Life in Prison

In May, 1901, 19-year-old Ira Vermillion (left, click on photo to enlarge) walked into the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, where he had been sentenced to spend the rest of “his natural life at hard labor.” That was too bad for him, obviously, but in a way it was good news for a family historian. As far as I know, my ancestors weren’t avid diarists or record-keepers, and so information about them and their daily lives is pretty thin. But for 13 years, prison authorities kept track of all kinds of things about Ira: when he was sick, what work he did, when he misbehaved, with whom he corresponded. The prison file I requested from the National Archives turned out to be a treasure trove not just about Ira’s life in prison, but also about his family in general. Through correspondence records I can see where various family members lived at different times and narrow down death dates for some of them. And in a couple of cases the correspondence confirmed some family relationships I was unsure about. So before I get back to Ira, here is some general advice for family historians: find your black sheep and check his prison record.

If you’ve read the last two posts, you know that Ira was convicted of the murder of Joseph Nemecek. He was sent to Leavenworth because he was tried in federal court—Indian Territory did not have territorial courts. Leavenworth started out as a military prison and was converted to civilian use in 1895. Starting in 1897 and over the next 20 years, a new prison was being constructed with convict labor. Ira was there during much of the time the new prison was being built, and records show that he worked in the stone sawmill, on a construction crew, and briefly—apparently as a punishment—in the brickyard.

When he was received at the prison on May 11, he was examined by doctors who took a very detailed inventory of his appearance, any distinguishing marks, and his health. We learn from the forms they filled out that he was 5 foot-5, 132 pounds, had medium chestnut hair, violet blue eyes, and a medium fair complexion. He could read and write, identified himself as a Baptist, and acknowledged that he chewed tobacco, drank, and smoked.

(At left: a prison dorm at Leavenworth around 1910. Click on photo to enlarge.) His smoking would be the cause of the little trouble that he got into in prison. The first violation for which he was written up—in October 1901, was for “having a box of matches and cigarettes in his possession.” A more serious offense—making cigarettes—actually caused him to lose nine days “good time.” (Although he was serving a life sentence at the time, the prison still kept track of behavior in terms of days that could be reduced from his sentence. Typically, an inmate could be released after serving two-thirds of his term plus any days he had “lost” for misbehavior.) But mostly, Ira was written up for small offenses: “talking in ranks,” “foolishness on stairway,” “refusing bread crusts and holding hand up for more bread,” “skylarking and talking so that they could be heard from one end of the cellhouse to the other while count was being taken.”

(At left: Prisoners marching to dinner at Leavenworth in 1910. If Ira’s in that picture, he’s probably talking. Or maybe skylarking. Click photo to enlarge.)

The records also tell us something about Ira's health during this time, most notably that he had tuberculosis in 1908 and 1909 and was frequently put on "special mess" because of his condition. I don't know a lot about TB and its treatment at the time, but the fact that he survived seems somewhat remarkable, and a bit ironic. His brother Walter, a father of two living in Indian Territory, had died of the disease in 1907--is it possible that Ira survived because of the superior medical care he received in prison?

The list of letters sent and received shows that Ira did not ever go more than a month without news from home, most often from his father, Wash, who wrote to him nearly 200 times. His sister Cora also wrote frequently. Other letters came from his brother John, his aunt Jane Moore (his late mother's sister) in Aurora, Missouri, and his aunt Mary Burns (his father's sister) in Wyoming.

It's kind of touching to me that after Ira's brother Walter died in 1907, his widow, Mollie, wrote to him about twice a year. Mollie, you'll remember from the first post, was related to Joseph Nemecek, the victim of Ira's crime. But I imagine she felt a sense of familial duty to keep in touch with Ira on her late husband's behalf (though Walter himself had been none too good about writing).

