Leeman Brackett Wormhood (1881-1960)

 

From Madbury Its People and Places, 1968.

  In its long history, the town of Madbury, New Hampshire was represented in the legislature by two curiously named men, Eloi Augustus Adams (profiled here on November 29, 2019) and Leeman Brackett Wormhood, who is highlighted today. A longtime resident of Madbury, Wormhood was employed by the Boston and Maine Railroad and also farmed in the aforementioned town. A multi-term selectman for Madbury, Wormhood served four years in the New Hampshire House of Representatives beginning in 1945, and later was a delegate to the state constitutional convention of 1956.

  Born in Ossipee, New Hampshire on May 24, 1881, Leeman Brackett Wormhood was the son of Hartley Lord and Julia Eldredge Wormhood. He married Blanche Tibbetts in East Rochester, New Hampshire in 1902. The couple were wed for over fifty years and had a least one son, Leeman Brackett Jr. An engineer on the Boston and Maine Railroad for forty-five years, Wormhood was active in the civic life of Madbury, being a member of the Grange, the Unity Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons, and the Union Congregational Church. 

  On the political front, Wormhood served Madbury in several capacities, including a sixteen-year tenure as town selectman (1930-1946). From 1945-49 he represented Madbury in the state legislature, and from 1949-58 was the town supervisor of the checklist. In 1956 Wormhood retired from farming at his home in Madbury and later resided in a rest home in New Hampshire. In that same year, he served as part of the Strafford County delegation to the state constitutional convention, representing Madbury. Widowed in 1958, Wormhood died in Rochester on December 18, 1960, aged 79, and was interred at the Rochester Cemetery. 

From the Boston Globe, December 23, 1960.

Worthington Perry Wachter (1881-1941)

From the Book of Maryland: Men and Institutions, 1920.

  Lifelong Maryland resident Worthington Perry Wachter was for over two decades a leading figure in the Washington County bar, and in addition to his profession served as county tax collector and secretary of the State Industrial Accident Commission. In 1926 he became the Democratic nominee for Chief Judge of Maryland's fourth judicial circuit, and though unsuccessful in his run, achieved further distinction in the Improved Order of Red Men fraternal organization, being named as that group's head in 1932. The son of Sidney H. and Phoebe (Smith) Wachter, Worthington Perry Wachter was born in Ceresville, Frederick County, Maryland on May 30, 1881.

   A student in the public schools, Wachter graduated from Walkersville High School in 1899 and enrolled at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. Following graduation in 1902, he embarked upon a teaching career in Washington County that extended nearly a decade. During this period he served as principal of the Sharpsburg public schools and married in June 1906 to Maude C. Young (1885-1959), to whom he was wed until his death. The couple had three children, Samuel Sidney (1906-1981), Evelyn Mae (1910-1980), and Mildred (1914-2010). 

   Wachter made his first move into local politics in 1913 with his service as Washington County deputy sheriff, and in February 1915 was appointed as Washington County tax collector. He served until November of that year, and was defeated for reelection by Republican John Fleming, the margin being just two votes! Two years after his defeat Wachter was elected as chairman and executive officer of the Washington County military exemption board, and in 1918 was selected as secretary of the State Industrial Accident Commission. During this time Wachter decided to pursue a law degree, and following a period of study at the University of Maryland Law School, earned his degree in 1920.

   Active in several fraternal groups in his state, Wachter was a member of the St. Bernards Commandry, Knights Templar; the Queen Esther Chapter, No. 3, Order of the Eastern Star; the Scottish Rite Masons; the Loyal Order of Moose; the Independent Order of Oddfellows; the Modern Woodmen of America; and the Improved Order of Red Men. From 1920-21 he was Grand Patriarch of the Grand Encampment of Oddfellows of Maryland, and in those same years was Grand Sachem of the Improved Order of Red Men of Maryland. He was also a past potentate of the Ali Ghan Temple, Mystic Shriners.

  After several years away from public office, Wachter set his sights on a state judgeship in 1926. In that year's Democratic primary, Wachter ran for Chief Judge of Maryland's fourth judicial district, and after announcing his candidacy was featured in campaign advertisements in area newspapers. In a writeup in the Hagerstown Daily Mirror, Wachter made note of his previous areas of service and remarked:

"I am keenly appreciative of the honor and the dignity of the office to which I aspire, yet I feel justice and fairness to all demand that you be publically informed of my candidacy. I, therefore, submit my candidacy to you, the Democratic voters of the Fourth Judicial Circuit, for your consideration, with the hope of your endorsement by your votes, Tuesday, September 14."

From the Hagerstown Daily Mirror, February 10, 1926.

