John Ambrose Arvin
Every
officer and man responded—there were no deserters.
—Missouri Office of the
Adjutant General, 1919
The
Service of the Missouri National Guard on the Mexican Border
John Ambrose Arvin was born 11 September
1891. He was the ninth of eleven children, the youngest son of William Henry Arvin and Margaret Ellen (nee Yates). He was born in Reeve
Township, Daviess County, Indiana, on the family farm which his grandfather, Joseph Edward Arvin, had homesteaded during the
Civil War. The family was Catholic, and John was baptized on 11
October 1891 at St. Martin of Tour’s Catholic Church by Fr. James Stremler, the pastor. The baby’s
given names, John Ambrose, were meant to honor Margaret’s uncle, John Ambrose
Patterson, who had raised her. However, at the baptism, Fr. Stremler
insisted that he have a Christian middle name, so he recorded him as John Albert
Arvin in the baptismal records of the church. (Apparently,
Fr. Stremler was unaware of the Catholic saint, St. Ambrose.)
In the year 1900, William and Margaret
Arvin and their children moved off the family homestead and into Martin County,
Indiana, where they had purchased a home situated on the outskirts of Loogootee.
The Census of 1900 finds them living in their recently purchased home.
1900 –
Twelfth United States Census
Date of Birth
Months Owned Free
or Farm
not
worked or rented mortgd or house
Arvin,
William H Head
W M Sept 1845 54 M 21
. . .
Farmer
0 . . . O M
H
_____ Margaret E Wife
W F
Jan 1858 42
M 21 *
_____ Mary A Daught W F Dec
1879 20 S Sales
Woman DS 0
_____
Louis
E Son W M Jan 1881 19 S Farm
Labor 0
_____ Rose E Daught W F Mar 1882 18
S Dress
Maker
_____ Joseph L Son W M Jan 1884
16 S Farm
Labor
_____
William Son W M
Sept 1885 14 S
At School
_____
Lizzie J Daught W F June
1888 12 S
At School
_____ Michael S Son W M Jan 1890 10 S
At School
_____
John A Son W M Sept 1891 8 S
At School
_____ Zetta O Daught W F
Apr 1893 7
S
At
School
_____
Catherine L Daught W F Apr 1896
4 S
John (right) with
William contracted pulmonary tuberculosis
and died in 1907, and his Margaret moved the family to Kansas City, Missouri,
in June of that year. John was only fifteen years old. They arrived by train,
and, with the help of Louis, the oldest son, they were soon located on the
bustling east side of town. They rented a small, one story residence at 1517 Olive.
It was only a few blocks from where Louis and his wife Catherine rented. (Neither
home is still standing.)
With their father deceased, and few if any
social safety nets available to them, the family found itself in desperate
financial straits. The children had to help provide for their own upkeep in one
way or another, and this meant finding employment was the top priority. Further
schooling was out of the question. Kansas City was a virtual boom town, and
jobs were plentiful for those willing to work. By the following year, all the children
except for John’s 11 year-old sister, Loretta, had found employment. The city
directory for 1908 lists each one of them and his or her occupation. John was
listed as “shoe.” Presumably, he had found work at the shoe
repair shop located at 1504 Montgall, two blocks east of their home. 
The following year Margaret sold the
family home back in Loogootee, and the family was able to move to a larger rental
house, two blocks to the west of 1517 Olive. The address of their new home was
1409 Garfield (no longer standing). It was a brick, two-story structure, and it
had considerably more space for everyone. In fact, it had enough room that
Margaret was able to take in borders.
John found a better job the following year. In
1909, he is listed in the city directory as a machinist for the Woolf Brothers Laundry
Company at 15th and Prospect. It was just around the corner from the shoe shop.
Woolf Brothers was described as the “World’s Largest Laundry” when it was built
in 1901.1
1910 –
Thirteenth United States Census
This census lists “every person whose
place of abode on April 15, 1910, was in this family.” Margaret and family are
living at 1409 Garfield. We see that Margaret has indeed taken in three
boarders: a grocer and two “automobilists.”
Address * # Occupation Industry Rent/Own Farm/House
1409 Arvin
Margaret
E. Head F W 50 W 11
10 . . . None
R H
-------- Mary
A. Dau F W 28 S Stenographer Lumber
Co
-------- William Son M W 24 S Motorman Street
Car
-------- Jennie Dau F W 22 S Cashier Department Store
-------- Sanford
M Son M W 21 S Salesman Department Store
-------- John
A Son M W 18 S Asst
Foreman Laundry
-------- Zetta Dau F W 16 S Clerk Roofing
Co
-------- Loretta Dau F W 13 S None
Klepberger,
Henry B Boarder
M W 63 D Retail Merchant Groceries
Johnson,
Chris Boarder M W 25 S Automobilist Automobile
Business
Jones,
Arnold C Boarder
M W 28 S Automobilist Automobile
Business
* Number of children born # number now living John (left) at Woolf Bros. Same scene today
For the next five years, the family continued to live on Garfield. John continued
to work at Woolf Brothers until 1911, when his occupation is listed in the city
directory as “driver.” He delivered train passengers and their baggage from the
Union Depot to local hotels and vice versa. He continued as a driver in 1912,
then in 1913 he is listed as a “chauffer” in the city directory.
