The automaton shell and pea game

wedish automaton of the shell and pea game. Good friend and member of Friends of Bad Man Soapy Smith, Whit "Pop" Haydn, found this amazing contraption on Youtube. It even cheats!

AUGUST 7

1782: George Washington creats the Order of the Purple Heart.

1789: The U.S. War Department is established by the U.S. Congress.

1870: During the last eleven days ten settlers are reported killed in Indian raids in Arizona Territory.

1880: The Battle of Rattlesnake Springs, Texas takes place. Black soldiers of the Tenth US Cavalry and the Twenty-fourth US Infantry fight the Apache leader Victorio who had left the Mescalero Reservation near Fort Stanton, New Mexico Territory with 125 to 150 followers. They intended either to return to their former reservation or to find refuge in the Guadalupe Mountains on the Texas-New Mexico Territory border. Twice defeated, hungry, and denied access to waterholes, Victorio abandoned his efforts and fled across the Rio Grande. On October 15 Mexican forces killed him in the Tres Castillos Mountains. Victorio's death ended the Indian threat to West Texas.

1880: Soapy Smith registers at the Hotel Granite in Central City, Colorado.

1881: Jesse and Frank James, Charles Ford, Wood and Clarence Hite, and Dick Liddell, stop a train in Missouri, near Blue Cut, outside Glendale, by piling large timbers across the track. This is Jesse James' last robbery which netted $1,500.

1885: Captain Wirt Davis reports five Apaches slain and fifteen captured by soldiers in the Sierra Madres, Sonora, Mexico.

1888: Theophilus Van Kannel receives a patent for the revolving door.

1891: The outlaw, Sundance Kid is arrested in Canada for cruelty to animals. The charge is dismissed.

1896: Soap Gang members, John Bowers and “Red” Gibson are arrested for vagrancy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The police confiscate their tools of the trade which include false whiskers, saps, and revolvers.

Soapy Smith represented again by the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park

"Suckered by Soapy"
The National Park Service parade entry
(photo by Thomas Pickerel)

(Click image to enlarge)

kagway resident photographer, Thomas Pickerel set up his camera on Broadway and 8th to get some great long-range shots of the July 4 parade. He shared them on Facebook and was kind enough to send me larger versions. Thank you Thomas!

This year's parade theme was "volunteerism," and once again the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park was able to work Soapy Smith into their parade entry. When word of the Spanish-American War reached Skagway, Soapy jumped for the cause. There is little doubt that he was a very patriotic man, but there was also big money to be made thanks to President McKinley's offer to financially support military militias that prepared to fight. Original documents and minutes sent to President McKinley and Governor Brady of Alaska pertaining to the newly created Skaguay Military Company clearly show that Soapy was more than willing to create, arm, train, and lead a government authorized company of soldiers, under his command of course. A story created in a Vancouver newspaper in May 1898 told the story of how volunteers were being robbed of their money, and even their clothing, in a fake physical examination set up by Soapy and the gang. Although no actual victims ever came forward with the same story of being robbed, Soapy continued to drill and parade the Company until July 4, 1898. The robbery story was obviously made up but nearly all the Soapy biographers repeated the story as if true. Although my book, Alias Soapy Smith, clearly shows the story the work of fiction, the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park used it as the story for their float. I don't mind it, the float concept was humorous and it seemed to work out well. I am sort of surprised that they would cater to fiction when they are so strict about their non-fiction status elsewhere.

Victims of Soapy's fake examination exit without their clothes.
(photo by Thomas Pickerel)

(Click image to enlarge)

The two photographs above show the rear of the Park Service entry as it turns onto Broadway. They are enough to see that the front portion of the float has Soapy signing up fully clothed volunteers to the Skaguay Military Company. The volunteers then enter the tent for their examination, and come out the back side of the tent in their long-johns, representing the robbery of their possessions. I would have loved to have seen it in person.

Signs on the float and carried by Park employees dressed in period garb, read, "STAND WITH US OR AGAINST US," SOAPY PUTS THE TEARS IN VOLUNTEERS," "SUCKERED BY SOAPY," and "UNCLE SOAPY WANTS YOUR MONEY."     

Thomas Pickerel's blog: Skagwaydelta








Last year's entry by the Park Service
July 7, 2011 

Skaguay Military Company: page 486-505.

