was Ray Green, and he built this fiberglass boat qalled
the "Rebel". He started it during the war, and the wgy he
happened to get into building the fiberglass boat was that he had
a contract during the war, to build fiberglass JATO tubes for the
Air Force. JATO meant Jet Assistant Take-Off. What it was, was
a tube that was fastened to an airplane with rockets in it,
essentially. When the heavy bombers took off, they needed an
extra boost, so they'd fasten these JATO tubes to them, and as
they took off, they'd fire them and they gave an extra boost to
the airplanes to take off.
Well, he got a contract from the Air Force to build these
tubes out of fiber glass. Fiber glass was a very new thing in
those days, and there wasn't any fiberglass, essentially, I
remember that on board ship, the curtains in the ward room was
made out of glass fibers, not out of fiberglass, 'cause they were
just glass fibers. But there wasn't this thing called fiberglass,
which is a mixture of glass fibers and resins. But he got this
contract, and he had some extra fiberglass and decided to build
himself a boat and so he built a hull out of resins and glass
fibers that he'd gotten from the surplus left aver from his
contract to build JATO tubes. And he built a boat, the first
fiberglass boat built, I suspect. It had a wooden deck and a
fiberglass hull, and he called it the ''Rebel" and after the war,
he went into the business of building fiberglass boats. So, the
Rebel waa the first fiberglass boat to go on the market.
And so, I got Lew and Bobbie interested in buying one of
these Rebel fiberglass boats, and we did. The problem was that
Lew wanted to be Skipper, and Bobbie wanted to be skipper. and
this presented a problem, and so, I wasn't real strong on being
one or the other, I'd skipper or crew. So we bought two boats and
I crewed for Bobbie and Lew took the other boat and he got his
oldest boy to crew for him. So we started sailing and we got
interested in competitive racing and joined the Rebel Class
Association, which was a national organization and we travelled
all over the country to various regattas and competed with other
people. I was crewing for Bobbie, and Lew was grabbing somebody
else for crew and taking his kid along, his children. But one
year, Bobbie and I won the National Rebel Association Regatta.
We were National champions. And Lew and his oldest child didn't
do thia, he never could make it. He made second place three or
four times, but he never could win. And of course Bobbie and I
never won again, but we did win second place one or two times.
So, the kids grew up in the sailboat, that is Lew's kids, and
they learned to sail, and we took them out when they were just
little things and we'd be out in the summer, and the kids would
just lie down in the boat and take naps while we'd be sailing and
as they grew up, they'd became good crew. Then they began to get
interested in sailing the Sunfish. The littlest child, Pqasie,
whose real name is Sarah, became quite a good sunfish sail
she's now interested in going to the Olympics in sailboats
and her husband are racing Tornado's which are catamarans.
number one in the United States in that class, and I hop

time, she makes it to the Olympics. She made a try once
9
efore
in 470'n, in the girls competition, but this time, she's the
skipper, and her husband is the crew, and she's the only wo an, I
guess, to compete against the men in the Olympics in t'Tornadosn.
Well, one time, we decided to buy a "Star" boat, so we
bought one that had belonged to Harry Nye, Harry Nye was world
champion Star sailor at one time and we bought his boat. It was a
wooden boat and it had a wooden mast and I think its number was
4110, if I remember correctly. But we sold the Star and I think
it still is at the Yacht Club, somewhere. I remember going out
one time. We had a very special wooden mast that Harry had made,
that had a core made out of very light cedar, and it was very
light weight. It was supposed to be very strong. I went out one
time with somebody in the evening one time and we had a light
breeze, and a fitting on. . . one of the side stays gave way
and the mast broke in the middle. We had to sail home with a
broken mast, and I was very perturbed about that. I still have
the mast. But, we got another wooden mast, and we sailed the Star
boat together. We went up to Peoria and sailed in the "Last
Chance Regatta", and Bobbie and Lew sailed together in the Star.
Then, they got interested in "Thistles", and they sailed
Thistles. Bobbie had her own Thistle that she would skipper, and
tew would crew for her. She did quite well. Beat a lot of the
men here at the Island Bay Yacht Club. Well, Lew died and she
died and we sold one of the Rebels and the other one, I gave
away, and since then, I haven't done any sailing, but I did do a
lot on the Race Committee boats and helped with the Race
Committee when they ran the National Championships for the Snipes
and we ran another National Championships for, I forget what it
was, but anyhow, the race committee at the Island Bay Yacht Club
won the St. Petersburg Trophy for the best run regatta in the
United States that year.
Q. What year was that?
A. Forget what year that was.
Q. What was your favorite boat, when you look back?
A. I didn't have any favorite boat. We had a rather large class
of "Rebels" here at Island Bay, and the group we sailed with was
a lot of fun. I wasn't a good competitor, really. I liked the
people and I liked to crew far Bobbie cause she gat such a kick
out of winning. . . I like the Rebel, it was a good boat, low
maintenance, easy to sail, I could sail it single handed, in very
heavy weather.
Q. Would you like to crew for the Star sometime again?
I
A. NO' I can't do that anymore. My arthritis is too bad.1 It's
no fun. That's the reason I quit otherwise I'd be sailiqg like
Ted Morph. He's in his 80's and he's been sailing the Thidtle.

Q. I understand the dues are high. Think maybe sailing is too
expensive for young people?
A. Yes, it's awfully expensive for young people to join the
Yacht Club and to race. Bobbies, Bobbie Herndon's child, oldest
boy, Bill, is racing competitively in the Thistles, and he and
Doug Slater are doing quite well. I guess they own their own boat
together.
Q. Chris, tell me about the Mackinac race.
Talking about the times that I raced on the Chicago to
Mackinac race on Lake Michigan. and I think it was in 1964 when I
first went and I happened to get on this race because my cousin's
son-in-law knew the people who owned this boat, whose name was
Rangoon", and they felt that I was a red hat small boat skipper,
and therefore I would know how to steer their larger boat better
than they did, and, perhaps I did know better. But any rate, I
tried it, and this was a thirty six boat and the Chicago-Mackinac
Race was about a three day race, depending on the weather. You'd
race from Chicago up to Mackinac Island and I did this three
times, and finally I decided I wouldn't do it any more because I
didn't think that the people who were on the boat, knew enough
about racing, that I would want to risk my life again with them.
The first time I raced, everything seemed to be all right, the
weather was pretty fair , and we didn't win the race but we got
up to Mackinac Island and everybody celebrated, and then
everybody went home.
The last time that I did this was the time that made me
decide I wasn't going to do it any more. The crew were business
men out of Chicago. The guy who owned the boat, ran a factory
that used to make jute boxes. Stromberg I think it was, or
something like that. At any rate, they had recruited me, and we
started out on this race, and the first day, the wind was fair,
and by the end of the day, we were up to Sleeping Bear Sand Dune,
about to enter into the straits between the islands, Manitou
Islands, it's called Manitou straits, and it was evening, and we
had just finished dinner, and we were headed into the straits
with the spinaker up, and there were a number of other boats
around us, and, as it began to get dark, one guy was down below,
finishing up, washing the dishes, and a squall came up from
behind us, and it got up to seventy miles an hour, and all the
other boats were around us were taking down their spinnakers and
putting up working jibs, but the guy who ran this boat, and I
can't remember his name, said, "No, we're going great. Just look
at the speedometer. We'll move the spinnaker up", and so we did
i
move the spinnaker up, and the wind got stronger and stronger
at
and
stronger, and all of a sudden, the masthead flag carried aqay and
went through the spinnaker and the spinnaker spin up and ounded
like a canon going off. The guy who was at the helm, this
was not a wheel, it was a stick, and he lost control, nd the
I
j

oat went broadside to the wind, and he laid her over on her beam
ends aa that the mast was almost parallel to the water. . . and I
should say that there was a guy who, incidently, was my cousin's
son-in-law. . . was up on the bow, and he was calling "trimtt on
the spinnaker, in other words, he sat up there and called back to
the guy who was trimming the spinnaker, what. . . to pull her in
or to let her out. He did not have a life jacket on and he
didn't have a life line, and most everybody else was sailing in
this heavy breeze without a life jacket except me, and I had my
life jacket.
Well, the guy up on the bow when the boat went on herd beam
ends slid down side of the deck and he reached up and just cbught
the line of the wheel, and saved himself. If he hadn't caught
that, he would have gone into the water and, at that time of
night, we never would have gotten around in time to find him, and
he would have been lost, because that cold water up there in Lake
Michigan, you've got about eight or ten minutes before
hypothermia sets in. And we wouldn't have gotten that boat in a
mile, and we'd have gotten back there and we would have had no
way to find him, and so we finally did, with a couple of guys on
the helm, we got the boat straightened around, going back down
wind, but we over compensated, and she went broadside the other
way, and we later got her up, and 1 can still remember thk guy
who was washing dishes, poking his head up out of the commnion
way, hi= arms loaded with life jackets, and finally we got the
boat under control, and it was dark, and we really didn't know
where we were, and the squall dissipated, and we had a fairly
good breeze, but we didn't know where we were. There were lights
over on the mainland on Michigan which was there about Traverse
City, and we could see the lights on Manitou Islands. We triad, I
remember, to look at the maps and read the lights, the blipking
lights to see if we could identify any of them, to see where we
were, and we never did, and we almost did run aground op one
island, and we finally saw shore before we did run aground.
And then, I remember, we almost round another boat tha was
sailing without any lights, which was against the rule. I ried
to get the skipper of this boat to protest him, but he wou dn't
protest. We could have thrown him out for that, but we fi ally
1
got up to the straits, to the bridge, the straits of Mack'nac,
and we went under the bridge and the wind had died, and we' just
got under the bridge and the wind went dead, and everybody was
sitting there. As we sat there, the boats behind us still had
breeze, and they had enough breeze to get under the bridge, and
then they died too, so everybody was just sitting there, sails
flapping, not able to move a bit, and waiting for a breeze to
carry us all in. I remember Harry N e was in a small boat, and he
was along side of us with his sails flapping, and finally he got
a little bit of a breeze, and he headed off for Mackinac Island
to try to get some off shore breeze, and he did and he fin'shed
ahead of us. But we finally finished, and we got acros the
finish line, and, wanting to get into the harbor, and we de ided
that the way to do that was to pull dawn the sails and st t up
4

the engine. Well, Dan couldn't get the engine started. He
cranked and cranked and cranked and never did get the engine
started. We finally put the sail back up and sailed into the
harbor. And that was quite a neat trick cause the harbor was
full of river boats, as well as sail boats and the island was
just loaded with people to watch the finish of this race. And we
sailed in and got into the harbor and got into a slip without
running into anybody, which I thought was a pretty neat trick.
But at any rate, it was three days before they could get that
engine started.
You feel when you're out there sailing, that you're pretty
secure because, if worse comes to worse, you've always got your
engine that you could turn on. Well, we learned that wasn't
always true, because this engine just wouldn't start. Well, I
decided, to hell with these fair weather sailors. I had enough
trouble taking care of myself, I couldn't take care of anybody
else, so I just wasn't going to sail with them anymore, and I
didn't. And I learned later on that what the Chicago bays did,
was to leave their boat up at Mackinac Island, fly back to
Chicago for the work week, and then they'd recruit a couple of
guys to fly back up to Mackinac Island the next week end and work
the boat back down to Chicago. And they'd do this in several
weekends. Well, this guy had recruited a couple of men, and they
were coming back from Mackinac Island and they were somewhere off
Frankfurt, I think it was, and they had been
END TAPE TWO, SIDE TWO
running on the engine most of the day. They
were standing watches where there'd be two men down sleeping and
one man up steering the boat. The owner was taking his watch, and
his watch was about over, and he wanted some relief he called
down into the cabin to get somebody to come up and relieve'him,
He didn't get any answer, so he went down there and these two
guys were in their sacks, out cold with carbon monoxide
poisoning, and so he dragged them back up on deck to get
1
some
good air, and he revived them, then took the boat into Frank urt,
and put them both in the hospital in Frankfurt and saved the . I
guess they came to, and were all right again. They resumed heir
journey back to Chicago and got back all right. But here it was,
I was sailing with these guys whom I thought were incompetent to
take care of themselves, and as I said, I had enough trouble
taking care of myself and I wasn't going to put myself in the
position where I'd have to take care of them, so I quit sailing
with them. That was the last time I went on the Chicago-
Mackinac race.
Q. Let's get back to your genealogy a bit. Tell me about your
mother's father from Ireland. i
A. My mother's father died when my mother was ten years 01
I never knew him, but he was a cocky little Irishman. B

orn over in Ireland near Belfast and, at the age of fifteen, he
came to the States. His father ran a pub over there in a little
town south of Belfast called Dromore. He stale all the money out
of his father's cash register, and he hopped a freighter for the
States, and he arrived in New York City, and got a job in a brick
yard. After working there for abaut a week, they didn't pay him,
and so he emigrated west, and came ta Springfield where his
brother, older brother John, had a grocery ators in Springfield,
on Washington Street, between fourth and fifth, on the south side
of the street, about where Myers Brothers now is. After working
with his brother for awhile, he went out to Riverton and
established a grocery and hardware store there. When Mr. Parley
L. Howlett, who dug the first coal mine in Sangamon County, went
bankrupt, then died. I guess he did pretty well, because his coal
mine was bought first by Jacob Bunn, then by my grandfather
Robert W. Jess, who owned several coal mines before he died, but
he. . .
&. What was his name, Chris ?
A. His name was Robert William Jess. Robert Williamson Jess.
And he married a local girl in Riverton, whose name was, last
name was Agee. (He spells the name) And I think that she also was
a second generation Irish girl, and he did quite well. He built
a house for himself and his wife on a hill in Riverton there, as
you go east into Riverton, cross the river on the highway and on
the big hill to the right, he owned that, and he built a large
hause there. A two story house with cupola, it had a long
walkway going up the hill to the house. It wasn't a very pretty
house, kind of ugly as far as I could see from the pictures, but
he built this house, and began raising his family there, and I
think my mother was born in that house, but the house eventually
burned down, and was replaced with a little one story cottage
and. . . after my grandfather died, it was rented out to George
Helmle of Helmle and Helmle architects. I remember George
Helmle. He was a friend of my mother's brother, Will Jess, who
took over the mining business when my grandfather died. George
lived there in that cottage, and he eventually got despondent and
shot himself there. Committed suicide. But getting back to my
grandfather, as I say, whom I never knew, was a cocky little
Irishman, and he came over sometime during the Civil War about
1863, and, back in those days, Irishmen were not well thought of,
as a matter of fact, most of them were on a social scale below
the Negro. I remember reading some entries in my great
grandfather Lanphier's diaries in which he noted occasionally
that he had given an Irishman a dollar. No name, just an
Irishman, he'd given a dollar to. Which was indicative of the
way people thought of Irishmen in those days. At any rate, my
grandfather apparently was rather successful and there was a
group of people who, a group of men who formed a hunt clpb on
Clear Lake. Clear Lake is south of Riverton, abaut a milel, and
Clear Lake has always been a sort of recreation area, a lpark

