The Sleigh Ride
Dolly McConnell answered her door about half past noon on a bright, frosty afternoon to see a friend of the family waiting outside. His horse was tied to her hitching post out front, a gleaming red sleigh behind it. Dolly invited Simeon S. Baker in; he took off his coat, hat and gloves and settled briefly into her parlor. Simeon owned a jewelry store on Main Street and was an expert diamond appraiser and pawn broker. Dolly’s husband, Harry, worked as a commercial traveler - a salesman - for Benjamin Allen & Company, a wholesale jewelry company. He was away on a business trip in Chicago. Simeon and Harry had known each other for years and Simeon had always been so kind to their children.
After visiting a bit, he asked if he could take the kids for a ride. A sleigh ride! Yay! Harry and May, nine and six years old, were excited. Dolly hesitated; the temperature was in the teens. Simeon said he would just take them to the post office and back; they wouldn’t be out in the cold for long. He’d actually promised a ride to two lady friends who were expecting him shortly. She gave her permission then and bundled her children up in their coats and wraps, putting a veil over May’s face. The three started out the door when she realized Simeon had walked out in his shirtsleeves.
“Mr. Baker!” she called after him, handing him his winter gear.
She watched as Simeon tucked the children in under blankets and lap robes. It was Sunday, January 17, 1886 in Kansas City, Missouri. It had been an unusual January already, with two severe blizzards that struck western Kansas, and unusually cold temperatures. The thermometer would not reach twenty that day. Off the sleighing party went, and Dolly got back to some housework.
Simeon S. Baker was a distinguished-looking jeweler, diamond appraiser and pawn broker with a store on Main Street in Kansas City, Missouri. A Civil War veteran, he'd been a trusted friend of the McConnell family for years.
Three miles from Independence and two hundred yards from a narrow, rutted country road stood the Widow Long’s house. It was attached to a dilapidated log cabin, now in such bad repair that it was only used to store firewood. Her frame home was fourteen feet square. There was also a little summer kitchen, six by ten feet that was recently added.
The poverty of the place was evident. In Fanny Long’s little house lived six people. She still had two of her children at home; her son Robert Jr., 19 and daughter Maud, 17. Her “baby,” Otis, was nine and lived in Independence with one of her brothers so he could go to a better school than their rural one. Two older daughters were married. In spite of her hardships Fanny had taken in three nieces, Ida Monroe, 15; and little Eva and Alverda Monroe, who were three and five, when their mother died.
The floor of her home was uncarpeted and the walls devoid of any adornment. Three beds lined the walls. Robert slept in the smallest, Maud and Ida shared the second, and Fanny shared her bed with Eva and Alverda. It was hard to accommodate any visitors in so small a space. A sewing machine and a few chairs also took up room. They had two books, a well-worn New Testament and a one-volume encyclopedia. They did have a decent barn, though, and a good cow, and a fine team of horses for Robert to work their 44 acres.
Fanny had never had an easy life. She married when she was only 13, to a man of 26. Their first home was the log cabin. She had thirteen children and buried eight as babies. They’d always barely eked out a living on their farm. Now she’d been widowed for ten months and was trying to make a go of it. Her children had gotten little education and it was just the basics from the Mill Creek country school nearby, though Fanny had dreamed of more for them. She and her brother had made plans recently for her to rent out the farm and move to town. He had offered his home to her and her bunch.
This sketch of the Long's home appeared in the Kansas City Times.
An hour had passed since Mr. Baker had taken the McConnell children for a sleigh ride. Mrs. McConnell looked out her parlor window again. They should have returned by now. Just to the post office and back. Why hadn’t they returned, then? Who should she contact? She didn’t have a telephone, as most people still did not. She waited a little longer and began to feel increasingly uneasy.
Around five o’clock a red sleigh was spotted pulling up at the Merchant’s Hotel in Independence, about nine and a half miles from Kansas City. It was noticed that the horse was foaming and two children were in the sleigh. A man burst into the lobby in a frantic state of excitement and told the surprised hotel clerk that he was the victim of a runaway, and that his sleigh was upset and dragged some distance. He didn’t seem to know where he was. One account said he stayed and took dinner. At 5:30 he was seen leaving Independence, heading towards Kansas City. His whereabouts were traced as far as the Catholic cemetery. Someone else later reported they saw the sleigh heading towards Independence again.
By now it was dusk. Dolly McConnell had contacted her parents and friends. Phones calls were made “in every direction,” though not everyone had phones, of course, and messengers went door to door. They contacted Simeon Baker’s wife to see if she knew the whereabouts of her husband. The police were called, though their role seemed to be remarkably limited. A large group of friends filled the McConnell parlor. Mrs. McConnell paced back and forth, struggling to keep from hysterics. She had learned to her horror that Mr. Baker recently had some sort of mental breakdown. He was not considered dangerous, and he had continued working at his shop, but his wife Melcenia made arrangements to take him to her father’s place in Iowa. She thought rest and a break from the rat race of the city and the constant demands of his business would restore him.
There had been behavior described as eccentric. A few days ago he burst into an office near his store and told the people there that he’d been blind, but his sight was now miraculously restored. Mr. Baker wore glasses but had never been blind. Dolly McConnell thought back on how he had left her house without his coat and wraps, with the temperature stubbornly in the teens. It seemed odd then but took on more significance now.
She wanted to burst into sobs, or screams. Her children were loose in an open sleigh with a madman! Now it was getting dark; the temperature was dropping. And no one knew where they were. Helpers kept returning to the house with the sad news that they had found or learned nothing.
“Oh sir!” Mrs. McConnell cried out to one man. “Please, please, please find my darling children! I cannot bear this.”
Melcenia Baker also paced in her home that night. Where was Simeon? What had he done? Why hadn’t he returned? Was he all right? What about the children? She’d been concerned about him, but never - never - did she think he’d disappear like this. He adored those children! Had he gotten hurt? Was he unconscious somewhere? One thing she was sure of – he would not hurt the children. He wouldn’t! He loved children. And he thought the world of the McConnell kids. He even said he wished he could adopt them.