Marriage
In June of 1913, John’s younger sister,
Zetta, married a handsome young man of Irish descent. His name was Dennis
Simms. The marriage was celebrated at St. Aloysius Church. John and his oldest
sister, Mary, were recorded on the church registry as witnesses. Later
that same year,
it was John’s turn to get married. Now 22, he had met a lovely young lady named Lillian M. Seeley. Lillie was only
17, born 24 November 1895 to Clarence and Dolly 
(nee Cox) Seeley of Kansas
City. Because of her age, Lillie had to have a parent’s permission, which her
mother granted. Marriage License reverse The wedding took place on
25 September 1913, and was also celebrated at St. Aloysius. Lillie’s mother
signed as “Mrs. Martha Hyer,” perhaps indicating that Lillie was adopted.
(This picture postcard, made at a downtown department store, shows Lillie on the left, with her sister, whose name is unknown.) The other recent newlyweds,
Dennis and Zetta Simms, were their witnesses. From
the Latin verbiage on the church registry, it appears that Lillie was not
previously baptized.
Now Lillie and John were the newlyweds. They moved
into their own place, located just a few blocks away, at 1323 Montgall (no
longer standing). At first, everything went well for them. They spent their
first winter together, and as spring approached, Lillie became pregnant with
their first child. But soon her health took a mysterious turn for the worse.
She became bedridden. The cause of the illness was unknown, and at first she
received no treatment. Her condition grew steadily worse. John tried to care
for her, but did not know what to do. She was stricken with
hemiplegia, a total paralysis on one side of the body, sometimes caused by a
stroke. Her condition continued to deteriorate. It was a dangerous situation.
On April 30th, John’s younger sister, Loretta, and mother,
Margaret, received a desperate phone call from him in the middle of the night. Lillie was extremely sick (perhaps even having convulsions) and he needed
help. Loretta and Margaret got up, dressed quickly, and asked Regina, a nurse who
lived in their building, to go with them. In the early hours of the morning they
hurried through the dimly lit streets of the city to John and Lillie’s place.
Lillie returned home, but her condition grew progressively worse. Four days later, she herself passed away. The official cause of death was
listed as eclampsia, a condition in which protein levels in the mother’s blood
are too high to sustain life. It has been assocated with high blood pressure occurring during pregnancy. 
Lillie’s funeral was held at St.
Aloysius Church on Tuesday, May 5. (There was no notice in the Kansas City
Times newspaper. The notice was probably run in one of Kansas City’s other two papers, but no copies of editions for this time period have survived.) Lillie
M. Arvin was buried that same sad day, May 5th, at St. Mary’s
Jitney Driver
Devastated after Lillie and their daughter’s deaths, John moved out of their little apartment on Montgall and back in with his family at 1425 Prospect Avenue. He was only 23
years old, and now he was a widower. Nevertheless, he slowly began to put his life back together
again. He started using his driving skills in a new way. He became a “jitney” driver.
The origin of the name is uncertain,
but it is thought to have been based on a slang word for nickel, the
typical jitney fare.
A jitney was any independently
operated motor vehicle that carried groups of passengers for a fee.
Typically, a jitney was a
standard passenger automobile driven by anyone who could wrangle the right
to use it. Sometimes jitneys
were larger, bus-like vehicles that could carry a dozen or so people. The ranks
of jitney drivers were filled
by unemployed people, car owners moonlighting after their regular jobs, and
chauffeurs who could cut a deal
with their bosses for use of a car. Often, jitneys were on their second or
third owners, and sometime in
poor condition.
The first jitneys appeared
in mid 1914 in Los Angeles. In no time, jitney popped up in cities across
America. The first showed up in
Kansas City in February 1915.
Jitney drivers patrolled
streetcar routes, picking up people waiting at car stops. The jitneys offered
fares competitive with the
streetcars and the chance to reach a destination promptly and in more privacy
than the streetcar offered.
Naturally, the heavily
regulated streetcar companies saw jitney drivers as parasites. They had no
investment except whatever it
took them to obtain a vehicle, and could travel any route on any schedule
they pleased—though jitneys
preferred the ready-made customer base along the streetcar lines at rush hour.2
Ruth W Spake
John is listed in the city directory for 1915 as a
chauffeur, then in 1916 as a driver. Then one day, his life changed
dramatically. He met Ruth W. Spake.
Ruth’s father, Abijah, was born in 1845 in Ohio, and grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Civil War records indicate he enlisted in the Indiana Infantry in January, 1864 and was mustered out in December 1865. He moved west to rural Johnson County, Missouri, where in 1867 he married Elizabeth C. Thompson, born in 1848. Abijah and “Lizzie” had a son, Frederick, born in 1869. What happened next is unclear. They apparently separated, but Abijah and one year-old Frederick are shown in the census of 1870 as living 
with her parents, Andrew and Elizabeth Thompson. Lizzie C. Spake’s tombstone indicates she did not die until 1874. (Search in FindAGrave.com/) Abijah, meanwhile, married Nancy A. Dixon. (Her family claimed descent from Jeremiah Dixon, surveyor of the Mason-Dixon Line.) To this marriage Charles Dixon Spake was born on 30 January 1873, and Thomas Henry Spake was born on 27 October 1875. There may have been other children; the records are not helpful. Daughter Ruth Spake was born much later, in February of 1892, as shown in the Census of 1900 for Johnson County, Missouri. Nancy died in 1905—when Ruth was only 13—and Abijah died four years later. (FindAGrave.com/) This left the children in a disastrous situation, much like the one John and his family faced when William Arvin died, only this was worse.