area, and we used to have Chautauguas there, and during the Civil
War, there was. . . Camp Butler had been first started Ohere,
until it was moved up to where the Camp Butler Cemetery is now.
But after the war. . . there was a group of Springfield men
who had formed a hunt club there an Clear Lake, a good place to
hunt duck and my grandfather wanted to join the club and they
wouldn't let him join, and I suppose because he was an Irishman,
but my grandfather, then, up and bought the property and so he
formed his own hunt club and kicked them out and he built a road
from his house he had there on the hill in Riverton down south,
to Clear lake, and on weekends, he would gather his own caonies
together with a team and a wagon and put a barrel of whiskey on
the wagon, and they'd go down to clear lake, and camp out for the
weekend and hunt. So he began to accumulate a lot of property
around there. One of the reasons why he wanted the property was
so he could mine under it, but, at about this time, and I think
it was around 1870, the Marine Bank had failed, and Jacob Bunn,
Sr. was in receivership, and the receiver was selling off his
property in order to pay the debts of the bank. He owned some of
this property around Clear Lake, and my grandfather began buying
it up, parcel by parcel, as it went on the auction block, and
some of it was actually sold at auction on the court house
steps, and my grandfather bought it, and he ended up owning all
the property around Clear Lake, and quite a bit to the south and
east of it. It became a farm, and was handed down through his
family and my brothers eventually ended up owning it, and we did
sell it. There was a large gravel deposit there, and a Sand and
Gravel Company leased the land from us and mined it, and this was
a. . . and I guess this is all I can tell you about Grandfather
and the land.
Q. Well now, what relation was Bill Agee to the man you saw on
the ship on Thanksgiving Day, during the war?
A. I don't know that there was any relation. I don't know.
Could have been. I haven't been able to find anything out about
this kid, and I inquired the other day Pram some people who
worked at Sangamo Electric Company, and I did find one man who
remembered him, but he didn't know anything about him, where he
was, hadn't seen him. My grandmother, as I said, wha married
this cocky Irishman, she was an Agee, and her family had a farm
south and east of Riverton, and she had seven children, one of
them died at birth. The youngest child was a boy, and he was
born, and the nurse that as to take care of him, failed to put
the drops in his eyes when she was supposed to and he turned
blind, and he was blind all of his life, and he lived with her,
and she took care of him, and she, as a matter of fact, as hp was
growing up in school age, moved from her home in Springfield
I think, rented a house in Jacksonville. In Jacksonville
was a school for the blind, and she moved over there while h

in school, and lived there till he became educated, then moved
back to Springfield, and lived in that house that's on the
northeast corner of second and Lawrence Avenue. Still stands
there. It was just a block west of the Frank Lloyd Wright House.
Now, her oldest son took over the. . . when my grandfather died,
the oldest son took over the mining business and ran it till he
died, and that was sold, and World War 1 came along, the business
was sold to the Peabody Coal Company. And incidentally, the
property, the property during World War I out at Clear Lake was
forested for walnut. The Government cut dawn all the walnut
trees to be used for making gun stocks, and they had huge piles
of walnut logs there at the end of the war there that never got
used, actually. But my uncle, who was the second brother, whose
name was Jack Jess was a mining engineer, went to Princeton, and
he was hired by some, at one time, by some mining men in New
York, who had invested in some gold mine in Alaska. He was hired
to go up to Alaska and to survey this gold mine up there and
report back what he thought of its value. Well, he was
shipwrecked on the way up, and was. . . I don't know much about
that story, except it came out in the newspaper here in
Springfield, and somebody read the story, and quickly went to my
grandmother's hause and picked up the newspaper so she wouldn't
read it.
Q. what ye8r was that?
A. Can't remember what year it was. Probably about in the '20's
sometime, maybe. Don't remember if it was before World War I or
after. I think it was after W W I. But he was saved and he did
go out and survey this gold mine and we have some of the records
that he kept which show how much he had to pay for a dog team,
how much for a horse, how much for food and lodging for the week,
which was interesting, and he, he had some pictures of that which
we still have also. But the youngest son was blind from birth,
learned how to play the piano fairly well, and he lived with the
next oldest son, whose name was Bob. Bob had been divorced from
his first wife and lived in a house on Lowell Avenue. But he
took care of the blind son too, but forbad him to play the piano
cause he couldn't stand the racket, so this guy, this blind boy,
just listened to the radio and wound the clock and somebody came
and took him for a walk everyday, but he survived all the rest,
and the estate was put in trust for him, and it took care of him,
and so, we didn't inherit anything from the estate until he died
which was, oh, quite a long time after my mother died. Then we
inherited all this Clear Lake property, the Sand and Gravel
Company and finally divided it up amongst the nieces and nephews.
Q. Have they sold it, or are they living on it.
A. It's all been sold. And they're all dead now. I
Q. So then, Springfield Lake came in. What can you t 11 me
4

about Springfield Lake?
A. Lake Springfield? I remember, of course when it was built.
It was built in 1935. And they thought it was going to take
forever for it to fill up, but that first year, the spring rains
came and it filled up over night. I remember when they were
building the Lake. I guess I used to go out with my friend, Jack
Connelly to the Stout Farm, out south of town in Cotton Hill
Township, and help them with the harvest. We were just kids then
in grade school. We'd go out. , . sometimes we'd ride aut on our
bicycles, and sometimes Mrs. Connelly would take us out in her
chevrolet, which she called the "Plaza Express". She was a funny
lady, and we'd help them with the harvest. We'd help them pitch
beans. It's a hell of a job, you know, they. . back in those
days they would go in with a mower, and mow the beans down, and
then they'd go over them with a rake, and rake them up, and then
they went in with pitch forks, and make piles, and then they'd
come in with an old wagon, and go past all the piles, and people
would have to take the pitch fork and pitch the beans up into the
wagon. And, that was a back breaking job, I'll tell you. And the
wheat, they'd cut the wheat and tie them up into bundles, and
drop them. . . this machine would cut the wheat and. . . it was
called a binder, I guess. They'd cut the wheat and then bind it
up into bundles, and drop them on the field, and then you'd have
to go along and pick up the bundles, and put them into shocks,
and then you'd come along with a wagon with a pitch fork and
I you'd pitch these bundles of wheat up into the wagon, and then
I take these bundles of wheat over to the thrasher, and you'd feed
the bundles into the thrasher, and the thrasher would take the
I bundles and take the wheat seed off of the bundles and throp the
I straw up into a big straw pile. Not like it's done today. AM the
I corn, of course, was cut and shocked into big shocks,
I
I know what a shock is? It's a pile of corn stalks with the corn
aT
I still on, and then you'd have to go around with a wagon, andl load
"t"
1 it. And now I've lost my train of thought, I don't know what I'm
telling you.
I the shocks too, but they. . . but pitching the wheat
onerous task because of the wheat chaff that you'd get down your
I neck, and it just itched terribly. But we had a lot of fun oing
I
€4. Lake Springfield.
A. Oh all right, 1'11 tell you about Lake Springfield. We'd be
pitching wheat, or oats, maybe, and get all this stuff down your
neck, and you'd itch terribly, so at noon time we'd go out apd go
swimming in the Lake, and Jim Stout. . . we'd get a
we'd all pile on, and he'd drive over to some arm in
where he had a pretty good swimming hole. We'd strip
and go swimming to wash off all that dirt. And
i I know about Lake Springfield until I moved out here.
1
€2. Yes, but do you remember anything about the constructi n of

the Lake?
A. All I remember is that they had an awful lot of stumps they
tried to take out.
Q. Horse and Buggy?
A. Yes, with horses. The dam was built not with bulldozers, but
with teams of horses that dragged these scoop shovels along.
They scooped up the dirt and dumped it. It was an onerous task.
It took haurs and hours and hours to do that.
Q. Then certain trees were planted around.
A. Yes, they hired a lady, and I can't remember her name. [ a
Mrs. Knutsen]. She was a friend of my mothers and she did the
planting, and they planted certain trees, and each of the lots
that had been laid off, so that when people came and leased the
lots, they had tress already planted on it. Of course this was
all farm land to begin with, and there weren't any trees, sa we
had to plant them, and she did a pretty good job planting good
trees in each of the lots.
Q. W a s she the woman who was also responsible for the Lincoln
Gardens?
A, I think so. She was a maiden lady. I can't remember.
Q. Do you know much about the Lincoln Gardens?
A. No, I don't remember much about them.
Q. Were there any Indians here in this particular area?
A. Yeah, there were Indians here. There were prehistoric
Indians here. As a matter of fact, down the road
houses, when they built that house, they found a
Indian arrowheads right there at that place when
foundation. I don't know what Indians they
prehistoric. But these were Potowatomis here
then some of those who were pretty poor
have some Indian artifacts that I picked up down at Clear Lake.
There was, apparently a large Indian village out at Clear Lake at
one time, and when they mined the sand and gravel, they picked up
a lot of Indian arrowheads and axes, and that sort of thing, and
actually guns that had been dropped in the Lake by hunters or by
the Civil War soldiers who had a camp there.
8. What camp was there?
A. It was Camp Butler. Camp Butler was first started
Clear Lake and the first winter they spent out there, it
i

muddy, that they couldn't get in and out of Springfield, and they
had a hard time even getting into the woods getting wood for
their firs, so they decided they'd better move on up on a higher
hill. So thevnext spring, they moved up to where the Camp Butler
Cemetery is now, which was along side of a railroad and up on
high ground. (I guess we're going now) Ever since I was a kid, I
been interested in Clear Lake. It's been a fascinating spot, and
since my grandfather owned it, it was doubly fascinating to me,
and when I was a kid in grade school, one of my uncles, who was a
good. . . he and his wife were good figure skaters, and he took
me out there t o Clear Lake to skate one winter, and the water had
been high and then frozen and then the water had receded, so that
we had a layer of ice laying on top of the ground throughout the
timber, and around each tree was maybe a foot, foot and a half of
ice sticking out like a bench up on the tree maybe a foot, foot
and a half, and you could sit on it. And you could skate all
through the timber and up and down the little hills, and I
remember skating through the timber and coming to the lake and
coasting down the bank of the lake onto the surface of the lake
and then skating out there. It had good ice, it was nice and
smooth. But Clear Lake has always been a recreation spot even
in. . . before the white man came, the Indians gathered there.
There was apparently a big Indian encampment or Indian town
because there were lots of Indian artifacts had been found there
l over the years, and one of the, one of the recreational things
that people did back at the turn of the century was to go out to
I Clear Lake and they'd look for arrow heads, and lots and lots of
I arrow heads have been found out there, and other Indian
I
artifacts. My father tells about going out there himself when he
was a young man. They'd go out to Clear Lake in a, with a horse
I
and buggy, the boys and girls all together, and sometimes just
the boys would go out and they'd camp out there, and I remember
I him telling about camping out there in Clear Lake with sqme of
I
the other boys and they had a gun and they shot blackbir s and
I they cooked them and ate them and what they did was they'
1
take
I
the bird and pack it into a mudball and throw the mud bal into
i the fire and let it bake, and when they, when it was done, they
S could rake this ball out of the fire, break it open and th bird
I would be all cooked, and as you'd pull the mud off it, the
I
feathers would come off with it.
I) Well, I guess they had a good time with that, but it doesn't
sound too appetizing to me, but then earlier than that, there
I were Chitawkwas out there. People went out there to listen to
preachers, and in one of the letters I have, that was written to
my great grandfather Lanphiar, it talks about going out there and
listening to a lady preach, and tells about all the fancy
carriages that were out there and the fancy people that were all
dressed up to go out there to listen to this woman preach, and
then, they had. . . prior to the Civil War, there was a hotel
that was built out there at the north end of the lake. It was
called Clear Lake House, and it was .run by a lady whose nam was
Mrs. Chapman. I think she was originally a Richardson, I'F not
1

sure.
But, anyhow that hotel was there during the Civil War, when
Camp Butler occupied the East side of Clear Lake, and I suspect
that the officers all lived at the hotel while the men camped out
in the barracks. But, it was in the fall of 1860, 1 guess, when
Lincoln called for the troops that they all began to gather out
there and they decided that Camp Butler was the place to have
this camp where the soldiers were going to gather and train and
to get ready for the war, and the camp was named after Mr. Butler
who was the State Treasurer. I think that the time, that the
property was owned by Strother Jones, and maybe some of it by
Jacob Bunn. But at any rate, they would let the soldier% camp
out there, and, and after the first winter, as I say, it got so
muddy, they moved up onto the hill where Camp Butler Cemetery is
now, to get out of the mud, and to be able to get back and forth
to Springfield. The railroad track went right by there, and they
could go back and forth on the railroad. Just to the west of
that Camp Butler site, stood a farmhouse. It was owned by one
Uriah Mann. And Uriwh Mann was an old settler here and had been
in the Black Hawk War with Abe Lincoln, and the property, after
he died, I guess was handed down to one af his descendants by the
name of Black, and it still stood up untiJ maybe five, six, seven
years ago when it burned down. Some kids. . . it was empty, and
some kids got in there and built a fire, the place caught firs
and burned down which is a terrible shame cause it was a
beautiful old farm house, Back about 19. . . oh I guess abaut
1960'~~ maybe, I'd gotten interested in metal detecting and I had
bought a metal detector and was, and had a lot af fun with it
going around to various places trying to uncover artifacts of one
kind or another, and ran into a fellow who was also interested in
doing things with a metal detector, and a friend of his had sent
him a copy of a map of Camp Butler in the days of the Civil War,
and it was made for the purpose of reimbursing the peaple who
owned the property for the damage done by the Civil War Soldiers,
but this was the earliest map I'd ever seen of the Camp Butler,
and I suspect it's the only one that exists of Camp Butler that
first year that it was there, and it shows where the barracks
were, and where the cavalry kept their horses, and that sort of
thing. And it also shows where the Uriah Mann House also was,
and where the current Camp Butler is in respect to the first Camp
Butler. And at the Uriah Mann House, one day, a friend of mine
and I went out there to look through the Uriah Mann House. This
must have been 19. . . oh I don't know. . . 19701s, and we took
our metal detectors out, we thoroughly searched the yard, we
found all kinds af things.
One of the most interesting things I found was under the
front porch. I found a half dime, which obviously had been
there for quite some time. And one of the other things we did
was to dig up the old privies where the house. . . you could tell
where the privies had been. You know, they had to move the
privies every so often, maybe every five or six years, and they
got filled in with all kinds of junk that the people didn't want,

