294 A Kansas Pioneer Governor's Family

A KANSAS PIONEER GOVERNOR'S FAMILY: AN INTERVIEW OF JOHN A. MARTIN'S GRANDCHILDREN, THE REV. ERNEST F. TONSING AND MRS. IDA TONSING DENTON By Dr. Ernst F. Tonsing In Topeka, Kansas June 7,1975 Transcription by Dr. Ernst F. Tonsing October 7, 1999

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This transcription is from most of one side of a tape that was recorded when Mrs. Ida Denton, of San Bruno, California, paid a visit to her twin brother, the Rev. Ernest Tonsing, at Topeka, Kansas. The two interviewees sat together on the couch by the bay window of the colonial house, and the interviewer sat in a chair pulled up to a coffee table in front of them. The tape was made with a small, Panasonic recorder that was passed from person to person over the table. I believe that this is the only time that the twins recorded their recollections together, and they obviously enjoyed the exchange of memories. The session ended when dinner was announced, and did not resume after that, much to the interviewer's regrets both then, and, now, twenty-five years later. THE INTERVDEW

[Fred] This is June 7, 1975. This is Fred Tonsing, or, Ernst Frederick Tonsing [son of Ernest Tonsing], talking with a couple of people here I'm very fond of, father, Ernest F. Tonsing, or, Ernst F. Tonsing, and then Ida Denton, twins, who have some fantastic experiences to tell. [Ernest] This is Ernest Tonsing. And, Ida and I are the children of Paul Gerhardt Tonsing and Ruth M. Tonsing, and were born in Atchison [Kansas] on June 7, 1907. Mother Tonsing was the daughter of a former governor and Mrs. Martin. He was governor from 1884 to 1888, or, 1885 to '9, however you count it, of Kansas, of course. Grandmother Martin lived with us while we were children. In other words, we lived in the home that Grandfather Martin built for her at 315 North Terrace in Atchison.

Dad Tonsing was a Lutheran minister, served parishes in Beloit [Kansas] and Harding, Nebraska, and became quite ill and the doctor told him that he had to have another profession in order to get out onto the street. So, he moved back to Atchison with his family in 1903, set up a small printing business which later developed into a little church printing plant and in which all of us children worked at one time. All of us worked later commercially, later, as printers. But, Ida and I were almost the last children. We have one child that came after us, Paul, who is nine years our junior. But we all lived in Atchison and grew up at 315 North Terrace. [Fred] This is Fred again. I'd like to ask about the influence of [Governor] John A. Martin on the family. He was a publisher and printer, and I am sure this dominant personality shaped the whole activity of the family. Just in what way, Ida? [Ida] From the time we were small children we heard of his paper. The Atchison Daily Champion,1 was stored there in the house at 315. We had access to it as well as Godey 's Ladies Book,2 and the library which he had built as a self-educated man. All our life we spent hours reading in the library, at least I did, and enjoyed it very much. Whenever they were looking for us to do the dishes or run errands they would almost always find us with a book in our hands.3 Later on, when the boys went to the printing office, I stayed at home to help my mother as her especially good helper. So, I didn't enter the printing trade as early as they did. But, our grandfather as a printer and a publisher, and a father as a printer and a publisher of church publications and city directories, other church bulletins, other publications, influenced our lives to a tremendous degree, as much as the heritage we have from them accomplishments in writing, and reading, and other educational benefits. I never think of 315 without seeing the beautiful trees, the lovely view over the 1

