THE GRANT COUNTY WISCONSIN POSSE COMITATUS

      It was a strange letter written to the people of Grant County, and published in the Dubuque Telegraph-Herald on May 30, 1974.  “We are incorporated and will be known as “THE POSSE COMITATUS OF GRANT COUNTY, WISCONSIN” it declared.  “Our organization…stands for constitutional government and freedom.  Our pledge is to assist public officials…but we also pledge to help EXPOSE those who violate the law and the U. S. Constitution.”  To the average reader it must have seemed strange when the author, Earl S. Martens, operator of a salvage yard near Platteville said; “We believe the U. S. Constitution is the SUPREME LAW of the land (despite the traitors, who would like us to believe otherwise).”  What was he talking about?  Most readers probably did not know that this was the beginning of a drama that would continue to this day.  Martens said that under the constitution the county sheriff is the only legal officer, because only he is elected.  Federal and State officials had no legitimate right to engage in law enforcement, he believed.  Martens threatened to make “citizens arrests”, if the sheriff refused, of those whom his group felt were committing “unlawful acts.”  If the sheriff did not prosecute, they would form “citizen’s juries” to try their targets.  Grant County Chief Deputy Sheriff Lloyd Runde advised Marten’s that under Wisconsin law Posse Comitatus members could not make arrests unless they were sworn deputy sheriffs.  A radical group had begun its work in the county.

    This movement was not confined to Grant County alone.  In the 1950’s a building contractor in Wichita, Kansas named Arthur Porth filed a claim with the IRS for the return of the income tax he had paid.  He argued that the 16^th amendment, ratified in 1913, which gave Congress the power to “lay and collect taxes on income”, was unconstitutional because it put citizens in a position of “involuntary servitude” to “international bankers” in violation of the 13^th amendment.  He also argued that since paper money was not backed by gold or silver, that taxpayers were not required to pay taxes because Federal Reserve notes were not dollars. He went about the country speaking and wrote a book called “A Manual for Those Who Think That They Must Pay an Income Tax.”  He issued “arrest warrants” against officials who he decided were violating the Constitution.  His beliefs and tactics formed a foundation for those who formed the Posse Comitatus. 

     Porth’s ideas inspired William Potter Gale, who founded the Posse Comitatus and the “Christian Identity” movement in the late 1960’s. He and his followers believed white men were the pinnacle of God’s creation and that African Americans were subhuman “beasts of the field” who had no souls. They believed that Jews were servants of Satan who worked their evil deeds by controlling the banking system.  They felt that the United Nations was a conspiracy to sell out the country to communists and Jewish bankers. These beliefs were more elaborate versions of the beliefs spread by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920’s. 

     The next surfacing of posse radicalism in Grant County was in 1975 when two individuals, Gordon Buttorff and Charles Dodge, Posse members using the front name "Little People's Tax Advisory Committee" began holding meetings attended mostly by Dubuque John Deere workers.  Many of these were men from Grant County.  Dodge and Buttorff preached the typical line; the income tax was unconstitutional, and there is no legal obligation to pay it.  They coached the John Deere workers on methods of avoiding taxes, advising them to claim 20 or more exemptions on their W4 withholding forms so that no income taxes would be withheld.  Fifteen followed their advice and they ended up in federal court, charged with tax evasion.  All were convicted, and despite frivolous appeals (their arguments had been refuted again and again in the courts) and harassment suits that some of them filed against the judge and public officials, they went to jail and paid substantial fines and court costs.  Some of these were members of the family of Leonard and Norma Ginter of Dickeyville, charter Posse Comitatus members. Another of those prosecuted was Bernard Hinderman, another early convert to the group.  

   The fifteen tax evaders didn't help themselves by demanding representation by posse members who were not licensed to practice law.  Robert E. Walsh Jr. refused a court appointed lawyer, saying he would not accept attorneys “from the ranks of our adversaries or from the Bar Association” They felt that  licensed lawyers were lackeys of an unconstitutional federal and state government.  Mark E. Mulvehill, one of the defendants said “we do not advocate cheating…We advocate payment of just taxes. We are not criminals.”  The court decided they were.  On May 13, 1975 they and their supporters, upon the conviction of Walsh, threw the federal courtroom in Cedar Rapids into “pandemonium”, requiring an increase in security. Twenty law enforcement officers had to be posted to keep order and do weapons checks. 

