"Nutty Jack," the Human Fly

“Nutty Jack”

by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

November 18th, 2019

 

Thirty-one stories above Seattle, with bare fingers wedged into cracks and crevices, “Nutty” Jack Williams was clinging to a building.
With a ledge 6 feet above him, he crouched for a moment on a concrete windowsill, judging the distance and catching his breath. From out of the window, a hand gave him a towel and Jack wiped the sweat from his palms.

Harry C, Gardiner, Human Fly

Then, his muscles tightened and he shot upward, his arms outstretched, grasping for the ledge. A thousand voices gasped in horror as his body swung back and forth until it suddenly went horizontal and bounced upward, landing safely on the ledge.
Teasing the crowd, he stood up, pretending to be dizzy. He wavered, pushed his jersey into his trousers, adjusted his black slouch hat, then wiggled his toes in his comfortable “sneaks” and began to climb again.

Harry C. Gardiner, Human Fly

On the 42nd floor, his head was just below a cornice jutting 5 feet out. He coiled his body then catapulted upward and outward. With one last swing, he was up and safe and lying breathless on the roof.
Seven ladies fainted, heads turned away in fear, and others just froze in disbelief.
“Nutty” Jack Williams, who claimed to have “climbed everything in the world with a smooth face on it,” including the well-shaven faces of his skeptics, was a well-known “Human Fly,” and one of the best in the country.
He had carried a bathing beauty on his back to the top of the Waldorf Hotel in California. He had climbed the Washington Monument, countless state capitol domes, and the 63-story Woolworth building in New York City, the tallest building in the world.

John Jammie Reynolds, Human Fly

Jack’s career began in Cleveland as a teen member of an acrobatic troupe. He said he had saved a young girl trapped in a skyscraper after fire department ladders couldn’t reach her. He used bare hands to climb up and bring her down.
In December 1918, he left Seattle heading for Medford, planning to climb the tallest building in the Rogue Valley, the five-story Hotel Medford (the sixth story wasn’t added until 1925).
For a man who had been at the “top of the world,” the buildings of Southern Oregon offered him little difficulty, but because the railroad ran through Medford and the town had offered some traveling money and a free place to stay overnight, Jack couldn’t pass it up.
Jack’s moneymaking routine was the same as all the other “human flys.” Find a town with a worthwhile cause and agree to split any money he made — 70% for Jack and 30% for the cause.
It was an easy climb to the top of the Hotel until he reached the large cornice at the top. The crowd briefly booed when he asked for a rope, but began to cheer again when he made it to the roof and climbed to the top of the flagpole.
He put $19.82 in his pocket, gave $8.50 to the local Red Cross, and left town for good.
Jack Williams disappeared from newspapers around 1925, and his fate still is unknown. Some say he fell to his death in Tennessee, others say he changed to wing walking on airplanes.
 

John Jammie Reynolds, Human Fly

Swallowed up by the Great Depression, traveling daredevils were about to disappear. It was just too dangerous and not enough money in the world to take that kind of risk.
Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.

The Oregon Legend of “Little Phil” Sheridan

 

The Oregon legend of “Little Phil” Sheridan

By BILL MILLER

For the Mail Tribune

Long before the Civil War split ranks between north and south, the Oregon frontier was the proving ground for future leaders.

Isolated and lonely at Fort Vancouver, U. S. Grant fought against the bottle, wishing he was home with his beloved wife, Julia.

Ft./ Vancouver, Oregon Territory

With him was Captain Rufus Ingalls. Ingalls had supervised the construction of the fort and with Grant had opened a side business, growing 100 acres of potatoes.

George McClellan, Joe Hooker, and Philip Kearny were just a few of the future Yankee generals who would share time in Oregon with their Confederate counterparts, George Picket, John Walker, and John Bell Hood.

Of all the men who served here, perhaps no one stood taller than “Little Phil” Sheridan—that’s how early Oregonians remembered him.

 

West Point Cadet Philip Henry Sheridan

Phil was short even for his day. He claimed to be 5 feet 5 inches, but, then again, Phil was always claiming something. He told some he was born in Albany, New York; others that it was Ohio, and, shortly before he died, he told the Sheridan Monument Association that he first saw light of day on the seas between Ireland and America.

Little Phil didn’t like his nickname and, even though he was a scrawny 115 pounds, he was also a tenacious fighter. A rough scuffle during his third year at West Point got him a one-year suspension and delayed his commission as a 2^nd Lieutenant.

Phil graduated in 1853, 34th in a class of 52. He headed west to Texas and, a few years later, it was on to the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation in Yamhill County. Here he would watch over Southern Oregon Indians brought to the reservation after the Rogue River Wars.