Simeon Baker felt confused. Confused, exhausted and cold. He kept trying to get over the mountains. If he could just get over the mountains! Mountains…. Like his Pennsylvania boyhood. He’d tried and tried. Now he stood in a snowy woods, unsure what to do. It was so cold, so dark, so quiet. He started walking – trudging – eyes down, concentrating on each footstep.
The Long household had been in bed in their little one-room house for hours. It was about one in the morning when they heard a loud knock at the door. Robert got up to answer. A man stood there, clearly exhausted and barely coherent. He said he’d gotten lost in the mountains and was the victim of a runaway, his horse careening off the road into the woods, tipping his sleigh over, breaking the sleigh’s shaft and leaving him stranded. Could he seek shelter with them till morning?
How could they refuse?
The man staggered in and collapsed on Robert’s bed. He mumbled something about leaving two children behind at the sleigh. They questioned him, but couldn’t get any other information out of him. Robert, Maud and Fanny Long stood huddled in confused conversation. Children? What was that he said about children? He seemed delirious, and there was a total lack of concern about any children. Any desperate father would have burst in saying he needed help rescuing his children, that he’d crashed and left them only to seek help. That would have been his primary concern. The man was now unresponsive, eyes closed.
Maud said they had to go check. Had to! Mrs. Long demurred. It was freezing outside. It was dark. It wasn’t safe, and it was snowing again. Besides, look at him. He was asleep. Would someone who left children outdoors really be sleeping soundly? He talked about being in the mountains.
Robert agreed. It was crazy. The man didn’t even know what he was saying. There probably weren’t any kids. They could go looking for any children in the morning.
By morning any kids left out in subfreezing temperatures would be dead, Maud persisted. She would go alone if she had to. Maud began putting on her shoes. Robert said he would go with her then. Mrs. Long protested a bit more, but Maud was absolutely determined – and Robert wasn’t going to let his sister go alone.
Once bundled, the Longs headed for the narrow road running by their house. There they spotted the tracks of sleigh rails. They could also see footprints where the man was walking alongside the sleigh. New-fallen snow was already softening those outlines.
Soon the tracks left the road. The Longs trudged across open country, down gullies and over banks, following the parallel marks as the air stung their cheeks. They could see where the sleigh had overturned many times. Finally the tracks led to Mill Creek, frozen over and covered with snow. They followed the markings downstream for about two miles. It was obvious the man had driven his sleigh right in the middle of the creek, where the party would have drowned if the ice had broken through. Thick woods lined the sides of the waterway.
“After we’d walked about three miles we heard bells ringing, and almost running, we came upon the horse,” Robert said. The poor animal was shivering in the cold, shivering so hard it made the sleigh bells jingle. “The horse was pretty near dead from the cold and fatigue.”
“It was the worst, most desolate spot in all of Jackson County,” Robert said. “I don’t see for the life of me how Mr. Baker got there, for there were places over which he must have passed that I would not lead a horse through.”
Maud and Robert approached the vehicle anxiously, and at first it appeared empty. Maud lifted the lap robe, and there were two children, lying on the bottom of the sleigh, wrapped up but very cold. Maud picked the girl up and pressed her cold little body against her own. Robert hitched the horse back to the sleigh, which was broken underneath. Cautiously he led the horse up from the creek embankment. The poor thing broke through the ice there, but Robert managed to get it up. Now they had to make it back through the woods to the Long’s modest home.
Maud carried May part of the way. Then they joined Harry in the sleigh, with Robert leading the horse. “He walked us clear back to the house,” Harry said later. “And lots of times when it was rough she got out and steadied the sleigh for us.”
It was 4:30 in the morning when they finally reached home. Maud and Robert had trudged through snow for three hours. Robert took the horse to the barn where it received “the best of care.”
When they got back to the house, Mrs. Long found dry clothes for the children to put on and bundled them into bed. It was her feather bed, and the warmth and snugness was something Harry and May would long remember. The Longs stayed up as their beds were full.
It was a terrible night at 1005 Washington Street. Friends kept coming to the house to update Mrs. McConnell on the doings of the search parties. Her parents had come from her hometown, Leavenworth. Her father and brothers were out searching; her mother sat with her as she wept and shook, imagining her babies freezing to death. Her mind raced and she finally gave way to what was described as hysterical convulsions.
Monday morning, the story hit the Kansas City area newspapers. Two little children, out with a madman all night in an open cutter in a snowstorm and these freezing temperatures, their mother prostrate with anxiety and grief. It captured the imagination of readers. Never in the history of the city, the Kansas City Times said, had the public been worked up to such a state of excitement. Every minute that passed without word of the children built suspense.
In a time when telephones were still relatively rare, people were used to events in which someone simply didn’t come home, only to show up the next day. A wagon break or a snowstorm could require a night spent in a barn or friendly farmer’s home till the next day, with no way to let one’s family know. But a trip to the post office and back, a distance of a few blocks, ruled those scenarios out. Of course, Mr. Baker’s precarious mental state was also quite another matter.
A telegram was sent to Mr. McConnell in Chicago at 7:00 a.m. He responded promptly that he would take the next train headed for Kansas City, and to telegraph again whether the children were found or not.
Search parties had been out overnight, with new ones organized at daybreak. H.H. Noland and W. Peters made their way close to Independence and journeyed down what was known as the Long Road by the Long family farm. They were in one sleigh. Dr. John Bryant and a Times reporter followed them in another.
The Longs let the children sleep until they woke on their own. Mr. Baker hardly seemed to know they were there and didn’t speak to Harry and May. Robert had just been preparing to take them and Mr. Baker into Independence when two sleighs drove up to the door. Of course the four Kansas City men told the Longs that the children’s disappearance had caused a frenzy. Hundreds were out looking for them. Mr. Noland and Mr. Peters took May in their sleigh; the doctor and the reporter took Harry. Robert followed with Mr. Baker. On the way they ran into friends of the McConnells who were out searching, and they joined the party.
When they got into town the news of the children being found preceded them and citizens gathered to give them a standing ovation. “Men cheered and waved their hats, women cried, and everybody crowded around and kissed the children till it seemed they were in as much danger of being smothered with kindness as they had been of being frozen with cold,” the reporter wrote. When the citizens heard of Maud’s insistence on searching for the children, a collection immediately began to be taken up for her.
