Bit of History - February 5, 2025

In 1886, if you used colorful language in a letter, you could find yourself in legal hot water.  J. M. Stanley, a Ridgeway merchant, consigned a shipment of game and another shipment of hazel nuts to Wheeler & Doniphan, merchants in St. Joseph.  There were some disagreement about the amount due for these shipments and Mr. Stanley “took occasion to ventilate his sentiments in a letter to the commission men in language less elegant than forcible and less grammatical than expressive.”  The men at Wheeler & Doniphan took offense at this and “swore out a warrant” before a United States commissioner named Stewart to charge J. M. Stanley with sending “obscene” matter through the mails.  

Deputy Marshall James Swallow then travelled to Ridgeway to arrest Mr. Stanley and bring him back to be arraigned.  Dr. Charles W. Robertson, also from Ridgeway, provided the bond of $500 (According to the inflation calculator at officialdata.org, this would be $16,787.50 today.)  (St. Joseph Gazette, 1/14/1886)

Funny note The first article that I found for this news referred to the charge as being for “passing obscure literature through the mail”.  I was puzzled about what could have been said that was so mysterious as to be illegal.  “The affair has cause no little excitement and comment among the citizens of Ridgeway where Stanley resides.” (St. Joseph News Press, 1/13/1886)

Mr. Stanley travelled to Kansas City in April 1886 with Dr. Robertson where he pled guilty to the charge.  He paid a fine of $100 and was released.  (Kansas City Times, 5/23/1886).  Sadly, Mr. Stanley took his own life in 1892.  (Ridgeway Journal, 12/29/1892.)

Bit of History - February 22, 2023

In Ridgeway’s early days, there was no organized sports such as baseball, basketball, or football.  There were local athletic contests, though, such as team pulling contests and tug of war, running, and jumping, wrestling, square pulling (where men would sit down and pull against each other) and horse pulling (man vs. horse – still trying to figure out how that worked).  The most common sport was sprinting and every town of any size had its champion.  Ridgeway’s own J. W. Leazenby could run 100 yards in 10.5 seconds in 1885.  In 1886, he was able to shave that time down to 10 seconds with wearing the “Frazier Spiked Shoe”.

Sprinters were usually backed by a group of betters and found their races either by following state and county fairs or advertising a challenge in the local paper.  Leazenby’s first race was in 1885 against Claud Blackburn of Bethany. Leazenby won that race and all but one of the 30-40 races he ran.  He lost only one race in which his backers bet that he could win racing barefoot against a baseball player.  He got so famous and his backers won so many bets that he had to enter races under an assumed name or he would be refused.  His last race was in Des Moines, IA.  He won in a two-mile race, a distance he’d never run before, but said “I became convinced there that the game was crooked and what was wanted was to make victims of the backers…Never since that day have I had a running shoe on.  You can say, too, that I believe commercialism will kill any amateur sport, in the end.”  Leazenby went on to become a successful businessman in Ridgeway, owning or investing in several local businesses, including the New Ridgeway Hotel.  He also served as a state representative and was an avid fox hunter and active in the Northwest Missouri Fox Hunters Association.  (St. Joseph News-Press, Mar 20, 1938.)