From the studios of KOP in Detroit, it's C.M. Branch

As some of you know, Clarence Milo (Miles) Branch (left, in an undated early photo) was already 31 years old by the time he arrived in Oklahoma City and met Blanche Vermillion. So I've often been curious about what he did during his early adulthood. One thing that Blanche always told me was that he was a police dispatcher in Detroit, something that never sounded particularly remarkable to me. But in recent years I've read up and discovered that if he worked with radio in Detroit before 1928, he was a kind of pioneer, as the Detroit police were the first to use radio to communicate with police cars (which were themselves a Detroit police innovation).

How did Miles get there? My time line for his early life is a little spotty. His sister Sarah told me that he left home when he was 16 after a dispute with his father, who denied him the use of the family buggy to go on a date. Just what he did for the next five years is uncertain, but we know that he was in the Navy in 1918-19, when he was 21. He joined just as World War I was ending, and Blanche always said that he was on a ship headed for Europe that turned around when the armistice was signed.

While he was in the Navy, Miles attended the Aircraft Radio School on the campus of Harvard University. World War I, of course, was the beginning of aviation in warfare, and putting radios aboard planes would be the next big advance. An online history of naval aviation says that the curriculum for aircraft radio electricians included "code work, semaphore and blinker study, gunnery, and laboratory work."

It's conceivable that Miles might have learned something about radio or electricity before the navy, but my guess is that his naval experience led him to his career as an electrician.

The next I know of Miles is in the 1920 census, when he was working in a rubber factory in Akron, Ohio. It must have been after that he went to Detroit.

He was not alone. Many people, including some of his siblings and cousins, left the coal mines of central Pennsylvania for industrial jobs in places like Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Ohio, and especially Detroit. With the auto industry exploding in the 1920s, I imagine Detroit to have been something like Silicon Valley has been in the last few years--a place brimming with money, energy, and the excitement of new technology.

While I have not found any written sources that mention Miles's involvement with the Detroit police, their early experience with radio is well documented. This article by Kenneth Dobson from the Detroit News describes how the city's police department was an early adopter of technology.

In 1909, for example, the Detroit police acquired their first patrol car, a Packard that the commissioner bought himself, as the city fathers were reluctant to fund such a radical idea. The idea caught on, especially as criminals increasingly had access to cars of their own. Police officers would wait at heated telephone booths around the city for calls from a dispatcher at police headquarters, then jump in their cars to pursue as many as five or six assignments at a time.

The system was far from perfect, needless to say, and radio provided some solutions. Writes Dobson:

In 1921, Detroit Police Commissioner William P. Rutledge began experimenting with patrol vehicles equipped with radios. Rutledge was "convinced that the automobile had given the criminal an advantage in speed that could not be overcome by police cars controlled by telephone. Gangsters could make their getaway while the booth patrol was still awaiting a telephone call.

Rutledge had a radio transmitter installed at police headquarters and in 1922 the Federal Radio Commission, the forerunner of the Federal Communications Commission, issued Detroit the first provisional commercial radio license, KOP.

But there were obstacles to be overcome before the radios could be made mobile. The vacuum tubes, which comprised the internal workings of the radio receiver, were fragile and required extensive cushioning. The electrical systems of the automobiles were not powerful enough to operate the radios, so six-volt batteries had to be mounted on the running boards. The battery was only good for four hours before it had to be replaced.

Other obstacles were less technical but just as formidable. Several times the Federal Radio Commission refused to renew the department's radio license because it failed to live up to requirements. One of these insisted that KOP broadcast "entertainment during regular hours, with police calls interspersed as required."

After one such refusal to renew , Commissioner Rutledge wryly asked: "Do we have to play a violin solo before we dispatch the police to catch a criminal?"

But the kinks got worked out, and by 1924 the Detroit News was calling for more radio-dispatched cars:

"The motor car has been a big asset to criminals, because it permitted a quick getaway. But the radio is swifter than any motor vehicle ever invented. By its use a well equipped police department can bar every city exit as soon as a description of the suspects can be obtained.... The police department now has three radio equipped flyers. It should have more. The motorized bandits would soon learn that Detroit had become a trap for them and they would move on to some town with less modern ideas."

A complete radio-dispatched patrol program was rolled out in April 1928. It was not until 1933, though, that another department, in Bayonne, New Jersey, installed the first two-way radio communication between dispatchers and patrol cars.

So where did Miles Branch (he probably called himself Clarence at the time, actually) figure into all this? I don't know. I imagine that he found his way to Detroit like so many others seeking work in the economic boom there and discovered a use for his background in radio. Perhaps there are records somewhere in Detroit that could confirm his employment with the department, but I haven't had time to go down that road yet. Whatever his involvement, it must have ended before or soon after the full-scale radio car program began in April 1928. By November of that year, he was in Oklahoma City and had married Blanche.

Below: Police radio operator B.D. Fitzgerald at the controls of the Detroit police radio dispatch equipment in 1925. Did Miles Branch sit at the same desk?

