Followup to the Combs murder, discussed below

The CST's history column follows up on the murder of attorney Combs.

Casper Tribune-Herald, 1934

Evidence piles up -- Throughout the week of June 15, excited headlines screamed of the presumed solution to the previous week's top story. "MRS. COMBS ARRESTED

"WIDOW FACES FIRST DEGREE MURDER CHARGE

"In a startling climax to investigation into the murder of S. S. Combs, his widow, Mrs. Hazel Combs, was placed under arrest. ... A warrant charging the first degree murder of the former (Casper) city attorney was served on the slight, steel-nerved woman. ...

"(Combs) had been shot five times at such close range that powder burns were left by some of the shots. ...

"Prisoner Visibly Shaken When Shown Weapon

"To the rear of the (Combs) cabin, about 50 feet distant, is the outhouse where an important discovery was made. Beneath fresh wood ashes ... was found the revolver with which, the officers said, the murder was committed. It contained six empty shells. ...

"MURDER WEAPON IDENTIFIED

"EXPERT LINKS REVOLVER WITH BULLETS FOUND

"Insurance Collection Is Held Motive

"... Mr. Combs was husband No. 4. ... He was an attorney who represented her in divorce proceedings against husband number 3. ... Harley Atwood, the second husband of Mrs. Combs, died ... from asphyxiation by gas, when a coffee pot boiled over on a gas stove in the room where he lay asleep on a couch

Modern Transportation

Changes in transportation methods were brought home to me again this week.

On Tuesday of this past week I drove 140 miles to Rawlins Wyoming, worked all day, and returned home that evening. 140 miles isn't a long distance in modern terms. My route took me past Independence Rock, where I stopped at the rest station as I always do. Then, resuming travel, down the Oregon Trail a ways further, and then across some desert country to Ten Mile Hill, a huge topographic rise just outside of Rawlins. Then into Rawlins, whose Union Pacific station is depicted above.

I have no idea if this station is still there. A lot of Rawlin's older buildings are. Rawlins itself, still on the main line of the UP, has seen some very hard times in recent years, but it seems to be rebounding, it's recovery fueled, as it were by natural gas exploration, as well as some wind energy development.

When I wrapped up my work, I turned around and was home in the early evening. A typical day's work for a litigator in Wyoming. It was an enjoyable trip really. Armed with my company supplied Ipod, I finished the book on tape version of Alexander Hamilton for the third time, and listened to a selection of episodes of "The News From Lake Woebegone".

I was to return to Rawlins on Thursday. I didn't, as I came down with the flu. Before somebody asks, no I don't know if it was the "Swine Flu". Whatever it was, it was fast moving, and I am over it now. I crawled into work on Thursday, but a partner of mine very graciously volunteered to take my place, so he repeated by Tuesday travel on Thursday.

I was very grateful for this, as I had a motion hearing in Douglas Wyoming, fifty miles a way, on Friday. I went home on Thursday and slept most of the day. The next day, however, I was back on the road to Douglas.


The courthouse depicted above is no longer in use, and I don't even know where it was. Douglas has a nice new courthouse, built, I think, in the 1970s, or maybe 80s.

This trip too was pleasant and uneventful, except for loosing my motion (rats). On the way to Douglas, I listed to an Ipod interview of H. W. Brands, speaking about Franklin Roosevelt. On the way back, I finished up the last downloaded News From Lake Woebegone I had.

What's the point of this? Modern easy of travel.

Could I have done this a century ago? I doubt it. Even had I owned a car in 1909, there's no way that I could have traveled to Rawlins and back in a day. I wouldn't have tried. It would have been much more likely that, if I had to do that, I would have taken the train from Casper to North Platte NE, and then switched on to the UP line and rode to Rawlins on Monday. I'd have stayed over in Rawlins Tuesday evening. I wouldn't have been able to have a back to back event in Rawlins and Douglas, in all likelihood.

But what does that mean? In part, it probably means that a lawyer, in this context, a century ago, would have gone to Rawlins on a Monday, and came back on a Friday. On Wednesday, he probably wouldn't have had much to do. Perhaps, were it me, I would have gone down to Parco for amusement. If I had to go to Douglas for Friday, I would have had to catch a night train.

What about, say 1939. I could have driven then, road travel was much improved. Even so, it would have been a bit of a brutal trip.