  That September Wachter was defeated by William C. Walsh, 5,765 votes to 3,448. Walsh, in turn, was defeated in the November general election by Republican D. Lindley Sloane. Wachter returned to practicing law in Hagerstown following his loss, and while his judicial aspirations were dashed, he achieved a measure of consolation outside of politics in 1927, when he was elected as district governor of the Lions Club. This post saw Wachter as chief of the Lions clubs in Maryland, Delaware, and Washington, D.C., and during this period continued his rise through the hierarchy of the Improved Order of Red Men. In 1928 he served as Patriotic Director of that organization's grand council, and in September 1932 was elected as Great Incohonee at the group's biennial convention in North Carolina. 

  As the highest-ranking office in the organization, Wachter visited numerous Red Men lodges during his tenure and installed degrees on new members of that organization. In September 1933 he undertook "a tour of units of the order in  Texas and other western and midwestern states", and was succeeded as Great Incohonee in September 1934 by Arthur J. Ruland. 1934 also saw Wachter be a candidate for the Maryland state senate but lost out in the September Democratic primary to Joseph D. Mish.

   In 1940 Wachter began experiencing heart trouble, and by February 1941 had entered the Washington County Hospital for treatment. He remained under hospital care until his death at age 60 on November 23, 1941. He was survived by his wife and three children and was interred at the Boonsboro Cemetery in Boonsboro, Maryland.

From the Hagerstown Daily Mail, November 24, 1941.

San Francisco (1881-1939)

Portrait from the 1909 Kansas Legislative composite; Author's collection.

"Perhaps Mr. Shakespeare's guess is right. Just because this representative's name is San Francisco, it does not necessarily follow that an earthquake will strike him before the session closes. It is evident that his parents had a wide streak of humor about the time they named him, but it is not a bad name. "San" means Saint. This young man from the classic Cimarron may not be a saint, but he is highly respectable...Every San Francisco should have a Golden Gate, so Mr. Francisco follows the occupation of bank cashier."

   Such was the description given in the January 19th, 1909 edition of the Garden City Telegram in its write-up of San Francisco of Gray County. Before anyone accuses me of making up a name to post here, I can assure you that Mr. Francisco was an actual person, and while he shares his name with the famed California city, isn't believed to have had any connection with that area (despite the latter portion of his life being spent in the neighboring city of San Diego.) A one-term member of the Kansas State House of Representatives from 1909-11, little could be found on Mr. Francisco, hence why his article here will be on the short side!

   Born in Adair County, Missouri on April 15, 1881, San Francisco was the son of James Detroit and Mary Ellen Hilton Francisco. Research has shown that by 1900 San Francisco was a resident of Ingalls in Gray County, Kansas, and married there in December 1902 to Enid Studebaker, with whom he would have one daughter, Enid Elaine (1915-1996). 

  Sometime following his marriage San Francisco moved to the neighboring town of Cimarron and was still a resident of that town when he became the Democratic nominee for the Kansas State House of Representatives. Remarked as being one of the youngest candidates ever to run for representative, the 1908 Topeka Journal (article below) notes that Francisco's name would be of aid during the upcoming campaign!

  San Francisco would win election to the Kansas legislature in late 1908 and served during the 1909-11 session. During this term, Francisco held seats on the committees on Irrigation, Horticulture and Forestry, and Banks and Baking. Around this same time, he became affiliated with the Capricorn Mining Company in California, of which he would serve as President. 

From the Topeka State Journal, April 22, 1908.

   Following his time in state government, San Francisco served as a Vice President and director of the Gray County State Bank at Cimarron. San Francisco later removed to San Diego, California, where he died in 1939. He was later interred at the Greenwood Memorial Park in that city and was survived by his wife Enid, who died in 1945.

You Can Help!

 I am currently searching for further information on San Francisco (the man, not the city) and need your assistance!! If there are any readers or possible relatives who have further information on Mr. Francisco to share, please don't hesitate to contact me here or via the Strangest Names In American Political History Facebook page!

Ortho Olden Wolf (1874-1944), Ortho Voorhees Stevens (1881-1976)

Ortho O. Wolf, from the Kansas City Star

   We continue our stay in Kansas to profile four-term state senator Ortho Olden Wolf, who, in addition to his service in state government, was a leading agriculturalist, veterinarian, and farm organization leader, serving as the president of the Kansas Farm Bureau for a number of years. Although a resident of Kansas for over six decades, Ortho O. Wolf's birth took place in Allen County, Ohio on June 4, 1874. The son of Charles and Mary Abbott Wolf, Ortho moved to Kansas with his family in 1884 and his early education took place in Franklin County. As an adolescent, he attended both Baker University and the Kansas Agricultural College and in 1898 graduated from the Chicago Veterinary College.