When Mr. Baker reached Independence he was interviewed by a reporter who said his talk was “wild and incoherent.” When asked why he did what he did, “he launched into a rambling and disconnected discourse.
“I tell you, that was a rough country,” Mr. Baker said. “One minute I was way up in the mountains and then I was down in the valleys. I guess I must have got lost.” Then he began telling of incidents that happened years ago, speaking of them in the present. “He seemed to be utterly unconscious of the danger to which his mad freak had exposed the two helpless children,” the reporter wrote. “He did not seem to realize what he had done.”
A sleigh pulled up at Mrs. McConnell’s house, the horse soaked in sweat and frothing at the mouth. Miller Hageman, Mrs. McConnell’s father, sent a messenger to let her know the children had been found. Mr. J.C. Harrison raced over from Independence at top speed and was able to announce the good news.
It was about noon when the party left for the nine and a half mile drive to Kansas city. They arrived there around two. Several sleighs had joined them on the way, and now there was a triumphal procession that pulled up at 1005 Washington Street, with everyone eager to see the reunion between mother and children. “Her joy can be better imagined than described,” a reporter said. All afternoon the house was filled with friends joining with her in relief and jubilation. “Harry and May were lionized to an extent that they seemed to fully appreciate.”
Members of the Kansas City Board of Trade asked if they could take the children to present them to their group. Mrs. McConnell quickly shot down that idea. The children were not going anywhere. Wives of the city’s most prominent men, such as Kersey Coates, stopped by to call. Kersey founded the Kansas City Board of Trade and was the developer of Quality Hill, then the neighborhood for the city’s elite. He was also a leader in persuading the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad to build the first bridge over the Missouri River, eclipsing Leavenworth as the predominant city in the region.
Understandably, Mrs. McConnell had some heated opinions of the man that she trusted. “Mr. Baker is not a fit man to be allowed to go at large,” she said. “He ought to be locked up and put under a physician’s care. I have a great mind to go over and see to it myself.
“Until last night he seemed perfectly devoted to the children. He had known them ever since they were babies and he thought so much of them that he was almost crazy to adopt Harry.” When he asked to take the children out she didn’t “make any great objection because I supposed that he would take the best of care of them…he has always expressed the greatest admiration for them and had seemingly been their best friend. Oh, he must have been a raving lunatic. I can’t believe that Mr. Baker in his right mind would do as he did.”
Several times that afternoon, Mrs. McConnell begged her father to go to the authorities to demand some action.
Simeon Baker’s wife received the news of her husband’s safe return with as much gratitude as Mrs. McConnell. But of course, her relief was tinged with sadness about her husband’s mental condition. His friends were claiming that the children’s safety was due to his actions. That was an incredible claim, but it was also what Mrs. Baker wanted to believe. When he returned home, his doctor was sent for. Mr. Baker continued to be distressed that he couldn’t get over the mountains and said his head was hurting.
A reporter knocked at the Baker’s residence at 1103 Broadway. Mrs. Baker came to the door and said her husband was not to be seen by anyone. When he returned home, he seemed in a state of excitement and agitation and the family physician, Dr. Griffith, had given him sedatives.
“I’m going to take him to my father’s in northern Iowa,” Mrs. Baker said. “I had intended to take him this evening but I shall have to postpone it till tomorrow morning. His mind seems to be somewhat affected. I don’t think it’s permanent trouble, but he is just not right at present. I think a few weeks of quietness will make him himself again.”
“Did he say anything about the children?” the reporter asked.
Not very much, she replied. He’d gotten lost and trying to find his way exhausted him. “He took the best care he knew how of the children, of that I am sure,” she said. “He thought the world and all of the little ones, and he has always been very fond of children. Why, the first thing he did when they got home was to run around to the sleigh where they were and he wanted to take the little ones in to the fire.”
As for herself, it had been a terribly anxious night, but she kept calmer “than I might otherwise would have been by the thought that Mr. Baker must have driven farther than he had intended and have gotten lost and gone to some farmhouse and spent the night. It was a merciful Providence which guarded them from all harm. I do not think that Mr. Baker really knew what he was doing and I am satisfied that he did all that he could for the children under his care.”
The competing Kansas City Weekly Journal said that a doctor diagnosed Mr. Baker with softening of the brain caused by his old experiences suffered during his service in the Sixth Missouri Infantry during the Civil War. This included being a prisoner of war.
That afternoon, the McConnell children sat in their parlor with their mother, a newspaper reporter and a cluster of friends and relatives. They’d been gone a little more than twenty-four hours. Both children were sturdily built, and their faces were chapped red from the cold and snow they endured. May’s little face was round, with large blue eyes looking at the reporter without a trace of shyness.
“Mr. Baker has always been more than kind to me and my sister,” Harry said. He and May were glad to go with him as “we both liked him and he has always been most pleasant toward us.” Instead of turning towards the post office, though, Harry said Mr. Baker wanted to show them where he had moved on Broadway. “He kept on to Sixteenth Street then he went over to Summit Street then back to Broadway then out to Eighteenth Street to the road running east. I asked him to come back and told him he was not going to the post office, but he didn’t answer me at all. He seemed to be changed from what he was before, and instead of being kind, he was not the same man at all.
“He drove as hard as he could, lashing his horse lots of times down the road for several miles until we got to the town they tell me is Independence. It was getting late then and I began to get frightened, and asked him to take us back, but he wouldn’t say anything. Then he drove us up to what they say was a hotel, and he went inside while we sat in the sleigh. In a few minutes he came out and got in the sleigh again and started back on the same road he had come. He whipped his horse just terribly and the poor thing seemed to fly up the road while we held onto the sides to keep from being thrown out.
“By and by he slowed up. We came clear to Woodland Avenue and then he turned around and we started off in another direction. He must have been going nearly southeast, or so it seemed to me. Once he said to me that we were going north, and I told him no, we were going just the other way, and he laughed at us. May said several times that she wanted to go home. At first he paid no attention to her. Finally he said if she didn’t let up he would sling her out and let her be there. She didn’t stop, though, and he didn’t throw her out either.