The return addresses on letters from his father reveal approximately when Wash returned to Oklahoma from the state of Washington (1906), when he married again (1911), and when he moved to Oklahoma City, where Blanche Branch said he owned a furniture store (1912). Wash's second wife, whom he had married in 1894, must have died some time around 1903, as that is the last time there was a letter to or from her. [UPDATE, 3/24/09: Turns out I was wrong about this. Despite the lack of correspondence, Susan was still alive--and still married to Wash, as of the 1910 census. I had assumed that their marriage ended when she died, but I've seen online sources that say she didn't die until 1917. More on that in a later post.] Once Wash married Carey in 1911, she wrote to Ira at least once a month. She also wrote at least once on Ira's behalf. On November 30, 1912, she wrote to the warden to ask if, as Ira's pardon attorney had told her, Ira was due to be released right away. "You will pardon us for jumping at the idea—as a drowning man would cling to a straw," she wrote. (It turned out that the attorney was mistaken. He still had nearly two years to go.)

The prison file doesn’t include an account of how and why, but in 1909, President William Howard Taft commuted Ira’s sentence from life to 20 years. (At left: the commutation certificate with Taft’s signature.) I read up and discovered that Taft was unusually generous with pardons and commutations. Ira’s commutation came just a few months after Taft became president—I wonder if his attorney had tried the previous president, Teddy Roosevelt?

Once the sentence was commuted, Ira had every incentive to keep his nose clean, and except for ticking off a guard now and then, he seems to have done so. After working in all sorts of jobs, in 1912 he finally settled into a job at the corral which seems to have suited him, as he kept it for the rest of his term. (The Vermillions may have run a farm, but they seem to have had a lot of cowboy in them. And Ira's brother Walter was a horse trader.)

Near the end of his term, those nine days good time he had lost back in 1905 for making cigarettes must have been haunting him, for in July 1914, the month before he was to be released, the warden wrote to the U.S. attorney general on Ira's behalf. "Vermillion has a splendid record. He has not been reported for any offense whatsoever for more than nine years and his influence upon other prisoners is decidedly good. I respectfully recommend that the nine days lost commutation be restored to him in order that he may be released August 31, 1914."

The request was granted, and Ira was released after more than 13 years in jail.

Next post: what little I know of Ira's last fifty years.

The Vermillion Murder Trial

(At left, the bridge over Walnut Creek, scene of the murder of Joseph Nemecek, in September 1900.)

In September 1900, 18-year-old Ira “Pete” Vermillion was bound over without bail for the murder of Joseph Nemecek. I’ve found no indication that he was released any time before the trial began in March 1901, so he presumably spent six months in jail waiting for his day in court.

Because the crime took place in Indian Territory, the federal court sitting at Purcell had jurisdiction. Indian Territory had something of a reputation for lawlessness, and the judge’s instructions to the grand jury addressed this in a way that a modern defense lawyer might see as prejudicial. According to the Purcell Register, the judge remarked that “there seems to be in the territory a lawless element, the chief education of which consists in knowing how to carry pistols and to discharge them. The greater number of such people are hanged, said he, the greater would be the number of lives saved.”

Jury selection in the case began on March 19 and was complete by the next day. The trial itself took just two and a half days. Ira had entered a plea of not guilty, his lawyer arguing that all the evidence against him was circumstantial.

Indeed it was, but there was plenty of it. He had been seen in town—drunk and trying to rope people with his lariat—just before the crime took place. And he was last seen heading south toward the scene of the crime. When he was found in a drunken stupor not long after the crime and not far away, he was missing a shoe, which was found in his stirrup nearby. That shoe had a piece missing from its heel, and a piece found at the crime scene was a perfect match.

The case attracted more than local attention: the Dallas Morning News ran three short articles on the trial, noting that "the peculiar circumstances surrounding the case make it especially interesting."

The jury didn’t take long: they returned a guilty verdict, but decided that the crime did not merit capital punishment. Ira was sentenced to life in prison. “The prisoner and his relatives received the verdict very calmly,” wrote the Register, “though it was a severe blow to them, especially to the parents, who stood by their boy during his time of trial.”

And surely standing by their boy had a cost for the family in the community. By the time Ira entered the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth in May, his father Wash, his stepmother Susan, and his brothers and sister were living in the state of Washington. They may have been planning the move anyway, but the timing makes me wonder if they left out of shame.

Next post: Ira’s years in Leavenworth.

