The Many Stages of Mary Ruth Norwood, or Hey, Kids! Let's Put on a Show!

Mary Ruth Norwood
Portrait Sketch by Rebecca J. Becker

In 1649 (less than three decades after the original Thanksgiving), Henry Norwood fled England to seek safety in Virginia. His cousin, Sir William Berkeley, was royal governor, and Henry was in real trouble.

Sir William Berkeley by Peter Lely

He’d supported the king against the Roundheads - - and the king had, quite literally, lost his head. All royalists were at risk.

Norwood’s voyage was a disaster - - a nearly unbroken series of horrific near-death encounters - - but he survived to write about the journey in a celebrated narrative, A Voyage to Virginia. 

(A few years later, Norwood became Treasurer of Virginia, a post he held for 12 years, before continuing his nearly unbelievable adventures - - including another flight, this time with a warlord and his harem in Tangiers!)

Front page of A Voyage to Virginia by Henry Norwood

270 years after Henry Norwood’s catastrophic voyage to America, Mary Ruth Norwood arrived at Crescent College.

Crescent College, c. 1919

She had every bit of her ancestor’s incredible courage and adventurous spirit. Her story is just as implausible as Henry’s - - but every word is true.

Ruth Norwood
Preparatory Student, 1917
Hardin-Simmons Academy
Abilene, Texas

Before she came to Eureka Springs, Ruth (she very rarely used her full name) had been a student at a preparatory academy on the campus of Abilene’s Hardin-Simmons University.

Ruth Norwood
Preparatory Student 1917
Academy at Hardin-Simmons
Abilene, Texas

We don’t know, yet, what brought her to Crescent College, but once here she had a very busy time indeed. Her focus was in Literary Studies, with a second emphasis in French.

Ruth Norwood (second from left) at Crescent College
Senior Vaudeville
from the 1920 Crescent College yearbook

But she was active in the Expression (theatre) Arts.  You can see her here in two photographs from one production, the Senior Vaudeville: she’s second from the left in both, 

Ruth Norwood (second from left) at Crescent College
Senior Vaudeville
from the 1920 Crescent College

and performed in all of the college’s plays; she was a member of the Athletic Association, 

Ruth Norwood in the Crescent College Tennis Club
from the 1920 Crescent College yearbook

a member of the Tennis Club, 

Ruth Norwood in the Crescent College Riding Club
from the 1920 yearbook

the Riding Club, and the Hiking Club!

Ruth Norwood in the Crescent College Hiking Club
from the 1920 yearbook

In 1919, everyone stayed at Crescent for Thanksgiving.

President Thompson held a feast for the entire faculty and all the students. They described the evening:

“This was probably the most enjoyable occasion of the year, for the spirit of Thanksgiving certainly prevailed. Toasts were given by members of the faculty and student body. Then, to add more to the hilarity of the evening, Mr. Thompson entertained us with his clever stories. After the last course was served we passed into the ball room, where dancing began in full sway. And Thanksgiving was enjoyed to the fullest extent, by both the faculty and students.”

(Having a ballroom was an unusual, but often welcome, feature of Crescent College!)

Ruth Norwood in Crescent College's SINS Club
from the 1920 yearbook

In the 1920 yearbook, there are tantalizing glimpses of other sides to Ruth’s personality - - she (and her roommate, Sam “Sambo” Anita King)

Sam Anita King

from the 1920 Crescent College yearbook

were members of the Sins Club (we would love to discover more about this club!), and the pair were also affectionately kidded on the Jokes page:

Ruth Norwood (to her room-mate): “Sambo, I wish you would illuminate some of those shoes from the closet.”

Ruth Norwood
Senior Portrait
Crescent College 1920 yearbook

The two girls continued friends even after Ruth graduated from Crescent, and Sam visited Ruth in Abilene in 1921, when Ruth was enrolled as a student at Hardin-Simmons College.

Ruth Norwood Junior Portrait
Hardin-Simmons University
1921

(Crescent was a two-year college, and so after graduation, Ruth was able to begin her studies at H-S as a junior.)

Ruth Norwood
Hardin-Simmons College, 1922

J.D. Sandefer, president of Hardin-Simmons, offered Ruth the first of her many remarkable jobs, while she was still a student.

“Well,” she recalled years later, in an Abilene Reporter-News interview, “he saw me passing the campus one day and asked if I’d like to be the bursar at San Marcos Academy. I wasn’t sure what a bursar was, but I said yes.