so you were sure to find artifacts in the old privies, +nd we
went in and dug up n old privy and sure enough we found all'kinds
of things. We found automobile parts, bottles, old milk bottles,
which you don't see any more, and all kinds of other things, and
that was a lot of fun. But then, I gat permission from the Blacks
to look at that place before we went in and I'm sorry that the
Blacks didn't do something about preserving that house. I'm sure
if someone had hen living there, it wouldn't have been burned
down l ike it is now.
Q As a caretaker.
A. There should have been a caretaker there. *But that house is
gone. It would have been a nice house to preserve, because it
was pre Civil War, certainly and I don't know how old it is.
Uriah Mann must have built it shortly after the Black Hawk War.
I think there's still a shed out there or a barn, but I don't
know how old it is. W e l l , I don't know what else to tell you
about Camp Butler.
Q. It was moved.
A. Yes, it was moved up to where Camp Butler Cemetery is now.
If you go out into that, I think its Oak Lawn Cemetery that's
immediately to the south of the Camp Butler Cemetery, and you go
through the plowed fields that are next to it in the spring after
the farmers' have plawed, you will find, you're quite apt to
find buttons from Civil War uniforms, mini balls, bullets, things
that were left over. And back, just to the east of the Uriah
Mann house, where the Camp Butler buildings were, one of the
buildings, which was, I think, an infirmary, burned down, and
they got the soldiers out of there just in time, so that there
were lots of uniforms and stuff burned up in that buildin
that spot, you can still go out and find things that wer
aver from the fire, and that's right next door to where th
Butler Cemetery is right now. But it's privately owned pr
and you have to get permission to use it. Prior to the
War, as I say, this was a recreation spot for Springfiel
they. . . and Mrs. Chapman and her husband, Richardson, bu
hotel at the north end of Clear Lake, and people could
there. . . it was a spa, I guess. People could go out the
the weekend or a for week and stay around there and they could
rent boats, even sail boats on Clear Lake, and they could fish,
and generally have picnics and a good time in the timber, and
look for arrow heads too, I guess. Well, that house was called
the Clear Lake House, and I guess, during the Civil War, the
soldiers took it over, probably the officers quartered themselves
there while the soldiers were in the barracks. But sometime
after the Civil War, Mrs. Chapman turned that into a, into a
whore hause, politely called a" Maison du Joi", by my Uncle W i l l ,
who re'lated the story of it in a letter that I have which he
wrote to a Lawyer friend, I can't think of his name, but he was a
J

partner of Billy Hesndon's after Lincoln died. And he had! run
into Mrs. Chapman, and a0 my Uncle was telling him the sto y of
this Mrs. Chapman. W e l l anyhow, then probably in the 181 P . .
let me think, 1890'8, perhaps, maybe in the late 1880's, the
place burned down.
As I've said before, my grandfather had a big home on the
hill there in Riverton, and it was three story high, and my
uncle, my mother's next older brother, told me that he remembered
seeing the Clear Lake House burn down from his bedroom window in
the home there in Riverton, and even today, you can go out to the
spot, it's now a plowed field. . . it gets planted in corn, or
beans. . . but if you go out in spring, just after the farmer has
plowed, you still find artifacts left over from this hotel.
Brick bats, pieces of tin. I found an old skillet, you find
money, you find Civil War bullets and buttons from Civil War
uniforms, and all kinds of stuff left over from this hotel. When
they started to find sand and gravel out at Clear Lake, can't
remember when that was, but I suspect it was around 1920 or 25,
the pumps that they used to pump the gravel up out of the Lake
would bring up all kinds of artifacts. It brought up deer horns,
arrow heads, Civil War soldiers' uniform hardware, and even the
metal parts of guns left over from the Civil War, which some, I
suspect, were dropped in the lake by hunters. So there's still an
awful lot of stuff out there in addition to the arrow heads, and
you can still go out today and find stuff, and I expect if I went
out there tomorrow, right after the man plowed the field, and
went through, I" find arrow heads and Civil War artifacts. It's
very interesting.
Q. Have any of these artifacts been given to the museums? Is
this where they all go.
A. I don't know what happens to them. People pick them up and
collect them. May be some of them got to the museum, I don't
know. I have no idea.
Q. What can you tell me about the Indians? What Indian tribe
was here on Clear Lake, say?
A. I don't know what Indian tribes were there in the early days,
probably the mound builders were there in the very early days,
and then later on just before the white man came to Sangamon
County, there probably was Potawatamis and maybe some Illini.
It's hard to tell what Indians left the artifacts that are there,
but there certainly were Indians there. And the museums know
about that and they hadn't done any excavating there but that is
one spot where they could go to excavate and perhaps find burial
sites like the one they've got out at the Dixon's Mounds. Now
what do you want
Q. How do you feel about Dixon Mounds?

A. Well I think it aught to be left the way it is. Le% the
people look at the bones. Why should the Indians down in
Oklahoma care about it. They don't even know whose bones they
are. They've gat no reason to believe that these bones were
their ancestors. They may have. . . the Indians down there may
have came from an entirely different group that came over here,
from, presumably from. . . cross over into China and then
Russia. Who knows which tribe is which, and when they came over.
After the last ice age, before the last ice age, who knows. It
was 30,000 years ago when they came over.
8. Perhaps they should be flattered that we're showing their
bones.
A. Well, perhaps. They certainly shouldn't make any stink about
it. They've got no right to do that. They ought to get out and
start making something out of themselves. I think that those
Indians, personally think that they just don't have the gumption
to get out and make a living for themselves.
Q. Yes, but haven't we taken away their incentive?
A. No, not at all. There are a lot of Indians who have left the
reservation, and melted into the rest of the American population
and have been successful, and, make a good living and don't
depend on the dole from the United States. I think it's a big
welfare system now. They never were very enterprising to begin
with. They were a poor lot.
Q. Well, Lewis and Clark thought that, didn't they?
A. Well, yeah. They didn't even have the wheel, Now when the
white man came, they didn't have any guns, they didn't have
horses, all they had was very cruds instruments, and they'd been
here for thousands of years, and their development was very slow
and very meager compared to the Incas and the Aztecs dpwn in
Mexico, who came of course to this continent the same way the
American Indian did. The American Indian was a poor lot.' They
fought amongst themselves all the time, they killed each dther,
they were racked with disease all the time, they had a hard time
getting enough to eat, and they just were a miserable lot. When
they talk about going back to the glory days of the Indian, well,
they are sadly mistaken. They ought to study their own history,
cause they aren't the noble red man that they would like to have
us believe. f think the white man has elevated the American
Indian far more than the American Indian has. It's the white man
whose made him into the brave warrior.
Q. Like Remmington.
A, Like Remmington. It's more than that. I think the
who wrote novels back at the turn of the century.

Q. Cooper?
A. Yeah, Fenn Cooper. I met Fenn Cooper who was the descendent
of the James Fenimore Cooper who wrote the Last of the Mohicans.
I met him up in Minnesota, I think it was. Yes, I went up there
for the Sangamo Electric Company to do some business. They had a
small factory up there that made metal desks and he was the
president, and they called him Fenn, Fenn Cooper, and he was the
direct descendant. Don't know what's happened to him now.
Q. Chris, tell me about your high school days. I presume that
they are probably your favorite time to recall.
A. Those days were lots of fun before the war. We had a lot of
"gangst1, guys who were good friends, gave parties together. Back
in those days, we had lots of dances and, I think a lot more than
what they do today, and the girls had their own organizations,
and they gave dances, and then there were dances by, given by
various organizations like the Beaus Arts and the Kings'
daughters charity Ball, you know, they were annual affairs and
everybody went to them and everybody dressed up in those days
when they went to dances. Everybody had tuxedos, and some af the
dances were so formal that we wore white tie and tails, and we
all had all the accoutrements for . . . we had top hats,
chesterfield coats, and we wore spats. You know what spata are?
And we had white silk scarves, white kid gloves, and really
dressed up fancy for these white tie and tail balls, and if it
wasn't white tie it was black tie and everybody had tuxedos, and
we wore tuxedos a lot to parties and not only just to dances but
to other parties, and people don't do that these days, it seems.
But we liked the dances, we liked having dances, getting
dressed up and groups of us would get together and decide to have
a dance. We'd go out and hire an orchestra, a ten piece
orchestra, and we'd hire a hall, which may mean the Elk Club
Hall, or the KC Hall, or it might be the Illini Country C1 b, or
even out at the, we had dances out at the Pavilion in Wash ngton
I Park, and I remember that was a goad place to have a ance.
Didn't have anything to drink in those days when YOU went o the
Pavilion because it was prohibited to have liquor at the Pavilion
at Washington Park, but we had the dance anyway and everybody had
a good time. We smoked. Go outside to smoke, but we had an
Orchestra, and the best Orchestra generally was one that was
brought down from Champaign, and I wish I could remember the name
of the guy who had the Orchestra from Champaign, but he came down
here and played for all the big dances, and back in those days,
after. . . of course I played football in high school, and in
high school we all wore sweaters, and the football players all
had letters that were sewed to the sweaters. If you were a
football man, you wore your, you wore your letters, and then of
course, you'd get a letter at Springfield High School forltrack
too, or for basketball, and baseball. Although baseball
as popular in those days as you night think. They diga::::

aseball teams, but the football team was the thing, and
!
qhen I
was in high school, Bill Rollie was the coach and Johnny Tu cher,
?
and we won the big twelve championship three years in a ro when
r
1 was khere, and that was a big thing. And it's never bee done
I
since. And the city thought it was a great thing, and the$ gave
1
us lota of dinners, parties and things for doing that, But as we
graduated from high school and kids went to college, we still had
i
this companionship with each other when we'd come home fqr the
i
I
holidays. And we'd have big parties then and big dances, and hire
I ten, twelve piece orchestras, and everybody came, and they all
dressed up. And when we were at college, we all dressed in suits
when we went out, and everybody had vests, and if you had a
pocket watch and a chain, that was great, and everybody was proud
to have a watch chain with some kind of an ornament attached to
I it. Whatever, your fraternity key or. . . I remember my father
had a watch chain with his fraternity key on it, and his medical
fraternity key on it, and my brother had his, and that was part
of getting dressed up.
We always dressed up on Sunday, and my father had lots of
parties at his house, and on Sundays, quite often he'd have
cocktail parties at noon before lunch, and he'd invite all his
friends, or a lot of his friends, and they'd come and they'd have
principally martinis, and the conversation was brilliant. We'd
have people like. . . well my father's older brother, Will Patton
who was an attorney. He was interested in history and in hunting
and in fishing, and he read history a lot, and mystery stories,
as my father did. Both of them were quite interested in mystery
stories as well as American history, English history, and French
history, and they belonged to the crime club which was a book
club. A mystery story came out every month, I think. And they
always read the crime club books. And the people that my father
had at his house for cocktails before Sunday dinner were all
interesting people like that. Like Logan Hay, and old Tom Smith
and Mr. Merium and he quite often had people who were quite
interested in history, and the conversation was always most
interesting, and us kids, his four boys, we'd all dress up in our
suits with our vests and our chains or what ever we had and we'd
just stand around and listen to the conversation. It wa$ very
educational and we. . . our father taught us how toi make
martinis, and we had to serve the martinis, and they were made in
cocktail shakers, and you stirred the martinis, you didn't shake
them, but if we had to make other drinks for somebody, mostly for
the ladies, like pink ladies, we'd shake them up in these
cocktail shakers. But while Father was having conversation with
all these men, we would mix the martinis and keep the glasses
full. Always had, the glass had an olive in it, and you stirred
the martini, you didn't shake it, and you always kept it ice
cald, and you never put ice in the martini glass. The martini
glass just had whole martini in it, nothing else, and the mqrtini
was made three to one. Yau never made it four to one like they
do these days. It was always three to one. And, we serv
martinis in cocktail glasses which didn't hold very much, b

martini was pretty potent and we were instructed to ke p the
martini glasses full all the time, and we did. And rI can
remember these guys. Mr. Merium had a little problernj with
paralyeis agitans, and his hands shook all the time. He had a
terrible time holding the martini glass, (chuckle) he always held
it in two hands, and he was always spilling it, but he was a
delightful Gentleman and he was red faced and he knew lots of
storiea, and when Adlai Stevenson was Governor, my father used to
have him out for cocktails on Sunday, before Sunday lunch, and he
had a lot of the neighbors in, and of course all of the Pattons
came and Adlai was confused about the Pattons cause he was always
meeting Pattons and he couldn't keep them straight, and I didn't
blame him, cause there was Will Patton and his sons, two sons,
and my father and his four sons and various wives, and my mother,
bless her heart, was a lady in the finest sense. She was brought
up as a. . .
END TAPE THREE, SIDE ONE
Her father had sent her to Manticello at Godfrey, Illinois,
where, incidentally one of her classmates was Alice Longworth
Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelts daughter, and I think she, my mother
was in, in her wedding party too. Anyhow, her father also sent
her to the Riverside school for Girls in New York City, and she
was taught all of the niceties of being a lady and she was a lady
indeed. As a matter of fact, I never remember my mother ever
being down stairs in our house except fully clothed. At any
rate, she was at this party when Adlai was there, and Adlai was
sitting on the couch talking to her, and he was saying to her. .
. remarking that there were so many Pattons that he couldn't keep
them straight, and made the remark that "there must have been
incest in the family", and she took offense at this remark and
just said it was terrible and would never have Adlai Stevenson
back in her house again after that. But, I guess it didn't make
any difference to Adlai. He probably never even knew it. But,
when Adlai was Governor one time, I played tennis with him on
several occasions along with Chick Lanphier, and I guess this
must have been in 195, 1951 or 52, cause at that time I was
working down in Southern Illinois at the Sangamo Electric
Company plant down there. We had a plant down there that
manufactured capacitors and I was sent down there to help get
that plant going, and during the time I was down there, they had
a terrible mine disaster at the old Ben mine, and I remember this
cocktail party when Adlai came out to our house, he was quizzing
me about the attitude of the people down there about this mine
disaster.
Q. What did he want to know?
A. He wanted to know how the people felt about the disaster. I
guess he wanted to know whether they were all mad at the Governor
because of the disasters. I don't know, but he was concerned
i