The Atchison Daily Champion, published by John A. Martin. This newspaper was the leading anti-slavery paper in northeast Kansas after Martin purchased and became its editor in February, 1858. First published in Philadelphia in 1830, this monthly brought French and British fashion to the United States. In the 1920's, it was especially popular for its photographs of elegant women. 3 The "boys" had their favorite reading as well. Ernest spent hours with "The Lie Book," so-called. It was written by Kennedy Holbrook, with the title, How? or, Spare Hours made Profitable for Boys and Girls. Illustrated. It's title page is missing, but the preface is dated 1886. It contained many projects to entertain children, mostly instructions, for example, to construct a "windmill puppet," a "flying whirligig," puzzles, and "an infallible barometer," filling a tube with "pure nitrate of potash," "chloride of ammonium" and alcohol. If it was to rain, solid particles were supposed to rise and fall in the fluid. The approach of a storm would be indicated by the materials rising to form a crust on the surface, and the direction of the wind was indicated by the particles gathering on the opposite side of the glass. Some of the book's experiments worked, but, most did not, thus the Tonsing childrens' title for it, "The Lie Book." Paul Tonsing, Jr., had as his most beloved book, How Private George W. Peck Put Down the Rebellion (Chicago & New York: Belford, Clarke & Co., 1882?), the story of a naive private who manages to bungle his way through his enlistment in the Union Army during the Civil War. His outrageous behavior and ill-conceived plots all turn unfortunate, but he comes out on top in the end. During our stay in the house while father, Ernest Tonsing, was in World War IL my favorite was George Cary Eagleston, The Signal Boys, Illustrated (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1877?), telling the adventures of a fictional Sam Hardwicke and his six friends defending Lake Borgne below New Orleans during the British-American War. The boys are witty, resourceful and brave under desperate circumstances, and manage to have great fun as well.

[Missouri] river, the soft spring air, the violets in the yard, the many, many memories there are almost always happy, and growing up as children there was a wonderful background experience that I never will forget, that I which I could have given my own children. [Fred] Dad, I would like to ask what influences you see from John A. Martin and from your grandmother, Ida Challiss Martin? I was interested in what she was like as a personality. [Ida] Patrician. [Ernest] Yes. [Ida] Patrician. [Ernest] I tell you, Fred, our recollections of grandmother are not very pleasant. She was a harsh woman, and she didn't like us. [Ida] She didn't like children. [Ernest] She just didn't like any of us. None of the children. She had no affection for us. [Ida] I can tell something that she did. It was so remarkable and so different, because she called me one day when I was getting ready to go to Midland College in Fremont, Nebraska. So, she said, "Ida, sit down. I want to tell you something." So I sat down and looked at her expectantly. And she said, "Ida, I have never liked older children. Younger children bother me." She said, "Now, when we get old enough to be adults, then I like them very much." And she said, "I have been with you children a great many years, and we have had difficult times." I don't remember the exact words. And she said, "I have never really done anything to help any of you." So she said, "Here is a check for twenty dollars, which will help you in your schooling at Midland." And I was so overwhelmed, not by the check, but because she reached over and patted my knee, and told me that she actually loved us. But, she did not know how to deal with children, that Momma [Ruth, the eldest daughter of Ida and John A. Martin] had raised her children. It was the most amazing experience, so I thought of that so many, many times, that the lack of communication there with her and with us, how much we missed. Of course, in those days, people didn't believe in showing affection. And you know, with Momma and Poppa, that if we got a pat on the shoulder or on the h[ead]—we were never hugged and kissed—I never remember being, except in later years a little bit. But, Momma would reach over and pat me on the shoulder. We were never mistreated in any way. I never received a spanking in my whole life, and probably deserved a good many. And the boys, I don't know—perhaps some. But, I never forgot Grandmother doing that, and then she was very kind and very good.