I suspect this also shows that, while travel is easier, life is faster paced. Probably nobody would have tried to schedule back to back travel plans like this "back in the day". Now, I'll often travel up to 600 miles in a day. If something is no further than 300 miles away, I don't stay, usually. That certainly wasn't the case at one time.

History of Natrona County

I'm surprised to find that A. J. Mockler's History of Natrona County is on line.

Granted, it is one of the dullest books ever written. But what an amazing tribute to the internet in that what is truly a rare book is so easily available in this form.

Dual Careered lawyer

Here's an interesting item from today's CST history column. I'm afraid that I'm interested in it for the wrong reasons.

"Three Wounds in Head and Two in Body of S. S. Combs"

Recently retired Casper City Attorney Sewell Stanley Combs, 50, was found shot to death in his car June 10 at his ranch near Granite Canyon.

"The bullets that literally riddled his body were fired by a 'cowardly murderer' who shot the unsuspecting victim in the back of the head and body," a sheriff said.

Combs' widow, Hazel, "(h)er face ... drawn by grief, her eyes tortured by unshed tears and sleeplessness ... seemed overnight to have aged many years. She was haunted by the knowledge that while she lay asleep in their ranch home between Alcova and Leo, ... her husband was brutally murdered in his car--not a quarter of a mile away! ...

"The position of the body and other details indicated ... that Combs had been ... unaware of the menace hovering over his life when the assailant, in the back seat, shot him through the head, then emptying the gun as the man's body slumped over. ...

"Credence was ... given today to the theory that he was slain by an assailant harboring a bitter, personal grudge. ... This theory was a source of mystification, ... it being heard on every side: 'We didn't know Stan Combs had an enemy in the world.' ... Rumor was rife today that the trail of the murderer had led to Casper.

What's interesting here to me, I'm afraid, is that this lawyer apparently had a ranch way out of town. The location mentioned here is a pretty good trip out of Casper now, but in 1934, it was a very good trip indeed.

Lawyers coming from ranch families was common in Natrona County as recently as 20 or so years ago. In other counties, it remains common. But combining the professions is not common any longer. I wonder if it was at that time, and if so, how common.

Casper, Natrona County, 1909

Another interesting item about transportation a century ago. From a recent Casper Star Tribune article, quoting the Natrona County Tribune of 1909.

"A Dozen Will be in Service During This Summer.

"... J. P. Cantillon, superintendent of the Wyoming & Northwestern railroad company, ... was the first of Casper's citizens to start the fashion. Mr. Cantillon owns a Pope-Toledo, 20 horse power. ... (T)o its use is due the fact that very few of the ranchers about here now have any teams that are afraid to meet an auto in the road. ...

"C. M. Elgin ... has a Chalmers-Detroit 30-horse power," which he drove to Casper after purchase. "The time made on the trip ... (was) eighteen hours and forty-five minutes from Denver.

" ... M. N. Castle (Shorty) owns a 20-horse power Reo . ... (He) deserves credit for a new mixture ... for fuel for his machine, but he only used it once, and says that he will never do so again if he can help it. ... (H)e ran out of gasoline and could procure no more, but the ranch where he stopped had plenty of coal oil. Shorty tanked up with the coal oil and the mixture ... sufficed to run him into town, a distance of twelve miles."

The Reo in question appears here.

J. V. Puleo, on this topic on the Society of the Military Horse website, posted an interesting photograph of a little newer Reo here.

Transportation, Early 20th Century

Monday, May 4, 2009 2:02 AM MDT

Natrona County Tribune, 1909 A trip to write about -- "AN auto-stage line is to be established between Shoshoni and Thermopolis in the near future, and every editor in the state is hoping that the gasoline wagon will be in operation before the meeting of the Press association."

An item noted in today's Casper Star Tribune.

Best Post of the Week of April 27, 2009

Lex Anteinternet?

Niobrara County Courthouse

This is the Niobrara County Courthouse, one of the oldest courthouses still in use here. Perhaps its the oldest one still in use. Anyhow, this is an example of how they used to be.

__________________________________________________________________________

Postscript. 

Perhaps simply because this is one of the first posts that I did on this blog it has remained, for some reason, one of the consistently most viewed.  Anyhow, in checking back on it, I realized that I didn't post a link to the photo of this courthouse up on Courthouses of the West, our companion blog, in the main thread, although I did add it in a comment.

