June Gleanings From Fort Wayne: Roller Skating, the Humane Officer's Work & Princess Eulalia

 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. These are Fort Wayne items from Junes of the past, with the exception below from March. 

24 March 1893, Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette

• The unpaved streets are almost impassable at present, especially where the soil is a sticky clay.

• The Humane Society is having printed legal blanks to be filled out by wives of habitual drunkards as notices to saloonkeepers not to sell their husbands any more liquor, under pain of prosecution. 

20 June 1882, Fort Wayne Sentinel

• Mr. Lon M. Neeley of Muncie, patentee of the roller skate, has established a rink under a large canvas. The tent was crowded last night with some of our best people, including a large number of society ladies. A fine, portable floor, smooth as glass, is laid, and this was crowded last night with a merry party of skaters, most of them novices. The tumbles of the fresh ones were very amusing….The innocent-looking wheels are treacherous and slip up without giving any notice. 

     The rink will remain here six weeks, the forenoons being devoted only to ladies’ practice, the afternoons to gentlemen and the evenings to assembly. 

     Lon Neely was Leonidas M. Neeley, known as Lonnie. He promoted roller rinks, but according to the National Museum of Roller Skating, it was his brother Thaddeus A. Neely who patented a two-wheel skate in June 1882. It was “designed to have all the advantages of a four-wheeler, while avoiding much of the friction and wear.” A roller skating craze hit the country in the 1880s with roller rinks being built, both temporary and permanent. 

11 June 1895, Fort Wayne Weekly Sentinel

• Bicycle riders report many water lilies in the old canal bed, near the Nickel Plate railroad tracks. 

• Mrs. W.H Watt rides the lightest ladies’ wheel in the city – a 20-pound Rambler.

26 June 1895, Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette 

• Humane Agent Schlaudroff has a bright boy, one and a half year old, for whom he desires to find a good home.

• The oppressive heat is affecting the men at work in the trenches for gas and sewer pipe. Three men were overcome yesterday but returned to work. 

     Louis C. Schlaudroff worked as a combination social worker and police officer who investigated cases of cruelty and neglect to “helpless women, children and animals.” Since the post Civil War era, Americans increasingly saw a role for humane societies and local governments to work to stop abuse and neglect. Schlaudroff also investigated and assisted in cases involving the elderly. It wasn't unusual for him, and similar officers in other cities, to advertise the need for a home for a child. In 1898 the Allen County Humane Society paid $300 as a portion of his annual salary. A sample of his report for the fiscal year closing in March 1898 documented the wide-ranging role Officer Schlaudroff had: 

Complaints of abuse and destitution: 263

Abandoned or neglected by father: 147

Abandoned or neglected by mother: 79

Beaten or abused: 49

Homeless: 19

Having improper homes: 167

Wife beaters: 37

Beating or whipping animals: 21

Animals deprived of necessary food or shelter: 67

Overdriving of overworking horses: 31

     Schlaudroff made clear that the Humane Society would not interfere in cases of corporal punishment of children, including the “rod or strap,” but added that parents in a fit or anger or under the influence of alcohol “are not in the condition to punish children” and were apt to deal with them too severely, which was not acceptable. He urged parents never to strike children on the head. 

     Schlaudroff served as humane agent and officer for 22 years, resigning in 1914 due to poor health. He died in 1915 at age 68.

6 June 1893, Fort Wayne Sentinel

• The special train bearing Princess Eulalia reached this city at 8:15 this morning, just five minutes ahead of scheduled time. A crowd of perhaps 150 people, including a number of ladies, was at the depot to pay its respects to the royal party and to look upon a real, live princess. But the crowd was disappointed, for Eulalia had not yet risen…[her] trains consisted of three magnificent Pullman coaches and two baggage cars. It was one of the finest trains seen here, and it is making the run from New York to Chicago on quick time. Next Thursday will be known at the world’s fair as “Princess Day” in honor of the infanta. 

            

• Thirteen Pennsylvania passenger trains passed through this city this morning between the hours of six and nine o’clock. Nine of them were west-bound and four of them were east-bound. With the exception of Princess Eulalia’s train, all were crowded with passengers.