about the Union activities down there.
Q. Did he have any reason to be concerned?
A. As far as I could tell, the people, the people were upset
about the mine disaster, but weren't blaming the state ar the
Governar about it, so he didn't have any reason to ge worried as
far as he was concerned.
Well, I should get back to telling you about how Springfield
was in my generation before the war, and while I was in high
school. There was a gentleman who was a pharmacist by the name
of Charlie Dungan and he ran the drug store that was on the
Island at South Grand and MacArthur. Back in those days,
MacArthur was West Grand Avenue. Let's see, there was North
Grand, South Grand, West Grand, but after WWII, they renamed West
Grand, MacArthur, after General MacArthur. It was West Grand in
those days. And there, on the Island. . . on the Island
was a drug store and a barber shop and a gasoline station. The
barber shop was used by all the neighborhood and it had been
there for quite some time, and even when I was a youngster, w e
were sent there by our family with a quarter to go get our hair
cut. Twenty five cents is what it cost. One of the barbers name
was Butch, and I can't remember what his last name was, but at
any rate, I was in there getting a haircut one time when in came
John L. Lewis. His sister lived just off of West Grand Avenue
and he was visiting town and came to get his haircut. Butah was
cutting his hair, and I remember, Butch asked him if he wanted
his eyebrows trimmed, and boy he bristled up and said "don't dare
touch his eyebrows". That was his symbol, big bushy eyebrows and
they certainly were bushy. His daughter was a nurse,
anesthetist, I think at St. John's Hospital, and I guess she was
pretty good. My father knew her, of course, but John L. Lewis, he
was a pretty tough Union man, and he was mixed up with the mine
warfare down in Southern Illinois, and he was involved with the
massacre in" bloody" Williamson County, and I remember when I was
working down in Southern Illinois in 1950, '51,'52, I remember,
Paul Angle, the author, was writing a book an "Bloody
Williamson". He came down there and was staying in the yerion
Hotel in Merion, Illinois and I was staying there also, nd he
and I had dinner together and we talked about the floody
Williamson and the mine warfare, and it really was brutal. And
he was collecting data at the time for his book on" Bloody
Williamson".
Q. Did he use it in his book, What's the name of the Book?
A. It's called
"Bloody Williamson."
Q. Have you read it?
A. Have I read it? Oh, of course.

Q. Was it accurate?
A. Yes, it was a factual account of the warfare that went on
down there. Of course, before I was down there. That warfare
went on back in the twenties, I think it was.
Back to Charlie Dungan who ran the. . . who was the
pharmacist at the, I think it was called the Avenue Drug atore.
He was interested in looking after the high school kids, an@ they
all congregated at his drug store, and he had a soda fopntain
there, and that was a meeting place for all of us kids ip high
school, and we all would drive up in our automobiles at the drug
store, and we always met our friends there. And Charlie was
interested in keeping us out of trouble, so he formed a club
which he called the Pillrollers Club, and the name Pillr~llers
was in reference to the old time druggist who made pills by
mixing the powders and by rolling them up in a piece of paper.
And that was the way, before the days of making pills with
machines, where you compacted the powders into a pill.
They were just loose powders rolled up into a piece of paper. That
was a pillroller. Well we had a. . . everybody joined the
Pillrollers Club and I have here my membership club.
Q. Did you have a number?
A. Yeah, it was number twelve, I see. I don't remember that
was significant, by any means. Bob Davenport was one of the kids
and his name is on here as being, the-secretary-pill and Gerry
Keally was another one of our high school friends who was the
grand-c-c-pill, what ever that meant, Founded in 1930. And we
gave dances. The pillrollers gave lots of dances. We just had
lots of fun together. A lot of us kids had cars. I had a car.
It was an old model A two door sedan, and it's name was Ethel,
and it was one where the gasoline tank was right up above the
dashboard, and of course, it had a regular gear shift on it, and
I used to drive it back and forth to Michigan to our summer home
up there. Take my friends up there. My oldest brother, when he
was in high school, his car was a model T, and I believe its name
was Lucy, and I remember Lucy. I was quite a bit younger than my
oldest brother and so I didn't ride around in it much, but 1
didn't like to ride in it much cause it didn't have any floor
boards in the front. You looked right down through to the street
when you sat in the seats, and all you could see was the axle on
the drive shaft going back and forth with the axle, But anyhow,
my brother. . . Lucy kind of injured him one time. He was trying
to start it up one time by cranking it, and it backfired and the
crank came back and hit him in the chin. Put a big gash in his
chin. He still has a big scar there, but Ethel was more kindly.
I had a lot of fun with Ethel. Used to drive back and forth to
high school with her. Before I had Ethel, I uged to
walk home from high school. I'd go to school with my fat er ,
he'd drive down to work and I'd go down with him, He'd d op me
F
55

off at high school but I played foot ball and always had to stay
after for football practice and didn't have a way to get home, so
we walked home. I think it was twenty four or twenty five
blocks, and we'd walk home from high school foot ball practice
and sometimes it was after dark. You were worn out, and that
walk hgme was a long walk, carrying your books. Used to walk to
grade school too. That was about twelve blocks, when I went to
the Butler School. One year, we had a big ice storm, I remember,
and I skated to school on my ice skates for twelve blocks and
back, but the Pillrolle~s gave lots of dances and all the high
school kids in my gang belonged to the Pillrollers, and the girls
had clubs too, I can't remember what the names were of those
clubs, but they gave dances and they'd invite the bays and always
had an orchestra. One of the other clubs that we had was called
the "Antlerstt, and it was sponsored by the Elks, and they had a
way of keeping kids out of trouble, and the "Antlers" would give
dances alsa and, of course, it was always at the Elks Club. Not
all the kids in our gang belonged to the "Antlers", and there
were some other kids in the "Antlers" that didn't belong to our
gang, but there was one group of kids, mostly a year or two older
than I, who decided that they ought to get together and give a
party, because they'd been invited to so many parties by other
groups, that they didn't want to be "pikers", and so they thought
they'd pay back. So, they got together and they all chipped in
and we called this group the "Pikers", and they gave a big dance
and I think that was the only function the "Pikers" ever had.
Just this one dance which was on Christmas Eve at the Illini
Country Club and the "Pikers" were the elite of Springfield, 1'11
tell you. It was Jack Miller, Rod Metheney and Junie O'Keef and
Francis Shuster, and Bunch Bunn and George Bunn and Bob Hitt, and
Cprk Sankey, Bob Cook, Eddie Edwards and his older brother, Bob,
and Bud Vredenburg and Cliff Lockey and Otie White and Tom Smith
and Jake Bunn and Jim Patton, my older brother, and Cork leg
Sankey, and Jack Neal.
Q. Why'd they call him cork leg?
A. Well, cause he had a funny way of walking. Made him look as
though he had a wooden leg, so we'd call him "cork leg". Still
walks that way, and as a matter of fact, his younger brother
walks that way also. Younger brother is Jack, and he and Jack
ran the Sankey Brothers Sand and Gravel and Paving Company, I
guess it was. Sankey brothers did a lot of paving. They sold it
now. It's still called Sankey brothers, but they do paving work.
Q. W e l l , as I look a t this elite list, I see Barley Bunn. Why
Barley?
A. I don't know why he was called Barley. That was George..
Q And Plunger Hitt.
I

A. Don't remember why he was called Plunger. I don't know why
he was called Sinker. But there were reasons, I guess. If my
next older brother were here, he could tell you all that. But I
don't remember that. Those guys were all a year or a year and a
half older than me. And I wasn't included as one of the
"Pikers", but I was invited to their dance, and some of the other
dances. . . that's Charlie Dungan, he was the guy who formed the
Pillrollers. Kept us out of trouble. A little short guy, and
Bob Rourk was a big football player along with Bob Cook, and Bob
Rourk was the Soda Jerk at the Avenue Pharmacy which is the
pharmacy, the drug store that Charlie Dungan ran, and Bob Raurk's
specialty was making a toasted hershey bar and ice cream
sandwich, and he would get a slice of ice cream and a hershey bar
and put it together between two pieces of bread and put it in the
toaster and toast it, and he'd get it toasted before the ice
cream melted and before the chocolate melted, and it was quite a
trick. (Laughter) I forget what he called that, but that was his
specialty. And he was a good guy too. He tried to keep a11 the
kids out of trouble and some kids did get into trouble. Mostly
with drinking, and my next older brother was one of them, and he
became an alcoholic, and George Bunn thought that he was getting
to be an alcoholic cause his wife became an alcoholic. I don't
think George was an alcoholic but he joined Alcoholics Anonymous
anyhow and he helped an awful lot of these guys who became
alcoholics. Richie Irwin became an alcoholic, and he hired them
in his factory which was the Bunn-a-matic. He hired my brother.
My brother took the cure and was no longer a drinker. Of course
an alcoholic's always an alcoholic, but he doesn't necessarily
drink, and Richie Irwin was cured too. He was an alcoholic, and
George hired him out at Bunn-0-Matic, and he worked out there
until he died, and my brother worked out there until he died and
they had a lot of respect for George Rsgan Bunn. One should not
confuse George Regan Bunn with the other George Bunn who was the
son of Jib Bunn, brother of Sallie Bunn, whose is now $allie
Schanbacher. George Regan Bunn is a good guy and he's a horse
enthusiast, and he raises quarter horses, and I think he hag some
race horses now, but mostly he raised quarter horses.
Q. Where's he racing them?
A. I don't know, Down in Texas the last t ime I heard.
9. Because he's not racing them here.
A. Well, I guess if there were any quarter horses here, he'd
race them. I guess. I suppose he shows at the fairgrounds
during Fair Week.
Q. What about the Fair Grounds? What was the year they opened
the Fair Grounds?
A. Long before I was born. The Fair Grounds is old, old, old.

Q. Have they changed a great deal, the last couple of years?
A. Of course the Fair Grounds has improved all the time. The
Governor's always interested in having the Illinois Fair. . . the
Illinois State Fairgrounds. . . always interested in having the
best State Fair and always has been a good State Fair and from
the beginning it always was a farmers affair, always concerned
with Agriculture, cattle, chickens, hogs, sheep, and it's always
been the best in the country. I haven't been to the State Fair
for years, but they still show a lot of cattle, horses, what not.
They even had a sale out there one time of the, oh, what did they
call it, the. . . "Pony of America" which my friend, Boo
McGilvra, was one of two men who started the breed of the "Pony
of America" because they felt the Shetland pony. . . the
personality of the Shetland Pony was not suitable for kids.
Everybody was buying Shetland ponies for kids but Shetland ponies
were mean, so they bred down some other breeds of horses to what
they called the Pony of America specifically for kids and I guess
the breed is still going and it wasn't too long ago when they had
a sale there of PoA's they called them. Ponies of America.
Well, I guess. , .
Q. What about the World's Fair of 1933?
A. Well, yes, I went to the world's Fair in 1933. In 1933, how
old was I then? I was 16 or 17, I guess, I went up there with a
group from Springfield. It was a YMCA group, and they had kids
from Springfield and from other towns about, and it was sponsored
by the YMCA, and we went up with this group, and it wa$ Rich
Irwin, Rog Troxel, and Jack Connelly, and myself. I can't
remember who else, but in the group was Robert Wadlow from Alton,
who was called the "Alton Giant". This poor kid had grown to be
almost nine feet tall and tremendous big feet, and he was a nice
gentle guy, but just had a terrible time living. He had a
terrible time walking, trying to carry all that weight, and he
couldn't talk very well because his vocal cavities were large
(apparently spoke with a great hollow sound) that made his voice
sound funny and. . .but we went there on the train, stayed t the
YMCA up there and they had to put a couple of beds togeth 1 r to
take care of Bob Wadlow, and I remember when he went swimming in
the pool at the YMCA, they just had a terrible time getting him
out. They just cauldn't get him out of that pool. They had a
terrible time, and had to get several people together ta help get
him out of the pool. But we went out to the Fair Grounds for
several days and I see I have several tickets here. Looks like we
were there for at least three days, cause I have three ticket,
four ticket stubs. But he walked around the Fair Grounds, and of
course always had a crowd around him, and everyone was looking up
at him, admiring this poor kid, and he was very nice to
everybody. He'd sign their, whatever they had to sign. I don't
knaw how much of the World's Fair he saw, but he was able to walk
around, but eventually, they put him in a wheel and wheelqd him

around, but we went to see Sallie Rand and her fans and, all we
saw of Sallie Rand was her fans, She was very clever about that.
Presumably she didn't have anything on, but you couldn't tell.
I'm sure they wouldn't have let her perform at the World's Fair
if you could.
But a group of us alsa went into one of the burlesque houses
in Chicago. This was not at the World's Fair, this was in
Chicago. But we want to the Burlesque House to watch the
striptease act. . . well they had other acts besides striptease,
but, being young, high school kids, we were, we thought we were
being quite bad, and I guess we were, but we went to see the
striptease, and I saw a lot of things at the Fair. and many af
them don't remember much of what they were about, but I do
remember going in and looking at a display of a new product made
from fiberglass, from glass fibers, and the, I think it was
Libby-Owens-Ford, perhaps, who had this display and they had
samples of cloth, woven out of glass fibers, and this was a
fantastic new thing at the time, and I was very impressed with
it. Brought home some samples they gave out of this fiberglass
stuff. They even had a machine there that showed how they made
the fiber, the glass fibers, and they'd start out with a ball, a
marble of pure glass, and they'd melt it, and form it into glass
fibers.and somewhere, I still have that sample, I believe. Well
the World's Fair was quite a thing, and I have some post cards
that I bought at the World's Fair, and the one I have here is a
great tall thermometer that was used as a display by the Haveland
Oil People, and I guess they called it the tallest thermometer in
the world, but you could see it from anywhere, it was a tall
tower, and you could see it from anywhere on the on the World's
Fair grounds.
Q. Was it there for very long? This particular display?
A. I dan't know whether it was or not.
Q. It says here( I read from part of this descriptio
card) twenty one stories high, shows temperature by neon
tubes, sponsored by Indian Refining Company, Lawrence
Illinois. Makers from wax free Haviland Motor Oil. What'
free?
I
A. It's more highly refined than other motor oils. That's all
it means. They had a harbor there at the World's Fair in C icago
and it's still there, and they had boats that you could take
rides in and ride around and see the various displays, and, after
the World's Fair, one of those boats was brought dawn here to
Lake Springfield, and it was used to take people rides around
Lake Springfield. I guess you could put twenty to thirty geople
into this boat and, also same of the houses that were.
guess they were display houses of modern homes that, wir:
displayed there being the newest thing and some of those were
brought down hers to Lake Springfield and erected at the C ttage