And another thing that I remember about her is when we were there, my husband Paul [Denton] and I were there, and she was dying in the big bed, that's in this back bedroom here [in Topeka]. She was lying there dying, and had been for three days. And they would moisten her mouth, and she was asleep. And then, with no expression on her face, except a look of wonderment. And I was around her a good deal, being young and inexperienced. Then when she died, she smiled the most beautiful smile that I have ever seen, and the look on her face was of such peace and happiness because she had suffered from arthritis rheumatism for so many, many years. And she had groaned and cried. I had seen it, and it was genuine pain. Since then I have never been afraid of death. [Fred] Talking about spankings, I noticed that Dad got some reaction to Ida's statement. Why doesn't he comment on that. [Ida] I think it was something mostly about meals and dishes and food. [Ernest] It was. [Ida] Yes. [Ernest] Well, say that (he chuckles). [Ida] Home life was mostly, at least for the women, getting three hardy meals a day. Then, the men coming home from the printing office, and, returning to the printing office [in the] afternoon. Pop always took a short nap. Then they would go back to the printing office, and then we had mountains and mountains of dishes to do. There was always bread to bake. There was always house cleaning, and, washing in those days was much more strenuous than it is now days, and so many, many activities. Our church activities also took up a good deal of time. We were all attending church. Evan was the superintendent of the Sunday school. The singers in the choir were the rest of us. We went to the Luther League [youth group]. We were there for activities during the week, activities Sunday afternoon. So, it was a very closely-knit religious family as well as a family in a family business. [It was] always interesting, and Poppa was a person who could not walk out the door, down the street, without something interesting happening. He was a great teller of stories. He had a wonderful memory, high physical strength, numerous friends— Catholic priests, Jewish merchants, Irish policemen, Mexicans who he dealt with, businessmen of every walk of life. Lockwood Hazel was, more or less, his competitor, and yet he had some of his type set at Lockwood Hazel, and they had some of their type set there. We did some of it there for a few years. It was a marvelously exciting, interesting experience, and the printing office was always thoroughly covered with papers, and dust, and jobs in the process of being done, church bulletins, all the papers that we printed—everything—and I would walk in the door and be hardly able to get the door open because of all the stacks of paper that were there, the jobs yet to be completed.

[Ernest] My recollections of the work at the home, of course, had to do with washing clothes. I was the one who was expected to fill the boiler at night, on Sunday night, and set it on "slow burner." Then we would cut up [blocks of] soap in it, and soap by the morning, on a slow burner, that would be boiling water. It was always cistern water, soft cistern water. And I remember that we evolved in washing. We did have a washboard, and mother, many, many times, washed the clothes on that washboard in a tub to get the dirt out with soap. Then I remember when we got a milk-stool washing machine. The dasher inside looked like a milk-stool, and fitted on the lid. You pulled the lid down, and, first, it worked by hand, a hand lever, and then dad put a motor on it. And it worked by motor, and, of course, we went up until we got a regular washing machine. But we wrung our clothes by hand, the hand wringers. And I can remember how hot that stuff was coming out of those. We'd boil the worst clothes, the work clothes, and how hot that was coming out of that boiling water. And [they] had to be wrung, and then put into cold water. We usually had two cold dips, and then everything went out on the line to be hung out to dry.4 If it was wet weather, why, we didn't wash. And then I remember the silverware. We had knives that had bone handles and steel, and they had to be polished every meal by putting them between two pads, and using "Bon Ami"6 in order to keep them from rusting. They were good steel and very sharp. But, that's what we did. Of course, Ida and I would fight over who were to wash or wipe the dishes. That was an every-day occurrence, and particularly in the evening, we did the dishes. Now as far as the printing office is concerned, that was our living. Dad had one of the first linotypes in the area, number six sixty-six, and all of the children learned from that one machine to operate it.7 We had two presses, one they called the "Big Press" and the other the "Little Press." The Little Press was about nine by twelve platen, and the Big Press was a twelve by eighteen.8 We ran everything that we ran on those two presses. They were all hooked up by a single shaft to one big motor—the linotype and all—and several times I got my clothes caught and torn off in that big shaft. But we would run those presses, and, as Ida said, the paper was all over the floor. We'd just have to throw the paper on the floor when the presses were running. We got out city directories, though. That was our father's pride and joy. He sold them for a dollar. They had not only a directory of homes, but a directory of streets, and then a directory of telephone numbers, in the one little book. He sold them for a dollar, 4