What Ira Did

“On September 15 1900 I became intoxicated and while in that condition I threw my lasso in a spirit of mischif dragging Joseph Nenecles [sic] from the buggy in which he was riding and he was dragged 250 yards receiving injuries from which he died Can give no reason for the crime except drunkeness”

So wrote Ira Monroe Vermillion (above, as seen in his prison mugshot; click on photo to enlarge) around 1910 when he was applying for “trusty prisoner” status at the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. He had spent all his adult life in prison as a result of his reckless action, which killed a Czech farmer named Joseph Nemecek. (The spelling error must have been that of the clerk who typed up Ira’s application—surely Ira knew his victim’s name well enough.) In fact, he had been sentenced to life in prison for the crime, but President William Howard Taft commuted his sentence to 20 years in 1909.

I’m going to spend this and perhaps one or two more posts telling you what I’ve learned about Ira, his crime, and his punishment, largely from two useful sources: newspaper accounts reprinted in a volume of family history by a member of the Nemecek family, and Ira’s inmate file from Leavenworth, which I ordered this fall.

First off, though, who was Ira to us? He was Blanche Vermillion Branch’s uncle, a brother to her father Walter. He was the middle of five children born to John Washington (Wash) Vermillion and Martha Burrow. He was born in Lawrence County, Missouri, where both his parents had grown up. When he was still a boy—some time around 1885—his mother died, and around 1889 his father moved the family to the vicinity of Wayne, Indian Territory, and raised his children on a farm there.

(At left is a picture of Wash and his five children; they're not labeled individually, but my guess is that Walter, the oldest, is at far left, Will, the second oldest, is at far right, Ira, the third child, is seated on his father's left, and John, the fourth, is standing behind Ira. Cora, the youngest, is easy enough to spot. Click on photo to enlarge.)

The victim, too, was connected to our family. Joseph Nemecek, who also lived in the Wayne area, was the father of, among others, Andrew and James Nemecek, who each married sisters of Mollie Jicha, Blanche Vermillion’s mother. Before Nemecek’s murder, all these families were apparently on good terms, and Andrew Nemecek was even boarding with the Vermillion family when the crime took place. The family connection would later be a source of pain for Blanche, who grew up with the knowledge that her uncle had killed the grandfather of many of her closest cousins. She rarely if ever spoke about this until late in her life, and even then it was difficult for her—even though it all happened before she was born. I learned from Ira’s prison file that Blanche’s mother Mollie—whose brothers-in-law were sons of the victim—was one of Ira’s frequent correspondents in prison after her husband and Ira’s brother died in 1907.

I can't tell you too much more in terms of setting the stage for what happened. Just imagine Ira, who was nearing his 19th birthday and working as a "farm laborer" according to the census taken a few months earlier. And imagine Joseph Nemecek, a 64-year-old immigrant from Czechoslavakia and the father of eight sons, working a farm in Indian Territory.

(At left, the Vermillion boys a few years later. From left to right: John, Will, and Ira. Click on photo to enlarge.)

On the Saturday afternoon when the murder took place, Ira (who was actually known as Pete, apparently) was seen by several people in downtown Purcell, eight miles north of Wayne. As the Purcell Register put it, "he gave evidence of being strongly under the influence of liquor," and he was "seen swinging his lariat rope quite freely and had struck one man on the head in throwing the rope at him." Meanwhile, Joseph Nemecek was returning home from a visit to his oldest son, Anthon, and his wife and children, who lived on a farm across the river from Purcell near Lexington.

There were no eyewitnesses to exactly what happened next, but around six o'clock, word reached Purcell that a body had been found in Walnut Creek, below the bridge on the road that ran between Purcell and Wayne. Someone recognized the body as being Joseph Nemecek's, and his wagon and mules were found nearby. A coroner's jury determined from looking at the scene and the injuries to the body that Nemecek had been caught by a rope around his right wrist, pulled from his wagon, and dragged for some distance near and on the bridge. The body appeared to have been thrown from the bridge into the creek.

When the body was discovered, a pair of deputies went looking for the perpetrator; they soon found Ira Vermillion asleep by the side of the road, in a "drunken stupor" and missing a shoe. He claimed not to remember what had happened. He was taken to jail in Purcell.

Andrew Nemecek, Joseph's 24-year-old son, got the news about his father by telegram when he was sitting at the supper table of Ira's father and stepmother, where he was a boarder. He and Ira's father Wash jumped into a wagon together and reached the scene at about the time the deputies found Ira.