 

Lt. Philip Henry Sheridan

In his memoir, Phil remembered entering Oregon with Lt. Williamson’s railroad survey party, trekking northward through the Klamath Basin. This was the closest that Phil would come to the Rogue Valley for nearly 20 years.

His memoir continued with stories of Indian battles and his official duties on the reservation. But it was his description of the American Indians on the reservation that added fuel to his Oregon legend.

“Many of them were handsome in feature below the forehead, having fine eyes, aquiline noses, and good mouths,” he said.

Although whispered rumors and written exposés of his illicit affair with an Indian girl have never been confirmed, the contemporary Jacksonville newspaper had no doubt at all.

They glibly wrote of “Sheridan’s Widow,” and how she had captured the heart of “the youthful, impressionable, and susceptible Lieutenant. … It was a case of love at first sight.”

The newspaper claimed the couple married in a ceremony sanctioned by the tribe, yet denied by the whites. Within the year, “their union was blessed by a beauteous daughter.”

 

General Philip Henry Sheridan

As he left for the Civil War, the newspaper mockingly compared Sheridan to a Greek warrior who was forced to choose between love and duty, “leaving his bride and their fat little child behind.”

The day he left for war and immortality, he puffed himself up as large as possible and, with a finger that marked every word, he yelled. “When you see me again boys, I’ll be wearing the shoulder strap of a General!”

His circle of cronies nodded in agreement. Little Phil might be short, but he never lacked confidence and no one doubted he could do whatever he said he would.

When Sheridan and his wife finally did pass through Jacksonville on a stage in 1875, the newspaper was politely cautious. They never mentioned the Indian “widow” and only reported that he stayed overnight and stopped in Ashland to have lunch with an old friend.

That was it. He was gone for good—but Little Phil had left Oregon a genuine legend.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,”a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com or WilliamMMiller.com.

Ed Schieffelin—a gold and silver touch

Ed Schieffelin, the millionaire prospector, had been dead for several days. He had fallen face down in the doorway of his cabin.

Ed Schieffelin, named Tombstone, AZ

When Sheriff Alex Orme had heard that his old boyhood mining companion hadn't returned for supplies, he had a feeling something was wrong, perhaps a broken leg, but nothing like this.

Under the body, Orme found a mortar. When Schieffelin died, he had been grinding down ore, and at the bottom of the mortar was a fine powder, flecked with what looked like gold.
On the table inside the cabin, Orme found a few tobacco cans filled with the same powder and nearby, Schieffelin's diary.

On the last page, Schieffelin had quickly scrawled, "Struck her rich again, by God!"
He had apparently died of natural causes at age 49. Biscuits that had been cooking in his now-cold oven were black, Schieffelin's $450 gold watch that chimed on the quarter-hour still was in his pocket, and there was no sign of a struggle.

Orme wrapped Schieffelin in a blue blanket that he found in the cabin and buried his friend in a shallow grave.

From his birth in Pennsylvania to his last day near Days Creek in Douglas County, Ed Schieffelin's life was touched by gold.

Born a year before the discovery of gold in California, Schieffelin crossed the plains to Southern Oregon with his mother, five brothers and two sisters in 1857.

His gold-seeking father and uncle had sailed around South America five years earlier, eventually taking out land claims near Woodville, today's town of Rogue River.

As a boy, Schieffelin panned gold and learned everything he could from the local prospectors. By the early 1870s, he was wandering the West, always looking for gold.

"I can't say that I care to be rich," he wrote. "I like the excitement of being right up against the earth trying to find her gold."

In Arizona's Apache territory, he settled in with the army at Camp Huachuca. Nearly every day he went off into the hills alone, prospecting for gold.

"The only thing you'll find is your tombstone," a friend warned.

Schieffelin had the last laugh. At a site he named the Tombstone Lode, he found millions of dollars in silver and, according to legend, gave the Arizona town its name.

With his fortune he bought property in California, including an orange grove for his parents. He married, spent his money freely, but never gave up on his quest for gold.

When he drove his own blue Concorde stagecoach into Woodville in 1895, none of his old friends recognized the 200-pound, blue-eyed stranger with the flowing beard.

"I was raised across the Rogue River," he told the gathering crowd, "right at the mouth of Schieffelin Gulch. I'm Ed Schieffelin."

After some backslapping and some whiskey drinking, Schieffelin was on his way.

Three years later, just east of Canyonville, he struck the mother lode again. And though he died before he could stake a claim, Ed Schieffelin died a happy man.

Schieffelin Gulch, Jackson County, Oregon