JULY 6

1699: Pirate, Captain William Kidd, is captured in Boston, Massachusetts and deported back to England.

1777: British forces capture Fort Ticonderoga during the American Revolution.

1854: The Republican Party holds its first convention in Jackson, Mississippi.

1858: Lyman Blake patents the shoe manufacturing machine.

1863: John Bozeman leaves Fort Laramie in present day Wyoming to blaze a trail to the Yellowstone Valley in what will be named the Bozeman Trail.

1869: Nine Indians are killed and ten wounded by cavalry as reported by Lieutenant McCleave in Arizona Territory.

1876: Captain McCaskey of the 20th Infantry receives a communiqué at Fort Abraham Lincoln, Dakota Territory from General Terry at 2:00 a.m. He summons officers to inform 27 widows. Elizabeth Custer is wakened at 7 a.m. with the news of the deaths of her husband, her brother-in-laws Tom Custer, Boston Custer, and James Calloway, and her nephew Henry Armstrong Reed. Elizabeth then accompanies an officer as he visits 25 other widows.

1885: Louis Pasteur successfully tests his anti-rabies vaccine. The child used in the test later becomes the director of the Pasteur Institute.

1886: The Academy of Music in Denver, Colorado burns down. In addition, the theater, Kinneavy's Saloon (Soapy’s friend), the St. Cloud restaurant, two stores and the Western union office were destroyed. Next door, the hotel Doc Holliday was living in, the Metropolitan, was spared as were the Board of Trade saloon, a warehouse, the German National Bank and Charpiot's restaurant suffered a scorching loss of windows from the heat.

JULY 4

1776: The Declaration of Independence, prepared by Thomas Jefferson, is approved and signed by John Hancock, the President of the Continental Congress.

1802: The U.S. Military Academy officially opens at West Point, New York.

1803: The Louisiana Purchase is announced in newspapers. The property is purchased by the U.S. from France for $15 million (or 3 cents an acre). The "Corps of Discovery," led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, begins the exploration of the territory ten months later on May 14, 1804.

1817: Construction begins in New York on the Erie Canal, to connect Lake Erie and the Hudson River.

1845: American writer Henry David Thoreau begins his two-year experiment in simple living at Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts.

1848: In Washington, DC, the cornerstone for the Washington Monument is laid.

1854: Lawman and buffalo hunter Bill Tilghman is born in Ft. Dodge, Iowa.

1855: The first edition of Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman is published in Brooklyn, New York.

1863: The Confederate town of Vicksburg, Massachusetts surrenders to Union General Ulysses S. Grant.

1864: Congress passes the Immigration Act, which allows the railroads, and other companies, to import Chinese laborers to the U.S. due to the shortage created by the Civil War.

1866: The Superintendent of Indian Affairs signs a treaty with the Delaware Indians at their agency in Kansas.

1867: Due to flooding Fort Hays is relocated south of what will become Hays City, Kansas.

1869: In what some believe to be the first rodeo, cowboy Emilne Gardenshire wins the title “champion bronco buster of the plains,” and a new suit in Deer Trail, Colorado Territory.

1870: The first Seminole-Negroes recruited in Texas as U.S. Army scouts by Major Zenas R. Bliss enlisted for 6 months. The organization fought in numerous expeditions against various Indian tribes in Texas. During the Indian Wars, four of the scouts won the Congressional Medal of Honor.

1872: Wild-steer riding is added to the competition at an early rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory.

1874: The 2nd Cavalry and its scouts engage Indians on the Bad Water ranch near the Wind River, Wyoming Territory. Twenty-six Indians are killed and twenty wounded. Four soldiers are killed and six wounded.

1876: Black cowboy Nat Love wins a mustang roping contest and a shooting match in Deadwood, Dakota Territory. In addition to the prize money he is given the alias “Deadwood Dick.”

1878: Outlaw, Billy the Kid and the Regulators have a long-range shootout with rival factions of the Seven Rivers gang at John Chisum's South Spring River ranch in New Mexico Territory. No one is injured.

1880: At an Independence Day horse race in Bisbee, Arizona, George Warren bet his share in the Copper Queen Mine. The horse he bet on lost the race. His share in the mine would later be worth about $20 million dollars.