Also, since posting this, I've learned that at the time I posted this photo there were at least two, and probably three, courthouses then in use that are older than this one.  One of those, the Johnson County Courthouse, just went out of use, as a new courthouse has been built.  Another one, however, in Uinta County is much older than this one, having been actually built in the 1870s.

Transportation, late 19th Century

A modern highway map shows as distance of 211 miles from Worland, in the southern half of the basin, to Rawlins, and 293 miles from Cody to Green River, but modern transportation systems are not remotely like those of 1879. In practical terms, Green River and Rawlins were further from the Big Horn Basin in 1879 than they are now from Outer Mongolia, and criminal prosecution was nearly impossible.

There were no roads leading south from the basin, only trails. At least one yearly trip to the Union Pacific had to be made, though, because in the early 1880s this was the nearest railhead, the only real opening to a market to sell cattle and get supplies. E. W. Copps declared that the cattle drive from Buffalo to Rawlins, a trip that did not require a traverse of mountains, took eighteen days. Coming from the basin, however, a cattle owner first had to get out, and any exit required going over an 8,000-foot pass, such as Birdseye Pass or Cottonwood Pass; thus, David John Wasden's estimate of six weeks for a round trip seems about right. Of course, the return trip, when cattle were not being driven, did not take as long but was still arduous. Owen Wister describes a 263 mile excursion from Medicine Bow "deep into cattle land," a trip taking several days by wagon, while "swallowed in a vast solitude." His description sounds like a journey north into the Big Horn Basin.

Goodbye Judge Lynch, by John W. Davis.

Sunday, April 18, 1909. St. Joan d'Arc beatified.

 St. Joan d'Arc was beatified by Pope Pius X before a crowed of 30,000 in St. Peter's Square.

Drawing of St. Joan d'Arc made during her lifetime.  

A patron saint of France who lived from 1412 to 1431 before being executed, her canonization would follow in May, 1920.

Remarkably, an example of her signature exists.

The 1909 St. Louis Cardinals were photographed.

Last prior edition:

Saturday, April 17, 1909. Soccer riots.

1900s, 1909, actors and actresses, children, Rhode Island, Soccer, Sports, Teenagers, Washington DC, William Howard Taft

Saturday, April 17, 1909. Soccer riots.

Edith Kelly was photographed in her role in Havana.  She was an English actress, best known for her role in that production.

Thousands of angry soccer fans attacked the stadium at Hampden Park after a replay of the Scottish Cup between the Rangers and Celtics ended in a draw.

Soccer riots aren't a new thing.

The Scottish Football Association did not award the prize cup to any team.

Helen and William Howard Taft opened West Potomac Park to the public.

Child laborers were photographed in Rhode Island on  this day in 1909.

Last prior edition:

Wednesday, April 14, 1909. The Adana Massacre continues.

1900s, 1909, 860 BC, 860s BC, Adana Massacre, Agriculture, Animals, Cartoons, Christianity, Illinois, Iran, Minnesota, Ottoman Empire, Persia, Petroleum, Sheep, Smoking, tobacco, Women

Wednesday, April 14, 1909. The Adana Massacre continues.

The slaughter of Armenian Christians by Ottoman soldier began in earnest in Adana, Ottoman Empire.

Tuesday, April 13, 1909. The Aadna Massacre.

The Adna Massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, which would kill over 20,000 people, commenced.  Ottoman troops would participate in it.

Armenian orphans from the massacre.

The Armenians had the first Christian kingdom in the world, and have had a state of one kind or another since 860 BC.  Since the conquest of Anatolia by the Turks, they've been subject to repeated atrocities.

The Anglo Persian Oil Company was incorporated.  The company became a power in its own right, and extensively exploited what became Iran, setting the stage for what we have today, unfortunately.

Minnesota passed a law banning cigarettes, effective August 1.  Too bad that didn't stick.

Punch, April 14, 1909.

Sheep yards, Kirkland, Ill, April 14, 1909.

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, April 13, 1909. The Aadna Massacre.

1900s, 1909, Adana Massacre, Armenian Genocide, Education, North Carolina, Ottoman Empire, panoramic, The Big Picture

Tuesday, April 13, 1909. The Aadna Massacre.