     Dodge and Buttorff had promised to help if the government questioned the tax evasion scheme, but they refused when the feared federal prosecution became the fact.  These instigators were themselves charged and convicted of aiding and abetting criminal tax evasion. Leonard Ginter was reported to have helped arrange the meetings with Buttorff and Dodge which led the Deere workers into the whole mess, with their talk of an oppressive government that levies taxes without authority, of the right to set up their own courts, their own units of government, and make citizens arrests of those elected and appointed officials who did not abide by the Posse Comitatus's notions of right and wrong.  

     In 1975, the Posse Comitatus using as a front name “Grant County Taxpayers Alliance” also inspired a recall election against Grant County Board chairman Richard Markus.  His sin was being a member of, and supporting the Southwest Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission.   When the farm crisis of the 1980's came, these same men would call themselves "Family Farm Preservation" to try to lure hurting farm families into their web of  political, religious, and racist ideologies.
 

     In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s there was desperation in farm country.  The government, seeing expanding markets in communist countries, encouraged farmers to expand their operations.  Many borrowed to buy equipment and land.  Then interest rates exploded and many farmers, unable to make their payments, went bankrupt.  Organizations like the Posse Comitatus saw an opening they could exploit.  They spoke with rural groups, spreading a message that blamed international bankers and conspirators in government for putting them out of business. Some farmers joined the movement, most notably in Michigan and Wisconsin.  They saw in the Posse’s conspiracy theories an answer to their questions. This explained, some believed, how this economic disaster had happened to them.

     Leonard and Norma Ginter, moved to a barricaded compound near Smithville, Arkansas to be with “like minded people”.  Leonard was a 63 year old carpenter, who had been denied Social Security Disability benefits. He had demanded a jury trial on the issue of his disability, which the law did not allow, and was denied on appeal by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1980. At times he was forced to apply for food stamps.  His hate for “the government” continued unabated, and he read the Bible, interpreting its passages to support his increasingly paranoid beliefs: “Leonard was a good student of the Bible” said friend Bill Wade, “He felt the Biblical prophecies for the end of the world were being fulfilled.  He thought the millennium was upon us, and that the Russians might be coming up from the shores any day…  He wanted to be ready.  They tried to have things that were necessary if you came to an economic collapse or other national catastrophe that you might have to crawl back in a shell and live on meager means.”   His concrete house was “burrowed into a hill, accessible only from the front.”

     Fringe groups prospered in Wisconsin.  James Wickstrom, a tool salesman, angered at seeing African-Americans promoted above him, joined the Posse in Racine.  Subsequently he teamed up with Donald Minniecheske, another Posse member who owned 750 acres of land on the Embarrass River near Tigerton, Wisconsin.  They set up a compound and called it a “township” which they declared to be independent of Federal, State, or County jurisdiction.  Wickstrom declared himself clerk and judge of the township.

                                                              James Wickstrom

     A defining event occurred on February 13, 1983. Gordon Kahl, a farmer and oil field mechanic who was a highly decorated decorated World War Two veteran, got into a gunfight with Federal agents sent to arrest him near Medina North Dakota. He had been imprisoned in 1979 for tax evasion, after stating on a radio program that he had no obligation to pay taxes and would not do so.  Kahl lost his farm in 1981 for nonpayment of income taxes.  He was wanted for violation of parole: he wrote a letter to the court refusing to appear when summoned, and vowed not to pay taxes.  Gordon, his wife, and son Yori were intercepted at a roadblock near their home by U.S. Marshalls.  Kahl and his son were armed with semi-automatic Ruger Mini-14 rifles. In the ensuing gunfight Yori Kahl was gravely injured and Marshalls Kenneth Muir and Bob Cheshire were killed.  Kahl took the car of Medina deputy police Chief Steve Schnablel and fled to Arkansas.  He stayed in several of his sympathizers homes, including the home of Leonard and Norma Ginter at Smithville, Arkansas.  On June 3, 1983 the FBI received information indicating that Kahl was at the Ginter home, the concrete fortress.  Eight thousand rounds of ammunition were reported stored in their home.  Ginter was captured in his car leaving the home and Norma surrendered herself.  Kahl died in the subsequent gun battle with the 28 lawmen present. Lawrence County Sheriff Gene Matthews was killed by Kahl.