“He went way off – oh, ever so far,” said May. “I was getting cold. Mr. Baker wouldn’t talk to us a bit. By and by it began to get dark, but I didn’t get scared, because it was no use. I asked him to take me home, but he told me to keep still and he said to me in an awful rough way, “If you do this again I’ll sling you out.” His conduct was so different from what it was before, for he was always as kind to us as a father. Did I cry? You bet I didn’t. There was nobody to hear me, and it was no use.”
“By this time it was pretty dark and I couldn’t tell where we were going to,” Harry continued. “He turned off the main road saying he was going to give us a long ride and whipped up his horse again. Then he turned to May and asked her to sing “Peekaboo” for him. She did not say a word and he asked her several times.”
"Peek-a-Boo!” was a popular sheet music hit from 1882. The sentimental lyrics sound a little foolish today.
When you come from your work in the evening,
And the little ones climb on your knee,
You laugh at the stories they tell you,
As full of fun as can be.
Perhaps there’s a face in the corner,
With a pair of bright eyes open wide,
And you see a wee rogue all dimples,
Just trying her best to hide.
Chorus:
Peek-a-boo! Peek-a-boo!
Trying to hide from me!
Peek-a-boo! Peek-a-boo!
Two little eyes I see - now take care!
Peek-a-boo! Peek-a-boo!
Hiding everywhere.
On the floor, by the door,
Now I’m coming there….
Then you catch the wee rogue and you kiss her,
As you hold her so close to your heart,
And you think how much you would miss her,
If ever from her you should part,
Then away she goes shouting and laughing,
And a kiss she is throwing to you,
And behind the door she is hiding,
To hear you say peek-a-boo!
When May refused to sing the song, Mr. Baker began singing it at the top of his lungs. The sleigh whistled past farm houses.
“All this time May never said a word and I didn’t know but what she wasn’t asleep,” Harry continued with his tale.
“No, I wasn’t either,” May replied, seated snugly on their mother’s lap. “I was a-thinking and wishing I was home.”
“All at once,” Harry continued, “Mr. Baker turned off from the road and started into the woods. We ran over stumps nearly as tall as May and upset six or seven times. We fell in all sorts of ways. He let us stand in the snow while he walked around. Then he let us get into the sleigh any way we could.”
“My nose is almost mashed from being slung so much,” said May. “Once the sleigh tipped over and we all fell out. Mr. Baker fell on me and Harry fell on him. It didn’t hurt much, ‘cause the snow was soft.”
“How did you get back into the sleigh when it tipped over?” the reporter asked.
“I pulled the veil off and crawled in the best I could,” May replied. “Mr. Baker wouldn’t help me a bit. My face was all full of snow and the sleigh robes were wet and my clothes got wet through, but I didn’t cry a bit, ‘cause you know it wouldn’t have done any good. I was too busy thinking about getting back home.”
Harry continued his account. “He sat in the middle, and didn’t brush the snow off us a bit. It was awful cold and wet. He came to fences and tried to make the horse jump them, but he couldn’t do it. Then he went full tilt over gullies almost as wide as the sleigh and banged things around generally. All this time he was whistling and singing and laughing to himself. He never said a word to us. Sometimes when the sleigh would tip over, he would go behind a tree and get behind it and holler out, “Whoop-eee!” to scare us, I guess, and then he would laugh.
“Just before the time when he left us the sleigh tipped over at the bottom of the hill and he and I fixed it up but he left some of the things. Then he tried to climb the hill with his sleigh and the shafts broke and the sleigh tipped over. Lots of times when we were tipped we turned somersaults and landed on our heads but he never wanted to help us up or brush the snow off of us. When he left us the last time, he walked off with his head down and never said a word to us. I waited a while and then I got the sleigh turned upright and got one of the robes and May and me got under it.”
When the sleigh had tipped over for the last time before Mr. Baker left them, the blankets had gotten tossed out. May confirmed that Harry righted the cutter himself and retrieved the blankets and a lap robe. “The snow blew in my face and I had to lean out over the side to keep my face from getting full of it,” she said. “It was cold, too. The owls and other things kept hollering all around us.When Mr. Long – that’s the name of the nice man and his sister that found us, came to where we were, I was awful glad to see them come and get us. I was thinking of my mamma and wishing I was home, but I wasn’t a bit sleepy. I tell you, the people at the home were awful kind. They had a nice warm feather bed.
“I’m awful tired and sleepy now and my face burns. My lips are all chapped and sore too, but I guess I won’t get sick.” May was soon put to bed, but not before she made a pronouncement.“I don’t think I will go out a-sleigh riding again with anybody unless my mamma is along.”
Harry echoed the sentiment. When the horse was shivering so hard that it made the sleigh bells ring, he said, “I said to myself that I would never go out again unless Mamma or Papa was along.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Harry McConnell was back from Chicago. He allowed the children to visit the Kansas City Board of Trade, with him and his wife present, of course. The children “were petted and much was made of them, and they probably ate enough candy and sweetmeats to disturb their sleep for a week to come,” a reporter wrote. “It was a sight worth witnessing to see the busy grain merchants, bankers and brokers flock around the little ones, toss them in the air and kiss them in a gingerly manner as if they were afraid they would break. The children told their story in a simple, childlike way a dozen times to eager listeners.”
A subscription was started and 142 individuals and corporations at the Board of Trade pledged money or gave cash on the spot, to be given to Maud. Three more men gave $5 each the next day, and the newspaper gave an address where donations could be sent.
The idea quickly formed that the donations would be for an education fund to send Maud to college so she could be a teacher. Maud agreed to the plan, and her mother was delighted.
Maud and Robert were modest about what they had done. “I did my duty and deserve no more credit than anybody else would,” Robert said. He was quick to credit his sister, and he let everyone know that it was only at her insistence that he had gone out searching. Maud said Robert deserved as much credit as she.