San Marcos Academy, San Marcos, Texas

“He said to catch the train at Buffalo Gap that night; that they needed a good Christian girl down there. I did. It turned out they’d had an administrative shakeup at San Marcos, it was registration time and there was no bursar to take the money.

Buffalo Gap
painting by George Bickerstaff

“I found out pretty quick I wasn’t a bookkeeper. So I secretly hired an accountant at Austin and would go to my sorority hall (Alpha Delta Pi) every weekend, with the books to balance. The accountant cost more than my wages.”

While still in her twenties, Ruth taught at several schools, including St. Hilda’s Hall in Charleston, West Virginia, and the Bon Avon School for Girls in San Antonio. 

Bon Avon School for Girls
San Antonio, Texas

 Her final academic position was as Principal in Ropesville, Texas.

Ropesville, Texas
Train Station built 1918

But she’d been bitten by the theatre bug while at Crescent, and now a truly exceptional opportunity presented itself.

Fairfield, Iowa
Home of the Stewart Brothers
and their Universal Producing Company

It all began with three brothers in Fairfield Iowa and their wild, revolutionary idea.

It sounds a bit like an old Judy Garland – Mickey Rooney movie: Hey, kids, let’s put on a show!

But that’s the seed of the idea - - multiplied by millions.

Universal Producing Company
poster for The College Flapper
1933

The brothers formed the Universal Producing Company, and trained a thousand directors who would then go out to every town, village and hamlet across the nation, armed with scripts, costumes, and a mission: to work with hundreds of locals to put on a play - - and then to split the proceeds from each performance.

(The local share of the proceeds usually went to charity, or to civic improvements, and townsfolk eagerly participated.)

Local Talent in a Universal Producing Company production

in Buffalo Center, Iowa

The endeavor was such a success that Universal Producing Company became “the largest live entertainment production company in the country for a decade starting in the late 1920s.” [Fairfield Entrepreneur Hall of Fame]

By the mid-1930s, the brothers were booking “ten shows a weeknight across the nation, employed 225 coaches and a swarm of salesmen….

Between 1928 and 1934 more than 1,000,000 amateur actors appeared in casts of its productions which played to more than 6,000,000 people.” [The Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties: From Self-Improvement to Adult Education in America, 1750-1990 by Joseph F. Kett, Stanford University Press.]

Advertisement for Universal Producing Company production

in Columbus, Nebraska, 1928,

of Aunt Lucia with 100 local people as 100 characters

including the [all male!] College Flappers (the Sig-sig-a-rette Society)

And most amazing of all?

Nearly all 1,000 directors and dramatic coaches employed by Universal Producing Company were young women!

Why do we never hear about this phenomenal enterprise?!

Jefferson Hotel
Dallas, Texas

Ruth recalled, “They held a course in play directing for six weeks in the roof garden of the Jefferson Hotel in Dallas. They really made you do a fall if you’d been shot, or do a dance step. Goodness, if it had lasted longer, we worked so hard we’d have all been dead.”

Wilson Stewart, the brother who ran the Universal Boot Camp, was described as “so charged with dynamite, if he jarred himself he’d blow himself to bits….”

In addition to polishing her directing skills, Ruth also learned how to “persuade people to be part of the shows, how to work with civic organizations...”

By the end of  six weeks, “coaches would have all the skills of a teacher, preacher, salesman, dramatic coach, nursemaid and governess, newspaper reporter, make-up artist, dance-hall queen, sideshow barker and banker.” [Fairfield Entrepreneur Hall of Fame] 

After Ruth finished Boot Camp, “they booked me in Downey, Idaho, and I played all over Idaho until the snow got so deep we couldn’t.

“Next year, they transferred me to California. I enjoyed that, five boat trips up and down the coast and all. I’d fly, too, and send the costume trunks overland.” [This was in the very early 1930s, - - flying was still quite an escapade!]

A poster from one of the Universal Producing Company’s shows, The World's All Right, is seen below.

You also see a map with the staggering number of productions around the country - - clearly demonstrating why this phenomenon needs to be recognized!

Universal Production Companies around the nation!

After three years, Ruth decided to strike out on her own. She produced her own show, Casey's Trial, using her knowledge and experience at Universal to help her succeed - - a remarkable feat, during some of the worst years of the Great Depression.

In fact, her opening production was in March, 1933 - - during President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous Bank Holiday. 