Charles D. Spake married Hattie Craycraft in 1898 in her hometown of Lee’s Summit, Missouri, a small town 20 miles southeast of Kansas City. Hattie was the daughter of Jorge (b. 1841) and Harriet Craycraft. By 1900, Charles and Hattie were in Sedalia, Missouri, and were living with her parents. Charles worked in a railroad switch house there. In 1909, they moved to the Kansas City area, and they rented a room at 123 Spruce Avenue, on the bustling northeast side of town. Charles worked as a grain inspector for the Missouri State Grain Inspection & Weighing Dept.
Thomas H. Spake married Marie Reed in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1899. They lived for a short time in St. Louis, but by 1900 were living with Abijah and Nancy Spake, on their farm. They had a baby daughter, named Alice. In 1910, Tom, Marie and Alice, along 18 year-old Ruth, all moved to Kansas City. They rented this cozy little home at 130 North Denver Avenue, which was less than a mile from Charles and Hattie. Tom began working as a streetcar conductor, Marie cared for Alice and kept house, and Ruth found employment as a clerk for the Postal Telegraph-Cable Co. (Meanwhile, their half-brother, Frederick Spake, had married his wife, Anna. They had a son, Hubert and daughter, Alberta. Hubert moved to Kansas City in 1911, found a job, and lived at 1407 Prospect.) 
Ruth worked for several years at Tel-Cable, as it was known. The 
company, in competition with Western Union Telegraph and American Telegraph & Telephone, was in the business of sending and receiving messages. An incoming telephone call would be received, and the message was typed onto a paper telegram and hand delivered to the recipient. Tel-Cable’s main office was at 8th & Delaware, in the heart of downtown. They also operated ten branches situated in important business areas throughout the city. In 1912, Ruth was promoted to manager of one of these branches.
Things began turn sour at home, however. Tom and Marie were having marital problems, and were probably going through a divorce. Everyone moved out of the 130 N. Denver home. Ruth, Marie and Alice moved in with Charlie and Hattie, who had themselves moved two doors south on Spruce, and were now at 129 Spruce Avenue. Hattie was now working as a clerk at the B Adler Millinery Company, a women’s hat maker. In 1913, we find Marie Spake listing herself as the “widow” of Thomas Spake in the city directory. This was a code word for “divorced,” a scandalous status for a woman at this time and a term to be avoided. (This family photo shows Marie, on the right, with Ruth and an unidentified Aunt Lou.) Marie found a job as a saleslady in 1914. Ruth helped Alice (shown on the right with Ruth in this picture postcard) get a job with Tel-Cable. In fact, Ruth may have hired her herself. She was the manager of the Postal Telegraph & Cable Co. branch at 917 Baltimore. Tom’s whereabouts are unknown. He is not even listed in the city directory again until 1917, when he was living at the YMCA.
The year 1916 brought big changes for everyone. Charlie took a new job and became a salesman for the Unity Oil Company. He and Hattie moved to an apartment building at 2826 Prospect Avenue (no longer standing. This is next door to the north.) Marie and Ruth moved there to live with them. In March, Charlie sold Ruth a contract for an interest in an Oklahoma oil field. inside outside It probably cost a month’s wages. Marie became a clerk for A Morrison Jr Farm Co., and Ruth became a “tel opr” for the Chicago Great Western Railroad at 809 Walnut, downtown. As for Alice, she disappeared from the city directory forever under this name. Did she marry?
It was at this time that John and Ruth met and started seeing each other. In due course, things got serious between them, and they made some big plans for the future. Then, their lives changed, and all their plans were interrupted by events which were far beyond their control. War with Mexico was becoming a real possibility. The Mexican Revolution was at a full boil in
that country, and it was spilling over along its border with the United States.
Revolution
The Mexican Revolution was a major
armed struggle that began in 1910 with an uprising against long time autocratic
President, Porfirio Diaz. The military staged a coup, declared themselves in
control, then held an election. But within a week the new president was assassinated,
and the country was plunged back into turmoil. In 1914, another army general, Venustiano Carranza, assumed power. But things were still unstable, and soon
warlords such as Francisco
“Pancho” Villa, Emiliano Zapata and others
renewed the uprising. Their actions brought Mexico to the brink of a civil war.
The tipping point came when the United States, under President Woodrow Wilson, officially
recognized the Carranza administration as Mexico’s legitimate
government. The warlords were dismayed.
“Villa, angered by his fading fortunes, by
The United States, although it had only a small standing army at
this time, reacted in turn. “The American response was immediate and
impressive. Ultimately, more than ten thousand
“Practically the entire small
regular army in the United States was now on the Mexican border or with the
punitive expedition….but due to the enormous length of the Mexican border, it
was so thinly distributed that the border county was open to raids anywhere.”4
The National Guard
The United States Army simply did not have
the manpower to get the job done. “Not merely were the forces on the border
inadequate for proper defense, but it would be impossible to undertake the
offensive that would be necessary to bring the Mexican war lords to their
senses. And the only reserve that the
Just like all the other states, the
Missouri National Guard got its call. “The telegram from the Secretary of War
calling the National Guard into federal service was received by the Governor
about 11 o’clock P.M. on Sunday, June 18, 1916. He at once called the
commanding general at
6
“Tuesday morning, June 20, twenty-four
hours after the order had been received, they were arriving in camp on special
trains….The force so called into federal service...consisted of 5,030 officers
and men…every officer and man responded—there were no deserters.”7
Enlistment
The call up of the nation’s entire National
Guard created a wave of patriotism. It swept through the United States like a
shot of adrenaline, and John Ambrose Arvin was one of the many young men who felt
it. “The war in Europe and the imminent danger of war with
Enlistments
skyrocketed. On 23 June 1916, as thousands of
young men his age (like these in New Jersey) were doing, John enlisted in the Missouri National Guard. With
mind-numbing speed, he was ordered to active duty the same day.