There was something about the tale that so thoroughly captured the public imagination and made people want to give Maud a reward. Her role in saving the children was regarded as outside of the expectations for women. Women stayed in their “sphere” - passive and at home. It was a man’s role to head out into a snowstorm to rescue the vulnerable. Maud had gone “above and beyond.” She had something admired in her era: pluck.
It was also simply a compelling story – a perfect melodrama good enough for the stage, or an artist. The scene in which Maud lifted the lap robe to see two children huddled alive at the bottom of the sleigh, a lantern in her hand, would make a perfect lithograph for the parlor, one newspaper suggested. Title it, “The Rescue.” The focus remained on her; no one talked of a reward for Robert.
That afternoon, Maud visited Independence where she was presented with the twenty-five dollars citizens collected for her. There were many places where $25 was a teacher’s monthly salary. It is equivalent to about $820 today. This note had been sent to her by a citizens’ committee:
To Miss Maud Long;
The citizens of Independence wish to express their appreciation of your heroic deed in rescuing the children on Sunday night, and hope you will accept a small present from them, and that the spirit that animated you may continue with you through life, and be the inspiration of others through like circumstances to emulate your example.”
That evening, the G.A.R. George H. Thomas Post No. 8 (a Civil War veterans group) met as usual at the Armory. On the agenda was a sad bit of unusual business. They passed the following resolution:
Resolved, That the members of this post deeply deplore the great misfortune which has fallen upon our comrade, S.S. Baker, in the loss of health, by reasons of wounds received in our country and hardships endured as a prisoner of war. And we extend to him and his sorrowing wife our most heartfelt sympathy, and tender to them our condolence, and any assistance which we, his comrades in arms, can render them in their difficulties, and trust that he may speedily recover, and be returned to us in his usual health. H.L. Devol, Commander. A. Spaulding, Adjutant.
It appeared in the Kansas City Journal on Wednesday and was probably appreciated by Mrs. Baker.
Also Wednesday, Robert and two other young farmers retraced the path of the sleigh on horseback and told a reporter for the Kansas City Journal that there were some places they had to dismount and lead the horses as the “rocks and brushes, hills and hollows,” were so rough. They found that the sleigh had been driven over rail fences seven times. Mr. Baker would remove the top rail and force horse and sleigh over the rest. They described the track as passable only in a fairytale, and then by reindeer.
On Thursday Maud and Robert were reunited with Harry and Dolly. Mrs. McConnell had invited them over for a visit.
Earlier that day, a small notice appeared in the Kansas City Times.
“The business lately carried on by S.S. Baker at 556 Main Street, Kansas City, will be continued until notice by the undersigned who is the owner thereof. Mr. Richard F. Mohr will as heretofore assist in the management of the business.
Mrs. M.C. Baker, Kansas City, Mo., January 19, 1886.”
Mr. Mohr had been the manager for some time already. This notice made it clear that Melcenia Baker considered herself the owner of the store. Instead of her original plan to take her husband to her father’s in Iowa for rest, Simeon Baker was taken to the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane in Philadelphia. Why there? Kansas had the publicly funded Topeka Insane Asylum, which was only seven years old. But Simeon’s father had been a Pennsylvania doctor (though he’d since moved to Ohio); maybe he recommended it.
Though Melcenia had expressed hope that Simeon’s problem was temporary, a doctor announced to a reporter that his case was hopeless. Mrs. McConnell had worried in vain about taking action to make sure Mr. Baker wasn’t loose on the streets again. He never would be.
Maud Long, the Heroine of the Snowstorm. Here Maude wears new, highly fashionable clothing and the gold watch and chain that she received as a reward. Her hair was recently "banged."
The adulation and acclaim towards Maud continued. Saturday, six days after the sleigh ride, a lengthy poem was written for the Kansas City Times by noted Missouri poet George Woodward Warder. It told the story in verse and appeared in several other newspapers.
January 24th Maud and the McConnell children were photographed by noted photographer D.P. Thomson. It was probably the first time she had her picture taken. Thomson was selling the pictures to the public with proceeds to be given to Maud. The next day, just a week after the children returned home, their photos and Maud’s were placed on sale at Love’s drugstore in Kansas City and immediately sold out. Newspapers announced that new copies were being made and sales would resume.
January 26, eight days after the children’s return, their father, Mr. Harry C. McConnell presented a fine, solid gold watch to Miss Maud. It was a gift from the owner of the jewelry wholesale company he worked for, Benjamin Allen. It was engraved in Louis XIV style with M.L. on the front shield, and on the back, the inscription: “For Miss Maud Long - For courage displayed on the night of January 17.”
The Kansas City Journal received a note from a group of traveling salesmen, snowbound but comfortable at the Depot Hotel in Newton, Kansas. They enclosed ten dollars to be given to Maud (valued at about $328 today).
On the 28th, a notice appeared in the Kansas City Journal. A group of businessmen explicitly and formally informed the public what would be done with funds donated to Maud. The subscribers had promised to pay all expenses for Maud to receive a full three-year course of study at college, with payment due each February. If Maud died the money already collected for that year would go to her mother. If Maud married, further collection would cease, but she would receive any funds that hadn’t been paid to the college that year.
Saturday January 30th, was a busy and exciting one for Maud. A benefit was held for her at the Kansas City Roller Skating Academy. The photographer Thomson presented her with fifty dollars from the sales of her and the McConnell children. At least 200 pictures were sold at twenty-five cents apiece.
That evening, there was a benefit at the beautiful Gillis Opera House. Maud and the McConnells were given prominent attorney Henry Craig’s private box. He was a former state representative and police commissioner of Kansas City. There were ten different acts including the Gillis Opera House Orchestra and the Mandolin Club. Chicago soloist Miss Jenny Dutton was a big hit.
This was a novel experience for Maud. She had never been out of Jackson County in her life. She probably had never been to Kansas City, and certainly not to the opera house. And to sit in a bigwig’s private box! The benefit yielded a surprisingly modest amount of five dollars. The McConnells had given her ten dollars.
The Kansas City Times reporter described her as a typical country girl, tall, healthy, “anything but delicate.” She wasn’t shy, but she was quiet and reserved. “Her imagination fails to reach the possibilities which her recently acquired fame has created for her,” the reporter wrote, “and she has no idea of the change which all the applause given her act of undoubted heroism is likely to work in her, or the fate which destiny may now have in store for her.”