Clovis News-Journal
[Clovis, New Mexico]
16 September 1933
Page 2

Ruth - - like her dashing ancestor, centuries before - - set out across the world and mounted her first show in Persia (modern-day Iran), “while the oil boom was on there.”

The show was an enormous success, and she then took the production around the United States.

The Shamrock Texan
[Shamrock, Texas]
14 December 1933

Dozens and dozens of newspaper articles show her progress across the nation, with local citizens posing for promotional photographs with great gusto. There was even one production where the entire cast - - over 100 roles, male and female - - was male!

You see below a photograph from Ada, Minnesota - - where (as in Columbus, Nebraska's production of Aunt Lucia,) the farming men are dressed as flappers!

Flappers' Chorus
Ada Minnesota

In 1937, she found herself in Tucumcari, New Mexico. She walked into the offices of the Tucumcari Daily News, where George H. Likins was editor.

Tucumcari New Mexico
1939 postcard

It was her usual habit to try for free publicity, since the town would benefit from her production, but in Tucumcari, Likins refused.

“'We don’t give anything away on this paper,’” Ruth recalled his declaring. “I guess we went in before he’d had his morning coffee.”

Discouraged, she returned to her hotel room.

Later, “I picked up a paper and he’d devoted his whole column to our show. I thought, ‘Well, I’ll just go back. His bark is worse than his bite.’”

“We closed that show by getting married on Thanksgiving of 1937.”

Ruth and George shared many years together, and after a period when they sold films for the Alexander Film Company, later owned and ran a large motion picture theatre and a drive-in theatre in Abilene. 

Advertisement for Alexander Film Co., 1925

At one point, zoning and construction delays threatened their operation, and they projected - - well, let Ruth explain, as she did in this wry advertisement:

"Our live families like to eat.
Takes Money.
So we're showing on a sheet,
Big and funny."

George died in 1957, and Ruth closed the downtown theatre the next year. 

In 1965, she was off on a new adventure, however - - traveling to England, to participate in the 750th anniversary signing of the Magna Carta.

Postage stamp from Great Britain
Celebrating the Magna Carta

Another of her ancestors, Robert Fitz-Walter,  

Seal of Lord Robert Fitz Walter, who led the opposition against King John of England

was one of the barons responsible for King John's signing the original.

Ruth Norwood in 1972

at a 50th reunion at Hardin-Simmons

Ruth died in 1979, and is buried with George in Abilene. They had no children, but if you or anyone you know is related to her  - -  or to any of the Crescent College students or faculty  - -  please, do get in touch! We’d love to hear from you!

Who’s That Girl?? or, The One and Only Frances Alberta Beebe

Frances Beebe
Portrait Sketch by Rebecca J. Becker

Only one girl in the history of Crescent College was ever invited back after she graduated, to give a solo dramatic and musical performance: to demonstrate to current and incoming students the level of skill and expertise possible after studying in their limestone castle in the Ozarks.

Girl on Stage
oil on canvas, c. 1907
by Everett Shinn

That student was Frances Alberta Beebe.  And when she returned to Crescent College to stand on that familiar stage, she was confident, astonishingly talented, beautiful and assured.  She was seventeen years old.

Why was she, alone of all the hundreds of girls over the years, singled out for this honor?  What had her years at Crescent been like?  How had it all begun?

One month after President Woodrow Wilson announced United States’s official neutrality as war raged in Europe, Frances Beebe arrived in Eureka Springs.

 

Frances Beebe
First Year Preparatory Student
Crescent College
From the 1915 yearbook

Frances was only fourteen years old in September, 1914, but she’d already won more awards and garnered more attention than many women could claim in a lifetime.  From her first public performance at age four (where she delivered the Opening Address at Children’s Day celebrations in Jones City, Oklahoma), to her recent appearance, testifying at a murder trial in Oklahoma City - - Frances had been in the news.

It may have been that last event that led her parents to agree to their young daughter's becoming a boarding student at Crescent College, more than 250 miles from home.  But Crescent also had a remarkable reputation, and its Expression Department (where students learned many aspects of theatrical performance, including oratory, acting, movement and voice training, and dance) was one of the finest in the nation.

Frances entered Crescent College as a First Year Preparatory School student (the equivalent of a 9^th grade pupil). She was one of the youngest girls in school.  Every student seems to have acquired a nickname while at Crescent - - Frances’s was “Babe.”