Grove, what's called Cottage Grove today an the East side of the
lake, and some of thase houses are still there. ~hey've been
built on to, but they came from the world's Fair in Chicago.
Citizens of Springfield would rent them from the city for awhile,
and they were used just as weekend cottages. I remember, I think
it was either Paul Noonan or Kurt Bretscher or Lee Ensel rented
one of those and they had a big group, his group was older than
I, and they'd have parties out there on the weekend. Big
Burgoos. I remember my brother Jim ran around with that crowd
and, they had big burgoos out there where they'd start a couple
af days before hand and put all kinds of stuff in it, and they'd
have to stay up all night to watch it cook, and of course you'd
have ta drink a lot of beer while you stayed up all night and
watched it cook, and by the next day, most of them had a
hangover.
But, that group. . . there was another club called the "0
So Peachy Club" that was formed by Paul Noonan and my brather
Jim, Curt Bretcher and I think that some of the Bunns belonged Lo
that group too, and it was really just a drinking club. They
gave mostly burgoo parties out at the lake. I don't think the 0
So Peachy Club ever had a dance, but it was called the 0 So
Peachy Club. They did a lot of singing. Paul Noonan liked to
sing, and they'd get drunk and have big songfests. Those were
good days for lots of conviviality with lots of companionship,
and it was very much like the groups I remember my father talking
about, when he was a youngster, same age here in Springfield, and
they had lots of dances and "in fairs" and "chivarees" and that
sort of thing. And they all got dressed up too, very fancily.
And they had lots of open houses in those days where you go
around from house to house an New Years, and get treated to
drinks and little tasties at every house you went to. By the end
of the day, it you weren't pretty drunk, it wasn't because it
wasn't available, but in those days they wore derby hats, and
they had long dances too. They had square dances. When I was in
high school, there weren't tao many square dances. There were
some. I remember Jim, Jim Stout, James Howard Stout. He always
gave a square dance out in the barn on his farm and everybody was
invited. All the gangs, all the age groups were invited to the
square dances. The old folks who were up in their nineties, down
to the kids who were ten or twelve years old, all came to these
square dances, and they all square danced and had a fine time.
And the hayloft there, and kids played in the hay, and the older
folks. . . vigorous dancing, I remember. And this is generally
done in the winter time when it's cold outside. It was generally
in the fall, I guess, after harvest.
8. The good old days.
A. The good old days. The war came along, and everything changed
and all the gangs were broken up. They were all separated from
one another. Many of them were killed, but they were sepa
and some went to west and some went east, and when the wa

over and they all came back, they all dribbled back, they didn't
all come back at one time, and relationships changed. The old
companionships were lost. Everybody had their own experience.
The youngsters who went to war, came back men who had seen. . .a
lot of terrible things.
Q. Chris, let's talk about your book, "Glory to God and the
Sucker Democracy."
A. A11 right. Sangamon State has several copies of it. It's
about, primarily, Charles Henry Lamphier who was the owner and
Editor of the Illinois State Register in the early days. I guess
he owned it from 1846 to 1864, and then he sold out. And this is
a story. . the book tells a story of that period, and there are
things about that period that I haven't put in that book, that
might be of interest. I can show you some of the pictures af my
early ancestors that are in this book, and they bring back some
stories that I have told before, but not in this book, and maybe
you'd be interested in hearing it. Let me start out by saying
that John Crenshaw was one of my ancestors who came to Illinois
in the early days, and he and his father came from South
Carolina. I think one of the family stories is that his house
straddled the line between North and South Carolina, and he was
one of those in the great huge migration that came from the North
and South Carolina, down the Ohio River, or down the Tennessee
River, and into the Mississippi River and then across the
Mississippi River to the West. And his, his ancestors. . . some
of them, one af them was from New Jersey. As a matter of fact,
there was an Abrahamm Crenshaw, who was the one who came down
here first, was married to a lady who, best we can tell, was a
descendant of John Hart who was a signer of the Declaration of
Independence, and they came into Southern Illinois by way of
Louisiana.
What was called Lauisiana in those days, it was actually
the Louisiana purchase, They came down the Ohio River and landed
at New Madrid, Missouri in 1811, and the great earthquakes of
1811 started about that time. I think it was in December that
the first earthquake came, and Abraham Crenshaw had already set
up a plantation down there, had his hause built, and the
earthquakes came along and they lasted far over a year and they
were more severe than any of the earthquakes that we've had in
California in man's memory, and I read somewhere that it was
estimated that an the Richter scale they were in the order of
nine and a half to ten. So it was more severe than the California
earthquakes that were in the order of, I think, six and a half to
seven. There were a few educated men in the area at the time.
Not many people were killed because there weren't many people
around, but there were some educated people who were able to
report on what they saw, and they saw some miraculous things.
The Mississippi River actually ran backwards for awhile. Huge
lakes were formed. Real Foot lake was formed from that 1811
earthquake, and the quakes went on for over a year, and so it

drove old Abraham Crenshaw out. He decided it wasn't for him, so
he cama back up the Ohio River and settled in Gallatin County in
Illinois, near Shawneetown, and went to work making salt from the
salt wells there and his son, John Crenshaw, also was a salt
maker, and he was the one who built the house that still stands
down there. It was finished in 1842, and is called the "Old
Slavs House". The current owner makes a little money by showing
people through this house, and he has some stories to tell about
the torturing of slaves in this house, but I don't think these
are true at all, because John Crenshaw didn't own any slaves. He
did lease some slaves from across the river, in Kentucky, to help
run the salt mills that they made, and what they did was, they
took the salt water out of the wells and boiled it to make salt,
The United States government had set aside a certain portion of
land down there around the salt wells for the purpose of making
salt, because the huge, large number of immigrants going west
needed salt, and so they allowed slaves to be brought into the
particular area, which was called the U.S. Salines, for the
purpose of cutting timber, building fires for boiling the water
to make the salt, and John Crenshaw, I suspect, leased some
slaves from across the river, and used them for that purpose.
In any case, that old house still stands, and my great
grandmother was born there, and she was, she married Charles
Henry Lanphier who was the owner/editor of the Illinois State
Register from 1846 to 1864, and he inherited this newspaper from
his brother-in-law who was William Walters. William Walters came
from Washington and had been a newspaper man there, and the local
Democrats in Illinois thought they needed a good Democratic paper
in the State Capitol which was then at Vandalia, so they talked
him into coming to Vandalia ta start up a new Democratic paper
which he did, and he was married to the sister of Charles Henry
Lanphier and so she came west with him to Vandalia and Charles
Henry Lanphier, a few weeks later, came west also to work for him
in the newspaper. I think he was sixteen years old at the time.
I guess he was the "printers devil". But at any rate, he started
the Illinois State Register there in Vandalia and when the State
Capitol was moved from Vandalia to Springfield in 1839, Charlie
Lanphier moved with the State Register which was rnaved at the
same time the Capitol was moved, so Charlie cama to Springfield,
and he married a lady from Gallatin County who was born in this
"Old Slave House" that John Crenshaw built. She was a Crenshaw.
Margaret Crenshaw. Margaret Taylor Crenshaw. In fact, she was a
cousin of Zachary Taylor, I think. At any rate, she had a number
of children, one of whom was named Bob, and everybody called him
"Black Bob". And he was "Black Bob" because he was a bad boy and
he was banished from Springfield by his mother, and he was sent
back to Gallitan County and put on a farm and was told to stay
there. Well, Black Bob. . .he wasn't really bad, he was just a
young man who was feeling his oats, and when he was here in
Springfield, growing up as a young man, he got into t~ouble
because he and his friends drank a lot and they, one day, went
out to east Jefferson Street, which was a red light district in

those days, and they were up, on the second floor Of znTEz;7
which was apparently a whore house, " Maison du Joie",
were in their cups. . . and they got mad at the girls and threw
all the furniture out the second story window, then they threw
the girls out after the furniture. Well, this didn't go aver
very well with his mother, and so, then one of the other things
his friends did. . .
One time they got a little high and went out on the east
side of town where there was a colored church that was in
session, and there were high broad steps that went up to the
front door of the church, and they pulled the front steps away
from the front door, and then they hollered "fire", and all these
colored people came, trying to get out the church, and there
weren't any front steps, and I don't know whether anybody was
hurt, but that was one of the stories that was told about him, so
he was banished from Springfield, sent down to Southern Illinois,
and old C.H. Lanphier bought a farm down there and he was put on
this farm and spent the rest of his life there. He had a speech
impediment. He sort of stammered before he'd start to speak.
He'd go llts.ts.ts" before he said what he was going to say, and
this impediment was his characteristic, which he carried with him
all the rest of his life. Well, sometime later, back in 1952 or
3, I was working down in Southern Illinois at Marion with the
Sangamo Electric Company, and I was staying at the Marion Motel
there, and John Crenshaw Lanphier who ran the Lanphier Insurance
Company here in town. . . he was my father's cousin, and my
father's age, came down to Marion and he wanted to go over to
revisit his grandmother's home, which was the "Old Slave House",
so I drove him over to see this house which is in Equality which
is about ten miles from Shawneetown, and we also went into
Shawneetown, because he wanted to see Shawneetown. Well,
Shawneetown was an old, old town where the settlers landed,
there, on the Ohio River, and they'd come down the Ohio, they
landed there, and instead of following the Ohio down to the
Mississippi then coming up the Mississippi to St. Louis, they
would stop at Shawneetown and then go across country, across the
southern tip of Illinois, to get to St. Louis, because it was
easier than coming up from where the Ohio joins the Mississippi
and up stream to St. Louis, there being, in those days, no
steamboats, of course, and everything was done by paddling or
pulling. Well, at any rate, Shawneetown became a, an important
town in those days because of that, and the salt business became
important because all of these masses of immigrants needed salt,
and so, when they got to Shawneetown, they would buy bushels of
salt to take along with them as they went west across the
Mississippi at St. Louis, and west into the Prairies. And
Shawneetown had a bank, and it was noted because, in the old
days, they refused a loan to the City of Chicago because they
didn't think that Chicago had much future.
Well, Shawneetown always flooded when the Ohio River
flooded, and they built big dikes or levies to protect the town
from the floods, but the floods always got higher and higher, and
i

always flooded. Finally, back in the 19309s, I think '33 or '35,
the federal Government decided they were getting tired of
providing money for all these flood victims, and the thing to do
was to move the whole town onto high ground so that they wouldn't
have to do that. So they moved Shawneetown up onto a hill, oh,
a few biles to the west, but not all the residents wanted to
move. There were some river rats that decided they just wanted
to stay in old Shawneetown, and they, by golly, weren't going to
move out. Well, when I and my uncle John Lanphier drove over to
Shawneetown, we drove into town and we got out of the car and we
started to walk, around and there wasn't a soul in sight. We
couldn't see anyone anywhere, and we eventually found out that
what was going on was that these old river rats thought that we
were the feds trying to drive them out of Shawneetown, so they
just disappeared. Well, we didn't see any one in the street
anywhere, and we walked down the street, and finally came to a
barber shop, and there were some folks in the barber shop, and so
Uncle John and I went into the barber shop, and he started
talking to some of these old people there, and said, "Anybody
here that remembers old Bob Lanphierl'? And there was one old man
who said, "Sure, I remember Bob," and he imitated his way of
speech, so there wasn't any question that he knew old Bob
Lanphier, and so, we talked a little bit about old Bob Lanphier,
and Bob, apparently. . . he had died down there, spent the rest
of his life there. He was just a farmer, but he w as a well
educated man, and I have some letters from him, and he had a very
good hand, and he spoke well, and he wrote well, but he came to
naught down there. Never did marry. Well, that was one of the
stories about that part.
Southern Illinois was an important part of the great
migration west in the early days. The people from the east coast
went down through Virginia and North and South Carolina, then
immigrated west down the Ohio and the Tennessee River, and they
all came past Shawneetown, which is down on the southeast corner
of Illinois. Shawneetown was one of the early towns right on the
river, and the immigrants, instead of following the Ohio River on
down to it's junction with the Mississippi, and then try t~ beat
the current going back on up the Mississippi to get to St. $ouis,
would stop at Shawneetown, and then go overland across the eenter
part of Illinois to, what was called the American Bottoms, which
is a piece of land right across the River from St. Louis, and
then they'd ferry across the river to St. Louis, and that saved
all the problem of trying to go upstream without. . . this was
before steamboats. Well, anyhow, southern Illinois became an
important part of the migration west. There were salt wells in
Galatin County, along with the Saline River there, and the
Illinois Indians had used the salt wells to make salt, and 80 did
the French, in the early days. And, along there, the Half Moon
Lick, they found dinosaurs and all the. . . a lot of bones of
prehistoric animals as well as buffalo and deer and moose and all
the other animals, all who have gone down there to lick the
ground to get the salt. And there's a place there called the