It was a lot of hoopla, a lot of new experiences. Maude had her hair cut in a new style; it was “banged,” a newspaper said. She had fashionable new clothes and the beautiful gold watch on a chain pinned to her dress. This was her fifteen minutes of fame.
There was at least one curmudgeon who questioned all the adulation given to Maud -- the editor of the Paola, Kansas newspaper. He editorialized on the "gush and slush and slobber and notoriety and cringing worship of Maud Long," and said is was "beyond all limits of sense or reason." Yes, she'd done a noble thing. Not every girl would want to leave her warm bed to hunt for children potentially out in a snowstorm. But there were thousands of girls in the U.S. who would have done the same, the editor wrote.
Maud would be the first to agree with him.
On March 18, 1886 the morning train from Kansas City discharged a special passenger at Warrensburg, Missouri. Maud Long finally crossed the Jackson County line. She came for a tour of Warrensburg Teachers College, and was probably tested to see where she needed to begin instruction. High schools were few and far between and generally for the wealthy. Because the average American had about the equivalent of a third grade education, colleges had Preparatory Departments. Students would study for a year or more in an attempt to bring them up to the minimal level for a college course.
Maud hadn’t been in school for three years. “Her achievements in an educational way are not extensive,” the Kansas City Times said. She was “fairly” proficient in arithmetic, reading, spelling and writing. She had a little geography and had never studied grammar. Her background had not prepared her for the unexpected gift that was thrown in her lap.
She was also offered admittance at nearby Holden College at a discount of forty-five percent. There had been talk of her going east for college, and her mother hoped for this. But in the end, Maud chose the school closest to home. The Warrensburg newspaper reported that Maud was “well pleased with her new home, and especially the school.”
Maud must have been able to start right away. She boarded with a Professor Bahlmann. In early April the Warrensburg Standard-Herald ran a small item that said Maud returned to school after an illness.
Incredibly, the McConnell children escaped death a second time in one year. They were at school, the Lathrop School, on Tuesday morning May 11 when a devastating tornado hit. It was a stormy morning that didn’t alarm anyone at first. But the sky darkened to black, then began to take on a greenish hue that those who live in tornado country recognize. The wind whipped up and rain began falling in sheets. From today’s perspective, the school’s handling of the storm is like a textbook example of what not to do, and a reminder of why schools today have clearly established emergency plans and regular disaster drills.
There was no protocol for tornado weather. The school did not have tornado drills – what school did then? – and it was the principal’s policy to leave it up to each individual teacher whether to dismiss her class or not. Buildings also did not have the building codes they have today, and there were questions in the aftermath of the soundness of the building.
During the storm, Miss Fanny McGee went to Principal E.L. Ripley, who also taught a class, and told him she thought school should be dismissed. He said he “hardly considered it necessary,” so she returned to her classroom. “I was considerably alarmed and finally made up my mind to let the children go home anyway,” she said later. She herded her class out into the hall. Two other teachers sent him notes asking if they could dismiss their class. He made the same reply – explaining later that he thought they were equally in danger outside making their way home as they were in the building. It may have been his policy to let each teacher decide, but he also had quashed their suggestions. Women were expected to be docile and submissive to men. The teachers uncomfortably accepted what he said. Several children also came to him to ask if they could go home. The principal replied that they better stay put; he didn’t think it was going to be much of a storm.
The windows of Miss Mary Smith’s classroom were suddenly blown out and the room began flooding with rain. At 11:30 the 300-pound bell in the school’s bell tower, and then the belfry itself, began rocking. Mrs. Patterson, whose room was on the third floor next to the belfry, became concerned thinking that if the tower fell it would block the stairway. She took her class down to the second floor to Professor Ripley’s room. As they evacuated the third floor she noticed that the air in the belfry was filled with dust.
But soon after she'd moved her class, the plaster on the ceiling of Prof. Ripley’s classroom fell in on children's heads. Belatedly, he took action. He said he wanted to get his kids down the stairs without creating panic, but they clung to him so tightly he couldn’t move. He sent two boys outside to report whether there was a clear path out. There was, so he began lowering kids out of the windows and dismissed the rest to walk down, telling them to go to the outhouses and a nearby natatorium.
On the first floor, some teachers took the students out into the hall where they panicked and became unmanageable, running back and forth in the hall crying and screaming. Other teachers were still in their classrooms, immobile. In their terror, the entire class clung so tightly to the teacher, as Prof. Ripley’s had, that they could not walk.
Miss Hotchkiss, whose room was in the basement, said she could hardly make her students hear her over the roaring winds. She clapped her hands as hard as she could to get her students' attention, then led them in prayers. They had recited four or five rounds of prayers when things began to happen.
There was a crash as the bell tower fell through the school roof, pancaking down, taking everything in its way into the cellar. Miss Mary Smith was not the only teacher who reported that the storm was so loud that she didn’t hear the bell crashing. Miss Jennie Smith, who was in a basement classroom, didn’t know the tower fell until the janitor rushed into her room crying. Her students became panic-stricken then, and, “I could do nothing with them.” She could see students being lowered down to the ground from windows above her, and she got her children out from her windows.
Sixteen children were killed when the bell tower fell. Almost as many were seriously injured. It was amazing that there weren't more.
A sketch of the Lathrop School after the tornado shows the wreckage caused by the collapse of the bell tower.
A Kansas City Journal reporter interviewed Harry in bed the day after. His neck was swathed in a bandage.
“I was sitting in my desk when the storm commenced,” Harry said. “We were in the second story. When the crash came, everybody was frightened, and I don’t know much about what took place after that, for I ran to the window and jumped out. As I struck the ground a brick hit me on the neck and I fell over on my face. I wasn’t hurt much, except on my side, and one of my legs is sore. As soon as I got up I ran around to find my sister, and to get her out, but she was all right, and we ran home together. Jimmy Bailey, the boy who was sitting next to me was hurt, and Robbie Sprague, who sat behind me, was killed.”
