Fort Wayne Gleanings: May 1880s- Baseball, Alleyways, & a Spilled Wagon of Molasses

 Newspapers in the 1870s and beyond almost all had a column with a name like “Gleanings,” “Brevities” or “Town Topics” in which the editor commented on local happenings, seasonal changes, who was visiting in town and so on. I’ve compiled collections of these from the two places the Barbour branch of my family were living in during this era: Coffeyville, Kansas and Fort Wayne, Indiana. Almost all my earlier “Gleanings” articles were from Coffeyville, however. I picked up with Fort Wayne items in April 2024. 

       An 1888 sketch of "Smiling Tim" Keefe, a pitcher with the New York Giants.

6 May 1881, Fort Wayne Sentinel

• Clean up the alleys.

• Baseball clubs are springing up all over.

• The oats is up and looks beautiful at the county farm. The fields are ready for planting corn. 

• The street car drivers are asking for an increase of wages from $1.25 to $1.50 per day. The matter has been taken under consideration by management.

• Superintendent Wilkinson took Mrs. Vizard to the poor house yesterday, and also has the little girl at that place. The other child is at St. Joseph hospital quite ill from exposure and lack of nourishment, and may die. Vizard is in jail, where it is hoped he will be kept until he gets the whiskey out of himself. Mr. Wilkinson speaks very highly of Mrs. Vizard, as a worker, and a good woman when sober. 

     Both the Coffeyville, Kansas and the Fort Wayne editors ran frequent reminders to clean up alleys. Back alleys have disappeared from modern neighborhoods after the Federal Housing Administration disfavored them in the 1930s. But they were once ubiquitous and necessary. Here was where barns and stables were kept, chamber pots emptied, where “water closets” were hidden from the front of the street. Here coal was delivered, and servants entered and exited. As public passageways, they also served as dumping grounds for trash, and the potholes as breeding grounds for mosquitos. 

     They continued to be eyesores and problems for decades. In a 1912 paper Mrs. Albion Fellows Bacon wrote, “It is a common sight to see [even] well-paved alleys strewn with paper, tin cans and filth, with a black stream of ooze meandering down the middle.” In these semi-hidden spaces were cesspools and can after can of ashes and trash. Down the alleys, this housing reformer wrote, went the ash cart, the slop man with his cart, the rag and bone man. Offensive odors, swarms of flies, and poisonous gasses emanated from these spaces.

     In the crowded and poorer districts, Mrs. Bacon said, congregated “the human waste of the city, in all their filth.” Here were the cocaine alleys, the backs of saloons, the dives and hangouts for gangs.

    No wonder editors often called for them to be cleaned up. 

     In May 1873 the city passed an ordinance that pigs could no longer roam free in alleys or anywhere. After May 8th any free-roaming swine would be taken to the city pound. Notice was also given for all city residents to clean their alleys within five days. 

     The Fort Wayne the Public Board of Health, in its 1876 annual report, called for an ordinance to “provide for the removal of all kitchen offal from all residences and to clean alleys every month.” In 1878 the newspaper editor warned, “Clean your alleys or suffer the consequences.” For years there were reminders like this, especially as warm weather arrived.  

By 1881 Baseball was entrenched as America's favorite sport. In Fort Wayne it was first played as early as 1862 in a newly-organized Summit City Club. The club disbanded as members enlisted in the Civil War, and some were killed. In 1866 the club restarted under the name Kekionga Base Ball Club and played its first game in July. Baseball was first played at Concordia College in 1867, which remained a popular place to hold games. July 11, 1867 the Fort Wayne Daily Gazette said, "The most attractive outdoor amusement now in vogue in this country is baseball playing. Clubs have multiplied so much lately that "base ball" is a national institution, and the game is now called a national game." The newspaper reported that Fort Wayne had "half a dozen companies" with a membership of 200 to 300.

In April 1881 the Kekionga Baseball Club played the Bijou Nine on the grounds of Concordia College. Both teams were made up of college students. But it seemed everyone wanted in on a game.

In June 1881 the Fort Wayne City Council voted to challenge the Logansport City Council to a baseball game. The same month, Fort Wayne bank clerks played Fort Wayne dry goods men on the Concordia College grounds. The Council decided that Sunday baseball games would not be played in city limits.

     For more information on the Allen County Asylum for the Poor and Superintendent John Wilkinson read my four-part series, “Over the Hill To the Poor Farm: The Allen County Asylum and Its Superintendents.” 

In April and May, there was an "outbreak" of street car drivers in major cities such as Chicago, St. Louis, Cleveland and Cincinnati asking for higher wages. They didn't just ask -- they went on strike, and won. This was undoubtedly due to wide public support. In Cincinnati, citizens gave donations to keep strikers going. They sabotaged cars on the lines driven by strikebreakers. The street car drivers received slight wage increases with fewer hours. In Chicago, they received a 20 percent raise after citizens demanded the city give it and get the cars back to work.

The Fort Wayne Daily Gazette said on 13 April 1881, "We are not in favor of trade unions, or strikes, but cannot help feel jubilant at the success of these men, for there is no class of workmen in the country who work harder, for longer spells and at less wages than the drivers and conductors of street cars in the larger cities." I searched for results for the Fort Wayne drivers but did not find a follow-up story.

22 May 1881 Fort Wayne Daily Gazette

• A farm wagon broke down on W. Main Street yesterday morning and spilled a load of molasses and eggs in the street. As a consequence, all the street urchins in the vicinity reveled for a time. 

• Amos Waters must be prospering. Customers can now “hello” to him through the telephone.

• C.L. Centlivre has placed in his brewery a new patent apparatus for cooling beer.

• Twenty-five Sisters of Mercy were among the passengers west on the Wabash No. 3 last night. 

16 May 1883, Fort Wayne Sentinel

• Col. Harmer of Philadelphia has presented his friend, John H. McCain of this city, with a beautiful Italian greyhound, sinuous and graceful, which arrived this morning by express. The animal is valued at $100 and was presented by Mr. McCain to his wife. 

• The cold weather lately did not affect the sale of soda water at Mr. Thiemes new soda fountain.

• Extensive street improvements are anticipated this season. Wayne street will be paved with cedar blocks and Berry street will get a four-inch layer of stone. 

• The City Hospital Fair, which has been in progress this past week, will close with a grand concert this evening. The chair for the most popular young lady was voted to Miss Jessie Hanna, she receiving 90 ½ votes. Total receipts for yesterday were $373.75.

Note: See "Lillian Russell's Understudy? Jessie Hanna's Story," for more on this Fort Wayne native.

Sources:

     Bacon, Mrs. Albion Fellows. “Alleys,” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York, Vol. 2, No. 3 (April 1912),  pp. 39-46.

"Baseball. Match Game Between the Kekionga and Kendallville," Fort Wayne Daily Gazette, 11 July 1867, p. 4.

Canin Associates, “Alleys in Urban Design: History and Application,” 8 July 2015, canin.com.

     Martin, Michael. “Endangered Landscapes Residential Alley Transformations,” APT Transformations: The Journal of Preservation Technology, Vol. 31, No. 4 (2000), p. 39-45.

Copyright by Andrea Auclair  © 2024