In reporting on the crime the next week, the Purcell Register said that Wash Vermillion was "well known as an honorable, upright gentleman" and that "the best of feeling existed between the two families." Indeed, no motive besides drunken mischief seems to have been raised during the trial.

In my next post, I'll talk about Ira's trial the following spring.

Did Henry Overholser steal the seal?

A cousin writes: "Seems there is some story about an Overholser stealing the state charter from Guthrie and moving it (thus the capital) to OKC. You got anything on that?"

My reply: Hmmm, I've never heard anything about an Overholser connection to this story, but Guthrie residents have long maintained that Gov. Haskell "stole" the state seal from the capitol in Guthrie in the dark of night and took it to OKC. But from what I can make out from various sources, the story is exaggerated at best. There was an election to determine whether OKC or Guthrie should be the capital in June of 1910, and OKC won. Gov. Haskell sent his secretary for the seal that night, but the clerk there handed it over willingly. The election and the move were questionable legally, since an earlier law said that the capital could not be moved until 1913, but the courts ruled in OKC's favor.

This Tulsa World story sums it up pretty well.

I'm sure that Henry Overholser was a proponent of moving the capital, as it would have been good for his real estate interests. But there's nothing to suggest that he took the law (or the seal!) into his own hands. . . .

Happy 100th, Oklahoma!

Although I haven't really lived there for more than 20 years, Oklahoma is still home for me. Besides the fact that I was born and raised there and much of my family is still there, it's the one common denominator in my mongrel lineage. Oklahoma is where the daughter of a Czech immigrant and a French/Scotch-Irish horse trader met the son of English and Welsh coal miners, and it's where an orphaned English/German/Swiss/Scotch-Irish schoolteacher met a bookkeeper from the hills of Arkansas whose ancestors had been in America and inching west for 300 years.

So what parts of our family were in Oklahoma by November 16, 1907?

Clara Paxton was still an 8-year-old girl in Missouri and would not move to Oklahoma for another decade, but her grandfather Lee Overholser had lived there since the time of the Land Run, and her uncle Will and aunt Ella Overholser were living in Oklahoma City at the time. (Her brother Burton, incidentally, was born in Oklahoma City in 1896.)

Cal Jones was a 12-year-old boy whose family was probably living in Boynton, Indian Territory, on the day that it became Oklahoma. His parents Silas and Nannie had left Arkansas four years earlier.

Blanche Vermillion was seven months old, having been born in Wayne, Indian Territory, in April. She was living with her mother in Wayne, and the celebration of the new state must have been muted for them, as her father Walter Vermillion had died in September. Blanche was surrounded by cousins in the area, most of them grandchildren of George and Kate Jicha, who had settled across the river in Oklahoma Territory in the 1889 Land Run. Blanche's one living grandparent, John Washington Vermillion, also lived in the area, where he had settled as far back as '89 also.

Six generations of our family have lived in Oklahoma so far, and Clara's sons' families are on their seventh. It's probably not any kind of record, as a lot of Oklahomans reproduce more rapidly than we do. But considering our earlier family history of heading west every generation or two (always in search of farmland, something that's not so much an issue now), it's a pretty good run.

I wish I could be in Oklahoma today, but I'm there in spirit.

Quite Possibly My Coolest Ancestor

Okay, so you've heard about various veterans, preachers, and at least one possible con man so far on the blog, but the subject of this post may be my favorite: Martha McFarlane McGee Bell, who tradition tells us was a spy for the patriots in the American Revolution. The stories about Martha are a little vague in some places and sound a little . . . enhanced . . . in others, but the idea that she surreptitiously gathered intelligence about Cornwallis's troops has persisted for two centuries and has made her a heroine of the Revolution in the area where she lived, Randolph County, North Carolina.

Before I get started, though, let me tell you to whom she is related. Martha was Blanche Branch's great-great-great-great-grandmother, one of a succession of Grandmother Marthas: Blanche's own grandmother Martha Burrow Vermillion, her grandmother Martha McGee Burrow, and finally her grandmother Martha Bell, the spy herself. (Martha Bell was also the mother of the revival preachers John and William McGee, who I wrote about a while back.)

