Cape Girardeau History and Photos

March 21, 2014

802 Good Hope

I was never in the tiny service station at 802 Good Hope, at the corner of Good Hope and Ellis, but I’ve always been fascinated with it because it looks almost like a model of a real building. You can click on the photo to make it larger but the building itself is still going to look miniature.

I couldn’t find much about the history of the building, but here are a few news stories culled from The Missourian over the years:

Sept. 12, 1934 – Arthur Kempe, 545 S. Ellis street, has purchased from the Phillips Petroleum Co. the filling station located at 802 Good Hope street. Kempe was formerly bookkeeper for the Rudert and Sons garage. He is being assisted on Saturdays by his son, Jimmy.
Mar. 4, 1946 – Arthur Kempe called The Missourian office to say that he saw his first swallow of the season this morning in a bird house at his service station at 802 Good Hope street.
May 25, 1961 – Officers almost nabbed a burglar late Wednesday night but darkness enabled the thief to elude his pursuers. Police, who drove up with their headlights off, spotted a man near the station with his hands full of apparently stolen articles. The suspect ran between houses near the station and managed to escape, “his dark clothing making him almost invisible in the night.” He took $3 in pennies, eight packs of cigarettes and six flashlight batteries.
Aug. 19, 1984 – The Urhahn Service Station, 802 Good Hope, has been purchased by Otto and Rebecca Goehman, who are now operating the business. They bought the facility from Harold and Dorothy Annis. The business retails gasoline and other motor car products and also does major and minor automobile work.
May 22, 2004 – Black oramental iron stands were reported stolen from FGR Mechanical, 802 Good Hope.

Other business is the Haarig area

Dad’s construction office was in Farmers and Merchants Bank, the place we did our banking.
I got my hair cut by Ed Unger at the Stylerite Barbershop.
We bought our ice from the Pure Ice Company
Suedkum Hardware was better than Disney World. (Or course, Disney World hadn’t been invented yet.)
You hoped you weren’t sick enough to see Dr. Herbert
If it was REALLY serious, you went to St. Francis Hospital
We could buy clothes at Schades and shop for groceries at Hirsch’s Midtown.
At Sprigg and William, in the next block up, you could go to church at St. Mary’s, buy a car at Clark Buick and a TV from Lorberg’s.
In later years, we’d stop in to see Doris.

March 21, 2014

Municipal Band Shell

It won’t be long before the trees on Cherry Hill are blooming and the grass will be turning green around Capaha Park’s Municipal Band Shell.

Fred Lynch’s blog in The Missourian had a Frony photo of a November 11, 1957, Veterans Day memorial service at what was described as “the newly-built bandshell in Capaha Park. What is interesting about Frony’s photo is how tiny Southeast Missouri Hospital looked in the background.

[Style note: The Missourian’s story has it spelled as one word – bandshell – but I see it’s spelled as both one and two words. I’ll go with two, which makes my spellchecker happier.]

It’s been years since I was at a concert at Capaha Park, but here’s what a Jackson’s band concert looked like last summer.

You can click on the photo to make it larger if you’ve forgotten what green grass looks like.

March 20, 2014

Portraits for the Ages

I spent a lot of my younger years in Southeast Missouri cemeteries because Mother and Grandmother made a point of keeping fresh decorations on the graves of family and friends. As a child, I was fascinated by two things in the Advance cemetery where my namesake, Kenneth Welch, was buried.

A few rows over from his stone was a marker with a photograph on it. On the left as you made the circle to leave the cemetery was a wooden box with a glass cover. Inside was an intricate hair bouquet made from the deceased’s hair. The ceramic photo is still on the first marker, but there is no trace of the bouquet on the second one, and I’ve not been able to figure out which grave it marked.

Since then, I’ve been acutely aware of gravestones with photos on them. My interest was rekindled when I saw a photo of a young woman in her coffin on a stone in a church outside Gordonville.

Bollinger County Memorial Park Cemetery

When Mother and I went down to the Bollinger County Memorial Park Cemetery outside Marble Hill looking for Veterans Day flag photos, I was amazed at how many graves were marked with pictures. This is the cemetery, by the way, that had the unusual shoe marker.

Some photos captured a tender moment in a pair of lives. Others were more formal. Some dated to the turn of the 20th Century, others had been taken in the past decade.

Toddler photo was hard to look at

I had a hard time editing the photo of Ricky Dale Wiseman, who died in 1967. A bright-eyed one-year shouldn’t be beneath a tombstone. I didn’t feel floods of emotions like that until I had kids and grandsons. I guess you do acquire some wisdom with old age.

“Lucky”

One large black stone had the photo of a young couple on it. (OK, RELATIVELY young: he was born two years after me.) Steve L. Chandler died in 2004; his wife, Julia M. is still living. At the bottom of the stone is a photo of “Lucky.” I have to wonder if Lucky is buried there.