John’s younger sister Loretta
remembered the scene at the Union Station in Kansas City as John said goodbye
to her, then to his mother Margaret and lastly to his teary-eyed sweetheart, Ruth.
Then he boarded the troop train, and his unit shipped out to the National
Guard State Rifle Range at Camp Clark, in
The Missouri National Guard
The entire Missouri National Guard
consisted of just one brigade, the First Brigade. “It was on duty during a
period of more than six months, during which time it patrolled 145 miles of the
Border in the Laredo District. Although this district was regarded as the worst
along the Rio Grande and the troops of the regular army on duty there prior to
the arrival of the National Guard had experienced difficulty in preserving
order, and one of their camps had been raided with the loss of four men, not a
single act of disorder occurred during the tour of the Missouri Brigade. No
better troops ever served.”9
John was in the Third Regiment of
The First Brigade. “Under the President’s order of June 18, 1916, the companies
of the regiment were mobilized at Nevada on June 23, 1916….it was mustered into
federal service on July 7, 1916. It departed for the Border on July 8, 1916,
and arrived at
July 1916 muster in muster roll 1916 statement
“The troops were mobilized with remarkable
promptness and moved to the Border without friction, confusion or delay. Their
whole conduct throughout their service was one of which the State might well be
proud. They expected to see service in
From the Missouri Office of the Adjutant General
12
A fellow
It was pleasant to be on a troop
train and border-bound again, equipment swinging back and forth on
hooks in an atmosphere of
cigarette smoke as the train jolted along, and with volunteer quartets caroling
for the their joy at being alive
and going places. Carranzista troops had shot up two troops of the 10th U.S.
Cavalry at
cheering reception at many of
the towns through which we passed and I recall particularly that at Enid,
Okla., where groups of women
served ice cream to all personnel, there being a delay there which permitted
the troops to be detrained in
front of their cars for that purpose….
South of San Antonio the country took on
a warlike aspect, quite different from what it had appeared
when I traveled that road a few
months before. Bridges and culverts were guarded by squads of troops
with red hat-cords—coast artillerymen
with bulging cartridge belts temporarily serving as infantry—
standing beside sand-bagged
trenches. In the small towns a number of citizens were seen wearing
revolvers—picturesque old
frontier models many of them. Near Webb was pointed out a wooden cross
marking the grave of a Carranza
colonel, killed some time before in a raid meant to cut the railway.
Moving northward on the roads
were groups of Mexican men, women and children in burro-drawn vehicles
or trudging along on foot, presumably seeking safety from the storm they
imagined about to break over the
border country.
On the Border
“To the guardsmen of the border
states the scenery of the border country was familiar, but to the men from the
green Middle West and the Atlantic Coast, the scene was one of desolation and
horror. Many of them knew so little of what to expect, knew so little about the
southwest of their own country, that when a train was delayed because of a broken
rail, the officers immediately formed a defensive perimeter to repel the
expected Mexican attack.
“Since there was no time to prepare
camps and campsites in advance, the Guardsmen had to make shift with
constructing their own living places. The 1st Kansas Infantry, for example,
detrained at
Ward Schrantz: “We arrived at
“The troops at 
“Our camp of pyramidal tents which
we had pitched at the north edge of
“The weather varied the monotony of
drill, hike and minor maneuvers a little. Dust storms occasionally filled the
air so that it was difficult to see across the company streets. The tail of a
hurricane caught us one night, flattening three fourths of our regimental camp
and submerging with rain water those tent sites on low ground or in gullies.”14
“The largest number of National Guard
members on duty occurred on July 31, 1916, when more than 110,000 were on the
border and more than 40,000 were in state mobilization camps. The largest
number actually to be on the border (112,000) was during the following month.”15
“It goes without saying that most of the
guardsmen expected and hoped to fight the Mexicans soon after arriving, but
such was not to be. Instead, they found themselves in a daily grind of drill, drill,
shoot, shoot and fatigue, fatigue and more fatigue. There were long marches,
designed to harden the men and instill march discipline so that they could be
maneuvered if war should come. The marches were, at first, hard on men who were
not accustomed to the summer temperatures of the Border, or to the dust and the
complete absence of amenities that they took for granted in their homes.”16
“A
morale factor developed in the national guard troops on the border. While it is
known now that relations with the Mexican de facto government remained
unsatisfactory and were several times near the point of war, there was no
outward evidence of this and the true situation was unknown to the troops or to
the public. It all looked peaceful enough and homesick guardsmen and their
families wondered why they were kept there. Some had left families, and could
not support them on the $15.00 a month pay of the private soldier. Congress
soon took care of this by making allowances or authorizing discharges for men with
dependents.”17
“Many observers, newspaper reporters and
other writers, unaccustomed to soldier ways, took the men’s griping and
grumbling seriously: “Never again!” “I’m through. They’ll never get me in a
uniform again as long as I live!” “I wanna go home!” And yet these same
National Guard organizations, with many (probably most) of the same men, within
the next two years, plunged ahead into flaming sheets of German machine gun
fire and barrages to carry out their objectives.
“There was, however, a serious side
to some National Guardsman’s complaints that posed a problem that has not been
wholly solved as yet and possibly cannot be solved. Actually it is a problem as
old as war itself—the problem of the soldier who leaves dependents behind….