Half Moon Lick, and it's a very. . . well, there's a slight ridge
in the shape of a half moon, which had probably been formed by
the licking of thousands and thousands of animals who came in
there to lick the clay to get the salt. Well, the early settlers
needed ealt also, so the United States Government laid aside a
ten square mile area of land around the salt wells on the Saline
River, just below where Equality, Illinois is for the purpose of
making salt for the emigrants going west. And they made the salt
by taking the water out of salt wells or salt springs, and
boiling it in huge pots, and apparently the Indians have done
this before the white man came because you can go down there
today, and find all kinds of pot shards left from the clay pots
the Indians used to boil the water in to make salt. At any rate,
my ancestor, John Crenshaw and his father, Abraham Crenshaw, were
salt boilers down there, and they got into the business of making
salt and selling it to the people who were going west, and
Shawneetown was only about, I think about five miles from
Equality, where the salt wells were, and there were. . . one of
my ancestors built a house there on a hill by Equality, and it
was, down there, known as the "Old Slave House", but it still
stands. It was finished in 1842. It's a huge structure, three
stories high, sitting on top of a high hill overlooking the Ohio
River. And, it was used, I suspect, to house people going from
Shawneetown, across ta St. Louis. Sort of an Inn or a Way place,
or a hotel, and the third floor had small rooms with double
decker beds.
END OF TAPE THREE, SIDE TWO.
My ancestor, Great, great, grandfather, John Crenshaw, that
built this house, was the son of Abraham Crenshaw who was married
to Elizabeth Hart. Elizabeth Hart, we think, was a daughter of
John Hart of New Jersey, who was a signer of the Declaration of
Independence. Abraham had moved from the house that stood on the
line between North and South Carolinas, so the story goes, and
moved west down the Ohio River and settled in Missouri at New
Madrid, and that's where the famous New Madrid earthquakes
occurred in 1811, and when they occurred, he had already built a
house, and staked out a claim for a good sized ranch, and the
earthquake came along. Well, they were much more severe than the
one's in California, and would last for over a year, and they
shook down chimneys and they shook down these houses, and so that
the people hardly dared to live inside their houses. They were
outside all the time. Well, anyhow, this got a little tiresome,
so Abraham Crenshaw moved out, moved back up the Ohio River and
settled in Gallatin County and started boiling salt for the
trade, and his son also became a salt boiler and built this house
which they called "Hickory Hill", and which the people down there
today, call the "Old Slave House, and he married Francine T ylor,
who was a daughter of a. . . forget what the guy's name w s who
had settled in the area, but anyhow, they were cousins of Z chary
f

Taylor, and they had a daughter named Margret Crenshaw, who
married Charles Henry Lanphier who was the owner/editor of the
Illinois State Register from 1846 to 1864, and he was my great,
grandfather. Well Charles Henry Lanphier came to Illinois from
Washington, D.C. where his family lived, and his sister had
married William Walters who was a newspaper man in Washington,
and some of the Democrats in Illinois, at the time the Capitol of
Illinois was in Vandalia, felt there should be another Democratic
newspaper at the State Capitol in Vandalia, so they talked him
into coming out west and starting up a new newspaper in Vandalia.
A Democratic newspaper, so they did, and the Illinois State
Register was started down there by him, and his brother- in-law,
Charles Henry Lanphier, who was then sixteen, came out west to
work for him, and he worked in the newspaper a couple of years
until the newspaper moved up to Springfield, and it moved to
Springfield when the Capitol moved to Springfield from Vandalia.
The newspaper came along and so did Charlie Lanphier and William
Walters .
William Walters was quite a character. I guess he was a
pretty good newspaper man and an avid Democrat, and he also was a
pretty good drinker, and he became an alcoholic and in 1846,
when the Mexican War started, he decided that his fortunes would
be served best, if he joined the Army and became a general or
made himself a name in the service in the Mexican War. So he
joined the army and went to Jefferson barracks in St. Louis where
he took ill.They moved him out of the barracks and moved him into
a hatel and he suffered badly, they said, from brain fever, but I
think he was just plain an alcoholic. At any rate, Charlie
Lanphier's sister, one of his sisters,was coming west from
Washington to visit in Springfield, in 1846, and she happened to
land in St. Louis, right at the time when William Walters, her
brother-in-law, 'had taken ill, and was put in the hotel down
there. I think it was the Planters Hotel, and his fellow
soldiers were staying up with him all night, and taking care of
him, but she came along, and she stayed there in St. Louis until
he died. And I think it was only a few days, but she wrote a
letter back to Springfield, describing his ailments and his
death, and her experiences, and from that letter, we learned they
put William Walters into a lead casket, and filled it with
alcohol, and sealed it up, and they put the casket on a steamboat
on the river and took him up the Mississippi River to the
Illinois, and up the Illinois to Beardstown. Then they put
William Walters in his casket on a wagon and took him to
Springfield where the masons had a big funeral for him with lots
of celebration, and they buried him in the old city cemetery
which was where the IRS building is now. But, later his body
was move out to Oak Ridge Cemetery where it is now. But
everybody said that William Walters aught to rest happily because
in life, he was an alcoholic, and in death he was buried
1
in a
casket full of alcohol, and I guess that's probably true. ut he
was a pretty fiery political editor, and Charlie Lanphier, when
he died took over the Illinois State Register, and becam it's

owner/editor, and he became an avid Douglas Democrat and
advocated Douglas for the Presidency and was the proprietor of
the Illinois State Register from 1846 up to 1864 when he sold
it. Back in the early days, when my great grandfather was editor
of the newspaper, the State of Illinois was called the "Sucker
State" and even Douglas would refer to Illinois as the "Sucker
State". So did other politicians. They all knew what they were
talking Tabout, they understood each other, but people today,
don't understand where the word "Sucker Staten came from or what
it referred to. W e l l , I ran across an article in the Sangamon
County History Book, which the local farmers used to call the
"Sangamon County Stud Book", because it gave the genealogy pf all
the settlers in Sangamon County. But there was a fellow who
settled out in Cottonhill Township and his name was George Brunk,
and he came, I think, in 1859. He settled in Cottonhill Township
and the are still out in that area.
But, at one time, he went up to Galena, Illinois, where the lead
mines are and, I suppose went up there to work, and make a lot of
money as a lot of Illinois people did. And he told a story of
why Illinois was called the Sucker State. And this is kind of
the story he told. He said that 1926 he was standing on the levy
up at Galena, meaning the bank of the River, and there was a man
from Missouri who was standing there too, and this was in the
fall, and all the Illinois boys who were working up there working
the lead mines for the summer, were getting an board their rafts
and boats, and going back down river to southern Illinois for the
winter, and this Missouri man stands up there and he says, *Well,
you remind me of the Suckers. Up in the spring and down in the
fall", and so. . . the Suckers being the fish in the river. . .
so from that time on, the Illinois boys were called Suckers, and
eventually, the State got to be called "the Sucker State". Well,
the next year, the Illinois boys were back up there at the lead
mines and a great number of men from Missouri who had come up
from the Lead mines in Missouri and working the lead mines in
Galena, and there were so many of them that the Illinois boys
said , " Well, it looks like Missouri has taken a puke, and so
all the Missouri men were all called Pukes. So we have the
"Suckers", who were the Illinois boys, and the "Puke's" who were
the Missouri boys. And up 'till, probably sometime after the
Civil War, those terms were well understood by most people, but
nobody today really knows much about it.
Q. Tell me about your summer home in Michigan.
A. Alright. My father, at the insistence of his former collage
classmate, for whom I was named, Christopher Parnell, went up to
a summer resort on Glen Lakc, Michigan, which was run by people
from Chicago, called Gregory. He was induced to come up there
because the trout fishing was just tremendous up there a$ one
time, so we all went up there in 1925, and while father we t out
to fish for trout in the stream, with his roommate, rchris
i

Parnall, the rest of us stayed around and investigated all the
things in that area, and it was still pretty primitive up there,
It was right at the end of the great logging era. They were
still doing logging on Glen Lake, cutting down the trees, cutting
them up into lumber and shipping them off by boat, down to
Chicago. There was a tug boat still on Glen Lake that took rafts
of logs from where they were cut on the sides of the hill and
rolled down the hill into the water. They were chained into
rafts and the tug boat took these rafts of logs to the sawmill
and the sawmill sawed them up into lumber and had a small
railroad track that ran from Glen Lake down to- two or three
miles over to Lake Michigan at Glen Haven, and the lumber was
taken over there by the small narrow gauge railroad, and loaded
on to steamships and taken from there to Chicago, mostly for
building in Chicago. There was also a lot of fishing in Lake
Michigan, in that area there which is between Glen Lake and the
Manitou Islands. It's called the Manitou Passage where most of
the shipping went in the early days. And there were a lot of
fishermen who fished with nets, and they caught tons and tons of
white fish, and perch, and lake trout, all of which was iced down
and sent on the steamboats down to Chicago. The first settlers
that came into that area, came, I suspect, in the 1880'~~ 1879's
or 1880's, and they were farmers who came in there, and they
first did lumbering, and then they did fishing, and then they
cleared lands for farming. The farming wasn't too good, because
the land was very sandy, but they did grow wheat, some corn, a
little far north for corn. I think wheat, mostly, and when I
first went there in 1925, I was only ten years old, and there
were still some of the original settlers there, and I remember
one of them. His name was Peter Burfiend, and he had come there
and settled on the edge of Lake Michigan on a high cliff that was
maybe two or three hundred feet high, and he built a log cabin
there, and he fished with nets, and he shipped. . . he built a
big dock there, close to where his log cabin was, and the
steamboats came in, and I suppose they loaded wood on the
steamboats to make the fires to make the steam, but they also
loaded his fish, and whatever wheat he might want to ship, and it
was sold that way. Well, when we first went up there in 1926,
Chris Parnell had been going there for sometime, he was a
physician from New York State, but he came there for the summer
for the trout fishing. And he knew quite a few of the old
settlers there, and we were introduced to them, and this one man,
who I remember talking to, was an old man at the time, but his
name was Peter Burfiend, and his son had inherited his land and
had built a home close to where his home was, and he was kind of
running a dairy farm at the time. And the house he built was,
again, on this high cliff, a beautiful spot where you could look
out on the blue lake Michigan and see the Manitou Islands and if
it was clear, you could look clear up and see the South Fox
Island, and I talked to him, or rather I listened to him as he
was talking to some of the adults, and he told about some of his
experiences there, that he had settled there, back in the 709s,

and he told about having his fish net stolen by the Mormon$ who
were on Beaver Island which is to the north quite a ways.
Apparently, they were a rowdy lot, and they had / this
settlement on Beaver Island and they had one man who cblled
himself "King", of the Mormons there, and they would go oht in
their boats and steal the fish out af the fish nets, and old
Peter was telling how they came down and stole his nets, and he
also told about the time when he and his brother were out tending
their nets, when a big storm came up, and they tried to get back
to shore, and their boat was capsized, and they were left
swimming in the water, and he tells about swimming, just as long
as he possibly could, and he got cramps, and he couldn't move his
legs, and he thought he was a goner, and just as he was about to
give up, his hands felt sand on the bottom. The waves had washed
him up on the shore, and he was just able, with his hands, to
pull himself up far enough on the shore, so that the waves began
to push him up, and he was saved, but his brother was drowned,
and I was quite impressed with that story. But anyhow, his son,
Howard Burfiend, built a house right there, as I say, and it was
a beautiful big old white farm house. Not mare than a hundred
feet from this cliff, and you could look out over Lake Michigan,
and it was a beautiful view. When you go down from this high
cliff to the beach, yau could walk along the beach and find
"petoskey" stones. Just lots of "petoskey" stones.
Q. What's a petoskey stone?
A. Oh, it's a stone made up of some fresh water coral.
Apparently it grows there in that area and around Petosksy,
Michigan, and you can still find lots of it. When they're
polished, they make an interesting pattern in the stone. But, I
think it was the next year, I was introduced to one of the
younger people that were part of these pioneer families. His
name was Jack, I remember, and Jack was a cousin of the
Burfiends, and about my age, and we played around together op the
farm there. He later became the Sheriff of the county bhere
after spending a tour of duty with the Life Saving Service.' The
Life Saving Service was created before the United States boast
Guard, and it was created to save lives from ships that woulb get
into trouble with the storms that came up on Lake Michigan. The
sailing ships, in particular. And there was a Life Saving Station
there at Sleeping Bear Point. Sleeping Bear was a huge sand dune
that projected out into Lake Michigan. It's the largest sand dune
in the world, as a matter of fact. And they had a life saving
statian there, and when a ship would get into trouble, the men
would go out in their surf boats, which they kept in barns at the
life saving station, and they'd go out in this huge surf and
they'd push these huge boats out into the water, row them with
oars, and go to any ship that was in trouble and save the pepple,
and it was quite a tradition in those days and the native$ in
that part of the country. . . one of the big things they liked
to do was to join the Life Saving Service because it was an

exciting life. At any rate, on this Burfiend farm, Howard
Burfiend had married a lady whose name was Orfa Fralich. . . her
father was an early country doctor there in Leelanau County, and
Howard Burfeind had married Orfa Fralich, and they had this big
farm there on, what they called, Pyramid Point, just off of
Pyramid Point, and the second year we were there, they were going
to build a new barn, so there was to be a barn raising, An old
fashioned barn raising. And the way this thing occurred is that
the Burfiend's would gather all the materials together, and then
one day, they would invite all the neighbors from miles around.
The men would come in to help put this barn up, and we were
invited to be there, and the women came too, of course.
I remember the women preparing lunch for this huge crowd of
men who were raising the barn. Picnic tables stretched out along
this huge cliff overlooking Lake Michigan, with benches to sit
on, and the picnic tables were all covered with white cloths, and
the table was just loaded with everything you can think of to
eat, from pork chops to steaks to. . . just everything. All
kinds of pies and cakes, and I remember strawberries so big, that
three of them would fill a coffee cup, and fresh cream from the
dairy from their own cows. It was so thick, that you had to
spoon it out with a spoon. I remember, the first thing in the
morning when we came out there, there were all these men gathered
around and the materials. . . the foundations for the barn had
already been poured into concrete and stone, but the huge beams
and timbers were all laid out, and the first thing that happened
was one of the men got up on the stump, and he addressed the
crowd and said, "Now, I'm going to be boss unleas somebody has
some objection", and nobody had any objection, so he was the
boss. Then he started doling out jobs to all these men and
various people and he'd say, "Well now you guys do this and you
guys do this", and so forth, and that's the way the job got done.
And one thing, in particular that sticks in my mind, is that
over here to the side was. . .there were two big stumps, and
there was a bar of iron that was nailed across between t e two
and there was a hole in the middle of this bar of iron, and there
was a whole lot of kindling wood that was laid there to the side,
i
cut to certain lengths, only ten or twelve inches long. 0 e man
was assigned to this job, and his job was to make woodenspegs.
And he'd take this kindling wood and an ax and he'd split it down
to a certain size. Then he'd drive the piece down the hole, made
the pins that they used to pin the timber together. And that's
what he did all day long. Make these dowels while the rest of
the men would take the dowels, pin the timbers together by
drilling holes in them and then driving these wooden dowels in,
and when they'd get a side of the barn ready to go up,
everybody'd get together with Gin poles and they'd push this side
of the barn up, and they'd get it together, and they'd have the
whole barn raised in a day. Of course the little jobs like
putting the shingles on and that sort of thing maybe wouldn't be
done 'ti1 later on, but the whole barn went up in one day, and it
was just an amazing sight. That barn stood there for years and