The Adna Massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, which would kill over 20,000 people, commenced.  Ottoman troops would participate in it.

Armenian orphans from the massacre.

On the same day, a rebellion broke out in the Ottoman Empire after newspaper editor Hassan Fehmi Effendi was assassinated. The rebels forced the resignation of democratically elected Prime Minister, Grand Vizier Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha, and killed the Minister of Justice. Tewfik Pasha.

The revolution was backed by Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who sought to regain the absolute power.  It wouldn't go well for him.

What would become the University of North Carolina was photographed.

State Normal School, #1, Greensboro, N.C., April 13, 1909.

State Normal School, #2, Greensboro, N.C., April 13, 1909.

Last prior edition:

Monday, April 12, 1909. Doc Powers falls ill.

1900s, 1909, baseball, Health, Medicine, Personalities

Monday, April 12, 1909. Doc Powers falls ill.

 

Michael Riley "Doc" Powers, catcher for the Philadelphia Athletics and a physician, became seriously ill during a game.  He'd ultimately die of peritonitis a few days later, after three intestinal operation.  He blamed his condition on earthing a cheese sandwich during the game, while some though he'd been injured straining to catch a foul ball, or by crashing into a wall during the game.

He was 38 years old at the time of his death.

I’m guessing the cheese sandwich was right.  Having been a victim of the dreaded gasoline station sandwich, and having witnesses my son virtually rendered comatose due to one, I think Doc was right.

Sunday, April 11, 1909. Tel Aviv founded.

Settlers drawing lots for plots, April 1909.

100 Jewish settlers living in Jaffa founded a 12 acre village located in sand dunes, dividing the property into 60 lots.  It was called Ahuzzat Bayit, but only for a year, after which it was renamed Tel Aviv.

Last prior edition:

Saturday, April 10, 1909 Finnish, Métis Tragedy, and Arctic Tragedy.

1800s, 1809, 1900s, 1909, 9000 BCs, Alberta, Canada, Finland, Finnish War, Metis, panoramic, Peary's Eighth Arctic Expedition, Personalities, Russia, Sweden, Tennessee, The Big Picture, Venezuela

Saturday, April 10, 1909 Finnish, Métis Tragedy, and Arctic Tragedy.

Czar Nicholas II approved a recommendation that "laws of general Imperial interest concerning Finland" be enacted by the Duma, in which Finland had a single representative, rather than its own legislative assemble.  It was part of the process of Russification of the country which had commenced in 1899, reversing the original imperial policy put in place in 1808 when Sweden had lost Finland to Russia.

The Finn's have inhabited Finland since at least 9,000 BC, and probably longer.  The first references to it as an entity come from Catholic sources in the 12th Century as the Church began to Christianize the country, but it had no real political organization.  It came under the control of Sweden the following century, with Sweden losing it to Russia in the Finnish War of 1808-1809.  The Russification policy, something the Russians have exhibited ever since the 19th Century wherever it has control, and which effectively continues to the present day, would result in the Finnish independence movement.

Canada opened up the Métis lands in Alberta to homesteaders.  250 claims by French Canadians were registered on the first day.

Professor Ross G. Marvin of Cornell became Admiral Peary's Eighth Arctic Expedition's only fatality when he drowned, maybe.

His body was found floating and appeared to have gone through thin ice, as reported by Inuit guide Kudlookto.  However, in 1926 Kudlookto claimed he had shot and killed Marvin, either because Marvin had started acting irrationally, or because Marvin refused to let Kudlookto's cousin, another member of the expedition, rest.  Peary's daughter (as you'll recall his sons were by his native mistress and were left up in the Arctic in the abandoned care of their mother), discounted the story, although how she would know what happened in reality is another matter. Presumably from information supplied by her father.

It's hard to imagine why Kudlookto would make the story of killing Marvin up, although people do odd things.

Peary's account.

He had been on a prior expedition.  He was 29 years old at the time of his death.

Cipriano Castoro, the former President of Venezuela, was forcibly ejected from Martinique by the French.

Jonesboro, Tenn, April 10, 1909.

Last prior edition:

Friday, April 9, 1909. Establishing Mother's Day.

Location: South Dakota, USA

Wednesday, April 9, 1924. Dawes Plan released.

The Dawes Committee released its plan for the Allies to restructure the method of reparations payments being made by the Germans.