“To take care of worthy cases, on
July 18, 1916, the Secretary of War authorized the discharge of any National
Guardsmen who had dependent relatives and who applied for his discharge.”18
Homeward Bound
The Missouri National Guard
“remained on duty on the Laredo District until September 2, 1916, when it
returned to Camp Clark, near Nevada, and was finally released from federal
service September 26, 1916.”19 John’s
service record indicates his Mexican
Border Service ended on 1 September 1916.
Ward Schrantz tells us, “...my own
regiment marched east of
final muster page 1 page 2 page 3
These records were published in book form in 1919. Here is an abstract of some of that book:
___________________________________________________________________
COMPANY G, THIRD INFANTRY.
Called into Federal service by
proclamation of the President June 18, 1916.
Arrived at
Arrived at
Relieved from
Federal service, September 26, 1916, at
_____________________________________________________________________________
Name and rank. In National
Guard of
Captain,
HENRY E.
LEWIS . . . . . . . Pvt.
Co. G, 3d
Inf., June 28, 1916.
Mexican Border Service.
Capt. Co. G, 3d
1st Lieutenant,
GEORGE E. LONGAN . .
. . Pvt. Co. I, 3d
ETS. Enl. Co. C, 3d Inf., June
23, 1916. 1st Lt. Co. G,
3d
Mexican Border Service.
1st Lt. Co. G, 3d
2d Lieutenant,
FRED C. WILHELM . . . .
. Pvt. Co. G, 3d
1st Sgt. June 28, 1916. 2d Lt.
Co. G, 3d Inf., July 3, 1916.
Mexican Border Service.
2d Lt. Co. G, 3d
1st Sergeant,
HARRY A. P ILCHER . . .
. Pvt. Co. G, 3d
Sgt. July 4, 1916. 1st Sgt.
July 4, 1916.
Mexican Border Service.
1st Sgt. Co. G, 3d
Mess Sergeant,
. . . (1 total)
Sergeants:
. . . (4 total)
. . .
Corporals:
. . . (7 total)
. . .
Cooks:
. . . (2)
. . .
Buglers:
. . . (2)
Mechanic:
. . . (1)
Privates:
ARVIN, JOHN A. . . . . Pvt.
Co. G, 3d
Mexican Border Service
Pvt. Co. G, 3d
BINZ, FRED H. . . . . Pvt. Co. G, 3d
Mexican Border Service
Pvt. Co. G, 3d
BROCKMAN, GILBERT G. . Pvt. Co. G, 3d
Mexican Border Service
Pvt. Co. G, 3d
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . . (50)
____________________________________________________________________________
22
Marriage and the Great War
Less than three
weeks after he was mustered out, on 19 October 1916, John and Ruth were married at St. Aloysius Church in Kansas City. Rall Grumman(?) was best man, and John’s sister, Jennie, was maid of honor. The pastor, Fr. Aloysius Breen, a Jesuit priest, performed the
ceremony, recording it in the registry and issuing a marriage certificate. Also, the Marriage License reverse was recorded by the Jackson County Recorder of Deeds. The newlyweds lived 
with Margaret and the rest of the family at 1323 Prospect
temporarily, probably because their incomes were not large enough for them to
afford a place of their own. John remained in the Missouri National Guard, as
required by the terms of his enlistment. He was promoted to First Class Private
effective 25 March 1917.
Despite the president’s “He kept us out of
war” campaign slogan, the United States of America was inexorably drawn into an
enormous, all-encompassing European conflict. In the event of an attack on a
given country, tangling alliances of all sorts bound allies together in the
name of mutual defense. This drew other countries into the conflict, until all
of Europe was on one side or the other. On 13 April 1917, the United States
declared war on
U.S. Army muster page 1
He
reported to the mobilization point as required, but immediately requested
release from his enlistment because he had a dependent—his wife Ruth. John’s
older sister, Mary, a Notary Public, helped him with an affidavit and supporting statements from Frank Jackson and I W Fry to that
effect. His request was granted, and he was granted an Honorable
Discharge reverse at
statement reverse
He was still required to stay registered with Selective Service, and he
complied in June, 1917. A Registration Certificate was issued to him.
John and Ruth moved to
Clinton, Missouri, about 60 miles southeast of Kansas City. John was probably pursuing a job opportunity for work as an auto mechanic there. They lived at 707 E. Franklin Street. His Draft Classification Card back was sent there in February of 1918. The card shows him classified as
IV-A, meaning he was still subject to the draft, but placed in a lower priority
than I-A registrants.
The young couple returned to Kansas City after a stay of only a few months. Ruth’s brother, Tom Spake (almost twenty years her senior) had contacted them with very good news. He was now working as an auto mechanic at Buxton-Phillips Motors Corporation, a prestigous distributor of the Chalmers and the Maxwell cars, located at 3340 Main Street in Kansas City. He 
said they were looking for another mechanic, and he could help John apply for the job. More good news: Tom was living at 2840 Michigan Avenue,a small wood-frame rental house, and he told them the home next door, 2842 Michigan, was for rent. (Neither still standing.) It didn’t take them long to decide to return to Kansas City. And in a matter of days, John was working at Buxton-Phillips and he and Ruth were living at 2842 Michigan Avenue, next door to Tom.