Martha McFarlane was born in Alamance County, N.C. in 1735, and we're told she was from a Scottish Presbyterian family. I haven't ever read anything about her family's social or economic position, but she married a well-to-do widower named John McGee and had five children with him before he died in 1773, leaving her "the richest widow anywhere in that region," according to Eli W. Carruthers, whose biographical sketch of her from 1854 is the earliest source for most of the lore about her. Carruthers goes on to say that she was "much sought after, especially by the young widowers and middle-aged bachelors; and it was then said that she was a 'little haughty,' but this probably originated with those who could not succeed in gaining her affections."

She married another wealthy citizen named William Bell in 1779 and moved to his home on Deep River, where he operated a mill and store. (A historian found ruins of the mill a few years ago—see photo above—but the site is now covered by a lake.)

Her biographer Carruthers goes into some detail in trying to describe Martha's looks, personality, and character, obviously walking a tightrope to make her at once boldly heroic yet acceptably feminine. His awkward attempts to justify her assertive and decisive actions suggest how difficult it must have been to reconcile those traits with femininity in the 19th-century South:

"She was not, at any time remarkable for personal beauty nor for the opposite, but was what, in common parlance, is called a good-looking woman.’ There was nothing about her that could be regarded as masculine and nothing in her deportment, ordinarily, that was at all inconsistent with the modesty and delicacy of her sex; but she was a woman of strong mind, ardent in her temperament and remarkably firm and resolute in whatever she undertook, which just fitted her for the trying scenes through which she was called to pass."

And later:

"If this should appear to the reader inconsistent with the modesty and delicacy of her sex, he must recollect that 'circumstances alters cases.' At all times, there may be occasions, and they were of almost daily occurrence at that period, when those qualities, so becoming ordinarily, must be subordinate to the higher principles of self-preservation and the public good. . . . the woman whose energy, prudence and dignified firmness were adequate to any emergency was sure to command a respect which would not be shown to more lovely or attractive qualities."

Carruthers is also curiously reluctant to say it outright, but it appears that Martha was a practicing midwife, albeit one who did not charge for her services until late in her life. He refers to her as "a sort of 'professional character'" who would travel throughout the county to attend to her duty "no matter what hour of the night the call was made"; he also alludes to her "medical skill" and even says she went on one of her spy missions "in the character of a midwife" but never says specifically what her profession was.

At any rate, it was not long after she married William Bell that she earned her fame. The Revolution was on by that time, and in 1781 Lord Cornwallis's British troops were trying to hold onto the Southern colonies, having taken Charleston, South Carolina, in the previous year. The area where Martha lived was divided between Patriots and Tories, and there was a great deal of violence off the battlefield as well as on. William Bell was a well-known business and political figure in the area who was also a prominent patriot. He spent a good deal of time away from home during the war, not as a soldier but under the protection of local militias, as his life was in danger from the local Tories.

In March 1781, Cornwallis and his troops faced the Americans at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, which is seen by history as a costly pyrrhic victory for the British. After the battle, Cornwallis's army sought to regroup and set up camp at Bell's Mill, where Martha Bell—but not William—was living. The locals must have enjoyed the idea of Cornwallis and his Redcoats meeting their match in this"woman of strong mind," for they told all kinds of stories about this brief encounter. The most repeated of these stories was told to Carruthers by a General Gray, who knew Mrs. Bell after the war. Cornwallis, after inquiring about the whereabouts of Mr. Bell, told Martha:

"‘Madam, I must make your house my headquarters, and have the use of your mill for a few days, to grind for my army while I remain here.'

'Sir, you possess the power, and, of course, will do as you please without my consent; but, after using our mill, do you intend to burn it before you leave?’

'Madam, why do you ask that question?'

‘Sir, answer my question first, and then I will answer yours in a short time.’

His lordship then assured her that the mill should not be burnt or injured; but that he must use it to prepare provisions for his army, and further added, that by making her house his head-quarters, he would be a protection to herself, her house, and every thing that was in or about it; for, said he, ‘no soldier of mine will dare to plunder, or commit depredations near my quarters.’

To which she replied: ‘Now, sir, you have done me a favor by giving me a satisfactory answer to my question, and I will answer yours. Had your lordship said that you intended to burn our mill, I had intended to save you the trouble by burning it myself before you derived much benefit from it; but as you assure me that the mill shall not be burned, and that you will be a protection to me, and to the property about the house, I will make no further objections to your using our mill, and making my house your headquarters while you stay, which, I think you said, would be only for a few days.'"

