I hinted last time that today's Old News would bring you yet another George Martin, but forget that. Here is something with no George Martins in it.
Between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. on this day 100 years ago, Arkansas men stood in lines to register for the Selective Service — the draft. The Arkansas Gazette's front page bore the federal instructions:
All male persons (citizens or aliens) born between the sixth day of June, 1886, and the fifth day of June, 1896, both dates inclusive, except members of any duly organized force, military or naval, subject to be called, ordered or drafted into military or naval service of the United States, including all officers and enlisted men of the regular army, regular army reserve, officers' reserve corps, enlisted men's reserve corps, National Guard and National Guard reserve recognized by Militia Bureau, the Navy, the Marine Corps, Coast Guard, naval militia, naval reserve force, Marine Corps reserve and national naval volunteers recognized by the Navy Department.
These were men 21 to not quite 31 years old. They were to go in person to the registration place of their home precinct or, if sick, to send a competent friend: "The clerk may deputize him to prepare your card."
Penalty for Not Registering
Liability to a year's imprisonment, then enforced registration.
In Little Rock, 2,000 nonresidents, absentees and sick men already had signed up, as well as one conscientious objector. Some of the sick men were signed up involuntarily by the city's chief health officer.
Dr. Milton Vaughan ... registered eight patients at the City hospital and three smallpox patients at the pesthouse, and will register all other hospital patients today.
In addition to these 11 residents, Dr. Vaughan registered a smallpox patient, C.E. Snodgrass, a young railroad man, living at 218 Schiller avenue. Snodgrass protested against being registered.
"I know what the law is and want to comply with it," Snodgrass said.
"I didn't come here to register you, but I will do it just the same," said Dr. Vaughan. "I came here to examine you for smallpox, and I find that you have it, and I must send you to the pesthouse, but I will register you first."
Snodgrass said he wanted to register, but thought it would be more patriotic for him to do so in his own precinct. He answered all questions readily, signed the card, and was then taken to the pesthouse.
The card will be thoroughly fumigated before it leaves Dr. Vaughan's possession.
In 1916 Arkansas had become the first state to mandate smallpox vaccinations for schoolchildren. About a third of people who caught smallpox died. If authorities spotted them, they died in the pesthouse — a quarantine building.
Thanks to Timothy G. Nutt, director of historical research for the UAMS Library, who looked in his 1917 City Directory for me, we know the Little Rock pesthouse was at 1415 E. 28th St. Look that up on Google and you'll see an empty lot behind a brick warehouse-type building erected in 1959, about a block from today's Little Rock National Cemetery.
Transport to the pesthouse — with a handy spot nearby for your grave — was not auspicious. On the other hand, it would tend to cast being signed up for military service in a happier light.
What happened to Snodgrass?
We know that C.E. Snodgrass survived, because on March 15, 1918, he showed up in a news report about the draft board's classification of 1,121 registrants. His class was "4-a, 2d." That was, in effect, a draft exemption by delay. Railway workers were needed at home, and he had a dependent wife and children. (Helpful Reader, I trust you will correct me quickly if I have this wrong.)
Snodgrass had married Maud Williamson on March 31, 1914. They honeymooned in Hot Springs. The newspaper noted the birth of a daughter in January 1915.
ANOTHER CLOSE CALL
In December 1915, this same resident of 218 Schiller Ave., a fireman for the Iron Mountain railroad, was injured when switch engine No. 9520, running backward over the crossing at Fourth and Magnolia streets in Argenta, crashed into switch engine No. 1849. Pipes in a cab broke, scalding an engineer (the doctors at St. Vincent's Infirmary expected him to recover). Snodgrass was able to walk home, about three miles.
And he kept on living. The 1920 U.S. Census found C.E. Snodgrass, age 27 in Little Rock's Ward 5, married to Maud and with children ages 4 and 2.
SAY WHAT?
In April 1922, Snodgrass was elected alderman for that city ward — even though his name was not on the ballot. Here's the Gazette:
Yesterday for the first time in the history of Little Rock an unopposed Democratic nominee for city office was defeated in the municipal general election by an independent candidate whose name was not on the ticket. E.L. Younger, Democratic nominee and candidate for re-election as alderman for the Fifth ward, was defeated by Charles E. Snodgrass, Missouri Pacific engineer, who was defeated by Younger for the nomination in the December primary by a majority of 84 votes. Snodgrass, whose name was written on the ticket by his supporters yesterday, defeated Younger by a majority of 578. The vote was: Younger 462, Snodgrass 1,040.
But before we cheer for the railroad guy know this: The turnout was low — one-fifth normal — and, the Gazette reported, the Ku Klux Klan had rallied its members to get to the polls, scratch out the 10-year incumbent and write in Snodgrass. Because Younger was Catholic.
Read more about that in Kenneth C. Barnes' book Anti-Catholicism in Arkansas (University of Arkansas Press, 2016) and also in The Ku Klux Klan in the Southwest by Charles C. Alexander (University of Kentucky Press, 1965).
Mr. and Mrs. C.E. Snodgrass' lives as active members of First Church of the Nazarene at Ninth and Battery streets in Little Rock were noted often in religion pages during the 1930s and '40s. He was a pallbearer for friends' funerals; she taught Sunday School and visited prisoners in the Pulaski County jail.
In October 1940, she testified in a trial about kangaroo courts and beatings in the jail; that report identified her as a "Nazarene church worker and wife of a Missouri Pacific Lines locomotive engineer." She testified that she had heard no complaints from prisoners.
In the '40s and '50s, small news items report a son's service as a Navy gunner's mate, their three children's and a granddaughter's weddings and several transfers of land (for a dollar) from the parents to one or another of their kids.
On March 25, 1964, the Gazette reported their golden wedding anniversary plan for an open house in their home at 1201 Kavanaugh Blvd. Snodgrass had been retired for seven years, having worked for the Missouri Pacific 47 years.
The Arkansas Democrat, which spelled her first name Maude, reported her death in July 1968. According to his obituary in the Gazette, Charles Edmond Snodgrass, 81, died April 9, 1972. He and Maud are buried in Roselawn Memorial Park.
One little 100-year-old anecdote about a guy with smallpox on draft registration day led to 58 years of news clips — tiny things too flimsy to support any confidence that we know C.E. Snodgrass' life story or his character, and yet evidence enough that Arkansas has changed.
We don't send you to a pesthouse when you contract smallpox, for instance. You don't contract smallpox.
With a grave sense of duty I tender my email address for the convenience of Helpful Reader:
ActiveStyle on 06/05/2017