This all happened at a very good time, for Ruth was now expecting. And, as the so-called Great
War—a War to End All Wars, a World War—raged out of control in
Tom and John did well at Buxton-Phillips. Tom became the foreman of the mechanics and moved to an apartment closer to work, at 112 West 36th Street. (Tom’s ex-wife, “Mrs. Marie Spake,” still lived with Charlie and Hattie at 2826 Prospect and still worked for the A Morrison Jr Farm Co.) John was also doing well. So well that on the 26th of November, 1919, John
and Ruth purchased a home. It
was, and still is, on lot 30 of the Hill Top Addition. The address is 2315 Myrtle Avenue. It is
directly south of Mount Saint Mary’s Cemetery, where John’s first wife, Lillie,
and their stillborn daughter were so painfully laid to rest a few years before. The home
purchase was subject to a lease, held by a tenant,
who was paying $25.00 per month in rent. The lease was set to expire on March
31st, 1920. Then they would be able to move in.
1920 – Fourteenth United States Census
John and
his family are still renting, waiting for the
lease to expire on the home they bought at 2315 Myrtle. John is an auto
mechanic with Buxton-Phillips Motors, a car dealer, over on Main Street. He works for wages.
2842 Arvin, John Head R M W 28 M . . . Auto
Mech In Shop W
-------
, Ruth Wife F W 27 M none
-------
, Robert Son M W S none
Run for Your Life
The Roaring Twenties
This working arrangement must have involved long hours and been
exhausting for John, for in 1931, we find the restaurant listed in the City
Directory as being operated by someone else. John’s mother, Margaret, died in the summer of 1931, and he moved back in at Zetta’s home.
This census gathered a lot of data about people. The column headings indicate that John: lived at 1229 Washington, and his rent was $9.00 per month ($147.28 in today’s money). Health Problems John was living at 1309 Pennsylvania
in 1945, when he suffered a serious heart attack. Loretta remembered rushing
her older brother to John stayed at Eventually, John’s health deteriorated, and he
later had to be readmitted to the Veterans’ John Ambrose Arvin died of a second heart
attack, the result of an enlarged heart, on 23 April 1955 at Wadsworth. His only child and descendant, Robert, handled the arrangements for his father’s funeral. He saw to the funeral notice and the death notice continued in the newspaper. The funeral mass, complete with holy card back, was held at Christ the King Catholic Church, Robert’s parish church. Postscript: Recollections of Dennis Simms Jr. Footnotes 1. “World’s Largest Laundry,” Kansas City Architect and Builder, vol.
16 (June 1901), p 185-188 Images Photograph of interior of Woolf Brothers Laundry courtesy of Walker Towel and Uniform Service, its successor company. Photographs
of Phoenix Sanatorium courtesy of McClintock Collection, Arizona Room, Phoenix
Public Library, as presented in “Vanishing Phoenix,” by Robert A. Melikian (2010) p 52ff
Soon
after the census was taken, John and Ruth were able to move into their home.
Now they had everything they ever wanted, everything promised to them by the
American Dream. John already had life insurance, and now they took out a policy reverse on Ruth. But within weeks, their dream had turned into a nightmare. Ruth’s health
began to deteriorate. She had to undergo an
operation for the removal of a kidney. But even after the operation, her health
remained poor and seemed to be getting worse. Then, terrifying, unbearable news. She was diagnosed with consumption (pulmonary tuberculosis.) John knew what this
meant: his father had died of the disease. “The classic symptoms are a chronic cough with
blood-tinged sputum, fever, night sweats, and weight loss (the last giving rise
to the formerly prevalent colloquial term ‘consumption.’)”23 In these days before the discovery of
the antibiotic Streptomycin, there was no medical treatment for the
disease. The conventional wisdom held that a “consumptive” should travel 
to places where the
air was considered cleaner, to give their system a chance to rest and rebuild
itself. Based on what they knew about the disease, John and Ruth made a big decision.
They ran for their
lives. They liquidated their assets to get the cash they needed. In July, older
sister Mary Ann and her husband Charlie McClung stepped in and purchased their
home. John and Ruth then made a trip to Denver, Colorado. The experts said what
they needed was, “plentiful amounts of high altitude, fresh air, and good nutrition.”
But when they returned to Kansas City, Ruth’s condition had not improved. In
fact, it was worse. Hoping against hope, they left 
little Bobby with John’s
younger sister, Loretta and her husband, Frank Jackson. In August, they took
the train to Los Angeles. They visited John’s brother, Louis, and his wife Catherine, who lived in the downtown area.
They also visited John’s sister, Emma, and her husband Henry Phibbs, who lived about a mile away, at The Rutland residential hotel, 1839 South Main Street. While there, Ruth went to another doctor. She paid him using a counter check
from the Los Angeles Trust & Savings Bank, which had an office next door to
the Rutland.
With Ruth’s health was still in
decline, with their options running out, 
they were getting desperate. They
left Los Angeles and made another trip, this time to a sanatorium in Phoenix. This “new word...would emphasize the need for scientific healing or treatment....they
took the Latin verb root sano, meaning to heal, and adopted the new word
sanatorium....The rationale for sanatoria was that before antibiotic treatments
existed, a regimen of rest and good nutrition offered the best chance that the
sufferer’s immune system
would ‘wall
off’ pockets of pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) infection....” 24 Although they were running low
on funds, John 
arranged for Ruth to check
in to the well-known Phoenix Sanatorium, located in the downtown area. (It
was on the second floor of the Stroud Building, the building with the “Temme
Springs” sign in this photo. Today, Durant’s
Restaurant stands on this site.) Many “lung patients looking for a
rest cure were attracted to Phoenix because of its low humidity, mild winters
and clean air. Into the 1920s, such institutions as the Phoenix Sanatorium
promoted themselves nationally.”25 “Wealthier people
chose to recuperate in exclusive TB resorts, while others
used their savings to make the journey to Arizona and arrived penniless....”26
John and Ruth arrived on January 16th. John knew the outlook was grim. Ruth would
have to stay there indefinitely. Her condition was now quite serious,
probably terminal. She grew weaker by the day. He decided to quickly return to
Kansas City, fetch their son and bring him to his mother. While he was on his way
back to Kansas City, Ruth lost her battle with tuberculosis and passed away.