   After a time spent traveling Great Britain and Scotland to study methods of stock-raising Wolf returned to Kansas and over the succeeding years established a reputation as a veterinary surgeon and cattle breeder of "sound judgment and practical experience", making a specialty on short-horn and Jersey cattle breeds. Wolf married on November 11, 1904, to Daisy Sterling (1965) and later had one daughter, Mrs. Charles E. Funk of Berkley, California. Wolf's status as one of Ottawa, Kansas's prominent farmers received extensive mention in the June 23, 1931 edition of the Daily Huronite, which notes that:

"In the vicinity of Ottawa he owns three tracts of land, 243 acres, 160 acres and 219 in extent, all of which are farmed under his personal supervision."

    As the owner of over six hundred acres of farmland, Ortho Wolf's name was one of the most recognizable in agricultural organizations of the period. A member of the Kansas Board of Agriculture for over two decades, Wolf also held the presidencies of the Kansas State Agricultural Council, the Kansas State Farm Bureau, and the Farmer's Cooperative Elevator Association of Ottawa, and was a member of the Kansas State Board of Veterinary Examiners, the Producer's Commission Association, the National Wool-Grower's Association, and the Mid-West Wool Marketing Association.
   Active in other aspects of Kansas public life, Wolf served as an executive committee member for the Franklin County Fire Insurance Association  and for many years was affiliated with the Kansas State Fair Association, serving in 1911 as the superintendent of its "cattle division." 
   O.O. Wolf first entered Kansas political life in 1912 when he was elected to the Kansas State Senate from Franklin County. Reelected in 1914, Wolf would serve on the committees on Cities of the Second Class, Commerce, Enrolled Bills, Labor, Live Stock, Municipal Corporations, Military Affairs, Ways and Means, and chaired the committee on Drainage. Wolf would be returned to two further terms in the Senate in the elections of 1920 and 1922, serving a total of eight years in all.

Ortho Wolf (third from left) at a Washington,  D.C. agricultural meeting, February 1937.

  During his third term in the senate in 1921 Wolf was selected as a member of the "Livestock Marketing Committee of Fifteen" a group of noted agriculturalists gathered under the auspice of the American Farm Bureau Federation to "give special study and consideration to livestock marketing problems" as well as to "submit recommendations". Wolf would become a founding board member of the National Live Stock Producers Association in 1921-22 and was chairman of the board in 1929. Three years later he became President of the Board of Managers of the Kansas State Fair and continued to serve in that capacity into the following year.

   On several occasions, Wolf was sought out to attend agricultural conferences in Washington, D.C., one of these being a meeting with U.S. Agriculture Secretary Henry A. Wallace in 1937 (portrait shown above.) In January 1939 Wolf again visited Washington as one of two dozen delegates from the American Farm Bureau, meeting with President Roosevelt to discuss its legislative program, as well as labor and wage rates. Wolf maintained a busy schedule in various agricultural organizations until his death, which occurred at a Wamego, Kansas hospital on April 7, 1944. His wife and daughter survived him, with his burial taking place at the Highland Cemetery in Ottawa, Kansas.

                                                   

Ortho O. Wolf in 1939 at an American Farm Bureau conference in Washington, D.C.

From the Caney News, November 1, 1913.

  Another Kansas "Ortho" who carved a career for himself in politics was Otho Voorhees Stevens, who served one term in the state house of representatives from Montgomery County. While little information could be found on his life, the rare portrait of him shown above comes as a welcome surprise. Born in Kansas on May 1, 1881, Stevens was the eldest son of Thomas Andrews and Luella Sams Stevens. He married Nellie W. Barr (1884-1932) in January 1905, and the couple had at least one daughter, Marjorie Barr (Stevens) Oakson (1906-1995).

  The manager of the Burgner-Bowman Lumber Co. in Caney, Kansas, Stevens' company also sold lime, cement, paints, and oils. He entered into the race for state representative from Montgomery County in September 1912, running on the Democratic ticket, and that fall opposed Republican Daniel Dabney. In October of that year, Stevens spoke on his campaign and that year's presidential contest at a Wilson For President meeting in Caney, and that November won his legislative seat. 