A decision was made the next day that the Lathrop school would be demolished, and the surviving kids would not go to school for the remainder of the school year. When Harry applied for a passport in 1922 he noted that he had a scar on his neck.
Maud Long married in a double ceremony on July 4th, in Kansas City, a Methodist Episcopal preacher officiating. The wedding was held at home, as most weddings were in those days, but it was at the other bride’s home, Maud’s friend Alberta Cobrin. This was because Maud’s family disapproved of the match. The groom was Albert “Al” Mills, a farmhand on a stock farm. Mrs. Long wanted better for her daughter. She had dreams of seeing Maud getting the opportunities that were denied her as a child bride. Education - a college degree, even, followed by the respect of being a teacher. And all this was offered to her for free! Marriage meant leaving college behind. Then too, Mrs. Long probably wanted a husband for her daughter who could offer Maud more than working on someone else’s farm. Maybe, in addition, there were personal objections to Al.
Maud's marriage was noted in the newspapers, then she settled back into obscurity.
Afterwards
In September 1886, Simeon Baker’s sister Lizzie apparently did not think Melcenia Baker was handling Simeon’s financial affairs properly. She filed a petition in court to determine the precise nature of his condition at the mental asylum. Her petition also stated that “he possesses valuable property, which is suffering great deterioration from neglect,” and she wanted an administrator appointed. It is unclear what court actions were taken, but Melcenia was Simeon’s guardian and administrator of his affairs.
The unfortunate Simeon S. Baker did not live long after his commitment. He died November 8, 1887 at the age of 47. His body was returned to Kansas City for a funeral and burial. Simeon’s will was probated in December and left everything to his wife. “The will bears the date Feb 23, 1884 and was therefore executed prior to the time when the testator became mentally deranged,” a judge noted. Melcenia moved to Iowa to live with her father. She never remarried and lived with a niece after her father’s death. When she died in 1923, her body was returned to Kansas City for burial beside Simeon.
After the stress of the sleigh ride incident, after the narrow escape from the tornado, the McConnells moved to Chicago. May married William Gillingham, a civil engineer nearly twenty years older in 1900 at age 18. Seven years later, her only child, William, whom they called Billy, was born. May left her husband and moved back in with her parents. On the 1920 census, Harry and Dolly McConnell lived with their never-married son Harry, 42, an attorney; May, 40, and their grandson Billy. Harry Sr. died in 1921; Dolly and May died in 1926.
Soon after the drama that thrust her family into the spotlight, Fanny Long, “the Widow Long,” moved in with her brother in Independence as planned. She supported herself as a seamstress. As she aged, she moved back to her farm and kept her own home, which was unusual for her time. Most elderly parents moved in with one of their children.
Robert married in 1887 at age 20. He had five daughters and four sons and operated a dairy for many years. He stayed in the same area all his life. In 1930 the Kansas City Star did a “looking back” type of article retelling the story of the sleigh ride and rescue. Robert said he wondered what became of the children and he hoped to find someone who could tell him. Frank Hageman, Dolly McConnell’s brother, who was president of a bank in Salina, Missouri, saw the article and sent Robert a letter. His nephew Harry was an attorney in Chicago. May’s son was a “fine young fellow” who worked for the Illinois Central Railroad.
Maud’s marriage to Al was brief. A divorce date is uncertain, but in June 1889 she remarried to Alexander McIlwain, a Civil War veteran twenty years older – in Napa Valley, California. She had two children, only one of whom lived, and stayed in the Napa Valley for the rest of a long life, dying in 1957.
The rescue of Harry and May McConnell remained a key event in Robert’s life and probably Maud’s. It was a point of pride that Maud was given a college scholarship, that she attended college (however briefly) and that at one time, she could say she was preparing to be a teacher. When Robert Long died in 1931, the rescue of the children was the main item in his obituary. Amazingly, he had a deathbed visit from Harry – literally. A week before his death, in bed with heart trouble, and knowing he didn’t have much longer, Robert enjoyed a reunion with Harry.
There was one more quirky thing in Harry’s life. His only nephew, Billy, with whom he was very close, married a woman named Boneita Meyrick in 1930. They had two daughters before Billy died at age 26 at the Illinois Central Hospital. In 1936 Bonita remarried in Broward County, Florida. In 1937 she had a son who was named after his father – and divorced him the same year.
On the 1940 census, 63-year old Harry was living in Miami with his niece-in-law, Boneita, and her three children. On the 1950 census, Harry is still head of the family. Boneita had become Boneita McConnell, his wife, and at age 72, Harry had a son, named after his late nephew and Bonnie’s first husband - William. Unfortunately, Harry died the following year, so his son never knew him.
Here is George Warder’s poem, published in January 1886.
Maud Long - Heroine of the Snowstorm
By George W. Warder
In the midst of the hoary winter,
When the earth was bound in ice,
And the snow spread o’er the landscapes,
White as robes of Paradise;
And the cold blasts of the northland blew,
Her chilling frozen breath,
Till all nature bound in fetters,
Seemed enwrapt in iced death,
Came a goodly friend and neighbor,
With his horse and robes and sleigh,
Asking, “May I take the children
For a little ride today?”
And the mother, nothing doubting,
Wrapped them cozily and warm,
While they kissed good-bye in parting,
Thinking not of fear or harm;
For she knew not reason tottered
On its weak and feeble throne,
And she trusted her heart’s treasures
To a madman’s hand alone.
He had petted and caressed them,
He had loved them long and well
Ere his reason had been darkened
By a strange and magic spell.
Then they started; wild and wilder
Grew the driver and the sleigh
Bounded over hill and valley
On its snowy, icy way.
Through the drear and lonely country,
Wild and reckless was his speed,
Till the snow was scarcely whiter
Than the foam upon his steed;
While the northern blasts blew colder
The children’s forms to chill,
And the snow fell thick and faster
Over valley, grove and hill.
On and on he madly hastened
Over bush and ditch and stream
Till day began to fade and wane,
And stars began to gleam.
Then little May said, “Take me home
Unto my mamma’s door;
I want to see my mamma now;
I’ll never sleigh ride no more.”