She died at 9:00 AM on Monday, the 31st day of January, 1921.
Ruth Spake Arvin
A Widower Again
John remained with Frank and Loretta Jackson in Kansas City
and arranged for Ruth’s body to be returned for burial. Mr. Dick Smith, a railroad agent, wrote him a letter page 2 page 3. John was in great need of money, and wrote a letter to Ruth’s attending physician, Doctor Woodall.
Dr. Woodall had already filled out the death certificate, and now completed the insurance form, returning it to John. Ruth’s funeral was held at St. Aloysius Church on Thursday, February 3, and she was buried that same day. Since he had almost no funds left, John had to have Ruth interred in the same plot which contained the remains of his first wife, Lillie, and their stillborn infant. John had not even paid the premium on his own life insurance policy for over a year, but he knew how critical it could be. So he made a back payment now to keep it from lapsing. The Spake brothers may have purchased the stone for their little sister. One can only imagine the grief and the terrible sadness he must have felt that day. And every day thereafter.
Loretta and her husband Frank Jackson were still caring for Bobby, now
two years old, at the apartment (2733 Gillham Road). They asked John to continue staying
with them. It was fortunate that the Jacksons had a three bedroom apartment, because
John and Loretta’s mother, Margaret, and their sister, Jennie, were also living
there. These were tough times for the Arvin family. Their brother William,
divorced and penniless, also needed shelter at this time, so Frank and Loretta took him in, too. So unselfish were the Jacksons that they even moved to a larger apartment, located at 3041 Wabash (no
longer standing), in order to provide shelter for everyone. In addition, Frank employed John and William at his printing company.
Loretta
simply continued to care for Bobby. She was now his de facto mother. Frank wanted to adopt Bobby, but Loretta insisted
he keep his father’s surname. Margaret pointed out that John might remarry again someday. And so it was that Robert Joseph Arvin remained
Robert Joseph Arvin.
John, not yet thirty years old, was a widower for the second
time. But he did not give up. All through the 1920’s,
he carried on. Though it was always a struggle, he succeeded. The Roaring Twenties were times of constant change for John and the Arvin family. Jennie married William Strasburg in September of 1921. She moved 
out to live with him in a place of their own. The following year, Frank
and Loretta purchased a home in a fresh new suburb on Kansas City’s
south side. The address: 5430 Forest. Margaret, William, John and Robert all moved there with them. The City Directory lists John as a mechanic for the Globe Laundry in 1922. Another
sister, Zetta, and her husband, Dennis Simms, purchased a home at 5439 Tracy, located one block to the east. Now the Arvin family had once again reinvented itself. And they took care of each other, each person doing what they could to help everyone else. John started to make a living working as a
driver again.
In 1925, William remarried and moved
downtown to begin a new life with his second wife. The following year, in sharp contrast, Dennis Simms abandoned his wife, Zetta, and their three sons, and left town
without a trace. Margaret and John moved in with her, and thus helped her hold on to her home.
The oldest child of the family, Mary McClung, worked at an insurance company downtown. She was the personal secretary of the president of the company, Arthur Hyde, who was a former governor of the State of Missouri. When Herbert Hoover was elected president in 1928, Hoover selected Hyde to become the new Secretary of Agriculture. And Hyde invited Mary to go to Washington as his personal secretary at the Department of Agriculture. Amid much publicity, Mary left to live a life of glamour and prestige in the nation’s capitol. She paid an unbearable price, though. Her husband, Charlie, committed suicide.
Back in Kansas City, John became acquainted with a young man named Maitland, whose father had money. Maitland had a dump truck, and he and John used it to launch a contract hauling business. They called it Arvin Brothers. They landed contracts with both the Kansas City Journal-Post newspaper and the Packer Publishing
Company, delivering rolls of paper to their pressrooms, and delivering the printed products to their customers. (He is shown here, at “The Packer,” second from the right.) They also made deliveries for
Frank Jackson Printing and subcontracted work with the Belger Cartage Company, the premier moving and hauling company in town. These
were great accomplishments in those tough years. John’s company provided employment not only for himself but also for his young nephews, the three sons of Leo Arvin (Joe Bemil, Louis and Dellis) and the Zetta’s two oldest (Dennis Jr and Emmett). He became a role model for them at an important, formative time in their lives.
1930 – Fifteenth United States Census
In 1930, John’s residence was listed in the City Business Directory as 5439 Tracy, Zetta’s home. But later in the year, he and Maitland (with financial help from Maitland’s father) took over the operation of a downtown restaurant, the Yellow Inn Cafe. It was located in the Drake Building, at 1334
Broadway. (No longer standing, but shown here on this vintage map as a three story brick building with a large 10 foot high chimney on the roof.) They operated Arvin Brothers from the same location, and John ran the restaurant. He took a furnished room in the apartments above the restaurant, 1334½
Broadway. There we find John in the 1930 census, listed
as a Roomer, living alone.
This census asked about ownership of a new
technological device, the radio set, which was becoming a standard feature in
many homes across the county. John does not own one.