As I recall, the washing machine and the rinse tubs were on the north porch, and the lines for drying clothes on the north lot. To see the clothes and sheets mashed between the white rubber rollers was a fearful thing, and as a child I was quite apprehensive of approaching the monster while it was operating. 5 While the mansion's gymnasium was standing north of the house, I recall that there were clothes lines draped from wall to wall, to hang clothes during damp weather. 6 This cleanser is still manufactured 7 The linotype was a typesetting machine invented in 1885, which cast lines of type, or, "slugs," by forcing quick-cooling metal against a mold or "matrix," and then by delivering the trimmed slug in proper order ready to print. 8 See, Paul Martin Tonsing, The Power of the Press: History and Development of Printing Presses from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century (Fort Worth, Texas: P & T Publishing Company, 1998), pp. 95 ff.

and he guaranteed that he would pay anybody a dollar if they would find a mistake of any kind in those directories after the publishing date. But he used mail carriers and anybody he could to check [for errors]. But we did all the canvassing on the streets. We sold all the ads. We went into the printing office and set all the type. We printed all the books. We gathered all the books. The only thing we couldn't do was to staple those heavy things. We must have done six or eight of those city directories as time went on. But we also printed the Kansas Synod Lutheran,9 which was the paper of the Lutheran Synod of Kansas, and we printed all the church bulletins, up to six or seven, on any weekend. We printed stationery and envelopes, and statements for almost everybody. We printed the Snowden Mize Newsletter1 for many years. This came about the time the Bob went to KU, and helped finance his early years at Kansas University. But, it was an active life, and we boys and girls didn't do much in school after school. We went out to the printing office every afternoon for two hours, and then we worked on Saturdays until we got the work done. So, that was the active life of the printing office. But, of course, like everybody else, we were big gardeners. Just south of the house, and Fred remembers enough to remember the yard there—south of the yard, we would spade in all the vegetables and the leftovers from the meals—spade into the soil— so, that in the Spring, we had ground that was very rich, and we grew beans and tomatoes, and, of course, lettuce and beets and peas. We had about everything, plus rhubarb by the fence, that we used to feed ourselves. Bob was a great bean picker. And, that garden for many years fed us. But, of course, in Atchison we had the farmers' market. That's where dad Tonsing went every morning on his way to work, about 7:30 or 8:00, and picked up bushels of various vegetables and things for mother to can. We canned many tomatoes. We had a big basement. And we did it all by hand, and it was a real wholesome experience that many of us remember ever since. [Fred] What I am interested in hearing from Ida is some stories about the aunts and uncles, and, of course, Amelia Earhart lived just down the street, a couple of doors away. n So, Ida is going to tell us a little bit about the relatives that were living around. [Ida] Well, I've been trying to get Ernie to tell you about it because he remembers the same as I do, and, perhaps, much more accurately. But, as we left our house at 315 and walked south, down to what they called Lookout, which was about a block and a half away, to see the steamboats go back and forth on the Missouri River. The bridge would open. Of course, upstream, the whistles would blow, and all this excitement. So, we would go down to this promontory down there and watch those ships go up and down the river. Every time one would go through, the bridge would swing open, and all the cars, and all the transportation would have to stop. 9

The Atchison Church Visitor, was published in Atchison, Kansas, from October 5, 1906 to August 7, 1920. I ° I have not been able to confirm the spelling of the name or the publishing dates of this newsletter. II Amelia Earhart was born on July 24, 1897, in the home of her grandparents, Judge Alfred Gideon Otis and Amelia Harres Otis, andfrequentlyreturned to visit them and the other Challiss and Tonsing cousins in the years before her career and fame made such calls upon the family difficult.