Pope Pius XI canceled plans to leave the Vatican in order to dedicate a new building for the Knights of Columbus in Rome, which would have made him the first Pontiff since 1870 to travel outside of the Vatican's walls.

Cancelled on thirty minutes notice, Papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Gasparri, appeared in his place. The cancellation was over the issue of Vatican sovereignty, but was spurred on due to this intended departure of the place being a major matter in the local press.

Senator Smith of South Carolina in 1924.  He'd serve until 1944, when he was defeated for reelection.  He took the news on his farm and stated: Well, I guess I better go out and look at the pigs."  He died several days later, in the same bed in which he'd been born.  His Senatorial career had spanned from 1909 to 1944, the same span as our look back posts today.

Senator Ellison Smith delivered his "Shut The Door" speech.

It seems to me the point as to this measure—and I have been so impressed for several years—is that the time has arrived when we should shut the door. We have been called the melting pot of the world. We had an experience just a few years ago, during the great World War, when it looked as though we had allowed influences to enter our borders that were about to melt the pot in place of us being the melting pot.

I think that we have sufficient stock in America now for us to shut the door, Americanize what we have, and save the resources of America for the natural increase of our population. We all know that one of the most prolific causes of war is the desire for increased land ownership for the overflow of a congested population. We are increasing at such a rate that in the natural course of things in a comparatively few years the landed resources, the natural resources of the country, shall be taken up by the natural increase of our population. It seems to me the part of wisdom now that we have throughout the length and breadth of continental America a population which is beginning to encroach upon the reserve and virgin resources of the country to keep it in trust for the multiplying population of the country.

I do not believe that political reasons should enter into the discussion of this very vital question. It is of greater concern to us to maintain the institutions of America, to maintain the principles upon which this Government is founded, than to develop and exploit the underdeveloped resources of the country. There are some things that are dearer to us, fraught with more benefit to us, than the immediate development of the undeveloped resources of the country. I believe that our particular ideas, social, moral, religious, and political, have demonstrated, by virtue of the progress we have made and the character of people that we are, that we have the highest ideals of any member of the human family or any nation. We have demonstrated the fact that the human family, certainty the predominant breed in America, can govern themselves by a direct government of the people. If this Government shall fail, it shall fail by virtue of the terrible law of inherited tendency. Those who come from the nations which from time immemorial have been under the dictation of a master fall more easily by the law of inheritance and the inertia of habit into a condition of political servitude than the descendants of those who cleared the forests, conquered the savage, stood at arms and won their liberty from their mother country, England.

I think we now have sufficient population in our country for us to shut the door and to breed up a pure, unadulterated American citizenship. I recognize that there is a dangerous lack of distinction between people of a certain nationality and the breed of the dog. Who is an American? Is he an immigrant from Italy? Is he an immigrant from Germany? If you were to go abroad and some one were to meet you and say, “I met a typical American,” what would flash into your mind as a typical American, the typical representative of that new Nation? Would it be the son of an Italian immigrant, the son of a German immigrant, the son of any of the breeds from the Orient, the son of the denizens of Africa? We must not get our ethnological distinctions mixed up with out anthropological distinctions. It is the breed of the dog in which I am interested. I would like for the Members of the Senate to read that book just recently published by Madison Grant, The Passing of a Great Race. Thank God we have in America perhaps the largest percentage of any country in the world of the pure, unadulterated Anglo-Saxon stock; certainly the greatest of any nation in the Nordic breed. It is for the preservation of that splendid stock that has characterized us that I would make this not an asylum for the oppressed of all countries, but a country to assimilate and perfect that splendid type of manhood that has made America the foremost Nation in her progress and in her power, and yet the youngest of all the nations. I myself believe that the preservation of her institutions depends upon us now taking counsel with our condition and our experience during the last World War.

Without offense, but with regard to the salvation of our own, let us shut the door and assimilate what we have, and let us breed pure American citizens and develop our own American resources. I am more in favor of that than I am of our quota proposition. Of course, it may not meet the approbation of the Senate that we shall shut the door—which I unqualifiedly and unreservedly believe to be our duty—and develop what we have, assimilate and digest what we have into pure Americans, with American aspirations, and thoroughly familiar with the love of American institutions, rather than the importation of any number of men from other countries. If we may not have that, then I am in favor of putting the quota down to the lowest possible point, with every selective element in it that may be.