Among the other tales of Cornwallis's two-day occupation of Bell's Mill: Martha had hidden her cash under a rock and had to slip out to the yard to get it right from under the noses of the Redcoats camped there. When the Redcoats were trying to raid her cellar and steal her cider, Martha threw herself in front of the cellar door and dared them to come through her. When a soldier uttered something profane in her presence as he rode by on his horse, she wished for the horse to throw him and break his neck—and he did so only a few minutes later.

The story that made Martha a heroine of the Revolution, however, comes immediately after Cornwallis left Bell's Mill. Writes Carruthers:

In the evening of the day on which the British left her premises, she made a visit to their camp, for the purpose, it is said, of reconnoitering, but under some other pretext. What was her precise object, or what induced her to engage in the enterprise, no definite or reliable information can now be obtained; but the tradition has been so uniform and so well sustained, that there can be no doubt of the fact. . . . her familiarity with every road and every bye-path, with every plantation and hill and dale, in addition to her patriotism and intrepidity, just fitted her for such an enterprise; and she would be in no danger, for Cornwallis, having been so lately sheltered under her roof, could not do otherwise than treat her with courtesy and respect. . . . Equipped and mounted on a first-rate horse, she set off alone and fulfilled her mission with entire success. the object, was to ascertain, as far as possible, the condition of the British army, and especially whether they were receiving any considerable accessions of Tories. Under the pretext of making complaint against the soldiers for depredations committed on her property, which had not become known to her until after they were gone, she went into the camp and hunted up his lordship or requested to be taken to his tent, to whom she made her complaint, but in doing this she had her eye upon everything, and managed so as to get the information she wanted, when she returned home in safety and much pleased with what she had done.

Carruthers goes on to suggest that Martha made another reconnaissance mission by night to check out "an embodiment of Tories which was said to be forming on the other side of the river." On the pretense that she was making a call in the area as a midwife, she went around to various houses asking about the presence of Tories in the area, ostensibly out of concern for her safety. Armed with the information she passed on, Carruthers writes, Colonel "Light Horse Harry" Lee "took them by surprise and broke up the whole concern" the next night.

Martha lived nearly forty more years after the Revolution; she died in 1820 at the age of 85. Carruthers notes that she became a Christian early in the nineteenth century, at about the time the Second Great Awakening was sweeping the country—and her sons William and John McGee were preaching to nearly hysterical revival meetings on the Kentucky-Tennessee frontier.

Martha's fame seems to have a lot to do with Carruthers's recounting of her story. A monument to her (see photo at the top of this post) at the Guilford Courthouse battleground, erected in 1928, reads:

Mrs. Martha McFarland [sic] McGee Bell
1735-1820
Loyal Whig—Enthusiastic Patriot
Revolutionary Heroine

We are indebted to E. W. Caruthers for the eventfull story of her life.

But the Daughters of the American Revolution, which had approved the 1928 monument, was less impressed with Carruthers as a source in 1997, when members of the local chapter wanted to erect a DAR marker at the site of her grave. The national organization at first turned them down, arguing that "no contemporary evidence can be found" to support Carruthers's stories. With a bunch of angry North Carolina Daughters on their hands, the national DAR finally compromised: on the basis of pay vouchers to Bell from the Revolutionary army (for unspecified goods or services) they allowed that she was in fact a patriot, even if Carruthers's tales could not be verified, and they gave her her grave marker (left). (There is also a highway bridge named for Martha just north of Randleman, North Carolina, on U.S. 220.)

More recently, a descendant of Martha's named Jennifer Wellborn wrote a book making the case for Martha's exploits. Unable to find further documentation, she instead took the tack of comparing the other Revolutionary stories in Carruthers's book with other contemporary documents. She argued that Carruthers was a reliable source in these other cases, and thus could be trusted as a source in the case of Martha Bell. She told the Greensboro News & Record that she wasn't surprised by the lack of contemporary evidence about Martha: "As a general rule, men of that era rarely wrote about women's feats of derring-do."

So here's to Carruthers, Wellborn, and especially to Martha Bell!

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?