Frances Beebe, on the left
from the 1915 Crescent College Yearbook
original caption in the yearbook:
"Two Imps"

 
Students usually progressed through four years of preparatory study before commencing their college work, but - - as you’ll see - - Frances’s trajectory was hardly typical!

Crescent College
Riding Club
from the 1915 yearbook

In that extraordinary first year, Frances’s endeavors reflected the talents and interests of both her remarkable parents.

Crescent College Expression Department
Production of "The Blue Bird"
by Maurice Maeterlinck
from the 1915 yearbook

Her mother, Stella, had worked continually during her married life as a teacher, postmistress, proprietor of a bookshop, and as a bank clerk, but she also had once been a child prodigy, performing at social, political and theatrical events.  From an early age Stella had been involved with the Rebekahs, working tirelessly to provide aid, education and entertainment to communities wherever and whenever she could.

Frances’s father, Frank, had become famous for hunting down and arresting stagecoach and train robbers as an inspector for the United States Post Office.   

1920 Postcard

A skilled horseman and sharpshooter, Frank enjoyed national popularity before a very public fall from grace ended in his having to reinvent himself - - something he did with panache.  Frank became a political organizer, a real estate speculator, and was now trying his hand developing oil wells.

Crescent College Athletic Association
(students with barbells)
from the 1915 yearbook

 At Crescent College, therefore , Frances naturally devoted herself to the Expression Department...

...but also joined the Athletics Association, the Riding Club, the Oklahoma Club, and the Gun Club.

 

Crescent College
Gun Club
from the 1915 yearbook

That last club may surprise readers, and we’ll let the students themselves describe it for you.  It was the only club in Crescent College history to have three full yearbook pages devoted to its activities, and members elucidated the Gun Club’s purpose:

“To appreciate ‘The God of the Open Air’; to have a general good time; to steady the nerves and train the eye; to train one in presence of mind, coolness, precision and resourcefulness; to become good markswomen.”

The three pictures you see here are from the 1915 yearbook.  The third photograph has a description of one of the club’s outings:

“After shooting until the sun sinks behind the mountains, we all join in building a fire beneath the overhanging rocks.  When the coffee begins to bubble and boil each girl, with a pointed stick, eagerly stabs a weinna [sic] or two, and soon has them sizzling over the fire.  Buttered buns with mustard, pickles, bacon, coffee, make a supper fit for 'queens.'  When the fresh air and exercise have stimulated already huge appetites, compliments on the excellent coffee, delicious juicy wiennas, [sic] are lavish, not to say extravagant.  The toasted buns and butter - - um-mm.  The caterpillar isn’t in it when it comes to making butter fly.

“Before we are aware, twilight has crept upon us; the shadows fall; day is receding into the gold and purple hills.  Alas, we are forced to realize that to reach the college in time for study hall we must ‘hit the trail.’

“We leave reluctant, arriving in good time.  Tired?  Yes.  But we are better and stronger for having listened to the robins’ twilight song; for having watched the moon rise above the mountains and peep at us through the pines; for having laughed much.  And we are more than ever inclined to make our prayer to the God of the Open Air.”

One of Frances’s closest friends at Crescent was also a member of the club.  Barbara Maude Beach (usually called Maude, or Peach) and Frances were such close friends that when asked why she returned to Crescent the next year, Frances laughingly replied, “To be by the Beach!”

Expression Department at Crescent College
Frances Beebe, top left
from the 1915 yearbook

Frances’s mother, Stella, was having a similarly wonderful year.  During Frances’s first year at Crescent College, Stella, at home in Oklahoma City, was elected president of the Rebekah order of the entire state. 

1898 poster demonstrating the various activities of the Rebekahs

 Known for patriotism, humanitarianism and loyalty, the Rebekahs were dedicated to performing charitable services for everyone, no matter what religion.  Christians, Jews, Muslims were all welcome as members (a policy leading to the Catholic church condemning the organization until the 1970s).

Tulsa World [Tulsa, Oklahoma]
08 October 1914, Page 3

Stella’s talents and concerns were perfectly in tune with the Rebekahs.  One newspaper explained:

“She brings to her office a high order of ability seldom equaled in either executive or detail affairs.  College educated, thoroughly posted in the law, rules and regulations of the order, a forceful speaker, enjoying the love and highest esteem of the members of the order all over the state.  (Her election from grand warden up having been unanimous and without a contesting candidate.)  The opinion of one and all is that she will have one of the most successful administrations in the history of the order.”[i]

Frances returned to Eureka Springs in September 1915, and we find she’d somehow skipped three levels of preparatory work to begin the new school year as a Crescent College junior!