Sometimes you should leave well enough alone and not do any more research. FindAGrave, carried Steve’s obit: “Steve L. Chandler, 55, of Marble Hill died Dec. 3, 2004, at his home, following an illness. He was born July 12, 1949 in Cape Girardeau, son of Lynn and Wanda (Ricketts) Chandler. He and Julia Johnson were married April 18, 1992 in Marble Hill. Mr. Chandler was a member of Lutesville Presbyterian Church and Marble Hill VFW Post 5900.

He was co-owner and pharmacy technician of the 103-year-old Chandler Drug Store in Marble Hill. He was a U.S. Army veteran of the Vietnam War and was awarded a Purple Heart. Survivors include his wife. He was preceded in death by a son, Austin Lynn.”

Still curious about Lucky, I expanded my search. RootsWeb’s WorldConnect project had the same obit, but it also had a link about Austin Lynn. I wish I hadn’t clicked it.

“The Southeast Missourian – July 30 1992 – Marble Hill–Austin Lynn Chandler, 5, was found dead Tuesday, July 28, 1992, in Crooked Creek near Marble Hill.”

I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. All thoughts of having a happy post about Lucky evaporated.

Photo gallery of grave photos

I don’t think I can handle any more obits for children tonight. Here’s a collection of some of the photos that appear on tombstones in the Bollinger County Memorial Park Cemetery. Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery. I’ll post similar photos from other cemeteries from time to time.

March 19, 2014March 19, 2014

Dr. Hayes and Hayti’s History

Mother has some serious eagle eyes. She can spot a tiny cemetery on the side of the road faster than Curator Jessica. On the way back from interviewing Bishop Armour in Hayti for my New Madrid baptism project, Mother pointed out some tombstones alongside the road mixed in with some strip malls and commercial buildings. It was worth a U-turn.

Dr. Granville M. Hayes 1827 – 1899

A tall stone dominates the tiny Hayes Cemetery. It says, Through the foresight and generosity of this early settler from Kentucky, the Hayes family farm was transformed into what is now the City of Hayti. Dr. Hayes generously donated all the land now designated as our streets. He gave one city block to Pemiscot County for a Courthouse and another block was given to the people of Hayti for a school. Portions of two other blocks were given for a jail and a calaboose. It is estimated that Dr. Hayes donated 75% of his original farm to the people of Hayti. It was his dream to have a town with a city square with “Lights and squirrels just like Memphis.” Dr. Hayes died at a medical convention in Chicago and was brought back home by train and buried in this cemetery, but there was no monument erected at his grave. This monument is erected to honor Dr. Granville Hayes, Hayti’s namesake and founder and to commemorate the centennial of Hayti. Erected 1995.

History is like a bumper sticker

I was talking with Dr. Lily Santoro about doing a presentation for her SEMO historical preservation class. I hope I can get across to the students that historical markers are like bumper stickers: they are a quick read, but they may not tell the whole story.

When I searched for Dr. Hayes, not a lot popped up, but what did was fascinating.

At the time the Hayes and their daughters donated the land, the Pemiscot county seat was located at Gayso, several miles to the east. Louis Houck (remember him) and J.E. Franklin were promoting a railroad from Caruthersville to Kennett. They reached an agreement that they would run this road through the Hayes land if they would lay out a town on it and deed every alternate lot to Houck and Franklin. Block 29 was dedicated to be used for a courthouse and the other stuff mentioned on the memorial.

Then, partially because of a conflict between the “wets” and the “drys, Caruthersville, not Gayso City / Hayti was made the county seat. The June 9, 1910, Hayti Herald bannered a headline, “Likened Unto An Octopus – Caruthersville Has Waxed Fat at the Expense of the County Which Like a Lamb, Lies Dumb Before Its Sharers.” [Editor’s note: I wonder if the paper meant “shearers?”] Anyway, you don’t get to read many stories today where the word “Judas” is used twice on the front page. They, obviously, weren’t happy at the way things worked out. If you like the days when newspapers had real fire in them, check out this link.

Now it gets REALLY confusing

Here’s where it REALLY got confusing. Since Block 29 wasn’t used for a courthouse, there was a bunch of wrangling over who should get the land. The matter hadn’t been decided when The Hayti Herald weighed in again on January 26, 1911. It did a pretty good job of summarizing the issues, but this nice turn of phrase jumped out: “So the county has itself no power to act in the matter, even in a thousand years or a million years or when Gabriel blows his horn, except to use the property for courthouse purposes, for the reason that every lot that has ever been sold in the City of Hayti have been sold with reference to this plat.”

Supreme Court Judgement

I’m not even going to try to interpret the twists and turns of Williams et al. v. City of Hayti (No. 17705) as reported in the Southwestern Reporter, Volume 184. You can read the Missouri Supreme Court Rehearing Denied March 30, 1916, report for yourself. I made a wise decision to go into photography and not law way back in high school. Taking pictures doesn’t make my head hurt.

Dr. Granville didn’t get Hayti made into the county seat and he didn’t get his courthouse. Now that I know what to look for, I’ll have to see if he got “a city square with ‘Lights and squirrels just like Memphis.’”