                                                                                                                              

 “Kahl was the catalyst that made everyone come forth and change the organizations from thinkers to doers” said James Ellison, leader of the Covenant, Sword, and Arm of the Lord (CSA) a successor group to the Posse Comitatus.  To avenge Kahl’s death, the CSA had planned to use rockets to blow up the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1983, years before Timothy McVeigh bombed it into rubble on April 19, 1995.  Their plan never was put into action.

       The Ginters were charged with murder and harboring a fugitive.  Under Arkansas law an accomplice could be charged as if he had committed the murder.  These charter members of the Posse Comitatus of Grant County were tried in Arkansas.  Leonard Ginter was sentenced in State Court to eight years in prison, and in the Federal Court to five years.  Norma, who was born in Beetown, was sentenced to time served and placed on probation. 

    

      It would be pleasant to say that this storm of hate and rebellion crested and died out, but it is still with us.  Wickstrom was imprisoned for impersonating a public official and for counterfeiting.  His “Family Farm Preservation” organization cynically sold phony currency for $200.00 a packet to desperate debtors telling them they could use the notes to pay off their debts.  The “township” at Tigerton died out, but the poison of these beliefs has spread to dozens of other organizations and militia groups.  One of these is the “Sovereign Citizens Movement”, which has grown rapidly in the last five years.  They hold the same basic beliefs as the Posse Comitatus did.  Once again they feed on hard times, and do not hesitate to become violent. In February 2010 Joe Stack, a member, flew his plane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas.  In March 2012, this group sent letters to State Governors, including Governor Doyle demanding that they vacate their offices or “face removal.” This prompted a Department of Homeland Security Alert.  Three weeks ago in Louisiana two sheriffs’ deputies were murdered and two others injured in an ambush in a trailer court.  Sovereign Citizens members are suspected.   And so the insanity continues.  

     In 1983 a federal official who refused to be identified said “not every member and every chapter of the Posse has the same views as the Klan” Many of these individuals were not engaged in any criminal activity except tax evasion.  The newspapers of the time do not tell us what the racial and religious views of most of the Grant County Posse members were.

     Bernard Hinderman of Grant County, one of the founders and promoters of Grant Counties fringe groups, is listed on a Department of Revenue  site that names delinquent tax payers as owing the State of Wisconsin back taxes of over $210,000.00.  What he deems himself not obligated to pay, the rest of us must. 

     In 1995 Leonard Ginter reportedly spoke to a group of like minded people and said “"Go back to the time when somebody committed treason years ago, most of them were put on a scaffold to swing. That's what we need to do. If we do about 10 of them, the rest will straighten out. It wouldn't necessarily have to be a judge or a governor. If one governor got it, we wouldn't have any trouble with the rest."

   Since the 1960’s groups on the left and the right have challenged the legitimacy of our government.  Why do some come to believe that they have the right to determine what is constitutional, and which laws they will obey?  We live in a democracy. We all elect our leaders, not those on the fringes who feel they can arrogate unto themselves the rights of all. Now, even those we elect to run our government demean it, and sow the seeds of distrust in the very institutions they manage.  They do it for political gain. This is the pattern for demagogues on both the left and the right. Is it any wonder that citizens feel bewildered?  Some have accepted the deranged explanations and “solutions” offered by radical fringe groups. What does the future hold?

The Racer who died at Four Miles per Hour

The Racer Who died at Four Miles Per Hour

     He had the pole position for the first Indianapolis 500 held in 1911.  He had been at the “top of the world”, the best racer of 1908, married to a beautiful actress, but recently his world had crumbled a bit.  Lewis Strang was a daredevil, who routinely drove those primitive vehicles at speeds approaching 100 miles per hour, but he died driving at four miles an hour. 

     Lewis Strang was a direct descendant of Revolutionary war general Israel Putnam, the man who, legend says. told his soldiers at the Battle of Bunker Hill “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes!”, and who himself, was a reckless seeker of adventure.  He had fought in the French and Indian War with Rogers’ Rangers, and was famous for Escaping from the British in a horse race in 1779 at the age of 61.