He scorned her pleading and appeal
And would not pause to heed,
But threatened he would cast her out,
And wildly urged his steed.
And when the sleigh was oft turned o'er
The little cherub child
would struggle from the drifts of snow
and gain her seat the while;
And Harry, he would right the sleigh;
The madman, he would shout,
Till on the creek, mid snow and hill
The jaded steed gave out.
Then what a sad and dreadful plight,
As like a feather tossed,
They drifted through the lonely woods,
All desolate and lost.
Two children and a madmen lone,
Without a house in sight,
Lost in the storm, amid the wilds,
On coldest winter's night.
O! Who can tell what chance was theirs
To see another day,
As wrapping in their only robe,
Their only house the sleigh.
Amid the storm and wind and snow,
With shivering forms they lie,
If with the morn they see the light,
Or with the night they die?
Past midnight at a farmer's house,
Three miles from them away,
A stranger knocked, all tired and worn,
And asked if he might stay;
And ere retiring to his rest,
"Now I could sleep," he said,
"Were not two children lone and lost
Amid the mountains dread."
Then rose a noble one,
And spoke with willing earnest mind,
I'll dare the cold and storm to-night;
Those children I must find."
And fearless through the winter blast,
And through the night and storm,
She sought the lost "babes in the woods"
With heart so brave and warm.
She tracked them far o'er hill and vale,
With tireless steps and bold,
So brave of heart, so strong of will,
Was never known of old.
She found them cold and lone and lost,
And in her arms so strong,
She bore the little cherub back
O'er the way so long.
She bore them with a shepherd's care
Back to her father's home.,
She gave them to their mother's arms,
From thence no more to roam.
She did a blessing to the race,
In that she helped a child,
And God will bless such noble deeds,
And on them, men will smile.
O! nobly said! O! nobly done!
All honor to Maud Long,
While man shall honor noble deeds
And right be known from wrong.
Note: This story does not involve anyone in my family tree. I thought it was too interesting to lay forgotten. I tried to find a copy of the pictures taken of the McConnell children in 1886 but was not successful.
Sources:
Newspapers
“Death To High Prices on Jewelry – Noah Mitchell & Co.,” Kansas City Times (Kansas City, Missouri), 23 April 1878, p. 4.
“The Cold,” The Atchison Weekly Champion, 16 Jan 1886, p. 1.
“A Madman’s Mess. Taking Two Children From Their Homes,” The Leavenworth Standard, 19 Jan 1886, p. 1.
“Missing. Great Anxiety Felt About S.S. Baker and Two Little Children,” Kansas City Journal, 18 Jan 1886, p. 2.
“From Death’s Door - Harry and May McConnell Rescued - A Thrilling Story of a Night With a Madman,” The Kansas City Times, 19 Jan 1886, p. 8.
“A Thrilling Story,” Topeka State Journal, 20 Jan 1886, p. 2.
“The Missing Children Found - Little Harry and May McConnell Returned To Their Mother,” Kansas City Weekly Journal, 21 Jan 1886, p. 8.
“Lost and Found,” Wyandotte Gazette (Kansas City, Kansas), 22 Jan 1886, p. 2.
“A Watch For Miss Long,” Kansas City Journal, 26 Jan 1886, p. 3.
“For Maud Long’s Education,” Kansas City Journal, 28 Jan 1886, p. 3.
“Maud Long: The Heroine of the Snowstorm,” Grainfield Cap Sheaf (Grainfield, Kansas), 29 Jan 1886, p. 1.
“A Purse For Plucky Maud Long,” Kansas City Journal, 30 Jan 1886, p. 3.
“Sympathy For Mr. Baker,” Kansas City Journal, 30 Jan 1886, p. 3.
“The Maud Long Benefit,” The Kansas City Times, 31 Jan 1886, p. 7.
“Photos of Maud Long,” The Kansas City Times, 31 Jan 1886, p. 8.
“Miss Long At Home - The Domestic Life and Antecedents of Jackson County’s Heroine,” The Kansas City Times, 2 Feb 1886, p. 8.
Gush and Slush Over Publicity: The Paola Times (Paola, Kansas), 4 Feb 1886, p. 2.
Holden College Scholarship Offer: The Holden Enterprise (Holden, Missouri), 4 March 1886, p. 1.
“To Be Educated Here,” The Standard-Herald (Warrensburg, Missouri), 18 March 1886, p. 1.
“Maud Long At School in Warrensburg,” The Kansas City Times, 19 March 1886, p. 3.
“Destruction! Kansas City Visited By Terrible Storm - A Slaughter of Innocents - Sixteen Children Crushed to Death in Lathrop School,” Kansas City Weekly Journal, 13 May 1886, p. 1.
“The Storm. A Day of Sorrowing and Suffering,” Kansas City Journal, 13 May 1886, p. 1.
Marriage: Hope Dispatch (Hope, Kansas), 9 July 1886, p. 2.
“Maud Long Marries,” Kansas City Journal, 25 July 1886, p. 3.
“In the Courts,” Kansas City Journal, 21 Sept 1886, p. 3.
“Mr. S.S. Baker Dead,” Kansas City Times, 11 Nov 1886, p. 3.
“Probate Court,” Kansas City Times, 15 Dec 1887, p. 5.
“Finds “Babes in the Woods” - Robert Long Hears From Uncle of Children in 1886 Kidnapping,” Kansas City Star, 24 Jan 1930, p. 3.
“A Hero of ‘86 is Dead - Robert M. Long Rescued the Kidnapped McConnell Children,” Kansas City Star, 18 May 1931, p. 1.
Other
Lee, Jesse. “B-B-Blizzard! The January 1886 Blizzards, 138 Years Later,” National Weather Service, https://www.weather.gov/ddc/January1886Blizzards#:~:text=Two%20great%20blizzards%20hit%20western,morning%20hours%20of%20the%203rd.
Rosabel. “Peek-a-Boo!” Cleveland and Chicago: S. Brainard’s Sons, 1882. Notated Music. https://www.loc.gov/item/2023844482/.
Copyright by Andrea Auclair © 2024
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