1881: Virgil Earp becomes the town marshal in Tombstone, Arizona Territory.

1881: The Tuskegee Institute in Alabama opens.

1883: Buffalo Bill Cody presents an early version of his famous Wild West show featuring cowboys, Indians, trick riders, and sharp shooters in North Platte, Nebraska.

1883: Pecos, Texas claims to hold history's first rodeo.

1884: Bullfighting is introduced in America in Dodge City, Kansas.

1884: E. C. Abbott, alias “Teddy Blue,” records that the outfit under the leadership of Granville Stuart, owner of the DHS Ranch, rode to the mouth of the Musselshells and hung Billy Downs and three more at Rocky Point, Montana Territory.

1886: Prescott, Arizona claims to hold history’s first rodeo.

1892: The first double-decked street car service is inaugurated in San Diego, California.

1893: Soapy Smith referees a boxing match in Denver.

1894: After seizing power, Judge Stanford B. Dole declares Hawaii a republic.

1898: Soapy Smith leads the Skaguay Military Company as Captain, in the Independence Day parade, Skagway, Alaska.

War of 1812: 200th anniversary

id you know it is the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812? Yeah, I didn't know either. What do we know about this war? Ok, I don't know that answer either, but I do know that Soapy Smith's grandfather, Dr. Ira Ellis Smith fought in that war so I found this short video which will explain the importance of this anniversary...sort of.

Ira Ellis Smith
August 18, 2011
August 16, 2011
June 26, 2010
September 10, 2009

Ira Ellis Smith: pages 9, 11, 19-20, 594.

MAY 16

1866: The U.S. Congress authorizes the first 5-cent piece to be minted. 

1868: President Andrew Johnson is acquitted by one vote during a Senate impeachment. 

1870: Ten workers on the Kansas Pacific Railroad are killed by Indians in Colorado Territory. 

1888: The first demonstration of recording on a flat disc is demonstrated by Emile Berliner. 

1888: The capitol of Texas is dedicated in Austin. 

1900: Lawman Jesse Tyler leads a posse after cattle rustlers near Thompson, Utah. Believing that they were riding into an Indian camp, Tyler and deputy Sam Jenkins dismount and approach the camp, but the occupants turn out to be a band of rustlers led by Harvey Logan of the Wild Bunch. The lawmen realizing the mistake try to escape but both are shot and killed by Logan. The rest of the posse flees the scene, returning for the bodies of Tyler and Jenkins 2 days later.

Is this Soapy Smith?

Soapy Smith?
price: $500

ack on April 28, 2012 I posted the above portrait by artist Bill Cummings of Soapy Smith and mentioned that there was one minor problem with it and asked if anyone knew what it was? No one responded so I will give the answer.

It's not Soapy Smith...




The artist apparently found one of the sources that list Soap Gang member, William Saportas, in the photograph below, as being Soapy, but it was taken AFTER Soapy had died in the shootout on Juneau Wharf. Yes, Saportas can be confused with looking sort of like Soapy but no contemporary accounts list him as so.

Nine members of the Soap Gang await deportation from Skagway

Even historian Dr. Jane Haigh nearly made this mistake, publishing the face of Saportas on the cover of her book, stating that it was Soapy. Lucky for her I brought this to her attention before it was published but Dr. Haigh could not let go of the similarity, so she wrote in her book in the caption under the photo above that Saportas was "pretending to be Soapy." However, other photographs of Saportas look pretty much like the one above so her conclusion is incorrect.

William Saportas
April 28, 2012
July 2, 2011
May 7, 2011 
April 1, 2010

William Saportas: pages 89, 450, 471-75, 506-07, 516, 532, 566, 572-74, 590.

MAY 15

1602: Cape Cod is discovered by Bartholomew Gosnold. 

1862: The U.S. Congress creates the Department of Agriculture. 

1863: Osage Indian warriors kill Confederate officers at Drum Creek, Kansas. 

1872: The Sante Fe Railroad reaches Wichita, Kansas.

1872: Buffalo Bill Cody tracks and kills four Indians who committed depredations near North Platte, Nebraska. 