Next Time You're in Staindrop . . .

. . . stop and pay your respects at the graves of George and Sarah Branch, our English forebears. (Click on the photo to enlarge.)They are the parents of Lancelot Branch, who emigrated to America in 1867 and began our line. Staindrop is a village in Durham in the north of England; a fourth cousin in England found this stone in the churchyard a couple of years ago and kindly sent me a copy.

The inscription reads:
"IN
MEMORY OF
GEORGE BRANCH,
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE SEP. 7, 1880
AGED 87 YEARS,
ALSO OF SARAH HIS WIFE
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE OCT. 31, 1874
AGED 77 YEARS.
WE ALL FADE AS A LEAFE."

The quote at the end is from the book of Isaiah--kind of poignant for a couple who both died in the general vicinity of autumn.

When Cal Went to War

Here's something I found a while back and have been meaning to post: it's Cal Jones's World War I draft registration card. (Click to enlarge.) No great surprises--I did learn what he was doing for a living in 1917, as he's listed as an oil pumper with a company called Corbin and Bradstreet (which I Googled to no avail). He enlisted on June 5, 1917, two months after the U.S. entered the war. For some reason, he (or whoever filled out the form) put down the wrong birth year--he was born in 1895, not 1896. But his age is listed correctly as 21.

I found this in an archive at Ancestry.com while I was taking advantage of a free trial there. Pretty cool. I'll try to post more documents and photos as I think of it; it's hard to find time for the longer, more encyclopedic entries, but I do like to put something up here from time to time.

Clara's Cotton Buyer

After Clara Paxton's mother and father died, she lived with a succession of relatives: her grandmother in Independence, Missouri, her uncle Charley and aunt Sue Overholser in Valley Falls, Kansas, and her uncle Will and aunt Ella Overholser in Oklahoma City. She lived with the Overholsers in the 1918-1919 school year, when she seems to have been taking courses at Central High School--probably to get some college preparation that her high school in Valley Falls had not provided. In 1919-20 she was at Hollins College in Virginia with Mary Overholser, and in 1920-21 she was back in Oklahoma City and earning her teaching certificate from what is now the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond. Because the Overholsers were part of what passed for society in Oklahoma City in those days (1918-1921), Clara turned up in the newspaper from time to time: hosting a lunch for friends at the Skirvin Plaza Hotel with her cousin Mary Overholser, attending a party here and there. On Sundays, the Oklahoman's society page would feature photos of pretty and prominent young women, apparently just so everyone would know who was who.

On September 26, 1920, it was Clara's turn (see clipping at left--click to make it larger). She was one of five women included that week, and the caption began "Two ambitious students, two charming brides, and an interesting young traveler in foreign lands. Upper left--Miss Clara Paxton, niece of Mr. and Mrs. Will L. Overholser, who is striving for a degree at the Central State normal at Edmond. . . . "



















Two days after the picture appeared, a Mr. Sidney Caldwell in Duncan, Oklahoma, wrote her a letter (above--click on the pages to make them bigger). Mr. Caldwell had wisely ruled out the two brides and evidently preferred Clara to the interesting young traveler, who had just returned from Germany, and the other ambitious student, an undergrad at Cornell (unless of course he wrote to them, too.) Here's the letter in its entirety:

Duncan Okla.
Sept. 28--1920
Miss Clara Paxton
Centeral State Normal

My Dear Miss Paxton, I thought I would write you a little love letter to let you know I love you very much. I saw your picture in the Daily Oklahoman Sunday. It said that the college girls loved to receive letters from other towns and I thought I would write you a small letter to let you know I love you. If you will write me I will answer your letters.
I think you are the most beautiful girl in the world, and I don't know what you think about me. If you will send me a picture of your self, and I will send you a picture of myself. If you love cotton buyers that get a salary of $5000 a year you had better tie into me. I'm 19 and a little bit over and you look in the picture about the same age.
Don't forget to write, I must close as a wagon load of cotton is on the street.
Yours truly,
Sidney Caldwell
P.S. Be sure and write me.

I don't know what Clara thought about the letter; my guess is that she kept it because she thought it was funny (and of course a little flattering). What Mr. Caldwell had no way of knowing was that 86 years later, Clara's descendants could use the Internet to do a little fact checking on him. I found him in the 1920 census, and there seems to be some truth--well, truthiness--to what he told Clara. His FATHER is listed as a cotton buyer, but at the time of the census (January 1920), Sidney was still in high school. So perhaps he'd joined his father in business by September of that year.

So what do you think? Did Clara choose the right guy? Maybe if she'd gone with Sidney, we'd all be in the tall cotton now.

Why We're Not Razorbacks, Part III

So now you've read Cal Jones's story about his father's departure from Arkansas, and his sister Tommy's response disputing some of the details. Now, we'll look at what the Arkansas justice system had to say. Like Bill Clinton and Scooter Libby, Silas appears to have gotten himself in bigger trouble over perjury than whatever he might have done in the first place.