                            

Strang’s winning Isota at the1908 Briarcliff Road Race                                                           Lewis Strang

   

     Strang always drove full tilt.  In 1908 he won the major races at Savannah, Georgia; Briarcliff, New York and Lowell, Massachusetts.  The same year he married Jennie L. Spalding, who performed as an actress under the name Louise Alexander. The marriage was tempestuous.  When he lost a race she demanded to know why.  Later, on November 17, 1908, when his driving partner Emil Stricker was killed moments after relieving Strang in Birmingham in an attempt to break the 24 hour record at the state fair race course, she changed her mind and pleaded with him to enter a safer business 2.  Though she had promised to give up acting, she left him in 1909 and returned to acting, appearing in Ziegfeld’s Follies of 1910.  Barney Oldfield in discussing Strang recalled: “When it came his turn to bow to the scythe-swinger, Strang wanted to be gripping the wheel of the fastest racing car in the world, with his foot shoving the throttle wide open. He wanted the band to be playing the latest rag, and when the ambulance hauled him to the morgue he wanted the crowd to say as they filed out, “Well, he certainly was going some.” 3

    In 1910 The J. I. Case Company, better known for agricultural machinery, bought the Pierce Motor Company of Racine 1.  They approached Strang about helping them promote their new automobiles by racing them.  He assembled a racing team to compete in their vehicles.  He raced a Case at the inaugural Indianapolis 500 in 1911, but none of the three cars entered finished the race.  On June 18, 1911 he crashed his car through a fence in Kenosha, breaking his arm.  Despite that injury he decided to drive the technical review committee car for the Wisconsin Automobile Association’s annual reliability run in July 2.  Steady rains had soaked the ground near Blue River, Wisconsin for days before the reliability run.  On July 20, 1911, as he approached a hill on the muddy road he encountered a farmer with his wagon ascending slowly.  In first gear he carefully began to pass the horse drawn wagon.  His car wheels sunk into the mud on the far side of the road, and the car began to roll.  It slid down the ten foot embankment, rolling over.  Three of the occupants jumped to safety, but Strang held the wheel and was crushed under the car. And so the man who wanted the a crowd at his death to say “Well, he certainly was going some.” died at a speed of probably four miles per hour.  God doesn’t give us the option of choosing the manner of our death, but our lives he allows us to direct for better or worse.  “The sensation of winning and losing and of taking a chance with something is probably the greatest in the world.” He said “It is natural to gamble with what you value. Some men obtain sport through gambling with money. I wouldn’t take a minute’s interest in a money stake. It doesn’t appeal to me. I like to gamble for something else, though. The sensation when you come close to a bad accident and yet don’t ‘get it’ can never be described.”3  He is buried in The Green Hill Cemetery in Amsterdam, New York.

        Advertisement for 1911 Case Touring Car

Sources

1.      CASE CAR HISTORY, at: http://www.ironmemories.com/case-car-history

2.      LEWIS STRANG, America's leading driver in 1908, From:   http://www.vanderbiltcupraces.com/drivers/driver/lewis_strang

3.      HOW STRANG MET HIS DEATH,  Hemmings Daily Motor News Blog at:  http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2010/05/31/how-strang-met-his-death/

4.      “OLD PUT”, THE PATRIOT, 2005 by Frederick A. Ober, EBook at: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17049/17049-h/17049-h.htm

5.      THE NEW YORK TIMES, July 21, 1911 at: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60914FE3E5517738DDDA80A94DF405B818DF1D3

TRAMPS

TRAMPS

“Our systems of poor relief provide bountifully for all cases of real need, and in all ordinary times there is work enough for every one to do in this paradise of the poor man.”

                                        - A. O. Wright, Wisconsin State Board of charities and Reform, 1895

“Ay, 'tis God's will! That's what you'd have me say,
'Tis Heaven's decree that I should starve to-day!
'Tis Heaven-born justice you are rich, I poor,
That you, with curses, drive me from your door!”

                                - From “Rags to Riches” in the book “Low Down”, by Two Tramps, 1886

     In the early 1870’s something new happened in America.  The tramp appeared on the scene, seemingly as if from nowhere.  Suddenly headlines like: “A Railway Train Captured in Wisconsin – Great Excitement prevails throughout Southern Wisconsin on account of a sudden invasion of tramps from Iowa….They captured two freight trains going south through Madison.  At Madison a company of Militia and a large body of citizens met them yesterday morning, and after quite a tussle in the driving rain storm captured 47 of the tramps.  They were sentenced to 90 days’ work at breaking stones for streets…The tramps are fierce fellows, and in capturing trains they jump on the engines and direct engineers when to stop, manage brakes themselves, and stop in country places and raid on farm-houses for food, returning to trains when satisfied.  The Governor says …they will be driven from the state at the point of a bayonet.” 1 Who were they?  Where did they come from?