  Taking his seat in January 1913, Stevens' one term saw him named to the committees on Cities of the First Class, Judiciary, Municipal Corporations, the Political Rights of Women, Public Utilities, and Supervision of the Journal. Early in his term Stevens visited home in Caney and was interviewed by the Caney Chronicle on his status as a freshman legislator. Speaking on the speed of the legislative process, Stevens remarked:

"The legislature is getting down to real law-making. I have been fortunate enough to be appointed to some of the leading committees and the work has kept me busy night and day. The trouble with the law making to date is we Democrats, get that, we Democrats aren't putting any foolish laws upon the books. The work has been committee work so far and the bills are being threshed over. When the time comes to pass them, we will pass them in a jiffy, get through and come home"

 Towards the end of his term in 1914, Stevens announced that he wouldn't be seeking reelection that year, noting that "the job does not pay expenses." Despite living to the age of 94, little else could be found on Stevens's life after his term concluded. Widowed in 1932, Stevens was later a resident of Collinsville, Oklahoma, where he died on March 3, 1976, two months shy of his 95th birthday. He was survived by his daughter and was returned to Caney for burial at the Sunnyside Cemetery.

Elloy Ring Ganey (1881-1950)

Portrait from the October 28, 1948 Fredonia, New York Censor.

    Every so often I receive the pleasant surprise of discovering a political figure local to my home county of Chautauqua, New York who is blessed with a peculiar name. Just a short while ago I experienced one of those surprises when I stumbled across the name of Elloy Ring Ganey, a Chautauqua County resident who was for many years prominent in local Democratic circles, being a candidate for the New York State Assembly, an alternate delegate to the 1928 Democratic National Convention, chairman of the Chautauqua Democratic Committee and Postmaster of Jamestown, New York. Despite Ganey's prominence in Chautauqua's public life several decades ago he is all but forgotten today, and the succeeding lines aim to be a proper biography of a historically neglected Chautauquan from the past.

    A native of Pennsylvania. Elloy Ring Ganey was born in Warren on December 12th, 1881, being the second of five children born to Mathew and Littie Ganey. The family would later move from Warren to the village of Carroll in Chautauqua County, and as a young man, Ganey would find work as a steam engineer under the employ of the Charles Haas Construction Company of Jamestown, New York. Ganey's obituary in the Warren Times Mirror further relates that he worked as a motorman for the Chautauqua Traction Company for a time, and would also serve as a game warden in Chautauqua County beginning in the early 1910s.

   E.R. Ganey became active in Chautauqua County political circles in the early 1920s, and in the succeeding years grew to be a prominent Democrat within the county. In 1926 he was a Democratic candidate for a seat in the New York State Assembly from Chautauqua's 1st district, and in the November election was defeated by Republican candidate Adolph Johnson, receiving 2,333 votes to Johnson's 11, 022. Two years following his defeat Ganey served as an alternate delegate from New York to the 1928 Democratic National Convention in Houston, Texas, which nominated Alfred E. Smith for the Presidency.

   Following his service as a delegate, Ganey achieved further prominence in April 1932 when he was selected to be chairman of the Chautauqua County Democratic Committee. The Silver Creek, New York News reported on his ascension to that office, noting that he was elected "without opposition." He held this post for two years, being succeeded in 1934 by Loren Lamphere. In that year E.R. Ganey received the appointment of Postmaster of Jamestown, New York, and would serve in this capacity until his death sixteen years later.

Elloy Ganey (pictured on the far left), from the January 6, 1946 Jamestown Post Journal.

                           Elloy R. Ganey (pictured at left), from the Buffalo Courier-Express, July 13, 1945.

   In addition to his political and civic activities within the county, Ganey maintained an interest in a decidedly non-political subject: horse racing. As the owner of a stable of several harness racing horses, he is remarked as being "a familiar figure at the Buffalo Raceway in his striking shirts and ties" and one of his horses, a "consistent trotter" named Camilla Hanover, earned over $17,000 in purse money. Ganey was also involved in several fraternal organizations in Chautauqua County, including the Jamestown Elks Lodge, the "Protected Home Circle" and was active in the running of the annual Chautauqua County Fair, serving as its president and head of horse racing.

   Elloy Ring Ganey died at WCA Hospital in Jamestown on March 21, 1950, at age 68. A heart ailment is attributed to being his cause of death, and following his passing was interred at the Fentonville Cemetery located near Frewsburg, New York. A life-long bachelor, Ganey was survived by three siblings and had resided with the Burch family of Jamestown as a border in their home. In keeping with the sometimes exhaustive research I do on some of these oddly named folks, I made a point to seek out Elloy Ganey's gravesite at the Fentonville Cemetery, and as luck would have it, this cemetery is comparatively small when compared to several others I've visited in the past. Within two minutes of beginning my hunt for his gravesite, I located Ganey's modest headstone near the front of the cemetery (photographs below.)