Frances Beebe - now a Junior!
from the 1916 Crescent College yearbook

She was even more active than in her previous year:  she was elected President of the Riding Club, and she added piano studies and the Tennis Club to all of her former activities.

Athletic Association at Crescent College
students with Indian Clubs
from the 1916 yearbook

Remember - - Frances was only 15 years old.   
 

Frances Beebe
as a member of the Expression Department
from the 1916 Crescent College yearbook

Her intellect, her theatrical abilities and her physical training were impressive indeed and she more than held her own in the company of talented girls three and four years her senior.

Crescent College Athletic Association
Dance Class
from the 1916 yearbook

Frances performed in the four plays directed by senior girls (including Frances’s friend, Barbara Maude Beach) and in various other entertainments staged throughout the year.

"Eleven Good Fellows" - from the 1916 Crescent College yearbook
The original poem accompanying this image had rhymes about each girl.
The poem concludes,
"Last, but not least, is Frances, the baby,
Who is a darling, and our little lady."

Meanwhile, Frances’s father, Frank A. Beebe, was back in the newspapers.  The Sun [Coffeyville, Kansas], 21 March 1916, headline announced, “Got a Fine Well.”  The article explained, “Frank A. Beebe has a 90-barrel producer in his No. 1 on the Porter Lewis farm just west of the city, says the Nowata Star.”  The family seemed on the brink of both wealth and fame.

Expression Department of Crescent College, from 1916 yearbook
Celia Brinson is in the center
Frances Beebe is #7
Her friend Barbara Maude Beach is #1

In April, Frances and three of her fellow students performed their junior recital, under Celia Brinson’s direction.

In May, her family embarked on a new adventure in its new hometown:  the Fort Worth Star Telegram announced the incorporation of “Northeastern Oil Company, Nowata, Oklahoma: capital $20,000.”  Frances’s father, mother, and older sister were named as the Incorporators.

Postcard from Nowata, Oklahoma

Unhappily, the oil company seems to have been a failure, and soon the family - - collectively and individually - - was forced to reinvent itself once again.

Frances didn’t return to Eureka Springs in September, 1916.  Having blazed through two years at Crescent College, she turned her attention to conquering new worlds, this time at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri.

Frances Beebe at Stephens College
from the 1917 Stephens yearbook

While she was at Stephens, in April 1917, Woodrow Wilson requested Congress to declare war on Germany.  Four days later, they did so.

The United States of America declares war on Germany on 6 April, 1917

By June 1917, Frances had earned her Bachelor of Oratory degree, but with her usual disregard for The Way Things Are Usually Done, she’d already formed her own musical and dramatic Chautauqua company with three classmates, and even before she graduated, local papers trumpeted the news: they’d received offers to go on the road![ii]

But two disasters struck her family, and wartime uncertainty troubled the nation, all of which must have affected Frances’s plans.  No record of her Chautauqua company has been found after initial exciting newspaper announcements of its existence.

The two family calamities struck within one week, early in 1918.  First, her father was once again in court, this time suing for possession of real estate in Baxter Springs, Kansas[iii], while the family ran the Liberty Café and Rooming House in that city.[iv]

Postcard from Baxter Sprngs, Kansas

And while Frank was busy with his lawsuit, Frances’s maternal grandmother died.  Once again Frank was unable to be with his wife, Stella, because a court case kept him occupied.  Alone, Stella traveled to Rogers, Arkansas, where her parents had been living, and brought her father back to Baxter Springs.
 

Advertisement focusing on the twin terrors of
war and influenza: August 1918

In August, 1918 the nation was buffeted by the influenza epidemic which killed twenty million people around the globe, including 548,000 in the United States alone.

And what of Frances?

No matter what storms the family weathered, her career was on the ascendant.

Students and faculty who remained at Crescent College missed Frances and her astonishing talent.   And in September, 1918, they invited the now seventeen-year-old girl to be their guest, to perform for students during the homecoming week, and also for the Commencement exercises.[v]
While back at Crescent College, Frances gave a memorable dramatic art and song recital to the student body of which she had once been a member.  The moment was a culmination of all of her years of work, a recognition by her peers and her former teachers that hers was, indeed, an extraordinary talent.