A few years ago, I wrote to the Washington County Courthouse in Fayetteville asking for any records they might have involving Silas Matthew Jones. They came up with one thing: a perjury indictment against Silas from November 6, 1903. The story told in the indictment doesn't directly address the killing of the dog at all, but rather some events in its aftermath.

The events in question—apparently an argument over the killing of the dog—took place on July 19, 1903. According to the sworn testimony of H.L. Robbins—that's Zode Robbins, the neighbor whose dog Silas killed—Silas "made use of violent abusive profane and insulting language towards and about one Della Carter and in her presence and hearing which language in its common acceptation was calculated to arouse to anger the said Della Carter and cause a breach of the peace." The exact words Silas is alleged to have said to Mrs. Carter? "You are a liar. I've got a rock for you. I'll hit you as quick as I would the dog."

The indictment, a hand-written document, says that four days later, Silas was in court having been charged with breach of peace. At that proceeding, under oath, he denied saying those words. The grand jury, apparently relying on the word of witnesses (more on that in a minute), decided that "in truth and fact" Silas did make that statement and that his testimony was "feloniously, willfully and corruptly false."

The cover of the indictment names the case ("State of Arkansas vs. S. M. Jones") and identifies the grand jury foreman and the witnesses. Besides Zode Robbins, the witnesses were Della Carter herself, Arizona Largent, J. Cherry, and Charlie Tunstill. I don't know how Tunstill fits in, but Cherry is identified as the justice of the peace at the original proceeding. As for the others, here's where it gets interesting.

In looking at some genealogy sources, I found out that Arizona Largent was the former Arizona Masters—not a desert golf tournament but a woman in Arkansas. She was the mother of Zode Robbins and Della Carter, who were half-siblings.

But the really funny thing is that Zode was a second cousin to Silas's wife Nannie Shumate—something that neither Cal nor Tommy had mentioned. It's possible they didn't know—or didn't remember it sixty years later. It's not a big coincidence; in their town of Durham in the 1900 census, at least a third of the residents appeared to be related to Silas and Nannie. But when Cal described the bad blood between his mother's and father's families, he wasn't kidding!

Was this indictment the paper that Cal remembered the man on the horse reading to his father? Was this what made him disappear out the back door and leave Arkansas for good? Cal says they left in the fall, which would square with the November date of the indictment.

This is all I have on the subject for now. I should say that Silas's grandchildren remember him fondly, and as a good man. The words he said to his neighbor that day—if he said them—might have been in character, or they might have been the meanest thing he ever said. I just hope that the meanest thing I ever said doesn't wind up on record in a courthouse somewhere!

Samuel Paxton, maybe for sure

I recently found this photo (click to enlarge) among pictures and papers that belonged to Clara Paxton Jones, and I believe it is probably her grandfather Samuel Paxton (1834-1903), whose farm in Montrose, Missouri, is pictured here.

The photo was taken at Latour Studio in Joplin, Missouri, where Samuel lived the last few years of his life. There is no identification on it, but the subject's age and the photo's presence in Clara's pictures leads me to believe it is Samuel.

I don't know why, but whenever I look at him I can't stop thinking about Wooly Willy.

UPDATE, 7/22/07: A Paxton cousin remembers having a copy of this photo and confirms that it is in fact Samuel Paxton. Thanks, cousin!

Why We're Not Razorbacks, Part II

In my last post I presented Cal Jones's report on why and how his family left Arkansas. This time, here's some of his sister Tommy's response, from a letter to Cal written just a few days later. Cal and Tommy were the second and third children, respectively, of Silas and Nannie Jones. As you'll see, her account differs in some particulars--it's kind of a hillbilly "Rashomon."

Tommy writes:

Now! While we are correcting and reminiscing let me correct you! First, I don't know who told you that I said Dad ran away from Ark. I did not! Them Zode Robbins' dogs did not attack Dad, but Zode had "sicked 'em" on to a young heifer that Dad had and they tore her to pieces. (I don't remember if she died.) But anyway they had a preliminary hearing (Dad killed the dog) and old Zode and Dad's own cousin Ambrose Clark swore to a bunch of lies so Dad felt that he couldn't get a fair trial and he took out. Mamma told me this a few years ago. But I remember when Dad had some of us kids at Grandma Shumate's one night and someone came to the front door and told Uncle George something and Dad grabbed us kids and we left by the back door and ran through the orchard for home and Dad left immediately. Later he came back and I saw him go into the barn and told Mamma, so she went to the barn and came back and said I was mistaken. I was just old enough to know there was something wrong. And I remember when he met us at a campfire just out of Westville, and somewhere in my things which are stored I have the little leather bag which Grandpa Jones gave him the gold in.

The biggest difference in their accounts is why Silas killed the dog--was it self-defense or retaliation? Tommy also seems to have known more about the legal proceedings, which we'll get to in the next installment.