years, and, after the government came along and took over this
whole scene, the lake side area and made it into a park, the barn
was, of course, taken over by the government and then some kids
went in there and they built a fire, and the damn thing burned
down, but the foundation is still there. It stood there, oh, 50,
60 years. And it was a beautiful barn, and it was a dairy barn,
and used to take care of the cows. That place still stands there
today, and the old house stands there, and nobody lives in it,
because it belongs to the government, and I suppose it will be
torn down someday, but the government has gone in and they've
taken out all the fences and all the barbed wire, and this friend
of mine, whose name is Jack. . .and I can't think of his last
name now. . . who went off when he was a young man at maybe,
fifteen or sixteen, and joined the Life Saving Service, and, I
guess he served in WWII, probably the Coast Guard, and then he
became Sheriff of the county, and he still lives there on that
cliff, and his house will be, when he retires and dies, his house
will go to the Government. And his fields are full of great hay,
and he tried to get the government to cut the hay, and sell it,
and give the government part of it, and the government wouldn't
let him touch the hay. Just had to let it stand there. The
government's going to let this land go back to nature, and it's
kind of too bad, but of course, there's no reason for any farmer
up there because a farmer couldn't make a living any more up
there. About the only crop they have now is cherries. They grow
great cherries. But that barn raising experience and that
fantastic lunch the women made, has been with me ever since. It
was a remarkable experience.
Q. Now how did the Government take over this area in the first
place?
A. Well, the congress decided to preserve all of that Lake Shore
Area, and so they'd just, by " eminent domain", and take it over.
Q. Wouldn't these buildings be good buildings to use?
A. They let the people live there until the generation qiving
there died or moved off, and then the government just took %over.
And of course these people were paid for their property. But
it's all a government park now. All along that shore line. It's
beautiful, beautiful property, and the views of Lake Michigan and
the Manitou Islands are fantastic.
Q. So you're saying people can go in and camp now?
A. You can camp, but you can't hunt. There are deer all over,
but you
can't hunt, and it's a recreation area.
8. Are there boats supplied for the people?

A. No.
Q. No boating.
72
A. You can boat out on Lake Michigan all you want, and on Glen
Lake where we eventually had a cottage. My father built a
cottage there, and we went up there for years.
Q. Is it still in the family?
A. Still in the family.
Q. Chris, you have a knack for memorizing poems, I understand.
Do you have a poem for us before we bring this interview to a
close?
A. Well, I like William Henry Drummond's poems about the Prench
Canadians. They came over early and settled in this country, and
they speak with a rolling, fractured french dialect, and there's
one poem that I like, which Drumrnand wrote in his book, "The
Habitant", called "The Wreck of the Julie Plante". and it goss
like this:
On wan dark night on Lac St. Pierre,
De win, she blow, blow, blow,
An de crew of de wood scow "Julie Plante"
Got scar't and 'run below. . .
For de win' she blow lak hurricane
Bimeby she blow some more,
An' de scow bus' up an Lac St. Pierre
Wan arpent from de shore.
De capitinne walk on de fronte deck,
An' walk de hin' deck too. . .
He call de crew from up de hole
He call de cook also.
De cook she's name was Rosie,
She come from Montreal, f
Was chambre maid an lumber barge,
On de Grande Lachine Canal.
De win' she blow from nor', eas', wes,'.
De sout' win' she blow too,
W'en Rosie cry "Mon cher captinne,
Mon cher, w'at I shall do ?"
Den de Captinne t'row de big ankerre,
But still the scow she dreef,
De crew he can't pass on de shore,
Becos' he 10s' hees skeef.
De night was dark lak' wan black cat,
De wave run high an ' fas',

END TAPE FOUR'SIDE ONE.
Transcriptionist, Eugenia Eberle.
W"en de captinne tak de Rosie girl
An' tie her to de mas'.
Den he alsak' de life preserve,
An' jomp off on de lak',
An' say, "Good-bye, ma Rosie dear,
I go drown for your sak'."
Nex' morning very early
Bout ha'f-pas' two - t'ree - four -
De captinne - scow - an' de poor Rosie
Was corpses on de shore,
For de win' she blow lak' hurricane
Bimeby she blow some more,
An' de scow bus' up on Lac St. Pierre,
Wan arpent from de shore.
Now all good wood scow sailor man
Tak' warning by dat storm
An' go an' marry some nice French girl
An' leev on wan beeg farm.
De win' can blow lak' hurricane
An' s'pose she blow same more,
You can't get drown on Lac St. Pierre
So long you stay on shore. I

I
I
go about "hogging" big fish (some over 30 pounds) with the bare hands, .and the joys
of camping and fishing along the river In August. He recalled, however, that every
several years the river also could do much damage, flooding and tearing up htq corn
fields* Sometimes as many as three plantlngs would be ruined in a season, yet Lloyd
loved the rivet end counted it as a part of hls very Ilfe. Dorothy Britz, wha Ilves
in Riverton and says she is a "river rat," remembers the flowers along the river near
the old St. John's Sanitarium, She went wi th her Paml ly to flnd vlolets and buttercups
in the spring, and nuts in the Pal 1. Depression days, before World War I I, drew
her famf ly closely together and thetr pleasures came from doing things with each other,
aspacisl ly enjoying the river. She, too, recalls the years of floods when the water
crept in among groves of trees and froze during cold weather. Bertha Craig (naw
deceased) l ivsd in Petarsburg where her husband, 01 11, not only f ishad along the
Sangamon but built his own boats. Bertha said that it took plenty of "motherwit and
comon sense" to build a proper boat for the river, and as Bill" fine boats became
better known ha Filled orders for other peaplc. Bertha recalled the wildlife along
the river * beaver, muskrat, raccoon and squlr~els
of all kinds, She, too, recalled
that tha river was prone t~ floodlng every few years. When her family built their
house In 1924 they were told by old timers to ttbuild it high" -- advice which they were
happy they followed, especially when a big flood In 1943 covered lower Petersburg,
Their home was the only one In the area which did not have water In the first floor.
Mrs. Craig preferred the Sangamon to any lake, for no lake had the charm of flowing
water, Mrs. Haynes' pictures and commentary brought to all of us the charm of the
flowing waters of the Sangemon.
ON TO NAUVOO!!!
Reservations are now open for our planned spring tour on Sunday, April 29. The $39.00
f ea includes the round-trip fare on a chartered Tr f angle Tours motorcoach (a 1 r cond i t ioned,
restroom-equipped); a continental breakfast on the bus; tours of the Joseph Smith Histor ic
Center, Smith Homestead, the Mansion House, Nsuvm Historic Society Museum, and lunch at
the historic old hotel in Neuvoo; a driving tour to view the beautiful restored homes on
the rlwar bluff at Keakuk, Iowa; a visit to the Carthage, Ill., jail, where Joseph and
Hyrum Smith lost their 1 ivcs; accident Insurance on each participant, a1 1 taxes, and
services of an escort on the tour. Reservations are limited to forty-one.
To secure a reservation, send your $lO.OOdeposit by March 1, 1984, to our business
address: Sangamon County Historical Society, c/o Robinsons Advertising Service,
308 East Adams, Sprlngf ield, IL 62701. Checks should be made out to the Sangamn County
Historical Society, The balance of the cost ($29.00) Is due by April 6, (The entire
amount may be paid by March 1 If you choose.) Isn't It great to look forward tp a spring
tour after a long, cold winter?
THE LINCOLN PENNY
We are indebted ta Chris Patton for this most Interesting and little-known story which
is particularly appropriate during the month in which we celebrate Lincoln's birthday.
A SEVENTY-F i FTH ANN IVERSARY
Few recall a Sprlngflald resident who 75 years ago left his mark bn history. He was
Jerome Stvia, r drug clerk at the Sol les drug store in Springfield and later a pharma-
cist at a Walgresn drug store in Chicago.
' Early in 1909, Sivia read that a &in was to be minted honoring Lincoln. It war to be
part of the centennial celebratton of Lincoln's birth. The plans were to coin a few

half dollars which would become collector's items. But Sivla had a better idea which
he shared with the president, Teddy Roosevelt. He suggested that since Llncoln had
been a humble man and a man of the people, he should be honored with a humble coin
which would be in everyone's pocket and In constant use. He recommended a penny and
suggested that the associatton of 'kenti' and "centennial" should further support the
idea.
Prsstdent) Rooseval t appr~~di He sent the suggestton to mint officials who had V. 0,
Brenncr, a famous sculptor; design the coin. Brenncr took the portrait of Lincoln
from a phot~ by the famous Civil War photographer, Matthew Bredy.
The .coin, first to bear the 1 fkenass of a president, was also first to bear the motto
"In God We Trustlb. This motto had been adopted by Congress, after much debate, in
March of 1865, but had never been used.
When the new coin appeared it was consfdered by some as a lucky piece and so many
people 1 ined up at the bapks for the pennies, that they had to be rationed. Black
markets sprang up In which the coins sold two for a nickel,
Let's hear s cheer for Jerome Sivia!!
(Watch for another story from Chris in next month's HISTORIC0 - an account of the
frlendshlp of Bob Llncoln and George Latham, who was Dr, Henry Street Dickerman's
grandfather. Or, bickerman Is a Life Member of our Soclety. Included in the story
is the text of a particularly sensitive and understanding letter from Abraham Lincoln
to his son's friend when both young men were at school in the East.)
ABRAHAM LINCOLN8 A MUSICAL BIOGRAPHY
In honor of the 175th Anniversary of Lincoln's birth, the National Park Service at the
Lincoln Home Natlonal Historic Site Invites the public to a special program entitled
"Abraham Llncoln: A Musical Biography," The program wl 11 be presented at 2:00 P.M,
and again at 7:00 P.M. on Lincoln's Birthday, Sunday, February 12, in the Lincoln
Home Visitor Center at 426 South 7th Street.
Due to limited seating capacity, the Historic Site encourages clckets be obtained In
advance. Free tickets may be obtained between the hours of 8:00 A.M. and 5:00 P,M.
any day of the week_, including weekends, at the Visitor Center. (Please note thiis
change in tfcket policy from that announced In the January HIsTORICO.)
The national ly-known actor, R. Frederick "Fr f ti?' Klein wi 1 l portray Abraham Lincoln,
using words from Lincoln's own speeches and writings to dramatfre the life of the 16th
president. Mr. Klein Is a Lincoln look-alike, and spends four hours on make-up prior
to each performance to enhance his own natural resemblance to the famous Presidefit.
Tha Sacred Heart Academy Vocal Ensemble, directed by Sister Mary Carolyn, wi 11 perform
during the program, singing songs which were popular in Llncolnls day, including "Skip
to my Lou,I1 'IBatbara Allen,11 and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."
Durlng the afternoon on Feb. 12, frw 2 - 4 P.M. members of the Springfield Junior
League, in period costume, will greet visitors in the Lincoln Home on the corner of
Elghth and Jackson, The event, sponsored by the National Park Service, wlll cardy on
the tradition of the "Levee", or f~rmal reception, whlch the Lincolns held at thgir

participated in many debates. Lincoln often came out on top because of his impres-
sive leadership appearance, He was elected a captain in the Blick Hawk War, where
he would become familiar in the choosing of military leaders. Lincoln represented
his hometown areas in the Illinois State Legislature and the U.S. House of Repre-
sentatives. keeping his local touch while rising to national prominance.
As he became more and mare well-known around the country, he was eventually voted
into the United States Presidency in 1860. He became known as one of our greatest
Presidents in history since he led us through the Civil War. He chose some of the
best military leaders this country has ever seen to help guide the Union through
battle, During that time of war, he wrote many historic pieces, including the
Emancipation Proclamat ion and the Gsttysburg Address. The Union would, w i n, but
victory soon ended in tragedy, as the Defender of the Union was assassinated, less
than a week after the largest war ever fought on American soil had ended.
What Lincoln showed us was that only union is the answer in all aspects, that all
men are created equal, and that all people must come together in times of pain and
joy, that our country is too strong to split in two in times of crlsis, that our
country's name is the United States of America and should last that way forever.
Abraham Lincoln was the Great Uniter.
I- "- -c --- .- -
OLD SETTLERS PICNIC -' 1919
Chris Patton has sent us an interesting account of the Old Settlers' reunion in
1919. The Old Settlers1 Society was e$taplishsd about 1858 or I859 with a
-
membership
consisting of all Sangamon County citizens who had been here before the winter
of the hi story-maki ng "deep snow" in 1830-31, and the1 r descendants. Chris included
a copy of an Aug. 1919 Illinois State Register account of the picnic. An interesting
side note is the little one-line ad on the same page, which reads "Form letters -
Robinsons Adv. Serv." Robinsons Advertising Service is still in business they act
for us as our downtown business office!
Dear HISTORICO:
On August 6th of 1919 at the picnic grounds in Auburn, IL, Sangamon County's old
settlers assembled once again to honor the pioneers who first broke the sod of the
county's prairies. Their ranks were rapidly thinning. Only three of the "Snv
Birds," those who were in the county at the time of the deep snow of 1830-31, lwere
present. Many of the old pioneers in the 80 and 90 year age group came early, erriv-
ing on the grounds by 8:00 o'clock in the morning, not wanting to miss the opportunity
to l isten to or to relate stories of the early days in the county.
The day's program included five speakers who mostly spoke of experiences in the late
World War I, Just terminated the previous Nov. 11. But it also included in the
afternoon a fiddlers1 contest. Mr. Richard 08Haya, the only entry, took all the
prizes, entertaining the folks with his renditions of "Turkey in the Straw," "Black-
berry Brandy," and "Arkanses Traveler." The 01 d settlers down front stamped the i r
feet In approval.
But of significant interest was the attendance at the picnic of the four sons of
Sangamon County's first settler, Mr. Robert Pulliam, who arrived on Sugar Creek in
the fall of 1816 and constructed the first log cabin in the county, The Pulllam
fl

