Artifact #62: The Ingersol Club Membership Card

Ingersol Club
membership card
Artifact #62
Jeff Smith collection

(Click image to enlarge)

he Ingersol Club
Fraternity, saloon, or gaming house?

      Artifact #62 in the Soapy Smith collection is another mystery item. Is it a fraternity for members to meet? Is it a saloon? Is it a gambling house, or perhaps a mixture of all three.

      The membership card is not filled in so there was little to write about the card itself. Below is the text for those that are having trouble reading it.

This is to Certify That

Mr. _____________________

Is a Member of Ingersol Club,

Incorporated under the Laws of the State of Colorado.

Pres._________________________

Sec. _________________________

      I decided to research the Ingersol Club, in order to have something to write about. I ran into research problems right away. My initial findings were regards to the name Ingersoll (spelled with two "l's"), which only sparked my curiosity as to why it was named Ingersol (spelled with on "l"). I have yet to discover the reason. I did find families named Ingersol, but not in Colorado.
      For the spelling Ingersoll, the closets I came to any reasonable connection, actually had direct ties to Soapy. A deputy sheriff known only as Ingersoll, helped Soapy's younger brother, Bascomb, beat a John Cooney in late July 1893.[1] Deputy Sheriff Ingersoll also accompanied Soapy to the residence of Stella Sheedy on Larimer street, to have the woman re-arrested, after inadvertently aiding her release.[2]
      On November 3, 1895 Soap Gang member, Henry "Yank V. Fewclothes" Edwards wrote to Soapy on stationary from the Ingersol Club [3]. A post on that letter can be seen here. In July 1896, Soapy's wife, Mary penned a two-page letter to her husband on Denver Ingersoll Club stationary.[4] Note that the spelling is with two "l's." Mary's letter is artifact #13.

Ingersoll stationary
Artifact #13
See post about this letter
Jeff Smith collection

(Click image to enlarge)

Ingersoll envelope
Artifact #13
See post about this letter
Jeff Smith collection

(Click image to enlarge)

      In March 1893 Soapy presided over the upstairs gambling rooms at the Ingersoll Club, located at 1653 Larimer near Seventeenth Street.[5] This gives rise to the possibility that the Ingersol (Ingersoll) Club was a "respectable" front for a saloon and gambling house, created to protect the business from the anti-gambling reforms that shook Denver in 1892, which were directly responsible for Soapy and some of the biggest gambling proprietors in Denver to set up business in Creede, Colorado during it's silver rush. Perhaps, upon their return, they took measures to hide the gambling from the do-gooders of the city. One theory is that the regular gamblers were given free memberships in the "club," and that this may have curbed police and their informants from checking out the upstairs gambling. 

Location of the Ingersol Club
1653 Larimer Street
Sanborn map
Two story "S" (store)

(Click image to enlarge)

Ingersol Club
(shaded yellow)
Larimer Street
Other points of interest
Denver Public Library Digital Collection

(Click image to enlarge)

      The above photograph shows some Soapy related points of interests. From left to right, we have The Arcade and The Exchange, two of Denver's most infamous saloon and gambling dens. Numerous shootings took place in these buildings. Soapy was involved in several of them, including the murder of gambler Cliff Sparks. The Ingersol Club, and two buildings away is the First National Bank on Larimer and Seventeenth Streets. This was Soapy's bank. It is also the same bank that members of Butch Cassidy's "Hole-In-The-Wall" gang robbed in 1889. Across the street from the bank is the Chever Block, where Soapy had an office. At the next block is the Windsor Hotel, home to some of the Soap Gang.    

Ingersol Club
(shaded yellow)
Close-up
Denver Public Library Digital Collection

(Click image to enlarge)

Sources:

[1] Rocky Mountain News, 07/28/1893, p. 3.

[2] Rocky Mountain News, 11/11/1893, p. 3.

[3] "Correspondence of a Crook." Alaska-Yukon Magazine (January 1908), Jones, Robert, p. 380

[4] Ltr fr Mary E. Smith to Jefferson R. Smith II, July (day unknown), 1896, item 13, author’s col.

[5] Rocky Mountain News, 03/21/1893, p. 4.

Artifact #13: June 14, 2010
Henry Edwards letter: May 29, 2011 

Ingersol Club: pages 271, 417.

"All this about “Soapy” Smith being alive, as wired to the newspapers from San Diego, and that he is in San Diego, is moonshine, said Arch Bodine, who has a restaurant at 1327 Fifteenth Street. Bodine was in Skagway last October [sic] when “Soapy” was killed, and did not leave for several months afterwards. I was near him when he was shot, and I helped to put him in the wagon. After he was carried from the wharf to the morgue, he lay there for two days under a sheet, and hundreds of people saw him. There are lots of men in the west who look like “Soapy,” but just paste it in your hat that Smith is as dead as a doornail. They didn’t take any chances on his coming back to life in Skagway."

— Arch Bodine, Alias Soapy Smith, p. 587.

JANUARY 11

1770: The first shipment of rhubarb is sent to the U.S. from London England.

1805: The Michigan Territory is created.

1815: U.S. General Andrew Jackson achieves victory at the Battle of New Orleans. The War of 1812 officially ended on December 24, 1814, with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, however, the news of the signing did not reach British troops in time to prevent their attack on New Orleans.

1861: Alabama secedes from the Union.

1876: Wells Fargo offers an $800 reward for the arrest of George Little, alias “Dick Fellows,” and “Richard Perkins.” 1878: In New York, Alexander Campbell starts implementing his idea of delivering milk in glass bottles.

1893: Soap Gang member John “Rev.” Bowers is fined $10 for his assault on Deputy Sheriff Hanson in Denver, Colorado.