1876: “Snowshoe Thompson,” the famed skiing mail carrier of the High Sierras dies. He is Norwegian born, Jon Torsteinson who changed his name to John Thompson and became famous in 1856 when he delivered mail between Placerville, California and Carson City, Nevada on skis in three days carrying a sixty pound sack of mail. He continued the same route for 20-years. 

1880: Three settlers are killed by Apache Indians at Kelly's Ranch, New Mexico Territory. 1882: Doc Holliday is arrested in Denver, Colorado at the request of an Arizona peace officer and charged with the murder of Florentine Cruz. The Governor of Colorado refuses to extradite Holliday to Arizona.

1883: With permission from the Mexican government U.S. troops attack Chato's camp, Sierra Madres, Mexico. 

1895: Soapy and Bascomb are arraigned and charged with assault to kill, John Hughes. Upset, Soapy goes drinking in Denver saloons with gunman and Soap Gang member, Joe Palmer. They were, in the words of the Times, “as jolly as a pair of pirates.” Soapy is arrested twice that day for carrying guns.

Soapy Smith and the Spanish-American War.

Would he have stayed?

MAY 13

1607: Jamestown, Virginia, is settled as a colony of England.
1648: Margaret Jones of Plymouth was found guilty of witchcraft and is sentenced to be hanged by the neck.
1821: The first practical printing press is patented in the U.S. by Samuel Rust.
1846: The U.S. declares that war already existed with Mexico.
1848: Louis C. Blonger, Soapy’s successor in Denver, is born.
1885: First mention of the alias “Soapy” Smith in a newspaper.
1854: The first big American billiards match is held at Malcolm Hall in Syracuse, NY.
1864: The Battle of Resaca commences as Union General Sherman fights towards Atlanta during the American Civil War.
1865: Sergeant Crocker of an all-black Union unit dies at White's Ranch, Texas and is the last recorded death of the Civil War.
1867: Confederate President Jefferson Davis becomes a free man after spending two years in prison for his role in the American Civil War.
1870: An Indian attack on a Kansas Pacific Railroad crew near the town of Kit Carson, Colorado Territory kills eleven and wounds nineteen. 500 head of livestock are driven away.
1873: Ludwig M. Wolf patented the sewing machine lamp holder.
1877: Gunman Wild Bill Longley is arrested in Louisiana and taken to Giddings, Texas where he is tried and sentenced to hang for the murder of Roland Lay.
1880: Thomas Edison tests his experimental electric railway in Menlo Park.
1898: Wild Bunch member, Joe Walker, is killed with another man by a posse seeking cattle rustlers near Thompson, Utah. When the two bodies are brought in, the town of Thompson turns out to cheer, thinking that the other man was Butch Cassidy, but the corpse was that of Johnny Herring, an outlaw who bore resemblance to Butch.

Eat, gamble, drink: Soapy's little paradise in Fairbanks, Alaska

View Larger Map

ast year at this time, May 6, 2011 I came across a picture on Google of the Soapy Smith Pull Tab store in Fairbanks. I posted searches and asked people in Fairbanks if anyone had ever heard of this place but never received a single response. As you can see I found the place. Naturally, it's next door to the Soapy Smith Pioneer Restaurant, which I already knew about. Something told me to check around the restaurant and see if the store was there and sure enough it is. Looking at the Google map, in order you can eat, go next door and gamble, and then continue on to the Mecca Bar and drink.

The Feast: Soapy art by Jeff Smith

The Feast 
A fantasy piece by Jeff Smith

APRIL 23

1789: U.S. President George Washington moved into Franklin House, New York. It was the first executive mansion. 

1856: Westport, Kansas -Free Stater J.N. Mace shoots pro-slavery sheriff Samuel Jones in the back. 

1861: Arkansas troops seized Fort Smith. 

1865: Kansas- a day of fasting and prayer for President Lincoln, assassinated on the 14th takes place on this date by order of the governor.

1872: Charlotte E. Ray became the first black woman lawyer.

1874: Kansas City- after being engaged for nine years, Jesse James & Miss Zee Mimms were married at the house of a friend. 

1875: Kansas- in northwestern Kansas Little Bull and his seventy-five Cheyennes, on their way back to home in the Black Hills, are nearly wiped out by buffalo hunters and a cavalry company out of Fort Wallace. 1885: Denver, Colorado- the town receives its greatest snowfall to date, 23 inches in 24 hours. Just to the west, Idaho Springs received 32 inches. 