     In 1873 both Europe and the United States were thrown into a depression as investment firms and banks failed, over invested in railroad bonds and hurt by government tight money policies that caused interest rates to rise.  The result was massive unemployment and a seven year depression.  In Chicago the unemployment rate rose to over 30% as workers, who had helped rebuild the city after the great fire of 1871, were thrown out of work.  All these, combined with huge numbers of new immigrants led to epidemic homelessness.  Between 1868 and 1873 33,000 miles of new track were added by the railroads, and these provided the means for penniless armies of men, many Civil War veterans, to move about the country seeking work.  It also provided similar mobility to criminals and beggars. 

     Tramps wandered America for generations.  They were called “tramps” after the Civil War term that was used commonly to describe a long march.  The middle and upper classes reacted to tramps in a uniformly hostile manner.  Only the labor publications pointed out that many of these “tramps” were victims of hard times, out of work and penniless.  A typical response was that of the Wisconsin State Journal in an editorial of July 20, 1878:  “Tenderness toward tramps is condolence with communism and sympathy with scoundrels.  The horde of vicious ruffians now attempting to overrun this State deserve the severest treatment at the hands of the people and authorities of the commonwealth.  No tramp should be harbored even for a single night, or fed with a single meal; he will repay charity with murder, rape or robbery, and will revenge himself on his spurner with burning his house over his head, and maiming his animals or his orchard…The tramp, especially he who travels in a gang, is thoroughly bad and beyond redemption; he should receive no countenance beyond what the sheriff and an armed posse can give him.”2

Because anyone riding the rails or on the road was termed a tramp, it is hard to ascertain what their ranks were composed of.  No real attempts were made to study the causes of individual homelessness, and in fact a uniform distain prevailed which was very similar to the attitudes of the day toward African-Americans, namely that they were lazy, criminal, and a cancer on society.  “The tramp is a man who can be approached by no other motive but pain,” one author said “the pain of a thrashing or the pain of hunger.” 3  The newspapers did their part by sensationalizing each event and exaggerating the facts.  Fifty tramps became five hundred or five thousand waiting at the gates to invade and plunder.  The Milwaukee Journal carried this story: “TRAMPS STONE TRAINS – Three Sent to Lancaster Jail for Three Months.  BOSCOBEL, WIS., May 5 – Three tramps were arrested and committed to the county jail today for three months for throwing stones through moving passenger car windows.”4  The magic word “tramps” apparently made it more than a local news story. 

     The national hysteria continued well into the twentieth century.  Tramps were blamed for many acts that were no doubt those of local toughs.  One popular tendency was to blame fires on tramps.  Since there seemed to be no definition of “tramp”, other than that he was presumably not a local citizen, it was convenient to point the finger at the outsider.  A review of the newspapers shows that there were in fact plenty of local incendiaries.  In November of 1916 the Dubuque Telegraph Herald reported: “VILLAGE OF POTOSI NEARLY WIPED OUT.  CONFLAGRATION SWEEPS THE TOWN DESTROYING SIX BUSINESS HOUSES.  Potosi, Wi,.  Nov 13  Special – Fire, supposedly started by a tramp in the town Bastille and who is believed to have perished in the flames, nearly wiped out the business section of this city at an early hour this morning”   The Milwaukee Journal trumpeted “TRAMP SETS FIRE: NEARLY RUINS TOWN.”  Our local Lancaster Teller told a more mundane story.  The alleged “tramp” was one John Cranitch, described as “well known in this vicinity.”  Indeed, Cranitch was a resident of Potosi, and had been sentenced to Waupun three times by Judge Clementson.  Cranitch died in the fire.  Several years later (June 1919) another local business woman, Mrs. Sarah Swale, a restaurant operator after having increased her fire insurance burned down her business and with it six others.