 

"Keith's Union Square"
oil on canvas, c. 1906
by Everett Shinn

Two months later, the Great War ended, and soon Prohibition took its place as the nation’s primary topic of conversation.

Sheet music cover:
At the Prohibition Ball
1919

And Frances?  Although her Chautauqua company had foundered, she was full of plans.  Her next endeavor may reveal that the fissure in her family (first noted during Frank’s year-long very public ordeal during the humiliating blackmail trial) had never fully healed.

In any event, just after Christmas in 1919 the newspapers announced a startling development in the Beebe family:

“Miss Frances Beebe is visiting her mother, Mrs. Stella M. Beebe, during the holidays.  Miss Beebe is conducting an academy of physical culture,

Cover of Physical Culture magazine
August 1919

dramatic art, aesthetic dance

Cover of Aesthetic Dancing by Emil Rath
c. 1924

and ball room dancing instruction with the father, Frank A. Beebe, at Pawhuska, Oklahoma.”[vi]

Postcard: "A Motor to Pawhuska" c. 1910

Apparently Frances and her father had been in Pawhuska while Stella stayed in Baxter Springs, running the Liberty café.  The school seems quickly to have become a success, and its beautiful young proprietor and her father a popular pair around Pawhuska.  At her school, Frances could put all of her abilities to use, employ all of the lessons she learned at Crescent College and elsewhere,  and create her own shining palace of delight, when tragedy struck again - - and this time the blow was one from which she never recovered.

In February, 1920, Frank A. Beebe died, suddenly.  His remains were taken to Carthage, Missouri, where he’d grown up (and where his father had once been mayor).  Newspapers were careful to explain:

“Stella M. Beebe, wife, is yet bedfast at home, recovering from ailments when a surgical operation was necessary and will not be able to attend these services.”[vii]

Instead of staying in Pawhuska or returning to Baxter Springs, Frances chose to move to Rogers, Arkansas, to live with her maternal grandfather.   
 

Postcard: Scene on White River, Rogers, Arkansas

After a few months, she revisited Pawhuska as a houseguest of friends she’d left behind.  Within days of her return to Rogers, Pawhuska newspapers announced another surprising turn of events:

"Married.

“The many friends of Boone Sadler and Miss Frances Beebe, who, with her father, conducted a dancing school in this city some time ago, were very much surprised when the announcement came that they were married last Monday in Rogers, Arkansas.

“After the marriage ceremony the happy couple journeyed to Eureka Springs, where they will spend a few days before returning to Pawhuska to make their future home.”[viii]

The marriage foundered after fourteen years, and Frances’s beautiful daughter, Mary Frances, suffered through unhappy marriages and eventually died of an overdose.

Frances's daughter, Mary Frances Sadler,
in her 1939 yearbook photo
(She was voted the most beautiful student
in Austin, Texas)

All of this was in the future, however, on that incredible day in September, 1918, when the brilliant, beautiful 17-year-old Frances Beebe stood on the stage at Crescent College and showed everyone just how wonderful the world could be.

If you're related to Frances Beebe, or to any other Crescent College student or faculty member, please get in touch.  We'd love to hear from you!

And if you’re in Eureka Springs, stop by the Crescent College History Project Exhibit in the Faculty Lounge, 4^th floor of the 1886 Crescent Hotel and Spa.  Open 10 – 5 every day, free to the public - - it’s a wonderful way to discover more about the people who lived, worked, laughed and dreamed inside the walls of the limestone castle housing Crescent College, high up in the Ozarks.

---

[i] Tulsa World [Tulsa, Oklahoma] 08 October 1914, Page 3.

[ii] The Daily Missourian [Columbia, Missouri], February 07, 1917, page 2.

[iii] The Baxter Springs Herald [Baxter Springs, Kansas] 21 March 1918, Page 8.

[iv] The Baxter Springs News [Baxter Springs, Kansas] 22 March, 1918, Page 6.

[v] Baxter Daily Citizen [Baxter Springs, Kansas] 23 May 1918, Page 1.

[vi] The Baxter Springs Herald [Baxter Springs, Kansas] 27 December 1919, Page 2.

[vii] The Baxter Springs Herald [Baxter Springs, Kansas] 17 February 1920, Page 1.

[viii] The Osage County News  [Pawhuska, Oklahoma] 10 September, 1920, Page 1.