1892: At the Republican convention Soapy is elected alternate delegate from the fourth division.

1896: The Vitascope system for projecting movies onto a screen was demonstrated in New York City. 

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(CUT ALONG DOTTED LINE)

ou have a choice! 

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Hey, while you are at it, would you please "Follow" this blog! Links (and even simple directions) are in the right-hand column. Thank you! It means a lot to me.

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Ok boys.. NO ONE picks up Soapy for nuthun!
The election is com'in and we need 'em...

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Smelling Soapy Smith's wife: Sloan's Liniment

Sloan's Liniment

he title of today's post lends a very dangerous task if you were around during Soapy Smith's time and tried to steal a whiff of Mary, his wife. At the very least you would wake up on the ground in some side alley with a sore noggin where Soapy buffaloed you with his revolver barrel. All I really wanted to do was make the point that there is a product on the market today in which the smell will take you back to Soapy's era. It won't actually take you back in time but you will smell a product that has the same odor it did in the late 1890s. You may ask how I know this to be true.

Imitators capitalized on Sloan's lack
of copyright and incorporation.

In the 1970s my parents were into collecting antiques and loved to go to the Antique Trader swap-meet, a big outdoor antique show put on once a year. It was there that my father found and purchased a very old bottle of Sloan's Liniment. When I first smelled the stuff I thought it had gone bad but he said it smelled just the way it did when he was a child. For a time, after his mother passed away, my father lived with Mary Little, his grandmother. She was born Mary Eva Noonan in 1872. Her last name changed to Smith when she married Soapy, and then became Little when she remarried after Soapy was killed in Alaska. It is not known exactly when Mary started using Sloan's Liniment but the grandchildren all remembered the smell as being a part of the household all of their lives. Sloan's for human use began in St. Louis where Mary lived and it appears to have arrived on the scene in the early 1890s so there is a pretty good chance that Soapy had a whiff of the concoction.  The smell was all too familiar with my father.

Shortly after my father had purchased the old bottle of Sloan's, his sister Joy (my aunt) came from New York to California for a family visit. It had been many years since they had seen one another so the house was full of laughter and good times. One evening my father had Joy close her eyes and he pulled out that Sloan's bottle and placed it near her nose. She instantly blurted out the word, "Mammy," which is the name all the grandchildren called Mary. I witnessed Joy's reaction but my father eventually pulled the same stunt on all his siblings and they all recognized the scent. It was at that time that my father learned that Sloan's was still being manufactured and he ordered samples for all his brothers and sisters. That was a common trait with my dad.

The history of Sloan's Liniment is split into two sections, pre and post incorporation. Earl Sawyer Sloan, philanthropist, was born at Zanesfield, Logan County Ohio, September 8, 1848. He was educated in public schools and later studied veterinary medicine, but never practiced. In 1871, a 23-year-old Earl, armed with several bottles of his father's horse liniment, joined with his brother Foreman Sloan in St. Louis, Missouri, where Foreman was engaged in the buying and shipping of horses. While thus engaged he prepared a liniment for disabled animals, and at some point in the brothers' venture the liniment was applied to someone's back, discovering that it relieved human discomfort, as well. Thereafter, the Sloan brothers began selling even more of the liniment advertising it as "good for man and beast." The Sloan liniment formula was in great demand. For about twenty-five years, Earl and his brother peddled their remedy from farm to farm, and also worked the horse fairs and carnivals.

Sloan put out a cookbook in 1901
(Click image to enlarge)

He placed his preparation on the market as "Sloan's Liniment," which became known the world over. Its wide and increasing use placed it in the forefront of similar remedies, a position it continues to hold, and it has had thousands of imitators. In 1903 he organized for its manufacture the Dr. Earl S. Sloan, Inc.

Sources:
John Randolph Smith (my father)
National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, volume # 20
Wikipedia: Earl Sloan

APRIL 12

1861: Confederate forces opened fire on the U.S. garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. Georgia was the fifth state to secede from the Union. 

1898: Soap Gang member Harry Green signs his name as “Jeff Smith” on the register of the Hotel Northern in Seattle.

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