     Tramps were also reputed to beg for food and take vengeance if refused.  Stories abounded of tramps stealing from the homes where they were given shelter for a night.  Mutilated livestock and burned orchards were blamed on tramp vengeance.  Tramps were alleged to intimidate rural farm wives to get food, and supposedly stole livestock to roast with numerous companion tramps in deep woods hideaways.  In April 1886 the following story ran in The Wisconsin State Journal and other papers as far away as Miles City, Montana: “As has heretofore been reported in these dispatches, tramps are infesting Grant county, stealing sheep, hogs and horses, and causing much trouble. John Stippich, a farmer by pursuit, recovered a pair of valuable 2 year-old colts that were stolen in the northeastern part of the county. A band of tramps have headquarters in a hut on Wisconsin river, and are raising terror generally by compelling women and children to yield to their demands and helping themselves to property which they take to their den, where they hold high carnival. A posse of men armed with muskets and headed by an officer are on their track.”   What did our local Lancaster Teller say about this?  Absolutely nothing!  The only story regarding tramps reported: “Three tramps “did” the good people of Lancaster on Monday.  On various pretexts they went about town begging money, food, and clothing, and met with fair success.  One purchased a pair of goggles and played the sore eye dodge, saying he wanted to get enough money to take him where he could have his eyes doctored.  He displayed a good-sized roll of bills when he bought the goggles, but pretended to others to have no money.  He was a bright and intelligent-appearing young man, and could find better business than begging if he were so disposed.”

     Tramps were almost universally viewed as lazy and unwilling to work, but sometimes a more balanced view broke through the pages of fantastic stories.  Many men and some women rode the rails as the tracks were laid across the country.  Many were killed by railroad employees who forced them to “hit the gravel” when traveling at high speeds: “Finally the “Con” (Conductor) climbed down and stepped on my fingers, so I had to let go”  9 one man wrote.  Many of these travelers were migrant workers, working in the farm harvests, or just seeking work.  In July of 1904 in Sioux City, Iowa it was reported that up to eighteen hundred “tramps, wanderers, immigrant workmen, and ordinary vags” had passed through the city in the past week.  Reports flew that the railroad was under control of the tramps.  The railroad denied it: “We have no complaint to make.  The men are going through here by the thousand, but it happens every year.  There are more this year than ever before because there is a bumper crop to handle.  It is this class that will aid the farmer in harvesting, and this railroad has no objection to helping the farmers with the crops.” A Conductor when asked if he could control the riders said they just wanted to ride and he had no objection if they behaved.  Another Northwestern official explained “many of them have not done much work since spring and are out of money and so look for free rides.”

     In 1894 The Milwaukee Journal reported that hard times during the panic of 1873, and the long years of depression which followed caused the advent of the tramp: “banks tumbled all over the country and in a short time general business was almost paralyzed:  factories closed or reduced their working force and wages, and it was then that the gangs of tramps were first seen wandering aimlessly from town to town, begging or stealing enough to keep from starvation."  The economic conditions remained poor into the 1890’s.  Despite the Social Darwinism of the times, and the myth that any man could find work, it was not the case.  Despite the pronouncements of the authorities of the day, the systems of poor relief were wholly inadequate to ameliorate the gyrating effects of a growing industrial civilization, and of mechanization which displaced thousands of workers, rural and urban.

A tramp poet wrote the following:

                They asked me what made me so thin and so pale,

                And I told them, dear Nessy, our sorrowful tale:

                How father had died, and mother—so weak—

                Had toiled and toiled our living to seek:

                How we often went bare, and hungry oft,

                And how mamma grew thinner and paler and coughed;

               And we had no fire, and we had no bread,

               And at last mamma lay on the hearthstone dead,

               And they brought us here.—I had oft to repeat

               My story to those who have plenty to eat. 

     What happened to those civil War veterans who took to the road in the 1870’s?  In 1896, a newspaper reporter visited some of the wandering old soldiers.  “These men were “soldier tramps.”  He wrote “They seemed to be proud of their soldier records.  When the call for troops was sounded in the early sixties, they had enlisted in the army; they served until the war closed and then they became wanderers.  Some time ago this class of men was quite numerous, but is fast thinning out.  Its decrease is accounted for principally, if not entirely, by the age of the men.  The death rate among them is large, and as the weight of the years becomes increasingly heavier, they cease their meanderings and put into the soldiers’ homes…  Two were brothers, and they told with a touch of pride that they had not been separated for twenty years.  It seemed that they served throughout the war in a Wisconsin regiment.  They spent a year after the war closed at their old home, and then took to the road… They had become tramps, they said, and they enjoyed the life.” 