1334½ Arvin, John A Roomer M W 36 Wd . . . Proprietor Restaurant
The tough times in the 1920’s were
followed by the even tougher times of the Great Depression. Through the 1930’s,
the City Directory shows John, living alone, in different residential hotels and boarding houses
downtown. Some years he is not listed at all, probably because he was not steadily employed. He was one of the many millions of Americans who struggled to get by day by
day in those Depression years. He lived in a dwelling at 1309 Pennsylvania Avenue in 1935. (The City Directory shows the Ever Ready Transfer Company at this address in 1930.) In
1937 he was listed at 414 W. 12th St. Ter. (No such address, but my father told me he lived here, the Cardova Hotel, on the southeast corner of 12th and Pennsylvania.) His occupation:
laborer. These must have been lonely years for him. He did the best he could. In 1938, he moved to 1229 Washington and listed himself as a driver. In 1939, he listed himself as a trucker at the same address. He had now become the proprietor of his own company: Arvin Trucking.
1940 – Sixteenth United States Census
He was a white male, 47 years old, who was single. He had an eighth-grade education, was born in Indiana and lived at the same place in 1935. He was an owner-operator, working in the Truck Services industry. He worked on his Own Account (e.g., was self employed), worked 52 weeks in 1939, earned $0.00 in money, wages or salary in 1939, but did receive $50.00 or more from sources other than money, wages or salary in 1939.
Image
1229 R 9 Arvin, John A. Head M W 47 S 8 Indiana same place owner operator Truck Services OA 52 0 yes
In 1941, the City Directory shows him at 1300 Pennsylvania (no such address, son’s military records list him at the Pennington Hotel, 12th & Penn., and also at “Co. 2, Woods, Wi.” The meaning of this entry is unclear.) His son, Robert, continued to live
with Frank and Loretta at 5430 Forest. Robert is listed as a student, then
later as a printer with the Frank Jackson Printing Company. Frank and Loretta
always treated Robert as their son, and Rosemary (who goes by “Todi”) always considered
him her brother, although she admitted that introducing him with a last name of
Arvin was always awkward.
Wadsworth
Domiciliary was considered a model facility, providing long term care for disabled
veterans in a pleasant, well maintained setting. There was a hospital, chapels (Protestant above grade, Catholic
below), library, dining hall, ballroom, theatre, amusement hall with a canteen,
a fishing pond with a gazebo for band concerts, and barracks that had bathtubs, hot and cold running water and flushing toilets. Quite a place. It was, and still is,
located in Leavenworth, Kansas. Loretta shepherded the application process
through the machinery of the Veterans’ Administration, and John was admitted in 1946.
The facility is now known as
the Dwight D. Eisenhower VA Medical Center. The Hospital is active and well run, but the old Domiciliary has been closed for decades, and now stands
abandoned. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has neither the funds to restore it
nor the heart to tear it down.
The world allowed John happiness only in short, precious
spans of time. It gave him a wife, and was about to give him a daughter. But
then they were taken away from him. It gave him another wife, then a son. But
once again, they were taken away. He was always at a disadvantage, but he never
gave up. He always made do with what he had and never complained. He always did more than his share in life. Then, all too
soon, the world took him away from us.
John is buried at Calvary Cemetery
in Kansas City Missouri, alongside his mother and father. He was John Ambrose Arvin.
.JPG)
Researched and written by Robert Joseph
Arvin, Jr. © Copyright 2012
2. Monroe Dodd, A Splendid Ride, The Streetcars of Kansas City 1870-1957 (2002),
p130-131
3. Jeff Patrick, ed. Guarding the Border, the Military Memoirs of Ward Schrantz, 1912-1917
(2009), p 136
4.
Patrick, ed. Guarding the Border, p 90
5. Missouri Office of the Adjutant General, The Service of the Missouri National Guard
on the Mexican
Border
Under the President’s Order of June 18, 1916 (1919), p v-ix
6. Adjutant General, Service of the Missouri National Guard, p xix-xx
7. Adjutant General, Service of the Missouri National Guard, p v-ix
8. Clarence C. Clendenen, Blood on the Border, the
9. Adjutant
General, Service of the Missouri
National Guard, p xxvii
10. Adjutant
General, Service of the Missouri
National Guard, p xxvii
11. Adjutant
General, Service of the Missouri
National Guard, p xvii
12. Adjutant
General, Service of the Missouri
National Guard, p ix-xii
13. Clendenen, Blood on the Border, p 291
14. Patrick, ed. Guarding the Border, p 90-101
15. Patrick, ed. Guarding the Border, note on p 186
16. Clendenen, Blood on the Border, p 292
17. Patrick, ed. Guarding the Border, p 101
18. Clendenen, Blood on the Border, p 294
19. Adjutant
General, Service of the Missouri
National Guard, p xxvii
20. Patrick, ed. Guarding the Border, p 104
21. Patrick, ed. Guarding the Border, p 140
22. Adjutant
General, Service of the Missouri
National Guard, p 256-258
23. Wikipedia
24. Wikipedia
25. Robert A. Melikian, Vanishing
Phoenix (2010), p 52
26. Wikipedia
Marriage Registry and Interment Records courtesy archives of Catholic Diocese of Kansas City - Saint Joseph
“Going to the border without training or equipment: raw recruits of the Essex
troop of New Jersey.” from Century Magazine,
Vol. 42 (October, 1916), p 805
Sanborn Fire Insurance map of 1334 Broadway courtesty of Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City,
Missouri. Used with permission.