[Fred] One of those bridges was very important, wasn't it, for your mother? [Ida] That one bridge was particularly important, because it was dedicated by Grandfather Martin when he was governor, and it was opened then, and the first passenger across the bridge was my mother, Ruth Martin, in the baby carriage.12 So, we've always had a special place in our affections for the bridge. And, every time I would see it, and when I was much older, of course, I would think about Momma going across there in her baby carriage, and I would like to push my babies across there, but, of course, I never did.13 So, we would go down there, and they had dug underneath the lookout a big tower, a power pole we would call it nowdays. And they had dug out clay and all sorts of rocks, and the children began to find arrowheads down there. Walter Berger and his sister lived in a house that they had built down there a little past the lookout, overhanging this place, but a little south of that. So, all of us would dig there for arrowheads, finding every kind that you could imagine, and carelessly put them in our pockets and take them back to 315. Whatever became of them I don't know (she chuckles). But, I thought about it so many times. [Fred] What about the relatives, the cousins? You played with them. [Ida] Yes, on the way down to the lookout we would go by the James Challiss home. And James Challiss was Grandmother Challiss Martin's brother. He was a corporation lawyer. They had a child by the name of Jack, who now lives in southern California, perhaps in L.A.14 Then, there was Lucy, who was about the age of Amelia, Evan [Tonsing] and Orpha [Tonsing]. And, then, Peggy, the youngest child, who was about our age. So we did go to school together, and we did play together some, but not to any great extent, because they were the cousins from the social society part of our family, and we were the working people. And, all of our activities were in making a living, in learning, in going to school, in our music, in family affairs. Uncle James Challiss was a chicken rancher farmer, and he lived outside of town. [Fred] It is a beautiful ranch.

12

The dedication of the bridge occurred at 4:00 p.m. on August 14, 1875, according to a clipping from The Atchison Daily Champion, in an album owned by Dorothy J. Denton Linn, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. 13 This bridge has long served as the railroad bridge across the Missouri River after the automobile bridge alongside of it was completed. The latter bridge was rededicated on July 24, 1997, as the "Amelia Earhart" Bridge, with special lights and laser beacons extending upward, to mark for airplanes flying overhead the birthplace of America's most famous aviatrix. 14 Ernest Tonsing and I visited Jack Challiss in his home in Hollywood in the summer of 1985. The house reminded me of the colonial house we lived in at 105 Courtland Avenue, Topeka, Kansas, with spacious rooms, wall sconces and chandeliers. Quite feeble with age, Jack Challiss was gracious and hospitable. Our visit was brief, as we did not want to tire him, but I did ask about his childhood games with Amelia Earhart. He acknowledged them with a twinkle in his eyes, and said, yes, he had participated in the wild roller-coasterrideswith Amelia—with considerable anxiety.

[Ida] Yes. I don't remember, but it seemed a long distance, but it couldn't have been over six miles. And, he was another brother. He specialized in White Leghorns, and he was quite scientific in the way he raised his chickens. He did not let them run loose. He built concrete houses—chicken houses—for them. He put in netting, so the eggs would drop down, would roll down it into the nests. He put the netting there also so that the chicken houses would be easy to clean. And his son... [Fred] His son was "Fred." [Ida] Right. And, Fred was supposed to stay there on the farm, and go ahead with business, as Uncle Paul had planned it. But, he did not. He left and went back to Oak Harbor, Ohio. What business he went into I do not know, except that he invented a machine for a car. He invented a type of steam-driven car there, and did very well with it, but how successful it became I do not know. But, to get back to the ranch, later on, Uncle Paul, with the neighbors laughing heartily, put in incubators, and began to sort and sell their eggs, and hatched those that were the best, and went on with it like that, and it was a marvelous business. And, when he died, it was quite a setup—which is the incorrect word to use—there, but, of course, no one there to carry it on, and, whatever became of it I do not know. [The session ended when Ernest's wife, Dorothy Peterson Tonsing, called us to dinner. The recording was not resumed after that—sadly.] Ernst F. Tonsing, Ph.D. Thousand Oaks, California October 7,1999