• An excursion will run to Upland on June 26. The cornerstone of the Taylor university will be laid upon that day.

• Invitations have been issued for the reception to be given by the graduating class of Central Grammar School Thursday evening, June 15. 

• Yesterday afternoon Mrs. Frankie Drake was fined $5 and costs by Justice Hays on the charge of keeping a house of ill fame at the southeast corner of Harrison and Columbia streets. She will appeal the case to circuit court.

• Mrs. R. Steadman McCann, who for a long time was a teacher of elocution at the Taylor university, was granted a license to practice medicine in this county. Mrs. McCann is a graduate of Fort Wayne Medical college and a lady of culture and refinement. 

     Princess Eulalia may have been a household name in the U.S. in 1893, but I had to look her up. Even if they weren’t keeping up with the members of the royal families in Europe, Fort Wayne residents would have known about her because of heavy newspaper coverage from the time she landed in New York. 

     She was the youngest sister of the late King Alfonso XII and had been chosen to represent the Spanish royal family at the Chicago World’s Fair. Officially called the World’s Columbian Exposition, the fair commemorated the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Columbus in America.

Fair organizers were anxious to have a member of the Spanish royal family attending. The queen of Spain chose her as she was young (29), blonde, pretty, and had an acceptably attractive husband. She was also a less formal and more lighthearted person than her older sister and the queen herself, and it was hoped that she would endear herself to the American public. 

      Eulalia stayed in Chicago for eight days. On Princess Day there was a magnificent fireworks display in her honor which featured her portrait done in fireworks.

     Taylor University  was established in Fort Wayne as Fort Wayne Female Seminary, which was attended by members of my family. In 1890 Fort Wayne College, as it was then known, merged with Fort Wayne Medical College and changed its name to Taylor University in honor of Bishop William Taylor, a Methodist evangelist. Taylor University was having financial difficulties and the college president and an Upland, Indiana citizen and a minister worked to move the college to Upland. 

     Rebecca Steadman McCann, the daughter of Col. G. Harry Steadman and widow of Cary H.E. McCann, was granted a Civil War widow’s pension in January 1887. Her husband had served as hospital steward of the 68th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He survived the war and they married in 1866. He worked as a druggist afterwards. He died in 1872 and she never remarried.

      In 1886 there was a large article in a Fort Wayne paper about the G.A.R. Fair (Grand Army of the Republic, a Civil War veteran’s group), featuring the performance of Mrs. McCann of Toledo as an elocutionist. One of the poems she performed was “Sheridan’s Ride,” which would have been a hit with her audience. It was one of the most popular poems of the Civil War. She performed at G.A.R. events in Ohio, too, before moving to Fort Wayne.

     After some years of teaching elocution at the university, she must have decided to follow in her husband’s footsteps in the medical field. In 1894 the dean of faculty reported that in its first fifteen years, nineteen women received degrees (out of 135 graduates). At that time, he said, “Only the old fogey, behind-the-times colleges bar out women.” By 1892, Fort Wayne Medical College required a three-year course of study. Students got practical hands-on training at the college’s free dispensary for the poor, and at the Fort Wayne Home For the Friendless, a place for homeless women and children. Rebecca was 48 when she graduated.

     She died in Eureka, Montana in 1915. Her death certificate listed “physician” as her occupation. 

Sources:

     Seigel, Peggy. “Fort Wayne’s Women Medical Pioneers,” from Hoosier Women At Work - Studies in Indiana Women’s Histories, https://www.in.gov/history/files/Seigel-for-WEB.pdf

     Wilson, Robert E. “The Infanta At the Fair,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Autumn 1966), 252-271. 

     Mrs. McCann’s Pension: Bryan Press (Bryan, Ohio), 27 Jan 1887, p. 4.

     “Want a Curfew: The Humane Society on Record…Officer Schlaudroff’s Work,” The Fort Wayne News, 15 March 1898, p. 5. 

Copyright by Andrea Auclair  © 2024