The great desideratum of modern times has been education not alone book knowledge, but that education which enables men to think right, to think logically, to think truthfully, men equipped with power to appreciate the rapidly developing conditions that are all about us, that have converted the world in the last 50 years into a brand new world and made us masters of forces that are revolutionizing production. We want men not like dumb, driven cattle from those nations where the progressive thought of the times has scarcely made a beginning and where they see men as mere machines; we want men who have an appreciation of the responsibility brought about by the manifestation of the power of that individual. We have not that in this country to-day. We have men here to-day who are selfishly utilizing the enormous forces discovered by genius, and if we are not careful as statesmen, if we are not careful in our legislation, these very masters of the tremendous forces that have been made available to us will bring us under their domination and control by virtue of the power they have in multiplying their wealth.

We are struggling to-day against the organized forces of man’s brain multiplied a million times by materialized thought in the form of steam and electricity as applied in the everyday affairs of man. We have enough in this country to engage the brain of every lover of his country in solving the problems of a democratic government in the midst of the imperial power that genius is discovering and placing in the hands of man. We have population enough to-day without throwing wide our doors and jeopardizing the interests of this country by pouring into it men who willingly become the slaves of those who employ them in manipulating these forces of nature, and they few reap the enormous benefits that accrue therefrom.

We ought to Americanize not only our population but our forces. We ought to Americanize our factories and our vast material resources, so that we can make each contribute to the other and have an abundance for us under the form of the government laid down by our fathers.

The Senator from Georgia [Mr. Harris] has introduced an amendment to shut the door. It is not a question of politics. It is a question of maintaining that which has made you and me the beneficiaries of the greatest hope that ever burned in the human breast for the most splendid future that ever stood before mankind, where the boy in the gutter can look with confidence to the seat of the Presidency of the United States; where the boy in the gutter can look forward to the time when, paying the price of a proper citizen, he may fill a seat in this hall; where the boy to-day poverty-stricken, standing in the midst of all the splendid opportunities of America, should have and, please God, if we do our duty, will have an opportunity to enjoy the marvelous wealth that the genius and brain of our country is making possible for us all.

We do not want to tangle the skein of America’s progress by those who imperfectly understand the genius of our Government and the opportunities that lie about us. Let up keep what we have, protect what we have, make what we have the realization of the dream of those who wrote the Constitution.

I am more concerned about that than I am about whether a new railroad shall be built or whether there shall be diversified farming next year or whether a certain coal mine shall be mined. I would rather see American citizenship refined to the last degree in all that makes America what we hope it will be than to develop the resources of America at the expense of the citizenship of our country. The time has come when we should shut the door and keep what we have for what we hope our own people to be.

South Dakota experienced floods on the Belle Fourche.

Friday, April 9, 1909. Establishing Mother's Day.

South Dakota became the first state to officially recognize Mother's Day, with a proclamation by Gov. Robert S. Vessy that designated "the second Sabbath in our national memorial month of May" for the same.

This followed the first church service recognizing the day, which had been in 1907 as prat of Anna Jarvis' effort to establish the holiday, which she had been working on since 1905.  The first service for the day was at Andrews Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia.

This brings to mind something we posted last week:

Blog Mirror: Family Values

 

Family Values

Last prior edition:

Thursday, April 8, 1909. Creation of Japanese Corporations

Location: South Dakota, USA

Thursday, April 8, 1909. Creation of Japanese Corporations

The Japanese Diet passed a law for the Japanese equivalent of corporations.

The United Kingdom and France accepted the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Chickasha Oklahoma, April 8, 1909.

Last prior edition:

Wednesday, April 7, 1909. A busy day for the Tafts.

1900s, 1909, law, William Howard Taft

Wednesday, April 7, 1909. A busy day for the Tafts.

President Taft issued an executive order that deaf mutes and deaf persons be allowed to take the civil service examination.

Some of the Tafts went riding.

Helen Taft became a professor of history and college dean.

Charlie Taft would go on to become a respected mayor of Cincinnati.

The third Taft child, Robert, not pictured here, went on to become a U.S. Senator from Ohio.

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, April 6, 1909. Peary claims the North Pole.

1900s, 1909, 1960s, 1968, Arctic, Peary's Eighth Arctic Expedition