With time these men died.  Some died in the woods, frozen or starved.  Some died in poor houses or soldiers homes.  No doubt some found steady work, settled down, and had families.  Some were unrepentant criminals, who spend many months and years in jails and prisons all over America.  Some were alcoholics living for the next glass of rot gut. Where did they come from?  Many came from cities, and armies disbanded.  Who were they?  They were the sometimes not so invisible homeless, despised and hounded with far fewer avenues of help than exist today.  We keep our homeless out of the press, anonymous to regular “normal” citizens passing them by, and maybe that is worse

THE EPIDEMIC THAT CRIPPLED A NAVY CRUISER

DEATH SHIP

                                                             By Dennis A. Wilson

Mysterious Photo from “Unknown” file at GCHS

     In the unknown persons and places file at the Cunningham are many photos of people waiting for a name and of events waiting for explanation.  This is one of those photographs: A gathering of men, women and children stand beside a long raised mound covered with crosses.  Each cross bears a name and a U.S. flag.  In the foreground a marker reads "QUADRO No. 24" which in portuguese means" frame or box no. 24."  I was able to read two of the names on the crosses; I.D. Renfro and W.L. Foegley, and from that came this story.  How it relates to Grant County, and why the photo is here remains a mystery.

     The USS Pittsburg was launched on April 18, 1903.  It was first named the Pennsylvania, an armored cruiser, displacing 13,680 tons with a compliment of 41 officers and 850 men.   In early 1911 the ship was fitted with a wooden platform 120 feet long and 30 feet wide for an attempt at landing a plane on a ship.  On January 18, 1911 Eugene Ely landed his Curtis pusher biplane on the Pennsylvania, the first airplane landing on a ship.  The future was obvious and in time the carrier would become the backbone of naval power. 

     The Pennsylvania was renamed the USS Pittsburg on August 27, 1912 to free up the name USS Pennsylvania for a newer and bigger battleship.  For the rest of her service life, the ship was designated ACR-4 USS Pittsburgh.  The ship was decommissioned July 10, 1931, used for bombing practice, and then sold for scrap.  The story told by our mysterious photo involves the activities of the USS Pittsburg in the year 1918.  That was the year of the great influenza pandemic, the “Spanish Flu” which swept the world through 1920 and killed at least 50 million.

     The Spanish Flu had made its first appearance in Rio de Janeiro in mid September of 1918.  In October the Pittsburgh docked there.  The ship’s captain, George “Blackjack” Bradshaw, knowing of the epidemic in the city, allowed working parties to go ashore and gave liberty to many crewmembers. The Pittsburgh at that time was also the flagship for rear admiral William Caperton who wrote about the sickness on board.  Admiral Caperton, writing to the Fleet Surgeon about the crew of the Pittsburgh said, “On Board the ship the sick list reached a total of 663 (which was 80% of the crew on board), with a final death toll of 58. The efforts of all hands were devoted solely to the care of the sick, and practically the whole ship was given over to them.”  The first two flu cases on board occurred October 7^th.  The first to die was Seaman E. L. Williams on October 13^th. Caperton later wrote: “By … the 11th, there were 418 cases of influenza in the flagship, so that her activities for any duty were becoming handicapped. The seriousness of the situation was cabled to the Department.  On the 14th of October 644 cases had been admitted to the sick list, with about 350 more light ones not listed. One man died the day before. On the 15th three had died, the Commanding Officer, his heads of department and two members of my staff were sick, while the disease raged unabated in Rio where conditions defied description…. Conditions in the ship were rapidly becoming worse. More than half of the hospital corps were ill, and help was commandeered from all ratings and from the junior officers of the line. And the drizzle and the rain which had set in during the early days of the epidemic continued fitfully, rendering it difficult to find room for the cots of the sick who had been kept on deck in the open, during the good weather. Ashore people died like flies, and many lay in the streets for two or three days waiting interment, even a hole in the corner of a trench. By the 18th, twelve of the 48 pneumonia cases had died in the Pittsburgh. Further caskets could not be obtained ashore, at any price, and the burial of our men became an urgent necessity. On the 21st of October 16 bodies were taken from the Pittsburgh and landed for burial in the Sao Francisco Xavier Cemetery. Notwithstanding the previous arrangement with cemetery authorities for the opening of 20 graves, the funeral cortege arrived at the cemetery and found no graves prepared. Those destined for us had been used by others. We were finally compelled to dig the graves for our own dead shipmates. Conditions in the cemetery beggared description. Eight hundred bodies in all states of decomposition, and lying about in the cemetery, were awaiting burial. Thousands of buzzards swarmed overhead.”

