By Dr. Ferrell Miller
Geary County Historical Society Board Member
“Bartell House Served As Home To Women” Part 1
Susan Lloyd Franzen, author of Behind the Façade of Fort Riley’s Hometown – A History of Junction City, Kansas wrote some of the following information in that book which is available for purchase at the Geary County Historical Society’s Museum located at 530 N. Adams Street.
“The years I remember were from 1940 to 1948, when I was a child living at the Bartell House, then managed by my parents.
The residential guests of my childhood were like an extended family to me. “Cousin Miney” (Myron Coryell) really was a distant relative, being the brother-in-law of “Aunt Doll” Coryell, my grandmother’s sister. I don’t remember talking to him a lot, but he was an impressive figure with a long beard and a cane.
More influential than any relative, however, was “Mama Thayer,” Viola Starke Thayer, whose late husband, Col. Arthur Thayer, had once been an instructor at West Point. Both her husband and son, Col. Jerry Thayer, were cavalry officers. She never told me of their military exploits, but she provided vivid descriptions of their life on cavalry posts.
I think it was “Mama Thayer” who gave me my first introduction to ethnic and religious diversity. She told me about the religious differences between her grandfather, a Spanish Catholic landowner on the Mexican border, and her father, a “Yankee Protestant. I observed her religious faith by her prayers to St. Anthony (the patron saint of lost things), her Sacred Heart calendar and the five rosaries she said each day.
Although I had a lot of contact with the African-American employees in the hotel, it was “Mama Thayer” who made me aware of their families. I knew Austin Wells as a bellhop. All bellhops who brought “Mama Thayer” meals three times a day, and all black maids on the hotel staff were important people in “Mama Thayer’s” life. She always asked them about their families, and each Christmas she made each of their children a stocking filled with candy, nuts and little toys.
She rarely left her room on the third floor overlooking City Park (now Heritage Park), her stories were about distant places. She and her children had bene the first officer’s family to arrive in Manila after the Philippine Insurrection ended in 1902. Since her era was the time of American empire abroad and segregation at home, the non-Anglo people she told me about did not enjoy a status equal to that of white cavalry officers and their families. But that was the world she had known, and it was one I would never have found in books, much less in my limited experience.” (to be continued)
Bartell House Served As Home To Women” Part 2
Susan Franzen continued her story: “A generation before “Mama Thayer” lived at the Bartell House, there was another distinguished woman who made it her home. Anna Elizabeth Pierce, widow of the president of the Central National Bank, moved to the Bartell after the death of her husband Sumner Pierce in 1914. “Sumner Hall,” (currently 700 Crestview in Junction City), the big house on 30 acres where they had lived together had become too depressing for her. She remained at the hotel until her death in 1932.
“Grandma Anna Elizabeth” held an important place among the first generation of Junction City residents. In 1870, Anna Manley came to Kansas from Buffalo, New York, to start a homestead with her mother and brother, Charles H. Manley, Sumner Pierce, another New Yorker, roomed with them. Sumner started a business partnership with Charles and, in 1874, he married Anna.
Before her marriage, however, Anna Manley taught school. At first, she taught in country schools among German-speaking families in Milford Township and Clarke’s Creek. In 1873 she taught a class for African American children on Sundays. In 1873 she got a job teaching in the first schoolhouse built for Junction City. This was also the first school which all children were allowed to attend regardless of race.
The deed to the property for the schoolhouse shows that the site had surprising links to the Bartell House. It was built on land southwest of town that had once belong to Augustus H. Bartell at that same location at 501 W. Walnut.
“Grandma Anna Elizabeth” lived at the Bartell during WWI and “Mama Thayer” lived there during WW II. The square block that included the “Bartell block” was truly the heart of downtown. Without crossing the street, citizens could visit the post office, Flower’s confectionery, a barber shop, Volz and Eisenhower Drug Stores, the Cozy movie theater, LaShelle’s shoe store, Hood and Spencer Men’s Clothing Store, the Fashion Shop, the George Smith Library, Durland’s Furniture Store and various other shops, lectures, and conventions at the Opera House. Across Washington Street were Rizer’s Dress Shop, Glick’s Jewelry, the Mission Billiard Hall and the Good Eats Cafe, as well as the Junction movie theater.”