I Boys, as they cal led themselves, were a1 1 farmers except for C. I. Pull lam who had rc-
I tired to Fresno, California, and just returned for a family reunion. He allowed that
I
"the Golden West has its fancies, but I still have a warm spot in my heart for my old
homestead." In addition to C, I. Pull lam, aged 80 years, of Fresno, were J. Robert
Pulliam, aged 63, of Glenarm, J. H. Pulliam, aged 75 years, of Chatham, Ill,, and F.M.
Pull lam, aged 84 years, of Glenarm. The oldest brother, F.M. Pull iam, claimed to be
the best farmer, having raised wheat for over fifty years. But it was only in the
past year that he was able to get an 80-acre patch that tested 60 bushels per acre.
"The county was nothing but a prairie when our father came here," he recounted," and
he erected the first house over in Ball Township. He never did tell us anything
about the Indians, and whether or not he saw any when he came here we do not know.
The house is gone now, but we can remember it we1 1 ."
I
F. M. Pulliam also told of the time he came to Springfield, which was a rare occasion
in those days - a day which was looked forward to the whole winter long. "We were
driving north on Sixth Street," he said, "and our wagon went down to the hubs in the
mud right in front of the spot where the McCourtney Dry Goods store now stands." (at
Adams Street). "We worked about a half a day getting it out and I remember that I
ruined my good clothes .I'
Another of the Pulliam boys, C.I. Pulliam of Fresno, said that his father, besides
being a farmer, also ran a tavern, the license of which was granted by Sangamon
County's first emission. The prfces that he was permitted to charge by the
commission were as follows:
...........................
. Meals, Victuals. .* . .
25 centsi!
, >
Bed, per night .............. 12* cents I
Feed for horse .............. 123 cents
Keeping horse overnight ........*. 37 cents
Whiskey, per half pint .......... 12i cents
I' .
\
CONGRATULATIDNSr - ( .
Our congratulations and best wishes to Mr. and Mrs. William A. Sausaman, Sr., upon
the occasion of thetr 65th wedding anniversary on March 6. The Sausamns are charter
members of our Society.
OPEL M. RIPPEY 1899 - 1992
We are sorry to note the death on February 12 of Ope1 Rippey, a long-time supporter
of the Sangamon County Historical Society, Many of our members had been her pupils
some years ego, as she had been a teacher in District 186 schools for 47 years.
.
., ,,

he Habitant
NOW g d wood row railor man
Tak' warning by dat storm
An* go an' marry some nice FIMC~ gfd
An* Iecv on wan beeg farm.
De win8 can blow Iak' hurricane
An' s'pm l e bkw MSIW mom,
YOU can't get drown on L.c St. Pkm
So bng you stay on shorn
v m-
ENEZ id, mon cher mi. a' sit down by
An' 1 will tole you story of ofd tam h g ago-
W'en ev'ryt'ing is happy-w'en altde bud b
sing
An' me I-1 'm young an' strong I& moose an'
not alraid no t'ing.
I ctose my eye jus' so, a*
set de place w*em
I am born-
C close my eat an' LIssea to musiqw ot de horn,
-4

CC PATTQN WORD LIST
Born 1916 January 6
Springfield, Leland Avenue
Charlea Christopher
Dr. Christopher Parnall
New York State
University of Michigan
Mother/Father, Alice Jess and Charles Lanphier Patton
Brothers, Bob, Jim, John
Sangamo Electric Company
WWII
Schlumberger
Paris, France
Canadian Comapny
Charles Henry Lanphier, Grandmother's father, owner/editor
George Helmle
Helmle & Helmle Architects
Dana House
Illinois State Register
Patton line were Scotch/Irish
Croghan, NW corner of Ireland
United States
William Patton
James Patton
United States
Robert W. Jess
France
Belgium
Switzerland
Riverton
Chattanooga
Armistice Day, November 1918
Oakland, automobile
Mrs. Connelly
John Pershing, Commander in Chief Allied Forces
Little Lord Fauntleroy
Marnie Lanphier
Bond, father, president, Sangamo Electric Company
Henry Bunn, owner, Illini Watch Company
Sangamo Electric
Jack Connelly
Wiggins at Ruth Place
Connelly Chevrolet Company
Tom Conners
Illini Country Club

Frank Jenningo
Ford Agency
Mr. Moore
Arnold Moore
Butler School
Portable School
Lawrence School
Springfield High School
"~ooties"
MacArthur
Big Twelve Conference
Rob Lanphier
Henry Bunn
Jacob
Millie
Illini Country Club
Hamilton Watch Company
Crash of 1927
Jake Bunn
Bud Vredenberg
"Chugs"
"~edbug"
Lawrenceville School
Bi-wing airplane
W A C 0
Wabash & Old Chatham Road
Chicago-Alton Railroad
Lindberg
Chicago
Wiggina Airways
Chatham/Wabash
Mesachusetts
Canadian Air Force
Toronto or Montreal
Jib Bum, uncle of Henry Bunn
Sangamo Electric Company
Kansas
Anti-Submarine Warfare Instructors' School
Boston at Charleetown Navy Yard
Key West, Florida
San Diego
Task Force Commander William Headden
USS Tillman
Atlantic
Irish Sea
Liverpool
Bill Ageti? *
Belfast Harbor
Belfast
Chinese fashion
Thanksgiving DayUSS Tillman, scrapped in 1930
Alf Lanphiar, father's cousin
Annapolis
New York Harbor

Continental Shelf
Brooklyn Navy Yard
Sicily
Italy
Hotel Commodore
Task Force Commander, William Headden, "Zeke"
Tennessee
Zeke
North Africa
Anti-Submarine Warfare Specialist
Mediterranean
Anti-Submarine- Warfare Officer
South Pacific
Norfolk Harbor
United States Forces
Rommel
North Africa
Sicily
Italy
South Pacific
California
San Diego
Panama Canal
Union Station
Virginia
Casco Bay, Maine
Cinclant, Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Fleet
Azores
USS Warrington
Bermuda
Mediterranean
Straits of' Gibraltsr
Germans
British
Spanish Morocco
Brest
North Africa
Oran
Santa Helena Ocean Liner
Modus Operandi
Algiers
Italy
Naples
Phillipsville
Street Dickerman
Italy
Bizerte
Rommel
North Africa
Sicily
Bubonic plague
Italian prisoners of War
United States Air Force
Lake Bizerte

Anti-Submarine-Warfare Developmnent Detachment
South Atlantic
Mediterranean
Port Everglades, Florida
Fort Lauderdale
Task Force Commander Brooklyn Navy Yard
German T5 Torpedo
North Africa
Straits of Gibralter
Gibralter
Part Everglades
Port Lauderdale *
MADD, detector
Straits of Gibralter
German Submarine, "MENACER
Anti Submarine Warfare Unit
Key West
San Diego
Anti Submarine Warfare School
"Hedgehog"
"Mou~etrap'~
FXR T5 sonic or acoustic torpedo, foxer
Pillenwerfer
The Submarine Signal Company
General Electric
Westinghouse
PPI, plan- plot indicator sonar equippment
Charleston Navy Yard
Harvard
Coast Guard Station
United States
Mediterranean
USS Warrington
Sangamo Electric Company
General Electric
Westinghouse
United States
June 1946
June 1956
Lewis and Clark Four Winds Tour Agency
Boo McGilvra

Snake River
Columbia River
Astoria, Oregon
Tom Jefferson
St. Louis, Missouri
Indians
Fort Mandan, North Dakota
St. Louis to Astoria, Oregon
Missouri River
Astoria, Oregon
Columbia River
North Dakota
South Dakota
Montana
Idaho
Washington
1804
Fort Clatsop near Astoria
Oregon
Wyoming
South Montana
Tobacco Root Mountains
Fred Massar, Rancher
Virginia City
Dillon
Ruby Mountains
Baaverhead
Helena
Shoshoni Indians
1969 Original Government Committee
Missoula, Montana
Idaho
The Lo10 Trail
Indian Trail
Columbia River
Lewiston, Idaho
Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation Philadelphia 1969
Shoshoni Indians
Sherman's Peak
Snake River
Philadelphia
Glasgow
Northern route
V Mail, Anti-Submarine Warfare Development Detachment
T5 Torpedoer
Jewish
Arthur Steinberg
ONI, Office af Naval Intelligence
La Concha Hotel, Room 424
Key Went, Florida, March 16, 1946
ASDEVLANT
Philip M. Morse, MIT
Canadian Russian spy
McOill Univeristy

Russian Embassy,
Chicago
Henry Bunn
Jack Connslly
Colonel Zabotin
Sam Connelly
Lew Herndon
Canada
Dick and Henrietta Herndon
Board of Deacons at the First Presbyterian Church
Richard Grabel, minister
The Palmer TB Sanitarium
Presbyterian Home
Hudson River at Nyack, New York
" Snipe "
St. Petersberg Trophy
"Toledo"
Bobbie Herndon
"Rebel"
Ray Green
JATO tubes (Jet Assistant Take-off, fiberglass
"Sunfish"
Peaaie, Sarah
Olympics
"470' st'
"Start'
Harry Nye, world champion Star sailor
Yacht Club
Peoria
"Last Chance Regatta"
"Thistles"
"Snipes"
National Championships
St.Petersburg Trophy
Island Bay
Ted Morph, 80
Bill Herndan
Doug Slater
Mackinac race
Lake Michigan
"Rangoont', boat
Chicago
Mackinac race
Mackinac Ialands
Traverse City
Stromberg
Michigan
Manitou Islands
Manitou Straits
Straits of Mackinac
Brand mother's husband from Ireland *
Robert Williamson Jess
Riverton
Camp Butler
Camp Butler Cemetary

Civil War
Hunt Club
Clear Lake
Sand & Gravel Company
BillAgee
1870, Marine Bank
Jacob Bunn
Jacksonville, school for blind
NE Corner, 2nd & Lawrence Avenue
Frank Lloyd Wright House
WWI
Peabody Coal Company
Uncle Jack Jess, mining engineer
Princeton
Gold Mine
Alaska
Lowell Avenue
Lake Springfield
Jack Connelly
Cotton Hill Township
Stout Farm
Mrs. Connelly
Chevrolet, " Plaza Express"
Potawatomis
Illinis
"chunky stone"
Camp Butler
Mr. Butler, Sec. of State
Maison de joie
Mrs. Chapman
Richardson, her husband
Uriah Mann, old settler, Black Hawk War
Fall 1860
Abe Lincoln
"Black Hawk wart'
Camp Butler
Oak Lawn Cemetary
Dixon Mounds
Mound builders
Potawanami
Beauxs Arts B all
Illini Country Club
Kings Daughters
Pavillion, Washington Park
Champaign, Illinois
Will Patton, father's older brother
Crime Club
Logan Hay
Tom Smith
Mr. Miriam
Montecello school, alma mater of Chris' mother
Riverside School for Girls, NYC *
Alice Longworth Roosevelt, daughter of Theodore R. Roosevelt

I
Old Ben Mine Disasters
Charlie Duncan, drug store, on South Grand and MacArthur
Butch the barber
John L. Lewis
Massacre at Bloody Williamson County
Paul Angle, author of "Bloody ~illiamson"
Pillrollers Club #12
Avenue Pharmacy
Bob Davenport
Gerry Kealey
1930
Ethel, Chris' old model A
Lucy, Brother Bob's model T
Butler School
"Antlerst1
Elks Club
"Pikers."
Jack Miller
Rod Metheney
Junie O'Keef
Francis Shuster
Bunch Bunn
George Bunn
Bob Hitt
Cark Sankey
Bob Cook
Eddie Edwards
Bob Edwards
Bud Vredenburg
Cliff Lockey
Otie White
Tom Smith
Jake Bunn
Jim Patton
Bob Patton
Cork Leg Sankey
Jack Neal
Sankey brothers' Gravel & Paving
Bob Rourk
George Bunn
Bunn-0-Matic
Richie Irwin
George Regan Bunn
Fairgrounds
State Fair
Fair Grounds
Pony of America- POA
WMCA
Rich Irwin
Rog Troxel, insurance firm
Jack Connelly
Robert Wadlow, the Altan Giant (nine feet tall)
Worlds Fair

Sally Rand
Fiberglass
Libby Ownsns-Ford
Old Howard
Glass fibers
World's Fair Thermometer
Cottage Qrove
Paul Noonan
Kurt Bretscher
Lee Enssl
"Big Burgoos"
"0 So Peachy Club"
chivaries
Open Houses
Square Dances
Jim Stout, James Howard Stout
Wwll
CCPatton book: "Glory to God and the Sucker Democracyn
Sangamon State Library
John Crenshaw, ancestor
South Carolina
North Carolina
Mississippi
New Jersey
Abraham Crenshaw
John Hart, signer of the Declaration of Independence
Louisiana Purchase
Ohio River
New Madrid
Missouri
Earthquake of 1811
Richter Scale
Mississippi River
Real Foot Lake
Abraham Crenshaw
Ohio River
Qallatin County
Shawneetown
John Crenshaw
Old State House 1842
United States Government
United State8 Saline
Charles Henry Lanphier, owner/editor, great grand father
Illinois State Register 1933
William Walters, Lanphiers brother -in -law
State Capitol
Vandal ia
Gallatin County
Margaret Taylor Crenshaw
Zachary Taylor
"Black Bob"
Jefferstan Street
Marion
Sangamo Electric

Marion Hotel
John Cranshaw Lanphier
Lanphier Insurance Co.
Equality
Shawneetown
American Bottoms
Ohio River
St. Louis~
City of Chicago
Great Migration
Tennessee River
Federal Government
French
Half Moon Lick
Elizabeth Hart m Abraham Crenshaw
Hickory Hill
Francine Taylor
The Mexican War
Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis
Planters House
Beardstown
IRS Building
Stephen A. Douglas
"Sucker State"
Sangamon County History Book
Sangamon County Stud Book
Cotton Hill Township
George Brunk
Galena, Illinois
Half Moon Lick
"Pukes"
"Suckers"
Civil War
Glen Haven
Manitou Islands
Manitou Pas~age
Peter Burfiend
New York State
South Fox Island
Beaver Island
trKing"
Mormons
Howard Burfiend
petoski stones, fresh water coral
Petoski, Michigan
Jack Burfiand, County Sheriff
Life Saving Service
Sleepin# Bear Point, largest sand
Orfa Fralick
Leelanau County
Pyramid Point
Barn Raising
"Gin poles"
Lake Shore area
dune in the world