     Eventually the bodies of 41 of the 58 dead were buried in the Sao Francisco Xavier Cemetery.   In Rio de Janeiro, at least 30,000 dies from the influenza.  From the website shown below I got a partial list of the 41 buried in Rio de Janeiro. http://freepages.military.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cacunithistories/USS_Pennsylvania.html

     From this list I was able to identify the photograph from our file by matching the names.  In the spring of 1920, with the help of Rear Admiral Henry F. Bryan, the crew of the USS Pittsburgh erected a 20 ft tall white granite monument which read: “Erected by the crew of the USS Pittsburgh, in memory of their shipmates who died from the influenza, October-November 1918.”  Perhaps this photo was taken at that time. 

     On page 171 of the Annual Report of the Surgeon General, U. S. Navy, for the fiscal year 1919 to the Secretary of the Navy the following is written:

“All but 42 of these bodies were embalmed and shipped to the United States. On January 30, 16 standard metal caskets were received on the U. S. S. Cyclops and the U. S. S. Pueblo brought 12 more in November. The cost of metal-lined hermetically sealed caskets with shipping box is $750 United States gold on this station. Our metal caskets are in store in Bahia, Rio, and Montevideo. Forty-two bodies have been interred in the San Francisco Xavier Cemetery in Rio. All but one of these were victims of the influenza epidemic, the exception being the body of the enlisted man attached to the U. S. S. Cyclops who was drowned and due to the long immersion in the water was so badly decomposed that shipment to the United States was impossible. The 41victims of influenza are interred in the same plot of the cemetery, each grave marked with a simple wooden cross on which the name of the deceased is stenciled, and in addition each grave is numbered in accordance with the cemetery regulations. A plan of the plot, designating the individual graves has been forwarded to the bureau and one given the cemetery and a third copy is in the files of the consulate at Rio.”

On May 30, 1919 The Indianapolis Star carried the following story: “Washington, May 29, -Bodies of forty-one former members of the crew of the Pittsburgh are buried in Rio Janeiro in a plot purchased by the navy and on which has been erected a marble monument inscribed with the names and ratings of the men.  Memorial ceremonies at the graves tomorrow will be directed by Rear Admiral Henry F. Bryan, head of the American naval mission to Brazil.”

"RIO JANERO. Sept 27 - The American scout cruiser Richmond arrived here last night, having encountered heavy weather and rough seas on the last part of her trip from Buenos Aires. When the Richmond leaves for the United States she will carry the bodies of the forty American sailors and marines, members of the crew of the U. S. S. Pittsburgh, who died in Brazil in the influenza epidemic of 1918. The bodies will be taken aboard without formal ceremonies. "

    And so I come back to the cemetery photo above, which was tucked away in our file of unknowns for decades with no marking or annotation of any kind.  Why is it here? Perhaps someone reading this will know the full story of its presence in Grant County. Perhaps that part of the story is lost forever.

Sources

1.      “CR-4 USS Pennsylvania / USS Pittsburgh” a website, by Joe Hartwell at: http://freepages.military.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cacunithistories/USS_Pennsylvania.html

2.      “Study suggests 1918 flu waves were caused by 'distinct' viruses”, by Robert Roos   News Editor, Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, University of Minnesota at: http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/panflu/news/sep2911panwaves.html

3.      “Thirty thousand Die of Flu in Rio De Janero” in The Oxnard Courier , Oxnard, California , Friday, December 06, 1918, Page 8

4.      “Remember Dead in Brazil” Article in the Indianapolis Star, Friday May 30, 1919, page 2

5.      “Annual Report of the Surgeon General, U. S. Navy, for the fiscal year 1919 to the Secretary of the Navy” Google Books page 171

6.      “Richmond To Bring Home Sailors Bodies” AP news story in The Danville Bee, Danville, Virginia, Thursday, September 27, 1923, page 1